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You Tell Me Lies // Voodoo 500 copies on black vinyl? Limp INT01, 1981 Lineup: Andy Murray / Nigel Dick / Hugh Attwooll / Mike Allen / Huw Gower / Alan Platt / Ron Francois Recording Info: Produced by the Group. Notes: Licensed from Nancy Boy Records/Chiswick/whatever in the UK... Skip's Comments: Howie from the Music Machine and I went over to England buying records in the late seventies we hooked up really quickly with Nigel Dick, who was the press officer at Stiff Records, and his second in command there was Andy Murray, whose brother was Neil Murray from Whitesnake. Well the two of them became good friends with us quick and fast, and they'd give us promos. We were big fans of the Stiff label and they had a band that had put out a record on Stiff under a different name. Then they had the Stiff All Stars record out on Chiswick, and they wanted to get some kind of presence established in America. They figured that, well, Limp was like the American Stiff in their mind--I don't think we ever achieved that status, certainly sales didn't reflect it. I made up a release and I think we pressed up 500 copies of that and put it out on Limp International. That's the only release on the Limp International label. I just returned the master tapes to them a couple weeks ago. I found them when I was going through the warehouse. Nigel's a famous video producer out in LA now, he does a lot of Britney Spears videos and Hoobastank and things like that. He's one of the most famous video producers there is. Andy's still over in England working for record companies, so I called him up and said, "Do you want this?" and he said to ship it out, so I shipped out. Reviews: Ugh. I have a hard enough time dealing with American Snoozewave, please don't import more. Howard Wuelfing called the B side "blank blustery boogie," which is a lie. This band wouldn't know boogie if it smacked 'em upside the head. |
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Penetrators - the Break / Rudements - Imagination / Mock Turtle - Thank You for Sending Me an Eno / Slickee Boys - Attitude / Chumps - Jet Lag Drag / Billy Synth - Every Time You Give me a Call / Jeff Dahl - Get Up'N Dance / Half Japanese - I Want Something New // White Boy - I Hate / Nurses - I Can Explain / Mark Hoback - No Fun / Judies Fixation - Martyr Me / Tina Peel - Knocking Down Guardrails / Young Turds - Murder One / Da Moronics - Mr. President / Raisinets - Stay Limp 1000 copies on translucent red vinyl 500 copies on gold vinyl 500 copies on black Limp Records 1001, 1978 lotsa copies on CD 21361/District Line Records, 2004 Recording Info: 1 engineered by Bill Murray at Soundbox Studios, produced by Malcolm Peplow. 2 recorded at the Psychedelly April 28, 1978 (probably engineered by Don Zientara). 3 engineered by Don Zientara, produced by Andy Charneco and Don Zientara. 4 engineered by Don Zientara at the Psychedelly April 28, 1978. 5 engineered by Don Zientara. 6 no info available. 7 engineered by Malcolm Peplow and Bill Murray at Soundbox Studios. 8 recorded August, 1978. 9 engineered by Malcolm Peplow and Soundbox Studios. 10 engineered by Don Zientara at Zientara B Studio August 19, 1978 (Howard's birthday), produced by Howard Wuelfing. 11 engineered by Don Zientara, produced by Mark Hoback and Don Zientara. 12 engineered by Pete Johnson at Rabbit Reproduction. Produced by William Dempster Smith (Bored Bill). 13 recorded and produced by the group. 14 no info available. 15 recorded live at CBGB. 16 recorded by the group. Notes: Comes in a plain cardboard sleeve with two 11.75"x11.75" flats. There was a red vinyl copy rubber-stamped with the number 17 (the same way that the Best of Limp was stamped, except on the front) that I should have scans of soon. Note, for the numbered copy the loose flats are actually glued to the plain white LP jacket, not loose like all the others I've seen are. Skip's Comments: Where did you get the idea of using two 12"x12" sheets of paper instead of printed LP covers? I assume it was a cost-cutting measure, since printed sleeves are ridiculously expensive. That's part of it, the other is that seventies bootleg albums came packaged that way and we thought it was a punk thing to do. What made you pick the Penetrators to open up the album? There was no question that that cut was...I mean, that was something that I would have been proud of if I had produced. It just soared and had great production from start to finish. It was definitely the thing on the album that sounded the best produced. We wanted the sampler to be representative from A to Z, start to finish, good to bad, of what was happening in the local DC scene. So we had to balance out stuff like Get Up And Dance by Jeff Dahl with something like that. We wanted to get all the variants, and the things that were happening in DC at the time. As I said, the purpose of the album was not particularly to please the artists or musicians that were on it, or to sell records locally, but to educate people in other cities and towns and across the world about what was happening in DC. Everybody was focusing on Los Angeles and New York and London and that was it. Later on it was Akron with Devo, Cleveland with Pere Ubu, and Washington, which I thought had a great scene, was not getting any attention. Did you work with the band at all? No, no, as far as I know they were down in Virginia. Alexandria. They only released two cuts, both on Limp Records, were there any plans or ideas for any more? What was the other thing? The Break? Best of Limp. Broken Promises. The Break was on :30 Over DC. Broken Promises, see you know this better than me. I also planned the Best of Limp Volume 2, which would have rounded up some of the other cuts. I had a lot of outtakes from the Razz and the Slickee Boys and the Nurses and things like that, as well as some leftover cuts from :30 Over DC. The Rudements, which I think were one of the better bands on :30 Over DC, gave me a whole four song EP that they never released. I still have the master tapes in my basement. I guess I had forgotten that the Penetrators were on there. Nobody will put that one on CD, so... Who was Don How-- David, David Howcroft. Why do I have Don Howland written down? Anyway, who was David Howcroft, who wrote the :30 Over DC liner notes? I told you about Steve Lorber having a show on WGTB. David Howcroft had a show on WGTB as well. David's show was oriented more towards the current new wave stuff, the bands coming out of--and you've got to remember this is all brand new at this time--the bands coming out of New York, the B-52s, and local bands like Urban Verbs--the more progressive end of things. Steve would occasionally play some of the British stuff, but he was more into the sixties psychedelic and punk rock stuff and that was the basic thrust of his show. So when it came time to start getting interest and putting together the album to showcase the DC scene, David's show was much more of a place for that kind of thing, and he had contacts. I had contacts through the store. My friend Howie Horowitz from the Music Machine up in Baltimore had contacts with Jad and David Fair from Half Japanese, who hadn't even recorded yet, but were regular customers at his store, buying the new releases and things. That's how he ended up writing that for :30 Over DC. And the CD? Well, I'm certainly happy with the way the cover looks on the new thing. I think Henry did a great job with that. I love pastel colors. Kim Kane's artwork was always great but it felt like a watercolor waiting to be painted, especially with the way we had the stars with all the groups, so the way Henry did it was just perfect. It took ten years to get the CD put out. He started working on the release, getting permission from all the group members, and then Jim Kowalski from White Boy got arrested and went to jail for life, so he was gonna drop the project. For two or three years it sat there, and then Dischord encouraged him to go ahead and do it. He picked it back up again and had to go back and get all the permissions from everybody. The last few months before it came out I had to help out with his office manager and contact a lot of people and get their publishing affiliations and things of that nature. I didn't get any money off the record then or now. Henry's Comments: :30 Over DC is a compilation record of DC area bands from the late 70’s that was released by Skip Groff who owned and operated the now legendary Yesterday & Today record store in Rockville Maryland. Skip had a label called Limp and he released a lot of cool local area bands and helped a lot of local musicians get their first records together. Look at the producer credits for the fist few Dischord releases and you’ll see Skip’s name. Anyway, this record was one of those cool LPs we all grew up with. One day I was talking to Skip about that record and what the deal was with it and a few weeks later, he sent me the masters and told me to do something with them. Sounded like a release to me. It features DC luminaries such as Half Japanese, The Slickee Boys and The Nurses. It’s a great slice of music and history. I sat on the tapes for about a year and at one point, I was at a wedding in DC and was talking to some Dischord types and told them about the tapes and my plans to perhaps some day release the record. They looked at me like I was nuts, "That record is so cool, you gotta put it out!" That was the shove I needed. Anyway, last year I worked back and forth with Skip on new liner notes and we got it together. I had it mastered by the great Phil Klum in NYC who specializes in old tape and it today, it came in. I just finished listening to it and it sounds great. We are lucky that the tapes held up, I was expecting some problems because of their age but we lucked out. I can’t wait to play a track off it tonight on the first broadcast of my radio show less than four hours from now. Reviews: As is the way with samplers, this record has some definite duds, but the duds are just that--duds, not atrocious excursions into the world of suck like some compilations I can name. The standout tracks are the Penetrators, with a massive collection of power chords and some great frustrated lyrics, White Boy with a tune that's every bit as mean sounding as it's title implies, and Half Japanese clatter, bang, and crash around for a bit less than two minutes, producing one the single best distillation of the Half Japanese ethic that you're likely to find. D'Chumps try to do arty spazzwave in the same vein as their 7", but it sounds kinda flat here. The Slickee Boys, Tina Peel, and da Moronics churn out respectable rock songs. The Nurses song was the only disappointing track (since I didn't know the rest of the artists, how could I be disappointed?) because it's a bland acoustic love song without any of the fire that made the band so great. A lot of the bands I mentioned play styles that mean absolutely nothing to me, like Mock Turtle (stupidest band name ever?) piddling around with their synthesizers or Mark Hoback's folky playing or Jeff Dahl's vague rockabilly stylings. I have to say that the CD version sounds miles better than my red vinyl copy. Hard to tell if that's because the original version was poorly mastered, the colored vinyl just sounded bad, the new version was remastered (the one thing I did notice was that the tape droput in da Moronics' song has been fixed), or some combination of the three. I'm still hunting for a test and third pressing (both on black vinyl) of this record. Email me if you've got copies for sale or trade. |
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We Are the Only Real People / Winner by Elimination / So Talk To Me, Karen / Beat the Streets / the Marines--Him? / the Blizzard of '78 / Have a Lark / Nobody's Girl // Don't Get Fresh With Me / Do the Touch / Designs on You / Mad at the World / Gotta Be Pretty / I Went Downtown, To See My Gal, She Wasn't There--So I Left / (I Wanna) Burnout / the Progression ?? test pressings on black vinyl 3000 copies on translucent blue vinyl Limp Records 1002/Kleen Kut KK823, 1979? Lineup: Kenne "Gizmo" Highland - bass, guitar, harp, vocals / Ken Kaiser - guitar, drums, bass, piano, vocals / Kim Kane - rhythm guitar (on Don't Get Fresh With Me), backing vocals / Martha Hull - vocals (on [I Wanna] Burnout), backing vocals / Keith Campbell - backing vocals / Laurie Hoch - backing vocals / Karen Hoch - backing vocals Recording Info: Recorded at Twin Studios, NJ. Engineered by Bob Both. Assitant engineer: Chris Corso. Associate producers: Kim Kane, Skip Groff, Ron Wikow, Mike Glicksman, Paul Lovell. Notes: The Korps released this LP themselves and just used the Limp name, which explains why this was the first Limp LP to have a printed sleeve and the only Limp LP to be shrinkwrapped (you know how I know? Cuz my copy was still sealed, and I destroyed its collector value by opening it. I did the same thing with my Effigies 12" on Autumn. And the We're Da Machine 12"! If you think that's bad, remind me to tell you about the time I melted the rare Meat Puppets/Flesheaters/Tex and the Horseheads flexi from Take It magazine by holding it up to a lightbulb, or the Travis Cut test pressing I threw across the room in a fit of rage. Cringe, collectorscum, cringe!). Skip's Comments: I had nothing to do with that. If you ask the group today they'll say I bootlegged it. The fact of the matter is that they were friends of Kim Kane, and Kenne Highland was one of the two main guys in the group, the other was Ken Kaiser. Kenne Highland was stationed in the army down here, but the Slickee Boys had known him from when he was in a punk band up in Boston. He used to come into the store--at the time I think he was stationed at Fort Meade--and he and Martin hooked up for the release of that thing, and Martha and Howard were on it. Keith Campbell was on it too. I didn't know that. I had nothing to do with it. All I did was set them up with my pressing plant and gave them the logos to put on it. I'm pretty sure it's on blue vinyl. They released it, not me. I just gave them the name. They begged me for the name, because again, like the Shirkers, they wanted...at that point Limp had the Slickee Boys out, and had the Shirkers, and Razz out and the :30 Over DC album and they wanted some kind of recognition. A year or two ago, when Gulcher were talking about reissuing it I called them up, I emailed the owner, and asked them what the story on it was. They said, you bootlegged it, you don't deserve anything. Ken Kaiser says you never had any rights to release this thing. Reviews: I didn't like the first Africa Korps LP when I heard it, and I'm not terribly fond of this one either. The entire thing is either dull Ramones-rip-off punk, or dull 60's-rip-off pop until you get to the last two songs. (I Wanna) Burnout's unquestionably the best song here (and it's great, lest you think I'm slamming it), but without Martha it doesn't really have much going for it. Hell, as the version on the Martha Hull and the Steady Jobs 7" shows, even with Martha it wasn't nec. much to talk about... The Progression (the final song) is the musical equivalent of Mark Perry's "This is a chord. Here's another. And another." chart from Sniffin' Glue, and pretty fuckin' funny. Too bad I had to sit through the entire LP to get to those two tracks. |
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Control / Heart Murmur / Golden Love / Red Rocket Roll / Six Feet Under / Just Blow Away // Dr Boogie / Road Runnah Walk Don't Run / Streets of Your Town / What Ya Gonna Do About It / No Money Down / Creepskin / What A Boy Can't Do '77 100 copies on black vinyl Dacoit 1001, 1977 200 copies on black vinyl Limp Records 1003, 1980 Lineup: Martha Hull - vocals / Marshall Keith - lead, rhythm, keyboards, vocals / Kim Kane - rhythm, lead, vocals / Andy von Brand - bass / Chris Rounds - drums, vocals, "ptish" effect / Howard Wuelfing - bass (on Control) / Charles Eichert - farfisa organ (on Road Runnah, Heart Murmur, and Golden Love) Recording Info: Recorded at: Underground Sound, MD, January 1977 / "Radio" (WGTB?), DC, October 1976 / the Keg, June 13, 1977, engineered by Don Zientara (tracks 8-12) / Carl Sandburg Elementary, July 24, 1977, engineered by Don Zientara. B side is live. Produced by the Slickee Boys and Steve Lorber. Notes: B side is live. Comes in a plain cardboard sleeve with two 11.75"x11.75" flats. Some copies came without flats. I believe they had explanatory/apologetic notes with them... Skip's Comments: I did the reissue as a favor to Kim Kane. I think it's an interesting LP, but it's not something that I would have done. I mean, if you listen to the Line album by the Slickee Boys, Here to Stay, it's much more cohesive, powerful, well-recorded stuff, only one of which I think I was involved with the production of, but everything else is very consistent and powerful. Separated Vegetables is all over the place. It's very much of a period piece, but it was something that was meant to be enjoyed by a few and cherished by the ones that didn't have it. I can only assume that's why we pressed such small numbers, and I have to believe that's because it was part of the deal with Kim Kane, that we could only make up a limited number in case he wanted to do it again himself at some point. Reviews: To be blunt, I can see why they only pressed a hundred copies of this to begin with. Why they repressed 200 more in 1980 is something of a mystery to me. The recording quality is uniformly poor, and even on powerful songs like Control (easily one of their best, and the version on Disconcerted is one of my favorite Nurses songs) it's a struggle to hear what's going on underneath the murk. The Slickee Boys formula of two or three rockers and a bunch of dead weight continues to hold true, with Control, Heart Murmur (an old Overkill song), and Six Feet Under being the rockers. Everything else...well, I don't need to spell it out for you. On a side note, this was one of the first punk records to be bootlegged, with an unauthorized edition showing up in 1981 with a bonus track. |
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Slickee Boys - Gotta Tell Me Why (remix) / Nightman - Secrets / D.Ceats - Go Back / Slickee Boys - Question of Temperature / Nurses - Something to See / D.Ceats - I Made a Mistake // Tex Rubinowitz - Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache / Razz - Do Wah Diddy / Shirkers - Drunk and Disorderly (remix) / Penetrators - Broken Promises / Slickee Boys - I Love You / Nurses - Viola D'Amour / Bad Brains - Don't Bother Me 10? rejected test pressings 10? accepted test pressings (Re1 etched in A side) 1000? numbered(?) copies on black vinyl, Limp Records 1004, 1980 Lineup: Recording Info: Tracks 1 and 4 recorded June 1979, produced by Ted Niceley and Skip Groff. Track 1 remixed March 1980 by Kim Kane and Skip Groff. 2 engineered by Mark Greenhouse at Track, February 1980, produced by Ted Niceley. 3 and 6 recorded January 1980 at Hit and Run Studios, produced by Steve Carr. 5 recorded August 1979, engineered by Don Zientara, produced by Howard Wuelfing. 7 engineered by Bob Dawson at Bias Studios, December 1978. 8 engineered by Tom McCarthy at Sounds Reasonable, May 1978. 9 engineered by Don Zientara, August 1978, produced by Howard Wuelfing. Remix by Howard Wuelfing, 1980. 10 engineered by Malcolm Peplow at Soundbox Studios. 11 engineered by Don Zientara at the Psychedelly April 28, 1978. Remixed by Skip Groff and Kim Kane, 1980. 12 engineered by Don Zientara at the Knights of Columbus Beer Blast, September 29, 1978. Remixed by Howard Wuelfing, 1980. 13 engineered by Don Zientara at Inner Ear, March 1979. Remixed by Skip Groff and Kim Kane. Notes: Comes in a plain cardboard sleeve with two 11.75"x11.75" flats. Back cover of my regular issue is rubber stamped with a number. (the test press back is pictured). Skip's Comments: The label was getting a lot of attention and as you can see from the cover, a lot of things I put on the front were reviews of records or reviews of the bands that we put out. I just wanted to remind people that there was this label there, because a lot of people bought 45s, but some people only bought LPs. I wanted to give an overview, again, of things that were still happening with the scene and things that we couldn't put out before. There were several bands that said they wanted to put things out on :30 Over DC, but they couldn't, either because of label reasons, or they were too stupid at the time. Best of Limp gave a couple of those people a chance to take care of that, like the Razz. The Bad Brains just did the one song on the Best of Limp. Did you have any plans to do more stuff with them? No, I actually don't have any rights to do stuff with them. I mean, shortly after they did the session for Limp, they did the local session they did for...hmm...at Omega Studios. I don't know if that was for anybody in particular, I don't know who financed it, but I think it was one of the local managers who had hooked up with them between when I did negotiations with them for the cut that I used and when they moved up to New York. They moved to New York and cut the Pay to Cum 45, which became legendary in punk circles and is one of the most prized punk artifacts. It's almost up there with the A&M God Save the Queen in terms of collectible things, if you have an original first pressing. We had fifty or sixty of those when they first came out, but there were also days when the guys from the Misfits would pull up in their van with all the colored vinyl versions of the Misfits 45s and we'd buy five of each for the store. The Bad Brains first studio session was arranged by you. Where did you run into them? They were big customers of the store and they were from Forestville, the area where I used to live, around Suitland. They were pretty much a go-go band. One day--and again, I still have this somewhere in my basement--they gave me like a sixty minute long basement demo tape of stuff that they had done. I could see that they had some kind of talent or affinity, but it was a little too clean. A lot of people don't know this, but the Bad Brains were a total mock thing. These guys were not punks at all, they just decided that was the scene they were going to suck into, and bite into, and they did. They were...if you ever hear this original tape, the guitar playing on there, the drums, it's professional. No, they weren't punks. Were you aware of that from the get go? Oh yeah. What was it like working with them? Well, I never worked with them because they scared the hell out of me. The week that we were supposed to do the session, it was going to be a Saturday over at Don Zientara's studio, and I think the day before, HR, who had a habit of coming into the store and just hanging around staring, he came into the store and just sat there for three or four hours straight and stared at me. I'm sitting at the counter ringing people up and there were these cold, steely eyes, not saying anything, just staring, trying to freak me out. And he did. So I called up Kim Kane from the Slickee Boys and said, "I don't want to do this session! I've already booked the time, I've already paid for it, please go over there and record it." (laughs) So he went over there. His recollection was that they had like three hours and everything they recorded, which was like five or six songs, they did in thirty-five minutes, one straight run-through, because it took them that long to get there and get their equipment set up. They were really late in arriving and the whole thing was a mess, but one thing that came out of it which I thought was a really, really tribal, guttural, and really punk, was the song Don't Bother Me. I don't know why they didn't really come back to that until much, much later on. Many years later they ended up putting that cut on a charity album. He had me send it up to them to remix and they did the horrible remix on it, almost made it into a disco cut. Phased guitars and stuff like that, it has a weird... Reviews: The lineup would lead you to believe that this is gonna be THE Limp record, but alas that is not that case. There are two remixes, and in both cases the original is superior (dramatically so for the Shirkers). Tex Rubinowitz and Nightman justify my hatred of retro-wannabilly and the Razz contribute a pedestrian cover song. The other two thirds of the album are strong, but not strong enough to carry the record. The other two Slickee Boys tracks are good, with I Love You (the kind of stuff I normally castigate the Slickee Boys for doing), being a surprise winner. D.Ceats play as fast as humanly possibly, pumpin' out some old fashioned stopdropnrocknroll. It's real similiar to the A side of their 7", but with some energy. The Penetrators and Nurses stick to what we expect from them, and do it well, but it's the Bad Brains, closing out the record, that really make Tex R, the Razz, and Nightman seem hopelessy out of touch. Don't Bother Me was the first Bad Brains song I ever heard. It was the song that, way back in the dawn of time, convinced me that hardcore punk wasn't just a tuneless, senseless racket. Tuneless it may be, but never senseless... |