In partnership with
WHY YOU GOTTA BRING UP OLD SHIT?
This newsletter is for writing about older stuff. Great music released even a year ago has long faded from view. Use Purple Vu as a map, or engage in the delights of disagreement. At the outset I’m going about it this way:
The purist approach. Older records that mean something to me, records I find out in the wild, records I find on the cheap; you can read up on that here. You wanna know the merits of some dollar binner you would otherwise flip past? That sort of thing. Also I plan to write more about the experience around finding records, and wherever that goes.
Publishing my older stuff. I used to run reposts on Heathen Disco (which is getting its own design zhuzh soon) of music writing from my previous ventures. I want to do that here, and offer up some more recent appraisals of those works. I feel like newer music out of the previous six months is the more suitable editorial focus and this will push me to engage with that history again.
Lists of things that go well together. Collections, canons, complements. Mentos and Diet Coke.
Reporting from wherever I am. I saw Times New Viking reunite last week. You can read about that below.
Plying my wares. I’ll be offering up goods for sale like records and other media, certain vintage items, and for services for writing one-sheets and the like. Some of this is for paid subscribers only, like most of the writing, but you can read enough up top to determine if it’s worth it.
Thanks for waiting up with me to get this going. Beehiiv is the platform I use to publish and it’s made a lot of this work possible. If you want to make your own one of these, you could do way worse.
-- Doug Mosurock
You earned the attention. Here's what to do next.
Most creators spend years building an audience on platforms that own it. The reach is real. The relationship isn't. One algorithm change and the people who chose you stop seeing you.
A newsletter is different. Your list is yours. Every subscriber is earned and stays earned. And on beehiiv, the tools to grow it, monetize it, and own it completely are built in from day one.
30% off your first 3 months with code LIST30. Start building today.
TIMES NEW VIKING, TV BUDDHA, TEMPS Empty Bottle, Chicago IL Fri 4/24/2026
Once upon a time I got to spend a couple weeks with Times New Viking, a band that always seemed incredibly sure of what they were doing. They excelled as songwriters of campfire material, singalongs folky like The Roches but rendered in primary colors, blared on guitar and synth and pounded with a couple of drums, lyrics yelled in unison, dragged through so much distortion and overmodulation that each element melts into one another. Even in the live setting, away from their lo-fi penchant, it was loud. If that was a formula then Adam, Beth and Jared had all the right lessons and very little to hold them back from getting to be in a really fun, memorable band and sharing that joy with a variety of people every night.
It seems that they have decided in some capacity to do it again, a very reasonable thing to do 20 years or so later, and if they’re missing a little of the rough readiness of youth, TNV immediately found their center and started bashing it around the stage, gleefully running through a set of favorites from the front to the back, “Dance Walhalla” to “(My Head)” to “Fuck Her Tears.” As a guy who likes to be either at the front or the very back at a show, it moved something inside of me seeing people who clearly had associated this music with key parts of their young lives as the color flushed back into them. Unlike sarcastic peers who decided to give this whole era a branding push, there’s an optimistic sweetness to their entire catalog, and moreover in the sheer confidence they had in the songs they write and the way they play them. Flip the switch and it’s there.
I missed all of TV Buddha to catch up with friends and didn’t get fully in the zone for Temps (who were plenty loud, and tall) as I was having some pizza in the other room. Credit to Temps though for starting exactly on time. This was a fantastic night out and I almost dipped Van Morrison style to catch Black Mama, White Mama over at the Music Box but it wasn’t worth shaving off a few minutes when I was feeling this good.
ZZ TOP “Gimme All Your Lovin’” b/w “Got Me Under Pressure” promo 12” (Full Moon/Warner Bros., US, 1982)
I believe in 12” singles; they’re my favorite format. Getting to dive into album tracks specifically recut to be as clear and loud as possible for radio is a charm that the 12” radiates. “Got Me Under Pressure” is top 3 roboboogie era ZZ Top’s strongest cuts (also Eliminator and Afterburner are as essential to the Top as any of the ‘70s albums, and as commercial music programmed in a “not up to you” sorta gatekeep zone that we oughta bring back, you’re not rushing to turn it off); the track has never sounded this good on any other release of the day, wide grooves and fine detail on the guitar lead, better opportunities for stereo separation, the absolute best latter-day impression this one could get. Someone did a great job cutting this loud and I hope their evening after this session was phenomenal.
One-off single by Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis from Wire, both sides working off of a rhythm loop that gets strikingly close to dub production styles from the razor that Wire had honed to in the 154 / “Our Swimmer” era. “Like This For Ages” backmasks instruments and cues like a relief map of the group’s desire to get away from whatever it was they were doing at any time. “Kluba Cupol” rolls out the backing track which slowly mutates over the course of 20 minutes (17 at 45rpm, pitch it wherever you like, Cupol can take it). Roll it some more, in and out of “Spoon” by Can. Second copy I’ve found out in the bins in the past 10 years so they’re still out there (and this one was hiding amidst random house and disco records in under-browser storage at a particular Chicago record store that gets really particular about formats over genre. It’s almost like it was calling from me down there, bookending a bunch of Barrabas 12”s with Blitz “New Age” on the other side. On one hand, I know where to look for these and significantly marked-down new vinyl, and it keeps me coming back, but it also seems like nobody else there shops this way).
SOHO Noise LP (Hedd, UK, 1989)
British outfit Soho had a decent sized hit with their Johnny Marr-sampled “Hippychick” back in 1990, a pretty fun year to be around. That song hit in the U.S. before it did back home, where they might’ve been better known for this one, a spotty but heated pop record that leans into very light industrial/hammer-on guitar moves, Information Society-distilled bleeps and arpeggios, and vocals that on the album’s best tracks “Spend Some Time” and “You Won’t Hold Me Down” cut between Madonna and Strawberry Switchblade. In a year, Curve would have bodied this by cutting through the uptight nature of this music like someone curing the ends of plastic with a lighter. Not a great record by any metric, but it will land in a way the first time you hear the opening cut that’s tough to shake. Found this at a recent pilgrimage to Jerry’s Records in Pittsburgh, where I hadn’t been since Jerry Weber sold the place to new owners. The prices had gone up but it really is still quite incredible, though not as spacious as the previous incarnation – no back room of country records anymore, though the 45 boxes are still lining the rear wall, filed like the Library of Congress for people who need to sort through things to stay in this world. It’s really tough fathoming any record store that doesn’t have to put a premium on space and can afford to keep trawling out records that were hiding in this country unpurchased for over 40 years, but here it was, $5, my curiosity satisfied. Also when I was playtesting at the communal turntable in front, a stink bug ran across the platter. Take that, Rough Trade!
GRACE JONES “I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango)” b/w “Warm Leatherette” 12” (Island, France, 1981)
As expected, sounds huge, really lets Sly & Robbie luxuriate, but supposedly this 12” is special because the picture of Grace Jones on the outer sleeve was not retouched. It’s a little grainy, Jones is blocking with an enormous accordion.
LASERDISCS in general
I really don’t have the capacity to start collecting LDs, but I ran into a stack of can’t-miss titles at an estate sale of someone who had thousands of them. Then I learned that many are no longer playable due to flaws in the manufacturing process that has caused a really gnarly looking phenomenon called disc rot, just a fantastic degradation of the format, like dirt that somehow never burnt out when it was being blown into glass and now chaotically preserved. I had to find a player to get these going, if only to test what I’d picked up, and the deck I have sounds like the wheezing twilight of old age (I haven’t replaced the grease or the belts just yet) but I’m coming to appreciate just how novel this format was, particularly around promotional videos (the excitement of the 1985 Pontiac Grand Am can only be contained on a laserdisc, for instance). Moreover I’m super into the album sleeve sized artwork, and the canvas it provides to promote a film. Look at this fucking version of Jaws. She’s busting through the art deco facade!
— DM