30 Years of Service
(Radon) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
In July 2003, Smegma celebrated their 30th anniversary as a musical collective with a series of concerts featuring Stooges saxman Steve Mackay. These landmark noise spectacles were highly praised, most notably the exceptional performance at The Derby in Hollywood. At the end of the year, the set was recreated in Smegma’s legendary Portland, Oregon, studio and painstakingly mixed and manipulated over the course of several months. From their mid-’70s work in the Los Angeles Free Music Society up through their critically exalted collaboration album with Wolf Eyes, Smegma’s influential free honk’n’gibber is like no other.
33 1/3
(Important - IMPREC145) Enhanced CD $12.00
Leaning here toward their 20th century avant-garde and out-jazz influences, Smegma have obviously spent of good portion of their 33.3-year history free-thinking their heads off. Magnificent blotoo honk by Oblivia, Ju Suk Reet Meate, Burned Mind, Conroy, and Dr. Id. CD includes live videos of “Happy Holidays” live at End Times Festival (with Spencer Yeh and Twig Harper) and “Grubsteak” live at the Three Million Tongues festival in Chicago.
Abacus Incognito
(Alga Marghen) LP $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Neo-primitive-suburban-folk music recorded in Temple City and Pasadena 1974 and 1975 by Ace Farren Ford, Ju Suk Reet Meate, Cheez-It-Ritz Chuck-O Fats (D.K.), Amazon Bambi, Dennis Duck, Craig, Jason, Peter, Bev, and a few others, all doing their best to avoid song forms. Fearless group improvisational vocals shape-shift through operatic show tunes, spirit visions and visits to a delirium motel room, contrasted by the title track featuring poetry by Dennis Duck (Human Hands, Dream Syndicate) accompanied by the family stereo console record player / radio unit and conventional instruments to create “a strangely unique non-jamming sound.” Edition of 200
Beast
(Destijl - IND036) CD $12.75 (Out-of-stock)
Intergenerational discomfort rock performed together by two free-sound conglomerates -- the sprawling Portland, Oregon-based LAFMS progenitors Smegma, and the more compact Wolf Eyes. With cover art depicting crop circles, alien grave rubbings and cryptographs, and group portrait inside resembling a family reunion snapshot you might find at a thrift store, The Beast merges Richard Meltzer’s nasal meander, reptilian pulsations, exploratory tweakadelica, outsider improv, toys, devices, and electronic noises. Proof that old weird America is far from obsolete and more than capable of frying the fiendly skies.
ANTLER / RICHARD MELTZER / ROBERT POLLARD / SMEGMA / VOM
Complete Soundtrack for The Tropic of Nipples
(Off - 998) Used CD $10.00
A once-in-a-lifetime sickness: Guided By Voices chairman joins forces with Blue Oyster Cult lyricist and long-running noise outfits for oddball bubble-and-burn words and music. Features all twelve tracks from the out-of-print seven-inch version, plus eleven bonus cuts.
Dives Headfirst Into Punk Rock 1978/79
(Krim Kram) CD $11.75
Krim Kram’s expanded CD reissue of the cassette first issued on Pigface Records in 2015 documents the earliest recordings of Smegma performing live as part of the Portland punk rock / new wave scene (Myrtle Tickner, Jerry A. and Pig Champion from Poison Idea would all later go on to play with the band at various stages throughout the 80s and 90s). Included are the complete Flashcards and Disco Diarrhea 7s, both originally self-released on Pigface Records in 1979.
Ever And Anon
(Ultramarine - UM021) LP $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
LAFMS-style free jazz, industrial noise, improvisation, and straight-up weird music from the first family of freakdom. Amazing drumming courtesy of Dennis Duck. Oblivia’s trademark vinyl samples pay homage to the devilish surfabilly of Link Wray. Crazy reeds, Aylerian invocations, electro-acoustic meditations, (shrink) chamber music and moments of pure avant garde. A riot in a farm, strange strings riding the waves, Ju Suk Reet Meate’s guitar riffs and slides with the seagulls, a bat party in a cave, a hot bath of analog synth bubbles. Cover art by Ace Farren Ford. Includes insert. Edition of 300.
Glamour Girl
(Japan Overseas - JO9728) CD $10.50
This 1997 CD reissue of vintage gorked-out wahoo originally released by Los Angeles Free Music Society in the late ’70s includes four bonus tracks (the Pigface Chant 7-inch). A bizarre combo of the tape-loops-and-nonsense later perfected by Negativland, the meandering skronk of Jandek or Gate, and the nightmarish hippie meltdowns of the No-Neck Blues Band and their offshoots.
Guff Vout Mulch
(Nashazphone - NP10) LP $20.00
Trans-Atlantic collaboration that sounds like what happens when Blood Stereo's re-imagined thousand-year-old Druid chants are invaded by Smegma's looped, psychedelic-folk-stomps. Liner notes by John Olson. Edition of 450.
I Am Not Artist 1973-1988
(Vinyl on Demand - VOD70) 6xLP + DVD $125.00 (Out-of-stock)
This astonishing set compiles most of Smegma’s long out-of-print and impossible-to-find vinyl releases on the LAFMS, Trap, Dom and Selektion labels, and, of course, their own Pigface Records. The box includes their first three seven inches (Disco Diarrhea, Flashcards, and Pigface Chant), their LPs Pigs for Lepers and Glamour Girl 1941, and their Spontaneaous Sound 1973-82 2xCS. Smegma started collectively by Ju Suk Reet Meate, Cheese it Ritz, Chucko Fats, Dennis Duck, Amazon Bambi and Cheesebro, and continued to lure in a steady stream of avant / free / improv lunos for three-and-a-half decades to come. The least likely folk / primitive / avant band in Pasadena, California, survived Portland, Oregon’s punk rock revitalization and first meltdown, and are today a serious force in weird music. The DVD reissues the 10 Years Wasted videotape from 1983, Mike Lastra’s Smegma The First 10 Years, and two bonus performances from 1978 and 1980.
Lipscomb b/w Absentia
(Helicopter - H64) 7-inch $11.25
Two collaborative tracks of beautiful dementia, computer treatments, rattling bells, distant ragtime and hoarse shrieks and groans. With five color inserts. Edition of 200.
Look'n For Ya
(Alga Marghen - plan-S 20TES.154) LP $28.00 (Out-of-stock)
Primitive, suburban, anti-hippie yoont recorded in the mid-1970s. Guests include Wild Man Fischer and Turkey Mon (a C.B. radio operator whose high-power transmitter signal was picked-up by the tape machine while the band was recording). Edition of 200
Mirage
(Important - IMPREC311) CD $12.00
(Important - IMPREC311) LP $15.00
Running the gamut from musique concrète-inspired bombast to frenzied noise funk that morphs Eno / Roxy garage rock with primitive meditations, demented voices, toys, and record players, Mirage reunites four of the original members (working together again for the first time in many years) and introduces them to new collaborators. LP includes exclusive track "Very Good Advice," spontaneously performed at a house party in 2009. CD includes a different exclusive track "Oh Yeh," and a previously unreleased original from Pasadena 1973, "Quiet On The Set Rioux I."
Morass Live
(Tanzprocesz - TP8) LP $24.00 (Out-of-stock)
In 1987, G.R.O.S.S. released Morass on cassette -- one studio side, one live side. The former was re-released as bonus material on Harbinger Sound's CD reissue of Nattering Naybobs. Here is the latter, plus 15 minutes of extra astounding unreleased live recordings from 1985-7 for your trouble. "Free jazz firepower is to the fore," observe our comrades at Volcanic Tongue, "With Ayler-ized horns and Borbetomagus-scale form-destruction battling against toy orchestras, power-punking loops, syrupy sludge-jams, garage band instrumentals and usurped avant garde modes. One of Smegma’s wildest sides and some of the most fucked-up art-aggro to escape the gravity of the LAFMS." As John Hodgman would say, "You're welcome." Full color artwork and labels.
Name Of The Frame
(Moloko Plus) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four recordings from the late 1970s and early 1980s, plus a 23-minute solo piece by core member Ace Farren Ford from 1974.
Nattering Naybobs of Negativity
(Harbinger Sound - 051) CD $15.00
Digital reissue of Smegma’s 1987 LP (Dead Man's Curve 1988), rounded out with the studio recordings from the Morass cassette (Soleilmoon 1988). Contains twenty-one tracks and an eight-page booklet featuring the complete Smegma discography up to 1988.
Pigs for Lepers
(Harbinger Sound - H043) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Reissue of second long-player, originally the seventh release on the band’s Pigface Records imprint back in 1982. With an eight-page color booklet of artwork and photographs from the archives. Bonus track “Mutant Baby” was recorded live in 1979 and appeared on an obscure Trap Records compilation.
Smegma Plays Merzbow Plays Smegma
(Tim Kerr) Used CD $10.00
1996 collaboration using MA-tape, audio generator, teleband transceiver, mixer, tape loops, record players, wood flute, vocals, Optigan, mussette, frequency analyzer. The Merzbow section is a churning inferno of molten sound and screaming speakers with a lot of dynamics. The Smegma section shunts the Merzbow noise to a continuous layer at the periphery of the mix, allowing their spazodelic improv to grab a few mouthfuls of air. Sealed
Smegma T-Shirt
([ no label ]) Used Size L $75.00
Hanes Beefy-T 100% cotton. White with black, red and green ink. Printed sideways, as displayed. Previously washed and worn many times. Some discoloration and spots / stains on left sleeve and torso. From 1980s
Smegma Vs. Black Leather Jesus
(Axis Mundi - AMLP01) LP $28.00
Four years in the making, reworking and obsessing over. Silkscreened jacket, color insert, download card. Edition of 220
Smell Remains The Same
(Anarchymoon - ANOK18) LP $15.00
Ten tracks from seven-inches originally released between 1990 and 1995, including their track from the Untitled comp (Cavity Search 1995). The tracks display Smegma’s pioneering style of hi-fi-lo-brow surf-noise-rock concrète. Liner notes by David Morgan.
Tiromancy
(Japan Overseas - JO9731) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Japanese CD from 1997 by this oblique improv collective. In some ways, just as traditional as a bunch of Sun Ra acolytes, in others more bent than actual acid casualties, Tiromancy splashes down swaddled in rainbow dots, early Playboy chic, laughing gas electronics, conflicting vapors, surround-seep ooze-adelia, and highly agile mental capabilities.