Crypt
COUNTRY TEASERS - Toe Rag Sessions September 1994 LP
$37.95
Gatefold sleeve with liner notes and photos.
Highly recommended.
“In the industry, I am the only complete man...” sang Country Teaser’s B.R. Wallers, quoting Naked Lunch, back in 1995. If modesty didn’t forbid, he might’ve been speaking of his own band. Is there another current group operating at such a high level musically or lyrically? Evolving out of a prolific home recording project in the late ’80s influenced by The Fall, The Cure and Butthole Surfers, The ’Teasers debuted as a beguiling mixture of deconstructed country and dissonant post-punk. “Boycott the Studio” was their manifesto: “You will not find music where it is shown, only where it is hidden...”
The Toe Rag Sessions is 14 cuts from their first recording studio sessions of Sept 2-4 1994. Originally the band recorded 23 songs but in October 1994, Ben Wallers fired the drummer and decided to re-mix everything.
Dec 1994: Ben erases the drum track and re-drums it himself. Ben decides to jettison most of the songs and suggests 10 cuts for the debut and goes for a 10” (Country Teasers “Pastoral / S/T” 10", also reissued.)
And here they are at last: the 13 tracks cut at Toe Rag that didn’t make it onto the Pastoral 10”, PLUS the original version of “Black Cloud Wandering”.
In a sumptuous gatefold containing ancient pre-interWeb communication forms (letters, faxes, etc).
It would have made a damned great debut album in 1994.
It IS a damned great album in 2019 (and forever!)
Highly recommended.
“In the industry, I am the only complete man...” sang Country Teaser’s B.R. Wallers, quoting Naked Lunch, back in 1995. If modesty didn’t forbid, he might’ve been speaking of his own band. Is there another current group operating at such a high level musically or lyrically? Evolving out of a prolific home recording project in the late ’80s influenced by The Fall, The Cure and Butthole Surfers, The ’Teasers debuted as a beguiling mixture of deconstructed country and dissonant post-punk. “Boycott the Studio” was their manifesto: “You will not find music where it is shown, only where it is hidden...”
The Toe Rag Sessions is 14 cuts from their first recording studio sessions of Sept 2-4 1994. Originally the band recorded 23 songs but in October 1994, Ben Wallers fired the drummer and decided to re-mix everything.
Dec 1994: Ben erases the drum track and re-drums it himself. Ben decides to jettison most of the songs and suggests 10 cuts for the debut and goes for a 10” (Country Teasers “Pastoral / S/T” 10", also reissued.)
And here they are at last: the 13 tracks cut at Toe Rag that didn’t make it onto the Pastoral 10”, PLUS the original version of “Black Cloud Wandering”.
In a sumptuous gatefold containing ancient pre-interWeb communication forms (letters, faxes, etc).
It would have made a damned great debut album in 1994.
It IS a damned great album in 2019 (and forever!)
