LABOR RECORDS
In 1982, Certain General signed with the New York independent record label Labor Records and issued their first release, an EP called Holiday of Love. The mini-album was produced by Peter Holsapple of the dB’s and mixed by Michael Gira of the experimental rock band Swans – “an interesting pairing if there ever was one”, said Nick West in a review for Bucketfull of Brains. (I don’t know much about Swans, except for their startling 1988 cover of the Joy Division masterpiece, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”). According to Wikipedia: “Holiday [of Love] garnered rave reviews, among them a Trouser Press piece that cited the disc as being created ‘for all the teenage devils of the world’.”
Here follows a reprint of the Trouser Press Record Guide (4th Edition) listing for the SourMash family of bands. Though slightly garbled, it presents a fairly accurate overview of our thing in the 1980’s.
Holiday of Love EP (Labor) 1982 November’s Heat (Fr. L’Invitation au Suicide) 1984 Reissued w/ bonus tracks (Fr. New Rose) 1990; (Alive) 1999; (Fr. Fantastica) 2002 These are the Days (Fr. New Rose) 1986 Reissued w/ bonus tracks (Fr. Fantastica 1999) Cabin Fever (Fr. Barclay) 1988 Jacklighter (Fr. Barclay) 1990 Signals from the Source (CBGB) 1999 Closer to the Sun (Fr. Fantastica) 2000 Live at the Public Theater (Fantastica US) 2001 An Introduction to War (SourMash USA) 2002 Invisible New York (Easy Action UK) 2008
CERTAIN GENERAL / BAND OF OUTSIDERS Far Away in America (SourMash) 1984 Far Away in America / The Live Side EP (Fr. L’Invitation au Suicide) 1985
(March 2015)
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