#donhowland — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

As randomly chosen by survey* on Mastodon, our next spotlight is on number 714 on The List, submitted by platenworm.

This band is so underground that there’s no page for it on Wikipedia. And yet, if you search for them, everyone swears to high heaven that they single-handedly created whatever it is that their sound is, lo-fi garage punk blues or what have you. Seeing as platenworm submitted the album, I think it’s safe to accept this story or, at the very least, give it a spin. As per the Bandcamp description for this album:

Since 1992, the Bassholes have churned out some of the grittiest, weirdest, most punkified blues scuzz ever committed to wax. Led by Don Howland (Gibson Bros.), this two-man band has consistently surpassed industry standards, prefering instead to achieve new lows in the world of lo-fi recording and new highs in soul-stirring rock’n’roll music. On this, their fifth album, they have broken out resounding and roaring with the most loud, rocking and intense album of their career. A 21-song masterpiece. The jams have most assuredly been kicked out.

You gotta kick ’em out!

A fun connection with the album we featured in our first SpaceAce Sunday: a member of Don Howland’s previous band, Gibson Bros., was none other than Jon Spencer of Pussy Galore (and then later, of course, of The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion). This Bassholes album is definitely in the same vein too – great rock n’ roll with ridiculous lyrics – so if you liked the Pussy Galore album and don’t know this one, give it a listen. And keep your ears out for track 9 and track 18 in particular, the former being possibly one of THE weirdest Joy Division covers I’ve ever heard and the latter something that might sound familiar to those who enjoyed our spotlight on ESG.

*The survey choices that led to this spotlight were “When you walk through the garden”, “You gotta watch your back”, “Well, I beg your pardon”, and “Walk the straight and narrow track”. There was a 3-way tie between the first, third, and last phrases, so each one will get a spotlight. For the first phrase, the survey result was translated as picking the first album in The List with one of the phrase’s words in the title, the matching word here being “when”.

https://1001otheralbums.com/2024/08/07/bassholes-when-my-blue-moon-turns-red-again-1998-us/

#1001OtherAlbums #1990s #Bassholes #DonHowland #ESG #garagePunk #garageRock #joyDivision #punkBlues