You know (Men of) Porn? So good, out there stoner rock from San Francisco, they've cranked out four pretty good ones you should hear. A sort-of side project for others,I guess most notably Melvin's drummer Dale Crover, they crank out similar, goofy-sludgy stoner rock on perhaps a more experimental, relaxed approach than the "mother act". The one constant over the years has been guitarist/vocalist Tim Moss, but the remainder of the lineup has been fleshed out with several bassists/drummers/guitarists, something of a semi-all-star band of lesser known lights of the West Coast stoner scene, if that makes any sense.The band's various incarnations have cranked out four different albums between 1999-2008, the first, "Porn American Style", set the template.....focusing on Moss' guitar shredding, combining a stoner/metal/industrial type of stew/sludge, burying the vocals far down in the mix and often distorting them beyond recognition, it's a decent album, a good loud kick with outrageous, Melvins-like song titles ("Comin' Home (Smokin' Pot on a Sunday Afternoon While UFO's Drone)"(the lead off track that sets the stage instantly with a frenzied 16 minutes), also stuff like "Ballad of the Bulldyke" and "Dancing Black Ladies"......a good one to listen to for fans of stoner rock in general, also of 1990's grunge and even NIN/Filter type industrial crunch rock.
Much more satisfying, to me, and much better, is 2001's "Experiments In Feedback", which I select as their best work, that is, the ONE (Men Of) Porn album to check, if you're only checking one....opening with a bulldozing 12 minute version of Pink Floyd's (!) "One of These Days", this is FAR more psychedelic than the debut, lots of tape-loops/effects, sort of out of place for such a slash and burn kind of band, but I think here they sound fine and give the Porn men some identity! Good album. Quite unique, an open mind can really find a good one here."Wine Women and Song" featured some fine drumming from Crover and a wierd album cover, depicting some kind of nude-alien-infant kind of thing......bizarre stuff, but what else would we expect from this crew. More of their semi-trademarked "long" numbers, "Succulento", "Last Song", and "The Five Books of the Arenas" take up the bulk of the album.
And finally, thier most recent offering...2008's "And the Devil Makes Three", in which the band (evidently now simply called Porn) collaborates with Japanese noise-God Masami Akita (aka Merzbow), whom is full credited in the collaboration. This is the most experimental album of the four by FAR, quite a departure actually from the other three....Some may be familiar with Merzbow from his collaborations with Boris which were sometimes interesting, it's an odd combination, but it works.....for a side-project, these lads have turned out four, at the very least INTERESTING albums, and there are LOTS of people I can think of that ought to turn themselves onto these if they've not had the pleasure!
PORN AMERICAN STYLE-01 Comin' Home (Smoking Pot on Sunday Afternoon while Ufo's Drome/02 Dancing Black ladies/03 Porch Song/04 Fat Trout/05 Teabaggin'/06 Ballad of the Bulldyke/07 Pyleven/08 Ode to Theodore's/09 Highlife/10 Ballad of the Bulldyke/11 Double Don/12 End
EXPERIMENTS IN FEEDBACK-01 One of These Days/02 Capp Street/03 Feedback II/04 Sister (Valium Mix)/05 Feedback IV/06 Outta Site/07 Sister/08 Feedback VII/09 Sister(Nod Mix)/10 Loop
WINE WOMEN AND SONG-01 Succuletno/02 Mastodon Entee/03 Glory Will Be Mine/04 (Untitled Track)/05 The Five Books of the Aeneas/06 Last Song
Links will be up soon.....lemme know what ya think of the (Men of) Porn......pretty cool stuff says yer uncle, what do you wanna hear tomorrow and the next day? Anybody got anything funny to contribute? The Pat Boone Metal Album or any shit like that? Life is too short for us to be all serious about this here rock n roll ALL of the time! Compilations, contributions, drawings, videos, short stories, bar band demo tapes ........ANYTHING is welcome here at ANYtime.....get your creative on, dawg!
Couple of late edits here.....got a link for a band from Chile called "Bruto", who refer to themselves as "fuzzgressive"....I haven't listened to it yet, likely will tomorrow, but you too can check out their debut disc for free by going to their Bandcamp site or by simply clicking HERE:
http://bruto.bandcamp.com
You can also make a donation to them, any amount you desire, to pay for the disc, if you wish....please check them out, SUPPORT these start-up bands, I hope they are good, but even if not, it's cool, I WANT unknown bands sending me their discs or links......I promise any band if you send me such a link it WILL be put up here (within reason of course).....
Also I had a request for some Killing Joke, I have a enough to throw together a reasonably sized post, watch for it maybe over the weekend as I have also been working on a fairly large Mars Volta mega-post.....but the Killing Joke request WILL be honored, thanks to the requester(forget who it was honestly), but it's a decent idea and we'll get there in the next couple days!
Lemme know whatcha think of (Men of) Porn!