Wednesday, September 24, 2008

THE WIPERS

THE EARLY WIPERS RECORDS WERE THE BEST. THEY WERE SO STRIPPED DOWN DARK AND IN YOUR FACE . AFTER OVER THE EDGE THEY GET A LITTLE SHAKY FOR MY TASTE . MY COPY OF THIS IS ON CLEAR VINYL . IVE SEEN IT ON BLACK TOO . IS THIS REAL ALSO COMES IN CLEAR AND BLACK . THIS INFO COME FROM WIKIPEDIA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wipers THE WIPERS OFFICIAL WEBSITE IS http://www.zenorecords.com/ The Wipers were a punk rock group formed in Portland, Oregon in 1977 by guitarist Greg Sage, drummer Sam Henry and bassist Dave Koupal. The Wipers were one of the earliest American purveyors of the genre, and the group's tight song structure and use of heavy distortion has been hailed as extremely influential by numerous critics and musicians including Nirvana who covered many of their songs.
The idea behind the Wipers started off as only a recording project. The plan was to record 15 LPs in 10 years without touring or promotion of any type. Sage's thoughts were that the mystique built from the lack of playing the traditional rock & roll promotion game would make people listen to their recordings much deeper with only their imagination to go by. He thought it would be easy to avoid press, shows, pictures, interviews. He looked at music as art rather than entertainment; with that concept in mind he thought music was personal to the listener rather than a commodity.
"I think I got that concept early on as a kid. I was very lucky to have my own professional record cutting lathe when I was in 7th grade due to my father being involved in the broadcast industry. I would cut records for friends at school of songs off the radio and learned the art of record making long before learning to play music. I would spend countless hours studying the grooves I would cut under the microscope that was attached to the lathe and loved the way music looked, moved and modulated within the thin walls. I might have spent too much time studying music through a microscope because it gave me a completely different outlook on what music is and a totally opposite understanding of it as well. There was something very magical and private when I zoomed into the magnified and secret world of sound in motion. I got to the point that I needed to create and paint my own sounds and colors into the walls of these grooves."[1]
Greg Sage's first choice of instrument was bass guitar, because of the low tones that made larger grooves in the vinyl records due to slower modulations. Unfortunately, basses were harder find and much more expensive when Sage was in grade school, so he had to go with guitar instead. After several years of playing and recording guitar he felt he wanted to do something different in music, and being labeled as a band seemed to be the first tradition and standard he should try to avoid. He wanted to make his own recordings, manufacture and run his own label himself without anyone else's financing to keep it as pure and unfiltered as possible. In fact, in 1979, Sage approached several young Portland punk bands and asked them to record singles for his new Trap label. Some of those early bands were The Stiphnoyds, The Neo Boys and Sado Nation. Sage later re-released some of that material on a compilation record entitled The History Of Portland Punk.
It was soon found out that it was almost impossible to fulfill this idea: most labels did not want to accept this kind of a game as music was, first of all, business to them. Being such an independent artist was an oddity. Sage says he learned that it is almost impossible to be a true artist in the sense of the meaning he started off with and that survival was to learn to compromise. That was the reason why Sage wanted The Circle album to be the last The Wipers album.
In spite of original idea The Wipers used to play live shows and even released a live album, called Wipers Live
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1. ALIEN BOY
2. IMAGE OF MAN
3. TELEPATHIC LOVE
4. VOICES IN THE RAIN
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PARK AVE. RECORDS 1980
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