Various Artists ‎– "Messthetics #105, Scotland 1977-81" (Hyped To Death ‎– Messthetics #105) 2007

Sorry, No Deacon Blue here.
It's the Messthetics Scotland compilation innit?
Its got all the classics on here, The Fakes, The Exile,He's Dead Jim, Scrotum Poles,plus bonus tracks, plus many many more.
Not Avalable in shops.
File under UK DIY.

Tracklist:
1 –Scrotum Poles- Helicopter Honeymoon 1:42
2 –Fire Engines- New Thing In Cartons 3:39
3 –35mm Dreams- More Than This 2:15
4 –The Exile- Jubilee 77 3:03
5 –Commercials- Simon 2:18
6 –Fakes- Sylvia Clarke 2:37
7 –Metropak- You're A Rebel 3:33
8 –Tony Pilley- Waiting For The Man 2:29
9 –Visitors - Moth 2:22
10 –Article 58- Event To Come 2:41
11 –Radio Ghosts- Falling Into Darkness 2:40
12 –Rapid Dance- Hidden So Well 3:29
13 –Strutz- Break Point 4:09
14 –Metropak- Looking 3:24
15 –Vertical Smiles- New Clash Single 2:12
16 –Ettes- A Conversation 1:45
17 –Restricted Code- New Messiah 1:51
18 –Radio Ghosts- My Room 4:50
19 –Brills- Gang Of One 2:30
20 –Rhythm Method - Insight 2:20
21 –Dirty Reds- Bad Sex 2:53
22 –He's Dead Jim - Towel On The Radiator+Lampshade Lampshade 2:55
23 –Jazzateers- Blue Moon Over Hawaii 4:02
24 –Paul Reekie- Lovers 6:10
25 –35mm Dreams- Suburbia Sheikhs (First Demo) 3:11
26 –Commercials- Speeds The End (Demo) 3:16
27 –Friction - Mystery 3:59
28 –International Spys- Baby Don't Go (Demo) 2:21
29 –Restricted Code- Then There Was You (Demo) 2:00
30 –Article 58- Idol (Unreleased) 1:28
31 –Vertical Smiles- Carnal Knowledge (Radio Airthrey Demo) 3:05
32 –Cats Eyes - Guilt (Demo) 3:35
33 –Scrotum Poles- Put An End To It All (A Shot In The Dark Go Pop Session) 1:34

DOWNLOAD from the high road HERE!

He's Dead Jim - "A Great Way to Die!" (self released cassette) 1984

"Punks not Dead Jim", said Bones as he reads the cover of the Exploited lp released a year or so before this DIY effort from Aberdeens fifth finest garage band.
"Mmmmm, Illogical", says Spock, as he finds it hard to comprehend how a group as miserably shite as the fucking Exploited had the shear  nerve to say something is 'not dead' when they have evidently played a major role in killing it!?
Luckily, other parts of bonnie Scotland did their best to counter such celtic musical atrocities such as Deacon Blue, Hue and Cry, and Big Country, by creating a special strain of unmacho punk influenced pop.
This 5 track demo cassette from HDJ, does have a please like me tone to it, but only to serve the purpose of securing Gigs from the cloth eared promoters of 1984. That being so, this has a great lo-fi sound to it, emphasised by the metallic sound baffling of the steel garage door. Another great touch is the recycling of an evil Barry Manilow cassette, to house these fine tunes. Top labels pay high flying designers thousands to come up with sleeve concepts that don't come close to this. The genius of necessity cannot be recreated by millionaires.
But what I really wanna know is..... who's Manilow cassette was this originally?
"I shite the songs that make the whole world SICK!", sings Barry in Vegas.

Neil Christie of HDJ explains:
"A Great Way to Die! was recorded about 18 months (after 'Lionise the Masses') and was done in an original edition of just one (the one you see in pics here), recorded on top of a Barry Manilow cassette. We used this as a demo to get local gigs. For this tape Andy Milne had taken over from Murray on drums, and Allan had mostly taken over from me on lead vocals, while I had taken up guitar. This all made us sound slightly more competent but, let's face it, this was not a sonic makeover of Scritti Politti proportions - we still made a bloody racket."

DOWNLOAD a great way to die HERE!

He's Dead Jim - "New Gods For The Smug" (Self released Cassette) 1983

This is how pop music should be. Played by dilettantes* outside of the accepted system,with only a passing thought of appealing to an audience other than themselves. With no other discernible ambition other than to create something fleeting; worthwhile only to a small section of the planet, and be satisfied with that! A healthy bi-product of this healthy attitude, is that it often leads to something bordering on greatness. Not saying that He's Dead Jim are Great, but they definitely score 10 out of 10 for doing it right. This is perfect Pop music,done perfectly.

More thoughts on the subject by Neil Christie(HDJ)  :

"New Gods For The Smug: another bunch of garage recordings, this time from 1983.
This captures us at a point where we had started to sweeten the primitive metallic sludge of our earliest recordings with touches of melody and even, occasionally, vocal harmonies of a sort. It's still not exactly Haircut 100 though.

We were quite proud of the (mostly inaudible) lyrics to Terry Burns, a song about lovers (perhaps the same Terry and Julie from Waterloo Sunset) who burst into flames:

Thrashes to ashes, lust to dust
When humans spontaneously combust.
There's no explanation for the conflagration
When humans spontaneously combust.

The song Oil was a move away from our usual subject matter of science fiction and gurls with its biting critique of the oil industry and its effects on our home town.

Oil - boring! Oil - boring! etc

Poetry? I think so."


 *

dil·et·tante/ˌdiliˈtänt/

Noun:

A person who claims an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge. A person with an amateur interest in the arts.

Track Listing:

1 His Own Number
2 Haywire
3 The Hour Steals On
4 Terry Burns
5 Oil
6 Jeepster
7 Wonderful Times
8 Prisoner of the Atom
9 Jenny Channel
10 Point Blank range
11 Backburner

DOWNLOAD and be very smug HERE!

He's Dead Jim - "Toys Attack The System" (unreleased recording) 1983

Here's a treat for all you vast legions of avid He's Dead Jim completists out there! Some unreleased garage recordings from those grey days of 1983, when we had to endure all things Goth. This trend went mercifully unnoticed in the HDJ garage.
 As the nations' youth dressed for the funeral of rock'n'roll,and Bauhaus finally gave it the coup de grace; HDJ continued making energetically dissonant punky pop songs in their Aberdonian garage.
This collection shows a musical sophistication of sorts,its even 'funky' in parts; and there's a.....gulp!.....ballad?
Don't worry, its still a raw lo-fi racket, albeit a more cultured raw lo-fi racket.

As Neil (HDJ) says:

"More garage recordings, this time from 1983. These have never really been distributed in any form, until now. By this point we'd learned to play, a bit, Andy had joined on drums and brought his bass pedal with him, and we were experimenting with different musical styles. Depending on your point of view, this may be a blessed respite from the grindingly primitive monotony of earlier recordings, or laughable jazz-odyssey pretension. On Siren you can hear the distinctive sound of the shittest and tiniest keyboard ever invented, the Casio VL-Tone, and we even attempt a ballad with Stolen Heaven. But fear not, most of this is still a grim and cacophonous sonic ordeal."

 Enjoy!

Tracklisting: 

1 Green For Go

2 Back To You

3 Siren

4 The Land Where The Dolls Go

5 Eternally

6 Tomorrow is Yesterday

7 Stolen Heaven

8 The Process

9 Swim to Oblivion

10 Line of Broken Hearts

11 Kiss Tonight Goodbye

DOWNLOAD these attacking toys HERE!

He's Dead Jim - "Bad Noise For Tuff Trendies" (Savage frenzy productions) 1981

HDJ’s first release from the garage is thee ultimate 80’s lo-fi fuzz punk cassette classic. This recording has the best fucked up fuzztone guitar this side of 1960’s technology. Mix this up with some punk influenced melodies,lo-fi sci-fi, a sense of humour, and you get a heady cocktail of DIY garage punk rock. Thank fuck these boys were never allowed near a proper studio! I dread to think what Martin Hannett would have done to them.

Instead, glory in the raw dissonance of this carbon monoxide fuelled smog fest, and wonder at its simple genius.

As a bonus, you also get no less than four versions of the eponymously titled “He’s Dead Jim”, where the lyrics are wholly made up from titles of Star Trek episodes, from the days when ,thankfully, there was no ‘Next Generation’! Which is apt indeed, because was this part of the last generation of the rock age? 

“He’s worse than dead Jim.......his Brain has gone!” (Dr Mcoy, from ‘Spock’s Brain’)

Neil Christie (HDJ) fills us in on some of the finer details behind this recording:

"This was our first cassette, from 1981, recorded within weeks of most of us (apart from lead guitarist Neil "minor chords are for girls" Smith) picking up an instrument for the first time and released in small numbers under our own 'Savage Frenzy' imprint. What you hear is a combination of ham-fisted thrashing, sub-lo-fi recording and hoarse screaming. We didn't have a microphone or PA, so vocals were simply shouted above the noise. The borrowed drum kit had no bass pedal, which made for an idiosyncratic approach to rhythm. The guitars were channelled through knackered amps and usually further distorted by the use of the 'Big Muff' fuzz pedal."

Tracklisting:

1 He’s Dead Jim

2 Wild Thing

3 Lampshade Lampshade

4 Towel on the Radiator

5 We Want Groupies

6 Headache

7 Rachel

8 Klingon Stomp

9 Archibald Willingham Butt

10 All About Losing

11 Bread and Circuses

12 Something awful

13 He’s Dead Jim (Mur)

14 He’s Dead Jim (Dub)

15 He’s Dead Jim (Remix)

DOWNLOAD this bad noize HERE!
or
DOWNLOAD from here if you're a real tuff trendy, it's on google drive.

He's Dead jim - "Lionise the Masses,Massage the Lions" (self Released Cassette) 1981

Lets change direction back to something a bit more pop orientated, where 'proper' songs roost.
so we switch from the sun-kissed beaches of California to the jolly grey skies of bonnie Scotland.Indulge in some classic UK DIY, and cleanse your mind from all this avant garde nonsense.
Here's Scotlands answer to  Airway(?)....yes it's He's Dead Jim!

As the Subway Sect had a disproportionate influence in Scotland, after their sojourn north of the border as part of the White Riot Tour in 1977; one thought it apt that we are now exposed to some classic scottish DIY Punk. That said, it was brought to my attention that the 'Sect Effect' only centred itself around Glasgow, Edinburgh and the general M8 area. So naturally, we go to Aberdeen, where we find "He's Dead Jim" grinding out sub lo-fi punk pop classics in their garage. Plenty of weedy Ron Asheton riffs, Swell Mapisms, and a sense of humour; this home-made classic could have been massive had it been  from 1981's fashionable place to be, Edinburgh. Not bad from, as Neil Christie of HDJ said,"(for)unquestionably Aberdeen's fifth best garage band of the early '80s."

He's Dead Jim has the honour of having a compilation Cd-r of their cassette greatest hits released on the great Hyped2Death label.....you can buy it HERE!

More from Neil:

" Lionise the Masses, Massage the Lions was recorded late 1981.

It features the original line-up, struggling with our equipment and incompetence. 

It was recorded in the garage, in mono on a reel-to-reel machine and distributed in very limited numbers to friends and 'fans'.

The garage had a large metal door that reverberated as the volume increased and I like to think gave the recordings a uniquely harsh metallic edge. The neighbours enjoyed our practising so much that they complained to the council and got an injunction for 'noise pollution' to stop us from rehearsing. It was inconvenient to be shut down by The Man, but we were delighted to be officially classified as 'noise pollution'. That seems like a pretty good genre name for what we did."

DOWNLOAD this diy guide to lion massagerie HERE!