RhoDeo 1412 Aetix

Hello, more news from Farcebook today , after gobbling up the popular What's App earlier now his greedyness considered buying the popular Oculus Rift virtual reality platform. The company, who in 2012 was boosted by 2 million Kickstarter funds, is now in the billionaire hands of Marc Zuckerberg "After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home, The future is coming and we have a chance to build it together. I can't wait to start working with the whole team at Oculus to bring this future to the world, and to unlock new worlds for all of us." (for the right price that is). The technology, which features a head-mounted display and motion-tracking sensors, caught the attention of John Carmack, the co-creator of the Doom video game series who evangelised the concept to the rest of the games industry. More than 60,000 developer versions of the headset have been sold and dozens of games already support the technology. The device is not expected to be available to the public until early 2015.

The idea behind today's band started as only a recording project. The plan was to record 15 LPs in 10 years without touring or promotion. Main man Sage thought that the mystique built from the lack of playing traditional rock 'n' roll 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 and interviews. He looked at music as art rather than entertainment; he thought music was personal to the listener rather than a commodity. A slower, prettier, spacier, moodier Sage emerges here, and undertones produced by his magical playing separate him from all previously mining this field. The more deliberate pace gives Sage's virtuoso guitar skills even more opportunity to bob and weave, stab and stun, float and tickle, tease and torment. As usual, words are kept to the minimum, to-the-point ideas brought home by evocative textures, singular guitar-lead style, and that spooky, chagrined, warning voice. ....N'Joy

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Misunderstood, mistreated, underrated, and/or just plain unknown, Greg Sage should be mentioned in the first breaths about trailblazing guitarists and U.S. independent music of the '80s and '90s. Since forming his band, Wipers, in Portland, OR, in the late '70s, Sage has been put through the ringer more than enough to justify his hermetic operating methods and attitude. While most of his devout fans consider it a travesty that his name isn't as known as a contemporary like Bob Mould or even an unabashed fan-boy turned legend like Kurt Cobain, Sage would likely retort that it's not for the notoriety that he began making music. Unlike most other musicians who gain inspiration and motivation from watching their favorite stars revel in popularity and idol worship, Sage's inspiration stemmed more from the joy he got from cutting records on his own lathe. He has been more than content to remain in the underground, retaining optimum control over his own career while lending production help and support to younger bands that look to him for his guidance. Throughout his lengthy and prolific career, he has downplayed or shunned any attention or recognition given to him, preferring to let the music speak for itself.

Initialized with the intent of being a recording project and not a band in the truest sense, Sage formed Wipers in 1977 with drummer Sam Henry and bassist Doug Koupal. Sage's original goal was to release 15 records in ten years, free of traditional band aspects like touring and photo shoots. However, he found out early on that being involved with independent labels involved plenty of compromise -- and that independent labels took a great deal of independence away from him, rather than empowering him.

After a debut 7" on Sage's Trap label (an outlet that Sage also used to release a pair of Portland scene compilations), Wipers recorded Is This Real? on a four-track recorder (free of overdubs) in their rehearsal space. Park Avenue Records was willing to release it, but they insisted that Sage and company re-record everything in a professional studio. Despite the relatively polished outcome, Is This Real? remained the group's rawest and most direct outing. It was full of Sage's raging but agile guitars and what would become his trademark songwriting style, dealing with extreme isolation, confusion, and frustration with an agitated sense of melody. 14 years after its release, Sub Pop picked up the record and reissued it without any involvement from Sage.

Prior to the recording of the group's finest moment, 1981's Youth of America, Henry left to join Napalm Beach. Koupal stayed on long enough to play on a couple of the album's songs but left the band to move to Ohio; Brad Davidson moved in to play bass and Brad Naish took over on drums. Having been unimpressed by the professional studio experience, Sage took it upon himself to record and engineer everything by himself. The move paid off, resulting in a furiously spirited but brief LP full of extended passages that allowed Sage to flex his astounding skills on guitar without sounding like a showoff.

For 1982's excellent Over the Edge, the structures of the songs tightened, the pop sensibility hit full stride. As a result, "Romeo" and "Over the Edge" each sustained a fair amount of radio play in the U.S., thanks to a few stations that were developing play lists that would later be identified as alternative or modern rock. Another factor in Wipers' somewhat increased exposure had to do with the better distribution of their new label, Restless. Before Over the Edge's release, Sage fell out with Park Avenue on a number of unresolved issues. The next studio record, Land of the Lost, didn't appear until 1986. During the lull between studio time, the band toured, Sage released his first solo album (1985's hushed Straight Ahead), and the band released a self-titled live album. Naish left the group in 1985 and was replaced by Steve Plouf. Follow Blind came out in 1987 and The Circle followed in 1988. Aside from some slight production nuances and the occasional dabbling with stylistic curveballs, the three studio albums between 1986 and 1988 more or less swam in the wake of the first three but are far from embarrassments.

A 1989 tour was accompanied with an announcement from Sage that Wipers would be ending. The end result of mounting frustrations with the independent music business and the fact that the band had lost the lease on a studio space they had devoted three years to developing, Sage packed up and headed for Phoenix to remain close to his mother. He left a town that he couldn't get arrested in, let alone reviewed. Plouf came along to Arizona (Davidson married, moved to London, and sporadically played with the Jesus & Mary Chain), and Sage built a fully operational studio in his new hideout. He recorded a second solo record, Sacrifice (For Love), and released it in 1991.

Meanwhile, several alternative rockers became vocal about their admiration for Sage. The most notable was Kurt Cobain, whose band Nirvana covered Wipers songs and asked Sage to open for them on tours. Never wanting to be opportunistic and never wanting to draw attention to himself, Sage politely turned down the offers. Sage would also reason that the timing was never right, as he and Plouf had trouble securing a bassist who would be willing to learn over 100 songs and tour unglamorously to little fanfare. Sage himself was never a fan of touring; trudging through the States to promote records had been nothing but one nightmare after another, he never got a thrill from the attention that comes with being a frontman, and only a couple towns -- specifically Boston and Chicago -- were regularly supportive. Wipers enjoyed most of their touring success in Europe, where they were treated with much more respect and filled theaters holding a couple thousand fans.

With a 1993 tribute record called Fourteen Songs for Greg Sage & the Wipers floating around, the Sup Pop reissue of the first record, and the attendant exposure gained from them, Sage effectively squashed any steam his "career" was gaining by releasing Silver Sail in 1995, a Wipers record that hardly resembled the storming fury that made his back catalog suddenly revered. And then, once the attention waned, Sage and Plouf returned to their '80s aggression with 1996's The Herd. Three years later, the duo unleashed Power in One on Sage's new Zeno label. In 2001, Sage used his own label to release a three-for-one package of Wipers' first three albums. Remastered with plenty of bonus tracks, it's probably one of the most unselfish moves committed by a musician. Electric Medicine, Sage's third solo record, came in 2002.

Influence and legacy

Sage later remarked on their initial reception: "We weren’t even really a punk band. See, we were even farther out in left field than the punk movement because we didn’t even wish to be classified, and that was kind of a new territory. ... When we put out Is This Real? … it definitely did not fit in; none of our records did. Then nine, ten years later people are saying: 'Yeah, it’s the punk classic of the ’80s.'" Wipers became better known after the wildly popular grunge band Nirvana covered two songs from Is This Real?, "D-7" and "Return of the Rat". Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain spoke of being heavily influenced by the band. The Wipers were a major influence on the grunge music scene in general, with bands such as The Melvins, Mudhoney, and Dinosaur Jr. citing them. Wipers albums like Is This Real? and Over the Edge are now widely considered to be among the greatest and most influential punk albums of all time.

In 1992, a tribute album Eight Songs for Greg Sage and the Wipers was released by the Tim/Kerr label on four colored 7-inch records, featuring Wipers songs performed by Nirvana, Hole, Napalm Beach, M99, The Dharma Bums, Crackerbash, Poison Idea, and The Whirlees. The CD release of the tribute album was called Fourteen Songs for Greg Sage and the Wipers, and expanded to include covers by Hazel, Calamity Jane, Saliva Tree, Honey, Nation of Ulysses, and Thurston Moore-Keith Nealy.

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Land of the Lost is an album by the Wipers, released by Restless/Enigma in 1986 on LP, CD and cassette. The record remains highly sought after and collectable. This is a great album. It doesn't have the cohesiveness or distinct identity that the previous three Wipers albums had, such as Is This Real?'s punk-inspired new wave, or Youth of America's perfect bridge of punk rock and post-punk or even Over the Edge's raw energy and killer riffs, but it's full of tight punk rock songs thanks to Greg Sage's amazing ability to write melodic, catchy guitar lines as if he were born to do so.
This is yet another truly great album from the Wipers. What this sounds like is some classic American gritty Garage rock, ala The Stooges circa Raw Power. And well...if you know how I feel about Raw Power you should know that I also didn't mind this simplification of sound! Greg Sage is too damn good with his crunchy fuzzy guitar playing and his unique sense of desperate sounding and casually harrowing melodies to NEED anything more than a basic Garage sound to kick ass after all, and that isn't to say this is crappily produced either because you'd be wrong. In fact for a garage album the production is nearly perfect, it's dirty enough, and clean enough.

Wipers - Land Of The Lost  (flac 236mb)

01 Just A Dream Away 3:13
02 Way Of Love 2:08
03 Let Me Know 3:00
04 Fair Weather Friends 3:13
05 Land Of The Lost 4:44
06 Nothing Left To Lose 4:47
07 The Search 4:12
08 Different Ways 4:30
09 Just Say 3:36

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The Wipers' 1987 LP found them heading in an even more moody, melancholic direction than before, and indeed, the first four tracks on this album are haunting, atmospheric masterpieces. Dark and gloomy and loaded with Greg Sage's unmistakable guitar tone and trademark soloing style, these songs are perfect for listening to while meditating or going on late-night walks. Beautiful. Unfortunately, after "The Chill Remains", the record takes a turn for the worse, and tracks five through eleven mostly consist of less exciting, more generic rock-oriented tunes. Some of these songs are incredible and absolutely up to the Wipers standard ("Losers Town", "Don't Belong To You" and "Against The Wall" come to mind immediately), but for the most part these songs lack the originality and energy that made the previous Wipers records so damn good. On top of that, the echoey, reverby production that worked so perfectly for those first four tracks isn't at all appropriate for the rest of the record and as a result, most of it just sounds muddy and thin. Don't get me wrong though, this is definitely not a "bad" album. It is a Wipers record, which pretty much automatically guarantees quality, but after four perfect records in a row, I can't help but be slightly disappointed while listening to it. It's definitely worth picking up for the better tracks, but Greg Sage's music wouldn't live up to its full potential again until his second solo album. - See more at: http://www.ssmt-reviews.com/artist/wipers.html#sthash.8Gu0Yro1.dpuf

Wipers - Follow Blind  (flac 195mb)

01 Follow Blind 3:37
02 Someplace Else 2:51
03 Any Time You Find 4:28
04 The Chill Remains 3:30
05 Let It Slide 2:32
06 Against The Wall 3:07
07 No Doubt About It 2:31
08 Don't Belong To You 2:26
09 Losers Town 3:00
10 Coming Down 2:12
11 Next Time 3:14

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At the time of its release, The Circle was meant to be the final Wipers album and Greg Sage had all the intentions of doing some solo work. As it turned out, The Circle represented the last album before a five year hiatus in Wipers releases. For the most part this album is workmanship and steady, but not really offering a whole lot for anyone but the dedicated Wipers fan. The Circle certainly isn't a bad record but at the same time, it does lack a lot of spark of earlier releases as well as later ones. But perhaps that was the reason Greg Sage intended to disband after this record. Everything here has his signature songwriting style and sound but somehow lacks the chemistry and magic of other albums. But on a plus side, the final three songs on the album are slower, much more moody pieces that foreshadow where Sage would go on his 1989 solo release as well as a far reaching hint at the future. Given all that, The Circle is required for anyone who fully digs the Wipers, but would be the last studio album I'd recommend as a first dive into their music.

Wipers - The Circle  (flac 207mb)

01 I Want A Way 2:30
02 Time Marches On 2:46
03 All The Same 3:34
04 True Believer 3:52
05 Good Thing 2:25
06 Make Or Break 3:38
07 The Circle 4:30
08 Goodbye Again 3:16
09 Be There 2:45
10 Blue & Red 3:07

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The Wipers have a long-standing reputation as sounding like "Jimi Hendrix fronting a garage band," and while Greg Sage's nimble fretwork might draw comparisons to Hendrix, The Wipers prove on this disc that they're far more proficient than any garage band. The pulsating rhythm section manages to sound vibrant but subdued, allowing Sage's squelching guitar noise to dominate the palette. Unlike other guitar luminaries whose popularity is restrained to a specific audience, Sage's fretboard ramblings made him the favorite guitar hero of the late-'80s underground rock scene. From the deadly riff of "Taking Too Long" to the textured frustration of "Way of Love" to the ringing desire of "Just a Dream Away," Sage proves he is both a versatile and unique talent. Not just among the best of the U.S. post-punk wave, but an enormously influential act that made an indelible mark on styles as disparate as the noise rock of Sonic Youth and Pavement's slacker indie pop.

Wipers - The Best Of Wipers And Greg Sage  (flac 301mb)

01 Nothing Left To Lose 4:47
02 Way Of Love 2:08
03 Some Place Else 2:50
04 The Chill Remains 3:27
05 Soul's Tongue 2:45
06 Blue Cowboy 3:10
07 Taking Too Long 3:05
08 The Circle 4:30
09 Romeo 3:55
10 Messenger 1:54
11 Better Off Dead 2:10
12 No Solution 2:26
13 My Vengeance 2:40
14 Just A Dream Away 3:14
15 Different Ways 4:29
16 Losers Town 2:57

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