ANGELA SAWYER is the proprietress of the fabled WEIRDO RECORDS in Central Square, Cambridge. Her legacy as a strange sound maker is a living one and can been experienced through projects such as PREGGY PEGGY AND THE LAZY BABYMAKERS, DUCK THAT, BABIES OF BRAZZERS, and hopefully once again at some point down the line, EXUSAMWA. Angela is a major stoker of the weird and wild flame in Boston area music, and we could not be more thankful and just plain excited to call her a friend and to have her in our very own zone. Go to WEIRDO RECORDS right now, buy bunches of records, and get your ears in tune will ya?!?
This was my 2013
Superior Viaduct came out of no place & put out so much nice stuff so fast I started getting boxes from California again after 2 years of blowing off the entire west coast’s musical output. I’m very excited by the Ecstasy of Gold spaghetti western soundtrack series, but that should surprise exactly nobody. I’m glad that someone made an Afflicted Man t-shirt (Permanent in Chicago). I liked an Alessandro Alessandroni library album, & a series about punk exploitation records (esp the French volume). I wrote a lot of liner notes this year (which were not particularly well received!), & also went to England for the first time, where I really, really liked the Chinese food & saw a great set by Alessandro Bosetti. I saw Chris Cooper play a show at the Bathaus that was so good it sparked a change in the equipment set up I’d been using the previous ten years. There was a poet at Cheap Seats who was so good I cried & I never would’ve bumped into if that wasn’t for Erich Haygun.
That all happened & it was neat. But 2013 was a year I only bought a couple of records a week; fewer than any year since about 1992. Instead, I saw a fat fuckpacket of amazing local comedy. Alingon Mitra, Shawn Armistead, Cam McNeil, Ken Reid, Ethan Marsh, Al Park, Jean Paul Rivera, every single person from the Union Square Round Table & so so so many more ladies and fellas whose names I cannot spell wrote/said kee-razy things that blew hot wind on my brain.
Best non-existent band name I heard this year was Butter Mother & Other, with their album ‘4 x 4’ that has a puffy cartoon drawing of a foot with wheels (courtesy of Reed Lappin). Best backhanded compliments I got were from a European guy whose band I’d insulted: “You have a worldwide reputation for being honest” and from a local improvising musician: “You just like pure chaos, don’t you?”.
Other people’s years, including yours, can be seen here as they arrive: http://weirdorecords.com/zen/
