Dusk “Glass Pastures” 2023. Don Giovanni Records. The Appleton, WI-based alt-country/honky tonk Americana band’s second full-length release. We’re heading up to our hometown of Appleton this weekend for a family thing (which will not involve seeing Dusk or really any honky tonk at all) so it felt like a good time to finally put this on for a spin. I’m pretty sure we bought it in  ’24 up in Green Bay when they performed at the GBUFO Festival, though we’ve seen them a whole slew of times over the past 10ish years, both in the Valley and down here in Milwaukee. (I know I have more photos but this one from 2022 at Cactus Club was the only one I could easily find).

While their style of music isn’t usually in my main wheelhouse I really do like Dusk. With six band members, each of whom are incredibly talented, their live sound is pretty huge, even when the individual songs can be sparse (on Glass Pastures the track “Organized Crime” is a good example of this). The opener of Glass Pastures “Pissing in a Wishing Well” is great – it wins for best title on the LP – and my top track is the rocking, excellently harmonized second song “Changes.” Their theme(?) song “Dusk” is a twang-swaying alt-country rocker and also great. “Don’t Let Them Tell You” has some psych elements mixed with country rock (the song’s intro has a Grateful Dead feel to it). I’m sure we will be seeing Dusk play out again very soon.

Pete Shelley “Telephone Operator” 1983. 12″ single on Genetic Records. Heavily electronic, 80’s new wave synthpop with just a whisper of punk attitude (that Buzzcocks snot). The track was a single from Shelley’s second solo LP XL1 and hit #66 on the UK singles chart. I’m not too familiar with the album but Wiki tells me the original pressing was “packaged with a computer program for the ZX Spectrum which displayed lyrics and graphics in time with the music The computer program was written in a mixture of BASIC and Assembly and is widely considered to be one of the first multimedia albums ever released.” While “Telephone Operator” – a hard driving, industrial-edged dance track – is clearly the feature/single of this 12″, it’s the non-single Devo-esque track (also on XL1) “Many a Time” — with its hook that almost exactly mirrors his controversial single “Homosapien” single from 1981 — that gets the most attention. Side One has the extended mix which, I believe, appears on the UK release (the US version has a shorter version) and Side Two has the Dub Mix of “Many a Time” which isn’t much different from the Extended Mix other than it’s even longer and has a harder-edged beat; I’m not sure it is included on any other releases.

The Selecter “Too Much Pressure” 1980. The debut album from English 2 tone ska revivalists; the record went to no. 5 in the UK (it was released on 2 Tone Records in the UK and Chrysalis Records in the US – our version – but I do not think in charted here). The singles released from the LP did really well, too: “On My Radio,” released before the album in the fall of ’79, hit #8 (it’s one of the better tracks on the album); “Three Minute Hero” went to #16 and “Missing Words” to #23. Those were all band originals, written by Selecter guitarist and primary writer Neol Davies; another original “Street Feeling” is one of my top tracks. Another top pick is “My Collie (Not a Dog)” which is not a Selecter original; I can’t find any other bands’ versions but it was written by Robert Spencer and Johnny Roberts, songwriters active in the 50’s and 60’s. The song is a play on Jamaican slang for weed (collie) and is a super upbeat, ass-shaking ska burner. Other covers/non-originals Too Much Pressure include “Time Hard” (The Pioneers), “Murder” (Owen & Leon Silvera), “Carry Go Bring Come” (Justin Hinds And The Dominoes) and a ska’d up version of “James Bond” (the movie theme). It’s a good end-of-summer listen but I think this is LP is on the thin-the-herd chopping block.