Monsula

Charles Mingus, “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”

Ladies and gentlement, the pilot has illuminated the “JOSH IS NOT QUALIFIED TO TALK ABOUT JAZZ” light, please return to your social media app of choice and return your seats to the upright and locked position.

Boris, “Hama”

Amplifier Worship is the first studio album from Boris if you ask them, because they consider Absolute Go a single. It’s a 60-minute single, mind you, but it’s still a single as far as they’re concerned, so this is the first album. And it’s a banger, the first in a very long string of fantastic albums. I’m not sure Boris really redfined anything, or set a template for other bands to follow or anything. They’re just consistently great across decades. That’s all.

Monsula, “Concession”

Monsula were one of the bands in the East Bay who had a bunch of people from the scene move through (up to and including Five Songs favorite Lance Hahn of J Church) and thus helped really mould the sound of a lot of bands. But even setting aside influence, this is really good stuff, bringing in some post-hardcore to the punk sound of the East Bay. Both Monsula albums were re-issued by Lookout on CD as a single disc, which was a fantastic deal. I suppose you can’t get that deal these days.