Note: The Teleport City Forums have sort of become the de facto place where music posts have been happening, so I'm sort of repeating myself here. You should get involved in the forums.

So a few weeks back, I came into possession of an Ion USB turntable, allowing me to start the long but enjoyable process of turning old records into mp3s I can then carry around town with me. This has led, naturally, to me listening to a whole lot of records I haven't listened to in years. It also led to me discovering that something like half my records and 80% of my 7-inches have been lost over the years. anyway, I should post this in Teleport city's moribund music section, but as a warm-up, here's some of what I've dusted off:

Undermine -- two 7-inches from a punk band from Louisville circa 1989-1990. I liked them then, but I absolutely love them now. Tight and fast (there's a "like I like my women" joke in there somewhere, but I'm not going to make it, because I'm too classy) and sort of like pre-Rollins Black Flag, but with more melody. these guys were all pretty cool, and I remember one show when the singer got his hair tangled in a guitar, so they just had to cut it off, and the guitarist just played the rest of the show with a big mass of hair tangling from the guitar. Lyrics are all about being alienated and crazy.

Brain Dead -- another old Louisville punk band with a couple LPs and more early Black Flag vibe. Songs are all about being wild and drinking beer and eating fried chicken. And being oppressed and stuff, of course.

Caroliner -- Todd got me into this group back in the early 90s, and I once described them as the sound equivalent of a grainy photo of a creepy backwoods southern child in a ragged dress, standing in some half-dead swamp with a crumbling church behind her and one of those beat up plastic baby dolls with mangy hair and burn/dirt streaks on its face. And with songs like "Rainbows Made of Meat" and an album that comes with a chapter from a textbook on hog cholera, it makes for a fun listening experience. Not exactly music to relax to, but it's fun to have a little Caroliner on hand to freak people out.

Sin Alley -- two volumes (2 and 3) of these raw old rockabilly collections, packed with songs about booze, knives, and hot women. Great stuff. If anyone can ever find more by Eddie Smalling's Rolling Aces, let me in on it. Their song on volume 2, "Jeanie," is great.

Blue Demon's Mexican Rock and Roll Favorites -- back around 1997 or so, I started ordering all kinds of crazy shit from the Norton Records catalog. Because a man needs a healthy stack of Hasil Adkins and Esquerita albums. They had a lot of stuff like this record, a bunch of songs, probably used without permission, collected from the nether regions of rock and roll. This album has a bunch of songs from the Mexican rock scene int he 1960s -- lots of Rolling Stones influence and such. Some gems, including a group of old men in Beatles wigs doing a whacked out cover of "Suzie Q" or a song in which the singer asks for romantic help from...Pythagoras.

Concussion! and Sleazy Surf -- Two more anthologies of unknown music from Norton. Man, I could spend my life's savings at Norton records -- except that my life savings is about $500, so it's not that impressive. Both of these are surf-influenced instrumental records from a ton of bands that probably twenty people knew of in 1965. I remember buying Concussion because the cover was of a couple 1950s female wrestlers beating the crap out of each other, and Sleazy Surf because there was a naked chick on a surf board on the cover and the back cover said, "Warning! Listening to this record may cause you to perform a grinding erotic striptease" even though most of the music is straight surf and hot-rod, and not really stripper music. Both are pretty sold collections of obscure instrumentals. Nothing great, but good old fashioned rock and roll, and that always makes me smile.

Hasil Adkins - Peanut Butter Rock and Roll -- Jesus, I love Hasil Adkins. That's all I'm gonna say. I remember an old issue of Kicks magazine where they had Hasil Adkins reviewing that Great Balls of Fire movie, and the review was like, "What the hell is all this? That boy ain't got no hunch. He's just jumping around like a goddamned monkey."

Petty Booka -- Dancing with Petty Booka -- before they became the darlings of SXSW and settled into the ukulele/country mold, the duo from Tokyo recorded this swank LP of cocktail lounge coolness. I can't believe this hasn't been reissued on CD, but so it goes sometimes.

Babes in Toyland - Spanking Machine -- Man, I totally forgot about this band. Kat Bjelland sure can scream and growl. Nice. Goes well in a mix with Beat the Devil.

Metroschifter - Generation Rx -- Louisville punk-pop band listens to Elvis country and records a record influenced by it. Pretty good results, although the recording is full of hiss for some reason.

That's been it so far. what joys are in store for the future?