Indie Vinyl

Drag City’s foray into archival Midwestern recordings helps fill in some gaps of the post-psych and pre-punk era for Chicago & Detroit rock. J.T. IV’s “Cosmic Lightning” reissue is such a perfect example of Midwestern suburban affluence crossed with self-destructive glam punk vanity. This lo-fi vinyl-only LP comes with a DVD so gut-wrenchingly personal it is almost painful to watch in a perverse way. I loved the inescapable 1970s-1980s tragic ethos presented here- a car accident on Chicago’s Sheridan Avenue & J.T.’s inevitable death seemed almost prescribed. Speaking of Death, the Detroit band’s 1970s recordings “…. for all the World to See” is almost too good to be true. Students of late-60s Detroit Lama Lama WITH CHOPS- these guys can play in almost a Thin Lizzy kind of way.  A band this intense with such playing skill must’ve been truly devastating in concert.
  I’m reading this delving into the past by Drag City as a call-to-arms to further unleash lo-fi scuzz of our Midwestern past onto vinyl. So much has been done already documenting older forms of weird obscure Midwestern Rawk,  labels like De Stijl (Michael Yonkers) & the forthcoming schedule by the Nero’s Neptune label (Pere Ubu) encourage & solidify this ideal. I’m planning my own vinyl dig into Winnipeg’s past- the far outer reaches of the frozen Midwest’s self-hatred (the ‘peg is probably the biggest Midwestern burg where an escape plan is handed out at birth) has inspired perhaps the most long-standing (25 years!) underdogs of underground rock The Breath Grenades.  Five diff LP releases won’t be enough to even start documenting their mayhem.