Won't You Please Help?

The Mushuganas discography, "Lows in the Mid-90's", is going to the pressing plant in a few days. To scrape together an extra few bucks to offset costs, we're putting a bunch of old vinyl up on Ebay. Most of it is of the punk rock variety, but if you're reading this, that's probably something you may have already deduced. Anyway, you may be interested in picking up some of these 7-inches and albums for cheap.

Here's the link to the full listing and keep checking back over the next few days as we'll continue to add stuff.

(http://shop.ebay.com/ohals73/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340)

Here's what's up for auction as of Sunday, January 31st.

Full-Lenghths
-the Dickies - Live In London
-Gang Green - Older...Budweiser
-Gaunt - I Can See Your Mom From Here
-the Gories - I Know You Fine, But How You Doin'?
-Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - Jonathan Sings!
-No Empathy - The Same Mistakes Endlessly Repeated
-the Queers - Love Songs for the Retarded
-7 Seconds - the Crew
-Violent Femmes - Hallowed Ground

10-Inch
-Electric Frankenstein - Sick Songs
-the Jewws - Heartbreaker

7-Inch
-Aliens & Strangers - Go-Go-Goes Dragstrip
-the Campus Tramps - Stick Around
-Clone Defects - Lizard Boy
-Electric Frankenstein - An Evening with Electric Frankenstein
-Electric Frankenstein - Up From the Streets
-Estrus 1995 Nationals - Drags, Impala, Insomniacs, Mono Men, Lord High Fixers
-Gotohells - If I Could Make a Girl
-the Hectics - Come Booze Down With...
-Jack o' Fire - OK Class...Let's Review
-Jodie Foster's Army - My Movie
-Jon Cougar Concentration Camp - Victoria's Secret Sauce
-Lonestar Showdown - Motards, Reclusives, Wormdirt, Cryin' Out Louds
-the Makers - Shout On!
-the Makers/Magnitude 3 - Split 7 Inch
-Mooney Suzuki - Taking Me Apart
-the Motards/Cryin' Out Louds - Split 7 Inch
-the Motards/Fuckemos - Split 7 Inch
-Murphy's Law/Aggressive Dogs - Split 7 Inch
-Mushuganas/Chemicial Blue - Split 7 Inch
-New Bomb Turks - Sexual Dreaming/My Hopes Are Copacetic
-New Bomb Turks/Entombed - Split 7 Inch
-Pagans Tribute - What's This Shit Called Punk - New Bomb Turks, Aggravators, Quazi Modo, Slak, Solid State Ignition
-the Reatards - Get Real Stupid
-the Registrators - Monkey/Stupid Girls
-the Spits - 19 Million AC EP
-the Stranger - Prison Called Life
-the Supersuckers - Can Pipe/Play Some Rock 'n' Roll
-Teengenerate/Bum - Split Double 7 Inch
-Teengenerate - Car-Crazy! Speed-Crazy! Japaneze!!

If you win any of the auctions after reading about it here, shoot us an email at beercanrecords@gmail.com or through Ebay, let us know and we'll drop an extra musical treat in with your record.

Reviews - 1/27/10

King Mastino - 4-Song Demo - Well, these folks contacted us via the MySpace account asking for our worldly and sophisticated opinion on their music. As points of reference, King Mastino let us know that they draw from the proverbial wells of the Hellacopters and the Stooges. And you know what? I can hear the Hellacopters comparison in here in that there are some decent hooks and well-timed parts in the each of the 4 songs where most of the band drops out and then piles back in for some punchy effect.

However, this is one of the cleanest sounding recordings I ever done heard. Very professional sounding but, for better or for worse, that is off-putting to us here at Beercan Records. Maybe "professional" is the wrong adjective...perhaps "polished" or "controlled". Not to hammer the Hellacopters comparison too much (because, to be fair, King Mastino never said they were trying to sound exactly like the Hellacopters) but the beauty of the Hellacopters was all the fuzz and the feedback and the fact that it sounds like your stereo is about to explode when listening to their shit at appropriate volumes.

So, decent tunes but a little too spotless for our tastes. Oh, and they sound nothing like the Stooges. Don't know where they're getting that. (www.myspace.com/kingmastino)

Big Show on 12/26 in Elgin, IL

A couple of months back, our pal Chris Musatto got in a pretty bad car wreck and while he is fighting hard and on the road to recovery, it looks like he's going to have a few bills to deal with when he gets home.

In order to help, Chris' pal and fellow Repulsator, Jeff Zimmerman, is putting on a big show on December 26th at the Gasthaus in Elgin (15 N. Grove Avenue). If you can't make the show but would like to contribute a couple bucks to help Chris with those bills, go to http://www.chrismusatto.com/ and look for the Paypal "Donate" button at the bottom of the page.

Show starts at 3p.m. and here's the top-notch lineup:

The Bungdoons

Vacation Bible School

Oil Can Boys

Chronic Seizure

Canadian Rifle

Love Mound

Groovy Love Vibes

The Mashers

The Repulsators

Biscayne

The Phenoms

That's a whole mess of new, current and old punk rock goodness for you to enjoy AND do something good for a fellow human being. So be there fuckface.

Reviews - 10/25/09

Well, the magical PO Box has not been really kind to us thus far in October but our promise stands to give anything that comes in a full listen. So here we go...
















Nitekast - 3-Song Demo - From the first notes of this demo, it was pretty clear where this was headed. Guitars run through some amp that makes all sorts of "effectz" coupled with a gal who I suppose has a decent voice, but this was kind of brutal. Would these guys list Evanescence as a main musical influence? Sounds like it to us. In the "pro" column, the second track starts out kind of sounding like mid-80's ZZ Top and the last track sounds kind of Judas Priest-y in parts.

Not that strong of "pros", but beggars and choosers and all that. (www.nitekast.com)
















John Gray - Demo CD - We were kind of surprised that this was even sent to us. I mean, we release albums at a rate of about once per year (if that) so I doubt we'll be making the jump to jazz guitar stuff any time soon. That being said, this started out stronger than expected. Some pretty chill noodlings by this 18-year old kid. Plus, the track titles kind of cracked us up too. "Vulcan Event Horizon", "Saturn's Magnetosphere" and "Beach Boy Socrates" to name a few.

Things start to get a little to loose by the end though with the overall sound drifting towards Spinal Tap's free form jazz odyssey after Nigel left the band and Jeanine started booking them at amusement parks. "If I've told them once, I've told them a thousand times. Spinal Tap first, puppet show last." (www.johngrayjazz.com)
















Anciem Regime - Demo CD - I am less of a man for having listened to this CD in it's entirety. Outside of the last track, an instrumental which was decent, I pretty much loathed this thing which was a watered-down appropriation of such 80's heavyweights as A-Ha, Thompson Twins, Flock of Seagulls and the like. Yes, a watered-down version of those bands.

At one point while driving through the local woods listening to Ancien Regime as the leaves around me changed from green to yellow and red, I felt, for a split-second, like I was a character in a movie starring Andrew McCarthy or Rob Lowe or someone like that and had just found out that I was getting kicked out of my boarding school or that that creep Lowe has been fucking my mom or my girlfriend or my favorite professor or something like that.

Very nice press kit though, complete with a full listing of Ancien Regime's gear as well as an overhead diagram of how they set up on stage. Ye gads. (www.myspace.com/ancienregimeband)

Reviews - 9/26/09

Smash It Up - Not Aiming, Just Swinging - Smash It Up certainly has an animal for a drummer, a couple of hotshot ax-wielders and a singer with a pretty decent sounding snarl. But, I can think of one, maybe two moments on this 13-track album where my attention was grabbed. One is on track 7 - "Babylon's Calling" - where there's a pretty heavy change of pace into a mosh-inducing breakdown. The other is...shit, I don't remember.

It's like there are some competent parts of songs going on, but there's nothing to set them up and make them mean anything. Even the track titles ring a little generic to me. I.E. "Drunk and Mean", "Die Hard", "Heroes", etc.

By no means would I go so far as to call Smash It Up "mall-punk" or anything like that, but I guess they're like a street-punk version of Rush for this reviewer. They know how to play them instruments and everything's tight, but they didn't move me. I bet they've got a following and that's cool. Just didn't really do it for the Beercan staff. (www.smashitup.se)

Reviews - 9/22/09

The Scraps - Demo - I could never bring myself to fully tear into these guys as you can tell that the music means a lot to them as a vehicle for personal, and perhaps social, improvement. In fact, the first two tracks on this little 3-songer - "Shotgun" and "Even Up" - are legit good, albeit shabbilly, recorded tunes. Maybe kind of Social Distortion-ish? In any event, if shabby recording is a crime, then let every band I've ever been involved in as well as 60% of the bands I've enjoyed in the last 15 years...be guilty!

That being said, track 3 is a real fucking stinker. Like, really, really bad.

So, 2 for 3. Nothing mind-blowing, but not too shabby (outside of the recording quality).

(www.myspace.com/thebinkleys)

Reviews - 9/5/09

The Baker Street Brawlers - The Drunken Fury of the Baker Street Brawlers - This has been touched on before on this blog, but we're usually against drum machines. However, in the case of the Baker St. Brawlers, you make an exception. Because A.) you can tell that these guys were like, "fuck it, we've got some good tunes ready to go, let's record 'em. Don't need a drummer" and B.) it doesn't sound like it would be a good idea to get on the wrong side of these cats.

This is a bunch of real solid, mean-spirited odes to the pursuit of debauchery, obtaining and engaging in debauchery and the consequences (both good and bad) of said debauchery. Juiced-up R'n'R guitars and growling vocals belting out tracks such as "Start a Fight", "She Spit In My Face" and my personal favorite, "Sold to a Narc". This is some good shit and the if the Brawlers can round out to a full band, they're on to something.

Favorite part about this CD is that by the time they get to Track 7, the singer's voice is gone, or at least well on it's way, leaving this humble reviewer to think that these fuckers go balls-out and let the proverbial dust settle where it may. Dig it! (www.myspace.com/bakerstbrawlers666)