Chestnut Season

Run Westy Run, Podcast Alert & Razorcake Donation Drive

The end of the year is always a weird time. In October and November I imagine December will be full of chill vibes with hot cocoa and sparkly lights. I’ve never once had chestnuts roasting on an open fire, but that’s the mood I’m going for. Instead I’m running around trying to get shit done while putting off trips to the post office or dragging out xmas decorations.

I’m not complaining. It’s ordinary holiday shit that we all have to deal with. But it seems like the days are just flying by. Yesterday I was eating Halloween candy. Tomorrow we’ll be decking the halls. And the day after that we’ll be dead.

OK, that last bit was a little dark, but when you’re spinning like a top there’s a part of you that feels like if you slow down even a little you might fall over and never get up again.

That analogy isn’t really helping. If someone could drop an extra two weeks in my calendar I’d really appreciate it. This is another way of saying I’m hard at work on my annual end-of-year reviews of books and music, so I’ll get right to today’s installment of…

PssSST! (Test Pressing Edition)

I have some exciting news for fans of this segment of Message from the Underworld. First, thanks to some coaxing and coaching from Michael T. Fournier (hi Mike!), I’ve invested in a new printer and scanner. That means I can finally properly document my collection of SST Records releases, inserts, catalogs, and ephemera. I’m happy to report that I’ve started the process of scanning these materials into a digital library.

I’ve also been adding my write-ups from previous installments of PssSST! so that the words and images live together in one place. My goal is to put all the cool stuff I find about SST records, tapes, and CDs that so many of us are obsessed with in one easily, searchable site. An online encyclopedia of my collection.

I’m at the beginning of the process and still figuring out what’s useful and what isn’t. While I’m not ready to share it yet, I will soon. I’m not going to wait until it’s “done” as it will be an ongoing project, but sometime between now and when Corporate Rock Sucks, which you can preorder now, comes out on April 12, 2022, I’ll share the library with readers of Message from the Underworld.

In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on what you’d like to see included in this digital library, I’d love to hear from you—but please keep in mind that I don’t know how to code and don’t plan on learning any time soon.

Today I want to talk about one of the more unusual records in my collection: the test pressing for Run Westy Run’s Hardly Not Even (SST 192). What’s a test pressing? As the name suggests, it’s a record made to test the audio quality of a record before printing hundreds and thousands of records.

A test-pressing is essentially a way for the label to say, “Yes, this is the way we want the record to sound. Please proceed.” Sometimes the label involves the artist in this decision, but it’s typically the label’s call. That said, occasionally an artist will make last minute changes to a record and drop a track or re-record one or more of the songs.

After the test-pressing has been approved, it has no purpose, which is why they typically don’t have album art. Most test-pressings will have a generic label from the record pressing company housed in a plain white jacket with a hole cut in the middle.

See? Not a lot going on here.  

If a record becomes a hit, the test-pressing can become a collector’s item mainly because of their scarcity. It’s a way to own something that only a few people possess, which isn’t really my thing. I’m not a record collector or a completist so test-pressings don’t convey any special magic for me. For my purposes, they are less valuable than most records because they lack the information about who, what, where, when and sometimes why the record was made. That stuff is more important to me than the value of owning something rare. In fact, I’ll buy records I really don’t care about just to get my hands on the inserts.

I bought the test pressing for Run Westy Run’s debut because it was cheap. Run Westy Run is an interesting and fairly accessible band from Minneapolis but it never rose to the level of the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, or Soul Asylum. However, the listing on Discogs mentioned the “T/P” came with an insert so I bought it. What can I say? I’m a sucker for SST ephemera.

But back to Run Westy Run. There are plenty of remarkable things about this record: it was produced by REM’s Peter Buck and Hüsker Dü’s Grant Hart. In fact Run Westy Run’s first single was put out by Tontine Records, which was run by Hart, and he had a hand in bringing the band to Ginn’s attention. Three of the five musicians were brothers: Kirk, Kyle, and Kraig Johnson. The name comes from the protagonist of a children’s book. Westy, apparently was a confederate of Dick and Jane.

Run Westy Run’s musical style is hard to pin down. It’s a fusion of dirty roots, funked up rockabilly, and loud fast rawk and roll. I think the reason I never latched onto Run Westy Run is that when I first moved to LA in the early ’90s and started exploring the music scene there were a ton of bar bands that sounded a lot like this. The musicians were talented and the bands were fun to see live but it wasn’t something I wanted to listen to when I was walking to work or hanging out at home. For me, Run Westy Run fit into this category: the soundtrack for a good time.

Then I checked out the insert, which turned out to be a lyric sheet—the same lyric sheet that went out with the album when it was officially released. No score there. But Kirk’s lyrics are far from ordinary. These songs are strange and surreal with unconventional arrangements. Instead of songs about low-down women we get this “take those marigolds from your bosom girl and I’ll show you where a rare fanatic stepped on me.”

It’s a cliché to compare song lyrics to poetry, but Kirk’s idiosyncratic lyrics make Hardly Not Even a memorable listening experience—no matter where you are.

🚨 Podcast Alert 🚨

Last week I was on SCOTCH AND “good” CONVERSATION to talk about Corporate Rock Sucks. We talked about my five quintessential SST releases (after we talked about what quintessential means). Add it to your podcast rotation.

Razorcake Fundraising Drive

Razorcake is having its annual donation drive and its efforts to get the word out are hampered by a website that’s under construction. As you should know by now, Razorcake is the only non-profit indie music zine on the planet. It’s also one of the longest running punk zines in print. Whether you subscribe for yourself, give a subscription to a friend, sponsor your favorite DIY-friendly space, or drop a chunk a change to get some cool merch designs by Kiyoshi Nakazawa, you’ll be doing a solid to an efficiently produced publication and ethically run organization. And that, my friends, is not something you can say about too many places these days.

After you donate to Razorcake, write “I did my part” in the comments to be entered into a book bundle from yours truly.

Be safe. Be well. Don’t keel over.