SNAKEFINGER “The Spot” b/w “Smelly Tongues” (Ralph Records RR7805, 1978)
“BUY OR DIE!!” screamed the 16th-of-a-page, black & white ad from the back pages of my beloved new issue of Crawdaddy. Or was it Creem? Circus? Trouser Press! Well who knows…time wipes that stuff out of your memory. I do remember, after devouring a 3-page Burroughs interview, clipping the little coupon and sending a crisp dollar bill to Ralph Records in San Francisco. For what exactly, I didn’t know. But it arrived a few weeks later in a thick cardboard sleeve: Buy Or Die #1 was Ralph’s first 4-song sampler, and it was pants-shittingly good. But that’s a story for another time, when I grab it randomly from the big red cabinet. In the meantime…