MENS FASHION DEPOT

It started innocently enough. I saw a thing on a friend's Facebook feed mentioning a compilation of San Diego bands from 1958 - 1973. A couple selling points: a 1973 cut by a band called Glory who were popular when I was way too young to go see bands. They're still talked about today as being the absolute shit back then. Once I did get older I met a couple of the members through my brother but still had never heard them. So, yee haw, I'll finally know what the fuss was about. The other selling point was the inclusion of the Strangers' "Caterpillar Crawl" (1958) a song that the Rumblers "borrowed" from for their song "Boss". Those two were enough of a reason to bite, the fact that it included 30 other local bands that I've never heard sealed the deal. I headed to the Ugly Things website. Shit was about to get thick.

Ugly Things started as a photocopied and stapled fanzine in the early eighties. The editor, Mike Stax, is a Brit who moved to the U.S. in 1981 to join the Crawdaddys and has been a scene fixture ever since. In 1983 he published the first issue of Ugly Things (he's big on the Pretty Things), and shortly after that was in the Tell-Tale Hearts. Ugly Things started taking off and I think there were a couple other bands in here someplace. Several years later he's now in the Loons, the magazine is now more like a book, and the website is going full bore. He still writes liner notes for compilations and has an Ugly Things record label. Just three of the 45s I' ve scooped up: The reissue of the Sloths' "Makin' Love" (500 pressed), the second Schitzophonics 45 (500 pressed), and the Nashville Ramblers' "The Trains" (1000 pressed).

Okay, so I went on a shopping spree over at Ugly Things. Four items. More on that later. I want to wrap this up before dinner so rather than switching gears and moving on to posting some songs, I thought I'd take an opportunity to post some links to musician owned labels. If you are going to do some holiday shopping anyway, these sites are are a great alternative to behemoths like Amazon. They also have oddities you're not going to find on bigger sites.

Support the true fiends:
Ugly Things
Mike Stax profile at SD Reader
Norton Records
Voodoo Rhythm Records
Swami Records