Various Artists-The Lounge Ax Defense & Relocation Compact Disc (1996)

 

Artist: Various Artists (The Jesus Lizard, Shellac, Sebadoh, June of 44, The Coctails, Guided By Voices, Archers of Loaf, Bad Livers, Yo La Tengo, Mekons, Superchunk, Seam, Tortoise, Rachels)

Title: The Lounge Ax Defense and Relocation Compact Disc

Label: Touch 'n Go

Format: CD 

Cat #: TG130CD

Year of Release: 1996

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1996

Listed Condition: VG+/VG+

Sell Date: 7/1/21

Sell Price: $3.99

Discogs Last Sold: 5/29/21

Low: $3.95

Median: $4.17

Average: $4.51

High: $8.00

Current low price: $2.38

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 22

Have/Want: 508/66

Where Sold: Indianapolis, IN

Time it took to sell: 8 years

Where and When Bought: Sounds NYC on St. Marks new upon release

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B

Sad To See It Go: No

This is one of those releases that boggles my mind that nary a single track was memorable a quarter century after purchase.  Not even the Shellac one where every compilation track that reared it's head was like a sacred scroll of musical text.  Good bands, good cause (the Lounge Ax was a Chicago mainstay from 1987 until the final headline show by The Coctails in January 2000 before closing for good 4 years after this CD came out.  Probably, like The Concert For Bangladesh, a drop in the bucket in the reality of overall costs, but a nice thought.

At least 11 of these 14 bands I considered essential to buy in the 90's and the other 3 I wouldn’t kick out of bed.  I bet you can guess who they are.  Hint, 2 of them close out the record and the other one closed out the club.  

The CD closes with the heavy hitters: Jesus Lizard kick it off with a good one, the Shellac song made me wonder if this was a courtroom transcript ala "Budd," and Sebadoh are still in top form with "Whole Hog."  The Yo La Tengo cut is astonishingly bad squall considering they usually ride the B+/B realm of indie rock consistently.  The GBV cut has an annoying knocking sound that I initially thought was neighbors pounding on my floor even though the non-stop stream of fireworks the evening of 4th of July was louder than the bed of music I was playing in my room and I didn't have an urge to "crank it up" like I would in my younger years with Drunks With Guns stereo speaker out the window wars to counter shitty music.    The contents of this record, while inoffensive to me would not be loved by my neighbors.

I gave this another pass off the hard drive as I was writing this.  Nothing was jumping out at me to report on.  The Bad Livers bluegrass and Rachels classical are outliers.  I prefer the Bad Livers to Rachels and enjoyed a Bad Livers full length in the mid 90's, but if I'm not spending time on Ralph Stanley and Stockhausen or whateverthefuck, why would I put serious time into them outside of chin stroking nods of appreciation?

Archers, June of 44, Seam, Mekons and Superchunk were all bands I enjoyed, saw live, played on the radio and bought almost everything they put out when the released new stuff.  Well, maybe not the Mekons, although they were possibly the best and oldest of the lot, but their catalog was much bigger.  Mekons are an outlier here more than the outlier bands.  I can only remember seeing them once at Nightstage in Cambridge before the Quarterstick Touch n Go distributed years.  I think the tour was Curse of the Mekons, and they were great yet I never saw them again.

25 years it too for me to pay attention to what I deemed to be a crucial purchase.  Had it not sold, it may have sat on my shelf in storage another 25 without my thinking about it.

Such is the world of The Reverse Collector (TM).