Air King Alliance appears to be an in-house label for WMUC FM of Washington, DC, as these two bands (so closely associated with the Gern Blandsten scene of the mid-to-late 90s) both recorded their contributions live on the air. Thus we get a 7" presumably pressed out of university budget money, with all the great non-production that student engineers give us. The Van Pelt are the a-side, with 'Yamato (Where People Really Die)'. It's made up of frantically strummed solid-state guitar over a clop-clop rhythm and those high-strung, yelped vocals that are the reason I never really liked the Van Pelt (who I have a vague memory of seeing in a moldy basement circa the time of this record - perhaps that's even where I got it!). Yeah, it's the flipside I keep this for - an "electric" version of 'Towncrusher', the hot acoustic jam on
Set You Free which is pretty much the only song I really remember from that album. This is certainly a substandard version, kinda bashed through without much passion or purpose, but it's still good since I don't own a copy of the original. The guitar solo here is lacking the fire and verve of anything from
8 Am All Day - it's a big step towards the indie-by-the-books efforts of the Ted Leo solo record. I wonder if Air King ever released anything else?
