My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - October 26, 2012 - McGuffy's House of Rock, Dayton, Ohio

As I type this I have now seen My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult twice. My first experience with the band was seventeen years ago at the Garage at Caddy's Complex in Cincinnati (long since razed to make way for the Bengals' Paul Brown Stadium - probably a poor trade-off) on their Raygun magazine tour in support of their Hit & Run Holiday album. The lineup has changed (Levi Levi on bass is a standout memory), the core of Groovie Mann and Buzz McCoy have aged noticeably (as have I) and the sound, stripped down to its essential elements for this twenty-fifth anniversary tour, has never been better.

Twenty Other Records I Love Almost as Much as Led Zeppelin II

I wanted to go outside 1,001 - or even 100 - of the usual essentials for that this post. There are certainly plenty of records populating the usual lists that I agree are indispensable. That said, there are also dozens rarely listed anywhere, even in genre sub-rankings, that I simply could never be without. My only criteria for this list, aside from general unlistedness elsewhere, is that the albums must be at least two years old in order to ensure it isn't just infatuation. Here they are, twenty records I will never part with, ranked only alphabetically by artist:

Worth the Effort: The Reincarnation of Luna - My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - 2001

In a class with few others (White Zombie, perhaps?), My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult were, in fact, the soundtrack to the best B-movie you never saw: sex, Satan, sex, horror, sex, motorcycles and sex all set to a danceable industrial beat. Originally Wax Trax darlings, the Kult peaked commercially in the mid-nineties, started bouncing from label to label and their records, while always remaining engaging, were hard to find new and fell out of print almost as quickly. Rykodisc has recently rescued most of the catalogue but one great title, The Reincarnation of Luna, remains the domain of secondhand stores. 

In the Mood for a Little Music? Enjoying the Extended Play.

I love the EP. I don't know how you discern it from a "maxi-single" or a really short album other than, to me, it somehow defines itself with tracks not appearing on proper full-length LPs, no tracks considered as b-sides to any other included song and substantial enough in its content to stand alone as an entry in a band's catalogue. Whether it's a 7" or two, a 12" record or a single CD, there are several EPs on my shelf that hold their own against any other bands' grandest double-albums. A few of my favorites: