American Alternative music reviews

Any dinosaur jr fan should have this one its extremely rare and very very hard to find.

I dont have this CD but the three songs on it are good.

This is NoMeansNo's album from their Wrong tour. The band is in great form, and the sound quality is excellent for a club gig. as live rock albums go, I would put this up with the Stones' Get Yer Ya-Yas Out. These guys are punk predecessors of many 'alternative' bands out there (Tool and Korn come to mind immediately).

To the extent that a Nomeansno show was exactly like a spiritual revelation, this cd is the resurrection and the life.

While everything about Wrong is right, some of these songs, especially What Slayde Says and Victory, are about the finest versions of these songs I am familiar with. They distort and mess with your expectations. The vocals are totally clear. I gets to shakin'.

When I put this on tonite, I had just forgotten how good it was. It's like a perfect Nomeansno show, and I ain't apologizing for it.

What can I say? I've seen these guys live at least 6 or 7 times, and this CD is representative of their best shows. Their interplay with the audience is hilarious. Just check out Andy mocking an obnoxious individual during his "solo"...

Y'know how good, raw, and live rock records are hard to come by? Look no further! Great performance, great historical value, great cover photo by Michael Lavine and design by Art Chantry...what more could you want?

Okay, maybe better sound quality. For an official live record recorded in the late eighties and released in the mid-nineties, this *could* be a bit better. I mean, gain, Pussy Galore was never a band that was known for sounding especially hi-fi, and of course there's no bass player, but hey, you just can't make out Bob Bert's great drumming all the time, and that's a ... shame, because as you may know from the later studio recordings, it's interesting stuff to hear. Why? Oh, let's see...found objects in his kit, I'd say! A gas tank, a shock absorber spring, a custom-made metal snare...you get the idea. Since the guitars take up so much of the upper frequencies, you can't hear all the great, piercing bashes and clanks that punctuate Bert's work in PG.

But, that aside...this is a ... album. They start off with a RIPPING, INSANE cover of The Twilighter's "Nothing Can Bring Me Down". Never heard of it? Look around for an .mp3, it's pretty good in its own right. But this is a deadly arrangement...most especially the ascending/descending riff in the chorus. You'll know what I mean when you hear it. From there, it's largely a retrospective of PG's best. A lot of songs which were laughable scuzz-fuzz tracks in the studio are raw and hard hitting here..."Kill Yourself" and "Alright" couldn't be better. "Sweet Little Hi-Fi" and "Dick Johnson", while both great in the studio takes, are still great here but in a different way...in fact, that's how a lot of this breaks down. It's their *last* show, so it only makes sense that a song like "Kicked Out", originally preceded with a long intro, is a basic rock and roll song, but WHAT a rock and roll song! Same for "Understand Me", which has a quicker tempo and is all the more brutal for it. See, what's happened by this point is that Jon Spencer's learned how to sing, Neil Hagerty AND Kurt Wolfe are dividing up the guitar duties (with Spencer occasionally punctating things), and Bob Bert...well, he just ... like he always does. The ... has been cut through and it's nothing but insane, crazy, too loud rock and roll. If there's one rock live album you GOTTA have, it's Metallic KO by the Stooges, but if there's another one, get this. ... it even ends with Hagerty smashing his guitar, and let me just say, what a wonderfully disgusting sound it is. Get it!

Live: In the Red is a work of unquestionable genius. It pulls off the tricky feat of actually being a good rock 'n roll live album. I heard Skynryd has one, and that it sucks. All the hits are here, from "Kill Yourself" to "Dick Johnson", alive and mean and undead, ready to rip your silly little lungs out. Buy it now. Kid Rock beware!

This CD rules!! i think if u like the bones side of Skull and Bones by Cypress Hill, then you will love this CD!! SX-10 r a very good band check them out on Live at the Filmore (also by Cypress Hill)!!
anyway buy this CD if you love Sen Dog or Cypress Hill or just good rap/metal!!

this band smokes and the music world will take notice coming from the bowles of cypress hill sen dog takes the mic to the next level whith hard rock and rap fusion thats insane(all you sd. locals check out frank mecurio on bass from the band the abuse now kickin the crap out of the bass for sx10 and sx10 will be backing cypress hill on tour so check em out they smoke

Salem 66 is my personal favorite band of the '80s along with Husker Du. This particular album I saw them perform at Maxwell's in Hoboken when it first came out. If you like this one, you'll love their earlier albums. Especially Ripping Spin, Frequency and Urgency, and the 1st one. They have a good greatest hits album too: Your Soul is Mine. I first heard them on WFMU in 1985: song: The Vessel. The dreamlike post-psychedelic vision they have is a tap into the collective unconscious of visionaries everywhere. They were on the great indy Homestead label along with other greats of the 80s Phantom Tollbooth and Antietam. Best song on this album: Isabella. Judy Grunwald is the John Lennon to the Paul McCartney schmaltz of Beth Kaplan. I love them both.

I have liked this band since the 80's. I want more ino on them -- i still think they are great!!!!!!

I have never thought of myself as the "alternative music" type, but, with the exception of one song, I really liked this album!

I consider this CD to be THE BEST compilation of some of the best alternative music pioneers in the industry. It is a complete blast to listen to, especially if you enjoy diversity in your music. This is one of those rare CDs that you can actually enjoy it from beginning to end. The Red Hot Chili Peppers kick off an old Stevie Wonder song "Higher Ground" with their usual funk rock. My favorite song on the CD (and also one of my favorite songs of all-time) is "Under the Milky Way" by the Church, a very thought-provoking song which features a bagpipe solo... when's the last time you heard that in a song?? The Cocteau Twins "Carolyn's Fingers" has absolutely breath-taking vocals - even without knowing what they are saying. Sinead O'Connor's breakthrough song "Mandinka" is still a favorite of mine even today. They Might Be Giants "Ana Ng" is very fun. This whole CD brings together everything 'alternative music' used to mean in the beginning stages, before it got too commercial. If you want to take a trip to the past to a time when alternative music meant being unique and different, pick up this disk... it's one of the best compilations you can buy!!

This is a wonderful collection of New York bands that played hardcore punk in the early 1980s. It's akin to the California stuff that was going on - Black Flag and Circle Jerks, for instance - but it's darker.

It seems the world remembers the New York hardcore scene as the totalitarian dictators of rock and roll, all music utterly fulfilling punk's ethos of hard, fast noise. But if you've heard that, you may be surprised to hear how much character these bands have. Its quality isn't terribly consistent (the BeastieBoys' two entries aren't exactly stellar), but the majority really shreds. I like Even Worse a lot, and Kraut is a monster. It's too bad they didn't do much more.

The compilation includes two alternate versions of songs from Bad Brains' self-titled ROIR release. They're not as good. Get their regular album.

I gave this collection a 5 star.This is some old stuff but this is the way it was in the early 80's.Some of the recordings are just a little fuzzy but thses bands didn't have a ton of cash to pay for the high cost of recording in those days. Bands like the Bad Brains,Kraut,The Beastie Boys(no rap here!),The False Prophets,which believe it or not is still around,and Much more keep this album alive.Good punk and definitely a collectors item for all you punksters.

This cd is the best out of my whole collection of over 3000 records and cd. You should but this out on vinyl to. The Nihilistics are great! Kraut and Even Worse are good too! where can i get more Nihilistics, Kraut and Even Worse?

the whole cd is full of ny punk scene music...b-boys and bad brains...can't go wrong there.

Clocking in at just under or just over a minute per song, this entire e.p. runs at less time than many artist's SONGS. That said, the best bet for a customer would be to pick it up on the Post Mersh vol 3 set, but it's more fun to review it as is.

Looking at Paranoid Time, one is amazed at the jazz funk originality of bassist/vocalist Mike Watt, vocalist/guitarist D. Boon, and drummer George Hurley. This begins their all too short trek that ends with 3 Way Tie (for last) just a few years later. But what a few years it is! In this meantime, the Minutemen would change all the rules, and the changes start HERE. On songs like "Joe McCarthy's Ghost" and "Paranoid Chant" the Minutemen kicked off an era... Now join along and follow it through. This band will remain as one of the best... Find out why! You'll never be the same again.

Excellent EP from these guys. Some say this record inspired hardcore due to its conciseness--seven songs just under seven minutes. But i think their agenda was different from other hardcore bands of the early 80's. These guys approached punk philosophically and wrote socio-politically charged short anthems. I mean D. Boon the guitarist barely uses distortion on the record. Anyway...this is prime stuff from one of rock's most creative, humorous and artistic groups.

Being a big Husker Du fan, I really wanted to like this album. But it wasn't long before it became a forgotten member of my music collection.

"Old Empire" is a crackling leadoff tune. It shows off the drumming of new recruit Steve Sutherland, a vast improvement over incompetent original drummer Michael Crego. It's the best thing on the album.

The rest of the album has its moments. "Little Miss Information" is catchy, although I can't listen to it without thinking about Adam Sandler's old Cajun Man character. I like "See And Feel And Know." And the two bonus songs didn't deserve to be buried anonymously at the end; they're better than quite a few of the listed songs.

In the end, though, this album did nothing to change my opinion that Bob Mould was the real ace in Husker Du and Hart was the secondary talent.

I cannot believe that I'm the first person reviewing this disc. I bought it in 1994 the second I heard it. "Please Don't Ask" is pure Husker Du, only more so. Every Huskers fan is searching for the perfect balance of the big three components...songwriting, attitude, and noise(for lack of a better term). This album has IT in spades, every track could be a classic in its own right. If your neighborhood garage band sounded one percent as good as this you'd be telling all your friends about them, but because this album came and went, so went its chance to be heard.

Don't let that continue! You'll find the work of a true believer, Grant Hart, the one person who could make you believe again.

Don't pass up this opportunity.

There aren�t many songs in the rock canon deserving of the oft-used label �glorious� --
The Who�s �Baba O�Riley� and Cheap Trick�s �Surrender� spring immediately to my
mind when I think of �glorious rock,� as does Grant Hart�s �She�s a Woman (And Now
He Is a Man)� from Husker Du�s *Warehouse* record. To that list I add Grant�s �Old
Empire,� the opening track on Nova Mob�s apparently final record, and, IMHO, the best
song Hart has released to date (which is saying a lot-- both of his solo records make for
extremely compelling listening). From the fade-in of shimmering guitar feedback--
punctuated by that single, airy bass guitar harmonic-- to the buzzing guitars-- one cutting
an electrifying lead line through the other�s panning background texture ... lightning
between mountain peaks-- to the crashing wall of percussion *behind* all of it and the
stuttering bass line *beneath* all of it (save for a silk-smooth solo), the song just *rings*
throughout, peals out gloriously. Pulling it together, somewhere between the front and
the back and the bottom and the top, is Grant�s voice: mixed-in at least twice, once
mellow, in an unusually low register for him, with a higher harmony line (and later chorus,
when the verses repeat), so quiet it�s almost unnoticeable--just enough, not too much,
totally arresting.

�Old Empire� washes over you in waves; and at the same time it punches you in
the chest. I�ve had this record for five or six years, and I still play it frequently. Glorious
rock music.