Skin Yard - Start At The Top

The creativity on this record is impressive. If you can get past the fuckin drum sound (KICK/SNARE) sounding so thin and trash can,(that kindda shit drives me nuts) then you'll hear some pretty cool and rare cuts here. I wasn't going to post this because of that. But to be fare, these songs were never meant for release. They fell on the cutting room floor, when making their previous records. So with that understanding. Disregard the production savvy and indulge this innovative post of music! - wino

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"A Collection of Singles and Rarities." Where to begin? Shortly after we called it quits (1992) it became apparent that enough good stuff had fallen between the cracks to make another decent album, easily. (Our "Odds 'n'Sods", or moving up two decades, our "Pisces Iscariot"...) Jack began working on accumulating, remixing, editing, sequencing and mastering stuff from the vault. Unfortunately, we kind of dropped the ball ("life" intervened) so it sat for awhile. Then we were getting going again and someone screwed us on the cover art, keeping our money and giving us useless files, so we wasted another 8 months. Finally we got another guy to do it, so... IT'S HERE. We made only 700 copies of it to sell, hand-numbered. You can still buy it at Jack's Garage Sale.

Those who played:

Ben McMillan: vocals.
Jack Endino: guitar; fuzz-wah-slide bass.
Daniel House: bass.
N. Scott McCullum: drums on 1, 2 and 7.
Jason Finn: drums on 3,9,11 and 12.
Barrett Martin: drums on 4,8 and 10.
Matt Cameron: drums on 5 and 6.

1. Start at The Top [music: Daniel, lyrics: Ben] Courtesy of Sub Pop. A-side of single SP47. Recorded spring '89, 16-track. Drums: Scott.

2. Watch [music/lyrics: Ben] Courtesy of Sub Pop. B-side of SP47, from the same session as above.

3. Jump The Wall (Gentle Collapse) [music: Daniel/Jack, lyrics: Ben] Jason Finn drummed for us from Sept. '86 to Apr. '87. We started recording what would have been our 2nd album, then started over from scratch when Scott joined on drums. This song, "The Ha-Ha", "This Lonely Place" and "No Right (Jason Version)" are from these earlier 8-track sessions with Jason. (Also see "Bleed" and "Out of the Attic" on the CD of our first album.) Notwithstanding Helios Creed's amazing guest guitar work on the Fist Sized Chunks version of this song, this one is much more like we used to play it live. Ben never did settle on lyrics. Not a punk rock tune.

4. Machine Gun Etiquette [The Damned] Courtesy of Dash Board Hula Girl Records. Originally on "Another Damned Seattle Compilation." Recorded Spring '91. Drums: Barrett.

5. Twelve Points [music: Daniel/Jack] Summer 1985, 4-track. Drums: Matt.

6. Make Room [music: SY, lyrics: Ben] Summer 1985, 4-track. Temporary insanity? Drums: Matt.

7. Snowblind [Ace Frehley] Originally on the "Hard to Believe" compilation. We were going to omit this, but too many people asked about it. Forgive us. (Same session as SP47.) Drums: Scott.

8. Bulldog (Alternate Version) [Lennon-McCartney] Knuckles sessions, late '90. Very different from the version on the Cruz 10-inch, CRZ-702. Drums: Barrett.

9. This Lonely Place [music: Daniel, lyrics improvised by Ben] B-side of the Toxic Shock "Stranger" single. Our only song without guitar; Daniel plays the straight bass part, Jack plays fuzz-echo-wah bass with a slide. Improvised "live" in the studio including vocals; more noises were overdubbed. A great live song but we got tired of carrying an extra bass around. Drums: Jason.

10. NWAP II [music: SY] Outtake from Knuckles sessions, 1990, 24-track. Drums: Barrett.

11. The Ha-Ha [music: Daniel] A song from Daniel's pre-SY band Feedback that we resurrected and played for awhile. Drums: Jason.

12. No Right (Jason Version) [music: Daniel/Jack, lyrics: Ben] Very different from the later version tacked onto the Fist Sized CD. Vocal effects done live in the studio by Ben while singing through some sort of pedalboard. Drums: Jason.

SKIN YARD