Kale Ogle and the Light (Arkansas); Armstrong (Wales)

Clean Nice Quiet is going on it's tenth year. Ain't that somethin'. I can't imagine too many readers see the webpage version of the blog anymore, but if you do, you may notice I did some tidying up on the sidebars. Specifically the submissions guidelines, the Noisy Neighbors blogroll, and the Other Cool Sites sidebar. I split the Other Cool Sites up into 3 smaller lists: radio shows, labels and distros, and then misc. cool stuff.

I used to be stupidly proud of the enormous blog roll I had created on the Noisy Neighbors blogroll. I daydreamed it was the biggest collection of amateur music blogs on the web, and hell, maybe at some point it was. And I wanted to use it for my own ends, to keep up with other blogs, comment on them, and maybe build a sense of community with these other folks doing both similar and different versions of what I'm doing here. Doing that was actually how I started CNQ; I enjoyed a number of music blogs at the time and wanted in on the fun. Over the last decade blogs have come and gone, of course. And I've trimmed Noisy Neighbors down previously, removing links to blogs that stopped posting or simply ceased to be. This time I went a step further and took out blogs that either I wasn't very intersted in, or were just sharing download links without context, a few that rudely didn't have CNQ in their own blogrolls (out of spite), etc. So it's still an unwieldy thing but it's trimmed down enough now that I've told myself once again I should use it for my own purposes -- to read other people's blogs, listen and engage more. We'll see.

I did leave a few up in memorium (Crud Crud, The Sunday Experience); and a couple in hopes they come back one day (Movie Ink, Killed By Death Records).

For the Other Cool Sites sidebar, mostly those were sites that didn't have an RSS feed for the blogroll when I first linked to them. A lot of them do have RSS feeds now and are active, so I moved them over to Noisy Neighbors. The radio shows in the new Radio, Radio sidebar are all aces, so you should check them out, and same goes for the labels under Record Labels and Distros.

So yeh, ten years. First post was Sunday June 3, 2012. Nothing special planned for the anniversary, just hope to keep chugging along and doing what I do here. Occassionally I do think about getting back into sharing obscure vinyl on here, but it's not something I'd say you should expect any time soon.

And of course I left up the ever present Doctor Nod Top Tips cassette listen and purchase link. I still have a few of those cassettes left, so go ahead and order one. That album rules and you're missing out if you haven't heard it yet.

Here's a couple of things I found while doing all this housecleaning today. Somehow I completely missed Kale Ogle (of the aforementioned Doctor Nod fame, and whose website can be found over in the also aforementioned Other Cool Sites sidebar) released this 9 song digital album in November 2019, with a backing band. Kale Ogle & The Light:

Armstrong is the solo project of Welsh musician Julian Pitt. His latest 20 track album, Under Blue Skies also came out in 2019, and is available on CD from The Beautiful Music in US and Canada and Country Mile Records in the UK. Pretty, pretty, pretty indie power pop:

Digital Leather

Pleased to present two new incredible tracks from CNQ's #1 homeboi, the incredible Dr. Nod, from Fayetteville, Arkansas:

Dr. Nod makes me glad I live in a world.

Martin Sjöstrand from Malmö, Sweden has a new track up on his This Heel Bandcamp page. This song originally presented on Small Bear Records' 2017 Christmas compilation "Unknown Presents:"

Austin's Blushing has a new EP coming out in a few days, which will be available via digital and cassette on the band's Bandcamp page, and on 12" vinyl through Austin Town Hall Records at athrecords.bandcamp.com/album/weak, with pre-order available now.

The record release show will be Jan 27th with Ringo Deathstarr at Cheer Up Charlie's in Austin Texas.

I'm into it, check out the first two tracks from the new album:

Oakland's Violence Creeps put out Northwest Tour Tape 2017 back on the 10th and man, I can't get enough of Violence Creeps:

I also absolutely slept on this 4 song EP of theirs, put out back in June:

8 new songs of blown out, noisy hardcore from Boston:

This was how I started out my day, and how I'll end it. Crank it up:

Nod News

Super Cool Dept.: "Automatic Switch" from Doctor Nod's "Top Tips" cassette got played on WFMU!!! Check out the archive of the show here, and listen for more Nod trax to pop up (we hope!) on WFMU in the future:

Brian Turner: Playlist from May 24, 2016

Dr. Nod's "Top Tips" still available -- you can order directly from me via PayPal (on the right sidebar of the web version of the blog), and from the Nod bandcamp page.

Rock/Roll.

HC with a little post-punk in it from Minneapolis:

A lot of post-punk and a little hc in this Wire-esque track, also from Minneapolis. I featured a track off this album, "Human Exploration," back in December, and Boston Hassle did a good review of the record back in July 2015. Here's another track from the album:

Here's some HC from Austin, courtesy London's Static Shock:

Arkansan first rate freak out artist and CNQ main man Dr. Nod just uploaded 6 tracks of unearthed material from 2014. Garage-psych sleeze-pop yeh!

Todayshits from Lexington has a new album out, chock-full of short little lo-fi psych-pop ditties:

More psych-pop, this from France and La Rochelle's Frantic City Records:

Sweden's Impo and the Tents have a new 7" out on Berlin's Alien Snatch! Records. This was actually put back in September I guess, but it's new to me. Sugary fourth wave power pop:

From power pop to grindcore. These angry fellows are from France, and this is new, off a split with the Indonesian band Proletar (the second song is by Proletar), on Massachusett's Give Praise Records:

Cool piece of punk rock history here from LA's Frontier Records bandcamp page:

"In the late '70s, Dangerhouse Records--that most legendary of punk rock labels--released a handful of indispensable 7-inches and two 12-inches: records that everyone knows, worships and collects. One of the 12-inches was Black Randy's Pass the Dust, I Think I'm Bowie, and the other, released in 1979, was the one-sided, six-song, silkscreened picture EP, Yes L.A.

"The title was a take-off on the seminal No Wave compilation album released a year earlier, No New York, and the Dangerhouse kids even went so far as to include the disclaimer "Not produced by Brian Eno" on the record. The original was limited to 2,000 copies, every one screened by hand and packaged in a clear bag with a white cardboard backing.

"2013: Frontier has taken great pains to reproduce every detail of the original EP, from the ink to the bag and cardboard, right down to custom-cut mylar seals for the flap. Still, there are a couple of differences: for example, there were only 1,000 of these made rather than the original's run of 2,000. As for the rest, we'll let you discover them for yourself.

Available in your choice of red on green, blue on green or black on green."

Here's the whole thing, this is great!

Alright, in near-future posts I've got more January releases coming, plus new Adam Holtz. And just in case you didn't know, that Black Randy and the Metrosquad album is available in full on Youtube. I just listened to the whole thing for the first time a few days after Bowie died.

Rock'n'Roll is Fur-Ever

I've been wanting to do a podcast radio show for a while now, inspired by the always excellent Best Table in Hell and Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio. Since I was a kid I've always liked the radio and making mix tapes and I'm not sure why I didn't end up a disc jockey.
So now that I've got the first show out of the way (you can download it here, warts and all), I'm excited to start work on another one. Hopefully I'll get better at it as time goes on.
Meanwhile back on the blog here, I've got some new Adam Holtz to bring you, I need to get caught up on new releases for the month from bands and labels I keep track of, as well as a few submissions, and of course the ever-present specter of the obscure 45s and LPs I horde. I have good intentions of sharing those on here, but I'm lazy and the cat's always on top of the record player when I'm writing a post. I don't want to disturb her.
So anyway, before I get to all of the aforementioned and more, here's a quick mix of new and new-ish rock'n'roll from Bandcamp:
Live garage rock from France, this was put out in December:

Arkansan sleeze-pop from 2014:

The lowest of fi from Pennsylvania:

And more outsider lo-fi action from Florida. This and the above song are off brand new albums from the respective artists:

The Central Singers: "Joy In The Camp" (196?)

This record originally came from my grandmother's collection; my dad wound up with it and then I wound up with it after that. There's no telling when it was last listened to.

I want to do more than just punk stuff on Clean, Nice, Quiet, while keeping the jams relatively obscure, and this little gospel ditty is about as obscure and not-punk as it gets. The "Joy In The Camp" LP is by The Central Singers of Central Baptist College in Conway, Arkansas. I'm guessing it was made in the late '60s based on the ladies' hairdos and the guys' sideburns. The title track, the one I'm sharing, was written by gospel singer/songwriter Bill Gaither. It was released by Queen City Album, Inc., a company based in Cincinnati, and originally recorded by Jaggars Audio Productions out of Little Rock. Steve Jaggars' studio also apparently recorded some Arkansas psych bands back then as well, but sold the studio in 1973 to Clyde Snider. Cool history.

Anyway, I like this tune. It's upbeat with a keen folk guitar, and to me has a bit of a Manson Family vibe, but I might just be projecting. There is so much frickin' joy in da camp, y'all! These guys look like they knew how to party, too -- check out the back cover. As for the ladies, I'll take the one with the glasses (low self-esteem).

Joy In The Camp