Reviews - 5/14/2011

False Alarm/Youth Gone Mad - Fuck 'Em All We've All Ready (Now) Won!/S/T (Featuring Dee Dee Ramone) - This one is a double album and, quite frankly, the whole thing is really quite confusing.  A little research tells us that this was released at least 5 years ago, but showed up in the magical PO Box (PO Box 457, LaGrange, IL, 60525) a few months ago.  The return address was in Indiana (our neighbor to the east), but looks like both albums were produced in California (our distant neighbors to the west).  Both bands have a shared member named Paul who plays rhythm guitar on the False Alarm album and, well, just about everything on the Youth Gone Mad side.  Then, there are two band photos, a picture of Cheetah Chrome, a picture of a guy who looks like the Winters Brothers long-lost brother, and a picture of a lady in a hat.  There's a song on the False Alarm side called "Youth Gone Mad" and there a song on the Youth Gone Mad side called "False Alarm".  Finally, read the album title for the False Alarm side again.  Go ahead, I'll give you 5 minutes to figure it out...

...yeah, I don't get it either.  Maybe I'm an idiot.

Anyway, you, the reader, at this point are probably thinking, "well, enough about the shit you noticed in the liner notes you fucking nerd.  What about the music?"  Good point.  It's pretty good.  The False Alarm side (featuring Cheetah Chrome on a few tracks) sounds kind of like the Dead Boys and the Youth Gone Mad side (featuring Dee Dee Ramone on a few tracks) sounds kind of like the Ramones.  Knock yourself out if you're a Dead Boys or Ramones completist.  (http://www.myspace.com/falsealarmrecords)

Reviews - 4/30/2011

Modern Convenience - Demo - Ummmm, there's something here, but it might be a little too artsy for our staff's tastes.  Or too deconstructed.  Or something.

Truth be told, this was another example of a couple songs sounding really good over tinny little computer speakers via a myspace page.  Then the CD came in and well, it didn't sound quite as good.

Maybe it would sound great to you though.  Who can say, really?  This guy is from Memphis so next time you're there, check out a show for yourself.  (www.myspace.com/modernconvenienceu)

Modern Day Rippers - Demo 2010 - We got this demo last year from the MDR fellas and I believe this evolved into their debut full-length, "Rip It Up in a Modern Way" on Machete Records.  This is one of those bands whose tunes give you the impression that while they talk it, they do indeed walk it as well.  Although "walking it" in this case leads you to write songs like "I Belive in Pills", "Liquor Store Blues" and "Abortion (I'm a)".  (As a parenthetical aside, that parenthetical aside of (I'm a) really cracks me up).

This is bad news rock and roll for bad news times.  But sometimes, that feels so right, doesn't it?  Go check these wastoids out live.  Only, for goodness sake, go straight home after the show.

(As a final parenthetical aside, the lead singer kind of looks like Konnan from WCW, Lucha Libre, etc.)  (www.myspace.com/moderndayrippers)

The Negligents - Good Advice - This is a beautiful, yet practically heartbreaking, album.  The Negligents bounced around Chicago for years playing tons of shows with tons of bands.  Then, they put out this debut full-length and subsequently shut down operations.  And if you listen to this album you can certainly hear why.  Songs like "Friends of Friends", "Good Advice", "Down Here in Scenetown", "Turn Up the Suck Knob", etc. are just dripping with the frustration, sarcasm, angst, and disappointment that only a band that HAS put in time and effort in ANY scene can know.  Yes, being in a band, playing shows and writing music can be truly great, but unfortunately, there comes a time in every band's life span when things start to unravel for any number of reasons.

I have no idea of the specifics of why these guys broke up as a band, but I do know that they managed to crank out a great piece of art before they left which uncannily captured the whole range of thoughts and emotions that go along with shitty gigs, broken gear, dealing with phonies, getting frowned-upon by "tastemakers", crumbling relationships, losing money, aging, et al.

Yes, I realize that this review is making this album sound like a real fucking drag.  And if it weren't so well done, the whole thing could have easily descended into a full-on bitch-fest.  Instead, the Negligents rail against all the aforementioned bullshit in an honest and unflinching way and deliver a pretty thrilling "Fuck you" to it all before striding off into the sunset.

Seriously, pick this up at http://www.creapo.com/ and give them some good vibes after the fact.

Reviews - 1/3/10

One of our many New Year's resolutions that we probably won't follow through on, is to stay more up to date on reviews, etc.  So on that note, here is a great fucking demo tape (yes, tape) that we got over a year ago!

Lord Green - Last Demo - Hailing from the Quad Cities on the Illinois/Iowa border, Lord Green dropped this green cassette on our ears over a year ago, as mentioned above.  Some quick research shows that they're still playing and actually have a bunch of shows lined up for this month in various locales throughout the Midwest that you'd usually associate with farming and not mind-numbing, heavy, HEAVY rock such as this.

We stop short of saying "heavy metal", because while there are certainly elements of that genre on display here, we wouldn't want to give the impression of nu-metal or black-metal or death-metal or anything like that.  There's too much of a groove involved in these Lord Green tunes for that type of railroading.

Whether they're taking it speedy ("Losing the Race") or sloooowly (opening track "Fly"), everything is very heavy and very groovy but NOT groovy in a polyester-pants kind-of-way.  Groovy in a 7,000 foot deep crevace kind-of-way.  Combine that with some paranoid, anti-media-type sound clips in between songs and these cats will get your attention.

So very heavy.  So very enveloped in clouds of smoke.  So very great.  It's always great to be reminded that weird shit like this is lurking in practice spaces, basements, garages, what-have-you in the vast expanses of country's breadbasket.  (www.myspace.com/lordgreen420)

Mushuganas "Lows in the Mid 90's" on iTunes

If you're lazy and unfeeling and don't care to embrace the full artistic presentation of the Mushuganas' "Lows in the Mid 90's" CD, well, we'll still take your money via iTunes and some other online mp3 stores, or whatever they're called.

Here's the link for the Mushuganas release (and iTunes links for other albums we've put out can be found along the right side of the page here just below the Paypal links for each respective album):



All tunes are also available on EMusic, Zune, Rhapsody, Napster, IMVU and LaLa but honestly, we have no idea how any of those services work which probably means that we should keep quiet about the fact that the tunes can also be found on those sites as they probably have some weird pricing scheme where 10,000 people have to download first before we see a penny.  Or, it means that we're paying extra money every year to have Beercan releases housed on those sites but no one ever uses them at all.  Either way, we're probably not being very business-saavy, but we've never profited a dime from this Beercan Records endeavor, so why start now, right?

Our goal is to bring the music to the people...man.

Reviews - 10/14/10

Whelp, after the excitement of the Mushuganas CD release, we've come to the realization that we haven't done shit around the Beercan HQ in months.  MONTHS!  So what better way to resolve that than to talk shit about/be middle of the road about/extoll the virtues of a bunch of bands that we don't know much about and will probably never see live.

Let's get the creative juices flowing shall we?

Brosided - Okeanas - Let us start by saying that this band may not even exist anymore as a functioning unit.  Again, we are behind on the reviews.  Let us follow up by assuming that their band name is an unfortunate translation issue.  These cats are from Lithuania and most Lithuanian Americans I've ever met are pretty cool so we're just going to assume that "Brosided" means something important in their native tongue as opposed to how it sounds in English...which is, of course, like something a frat guy would say to describe a secret handshake.  "Hey man, he's cool.  He brosided me.  Give him a beer."

This didn't do too much for the Beercan ears.  Not bad by any means.  They can play and "Alternative Amends" was actually a bit of a scorcher, but the whole thing is a little generic.  Maybe I've just surpassed my hardcore listening quotient, but I think it's more harbored in that these European bands should sing in, and put song titles in, their native language.  It's got to sound better than a song title called "Still Hardcore" or "Gap of Life".  Imagine an OK American punk band trying to shoehorn their lyrics into a Lithuanian dialect.  Why force it, right?  (www.myspace.com/brosided)

The Commies - Preemptive Strike - Let us start by saying that this band may not even exist anymore as a functioning unit.  Again, we are behind on the reviews.  Let us follow up by reiterating that we here at Beercan must insist that bands send us an actual CD or tape or record to listen to.  This is a cautionary tale of what happens when our occasionally self-important review staff shuffles through myspace requests listening through tiny, tinny speakers after having 5 to 7 too many beers.  Said reviewer might fire off an email saying something like, "fiucking cool tumes.  Send us a CF and whe'll reveir that shit."  Then, under more stable states, whilst listening on a proper sound system, the same reviewer might think, "Fuck, I kind of jocked these guys and it turns out it's some ska-punk stuff that doesn't really turn my crank, if I know what I mean."

Let's move on since "said reviewer" is me and I feel like a dick for inadvertantly misleading these guys.  (www.myspace.com/attackofthecommies)

The Coltranes - Demo - Let us start by saying...no wait, these guys are definitely still playing.  And a lot by the looks of it.  This CD that they forwarded to the magical PO Box just had like 4 or 5 songs on it and "the Coltranes" in some sloppy Sharpie handwriting.  And that's great.  Somebody in this band can fucking belt it out on the vocals and while a couple of the songs aren't completely fleshed out, in our humble opinion, there is some very, very good shit going on.  And it looks like they have a full-length CD out since they sent this demo in called "Chrisbenoit".  Creepy!

Look, I just got back from my 7th or 8th visit to California (these guys are from Temecula) and I usually end up leaving that state thinking, "man, those people are boring fucking assholes."  Maybe I'm just visiting the wrong places, but this is the type of weird shit that my uninformed brain used to conjure up about what was going in in California before the reality of my real-life experiences punctured that mind-thought-balloon.

Check these cats out and help me prove my quasi-fact-based prejudices about Californians wrong.  (http://www.myspace.com/thecoltranes)

The Peelers, "Let's Detonate", Re-detonated on ITunes and places like that...

Ever since this wonderful album by Chicago's now-defunct Peelers became available in e-stores (ugh, it pained me to type that) back in 2006, the track listing, order and actual songs were all kinds of screwed up.  In a nutshell, the 6 second intro track was posted in stores twice while the smoldering danger of "Dig Me" was omitted completely.  So unless you bought the actual CD when the Peelers raced through your town, you probably weren't getting the full experience of this gem.

FORTUNATELY, we here at Beercan finally ponied up and had the old album taken down from stores like ITunes, Amazon, Amie Street (whatever the fuck that is), etc.  The album is now correctly and fully available in all it's glory, including "Dig Me".

If there was a way for us to automatically send a file of "Dig Me", to all those who have bought an electronic version of the album since its release about 4 years ago, we would.  But as far as we know, there isn't.  So go plunk down $.99 at your favorite "virtual" store (is that term even used anymore?) and enjoy what you've been missing.

And while you're at it, check out some of the off-shoot projects that various Peelers ended up in after the explosion of this record, and ultimately their band.

Witness...

-The psychedelic garage-ish stylings of THE MEDIUMS - http://www.myspace.com/mediumcooldarkenergy

-The psycho-sexual kanoodlings of HOT AS HELL - http://www.myspace.com/hotashell1

-The I'm-not-really-sure-cuz-I-haven't-heard-them-yet-but-think-its-dark-and-heavy grindings of WITCHBANGER - http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Witchbanger/117648348257637?ref=ts

the Mushuganas "Lows in the Mid 90's" CD release show THIS WEEKEND - 5/29

This Saturday night (May 29th) at Subterranean in Chicago, not only are the Mushuganas playing their 43rd reunion show since 2002, but Beercan Records is officially rolling out the long-awaited, often-delayed and wonderfully good-looking Mushuganas career retrospective CD "Lows in the Mid 90's".  Also on the bill are the Mushuganas contemporaries Winepress and Lynyrd's Innards who are great bands in their own right.  Joining in the fun are The Slow Death and The Reaganomics who, frankly, I know nothing about but let's just assume they're great too.  Rounding out the bill is an acoustic set by Kepi Ghoulie of the Groovie Ghoulies.  Yes, an acoustic set sharing the bill with the Mushuganas CD release show.  But hey, I dig the Groovie Ghoulies and I once saw the Mushuganas play BEFORE a magician, so again, let's just assume the best.

Subterranean is located at 2011 North Avenue in Chicago and tickets for the show are available at http://www.subt.net/.  Doors are at 8:30, show starts at 9:00.  This show is part of the Windy City Sound Clash which runs from Friday through Sunday and weekend passes are also available so get you some.

Needless to say, we here at Beercan are very excited about this show and the CD itself.  It was 75% labor of love, 25% pain in the ass, but it's here, it'll be $10 at the show, it'll be for sale here and other places after the show and here is the track listing.  See you Saturday...

1 - You Really Can Never Tell
2 - Theme From Mushugana
3 - Dropout Girl
4 - Renaissance
5 - Mistreated
6 - Spoonfed
7 - Downfall
8 - Disappointed
9 - Breaking With Tradition
10 - Handsome and Beautiful
11 - When I'm Here With You
12 - You Hate Me, I Hate You (Live)
13 - Iowa
14 - We're the Mushuganas and This is Rock and Roll
15 - Aimed Wrong
16 - Strawberry Shortcake
17 - Summer Shoes
18 - WHPK Freakout
19 - Some Wings (Live)
20 - Last Night on Earth
21 - Uriah Heep Records
22 - Heartbreak '98
23 - The Vine
24 - The Deacon
25 - Long Good Time
26 - Her Boyfriend
27 - Paul Deluxe
28 - Attention
29 - Anyone Here Like Bad Religion?
30 - Everyone
31 - Ass Kissers
32 - It's Raining