MELVINS SINGLES OVERLOAD MEGA POST

So No music blog,especially one done by me would be complete without a Melvins post! Here's my story of how i came to love Melvins.... I have been a fan of Melvins since I got their debut album "Gluey Porch Treatments"  in 1987. at that time I was 16 and I was very strictly into hardcore, I bought the Melvins album based on great previous releases on the label it was originally released on Alchemy Records (who had released records by Poison Idea, The Grim, Sacrilege B.C., and Neurosis 1st album) that coupled with the fact it had 18 tracks on it which for the time was quite a lot so i was sold! I rushed home thinking I'd unearthed a new fast hardcore gem! How wrong can you be?.... The sides of the album were entitled "This Side" and "That Side" on the Alchemy vinyl version so I ended up playing side 2 first by mistake but what a glorious mistake! Opening instrumental "Glow God" kicked in and it was so slow and sludgy and fuck off heavy (And I mean HEAVY even by today's standards) I just went whhhooooooooaaahhh I had never heard anything that heavy at the time, bear in mind this was before all the grindcore and death metal downtuning of guitars etc, but I was still expecting them to burst into hardcore at any moment, then next track"Big As A Mountain" kicked in yeah maybe a little more uptempo but this was not hardcore in any shape or form, the next track was a real slow crawler called "Heavyness Of The Load" and the title which pretty much sums up the Melvins sound!!! that super thick heavy guitar and bass Dale Crovers' unique, brilliant and  insanely good drumming and Buzzos' unusual voice I didn't know what to make of it but I did know that I was fucking mezmerised!!! I have been utterly hooked ever since! and continued to play "Gluey.."side 2 first then side 1 right up until i got it on CD!
So as Melvins are one of my all time favourite bands (I own countless CD's and my Melvins file on my hard drive is 3.67 GB not bragging in any way I'm just trying to illustrate that if you get into the Melvins which you well should, that you will be hooked) I decided to do something a bit special for this post!

I am not even gonna attempt any kind of blurb on Melvins sound,but try this... the 1st 6 Black Sabbath albums crashing head on into Black Flag circa 84-86 add a healthy dose of noise rock ala' Jesus Lizard and you're about there! I'm also not gonna attempt any breaking down of their VAAAAST and complex back catalogue either with at least 33 albums and 70 singles and numerous collaborations to their credit over their almost 30 year career (fuck i just realised this year makes 30 years of Melvins and that I bought "Gluey Porch Treatments" 26 years ago!!! WOW!) It would be impossible to do you a discography and pointless to try and pick favourites so what can I give you that would be interesting to you, the discerning music blogger??...

...Well a few years ago when the internet became widely available and file sharing became a bit easier I decided it was long overdue to do a bit of research into what Melvins stuff i didn't have as they are absolute vinyl maniacs and have had a slew of crazily packaged and insanely limited releases over the years, this is when i discovered they had a load of singles that I'd never heard of or owned and due to their slavish devotion to limited vinyl and Melvins being one of the most collectable bands ever i was never going to be able to own any of those reords but as I've said i'm all about the music not the collecting records so over the years of my file sharing i have compiled a fair bit of Melvins rarities and obscurities!

As I've said before about other vinyl only releases, much as i respect the Melvins i do think that releasing ultra limited vinyls and not making them available for download (Tho this is not always the case they did offer their recent "Endless Residency" 8 LP/4CD boxset available to download for $10) It kinda leaves a lot of GREAT Melvins material out of print and unavailable to all but the richest collector scum!!! For example their latest in the  "Sugar Daddy Live" Series of Split 12's with Fucked Up was released a mere 6 weeks ago and is already selling for £26/$40 online for 1 Melvins and 1 Fucked Up Track! Ridiculous! And because none of the music in the first 2 links here has been compiled on CD or otherwise available and is completely out of print I do feel I'm not "hurting" Melvins in anyway by putting this up.

So as the post title says this is a Melvins Singles Overload!  I have spent a lot of time slaving over my computer to put this together over the years and I've compiled it here so you don't have to! However if you expected it broken down into separate links so you could have the individual singles you want....UNLUCKY! I have neither the time nor the inclination to upload around 30 short files when i can give you this bonanza!

Firstly  I have put together a 4 part collection of some of the rarest and hardest to find stuff, I've done the files in chronological order I've included pretty much everything there is. Now when i say "Everything" it is just simply impossible to collect "Everything" unless you have had the time to keep up to date with Melvins on a daily basis since 1986  but according to what research i have done on the excellent Melvins endorsed wikipedia Discography (go look here Melvins Discography ) and other resources online this is near as damnit a Melvins singles discography as you're likely to get! Covering 1987 to early 2012, I have been unable to locate some of the more recent releases like the aforementioned "Sugar daddy live series" 12"'s and a few other bits they have done of late.Also some releases are intentionally missed due to the fact they are just Melvins fucking with you ("Shit Sandwich" 7" for example is 2 sides of silence apparently a tribute to John Cage's "4,33" and their side of the split 7" with Plainfield is just cut ups of in between song banter of an unnamed classic rock band)

Below is a list of whats in the file links titled PT's 1, 2, 3 & 4 at the bottom of the post you decide if it's good enough for you!! :-)

PT 1 Contains...
1983 EP (4 tracks recorded in 1983 not on "Mangled Demos")
Live 8" Flexi (Slap-a-ham records)
Split 7" W/ Steel Pole Bathtub
With Yo Heart Not Yo Hands 7"
Split 7" W/ Nirvana
Night Goat 7"
Flipper Covers 5"
Lizzy 7"
Porn 2 7" (Split 7" W/ Guv'ner)
Split 7" W/ Cosmic Psychos

PT 2 Contains...
Hostile Ambient Takeover 7" collection
(The Hostile... Album over 7 x 7" singles each with a non album B-side mostly covers)

Tanx 7" (John Peel Session EP unofficial)

PT 3 Contains...

Untitled 7" Given free with comic "Barbaraal" #2

Message Saved/Thank You 7"

Pigskin/Starve Already 7"

Split 7" W/ Patton Oswalt from Chunklet magazine

Smash the State EP

Split Tour EP W/ Halo of Flies

Star Spangled Banner 7"

Split 12" W/ Isis

Horray For Me Fuk You! 12"
"God Of Thunder" from "Hard To Believe" a Kiss trbute comp.

And the Sawed Off 7" a Melvins side project feat feat King Buzzo & Dale Crover

PT 4 Contains...
Sludge Glamorous 12"

Black Betty 7" (Split with JSBX)

Amphetamine Reptile Cage Match split 7" W/ Unsane
The Bulls & The Bees EP

Apart from "Tanx" EP these are all official Melvins releases.I do not own any of these myself these are all taken from the internet and almost all are vinyl rips they are of varying bitrates from 128kbps to 320kbps but I guarantee that none of it is unlistenable quality otherwise they would have been ommited from the post,except for side 2 of the Flipper 5" which seems to waver in speed but i used to own it and as i recall this is cos it's a 5" single and some record players can't cope with it sorry nowt i can do! they are all in separate folders within the files,correctly tagged and dated and include cover art. These were easily available to find online but due to rapidshare and mediafire killing off a MAMMOTH amount of links recently you'd be unlikely to find them now which is another reason I'm doing this post all links presented in this post are my links and will remain alive for as long as this blog does.

So that's your first 2 links covered but of course this being OCDave I couldn't leave it at that, as you may be aware Melvins are absolute KISS fanatatics and apeing KISS in 1992 they did a set of Solo EP's with both artwork and lettering aping the Kiss members solo albums from 1978 for example....

So being the nice guy i am I have also uploaded all 3 Melvins solo EP's for you as well and considering that at the time Melvins line up was Dale Crover, King Buzzo and Joe Preston (aka Thrones) these are some mighty fucked up recordings!!!

But it does not end there.... in 1997 Melvins also did a series of 12 x 7" singles for Amphetamine Reptile 1 a month for a year, all with variations on the same theme for their covers(see CD cover above) these vary from live tracks and covers to noise experiments & re-workings of older tracks to just plain weird but hey that's Melvins! However Amphetamine Reptile kindly collected all these 12 singles on a double CD so as i did call this post MELVINS SINGLES OVERLOAD!! I have uploaded the CD for you because thats 12 x 7" singles and a years worth of single releases that would be missing from this post if I didn't!

So there you go a Melvins singles overload as promised The Solo EP's and the AmRep Singles 1-12 are out of print but easily available to find on CD used (tho very expensive) but I felt as this was a singles post that they were an essential part of it.

The 4 part link listed first those are some rare singles for example the split 7" with Nirvana sells for £120! as I've said already prices of Melvins singles and EP's are beyond ridiculous and why should it only be available to those with a large disposable income ? I would like to thank the more generous of collectors who were good enough to rip and upload the original files that i have compiled in this post unfortunately most of the blogs and links are long gone so i can't name the people but if you uploaded it then a major thanks from me you made a Melvins fan very happy!

PT 1 - Mediafire

PT 2 - Mediafire

PT 3 - Mediafire

PT 4 - Mediafire

SOLO EP'S - Mediafire

AMREP SINGLES 1-12 (Disc 1) - Mediafire

AMREP SINGLES 1-12 (Disc 2) - Mediafire

So That's it folks go OVERLOAD on Melvins!

UPDATE (JUN 2019)

So been meaning to update this for a while but just never got round to it... So as I've previously stated Melvins are nothing if not prolific since I originally did this post covering till 2012 Melvins have released no less than 32 singles and 7 albums!!! Now whilst Melvins ARE prolific it would seem they are using a lot of their album material for various limited split and regular releases so I have not included these here and also some are so hard to find I simply have not been able to source them but that didn't amount to more than a couple. So filtering out the chaff & previously released stuff I have got it down to the essentials so here is one further part to your Melvins Singles post and here is what you get....

PT.5 Contains...

Chaos As Usual (Split EP W/ Le Butcherettes)
Everybody Loves Sausages (Supplemental)
Hot Fish EP (Collaboration with Flipper)
Rebel Girl (Feat. Terri Gender Bender)
Sabbath EP
Steven Macdonald EP

So I guess some of these need a little explanation
Everybody loves Sausages (Siupplemental) This rounds up ALL the B-sides and extras from the various limited "A Tribute to... 7"'s and includes 9 tracks of covers by various artists from Venom to Throbbing Gristle that did NOT appear on the album.
Rebel Girl was a 1-sided 7" in collaboration with Terri Gender Bender I've no idea who that is but the 7" was very limited.
Sabbath EP is a 10" of  Melvins with Al Cisneros of Sleep guesting on bass & vocals covering 2 Classic Black Sabbath tunes! 
Steven Mcdonald is a very limited 12" supplemental to the Melvins Solo EP's from 1992 Featuring current (at time of Writing) Melvins bassist Steve Mcdonald who is more well known for being a founding member of Hardcore pioneers and later psychedelic rockers Red Kross.
Hot Fish is a the latest 10" from this year (2019) and features 2 songs of Melvins and Flipper together in the studio and a further 2 Flipper covers by Melvins
Split with Le Butcherettes - nothing interesting just 2 new Melvins tracks from a split 10"

There you go folks a bit of a catch up to what those "Limited to 5 copies silk screened one sided lathe cut made from dinosaur eggs blink and you miss it " Peddling bastards the Melvins have been up to in the last 7 years or at least in part! I've said it before I'll say it again if this isn't enough for you go away and do your own damn research/blog for the rest of you lovely appreciative souls who say nice things here's some new Melvins... ENJOY!

PT5 - Mediafire

BIG BLACK - REMASTERS

Do Big Black really need any introduction or explanation? I don't think this post would be of interest to anyone who might come across it randomly and fancy checking out this band with no prior knowledge?!

Big Black, at the time were a band making some harsh noisy stuff, they always get pegged with the industrial tag but I feel that's unfair, maybe it was their use of "Roland" the drum machine that put them in that category in a lot of peoples mind? I certainly don't think they are Industrial in any way! I think they are definitely the progenitors of what would later be called Noise Rock and popularised by labels like Amphetamine Reptile.

Right so whats the point of this post you might be thinking? Well, I recently discovered that, although they have not been reissued on CD between 2013 & 2018 Big Blacks primary releases were all remastered by Touch and Go and reissued on vinyl with a download version also available, so myself being a sucker for a remaster and always thinking that those recordings REALLY needed an update for the modern stereo I managed to get my hands on them all! Now this is NOT a discography as for some reason it would appear "Lungs" EP and the "PigPile"Live album were not deemed worth remastering for reissue plus there's things like the Peel session and "Sound Of Impact" Live album etc. So what you get below is both studio albums and 3 of their EP's all remastered and trust me the difference is noticeable! The Guitars sound sharp the bass thunders and that drum machine POUNDS! So for those of you like me that may not own a record player or simply don't want to re-buy albums you have lived with for decades then here you go the absolute cream of Big Black remastered.

ENJOY!

ATOMIZER - Mediafire

SONGS ABOUT FUCKING - Mediafire

RACER X EP - Mediafire

BULLDOZER EP - Mediafire

HEARTBEAT 7" - Mediafire

HEADACHE 12" - Mediafire

WIRE (A WORK IN PROGRESS)

For my money Wire are by far and away the best band from the 1976/77 explosion of punk, a bold statement I know and I am sure many punks will be shouting at their computer screens right now, While I struggle to listen to the almost pub rock sounding strains of "Never Mind The Bollocks" and generally struggle with a lot of bands and albums from that era,  I've always found Wire to be the best of them always forward thinking and original their debut album "Pink Flag"  which, for the time, contains a whopping 21 Tracks they really did take the shorter,faster,louder thing seriously! Wire were different from their pers because they tempered the rage and vitriol of their punk peers with a deep sense of melody , great structure and crafting brilliantly catchy "pop" songs within a punk framework, they did more with songs clocking in at under 2 minutes than anyone else i can think of, Oh.. and Wire could actually play!!!

Wire were a band for never standing still as soon as a an album came out they were already touring primitive versions of the next album eschewing almost any older material and they were a very progressive band. Though Wire are still going today and have remained a band pretty much for the last 40+ years and their current output is great it's their era on Harvest/EMI which will always be the best era for me the trilogy of albums they did from 1977 - 1979 "Pink Flag" "Chairs Missing" & "154" respectively were astounding (as were the attendant Non-Album singles that came out around that time as well) and testament to their genius their music has not dated and remains influential to this day.

Wire are a band obviously aware of how important their back catalogue is they run their own label Pink Flag which has reissued many live albums and various other things from their long career and their first 3 albums have been reissued a couple of times and remastered already which brings me to the point of this post.

In 2018 with little fanfare or at least I didn't hear anything about it Wire did some massively expanded, deluxe, hardbook cover reissues of the first 3 albums.whilst this is exactly the kind of treatment any fan would be crying out for but with a price tag around £25 - £30 a set which is not too bad for what is on them and the great packaging but to buy all 3 one would need around £75 which is a lot by anyone's standards.

So having been reissued multiple times what's so good about these sets? Well Firstly Pink Flag has been expanded to 2 discs and both Chairs Missing & 154 have been expanded to a massive 3 discs containing not only the Singles from the albums but also ALL the demo recordings from the era. Pink Flag contains the first 3 studio demos from May & August 1977 plus some alternate mixes of the album tracks, however both Chairs Missing and !54 have seen a massive expansion 154 Contains the album plus a second disc of the singles from the era and a 3rd disc of the 4th, 5th and 6th demo sessions a whopping 26 tracks, 154 has seen a similar treatment with a 2nd disc of singles,including the 4 track 7" that came free with the original vinyl pressings of the album and a 3rd disc containing their  6th demo which is 16 tracks.

Whilst normally these sort of demo expansions would normally not be that exciting a prospect for me Wire are a band who have consistently morphed their songs from the demo stage to when they eventually become an album track for example have a listen to the demo version of "The Other Window" from 154 it sounds more like an outtake from Chairs Missing than the final album version. so in this case the demos are totally worth having.

So here you go all 3 2018 multi disc expanded and remastered versions of the first 3 Wire albums I have decided this is going to be a work In progress I am going to expand this post further but as i already had these albums uploaded I thought I'd go ahead and start the post now and update it over the coming months with more music. For me this is the absolute CREAM of Wire's output and all 3 of these albums are definitely given heavy rotation here even before they were expanded  and if you are new to Wire i cannot recommend a better place to start than with these 3 astoundingly great albums!

PINK FLAG DELUXE - Mediafire

CHAIRS MISSING DELUXE - Mediafire

154 DELUXE - Mediafire