The Counterforce No. 5
Rad record stores & super swag from the second week of tour, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Richmond, DC, Philly, Sadie Dupuis, Steve Aylett, Becky McAuley, Rick Webb, and more
Continuing on with all the rad stuff I picked up on The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass book tour. Here covering week two. You can read the full tour diary for this week here.
I hadn’t realized how much stuff Schoolkids Records had put out until I got to the shop in Raleigh. Awesome to see such a huge Steve Kilbey section. And great to hang with Carl from Ally Records. He recently re-released two very good Graeme Jefferies records, Messages For The Cakekitchen and The Cakekitchen’s Trouble Again In This Town. And pointed out the Verlaines’ Live At The Windsor Castle 1986 that Schoolkids released. Which is really good. ‘Lying In State’, what a tune.
Reminding me how much I love the Superchunk version. Their whole Cadmium EP is ace.
Headed to the very cool Epilogue (Books. Chocolate. Brews.) in Chapel Hill afterwards. Where they’ve got Steve Aylett’s collected Hyperthick on display. With a quote from yours truly on the back. Full quote from the 2021 Comics Journal round up is:
“My favourite comic released this year was Steve Aylett’s Hyperthick. I’m still laughing and reeling from everything contained in issue #1, which came out in July. The microscopic lion in a sailor suit dispensing advice, gossip, and philosophy is one of my favourite things in all of literature. Aylett continues to present us with worldviews so original the word ‘unique’ doesn’t do them justice. And almost all of them sidesplittingly hilarious. Alan Moore calls Hyperthick “a new dimension of poetic genius”.”
Def check it out. So good.
Picked up Sadie Dupuis’ Cry Perfume at Epilogue. What a lovely cover. And there’s a section awesomely titled ‘Violet Noise’. Sadie’s on tour right now on the West Coast if you’re out that way.
At the Chapel Hill reading, at the other Schoolkids’ location, I got chatting with Gabe behind the counter. We ended up ‘art trading’, as he put it, Nick Cave’s Bar for Sweet Home’s Advice cd, on his Surplus Dads label. I’ve said it before, but I loved people giving me cds on this trip, new stuff to listen to on the drives between cities. Gabe prefaced this by asking ‘do you like shoegaze?’ Of course I do, and this did not disappoint. ‘Dream’ is one of the best songs on the record, but ‘Yo-Yo’ I listened to four times on my ride to Richmond. That guitar melody is so punch-the-air triumphant, taking things up a notch in its second half. I love it. Best song I’ve heard this year.
Stayed with Rick & Emma which was great. And Rick gave me a copy of his Amtrak Hipstamatic book. I was willing to buy it of course, as it just looks great. Check out Rick’s Substack here
Richmond was a blast. Lots of cool shops – Deep Groove, Records & Relics, Shelf Life Books, and of course Plan 9 Music where I did my reading. Got to meet Tracy Wilson who runs the very cool Courtesy Desk mailorder and Turntable Report newsletter. I was psyched about all of this as Plan 9 From Outer Space was the name of my high school band, that then morphed into my first real band Inbetween.
DC was next at Rhizome, which is a good old-fashioned punk rock house. Making the rounds of the shops afterwards was psyched to see Nick Cave’s Bar at Smash Records, and stopped into the lovely Lost City Books, where I’ll be ‘in conversation’ on April 2nd. Then on to Joint Custody Records where I had a great time chatting with Ambrose behind the counter, who knew an awful lot about the old Connecticut hardcore scene. He bought my books and even hipped me to Becky McAuley’s Lost Indignation, which is about the quest for an old hardcore demo. The idea sounds a bit like Cake Ass, so of course I was intrigued, and picked it right up.
The event at Repo Records was kinda wild. Talking to a full store of Sunday afternoon record shoppers, who would occasionally stop and listen. Hitting the excellent Nourish vegan restaurant on my way out of town. Delicious smoothies and amazing vegan ‘scallops’, which were really trumpet mushrooms. The owner does lots of cool stuff health-wise as I’ve found out following their Instagram now.
I really never wanted the tour to end. It was an emotional rollercoaster to be sure, but I loved all of it, especially hanging out at cool record and book shops and talking about, well, records and books all day.
Back in CT, the reading was at the excellent Redscroll Records in Wallingford. I was psyched to do it here as I believe Redscroll has really picked up the mantle from all the great CT record shops that I grew up with in the 80s and 90s – Brass City Records, Phoenix, Secret Sounds, Trash American Style, Cutler’s, and Rhymes. All of which The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass is a tribute to.
And then the Boston event was at Stereo Jack’s. A lot of fun. Chris, the owner, is a great guy, nice chatting to him about music. And when I got there, a bunch of records that I mention in the book and talk were displayed on the wall – AC/DC, Parliament, The Smiths... This kept happening on tour and was a very cool coincidence. And then I saw this too... Not one, but two Miami Vice soundtracks still sealed in their longboxes. In 2023. Who here still has their longboxes? I have most of mine, I loved them. Especially the one for Joy Division’s Substance, which had a different cover than the cd booklet inside. Was surprised to find, much later, that longboxes were only produced here in America.
Must give a shout out to Tres Gatos in Jamaica Plain, MA as well. Stopping in to check out this record store/bookshop/tapas restaurant, I was thrilled to see The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass already on the shelf, and even more so to learn that they’d already sold their copy of Nick Cave’s Bar. Very cool shop. I look forward to spending more time there.
Looking forward to the next edition where I can talk about all the other cool music I’ve heard lately.
SEVEN SONGS
Martin Newell – ‘The Speed Of A Train’. It was ‘The Greatest Living Englishman’’s birthday while I was putting this edition together so here we go, one of his best.
The Afghan Whigs – ‘Band Of Gold’. The Whigs have got to be the best covers band of all-time. I mean, they’re much more than that...but they’re that too
AC/DC – ‘Riff Raff’. It was so cool how those Australian AC/DC albums kept popping up at the shops on tour. I mention them in the book, how exciting it was when Rhymes Records in New Haven, CT was able to order me the vinyl boxset of the first six Aussie records back in 1990. We’d been dying to hear all those songs that were only on the Aussie releases. I just finished Jeff Apter’s High Voltage biography of Angus. Really took me back to how big a part of my life they were growing up. I always say this song sounds like a band playing for its very life.
Steve Kilbey - ‘Changling Child’. Such a great verse.
Robert Pollard - ‘Zoom (It Happens All Over The World’. Such a catchy tune
Jacobites - ‘It’ll All End Up In Tears’. Wonderful Dave Kusworth tune. More on this in the next edition
Dolly Mixture - ‘Everything And More’. Perhaps the best band to ever have existed. A string of incredible pop songs, and such a cool history