In my younger days I was a bit of a label whore. Still am come to think of it. One of the labels I followed was the Texas label Trance Syndicate. Run by King Coffey of the Butthole Surfers, Trance Syndicate was the home of a delightful bunch of miscreants such as Crunt, Crust, Pain Teens, …And You Wil Know Us By The Trail Of the Dead and this bunch of acid drenched punks, Ed Hall. I actually forgot that I owned this until I did a bit of a trawl through my CD’s over the weekend and suffice to say, I had not played it in years. To my rapidly fading hearing Ed Hall sound to me like Primus combined with the Butthole Surfers with a liberal dose of Jesus Lizard. Gloryhole was the third record they released and probably the first great record they produced. The other Ed Hall record I’ve heard is worthwhile tracking down is Motherscratcher and if I offload some stuff on ebay then I might just pick it up. The thing about Ed Hall is that their sense of humour sometimes disguised the fact that they could really play (check out the video at the end).
I actually remember buying Gloryhole in a record store in Canberra when I was visiting my sister around the time it was released. I remember the press at the time was pretty indifferent to Ed Hall and the other Trance Syndicate bands. I suppose it was the era of Sonic Youth, Nirvana and the mainstreaming of alternative music and bands such as Ed Hall were perhaps a little too weird even for a world that allowed the Melvins to be signed to a major label. It is great stuff and it has me all nostlgic to see what else I can uncover in my CD stash. I’m pretty sure I still have that Crunt record and an awful record by Crust. I think the Pain Teens record is long gone but Trail of the Dead’s fantastic debut is till floating around somewhere. Sadly Gloryhole is out of print (Trance Syndicate folded in 1999) but second hand copies turn up on ebay and amazon pretty regularly.
Live in 1992
Ducks Battle Satan 