I just stumbled across this menacing slice of history while perusing the seldom-updated Your Flesh website, where the famed zine of the same name now lives on in digital bliss: A 1988 tour diary for the Laughing Hyenas, who can easily be counted among the scariest bands of their era, and whose sludgey blues howl hit hard and with daunting precision. The tin-can production values favored by their contemporaries in Pussy Galore was nowhere evident in the Hyenas' catalog -- If Jon Spencer and company evoked the sensations of being roughed up in an alley by a crazed junkie, the Laughing Hyenas summoned the sensations usually associated with being run over by a fleet of trucks. Soundtracking for ugliness has scarcely reached higher plains.
Streaming Real Audio: Gabriel | What Tomorrow Brings | Hard Time Blues
How is it that John Brannon has any vocal chords left? Between the Hyenas and Negative Approach, I'm shocked that he can even pronounce his name out loud anymore.
Posted by: Voxx Populous | April 26, 2007 at 11:00 AM
Hey, Mike
Thanks for the nice post and bringing a little traffic our way, but for the record, the Your Flesh website is in fact being updated no less than three times a week with a lot of new and current things being written about and subsequently published and a lot of items from the archives being resurrected as well. Generally speaking, new stuff gets posted on the weekedays so the best bet is to check back with more frequency and you might be pleasantly surprised.
Anyway, thanks again. Hyenas are certainly worthy of their due and with Larissa's recent passing it only seemed right that that piece should get dug up and called back to light for everyone who missed it to be able to see it afresh.
Best regards,
Peter
Posted by: Peter Davis | April 26, 2007 at 10:22 PM
Hey Peter, a pleasure to hear from you and thanks for the update! Glad to hear that YF's website is being regularly updated. I became a big fan of your mag (rather late in the game) after buying an early 90s issue at City Lights in SF that contained a Killdozer tour diary. Said feature made me laugh so hard on the flight back to NYC, I very nearly peed my pants on the plane.
Posted by: Mike Lupica | April 26, 2007 at 11:06 PM
thanks for posting this - there's a good chance i was their booking agent for this tour... have to dig out the books to be sure. anyways, i hadn't heard about larissa, and it ruined my week. she had worked with my cousin at a card shop in ann arbor, and my cousin told me some great stories. larissa was one of the warmest, sweetest people i knew - even the time in houston when she was ACTUALLY GREEN she was so junksick.
shit, everyone in LH was nice, friendly, and glad to see you if they ran in to you on the streets.
i'm gonna have to go make my cousin dye her hair purple again and scare her kids by playing life of crime real fucking loud a few dozen times...
Posted by: craig | April 27, 2007 at 12:26 AM
you know, Larissa passed away recently; there will never be another
on a lighter tip, Brannon's band Easy Action is really hitting it's stride: truly, soul music for the end times
Posted by: Mike Garrison | April 27, 2007 at 04:11 PM
Good point, Mike. Incidentally, and apologies for not mentioning this in my initial post, Easy Action played here at FMU not long ago on Andrew's show. Here's the listen link to stream the Real Audio of the set:
http://wfmu.org/listen.ram?show=16141&drop=55
Posted by: Mike Lupica | April 27, 2007 at 05:01 PM