928. they aren’t the world

If We Are The World is the worst record ever released, then it’s entirely plausible to argue that Culturcide‘s assassination of it is the best. It’s certainly the purest response to it. Just take the original, sh** all over it and otherwise make an ugly-beautiful mess of things. Maybe you just had to be there to understand. Ronald Reagan‘s trickle down economics in full effect, the rich getting ever richer, pissing from their penthouses on everybody below, nobody really noticing as they stood in line around the block for Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwartzennegar, Michael J Fox movies. There is an alternative history of the past twenty-five where the revolution did happen. The ravenous masses rose in unanimous disgust and ate the rich. And it all started with Tacky Souvenirs of Pre-Revolutionary America (the album).

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987. the dream

You had to love the cover of Tupelo Chain Sex’s Spot the Difference. Little punk kid sporting a Ronald Reagan Adolph Hitler t-shirt, getting pulled two ways at once. But the real treasure was the music. Not just another hardcore band from LA, these guys had former Frank Zappa alumni Sugarcane Harris in their midst (not to mention a guy named Stumuk blowing a monster sax) and thus were brilliantly all over the place. Reggae, dub, ska, jazz, rockabilly, hardcore – everything, with lead off track The Dream (an extrapolation on an old Cab Calloway hit) serving as a whip smart intro to what remains one of the great (mostly) forgotten albums of any era.

Tupelo Chain Sex - Spot the Difference

996. macho city

“Nobody was paying much attention anymore to the Steve Miller Band come the 1980s, which means the spaced out analog synthetic bliss of 1981’s side long Macho City got mostly overlooked. Which is a pity. Because there has never been enough spaced out groove music, particularly during the 1980s. Ronald Reagan’s War On Drugs in full effect, the marijuana getting stronger and stronger. Something weird was going down. I’m still trying to figure out what.” (Philip Random)

1004. The Apocalypso

“The Singing Fools were from Toronto, I think. But the whole world was doing the Apocalypso by the mid 1980s, what with the doomsday clock edging closer and closer to midnight, the ice caps officially melting, the ozone layer officially depleting, chemical spills wiping out entire towns, nuclear reactors melting down, and the President of the USA well on his way to dementia. What else were you going to do?” (Philip Random)