God Mother & Country - Foot on the Rock

God Mother & Country existed for a short time and put out just this one 12" in 1985, on the Kaz label. Official band members where David Wright and Bruce Smith, Neneh Cherry's first husband and likely the reason she sings lead vocal on this track. Other Rip Rig & Panic alumni appear as guest musicians, the whole list being: Sean Oliver, Nick Straker, Paget King, Henry Defoe, Dave Defries, Ashley Slater, Simon Morton, and Afrodiziak. As for the sound it's pretty standard electrofunk, along the lines of the more commercial efforts of 400 Blows or Brilliant, though with a nice skronky sax solo at the end. The B-side is a dub version of the A-side. The record was cut with insanely high levels; I've done my best to tame them, but there's still some distortion and clipping in the rips. Get the vinyl rip here or here.

Junk - Continuation of Madness

Continuation of Madness is the third and final album by Bay Area acid-skronk quartet Junk, released in 1997 on their own Faffco Records label. The core trio of David Robbins (baritone sax), David Schumacher (guitar), and Frank Swart (bass) is intact from the previous album, while former drummer Diego Voglino is replaced by Malcolm Peoples. (See the previous entry for a full band bio.) The band's postpunk influences are on display here: "Ascending Thirds" is a fantasia on Liquid Liquid's immortal "Cavern" bass riff, and "Tippy Top" sounds like a lost SLAB! track. The full track list is:

01-Continuation of Madness
02-F U, Frank!
03-Stoppin' in Gilroy
04-Ascending Thirds
05-Stratesphere
06-Chutney con Carne
07-Leslie B
08-Tippy Top
09-Kojak Girl
10-Bowleeged Otis
11-Foreign Relations
12-Jive Picnic
13-Win Some, Lose Some
14-The Spoiling Kids
15-Junk

Malcolm Peoples was in turn replaced by Ian "Inkx" Herman; that lineup lasted for only a year and did not result in an album. Junk disbanded; Robbins, Schumacher, and Herman continued as Post Junk Trio, releasing four albums between 2001 and 2007. The last, Chinatown, is in print and readily available for purchase in mp3 format. The first three are more elusive, and may eventually grace these pages. In the meantime, get the Continuation of Madness CD rip here or here.

Junk - Kiss My Acid Jazz

Junk were an instrumental four-piece band who made music somewhere in the borderlands of acid jazz and skronk; the rhythms were too smooth for skronk, but David Robbins' baritone sax was too edgy for acid jazz. The band's bio from their seemingly abandoned website (last updated April, 2001) reads:

JUNK has been called a jazz band, a funk band, a jazzy-funk band, a funky-jazz band, an "anything but jazz" band, even (horrors!) an acid jazz band. While critics can't agree on how to define them, the listeners & dancers who have heard and seen JUNK will usually agree on this: they have a talent for moving their audiences (body and soul) and they do it intelligently, confidently, and without getting hung up on the labels others try to hang on them. Call it what you like--it swings, it grooves and occasionally it goes off the deep end. But label it, and the music will punch a hole through the box you tried to put it in.

JUNK's beginning can be traced back to 1988 when Dave Schumacher (guitar) and David Robbins (baritone sax) roomed together at Boston's Berklee College of Music, while Schumacher played with Frank Swart (bass) in a band that was to have a significant influence on JUNK. Six years later they all met again in the Bay Area and hooked up with Malcolm Peoples, the local drummer of choice for numerous funk/hip hop acts. Their first CD, JUNK was born out of jams worked out in a smoke-filled rehearsal space. The buzz got going right away. "A solid album," said Stepjazz magazine, "which really shows the possibilities of this music and this band." Urb agreed. "Quite against the pretty boy space cowboy pseudo-funkateer pretenders, they are willing to funk themselves into a cold sweat without apology or gimmickry."

Following tours of the West Coast, the band entered the studio with Philip Steir of Consolidated to record Kiss My Acid Jazz. A more varied CD than the first, KMAJ 's jazz/funk mix was spiced with some experimental cuts that raised a few eyebrows but also brought them critical praise, and national radio airplay. JUNK was nominated in the Outstanding Jazz Band and Jazz Album categories of the 1997 Bay Area Music Awards (Bammies).

The "band that was to have a significant influence on JUNK" would be Morphine, whose defining "low rock" sound is echoed in Junk's heavy bass-and-baritone-sax orientation. Get the CD rip of Junk's second album, Kiss My Acid Jazz (Faffco Records FAFFCD-02), here or here; check back in a week or so for their third and final album. (Have a rip of the first? Please let me know, I'm looking for one.)

Coloured Stone - Black Rock from the Red Centre

Black Rock from the Red Centre from 1987 is the first US release by Australian Aborigine rock band Coloured Stone; the twelve songs are taken from the band's first two Australian albums from 1984 and 1985. The album profile from Rounder Records reads:

With the emergence of two groups, Coloured Stone and the Warumpi Band, Aboriginal rock 'n' roll is becoming a significantand exciting genre in Australian popular music, with two albums to their credit in their homeland (from both of which Black Stone From The Red Centre is drawn), Coloured Stone saw its first release sponsored by the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association's own record label, lmpaarja. Recorded in one night, their debut LP contained "Black Boy" and "Kapi Pulka," which became #l hits, via Radio Australia, in the Pacific Islands Region.

Composed of two sets of brothers, the Lawries and the Coabys, with Buna Lawrie as songwriter, lead singer and drummer, Coloured Stone's songs and their sounds are naive, which is not to say simplistic, and they're straightforward and disarmingly honest. On this record you have straightahead rock songs devoid of the usual aggression and hostility and you have unique mixtures of all the different shades of modern pop from country to R&B to rock and reggae mixed up in totally new ways.

Finding original rock in the Australian bush is like finding a punk band in Dubbo —- it happens, but don't count on it. The uniqueness of this new breed of desert musician is that they play fast, loud and often raucous music in a landscape otherwise dominated bythe perennial C&W tunes and easy listening folk, not so much in the fact they are black. The melodies are there, the beat is there and the performances are uniformly strong. . . Coloured Stone is not some kind of folk or ethnic band; they make rock & roll with all the wit and taste that one can expect or hope for, from the personal to the political without heavyhandednesss or didacticism. Years of discrimination and determination, and long days and nights on the bush tracks have honed Coloured Stone and Lawrie's songs to afine edge.

Recommended Cuts:
"Island of Greed"
"Breaking Hearts"
"Dancing In The Moonlight"
"Take Me Back To The Dreamtime"

The full track list is:

01 Island of Greed
02 Breaking Hearts
03 Sacred Ground
04 Michael William Lawrie
05 Kapi Pulka
06 She's the Girl with the Broken Heart
07 Dancing in the Moonlight
08 Take Me Back to the Dreamtime
09 Magic Girl
10 When I'm Gonna Learn
11 I Wish I Was Living In Your Dreams
12 Black Boy

Get the vinyl rip here or here.

Monkeyspank - Demons Flew Out Of My Mouth

Here is an artifact from the Baltimore music scene in 1990: Monkeyspank's first album, the 7-song Demons Flew Out Of My Mouth on Merkin Records. The last.fm entry on Monkeyspank reads:

Monkeyspank was a Baltimore hard rock/funk band active in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Monkeyspank featured an unusual lineup of three drummers/percussionists, two bass players, and a guitarist.Monkeyspank’s sound owes equal debts to guitar-driven heavy rock and polyrythmic funk, in some degree similar to the Red Hot Chili Peppers (albeit with a much darker edge) and local Baltimore contemporaries The All Mighty Senators. They released two albums, the vinyl-only Demons Flew Out of My Mouth and Blue Mud.

The band lineup was: Bill Corsello, Allison Futeral, Dave Kahle, Kevin Keelty, Kendall King and Brian Rice. The track listing of Demons is:

1 Snakejuice
2 1000 Dead Jim Backuses
3 Akio's Dad
4 I Am Sam
5 Dr. Omar
6 Hero
7 I Shake My Stick

Get the vinyl rip of Demons here or here; see the Monkeyspank MySpace page here; get some "where are they now" information here.

Jon Butcher Axis - Stare At The Sun

The All Music Guide entry for Jon Butcher reads:

Jimi Hendrix disciple Jon Butcher achieved some moderate chart success in the mid-'80s as the singer/guitarist for the Jon Butcher Axis. Coming out of the Boston club scene in the early '80s, the Butcher Axis (which also included members Chris Mann [Chris Martin, actually] on bass and Derek Blevins on drums), issued such albums as 1983's self-titled debut, 1984's Stare at the Sun, and 1985's Along the Axis (Butcher dropped the Axis for such releases as 1986's Wishes and 1989's Pictures From the Front), opened for local Boston heroes the J. Geils Band in addition to other harder-edged bands, and issued a few singles that enjoyed some success on radio and MTV -- "Wishes," "Goodbye Saving Grace," and "Life Takes a Life." Butcher continued issuing solo albums in the '90s -- Positively the Blues (1995) and Electric Factory (1996) -- while a hits compilation (1998's The Best Of: Dreamers Would Ride) and an archival concert (1999's King Biscuit Flower Hour Presents) were also issued. In addition to his musical career, Butcher founded the Electric Factory Recording Studio, which focuses primarily on film, TV, and multimedia work. (Greg Prato)

According to Wikipedia, "Jimi Hendrix disciple" is a bit of an overstatement:

"If you grew up in the era of Jimi Hendrix as I did it would be nearly impossible NOT to be influenced by his brilliance and amazing facility as a guitar player. To be sure, my early impressions of the Jimi Hendrix Experience were completely life altering, but so too were my impressions of Albert King. Jeff Beck was and remains a constant source of inspiration, and working with Jeff on the MTV/ VH-1 video Ambitious remains an all time high." Jon also lists among his influences Richie Havens, John Lennon Bob Dylan and Keith Richards. While Butcher is humbled by the Hendrix comparisons he emphasizes that they may be superficial. " Being black and playing a Stratocaster might lead one to assume Jimi was my sole influence but that wouldn't be true. Like most musicians, in fact like most people we're a complex mix of a lot of things."

The 1984 album Stare At The Sun contains nine original compositions and a cover of Bill Nelson's "Eros Arriving" from his groundbreaking album The Love That Whirls. Get the vinyl rip here or here.

John Fred and his Playboy Band - Love My Soul

John Fred and his Playboy Band had their biggest hit in 1968 with "Judy In Disguise (with Glasses)", which satirized both the Beatles and the huge sunglasses that were a fad at the time. (Everything old is new again!) John Fred Gourrier was from Louisiana and his band excelled at Southern R&B grooves, but this style never translated into a national hit for them. It was only when they went for a pop gloss that their songs broke through. After three albums on Paula Records, the label dropped them and they disbanded. Fred got a new band together and signed to MCA/Uni, releasing a few more singles and one album, Love My Soul (1970). The new band did not include Fred's former saxophonist and songwriting partner Andrew Bernard; he wrote most of the songs on the album with his manager, Lynn Ourso. There is a distinct Beatles influence throughout the album, evident from the first track, "The Big Show", which not only sounds like "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", it also references it in the lyrics, along with "Judy In Disguise" (but which was written by outside songwriters). Side one closes with a Memphis-style cover of "Back in the U.S.S.R.", previously released as a single. In the middle of side two, the title track sounds like Fred's "Let It Be": a downtempo ballad that builds to an anthem, at which point the horns play the "Judy In Disguise" riff (co-written with Bernard). Sprinkled through the record are three more obvious singles: "Three Deep in a Feeling" (previously released). "Candy's Candy Kisses" (a dead ringer for Tommy James), and "Sadie Trout" (the album's other Bernard co-writing credit). Robert Christgau evaluates the album thusly:

With his sharp, nasal drawl, Fred was born to pop, and though he's lost collaborator Andrew Bernard, he's keeping Shreveport's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Fan Club going all by himself. Would anyone but a genuine eccentric rewrite "Sweet Soul Music" as a tribute to Johnny Winter, Pete Townshend, and Nilsson? "Agnes in Disguise (With Blanket)": "Sadie Trout." B-

The full track list is:

01 The Big Show
02 He Was My Friend
03 Where Will You Be
04 Three Deep in a Feeling
05 Sweet Soul Music-Can't Be So Bad
06 Back in the U.S.S.R.
07 Where's Everybody Going
08 Open Doors
09 Candy's Candy Kisses
10 Love My Soul
11 Leo Our Hero
12 Sadie Trout

Get the vinyl rip here or here. It's not from pristine vinyl so be prepared for some clicks and pops; if you like it you should be able to find a sealed copy for $40 or so.