Swinging Singles Club MN

  New Year's Eve. Good Riddance 2020 Hopefully we're not going to spend 2021 looking back at the Quarantine Year as a wonderful idyllic moment in history compared to the terrible shitshow that is the upcoming year. But I'm a glass empty kind of guy.   2001 - Simon Reverie  This band is an almost complete mystery. And I say "almost" because I did actually see them once. My band at the time played with them one probably Thursday night at Sursumcorda. Probably in late fall or winter. (I seem to remember it was chilly.) The guitar player liked us and gave me this disc which was nice of him. I was too clueless to try and set up more shows with them down the line and they were swallowed by the mists of obscurity very soon after. (My band didn't last much more than a year after that either.) So this disc kind of sat around in my house unnoticed for quite a few number of years until I finally undertook the monumental task of ripping all of my compact discs so I could ...

  Getting towards the end of the year. Fuck 2020.    It's hard to underestimate the strange but deep underground influence that Alex Cox's 1984 debut film " Repo Man " had on a certain segment of the youth who saw the movie. It was very punk rock movie and absolutely hilarious and quotable and a lot of us have seen it multiple times and can ramble off half the movie's dialog at the drop of a hat. It's a cultural touchstone. You should watch it if you haven't already seen it thirty times. One scene in particular seems to have struck a nerve and inspired a plethora of bands to name themselves Plate O' Shrimp.   It seems that every city had one. In Boston that band was a ska band.  But in Minneapolis, that band was a bunch of stand up guys who made a punk rock racket and drank lots of beer.     2000 Shrimp on the Barbie I'm not going to pretend that it will change your life, but it won't ruin your day. You'll probably start singing along with ...

  I got nothing.     2004 - Prescription Perils the Winter Blanket. Moved to the Cities in 2002 from the Quad Cities area. Recorded with and for Alan Sparhawk of Low fame. Semi-acoustic, male/female vocals. Slow and deliberate. Perfect for those evenings where it gets dark in the middle of the day and you're thinking it's probably some time well after midnight and you're tired and should turn in but when you look at the clock it's barely 8:30pm.  It's that with a Bruce Springsteen cover to boot.

  We continue...   2001 - City of Flakes    The opener "Concentration" is a killer track. This is not a sophomore slump kind of record. But we never got the chance to hear a next record. Dander soldiered on until around 2007, but never managed to get another record out. They did appear on a local music show, TC Muzique in 2006 with probably some of the most annoying and punchable presenters ever to appear on camera. They're running on about half strength there without an actual audience, but you can hear a few songs that might have made it on a third record as well as the standards of their set. Fast forward through the talking. You'll thank me later. This album just oozes an extreme concentrated sense of frustration. It's wound pretty tight. It's almost uncomfortable, but that gives it an edge that few other things I can think of manage. I'm pretty sure the biggest time I spent with this album was a winter while I was back in school in my 40s. It made pe...

  The wonder of working in an ICU during a fucking deadly pandemic is that you spend an awful lot of time paying close attention to how you feel. You sneeze or cough and immediately you're thinking about where can you get tested and mentally making out your Last Will and Testament. It's fun. I mean, I'm careful as I can be and wear all my PPE at work and a mask, avoid humanity and don't touch my face otherwise, but it's always there at the back of your mind when you're being slammed with extra sick patients in the ICU. We're all going to get PTSD.... 1999 - Titty Bar Mitzvah Dander.  So yeah. The title here is a joke. The cover is a joke. It's the sort of thing that probably was really hilarious at like three in the morning when you're really tired and punchy. It makes it seem like the album enclosed is some kind of morning zoo comedy record. At least that's what I thought it was when I first started coming across it in the Cheapos bins. But it...

  The week before last I broke a tooth and the car broke down.  This week one of my crowns is starting to be more than a little bit sensitive which past experience suggests that I may be looking at another root canal. Middle age is a fucking joy. 2004 - Lovers & Haters, Unite! The Bleeding Hickeys. Three women rocking it out with a boy drummer. They were a flash in the pan in the early 2000s and I find myself coming back to this disc more often than a lot of stuff that I could be listening to at any given moment. It's oddly compelling and I mean that in I can't specifically point to any particular thing about it that sets it apart. Are they punk rock? Probably by most definitions but heavier on the garage side of it, maybe. There's some Brix style leads which as a Fall fan is always going to catch my ear, but it's more than that. There's a confident conviction to it. "Cock Taco" from the first single makes a reappearance and is always a fan favorite in...

  It's easy to type that since I'm writing this post on November 3. Well, it still remains for me to see. Results are trickling in. Afraid (1980) Curtiss A. capturing the zeitgeist of the day.  Then and now. Flip is a song about lycanthropy. Larry Talbot being the name of the character played by Lon Chaney, jr in the original 1941 movie "The Wolf Man Spooks (1978) Previously Curtiss A led this intrepid band for the second ever release on the Twin Tone label. It's five songs and some nonstop medleys. Use with caution.

  The cat's hungry.  I'll make this brief.   1999 - Eggshells for Paperbacks    The second and final album by American Paint in which the boys have taken and expanded their sonic horizons past their roots rock origins into something else.  I like it.  I mean, it's all still there in spades. There's an obvious debt owed to the Byrds in "Lu" but "Yellow Cadillac" takes them in a different direction which kind of makes it the stand out track for me. That is to say that this album has some deeper flavor to it. More interesting arrangements. Horns and shit. That is to say that this album is a big improvement over the first one. It feels like they started hitting a stride and figured out what they were doing and capable of. It would have been interesting to hear what a next album might have sounded like. That is to say that this album is actually pretty good and worth a listen. That is all. I'm going to feed the cat now.