Cybotron "Alleys Of Your Mind"

 Cybotron

"Alleys Of Your Mind" b/w "Cosmic Raindance"

scum stats: at least three pressings...red/white labels with black printing, red labels with black printing, white labels with black printing. Anecdotally red/white labels are likely the first pressing, as those seem to turn up the least frequently. I'd venture the red label is the follow-up pressing and the white labels seem to relatively ABOUND in quantity. At one point 30 years after the fact Juan Atkins claimed that the white label was a bootleg, but I think that's the fog of the decades. Original pressings plated and pressed at QCA in Cincinnati, pretty sure that white label ran at Archer a few months later.)

The beginning of Detroit techno. Never mind that it's a wholesale lift of the hook from Ultravox's "Mr. X", all you need to know is that this is the shit.

Something shifted on my cell phone in the past week where the first thing to play when I plug into the car is no longer Mike Birbiglia's "Abby" but instead, Cybotron's "Alleys Of Your Mind."

This. Makes. My. Day. Every. Day.

I first heard this song on an "Old School Sunday" Detroit radio show...seemingly each one of the R&B stations in town sets up at a local spot with a club (read: not radio) DJ spinning live. None of the tracks get announced or even identified. 

Anyway, I was driving on Vernor headed west bound at the Gratiot intersection and this one drops. Sounding like nothing I'd ever heard before. Sounding like a BAND, a vibe I'd never thought I could gather from a techno record.

And...nothing. No idea what the song was or how to even try to find it.

A day or two later a call to dear band mate Mick Collins had the question answered in about ten seconds. Imagine my delight in finding out it was a DETROIT record.

In a few weeks one of those white label copies would be procured from People's Records. To later discern the story that Atkins and band mate Rick Davis self-released the record, essentially selling it out of the trunks of their cars and moving roundabout 25k copies in that manner.

As Atkins debut release, it's INSANE that the first lyrics he ever unleashed into the world (at a mere 19 years old!) are "Who'll cry for modern man?" I think about this line ALL THE DAMN TIME it's soo stupid good. 

To hear Mick talk about how it hit in Detroit...everyone heard it...and everyone freaked the fuck out. To the point where EVERYONE was bumping this song and loving the hell out of it.

Oh to have been around Detroit in 1981.

I've not stopped loving this record since. The Dirtbombs covered it on our Party Store LP back in 2011 and it's one of my happier full circles having made that happen. 

I've made a habit of grabbing any copy of this record I ever run into. So I've got some extras floating around here. They are all usually HAMMERED...a sign that a disc was a TRUE party record, getting played all the time, not kept in a sleeve, folks dancing so hard they bump into the turntable. Every copy of this disc has lived a full life no doubt. And that, more than anything, is the sign of the most important kind of records.

Ain’t No Radio Stations Getting Blown Up On My Watch

In remembrance of the legendary Fats Domino, here’s a collage I did a few years back for the Johnny Brewton Kut-Up zine. Utilizing almost exclusively materials that were within immediate reach from the desk in my TMR office, my inspiration for this piece came from the first broadcast of Mick Collins’ Night Train radio show around a decade back.

As the story goes, there was a deranged man repeatedly calling and threatening a radio station. Kept on demanding they play Fats Domino or he was going to bomb the place. There was a big to-do, the offender was tracked down and charged with the appropriate crimes. As Mick tells it, no one ever thought to just play some damn Domino. So with all the determination of a man on a mission, Mick proudly declared “Ain’t no radio stations getting blown up on my watch” and launched in to a half hour of music from the master. This is how he STARTS his public radio career. With style.

It is undoubtedly the favorite radio moment I’ve experienced in my lifetime and I was overjoyed to commemorate it in collage form.

Someone actually bought the original of this for something like $75. Insane.

Record of the Week: The 5.6.7.8's go ska

The 5.6.7.8’s
“Mothra” b/w “Dream Boy”
Time Bomb Records
Limited to 500 copies




Sometimes I marvel when I consider the multiple intersections of my life with the 5.6.7.8’s.

My first serious, in-person conversation with Mick Collins was at a 5.6.7.8’s show at the Magic Stick in Detroit. I was 17, we’d talked on the phone previously about me joining the Dirtbombs, but when talking in person, he asked “Are you in high school? Or college?”

I was in high school, I still got the job.

Five years later, the 5.6.7.8’s are opening for the Dirtbombs at the Magic Stick at the height of “Woohoo” post-Kill Bill exploitation. A LOT of folks in the crowd who’d never seen the Dirtbombs before and would never see us again. In all honesty, we probably should have been opening for the 5.6.7.8’s.

Six years after that, the band is in Nashville, not only recording a live show, a Blue Series single AND a Vault single, but also celebrating Third Man’s reissue of their seminal self-titled LP. Still one of my absolute favorite moments in TMR history is hearing them tear through Ralph Nielsen and the Chancellor’s “Scream” in the Blue Room. There’s no truer distillation of said “Back From the Grave” classic song in my book, not even the original. The 5.6.7.8’s own it.

This is a band that is not of my age, is not from the continent I’m from and can barely speak the only language I am conversant in. By all accounts, we should not be in the same orbit. But we are and I am eternally grateful for it.

I would have a hard time naming a more fully-realized band than the 5.6.7.8’s. Everything about them feels absolutely perfect. Even their first single, slightly off-brand projecting more of a 50’s greaser juvenile delinquent vibe is still so…them. The impeccably dressed, brimming with style Japanese girl-group approach to American surf, garage and (occasionally) rhythm and blues is valhalla. They exist on their own plane. They have no worthy heirs or imitators. They…be.

I became aware of this single way too long after it was released. Probably a year ago? It sat on my Discogs wantlist, ready, available, for nearly a year. I just couldn’t motivate myself to spend $30-ish on the record. I kept on thinking in the back of my mind “There’s got to be a better way.” And for the record, the 5.6.7.8’s are a band that I collect HEAVY.  I’ve got approximately seventeen of their 7-inch singles and that’s a LOT for a band of their vintage (and damn-near every one they’ve released).

Not too long ago it came into my mind that I could just ask their Japanese label, Time Bomb, if they wanted to do a trade. DUH. I was able to include a couple of their LPs I hadn’t grabbed as well and it was as smooth a transaction as possible.

The tracks themselves are an interesting veer from their standard, straightforward garage rock approach. “Mothra”, (originally written as the mightily orchestrated theme song to the 1961 Japanese horror movie in the “Godzilla” vein) echoes with shades of 1960’s ska. Now if I’d read someone else saying that about the 5.6.7.8’s I would immediately mumble “bullshit” under my breath. But when you actually listen to the song, it 100% makes total sense. Just like their foray into traditional Japanese-styled folks songs on their Blue Series single, they’ve made this “ska” approach seem and feel entirely within their wheelhouse.

“Dream Boy”, originally features on the band’s 1996 EP “Bomb the Twist” EP in a more sedate, traditional 50’s R&B doo-wop persuasion. But this song too is presented via the lens of 1960’s ska music. And it’s suited wonderfully.

And now it all makes sense. Taking the pre-existing songs, running them very loosely through a stylistic filter and pairing them together, released in a limited edition of 500 copies through a Japanese record label. Simply beautiful. The continued existence and output of the 5.6.7.8’s puts a smile eternal on my face. Were they ever cease, I would be truly, truly sad.

P.S. the 5.6.7.8’s (in that form) is my favorite band name to type. Every one of those periods pounds out of my keyboard like a foot-stomp along to their tunes