The first Consolidated album...

The story about how the band degenerated into bad emo towards the end of the nineties amuses me.

"YES."

like, wow.

The song "Consolidated" completely cracks me up now.

yeah, a lot of it is awkward, po-faced or clumsy, but i find the earnestness electrifying. i also enjoy the complexity of language they employed to project the message, like Hiphoprisy, the sense that there was little talking-down to the audience, a hard-edged sense of polemic. i certainly miss anything like them still being around (though big juss's solo stuff and work as Nefilim Modulation Systems, and Mike Ladd's stuff, tickle a similar spot).

i interviewed the group for their penultimate album, the first guitar one. it was the just the singer, adam i think, still in the group from the original line-up, and the album was pretty bad, and he just seemed so demoralised, so cynical. he said they moved away from the hip-hop because the market wasn't into the rock-rap hybrid anymore (Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park would 'break' a year later, ironically), and just seemed really defeated. they headlined the LA2 later that night, and most of the audience who had turned up for support act pitch-shifter left as the band played sub-hendrix funk rock that constantly broke down due to technical malfunctions, which adam weathered in a not-entirely-heroic fashion.

i really should pitch a piece on consolidated/hiphoprisy to Mojo; it would be a huuuge longshit, but i'd love to write the story.

PFUNKBOY: i've not heard the *first album either. their second, 'friendly fascism', is a pretty sharp industrial hip-hop album, really stern and didactic in places and really funny in others. quite quite dated, but the more combustive beats still thrill. 'play more music' is probably my favourite; the hendrix-sampling 'praxis bold as love' is just such a moving celebration of liberalism and activism, the Rollins-esque homosexuality fable was pretty cool, the Paris and Crack MCs collabs commendably venomous, and the Isleys/Doobies pastiche kicked ass. some of 'business of punishment' is great, esp 'butyric acid' ("if you don't want a nazi in your house don't let one / don't know a fundamentalist till you've met one / if you memorise civil rights don't forget one / if you don't want an abortion don't get one" sounded pretty righteous), 'worthy victim', and 'today is my birthday', though the jazz-funk excursions and greg proops guest spots are a little off. everything after that - bleccch.

i saw them with fun'da'mental and pitchshifter in '93/'94, and it was one of the best shows i've ever seen - fun'da'mental were just terrifying, so confrontational, and pitchshifter were still a molasses-slow grindcore thing, moshing in front of vivisection videos. we left at abt 1am, while consolidated were still passing the mic around the audience for the discussion segment, but there was something so great about a gig that felt more like a demonstration or something - it was so unprofessional, so unvarnished and anarchic. it felt pretty unique.

oh yeah, those were pretty good!

I came to Myth Of Rock after discovering Friendly Fascism (the latter was released in Australia, the former wasn't), and found it to be underdeveloped in almost all ways - the political hectoring was more focused, thought-through and funky by the second album, and they'd combined the industrial onslaught with sample-collaging (and the open-mike interludes etc) that spoke to my Bomb Squad The Bass-loving schoolboy heart. If I'd met it first, I"m sure it would have got more play as an album, rather than just being pulled out to put the most bludgeoning tracks on mixtapes.

The wussy leftie simpness of it all one definitely made excuses for given the strength of the delivery - a card still playable as late as Business of Punishment, where one of the few great tracks is just them whining about the transfer of rights to their back catalogue (cited by Alex above). Uh! But by then Adam's solo album Childman had been a massive warning announcement that they were going to become much more pathetic lyrically and also lose it musically, from the title on down.

Thanks to Mr Perry, though, I'm going to try and find Myth Of Rock tonight (just put the first four albums at the back of a shelf two weeks ago) and give it another appraisal.

To one extent or another, I suppose. They just always seemed to have a sort of po-faced, junior-high level of absolutism going on that made it a little discomfiting. Which was the point, presumably.

Friendly Fascism is a dud, although I used to get lots of roffles from the track consisting of spliced George H.W. Bush speeches.

Haha, I mean, the fact that I'd actually listen to Manufacture is saying something, not that I think the band really had anything profound to say (even though they were a politico-industrial synth pop group as well.. just not nearly as hit-you-over-the-hammer-with-our-preaching-to-the-converted style as Consolidated.)

They could have been a great thing if their audience talked to people who hadn't already heard of them, I guess!

TYPICAL MALE THINKS WITH HIS DICK

"We're not Fugazi"

in spirit i still love the first consolidated album, but im not going to the mat for it until i listen to it again

^^^ yr spirit OTM

http://open.spotify.com/album/3NWKO1lVJHfXHS5Pq3R0rV

many of their other albums are on here, too; listening to "Brutal Equation" for the first time in about... 20 years

haha these guys' rhetorical style could charitably be described as "sledgehammer"

I also wonder if they ever noticed that their burning desire to inject "clever" wordplay into "Unity of Oppression" accidentally turns it into a clarion call for all people and animals to be oppressed equally

haha i had the cassette of that album, haven't thought about it in 20 years
i remember it sounding like Front 242 w dodgy rapping? now to find out ...

1st album: new beat industrial with dodgy rapping
2nd album: Meat Beat Manifesto with dodgier rapping
3rd album: honestly I have no recollection of this one, but I assume it includes dodgy rapping

Ok I'm finding all of these CDs and listening to them in the car today

i remember going to see these guys live a bunch of times when i was a teen, and then a few years later i saw them play in prague and the dude was playing dave matthews style guitar rock or something and talking about his new direction and i never heard about them again

the "new direction" revelation still cracks me the fuck up

listening now
lol
they were REALLY into Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, huh?

basically

the "new direction" revelation still cracks me the fuck up

― Victory Chainsaw! (DJP), Tuesday, June 26, 2012 1:39 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did this happen to u 2?

no, I stumbled across it one day when I asked myself "whatever happened to Consolidated" and then looked them up on Wikipedia

this is hilarious
almost camp in its earnestness

I am listening to Dropped for the first time ever

O_O

this is basically an Uncle Cracker album

I couldn't even make it through one song

playing the Pleasure Game album instead

Following the split of the original line-up, Consolidated has continued to evolve musically through styles reminiscent of West Coast hip-hop, R&B, rock, and jazz similar to Miles Davis's early 1970s experimentation. Initially known for their strident, lyric-heavy albums, their most recent recordings have been almost entirely instrumental improvisations.

Ultimately working their way towards covers of John Cage's "4'33""

I saw Adam Sherburne interviewed on local TV in Portland during the occupy protests. They didn't identify him as being in Consolidated, obv. I was watching the soundbite and thinking, "Where have I heard that name before?"

Congrats, this has made me think about them for the first time in ages. I think there are maybe one or two decent songs on Dropped (I'm pretty sure I enjoyed "I'm Sorry Mat").

When I saw them open for Meat Beat Manifesto in the summer of '91 they stopped their concert so they could pass the mic around the hall and listen to political opinions, some of which sounded like Larouche-ism. A drunk guy in the row ahead of me goes FUCK. YOU. COMMIES LIKE BEATS TOO, MAAAAAAN

I remember a show in Edinburgh where a guy said "Y'know, if God hadn't wanted us to eat animals he wouldn't have made them so fucking yummy. So thanks for that, God."

Been revisiting up until and inc business of punishment. Some tracks still sound awesome and erm some are embarrassing.

"He" came on randomly in the car yesterday... man, Mordy should be forced to listen to it 100 times as punishment until he gets it.

Also, taking the lyrics literally "she" has her sex organs removed in order for her to give birth, and science & medicine are the enemies of nature.

i like the middle eastern beat - is all their music like this?

Not really.