Dogbowl - 'I Am Too Drunk Everynight Because Of The Blue Fur Bosom Girl' (Vital)

The 7" section of venture is obviously my least attended-to, as I just made the first post in 2 years. This is an accurate reflection of how my 7" box (or boxes, rather) is the least attended-to section of my music accumulation, which is a shame since there's so many gems. But there's also a lot of oddities buried in this mud, such as this single from Dogbowl released in 1991. Dogbowl is of course the original guitarist for King Missile, during their earliest records. He brought a softer, more folk-based sound to King Missile and is also, I think, responsible for the true bits of genius such as 'World War III is a Giant Ice Cream Cone'. He left and the Missile went towards full-on rawk, but I always felt John S. Hall's sense of humour meshed really well with Dogbowl. Now this is basically novelty music, except novelty music with arthouse tendencies, and for that reason I have a real soft spot for this single. Side A, the title track, has beatnik style brass accompaniment over Dogbowl's lonely lament -- and the quite literal cover art shows the girl in question. It's weird, but too funny to appeal to anyone except deliberate oddballs. The B-side, 'Here Comes the Man with the Plucked Out Eyes', is the 'classic' that I keep going back to (or would, if I remembered to listen to this song more than every 7 years). It's built around a driving beat that keeps stopping to let some droning pulse almost overtake it - like a horror movie, except the vocal delivery and instrumentation and pretty much everything else makes it ha-ha funny. Yes, I bought this single in high school. Yes, I still like it lots. No, I've never listened to anything else by solo Dogbowl, nor have I been particularly curious.

Cheveu/Crash Normal split 7" (Rococo)

Crash Normal's side erupts with a blast of manic, industrial punk, with careful attention paid to get a sharp, metallic guitar tone. But barely a minute in, we hear the sound of a stylus streaking across a record and the music changes into something much more Cheveu-like. By which I mean, synth drums, and distorted, mostly spoken vocals. So which band are we actually listening to? The third song on the side also confuses me - both of these are slower and almost a bit loungier than Cheveu usually sound. But both bands are from France and probably have some member overlap. The end of (what I think is) the Crash Normal side descends into a collapsing mess -- well, a 'crash', I guess -- which could pass for Nihilist Spasm Band on a good day. The Cheveu side (we're pretty sure of that, as there's a certain twang to the vocalist that we've come to recognise by now) has a howdown feel, with a twangy riff accelerating, smashing into a brick wall, backing up, and doing it again over and over. The vocals are more like barks and it's hard to imagine all of this energy coming from a line-in recording aesthetic. The guitar is clean here and I like the way it rises above the tide. There's great things afoot in France now, as the legacy of Metal Urbain lives on.