More from Larry Boyd: 90 minutes (roughly) by his band Disarray. This is labeled as “Angle/Reangle 1979-1985,” an Ahooastia recording — if you google “Ahooastia,” the only real hit you’ll find is the credits to song lyrics the reconstituted Disarray wrote after Larry was gone, so I guess that was the band’s music publishing company.
The tape package also sometimes has Disarray spelled “DSR@.”
It’s 24 songs, apparently in chronological order; the band’s style changed over time. I like the early stuff a lot — I don’t know if I’d ever played it, and suspect I didn’t, because I think I’d remember it if I had, as it’s damn good. “Straight Line/Brick Wall” is probably my favorite.
The middle period, from “Radio Free” through “War is Big Dicks,” I don’t care for much, really, but then in the last part “Ghost Fuckers” and “My Intimate Friend” are nice stuff.
Most of this seems to be studio recordings, but there are a few live numbers on Side 2.
Larry always said Disarray was a punk band, which was one reason I didn’t play all the tapes he sent — I didn’t really get into punk until later. Listening to this stuff, while it’s deliberately pretty raw, I wouldn’t really call it punk. It antedates grunge, but that’s the same esthetic, really.
I mean, I can see punk influence certainly — when one song’s lyrics include a little speech something like, “Hi, we’re Disarray, and here’s a one-chord song about flies,” it’s not exactly hard to see a disdain for the niceties of traditional performance — but it’s not manic enough for real punk.
Anyway, I have the impression that Disarray sort of broke up in 1985, and then re-formed several times but not necessarily with the same personnel, so if I have it right this tape is pretty much the entire repertoire of the original line-up.
I pasted up a cover for it from the only picture of Larry Boyd I’ve ever seen, for lack of anything better; I had already used the only Disarray poster I could find for the 15th anniversary concert album.
The transfer — well, the new version of Audacity doesn’t crash. I got distracted and recorded about an hour and a half of silence between sides, and it still worked just fine. And the tape was mostly excellent quality. There were a few tracks with noise here and there, and one or two of the live numbers (e.g., “Helicopter Dreemz”) aren’t exactly perfect, but I’m pretty sure that’s in the originals, not a problem on my end.