***"When I was 15, I used to sneak in to a dive called W.C. Don's in Jackson, Miss., to see the monthly hardcore shows that seemed to come around at that point. Inevitably, Men with No IQ's would be opening the show. They were three African-American guys who looked about as out of place as anyone ever could. The bass player Booger Man White and the drummer Steve Harris [no relation to the bass player from Maiden] were so huge that they would literally dwarf their tiny pawn shop instruments. Sylvester was the hot shot of the band, and he had like 10 Peavey practice amps, all stacked up on one another. Sylvester would always play with his shirt off while the other two guys wore custom 'MNI' shirts and baseball caps that were most likely made at one of those iron-on shops in the Jackson Mall. THEY WERE AWESOME. I regret to say that I didn't appreciate them nearly enough at the time, but they would always SLAY." —Anonymous fan on MySpace, via WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. Edition of 150 copies. Recorded in 1987 and originally released on a long lost, barely existed demo tape.
LP $31.50
10/24/2025
***"44 actual years into MASTERS OF THE OBVIOUS’ career and nuthin’s somehow still panning out nuggets by the barrel-full. This latest raid on Caporino’s Vault comes in the form of TERRAMOTO, another 20-sumthin’-song smattering of Savage Middle Aged M.O.T.O. chestnuts. Suck it, Geraldo!As with the recent excavation Wall of Phlegm, this collection is sourced from Paul Caporino’s late 20th century bedroom recordings—a notorious body of work— previously shared via short-run cassettes. Replete with curiously manipulated pitching, precarious guitar-mangling, primitive rhythm box electro-drumming and immensely pleasing, perfectly greased songcraft. It’s precisely this fuzzy racket that has turned hundreds into devout M.O.T.O. zombies the world over… And we hereby demand more!Take any 90-second moment from TERRAMOTO—might we suggest 'We Are the Rats', 'Deliver Deliver Deliver', 'Overtime Express' (INSANE) or the always astonishing 'Catamaran'—and ingest the endlessly endearing and unduplicable punky hiss. Every shard’s a diamond of D.I.Y. Rock’n’Roll… serious enough for the know-it-all collector compilations of the future, but still wild enough to have you pouring a brew down someone’s scalp. Purchase required!That old guy Einstein once said something like 'The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.' He never heard M.O.T.O."—Mitch Cardwell
LP $31.50
10/17/2025
***"Relying exclusively on his own cunning and brawn, Maestro Paul Caporino has led Masters Of The Obvious for a hair over 40 years now. While the full-band M.O.T.O. brand has cemented a formidable rep in the last two decades, well-versed fans yearn for the primitive sound of Paul’s bedroom hit-clinic cassettes. Those collections so eloquently kissed with hiss, containing bundles of hooks often too shocking for disc enshrinement. Few, if any, devotees soak themselves in M.O.T.O. minutia on the level of nuthin’s chairperson, so Wall Of Phlegm arrives guaranteed to please— the fruit of serious deliberation and perspiration, yet liable to cause the same upon consumption. How’d it even happen in the first place and why are we only hearing it now? The mystery of this mastery remains secret, but we can verify that the source material came to life in the late 1990s, with Caporino performing all racket with the requisite tossed-off genius that’s wrecked and inspired so many chasers of the crown. Primo Caporino, if you will. There are 21 or 22 tunes dripping down this Wall Of Phlegm and they’re all liable to drop jaws, even if you’ve been lucky enough to cruise a few of ‘em in prior iterations. Only a couple crack 2 minutes, but please don’t hold that against nuthin’ OR Paul…they tried. Prepare to span the globe again like we did last summer 2004, and 1997. M.O.T.O. is risen!"—Mitch Cardwell
LP $22.85
12/01/2023