SINGLES AGAIN / Chuck Eddy

Chuck Eddy dusts off his old vinyl and scratches his head. We all win.

Greetings, BLURT readers. This column's theme is fairly simple: Basically, I sort alphabetic ally through my shelves for dusty old 7-inch vinyl indie singles from acts that aren't household names, and try to figure out why I wound up keeping them in the first place. This is the 8^th installment (first two appeared at Idolator.)

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INDIAN JEWELRY "In Love With Loving"/"Lost My Sight" (On/On Switch, 2005)

The modestly plain-brown-paper-colored cardboard picture sleeve depicts two apparent humans with ichthyosaurus skulls where their heads should be, but joined Siamese-twin-like at the heart. Notes typed on a 6 1/2" x 5 1/2" piece of paper inside follow screwed-up 16^th Century French theories about conjoined twins ("too tight a womb, tight clothes, and the manner in which a woman sat while pregnant") with by more up-to-date screwed-up Italian theories about demonic possession. There are Latin words as well. The music, from three mysterious Houston, Texans also known to call themselves NTX + Electric and Swarm of Angels among other weird names, has vocals coiling through what sounds like a long vacuum-cleaner hose filled with psychedelic guitar noise wobbling as if from Mesopotamia (the A-side) and a barely audible woman's voice approximating Grace Slick/Kim Gordon/Exene mode way-in-hell-back behind a repetitive guitar figure given a disconcertingly nervousness (the B-side). Dub blackouts figure heavily, if not necessarily intentionally, in both songs, and the band knows how to get beauty out of an ill-defined blur as it gets louder and louder. Think Chrome, or maybe the Butthole Surfers of the mid ‘80s. "These songs," the liner note insert warns, "were recorded as quickly as possible."

(www.myspace.com/indianjewelry)

I-SOUND "Sweating In The Ages"/"Dog Years" (Broklyn Beats, 2002)

In "Sweating In The Ages," a broken computer keyboard dances a skittery soft shoe, turns into a cash register spewing pennies all over the room, which turns into a Martian typewriter, which gets mellow and forlorn and then turns into a tick-tocking metronome. In "Dog Years," an unhurried, fuzzy clank suffused with crud somehow forms itself into an identifiable albeit highly distorted groove. Nice pockets of space -- albeit conveying less personality, somehow, than Indian Jewelry's. Though based in Brooklyn, I-Sound once split an CD with Berlin's To Rococo Rot, whose name is spelled the same forwards and backwards. (http://broklynbeats.net/artist.html )

ROSS JOHNSON "It Never Happened"/"Nudist Camp"  (Sugar Ditch, 1993)

Shaggy dog stories, almost as hilarious as this Memphis roots-punk utility player clearly thinks they are judging by how he keeps laughing uncontrollably at himself - first, over a beat stolen from Dylan's "Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35", a yarn about naughty stuff Ross did in his youth. One time, for instance, he saw a woman in culottes and a halter top, and ("this is in a non-sexist context," he swears), he "felt funny" (see also: Beavis and Butthead), which is to say "objectifying glare took over." He's having a conversation with himself, reaching for the craziness of Hasil Adkins or Harmonica Frank; he stops to pray, hopes it's all just a bad dream, assures himself it'll all be over soon. Flipside starts with more chuckling, but the music gives deep chugga-chugga horn-funk a Latin bugalu bent then puts Hendrix guitars on top, à la the Jimmy Castor Bunch. Again, Ross is reminiscing. "When I was younger I had ambitions" -- many of which were inspired by looking at "nudie magazines" and involved living at a nudist camp. But one day a kid from down the block tried to pimp his strip-poker-playing twin sisters, bad girl Donna and good girl Dora. Which scheme went badly. There's also a hidden, untitled third track - a rinky-dink instrumental not distantly related to the theme from "The Dating Game." On the Sun Records homage of a record label, both sides are classified as "Delta Music Hot Vocal."  (www.myspace.com/thebaronoflove)

JOHN WILKES BOOZE "Whiskey And Pills"/"Marc Bolan Makes Me Want To Fuck" (Family Vineyard, 2002)

I count about 13 words in the lyrics of the first song; maybe five words in the lyrics of the second (yeah, fewer than in its title). "Whiskey and Pills" is a call-and-response between a preposterous Jon Spencer-style huckster and somebody (or maybe the same guy) with a higher voice - basically, pigfuck punks ineptly pretending to be a ‘60s garage band who were in turn pretending to be the Isley Brothers. Plenty of energy; not enough music. The "Marc Bolan" song, mainly just some geek swishily repeating the line "children, sweet children of the revolution," is slower and has some remnant of Southern-not-glam rock in its opening guitar cascade. Marc Bolan was one of "five pillars of soul" these guys later dedicated CD-R EPs too; the others were Melvin Van Peebles, Patty Hearst, Yoko Ono, and Albert Ayler. Which is to say they defined "soul" their own way. On the single, a sticker stuck to the outside says "debut 45 from Southern Indiana's premier R&B band." Guess they forgot about John Cougar's group. Also says "recorded live to 2" tape" -- but I bet Indian Jewelry still recorded theirs faster. (www.myspace.com/johnwilkesbooze)

KILL ME TOMORROW "I Require Chocolate"/"Rats For Sale" (Gold Standard Laboratories, 2002) 

Like Indian Jewelry, these San Diegans are a co-ed trio who insist on having their rock and dubbing it too - at least during the introduction of "I Require Chocolate," all zooms and zips and secret passageways. When unconventionally tuned guitars enter, it sounds a lot like real early Sonic Youth, back when their drums did a tribal goth rumble under foreboding Wagnerian feedback mini-symphonies. But the nasally voiced sarcasm upfront comes closer to mid ‘80s British indie post-punks like the Membranes or Nightingales. The words aren't remotely comprehensible, but it's clear their consonants and diphthongs don't match the insert card (see also: Indian Jewelry again) that substitutes for a lyric sheet. Turns out, when you read closer, that the words on paper are plot summaries: "A famous but over the hill superhero is found guilty in a case concerning a series of bizarre sex crimes..." And then, for the B-side, "Since the beginning of civilization a strange vendor has walked the Earth selling his variety of plagues to mankind..."  "Rats For Sale" - recited in a flat Thurston Moore deadpan - is both more deliberate and more decipherable, at least to the extent that its untrustworthy narrator hopes to convince you that rodent ownership would be "beautiful." Maybe not as beautiful as the water-blue vinyl the songs are pressed on, though, or the color scheme of the 45 cover they're packaged in - obviously designed (like Kill Me Tomorrow's CDs) by a painter with a fondness for filling in all available space with fluorescent hues. Which is sort of what the music does, too: For indie-rock artfucks, they've got a real full sound.

(www.myspace.com/killmetomorrow)   

Chuck Eddy is the former music editor of the Village Voice and the author of several books, including the greatest book on heavy metal ever written, Stairway To Hell. He won't admit it, but he knows more about rock ‘n' roll than the entire accumulated BLURT brain trust.