What rocks and rules on Record Store Day

The numbers are in: Record Store Day on Saturday works out to, like, 64 percent re-releases, 19 percent novelty 7-inches, 14 percent compilations and 3 percent “other.” (Warning: I made those numbers up.) Two of this year’s most exciting reissues offer a glimpse into the raw, early days of artists who later paved their own paths toward cult-status success.

By the time most of us here on the East Coast had heard of Heavens to Betsy, frontwoman Corin Tucker had already moved on to kicking ass full-time with Sleater-Kinney. But the completists who scoured the used bins and stalked eBay in search of HtB’s bygone gems were always trying to tell you: This band was the real damn deal. 

All told, the Olympia, Washington, punk duo’s back catalog consists of a few 7-inches, a couple of comp appearances and one fiery full-length: Calculated, which Kill Rock Stars is reissuing with a bonus track and a download code. Originally released in 1994 — when shouty rock was in and pretty pop was out, when the Pacific Northwest was the crumbling capital of the Alternative Nation and Riot Grrrl was emerging from the underground — this album sounds like a band doing all the right things. Tucker’s guitar is thick and abrasive, always ready to go from rumbling verse to bombshell chorus on fists-up anthems like “Nothing Can Stop Me” and “Waitress Hell.” Her signature quaver and soothing croon sometimes get shoved out of the way by brutal screams (see the bluntly beautiful “Stay Away” or the hellacious “Terrorist”). The completists were right.

A few years later and a lot closer to home, Tom Scharpling (a DJ at Jersey City’s WFMU) and his pal Jon Wurster (the Philly-born drummer for Superchunk and The Mountain Goats) were trolling listeners with a comedy bit that made the rounds among tape-trading music geeks. Recorded in ’97 and released in ’99, Rock, Rot and Rule (Stereolaffs) launched a formula the duo would spend the next decade-plus perfecting. Wurster called in as “Ronald Thomas Clontle,” the ostensible author of a coffee-table book on rock ’n’ roll he asserts is “ultimate argument settler.” Never mind his proclamations that Puff Daddy “rules,” Neil Young “rots” and British band Madness “invented ska.” Callers get angry, Scharpling plays the hapless straight-man, Wurster keeps his cool and an indie-comedy game plan is hatched. The two remained the undisputed kings of long-form radio comedy via The Best Show on WFMU until hanging it up last year in search of a way to make doing what they love pay the bills. 

More Record Store Day Recs:

Half Japanese “Art punk?” That’s about as fitting a genre tag as you’ll find for the music Jad Fair has been making for decades. Always intriguing and occasionally unlistenable, Half Japanese was cool enough to open for Nirvana in ’93 and Neutral Milk Hotel last year, and worthy of scoring some new fans, thanks to a series of retrospective anthologies from Fire Records, starting with the three-LP Volume One: 1981-1985.

Non Violent Femmes This pink-vinyl Kanine Records comp features Speedy Ortiz, Joanna Gruesome and Philly’s Bleeding Rainbow doing a dreamy cover of Smashing Pumpkins’ “Glynis.” 

Eric B. and Rakim Crate-diggers take note: The legendary Paid in Full 7-inch (Get On Down) featuring the “Mini Madness Coldcut remix” — previously only available in the U.K. — finally gets a Stateside release. 

The Space Project This Lefse/Fat Possum compilation (available as CD, LP and a nifty box of 7-inches) features Beach House, Porcelain Raft, Spiritualized and more making music inspired by NASA audio. 

See also: releases by Dinosaur Jr., Man Man, Pissed Jeans, David Lynch, David Bowie (a 1984 picture disc!), Life Without Buildings, Christian Death, Zang Tuum Tumb, the Muppets and the country of Finland.