Autumnfair >> Spring can really hang you the most

I can't believe it's still California Month, tremor #46:

Autumnfair - "Black Spring"

(Nate Starkman & Son Records Records, ca. 1988 / Mobilization Records, 2002)

"Black Spring" is a super-eerie ambient mindwarp, totally different from anything else this synthy post-punk / goth band ever released.  It's a shame they didn't record an entire ambient album.

This track originally appeared on a 1988 V/A compilation LP called The October Country, on a very cool label called Nate Starkman & Son.

This mp3 is from their 2002 compilation CD on Mobilization Recs. (a label run by Ethan Port of Savage Republic) with the truly horrible title 1986-1989.  The music on it is very impressive, showing fluency in all the key trends obsessed over by people with KROQ hair in the '80s, with charisma that was lacking in most of those bands, and some of the most mind-blowingly cool guitar textures this side of Sonic Youth or Plexi.  This compilation includes all six songs from Autumnfair's lone release, a 1991 10" called Glaciers And Gods on Independent Project Records, plus six more previously-unreleased tracks.  It does not contain "Naomi" from The October Country, though.  Some of them have (sonorously pleasant) male vocals and some have (rather grating) female vocals.  I highly recommend the song "Collide."  I was gonna post it, but the mp3 has bad clipping.  As you can guess, "Read My Lips" samples a certain George H.W. Bush speech.  Those boneheads Ministry of course later had a minor hit single by sampling GHWB's "New world order" speech.
Autumnfair was founded by Thom Fuhrmann of Savage Republic and Val Haller of Lords Of The New Church, making this band one of many noteworthy SR offshoots (Scenic, Fourwaycross, 17 Pygmies, Medicine, etc.).  Greg Grunke of SR apparently was also an auxiliary member of Autumnfair, but I don't know if he played on "Black Spring."

I'm really glad I stumbled onto this compilation recently, because I was worried I wouldn't have a good ambient track to post during this Californiastravaganza.  I'm not sure if "Black Spring" would make a good theme song for Black Spring Break, but there's only one way to find out.

Needing a title for this post, I resorted to making a lazy pun on a jazz standard that has been sung by countless dames of song; Ella did it best, in my opinion.  More recently, Jolie Holland wrote a catchy ditty called "Springtime Can Kill You".  Ladies, ladies...

Depressed, mopey humans can learn a lot from the will to live exhibited by plants and "lesser" animals of this world.  For example, see this photo I took of an elm tree stump regrowing along the Lake Pontchartrain bike path in Metairie, on 12/6/06.  Tree stumps only regrow from their edges, because the wood in the middle is dead.  Palms, being a more primitive type of plant called a monocotyledon, are the exact opposite, with the outside being dead and the center alive.  It took me a long time to notice that, even though I'm a plant fanatic.

Bloods, Crips, Juggalos?  FBI: Insane Clown Posse fans are gang

Planets with similar climates: Coil - "Dark River" (1991), Zoviet:France - "Thin Air" & "In My Secrecy I Was Real" (1990), Cluster - "Plas" (1972), Ennio Morricone - "The Watchers Are Being Watched" (1965).