Very Nice Strong Arm

July 22, 2006... Quietly, for quite some time now, I've been following my own edicts on file sharing via the blog. I never post more than three songs from any one record and, if at all possible, I try only to post files that, at 128 kbps, are lower than CD quality.

I do this because I have never been completely comfortable with the whole file sharing thing. The way I look at it is, somebody else's blood, sweat and tears went into writing and performing the damn song, and some other fool ponied up the money to release the fucker, if I make the shit available free-of-charge to anyone who wants it, how will the creators and risk takers ever be paid? And if they never get paid, how will they be able to afford to continue to write, perform and release new music? How do I know they won't end up like me, wasting their lives away at computer terminals, fussing over spelling mistakes on the manifest while the ship goes down?

Anyway, what brings this all to mind is today's featured album, Reality Bath, by Nice Strong Arm, a band that I might've been referred to as a "college rock" or "Homestead" band back in the day. The day was 1987, the label was Homestead (hence the genre name), and the record was almost perfect. So good, in fact, that it pains me to stick to my usual three-song-per-album max.

I stumbled across Reality Bath, Nice Strong Arm's first LP, while deejaying at a campus radio station. I'm not sure what it was about the record that made me pick it from the pile and listen to it; probably nothing more than the fact that it was on Homestead Records, then home of Big Black and Naked Raygun and Squirrelbait and other things cool. And less than a minute into the very first song, I was in love.

Nice Strong Arm - Life of the Party

Jangly, like REM, but murky and impenetrable, like fellow Texans, the Butthole Surfers, Nice Strong Arm's "Life of the Party" pulled me down into a dark, dark place, where the rest of the album kept me.

Nice Strong Arm - Minds Lie

Kevin Thompson wrings an odd variety of sounds out of his guitar, from slashing, semi-clean clangor to screaming, high-end arabesques of distortion--like Andy Gill (of Gang of Four) or Seth Jabbour (of Les Savy Fav), but without the restraint... Actually, most of all, his playing reminds me of whoever it was who played guitar on the first No Trend seven inch. Check out this post at Strange Reaction to get hip to my jive.

The drums, played on this album by a boy and a girl whose names I can't recall, are tom-heavy and tribal. Four arms are always stronger than two.

And Jason Asnes, the bassist, adds the Gothic darkness. In his deep, deep voice, one can almost hear hair being dyed black and eyeliner being applied.

Nice Strong Arm - Disenchanted

"Disenchanted" became an anthem of sorts for me later, when I found myself mired in a frustrating, unhealthy relationship. In between bouts of thinking "Maybe everyone's relationships are screwed up," and "I probably couldn't do any better, anyway," I would listen to this song and mope along.

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