back in highschool we useta get this catalog called vinyl ink - an exhaustive labour of love that, at the time, also happened to be the only way we knew to track down half the stuff we were getting into. as it happened, the descriptions would often lead us to grab stuff we were unacquainted with as well (which was right in line with my habit of buying at least one thing i'd never fucking heard of every time i went to th' record store); i don't remember if i bought tse tse fly's 'duckweed smuggled home' 10" in this fashion or if my pal bill recommended that i do so, but for sure it came from vinyl ink.
flash forward to now and that 10" is long-gone (who knows why or where) and all i have left to play for anyone who i'm trying to force into caring is a 7" - not bad, mind you, but not as good as 'duckweed' - and for some reason tse tse fly remain one of those bands that NO-ONE seems to want to put on youtube or their blog or whatever. (tho' what a blessed thing that is - when you find that something you know about - something you know is GOOD - has eluded the fucking internet.) and that's just a damned shame cuz outside maybe 18th dye i dunno anyone who rings my fucking early-'90s across-the-pond indie-rock BELLS quite like they do. these cd issues that i finally bought for like 75¢ off amazon (no, REALLY) are nicely mastered but of course lose somewhat that x-factor that helped make the original vinyl releases so god-damn alluringly cryptic (it isn't muddiness, tho' it's not far off - nirvana's 'bleach' and r.e.m.'s 'life's rich pageant' have a similar quality) but at least i can hear this stuff again. fans of bands who don't come right out and bludgeon you with it all the time can't afford to be without this stuff. it'll be holy grail in less than ten years, mark my words.
download includes the comp cd they did ('duckweed', that 7" i mentioned ['fox under diesel'] + a coupla tracks that weren't on it originally & 4 unreleased tunes) as well as their lone lp, 'mudflat joey'.
