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GENERAL INFO

Genre: Hardcore/Punk
Label: City Slang
Date: October 28, 1997

Musicians:
Courtney Love - vocals, guitars
Eric Erlandson - guitars
Jill Emery - bass
Kristen Pfaff - bass, piano, backup vocals
Leslie Hardy - bass
Melissa Auf Der Maur - bass, backup vocals
Carolyn Rue - drums
Patty Schemel - drums

The explosive anthology of the (w)hole story. Featuring rare single tracks, previously unreleased outtakes, high quality live recordings, 3 unrel. acoustic performances assembled by Eric Erlandson & Courtney Love
All songs by Hole (Bad Sister Music BMI or Mother May I Music BMI) except */**
Produced by Eric Erlandson
Mastered by Steven Marcussen at Precision Mastering, Los Angeles
Art Direction by Courtney Love and Joe Mama-Nitzberg
Design by Catherine Lorenz
Album coordinated by Brian Celler
Cover photo by Alex Slade

*"He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" written by Gary Goffin and Carole King
Published by Screen Gems BMI / EMI Music Publishing BMI

**"Season Of The Witch" written by Donovan Leitch
Published by Peer Music BMI / Donovan Music BMI

First band photo by Vickie Berndt
(left to right): Caroline Rue, Jill Emery, Eric Erlandson, Courtney Love

Second band photo by Mark Selinger
(left to right): Eric Erlandson, Patty Schemel, Kristen Pfaff, Courtney Love

Third band photo by Stephane Sednaoui
(left to right): Melissa Auf der Maur, Eric Erlandson, Courtney Love, Patty Schemel

Tracks 1 - 3
produced by Hole
recorded at Ruby's Rising Star, March 1990
courtesy of Sympathy for the Record Industry

Tracks 4, 5
produced by Hole
recorded by Michael James at RadioTokyo, LA, Nov 1990
remixed by Barry Goldberg with Eric Erlandson at Ocean Way, Los Angeles, May 1997
courtesy of Sub Pop Records
(p) 1990 Sub Pop Records. Issued under license from Sub Pop to City Slang

Tracks 6, 7
produced by Hole
recorded by Jack Endino at Word of Mouth, Seattle, winter 1992

Track 8
recorded by Craig Montgomery ar Ariola Ltda BMG, Rio de Janeiro, January 1993
courtesy of Geffen Records

Track 9
produced and engineered by Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade
recorded at Triclops Studios, Atlanta, September 1993
courtesy of Geffen Records

Track 10 - 12
produced by Hal Wilner
recorded by Pat McCarthy for MTV Unplugged at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, February 1995
Courtesy of MTV and Geffen Records
8p)1995 MTV Networks. All Rights Reserved.
MTV, MUSIC TELEVISION, MTV Unplugged and all related titles, characters and logos are trademarks owned by MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International Inc.

Track 13
recorded live by Miti in the BBC mobile truck at Brixton Academy, London, May 1995
mixed by Gary Goldberg with Eric Erlandson at Conway Studios, Los Angeles, May 1997

Track 14
recorded live by Miti in the BBC mobile truck at the Reading Festival, Reading, August 1995
mixed by Gary Goldberg with Eric Erlandson at Conway Studios, Los Angeles, May 1997



Dedicated to the memory of Kristen Pfaff and Kurt Cobain



Liner notes:
My Body, The Hand Grenade

"There's a part of me that want's to have a grindcore band and another that wants to have a Raspberries-type pop band."
Courtney Love 1991

So, what exactly is the purpose of an album that is neither a Greatest Hits package, nor a Greatest Misses collection, nor even a compilation of 'Totally Bonkers Volume 21' techno tracks? Well, in HOLE's case it's fairly obvious. MY BODY, THE HAND GRENADE stands as a document, an anthology of sorts, of a band that rocketed from a tiny LA basement studio into alternative rock superstardom. In doing so, they went through such wild times and changes that the shift from the legendary first, fiercely intense singles to the late, beautifully sculptured acoustic performances for MTV's Unplugged was almost too fast to follow.

Maybe there should have been another album between the debut platter 'Pretty On The Inside' and the second coming 'Live Through This'. If that's so, this disc could be seen as the missing link. But it's more than that. Here is the definitive opportunity to explore the many different aspects of one of the world's most interesting and original rock bands in less than one hour.

MY BODY, THE HAND GRENADE offers the earliest brutal noise work-outs as well as the first steps towards more accomplished writing and continues on to the first songsmithery of the 'Live Through This' era.

The album kicks off with Turpentine, the very first HOLE recording ever, which has until now never been released. The first two hard to find singles, Retard Girl and Dicknail, are also included with attendant B-sides. Gaining wild press acclaim, notably in the UK, it was nothing compared to the praise for 1991's Pretty On The Inside, probably that year's most important album. To quote one of our press releases, this was "where the extremes of abjection, obsession, trauma, atrocity and, most importantly, humanity collide." Certainly The New York Times agreed, making it their Album Of The Year, whilst others wrote of it being "the very best bit of fucked up rock 'n' roll I've heard all year" (Sharon O'Connell in Melody Maker, Sept. '91) and "...in the grand tradition of Patti Smith's 'Horses' and The Ramones, Television and New York Dolls' debut discs, Pretty On The Inside is in a class of its own." (Edwin Pouncey in NME, Sept. '91)

World-wide touring, a marriage and a maternity break followed, but the release of the now deleted single Beautiful Son, and it's haunting flipside 20 Years In The Dakota, focused attention on the music once more. Both tracks are found here in remixed and remastered versions, and highlight the evolution of Courtney and Eric's songwriting in just two years, from some of the scariest, most painful three chord cacophonies ever written to the sophisticated, accomplished and more dynamic sounds that led to 'Live Through This'.

Since everybody has that record, we have consciously decided to leave any original album tracks off this. Instead there's the early demo version of Miss World, a beautiful live version of Asking For It, and the MTV Unplugged version of Softer, Softest. There's also their intense and almost tribal live rendition of Drown Soda, a song which dates back to 1991, but appears here in a recording from 1995.

The album spans HOLE's entire recording career, from their earliest and very first recordings in the past punky days of 1990 Los Angeles to their last spectacular and fiercely different live shows of a post grunge 1995, when both the face of music and HOLE themselves had changed, singer Courtney Love being instrumental in both transformations. MY BODY, THE HAND GRENADE comes at a time when HOLE are in the middle of recording their next proper studio album, and stands as both a monument to the band, and as a signal of the end of one era and the beginning of another in their tumultuous history. Alternatively, as a HOLE shirt once read: "Use Once and Destroy!"

In November 1993, after having finished Live Through This Eric Erlandson proclaimed that, "It's easy when the music is more in your face and aggressive, but... now we've made a pop record..." MY BODY, THE HAND GRENADE documents this journey, and far, far more.

C.E., City Slang Records


Said about the artwork/title:
Question: "The artwork shows a dress you wore in the early Nineties as a sort of museum piece. Is it really in a museum?"
Courtney: "The dress is still very current. People still design off that silly dress. The truth is I used to wear those dresses more than slips, but those dresses never got as famous as slips and I wanted them to have their due."

Question: "The artwork also has a car wreck and a picture of Marie Antoinette. Why did you choose them?"
Courtney: "We actually show Anne Boleyn too. She was Henry VIII's wife who had her head chopped off. When I was little, I used to see these pictures of her with this necklace that had a B on it. I always had a fascination with ancient history, Roman especially, and early English, and I kept imaging her getting her head chopped off, for my whole life. Then, I told my friend Joe, who did the art. He always had an obsession with Marie Antoinette too. She was also decapitated. We also thought about Jayne Mansfield, just the idea of a woman having her mouth and eyes and ears taken away from her. And, hand grenades, the top comes off. You just pull out the pin and it explodes. So, if you take away someone's mouth and their eyes and their senses and their brain, they explode. I saw a grenade in my head, I saw taking out the clip, and then I thought of a human body and what happens if you take out the clip."

Question: "How did you choose the title?"
Courtney: "We were going to call it 'Use Once And Destroy", it was too much of a drug reference, too rock. But that was for a different record, one that never happened. I wanted to tell the truth of what this collection of songs really is and I just wrote it one day on a piece of paper. I was going through a lot of new Hollywood stuff about, all of a sudden, people caring what I looked like, more than ever in my life, and not being important to the film community, and that pissed me off. The truth is, I can go around and be a movie star all I want, but I'm kinda, like a punker. I just got pissed off and wrote it. It summed up the feeling of 'I'm going to explode!'


Additional info:
* Track 11, 'He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)', is a cover of a song by The Crystals.
* Track 12, 'Season Of The Witch', is a cover of a song by Donovan Leitch.



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RELEASED ON CITY SLANG:

Format: CD - Album
Length: ?
Country of origin: UK
Release date: October 28, 1997
Item number: EFA 04995-2

Tracklist:
1.   Turpentine
      previously unreleased - first recording ever
2.   Phonebill Song
3.   Retard Girl
4.   Burn Black
5.   Dicknail
6.   Beautiful Son
7.   20 Years In The Dakota
8.   Miss World
      previously unreleased - demo version
9.   Old Age
      Live Through This outtake
10. Softer, Softest
      from MTV's Unplugged
11. He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)*
      from MTV's Unplugged
12. Season Of The Witch**
      previously unreleased -
      from MTV's Unplugged
13. Drown Soda
      previously unreleased -live version
14. Asking For It
      previously unreleased - live version

Pictures:




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RELEASED ON CITY SLANG:

Format: 12" vinyl - LP Album
Colour: Black
Country of origin: UK?
Release date: 1997
Item number: EFA 04995-1

Tracklist:
Side 1:
1.    Turpentine
      previously unreleased - first recording ever
2.   Phonebill Song
3.   Retard Girl
4.   Burn Black
5.   Dicknail
6.   Beautiful Son
7.   20 Years In The Dakota
8.   Miss World
      previously unreleased - demo version
Side 2:
9.   Old Age
      Live Through This outtake
10. Softer, Softest
      from MTV's Unplugged
11. He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)*
      from MTV's Unplugged
12. Season Of The Witch**
      previously unreleased -
      from MTV's Unplugged
13. Drown Soda
      previously unreleased -live version
14. Asking For It
      previously unreleased - live version

Pictures:




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