Gregg Turkington: MUSICIAN

[Gregory Torso]

Have that cuellar, have it! Gregg Turkington: Musician, the thread!!!

I'll never make this thread good, but I've got three days off work and no love left in my heart and there's a lot of musical ground to cover, Greg having connections with legendary Scum Francisco disease merchants Caroliner, as well as being in a band with Terry "Mr Bungle" "friends with Mike Patton" "not a christmas tree" Spruance. Plus! Great bands like Faxed Head! Bean Church! Commode Minstrels In Bullface! Totem Pole Of Losers! The Three Doctors Band!

This thread is a god damn tapestry. Gree Turkington is all wrapped up in it.

First I heard of Gregg T was as one half of Zipcode Rapists.

Touch Me

Happy Like Larry

Cut Your Hair

#9 Dream

I have a live album by Zipcode Rapists that is pure nascent hamburger with gregg coughing phlegm and screaming red fuck all over the place. After the first song he says "I'm sorry, that was horrible, that was really horrible. We can turn this around. Please. Come on. We can turn this around. Hey buddy, where you from YOU FUCKIN ASSHOLE YOU FUCK"

Give me a chance, I can do this thread.

[Gregory Torso]

Gregg and John Singer (the other guy in Zip Code Rapists) were also in a band called The Easy Goings.

Here they are getting some shit and not giving one supporting Faith No More ,The Easy Goings having a rough time on stage

Also, is this Gregg Turkington? --- Pavement KROQ Announcer

[Twed]

Jug Town has been in my head since the day I heard it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIfBc2smkwI

[Chriddof]

I first heard Happy Like Larry about five (?) years ago, and it's astonishing. The horrid synths, the demented lyrics, everything about it is unsettling in a brilliant way. It's a cover of one of those song-poem affairs, isn't it?

I'd not seen the video before, and that guitar sticker at the beginning is marvellous.

[Gregory Torso]

Bean Church! Fucking around with Grux (band leader and focal/fungal point for Caroliner). Tried looking for Bean Church on Youtube, got lots of clips of Rowan Atkinson farting on effigies and accidentally overdosing on communion wafers HAA.

Oh wait, here's some Bean Church! Idiotically Happy In The Face Of Overwhelming Odds
HARDLY ESSENTIAL LISTENING IS IT READERS althought the first song on that tape is pretty funny (about how people won't stop talking shit about Bean Church and how bad they are)

Hello Kitty On Ice! Man With A Hole In His Throat Little teenage Greg screamin away over some GNARLY GUITAR. Apparently got reissued recently? I wonder why certainly nothing to do with the success of Neil Beefcake.

I'm gon to keep this thread going with Gregg Turkington MUSIC.

[Cuellar]

Never knew about the Zip Code Rapists - young Gregg was actually quite handsome, like a young Ronnie O'Sullivan.

[Famous Mortimer]

I first heard Happy Like Larry about five (?) years ago, and it's astonishing. The horrid synths, the demented lyrics, everything about it is unsettling in a brilliant way. It's a cover of one of those song-poem affairs, isn't it?

I'd not seen the video before, and that guitar sticker at the beginning is marvellous.

I watched the video and then took a screenshot of the sticker, before I read this reply. "Great" minds and all that.



(available with the "Sing And Play The Three Doctors And Other Sounds Of Today" LP. Yours for $30 on Discogs and I'm seriously considering it)

[Gregory Torso]

available with the "Sing And Play The Three Doctors And Other Sounds Of Today" LP. Yours for $30 on Discogs and I'm seriously considering it

Definitely worth getting for the live tracks, just to hear Gregg abusing the crowd and making up lyrics to Riders On the Storm about getting sick from eating a can of sweetcorn.

[PaulTMA]

Also, is this Gregg Turkington? --- Pavement KROQ Announcer

That's Rian Murphy of Drag City records who have of course released Neil Hamburger records.

[Gregory Torso]

Ah right, of course. Similar styles of crowd-baiting, though.

[Gregory Torso]

Next up in Gregg Turkington: MUSICIAN, the thread... Faxed Head!

Started off as some weird slop of costume metal Boredoms type pissing around with oscillating electronic noise mashed into it, like if your little brother was really into GWAR and Pantera, and him and his friends made their own armour out of water-damaged cardboard and old dog beds, and then some weird guy with a circuit-bent fisher price theremin turned up at band practice in your dad's shed.

Here's a song called The Astronaut, which features the lyrics: "They put a man in space, he shit his pants on the moon, the whole galaxy was watching".

Also, hear song name Wyoming Hair for you to enjoy.

Live, Gregg sat in a wheelchair wrapped up in an old tartan picnic blanker, with very silly, massive fake arms, while a nurse held his lyrics sheet in front of him.
Experience it here, and note he's gone full Hamburger by this point.

FULL SHOW ON YOUTUBE  <---- this is god damn brilliant

Trey Spruance out of Mr Bungle is in the band, as is Grux again, and Brandan Kearney (more from him later!).

Eventually, they accidentally got really good and started being the thing they were parodying. OR WERE THEY? OR DID THEY? n

This is fantastic - Rest Stop Cleaning.

[Gregory Torso]

Stop talking about Desreee and get on the Turkington Express

[Small Man Big Horse]

Are we allowed to discuss the Neil Hamburger albums here, or should that be a separate thread? It's just that I'm listening to Still Dwelling a lot lately and genuinely enjoying it a lot - the cover of Everything's Alright from Jesus Christ Superstar is especially stunning stuff.

[Gregory Torso]

Are we allowed to discuss the Neil Hamburger albums here, or should that be a separate thread? It's just that I'm listening to Still Dwelling a lot lately and genuinely enjoying it a lot - the cover of Everything's Alright from Jesus Christ Superstar is especially stunning stuff.

Yeah of course, thread is communal, I was just going through some of Gregg's lesser known bands, pre-Hamburger. I mean really this thread is just a stealth Brandan Kearney thread, who has been involved in or tangentially connected to lots of my favourite bands over the years (he's also singing backing vocals on Everythings Alright, which is stunning, but then it;s always been one of my favourite songs anyway and not even Mike Patton can take that away from me!!).

And now, here is Gregg Turkington band The Three Doctors Band, a band also featuring Trey Spruance (again), Brandan Kearney (again) and Margaret Murray (not again).

Country twang with silly vocals.

This video is great though.

And here is a cover of Papa Don't Preach which sounds like it was recorded on a soviet bloc karaoke machine.

Those songs are off their first record. The second one, they turned into some kind of noodly Supreme Dicks / TFUL282 mess, which is a GREAT THING in my world.

I couldn't find a lot of Three Doctors music on Youtube, I mostly got Doctor Who and the Spin Doctors and if I wanted to look at shit, I'd put up a mirror in my bedroom.

[Cuellar]

Jug Town has been in my head since the day I heard it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIfBc2smkwI

Obsessed with this now.

[sevendaughters]

the original 'Jug Town' by the New Kingston Trio is good too, though Hamburger's reading of it makes it depressing. I was also playing along with the Hamburger version on guitar, very satisfying, just E / D in the verses and A / B / E in the choruses.

[Cuellar]

Shit I didn't even know it was a cover.

[sevendaughters]

Shit I didn't even know it was a cover.

me either for about 5 years after buying it

[famethrowa]

I really admire Gregg's work, and he has a definite skill for making interesting noise, but damned if I can find one tiny bit of musical talent in all this. Still like it though, there's plenty of genius without talent out there.

[sevendaughters]

That's fair, famethrowa (coincidentally he hates Pavement, as do a lot of his SF noisenik chums) - I think he is someone whose comedy was music scene/label adjacent all of his life and he dips his hand in now and again because he speaks the language and understands the tragedy and hubris in performance. You're probably meant to read stuff like Faxed Head and Zip Code Rapists/Revue as the micro-scene jokes they are. They don't really translate. He did wise me up to Pleaseeeasaur / JP Incorporated, who are a better musical comedy act.

I like his reviews of the entire Bee Gees back catalogue. No irony here: http://markprindle.com/beegees.htm

[famethrowa]

I like his reviews of the entire Bee Gees back catalogue. No irony here: http://markprindle.com/beegees.htm

Ha it's like the first podcast episodes of On Cinema! He's right about the RSO pig, it's awesome.

[Gregory Torso]

That's fair, famethrowa (coincidentally he hates Pavement, as do a lot of his SF noisenik chums) - I think he is someone whose comedy was music scene/label adjacent all of his life and he dips his hand in now and again because he speaks the language and understands the tragedy and hubris in performance. You're probably meant to read stuff like Faxed Head and Zip Code Rapists/Revue as the micro-scene jokes they are. They don't really translate.

Yeah, and also most of this stuff was in orbit around Caroliner, one of the oddest bands in existence, who were all about performance, costumes, masks, silly pseudonyms, deliberate obfuscation, their records all had bizarre packaging and lyrics. I think a lot of that scene is generally rebelling against indie rock or whatever else might have been going on in the 1980s and early 90s. It's all part of the package. Personally, I genuinely dig Faxed Head, but the other stuff is more like an in-joke that seems amusing and I respect it, but it's not like I particularly want to listen to it.

[Noodle Lizard]

I genuinely enjoy Faxed Head.

Happy Like Larry is fantastic.  As someone mentioned, it's supposedly a cover of one of those vanity recordings Gregg's obsessed with, but I've never been able to find the original.

EDIT:  Oh yeah, and I liked Neil Hamburger's "Sings Country Winners" too.  Not a joke you'd think would be sustainable for an entire album, but it works surprisingly well.  Hilariously bleak.

Also he's done some new cover album I haven't given a proper listen to yet, but this Jesus Christ Superstar track has Mike Patton and Jack Black on it:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6s_Yk79aFQ

[PowerButchi]

I've just had a listen of the album. Little Love Cup is fantastic.

[Twed]

Shit I didn't even know it was a cover.

sevendaughters has taken away part of my soul today.

[Twed]

Haha, don't worry, you immediately fixed it:

[sevendaughters]

circle of life

[Cuellar]

Haaa, I saw that comment and laughed without clocking the name at all!

[alan nagsworth]

I genuinely enjoy Faxed Head.

Me too. Chiropractic is an awesome album and getting into that spurned me to buy the Osaka 1995 live DVD which is also great. Features some truly bizarre footage of the band turning up at a Japanese high school to talk utter nonsense at a class of bewildered kids.

Here they are getting some shit and not giving one supporting Faith No More ,The Easy Goings having a rough time on stage

Would it have been the lack of the age of information that would have warranted such a hateful crowd reaction, or is this genuinely one of those instances where, much as I love the country and a great number of those who live there, I can safely say "American audiences are fuckin pig shit thick when it comes to irony within art"? Because fuck me if you're even half a Faith No More fan you can surely identify with the fact that this isn't some halfwit band the venue owner pulled off the street. Even their stage presence is as obnoxiously confrontational as FNM would have been. Try to fuckin enjoy yourselves instead of being a cap-on-backwards jock-in-disguise aggressive cunt.



Christ himself only knows why this has such a low view count but this long-ass Cris Kirkwood video podcast with Gregg as the sole guest is absolutely fascinating for anyone remotely interested in the man. He goes into quite some depth about his involvement with the music scene throughout his life. Can't recommend it enough.

[jobotic]

The only Zip Code Rpists song I have is on this

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Peter-The-Man-Eeter-The-Peter-Fonda-Album/release/2119215

It's a great record but I know fuck all about anyone on it.