Category Archives: editorial

The Wailing Ultimate: Homestead Records Compilation Album

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Does anyone else even remember this one? In 1987, Homestead Records put out this hit-and-miss vinyl compilation, The Wailing Ultimate, featuring a pre-junior Dinosaur, Naked Raygun, and Big Black, plus a few future nobodies and the at-times-underrated Salem 66.

The Dinosaur track is the real reason to own this—“Repulsion” is a fabulous, moody cut that shows J. Mascis doing his thing years and years before anybody really took a shine to him in the mainstream media. Hear him showing off the same whine-n-crunch power long before he picked up a golf club on MTV. This one’s a tough find in some areas, but you can always pick it up used online via Amazon.com from a few nice reputable vendors including the venerable Newbury Comics.

Golden Records Vinyl/Cassette to MP3 Converter

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Golden Records is what I’d call a good entry-level vinyl-to-digital converter. If you have never tried to convert your vinyl records to MP3 or redbook CD formats, this is a great way to give it a try. Among the most attractive features of Golden Records is the normalizing function, which will give your new MP3s consistent volume for the entire album. Some of those indie/alternative albums like The Blasting Concept series and the amazing Homestead Records compilation The Wailing Ultimate are unfortunately the victims of wildly diverse recording and mastering techniques from track to track. Differing volume levels make listening to the tracks on MP3 a bit of a right pain in the arse—unless you use the normalizing function to make them all even across the board.

Audiophile purists won’t be so thrilled with normalizing as it can alter some of the dymamics of a song, but for most of us normalizing isn’t a bad thing at all. Golden Records is advertised as being designed specifically for vinyl and cassette transfer to MP3, including a handy set of fix-it features to get rid of clicks, pops and other artifacts.

If you’re an advanced audio nut you won’t need this software package, but Golden Records is great for anyone just getting started and needing a solution to get those all-time vinyl favorites running on your iPod in no time.

Cannibal Holocaust Soundtrack

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Believe it or not, Amazon.com is a good place to pick up bizarre and obscure works–if you know where to look. The soundtrack to the infamous Cannibal Holocaust is a prime example. Unfortunately this is NOT a vinyl copy, but the CD edition for between $11 and $17 depending on which indie Amazon vendor is hawking it.

Sadly, the vinyl version of this is damn near impossible to find. I am still on the hunt for a copy–call it a holy grail of sorts. The movie itself will repulse you, but it’s also fascinating and hard not to watch. It succeeds as an actual work of grotesque art–Cannibal Holocaust manages to transcend its low-budget grindhouse intentions and make you forget that you’re watching a moive. Agree or disagree, for those who love the soundtrack music of Italian genre films, the music works as well as the film itself.

Naked Raygun Vanilla Blue

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Chicago’s mighty Naked Raygun performing at Q101 makes me yearn for the good old days when the Rayguns were putting out vinyl, Jeff Haggerty was playing guitar for the group pre-Pegboy, and striped pants were still considered kooky stagewear. Check out this great YouTube clip. Even in this tiny little room, immobilized and hardly breaking a sweat, Naked Raygun manages to create quite a stir. Vanilla Blue is one of their best tracks, hands down.