Sympathy For The Record Industry, 1997

This EP/single was released in the US in September 1997. Again, I found this single in a Blockbuster Music store by pure chance, when I was originally looking for another CD for a friend. I actually bought my own copy at CD Now.
It consisted of 4 originally on vinyl only tracks that should please many long Hole fans. All 4 songs are pre-Pretty On The Inside tracks. And it shows. 3 of the songs are the whole Retard Girl EP, and the other is the first Hole recording ever, previously unreleased. This CD is a mini-collection of the early days of Hole. It leaves out the second Hole single, Dicknail, and the songs that were on it. If they had included those two songs, this "first session" would have been complete.

The packaging is unlike regular CDs. It has no copyright, just the Sympathy for The Record Industry logo on the back cover. The front cover is an old black and white picture of Hole's first lineup: Jill Emery, Caroline Rue, Eric Erlandson, and Courtney Love. On the back cover is the same, with Courtney's sloppy hand written tracklist and thank list in purple letters on a pink background. The inside booklet is quite thick. It contains of an early edited Hole interview, for the magazine, Flipside. Also, many color band pictures, all members in same uniform, and old promotional show posters made my Courtney Love. Many strange "poems" litter the booklet, such as "Bring us jewelry and interesting chemical weddings, she's covered it all, she's covered in warts. "

The songs are pure Hole obviously, regaining the "early Hole" sloppiness of their music when they first released an EP on vinyl. Courtney, at the time, wrote all the lyrics, whereas the rest of the band helped in the "process" of writing the music and putting it all together. The first three songs were results to a jam session the band had had until finally they added lyrics, organized a little, and they then released their first vinyl single.

Retard Girl-- The first track on the EP. Amazingly sloppy but good. In the booklet interview, Courtney Love seemed to notice that people thought the song was about some retarded girl, but it was really about Courtney and the feeling of alienation she felt as a child at a young age in a schoolyard. It's mostly about how the quietest, most tamest people get picked on. This song became a cult classic in Europe, the country that was Hole's biggest following in the early 1990s.

Phone Bill Song--2nd track, messed up and very loud. Same overdriven power chords over and over, until an occasional bridge pops in. This song is easily recognized by its spoken intro, "She's a bimbo playing on the damn phone." This track was also the 2nd track to the first Hole vinyl release, Retard Girl. Incredibly easy song to play, even I figured it out. Pretty brash song, but it was an early release so what do we expect?

Turpentine--This was the unreleased track that didn't end up on any early Hole releases on vinyl records. A great song, a big difference from most of the other songs on this EP, with verse-chorus-verse-bridge, etc. When I first heard this song on a bootleg, I thought that it was a live track, probably because of the guitars being played off the walls, as usual. This is not the kind of song you would expect from the Pretty On The Inside era of Hole's music.

Johnnie's In The Bathroom--This was the last track of this EP, and the Retard Girl EP. If you would classify it as a song at least. It sounds similar to "Sassy" and "Starbelly" on Hole's debut album. It starts out with Courtney reading her diary about wanting to be a model and calling her agent. The rest of it is guitars, mixed in with recorded tapes of people talking. It fades out with Courtney telling her diary that she has to go because, "Johnnie's in the bathroom and he's just incredible."

This CD can be purchased at CD Now.

Email: frankie_82@yahoo.com