Monday, May 24, 2010

The HOLE Truth: A Comprehensive Collection Of B-sides, Outtakes & Other Rarities v1 (1985-1991)

THE HOLE TRUTH:
A Comprehensive Collection Of B-sides, Outtakes & Other Rarities (v1) 1985-1991

Size: 165.61 MB (RAR File)
36 tracks, all encoded in the MP3 format (bitrate varies), then bundled into a RAR archive for download.

DOWNLOAD: http://www.mediafire.com/?wyezzzjtmne


Tracklisting:
01 My Dream* (1:54)
02 Best Sunday Dress
Sugar Baby Doll/Pagan Babies Demo (2:22)
03 Girls Can Play Football Too* (1:15)
04 Cold Shoulders
Sugar Baby Doll/Pagan Babies Demo (2:32)

05  Kat Bjelland (:57)
06  Quiet Room Sugar Baby Doll/Pagan Babies Demo (1:52)
07 Bernadine Sugar Baby Doll/Pagan Babies Demo (2:54)



08 I Was Desperate* (:48)
09 Hole In Your Head
Live at Nightmoves, Huntington Beach 11/11/89 (2:53)
10 El Diablo Live at Nightmoves, Huntington Beach 11/11/89 (4:01)
11 In The Endless Night Of The Alaskan Winter* (:40)
12 Johnnie's In The Bathroom (2:18)
13 Filling A Hole* (:38)
14 Turpentine (4:00)
15 Phonebill Song (1:48)


16 Long Gone John* (:50)
17 Retard Girl (4:46)
18 Every Man
Live at Club Lingerie, Hollywood 10/10/90 (4:32)
19 The Void In All Of Us* (1:03)
20 Burn Black
(Jack Endino Mix) (4:57)
21 Dicknail (Jack Endino Mix) (3:38)
22 Teenage Whore (2:57)
23 Drown Soda (4:50)

24 On Hole in 1991* (:18)
25 Garbadge Man (Unreleased Alternate Mix) (3:04)
26 The Only Rape I Know
Live at La Cigale, Paris 11/26/91 (1:47)
27 Want It So Bad 
Live at Bierkeller, Bristol, England 8/19/91 (1:11)

28 Where Did You Sleep Last Night? Live at the Rose Club, Koln GER on 12/4/91 (1:53)
29 Chad Live at Doornroosje, Nijmegan HOL 11/24/91 (1:53)
30 I Am (early version of 'Doll Parts') Live at Tower Records, Cambridge, MA 11/6/91 (1:32)
31 Doll Parts (Peel Sessions) (2:21)
32 Violet
(Peel Sessions) (3:36)
33 Forming/Hot Chocolate Boy
(Peel Sessions) (1:32)


BONUS TRACKS
34 Do You Fake It? Live at The Rivoli's, Toronto 11/1/91 (1:39)
35 Drown Soda (Peel Sessions) (3:51)

*Non-musical segment/interlude.

Hate her or LOVE her, one can't deny the astronomic will power and determination of the former Courtney Michelle Harrison, especially in regards to her music career. Determined to be a "rock star" no matter what, her first attempt at fronting a band came at the tender age of 16 when she briefly fronted an early version of Faith No More. Although she had star potential (apparently getting the job by being willing to light her hair on fire on stage), Courtney's strong persona soon was at odds with the band's "democratic" nature and she was ousted after only a few months. While this was a disappointment for Love, it also freed her up to focus on what she had dreamed about ever since she saw the first Runaways single at The Crystal Ship record store in Portland, OR - to have a female band that was as big as the Beatles. (Love subsequently shoplifted that record.)

Back in Portland, Courtney heard about a cool, new girl in town that played guitar and had similar ambition - Kat Bjelland. Bjelland and Love hit it off immediately and together began to plot their ascension to the top. On a hunch that the next big music explosion would happen in San Francisco, Courtney and Kat headed south in search of fame and fortune, eventually settling into a large house on the corner of Fillmore & Oak. There, inspired by a recent performance of Frightwig, San Francisco's outrageous all-girl rock troupe, the two invited Courtney's friend from L.A., Jennifer Finch, up with the prospect of starting a similar project, initially dubbed Sugar Baby Doll. This phase of the band was extremely short-lived with Jennifer sticking around only long enough to record a four-track demo with Love & Bjelland, before returning to L.A. to join L7, a band she would be a part of for a decade to come. Love & Bjelland then found bassist Janis Tanaka and drummer Deirdre Schlatter to complete their musical line-up, and christened themselves the Pagan Babies. Seeing as the tracks were all Bjelland/Love compositions, the band frugally recycled the Sugar Baby Doll tracks for their own demo, creating some confusion for years to come as to who to attribute the songs to. While they had been recorded by the Love/Bjelland/Finch incarnation of Sugar Baby Doll, the only actual demo tapes produced from this time bore the name Pagan Babies, so I suppose it is up to each individual as to where they would like to alphabetically file them in their collection.

And the tracks themselves: "Best Sunday Dress", "Cold Shoulders", "Quiet Room" and "Bernadine". Apologies for the horrendous quality of these, I've tried some minor remastering on a few to make them sound slightly less god-awful. Less aggressive sounding than what would later come from both Bjelland and Love, these tracks borrow heavily from Love inspirations Echo & The Bunnymen as well as ethereal 4AD band the Cocteau Twins. "Best Sunday Dress" would be re-written and re-worked by Love and recorded as a Hole b-side in 1998, while Bjelland would eventually turn "Quiet Room" into an instrumental for her band Babes In Toyland. "Bernadine" apparently was the first song ever written entirely by Love herself and was about Bernadine Mann, a great mentor to Love and the mother of Jeffrey Brent Mann, a boyfriend of Love's from the mid-1980's. A recent Twitter post by Love herself about these tracks:

"Jeffrey Brent Mann! The only ex boyfriend who is living and who doesn't talk to me, he's the guy who blows shit up; if you ever see "Tropic Thunder" he's the demo guy on that (that's the guy "Malibu" is about mixed with Kurt).

He never believed i would make it, his mother Bernadene Mann (trainspotters, look for the sugar babylon/baby doll song named for her) is one of my great mentors and loves along with Hal Wilner, Bono, Stipe, Panos, Billy and a few others. Look for the song me, Kat Bjelland and band did called "Bernadene", it was the first song i ever wrote. "Cold Shoulders" was a sophomoric attempt at a Cocteau Twins vibe with lyrics you could hear, funny we deconstructed.

Me, Kat and Jennifer Finch, it's really scratchy, there's no master but we turned into rock monsters from trying to do a sophisticated version of an all girl band that could take on Cocteau Twins, Echo and the Bunnymen and Bauhaus to desontructing entirely. Kat and i entered into primal scream therapy as a living, but i could write a hell of a good R.E.M. song during "Pretty on the Inside". Why the hell did we do that? Do any of you know what i'm talking about? In Liverpool, Julian Cope called his band with Ian Mculloch "Crucial 3"; i always felt me, Finch and Kat were the "Crucial Three", we were sooo good man we could've taken over the world seriously. Listen to "Best Sunday Dress", it's lost, it's so decayed you can't even hear the song so i finished it twenty years later."
While the Love/Bjelland combo had promise, there was little discipline and after only two gigs, the band disintegrated in early 1986. Love focused on a new lifetime goal - that of becoming a movie star - and aggressively pursued the role of Nancy Spungen in Alex Cox's film Sid & Nancy. While she did not win that role, her charm and talent impressed the filmmaker enough that he cast her as Spungen's best friend in the film. While all of that was going on, Bjelland, who had grown weary of playing with drama queen Courtney, quickly got out of town, moving to Minneapolis to further her musical passions, eventually forming the hard rockin' femme group Babes In Toyland. Love didn't quite get the hint however and soon joined Bjelland in her new town, rehearsing with Babes on bass a few times before Bjelland again gave her the heave ho. Cut adrift again, Love returned to stripping, an occupation made more frustrating by the fact that she would often have to dance to her old band Faith No More, who had scored a top ten hit with their song "Epic". Still bitter about her dismissal from the increasingly popular Babes In Toyland and with her 25th birthday looming ahead, devoid of all the success she craved, Love had an epiphany: she would start her own band, her own way...and nothing would stop her from becoming a star.

While Bjelland may have been guilty of copying Love's smeared lipstick and babydoll dress look (a style Love had picked up from Australian pop star and Divinyls singer Christina Amphlett in the early 80's), it is apparent that Love's brief time in Babes In Toyland would be the primary inspiration for the raw primal sound of early Hole. With a blueprint in mind for her own version of Bjelland's brainchild, Courtney found guitarist Eric Erlandson through an ad in local punk 'zine Flipside. Along with Lisa Roberts on bass, drummer Caroline Rue and former G.G. Allin guitarist Mike Geisbrecht this first incarnation of Hole started gigging in the fall of 1989. The two tracks here, "Hole In Your Head" and "El Diablo" (titles actually unknown) are from the third show ever performed by the band. The addition of Lisa Roberts vocals and Geisbrecht's extra guitar certainly lend a unique flavor to these songs, never officially recorded by the band. Freewheeling, chaotic and sludgy as all hell, they certainly capture the exuberance of a band being born.

However, that initial incarnation of Hole didn't last long: soon Roberts was out (apparently the band only had room for one loudmouth) and a personality clash with Love forced Geisbrecht to flee the combo early on as well. Finding bassist Jill Emery really was the spark that made the early Hole sound gel, and due to problems with finding a suitable additional guitar player, Courtney focused more on her guitar playing and the band line-up finalized at four. Ever the promoter, Courtney stalked L.A. tastemaking DJ Rodney Bingenheimer and secured play on his Sunday night show "Rodney On The ROQ" and convinced Long Gone John, owner of hip indie label Sympathy For The Record Industry to release the first Hole single, "Retard Girl" b/w "Phonebill Song" and "Johnnie's In The Bathroom" in the spring of 1990. An outtake from this session, "Turpentine", is an excellent example of the early Hole sound, Erlandson's heavy guitar licks slowly grinding forward amid Love's stream of conscious lyrical wailing. Also included here is a live rendition of "Every Man" another early Hole song never recorded.

Initially, the band seemed like a joke to most, often referred to as the band with the 'Retard Girl' singer, but anyone who saw them live couldn't deny Love's dynamic and charismatic stage presence which was performance art at it's highest. Word of mouth grew and Love's own personal guerilla style promotion of the band paid off with Love securing a Sub Pop Singles Club deal with the hip Seattle label in early 1991. "Dicknail" b/w "Burn Black" (both included here in their original Jack Endino mixed form) was an enormous indie success positioning the band at the front of the 'no wave' college rock movement. Simultaneously, Love befriended British music journalist Everett True who raved about Hole's performance in an NME article in late 1990, sparking a huge amount of interest in the band overseas which culminated with the release of the Kim Gordon produced debut album Pretty On The Inside. Soon after, the first single, "Teenage Whore" (with it's simmering b-side "Drown Soda") went to number one on the U.K. Indie Singles Chart. In the U.K. at least, Hole's star had risen.

A successful tour of the U.K. and Europe followed, dominating most of the latter part of 1991 for the band. The shows were the stuff of legend - one never knew what Love might say or do, and oftentimes she would do free-form poetry on the spot to the band's tunings/jam sessions that flowed from her as if she was speaking in tongues. Two of these improvs are included here: "Want It So Bad" (sometimes also referred to as "Shinner") recorded live in Bristol, England in August of 1991 and "Do You Fake It?" taken from a show in Toronto later that year. These improvisational bits are important in understanding how the creative process of songwriting in the band worked, as sometimes they would yield a finished original song by tours end, other times Love would refine lyrical ideas used in them for later use. Other highlights of the 1991 tour included the unrecorded original "The Only Rape I Know" (here recorded in Paris 1991), as well as a haunting cover of Leadbelly's "In The Pines" here called "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?", later more famously covered by future husband Kurt Cobain and band Nirvana for their MTV Unplugged in late 1993. Strangely enough, Courtney vocals eerily mirror Cobain own unique howl on parts of this recording, enough so that I had to double check the source information just to make sure Cobain wasn't in attendance that night. The rarely performed "Chad" (also included here) was an early songwriting collaboration between Love and Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan, who she was dating around the time of the recording.

Capping off this overview of the early years of the band, we have the sessions recorded for the John Peel Show in November 1991: "Doll Parts", "Violet", "Drown Soda" and "Forming/Hot Chocolate Boy". The Peel Session version of "Doll Parts" is preceded by a skeletal version of the track simply called "I Am", which contains incomplete lyrics from Love for the song and offers another view into her creative process.

Kat Bjelland on the early years with Courtney:
NEXT: New bassist, new drummer and the road to "Live Through This"....




Saturday, May 15, 2010

OtherStarPeople "Diamonds In The Belly Of The Dog"


OtherStarPeople

"Diamonds In The Belly Of The Dog"

Released: August 1999
Label: A&M/Interscope

Tracklisting:

01 Drip 2:43
02 I Could Never Be Wrong 1:52
03 The Half Of You I Love 3:27
04 Go To 2:50
05 Then There's None 3:25
06 Locked Out 2:23
07 Oceanway Sunday 3:21
08 California Shine 3:46
09 Shut Up And Show Me 2:22
10 Blown Away 3:02
11 Sun & Sky 4:21
12 Goodbye To You 3:05


Produced by Roy Thomas Baker
Recorded by Todd Burke
Mixed by Nick Didia
Mastered by Dave Collins

OtherStarPeople:
Jennifer "Precious" Finch - vocals, guitar
Xander Smith - vocals, guitar
Todd Phillips - drums
Junko Ito - bass, additional vocals

OtherStarPeople was a short-lived L.A. based guitar pop band active from the years 1997-2003.

Founded by Jennifer Finch, the former bass player for all-female metal-grunge band L7 in 1997, the band was a far cry from what many anticipated to come next from the L.A. punk rock scene veteran. Embracing the nickname “Precious”, switching to guitar and sharing lead vocals with suave, charismatic (and male!) guitarist Xander Smith, Finch confounded expectations by leading a band that mixed elements of punk, alt-rock, pop and new wave. A milion miles away from the femme-grunge sound of Finch’s former band, OSP spotlighted more of Finch’s nuanced songwriting/crafting talents that had been hidden within the belly of the wail of L7, while still featuring her heavy rock chops front and center. To round out the band, Finch and Smith recruited Todd Phillips on drums (formerly of The Juliana Hatfield Three) and later, neophyte Japanese bass-player Junko Ito.

Keeping a low-profile initially in order to avoid being snapped up by Slash Records (L7’s label, which legally had first right of picking up the band under a leaving member clause in Finch’s contract), the band held out and after successfully evading that contractual mess, the band signed a high-profile deal with A&M Records in 1998. The band quickly went into the studio with 70’s superstar producer Roy Thomas Baker (Queen, Journey, Foreigner) to record “Diamonds In The Belly Of The Dog”, just prior to the music industry imploding with the gigantic Universal/Polygram merger that basically closed down A&M Records (for all intents and puposes) for good. Surprisingly, their debut album was one of the few that survived the transition and earned an August 1999 release date during a time when most well-known Universal/Polygram artists were still trying to figure out whether they had a deal or not.

Sadly, probably due to Universal/Polygram still figuring out their internal marketing division, the record didn’t find the audience it deserved and after only one record, the band and A&M/Universal parted ways, with the group disbanding not much later in 2002. “Precious” went on to perform with Betty Blowtorch and formed the band The Shocker in 2003. She has also concentrated on her photography and in 1996 had a L.A. Weekly sponsored art show of her work called “14 and Shooting” on display at the Aidan Ryley Taylor Gallery in Hollywood.





Monday, May 10, 2010

Hole "Pacific Coast Highway" (Live from O2 Academy, Brixton U.K. 5-5-10)



Recorded May 5, 2010 at O2 Academy, Brixton, London by YouTuber Holyblop, this is one of the better performances from the current 'Hole Evolution' tour.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

BREAKFAST WITH COURTNEY LOVE



In 2004, to celebrate the release of her debut album America's Sweetheart, Courtney Love did this highly entertaining promo with Los Angeles radio station KROQ called Breakfast with Courtney Love. Broadcast live from The Viper Room on February 17, 2004 as part of the 'Kevin & Bean Show', BWCL (as I like to call it) was part interview, part live performance and part meet and greet, with Courtney seeming extremely lit for the duration of the show. (I don't know what everybody else there ate, but Courtney must have had crack cocaine and pills for
breakfast that day.)

Courtney and band 'The Chelsea' perform "Mono" and "Hold On To Me" (from America's Sweetheart), Hole classics "Plump" and "Celebrity Skin" (the latter with a wacky over-the-top reprise that consists of Courtney singing the song acapella with the fans urging them to 'Help me out on this, guys!'), as well as a bizarre cover of 'Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry" that veers on karaoke territory with Courtney badly humming some of the lyrics, only jumping in on the lines she remembers. She fields questions from the extremely enthusiastic audience, and also shares some personal thoughts and stories including an encounter with Creed singer Scott Stapp and her thoughts on Hole drummer Patty Schemel vs Hole drummer Samantha Maloney. All in all, Courtney dishes up some wicked grub to dine upon - dig in!

BREAKFAST WITH COURTNEY LOVE
Recorded live at The Viper Room by KROQ 106.7 FM Los Angeles for 'The Kevin & Bean Show' on February 17, 2004. Check out samples from the show in the YouTube playlist below.

DOWNLOAD: http://www.mediafire.com/?tmyn5ynozz0
File: 56.55 MB RAR
RAR contains 27 tracks all with the following properties:
Channels 2 (stereo)
Sample Rate 44.1 KHz{CR}
Sample Size 16 bit
Bit Rate 160 kbps
Encoder: LAME 3.98r
Encoder Settings Constant Bit Rate 160 kbps
Audio Quality Medium (Lossy)
Contains Album Art, ID Tag [ID3v2.3 (UTF16) & ID3v1.1]
Type MPEG Layer 3 Audio [.mp3]


Tracks
01 Mono (Live)
02 Most Profound Moment*
03 Patty vs Samantha*
04 Childhood Fantasy*
05 Amazon Planet Of Girl Bands*
06 We Missed You Courtney*
07 Q: What Inspired You To Become A Musician?*
08 Q: Are You Writing A Book?*
09 I'm Gonna Say The 'W" Word*
10 Q: How Are You Coping?*
11 Plump (Live)
12 Q: Are You Still Friends With Eric & Melissa?*
13 Q: What's Next?*
14 Q: Are You Doing Any Acting Soon?*
15 Q: What Bands Are You Into Now?*
16 Voices Carry (Live)
17 Q: What Women In Rock Do You Admire?*
18 Q: Do You Watch Any TV?*
19 Creed Story*
20 The Deviant's Advantage*
21 Celebrity Skin (Live)
22 Celebrity Skin (reprise)
23 Q: What's Your Opinion on Britney?*
24 Q: What Did The New Album Do For You?*
25 Q: Would You Do Anything Differently?*
26 Q: Who Inspired You?*
27 Hold On To Me (Live)


Bold indicates musical performance
*indicates Q&A with Courtney, Courtney rambling on, or someone else talking about Courtney. Non-musical segment.
Italics indicates a Q&A with Courtney





Courtney Love "Left In The Dark: The 'America's Sweetheart' Sessions"



COURTNEY LOVE
Left In The Dark
The America's Sweetheart Sessions: B-sides, Outtakes & Rarities


DOWNLOAD: http://www.mediafire.com/?mjyinhntdzm
File: 89.08 MB RAR
Tracks: MP3, varying bit rate

01. Mono (Alternate/Early Version)
02. Fly (Mono single b-side/Japanese album bonus track)
03. Sunset Strip (Non-U.S. Version)
04. Sunset Strip (U.S. Version)
05. Left In The Dark (Outtake)
06. Hold On To Me (Acoustic Demo - Radio Session)
07. Dark End Of The Street (with Ryan Adams) (Live on MTV2 2002)
08. Life Despite God/Chris Classic 1 (Demo - Rehearsal) (Ventura, 10/26/01)
09. Life Despite God/Chris Classic 2 (Demo - Rehearsal) (Ventura, 10/26/01)
10. Voices Carry (Live in Japan 7/31/04) ['Til Tuesday cover]
11. Cod'ine (Live at The Fillmore, San Francisco CA 10/26/04)

12. House Of The Rising Sun (Live at The Fillmore, San Francisco CA 10/26/04)
13. Mono (Clean Version)
14. Love Love Love (from the film Adam and Steve)




While many have written off Courtney Love's first solo record America's Sweetheart as a self-indulgent, awful mess (Love herself even calls it 'Le'Disastre'), in my opinion, this album gets far more shit than it deserves. Yes, it was slightly self-indulgent and completely drug-fueled, but isn't that what we have come to love about Ms. Love? History (and Love's subsequent legal troubles) have clouded most people's judgement about the LP and well, the truth of the matter is the album got really great reviews upon it's initial release in 2004. Unfortunately, around this time CL had become way too polarizing a character for radio to even give it a shot - and it's a shame because unheard tracks like "Hold On To Me" and "Sunset Strip" could have been massively huge across the board.

In four years, it's doubtful Virgin will be putting out a special bonus track-laden deluxe edition of America's Sweetheart to mark the ten-year anniversary of it's release, so instead i've decided to gather up this collection of what might have been on it. B-sides, outtakes & rare live tracks culled from the time period CL has now dubbed "The Letterman Years" - songs that were literally "Left In the Dark".