I've started a number of new posts here in the last couple of days, only to abandon and then summarily delete them in short order. During my overnight shift at the TIME News Desk just two nights ago -- my penultimate Friday shift after eleven years (as recently discussed in this post) -- I'd composed a wordy piece about the perils of after hours air-guitaring in the office (appended with a lovely picture of Kerry King of Slayer circa Reign in Blood) but aborted it, finding it too pointlessly frivolous in the wake of certain developments and my own bittersweet exit from the magazine. These are difficult times, and not just at TIME, as it turns out.
::::shiver::::
In a vain attempt to lighten the mood, I'm going to post some more music. In keeping with the theme I'd established earlier (posting only music that is either long out of print, otherwise unavailable, incredibly hard to find and/or unjustly relegated to obscurity), I'm reaching back into a grab bag from the late 80's to unearth a criminally forgotten and inexplicably out of print chestnut from bizarre British indie quartet, STUMP. Specializing in skewed, wilfully surreal absurdist pop that owed more to Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart than to any of the fatuous sacred cows of their day, Stump only managed to unleash one album on an undeserving world, that being the 1988's A Fierce Pancake. I forget where I originally heard it, but it instantly became a must-have (prompting me to -- if I sheepishly recall correctly -- help myself to my college radio station's pointedly unplayed copy of the vinyl). Discovering that its two inexplicably strange singles, "Charlton Heston" and the gleefully discordant "Buffalo", only served to irritate my housemates, the album was quickly put into regular rotation to maximize this effect.
Despite their uniquely silly sensibility, Stump vanished soon after the fact (I doubt Chrysalis Records reaped much in the way of reward for their efforts on the band's behalf). As such, A Fierce Pancake went out of print in 1990. I managed to prize a rare copy on compact disc off of eBay (for a weighty price) a number of years back. So, in the spirit of the holiday season, may my present to you, dear reader, be these two choice cuts from dear old Stump.
Download "Charlton Heston" by Stump
If you enjoyed these two tracks -- and why wouldn't you? -- please avail yourself to The Stump Story!
And if you enjoyed this, don't forget these other fine selections.
QUICK ADDENDUM, 12/26/05: As one of my readers astutely pointed out, Stump were actually IRISH, not English, despite the fact that they formed in London. Apologies. Cheers.
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