Kiss It Goodbye and all the other good things.

By now you will have probably heard the news, despite being only half the original line-up, Kiss it Goodbye have reformed for some select US shows. The band responsible for one of the most important albums to my musical growth as a youngster. Even now, over 10 years since I first heard it I still get a buzz every time I listen to it. In honour of this and my love for the melodramatic howl of vocalist Tim Singer, I have posted up some choice cuts from the dudes discography.
She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not is still, to this day, one of the angriest hardcore records I have ever heard. Tim Singer sounds like he is going through a complete mental breakdown, his vocals a mixture of mumblings, shrieks and roars complemented by the berserk, twisted instrumentation. I still struggle to get my head around some of the ideas and riffs on this album. You can draw a definite line from Black Flag to the KIG, sonically and lyrically they both possess a crazy, wild anger that not many bands achieve. Stone cold classic.

Kiss It Goodbye - She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not

Prior to KIG Singer and guitarist Keith Huckins where part of the Deadguy line up responsible for Fixation On A Co-Worker in 1995. The New Jersey group, along with Bloodlet where the black sheep of the Victory Records roster. A superb album in its own right. Combining noise rock, hardcore and a ton of negative attitude.

Deadguy - Fixation On A Co-Worker

After KIG, the other members took part in Playing Enemy and Nineironspitfire. The demo below surfaced about 1999/2000 and whetted a lot of appetites for a future that never came. Family Man was KIG without Huckins and sounds for all intents and purposes like Black Flag smashing into Unsane's practise room. Sadly these two songs are all that ever seemed to exist.

Family Man - Demo

There was talk of other recordings over the years, internet gossip and so forth but nothing has come out yet.

P.S. My Mediafire account is on the fritz so the links on this page are courtesy of the awesome folk over at The Living Doorway and Counts Of Arson. Sweet stuff.

Ol' Dirty Bastard - Return To The 36 Chambers : The Dirty Version

1995 saw the release of this album, probably one of the most well known and commercially successful offshoots of the Wu-Tang empire. From then onwards, its creator, Ol' Dirty Bastard ( Tyrone Russell Jones to his mother) went on to have a fair few adventures :

Around this time, Jones gained notoriety when, as he was being profiled for an MTV biography, he took two of his thirteen children bylimousine to a New York State welfare office to pick up his welfare check; his latest album was still in the top ten of the US charts. The entire incident was filmed by an MTV camera crew and was broadcast nationwide.

In February 1998, Jones witnessed a car accident from the window of his Brooklyn recording studio. He and a friend ran to the accident scene and organized about a dozen onlookers who assisted in lifting the 1996 Ford Mustang—rescuing a 4-year-old girl from the wreckage. She was taken to a hospital with first and second degree burns. Using a false name, Jones visited the girl in the hospital frequently until he was spotted by members of the media

The evening following the traffic accident, Jones rushed on-stage unexpectedly as Shawn Colvin took the stage to give her acceptance speech for Song of the Year at the 1998 Grammy Awards, and announced that he had recently purchased expensive clothes in anticipation of winning the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album that he lost to Puff Daddy. As Colvin took the stage to a round of applause, he asked of the audience, "Please calm down, the music and everything. It's nice that I went and bought me an outfit today that costed a lot of money, you know what I mean? 'Cause I figured that Wu-Tang was gonna win. I don't know how you all see it, but when it comes to the children, Wu-Tang is for the children. We teach the children. You know what I mean? Puffy is good, but Wu-Tang is the best, Okay? I want you all to know that this is ODB, and I love you all. Peace!" This incident was widely covered in the mainstream media.


In February 1999, he was arrested for driving without a license and for being a convicted felon wearing a bulletproof vest (the first person arrested for this infraction under a new California law). Back in New York weeks later, he was arrested for drug possession of crack cocaine and for traffic offences. With multiple cases in the past and present, he was arrested with marijuana and 20 vials of crack. After his arrest, Ol' Dirty Bastard reportedly asked the police to "make the rocks disappear". During a court hearing, he once called a female prosecutor a "sperm donor."


Its a top class album. It has that East Coast dissonance that RZA's production always lends. Alongside Liquid Swords its my favourite Wu offshoot.

Ol' Dirty Bastard - Return To The 36 Chambers