30 Years of Service
(Radon) CD $12.00
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Nattering Naybobs of Negativity
(Harbinger Sound) CD $10.50
Digital reissue of Smegma’s 1987 LP, rounded out with the studio recordings from 1988’s Morass cassette. 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.
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
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.