A self-released cassette comp that is equal parts intriguing and baffling. Promoted as “fourteen rare tracks from the underground punk scene, unearthed and presented to you in this compilation.” This is exactly the type of tagline that tickles the fancy of this KBD-obsessed crate digger. What we actually have here on A Compromising Situation is a passion project from two upstate NY outsider-music enthusiasts curating a compilation of songs gathered in one way or another, seemingly mostly around the turn of the century. Along with the cassette is an insert in which each song gets an essay explaining how it came to be known by our curators.
Perhaps I am not the fastest reader, but I think I aged the pause button on my tape deck years before its time with how many times I had to stop the playback between tracks so I could catch up reading my ten-minute exposé written about a 45-second-long song. Some of the stories are pretty funny, others are very confusing, and some are downright mind-boggling. How in the world do you let the guitarist of a band you are recording smear literal shit on your face without stopping him?
Musically, this seems to be a combination of songs the curators like, songs they can’t stand, bands they have an insane story about seeing or recording or contacting, and songs included as a “fuck you” to the projects involved.
The story about PISSASS, who had been completely off my radar, was the most interesting to me and also the closest to my tastes. Essentially a proto-egg-punk band who allegedly made over 400 releases and would travel around the Northeast of the US via Greyhound bus, leaving unlabeled copies of repurposed tapes at thrift stores and record shops. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the project, it seems unlikely I will ever track down more of his recordings, intriguing as they sound.*
I do have to wonder whether it was an intentional curation choice to include so many songs that contain some reference to someone’s dick in the lyrics, or if that is somehow a wild coincidence.
*A note to you, dear reader: if you have any of the PISSASS cassettes, please dub me a copy in the same fashion as the original found artifact and send it my way.
Label: self-released
