Ministry with Ian MacKaye on vocals. Pretty much sounds like all of the Ministry side projects of that era. Better than later era Fugazi in my opinion.

This is one of the first CDs I ever bought. I really have no idea what I was thinking at the time because it’s kind of lame. I guess I have to remember that in 1987 there weren’t that many cool bands releasing their records on CD (at least not at Musicland in the Northwoods mall where I would make my ill-informed music consumer decisions). The shelves were stocked mostly with The Beatles and your typical major label pop groups—in the absence of “Ringo” on drums, I’m pretty sure The Other Ones fall into the latter category. Perhaps I am being somewhat harsh because they aren’t really that bad. The single “Holiday” is probably what drove me to buy this CD and it is about as upbeat as a song can get. This single, like the rest of the CD, is awash with late 80’s digital synths and chorus-y guitar effects. With my love of cheesy horror soundtracks, I actually am turning back on to this sound these days, but the problem is that they tend to fill the rest of the disc with ballads. “We Are What We Are” is good, and I could see myself slow dancing the night away to this song but I would have preferred more tracks like “Holiday.” It’s hard to believe that one of the members of this group went on to create the legendary, thumping techno-soundtrack to Run Lola Run. Also, as an aside, this is the most valuable CD in my entire collection. I see it selling for nearly $100 for a used copy on Amazon.com!

This CD compiles all the Oblivians’ Sympathy for the Record Industry records on one CD. There are quite a few “hits” here including “I’m Not a Sicko There’s a Plate in my Head” and “Memphis Creep.” The Oblivians play noisy, minimal, rootsy (but not retro) sounding punk rock. They are one of the few 90s era garage bands that still holds up. Listening to this again I am surprised by how similar Greg O’s vocals sound to David Yow’s legendary crooning.

This is a great Rhino Records compilation of Ken Nordine’s “word jazz”—basically, spoken word stories told over free form beatnik jazz. Nordine’s voice is deep and goes right to your brain. He could read from the phone book and I would still recommend this CD. But, on top of it all, the stories and poetry is great. At times the words truly become yet another instrument in Nordine’s hep jazz combo. It’s sooooo kooky man!

Any Nomeansno record is going to get compared with their masterpiece, Wrong. No, they’ll never match the perfection of that record, but Sex Mad comes close. This CD has some of their best songs: “Body Bag,” “Dad,” “Self Pity” to name a few. Where it falls short is in some of the longer, repetitive tracks and the fact that there is just a general lack of cohesiveness from song to song.

The importance of this record cannot be understated, however, I do think the quality of the music might be slightly overrated.  It may just be that so many of these songs have been played to death on radio, TV and everywhere that I stopped caring about them. As much as the Rolling Stone editors pushed the idea, Kurt Cobain was no John Lennon. However, I didn’t immediately eject the disk when it looped back to track 1 in my car this afternoon, so I must like it more than I think.

This is quite possibly the most retarded band ever. They are like a friendlier version of GG Allin or, at their best, the musical equivalent of restroom stall graffiti. Most of their music is comprised of blunt, single entendres (Love in your Mouth and Hot Muff). It’s dirty, vile, misogynstic and completely hilarious. If you get this on CD it comes with a second disc containing a single, 70 minute track of Nig-Heist live featuring some of the best audience baiting since Fear in Decline of the Western Civilization.

This CD is a nice mix of electronics, processed guitars and throbbing dub-reggae style bass lines. There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking here—plenty of standard drum and bass tropes—but, I find myself going back and listening to this album a lot. The guitar and bass keep it from the looped-sample boredom of pure laptop music but, at the same time, it never comes close to being a rock album.

This CD compiles two solo albums from Colin Newman. Singing Fish  is mostly just Newman noodling around with keyboards. The style is reminiscent of the synth work on 154 and A-Z, but the songs are more atmospheric and don’t really go anywhere. Not To is better and more in line with Newman’s work with Wire. Perhaps it’s the absence of Mike Thorne as producer/keyboardist, but somehow this record doesn’t quite match the brilliance or the quirkiness of A-Z.