Kicking Giant

They seemed better at the time...

The album that's easiest to find, Alien I.D., isn't so great. Try to get ahold of mp3s of "Halo" which compiles a bunch of stuff. Their mid-fi guitar-effects blowouts sound better to me these days than their low-fi twee love rock stuff.

I still really like "she's real" even if the rest of alien id doesn't stand up. the version on the IPU 7" >> the version on the album.

Their allmusic entry refers to pre alien ID tapes that I've never heard, and might be interesting.

"My black market white baby dealer / is hunting around overseas"

In the annuals of answering machine pop that song is one of the best.

yar, sung by pre-fame Liz Phaire
At the time, I was big fan of the tapes. There were maybe four of them or so? Good songwriting inna love-rock stylee.

I have a couple of the tapes, I think there was a CD which was a compilation of 3 of them (there were lots of songs missing)? Unless that was Alien ID, I dunno. The 2 tapes I have are pretty good if you like that sort of thing.

"she's real" is a great summer song. "fuck the rules" is pretty good too.

Talking of indiepop cassette-only releases, I've still never been able to find Your Pretty Guitar by the Go Team anywhere - online/P2P or the actual cassette! I wish K would reissue that stuff.

insider scuttlebutt sez T0b1 v41l put the kaibosh on Go Team re-ishes over a "I am embarrassed now by improv" stance

man this is one of those bands that I feel like trying to explain what made it good would be rough. but I saw them at the YoYo fest in, like, '97 I think, and the vibe was, you'll forgive the term, transcendent - so different, so not-like-other-stuff, all this huge high-register guitar and fragile, vulnerable vocals, so much joy in it.

I never heard them on record sound as good as they sounded that day.

The CD that combines the tapes is Halo, but it's really hard to find. Comes in a cool non-standard package. Xpost.

naw, Halo was re-recorded vers of songs from the tapes.

anyway: http://www.sendspace.com/file/6429au

Dana is right - Alien ID is OK but nowhere near representative. The Shimmy/McGonigal Chinny Chin Chin comp features some of the amazing early material. Hard to believe that I wrote them off as Some Velvet Sidewalk clones the first time I heard them.

Kicking Giant + Sleepyhead + Flying Saucer = one interesting NYC underground scene circa 1990/91.

hey this disc stands the test of time

Kicking Giant + Sleepyhead + Flying Saucer = one interesting NYC underground scene circa 1990/91.

yeah and don't forget Love Child! :-)