Supply and demand, my ass! Where’s my fucking 30th anniversary coffee table book and expanded 180-gram vinyl reissue with download code and hand-woven T-shirt for Pussy Galore’s Exile on Main St.? It is the jewel of their catalog, you monsters! PledgeMusic and Kickstarter, j’accuse!

The NYC scum rock quintet issued their Exile on a limited run of 550 cassettes in 1986. If memory serves, it had something to do with Sonic Youth’s frequently repeated threat that they were going to cover all of the Beatles’ White Album, which they never (really) made good.
 

 
But Pussy Galore “walked the walk.” Listen. To readers familiar with the original 1972 double album, it might sound as if England’s newest hit makers, the Rolling Stones, have caught the plague. And isn’t it about time they did? A few buboes in the groin and armpits might put the Glimmer Twins back in touch with those old country blues. On the other hand, Pussy Galore fans who haven’t heard the ‘86 Exile already will likely be surprised how faithfully Spencer, Cafritz, Hagerty, Martinez and Bert try to play these eighteen songs. The band gathers a terrible momentum over the tape’s 55 minutes, and some of the tunes are even recognizable.

Discogs presently has just one of these tapes for sale at $150. Alternatively, Jon Spencer is selling a “lame bootleg CD” for $20, while we offer it at a deep discount of $0 below.

It’s NSFW unless your boss is cool with Julia Cafritz hating everyone’s fucking guts.
 

 
In a just world, Floyd Vivino would be a very famous man. He was the titular “uncle” of New Jersey’s Uncle Floyd Show, a cheap and brilliant kid’s show parody that aired for over 20 years starting in 1974—beating Pee-wee Herman to the punch by a pretty good length—and was even syndicated nationally for a hot minute in the early ‘80s.

Vivino’s show was known for chaos, unpredictability, puppets, and completely weird musical guests. The timing of his initial appearance and the gonzo nature of his act won him some fans in the nascent punk scene, and so he was championed by the likes of The Ramones and even David Bowie (who paid tribute in song in 2002), and welcomed guests like David Johansen, the Misfits, Smithereens, even Tiny Tim.

Also, Pussy Galore. Seriously. Pigfuck’s demented champions of classic-rock-as-corrosive-scum-noise appeared on The Uncle Floyd Show, in what must have been 1987 if the Pussy Gold 5000 EP Floyd plugs was a new release at the time, which seems likely, as that record contains the song they “perform” here. So enjoy a pre-respectable Jon Spencer, not even trying to pretend like he gives a shit about lip-synching in this gloriously shambolic farce.
 

 
Many thanks to Gerard Cosloy for this find.

 
When I mentally tally up all the shows I’ve seen in my lifetime, I think the band I’ve seen the most times is/was Pussy Galore. I must have seen them playing around New York City anywhere up to twenty times in the 80s, including once in what seemed like a squat in the East Village (with Richard Kern’s band, The Blacksnakes) where everyone was given a tab of acid when they walked in with the admission fee. I confess to taking mine (The handbill, below).
 

 
Pussy Galore were the band with the heaviest GROOVE I’d ever experienced, an almighty LOUD GROOVE, that moved entire audiences as one piece. They were what I’d call a body band. You really felt them in your gut. Their shows were normally so loud that you were helpless to resist that fucking insane GROOVE. You and everyone else in the room. The drum kit was embellished with a gas tank and trash cans. It was quite a yowling racket they made.

But Pussy Galore never got even close to capturing their live sound on record. It was always a tinny approximation of what their live shows sounded like and their albums were annoyingly low-fi and deliberately annoying at that. Nihilistic ear bleeders, their albums were. I could never play their records. But live it was a totally different story. They almost bordered on funky live!

The Xtrmntr blog has a neat Pussy Galore rarity and that is the cassette only ironic cover version they made in 1986 of every song on Exile on Main St., with just 550 copies produced. I bought mine at the legendary East Village fanzine store See Hear (I lived down the block and stopped in there frequently, almost on a daily basis, for years. I’d often see Thurston Moore who seemed to show up there as much as I did). Apparently Pussy Galore got a cease and desist letter from the Stones’ lawyers and it became an instant collector’s item. Now, of course, in this age of consumer enlightenment, you can download it all over the Internet.
 

 
Below, the “Maximum Penetration,” a Pussy Galore video compilation that came out in 1987. I always thought this was better than any of their albums.

1. Pig Sweat 2. White Noise 3. Just Wanna Die 4. Nothing Can Bring Me Down 5. Biker Rock Loser 6. Constant Pain 7. Rope Legend 8. Pussy Stomp 9. NYC: 1999! 10. Cunt Tease 11. When I Get Off 12. Get Out 13. Pretty Fuck Look 14. Trash Can 15. Die Bitch 16. Spin Out 17. Kill Yourself 18. No Count 19. Fuck You, Man 20. Alright [Cut]

Jon Spencer (guitar, vocals); Julie Cafritz (guitar, vocals); Kurt Wolf (guitar); Neil Hagerty (guitar); Bob Bert (drums)—you’ll notice that there was no bass player. Pussy Galore were a distinctly trebley band