Thanks for making it through week three of this An Album A Day project. I’m back in Los Angeles now, and I’ll be devoting tomorrow’s post to recapping my trip to Las Vegas. Hoo boy, it was a good time. I’m (or perhaps more accurately my body is) still recovering. All the pictures and tales from the four-day adventure will be available tomorrow. Oh, and before I forget, the second episode of Geek & Sundry’s “UNPLUGGED” that I wrote was posted yesterday. Check it out. Tom had me record some voice-over bits but I guess they weren’t used. Oh well. I think the next two I wrote will be posted on the next two Thursdays, but I’ll hip you to them here and on Twitter and Facebook if I remember.
My introduction to Foot Village came in July of 2007. That was back when I was a spry young lad, just 24 years of age. I’d recently moved to Los Angeles and spent the majority of my free time exploring all the hip venues in and around Echo Park. I was a total scenester for a while there, until I got old and bored and gave up on music.
The end.
Oh, sorry. Where was I? Right. Foot Village. Here’s what I had to say about them after I first saw them perform at The Smell with Tent City and Binges in support of Raccoo-oo-oon (oh my God do I miss Raccoo-oo-oon):
Foot Village were an unexpected surprise. Never heard of them, didn’t know they were playing, and I was totally blown away. Four drummers pounding the shit out of their sets and screaming at the top of their lungs. What’s not to love? They set up on the floor of the main space, four kits facing each other, with a fake tree towering over them. They seemed like your typical hard-partying, noise-loving hip-kids. And they had everyone in the room either screaming along with them or banging their heads. Intense as fuck!
That was my first and only time ever seeing the band live, but you can imagine my excitement when I stumbled across 2005’s World Fantasy which was — at that point — their only vinyl release. I think. The seven tracks spread across two sides were recorded at KXLU. Or maybe six tracks were recorded live and the seventh was remixed by Pete Swanson. Either way, it was pressed on white vinyl by those local underground hipsters at Not Not Fun. More recently World Fantasy has been reissued/re-imagined as a cassette-only release (limited to 100 copies) via their BandCamp page. Also, if you follow this link (to the BandCamp page) there’s a name-your-price download option that will score you the original seven-song 10″ plus a few other songs culled from other places. It’s the cheapest way I know of to find the songs. I don’t think the vinyl will set you back much ($5? $10?) if you can find it. When I scored my copy from Amoeba (June 5th, 2009) it was in their experimental 10″ section for less than five bucks. The ridiculous packaging is a nice touch. Gotta love records that can’t really fit on a proper record shelf because they are housed in a folded over sheet of cardboard with hand-painted or hand-screened artwork. It’s a slightly annoying but super-cool addition to my 10″ collection, and I’ve kept it through various purges because I think it’s more unique than, say, that stupid Magnetic Fields box set of 69 Love Songs. Who the fuck wants to listen to that thing on a bunch of 10″ records?
Thanks for sticking around through “10 INCHES OF PLEASURE” week. Stay tuned for the Sunday Mix Tape this week — which will feature a few more cuts from various 10″ albums I have — and on Monday I’ll announce next week’s theme.
Foot Village
World Fantasy
(Not Not Fun – NNF009, 2005)
A1. Brazil
A2. Great Britain And The Bermuda Rebellion
A3. World Fantasy [MP3]
B1. Egypt
B2. Where Ever The Fuck Arnold Schwarzenegger’s From
B3. Guatemala
B4. Antarctica (remixed by Pete Swanson)
