On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 07:56:04PM +0000, Arthur Gadney wrote:
The Ex started out as very, very simpel punk with very political lyrics, and slowly over the years developed a style mixing punk, experimental stuff, jazz, world music and many other things. For some of the really early stuff go for "The Dignity Of Labour". Their first real masterpiece and you can hear them already starting to stretch out. Another favorite from the 80s is incredible double CD "Joggers & Smoggers" which has pure punk songs mixed with many, many different things. My favorite of he newest stuff is still "Starter Alternators" from 1998. That's the one that really turned me on to them.
The discography of The Ex is big and a little unwieldy, I'd like to add two favorites: "Aural Guerilla", in the more punk vein, which is not unlike "Starters Alternators" but rawer ("Starters" is very good, and one of the best sounding Ex album thanks to Albini engineering). But two must-haves for me are the two collaboration albums with Tom Cora, "Scrabbling at the lock" and "And the Weathermen Shrug their Shoulders", starting with the first one perhaps. Amazingly beautiful, covering a lot of ground, they're also a good starting point for the band. And any record with Tom Cora is worth hearing anyway.
Like Sonic Youth, Boredoms and The Ex both have a huge pack of side projets. Unlike SY, almost all of them are worth checking out, but it would be too much for me to get into here...
I would just like to take this opportunity to add the Dog Faced Hermans, who used to be my favorite band ever and led me to a lot of things, most notably the Ex (with whom they shared Andy). The Alternative Tentacles albums would be the easiest to find. Julien