ANOTHER BLOG TO COMM MIXED VINYL/CEE-DEE LISTENING ORGY!
(STAND BY FOR BORING OPENING RAMBLE-ON SCHPIEL): Sheesh, another jam-packed-with-excitement (hah!) week has gone by and I didn't even have the wherewithal/stamina to present one of my mid-week postings for your usual vulture-esque pickings. It's not like I'm surprised one bit...after all, where is the party? Let's face it, back in the mid-eighties when I was hopped up enough to release an ish of my own sainted crudzine at first on a bi-monthly schedule, then quarterly, then whenever..., there wasn't that much really going on that would light a fire under any true rock & roller. But there were enough new wonders and oldies waiting to be (re)discovered to warrant my own self-publishing efforts. And yeah, that is one of the reasons I started my own rag up inna first place, to accentuate the positive that was going on on both the current levels (worthwhile hardcore, sixties garage revival) as well as on the reissue circuit which the mainstream and even underground press was willfully ignoring. But as the old cliche goes "that was then...today with the last great attempt to move and shake rock & roll a good thirty years in the past (and add an extra decade on if you wanna know how long it's been since rock & roll was a viable catalyst with regards to teenbo life-forces) what else can I do but scrounge around looking for past accomplishments while seeking out the few remaining true believers that are amongst us! And you can betcha butt that I'm not quite as jazzed about the sorry state of affairs as they may be today as I was when I was a pimply upstart just DISCOVERING this stuff, but hey...even all these years later I gotta admit that I still care, and perhaps even moreso than your everyday Compassion Incorporated liberal out there bleeds heart over just about everyone and everything that certainly doesn't want to be "uplifted" by these upper-crust worldsavers in the first place!
But as they say, what else is old??? I remember twennysome years back when the excretalesque Chuck Eddy once made an oh-so-prissy point more akin to your average FM-bred dolt writing for the local college rag o' the time along the lines that "punk rock was a long time ago" (I believe in the course of an Angry Samoans article for the once-potent but long-castrated CREEM) as if he were tossing his socially-potent daggers at a good portion of his lumpen readership in a proud state of rock critic bully pulpit oneupmanship. Def. a slap inna face to a whole lotta hard-working, hard-living and fun-loving rock & rollers out there who were making their own reality for themselves just like punkers have done ever since the late-fifties for that matter, and although it can easily be said that what Chuckles had planned for punk's "replacement" wasn't that much better'n some old seventies jamz rehashed in new light metal foil, as time goes on I can agree with the famed ex-VILLAGE VOICE sage more and more. Or to rephrase it, all of that exciting, driving and pulse-speeding rock & roll that burst out of the garages of early-seventies Ameriga (and World) was "a long time ago" and frankly I ain't exactly gonna rest until over-the-mountain ME sees rock & roll as a force to once again reckon with, not this half-baked rapcrap or Patti Page for the oh-ohs music they call rock these days!
But enough of that. Rock & roll as we once knew and loved it sure ain't as potent as it once was, and we have those brainiacs like Eddy (and his sycophants) as well as a whole slew of Big City rock critics and tastemaker/powerbrokers to thank for that! But at least we can still find shards of the real stuff if we look hard enough, and I gotta say that thanks to the internet we can now, with only our own tastes and sense of rockism pride to guide us, locate loads of previously undiscovered bands that MATTER...and I don't mean stuff you sorta hafta bend your ears a little to appreciate, but HIGH ENERGY HEAD-THROBBING TOTAL ERUPTION MUSIC both old and new! And back inna eighties I thought these computers were strictly for nerds, but as I've since learned perhaps rock & roll couldn't survive without an instant networking of bands as well as a fandom to support them these days!
Here are just a few of the recordings that I have been spinning as of this past week, not only newies to my ears but past faves that have been a'moulderin in the grave a little too long if you ask me. But whadevva the case may be, I thought you'd like to have about as much fun readin' 'bout these platters of both the black and shiny variety as I had listeinin' to 'em and writin' 'em up. And true, there's not too much on the recently-released front 'cept for the Screamin' Mee-Mees platter I mentioned last time (Volcanic Tongue mega-order still held up way past its due date), but hopefully more ear treats from various sources will be headin' my way soon and perhaps for once I can keep up with the Jonezez and write about some items that are actually contempo to today's fast-paced world. But until then, just chomp on these chewies and don't complain about any laxative effect you might get!
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Various Artists-LIVE AT THE RAT 2-LP set (Rat)As faithful
BLACK TO COMM readers already know to the point of nausea, I am one of the few flakes on the sub-rock crit/fanzine/internet circuit that actually professes a strong liking for the oft-abused
LIVE AT CBGB'S two-record set that came out on Atlantic during the very underground-active summer of '76. Most rock snobs continue to dismiss those prime platters crammed with what I would call a decent cross-section of what was going on in Underground Ameriga at the time, but even thirtysome years later I'll come out
proudly and admit that I find groups like Manster with their strange mix of jazz fusion and underground credo (almost like MX-80's) and Sun's late-sixties heavy metal garage band redux a lot more exciting than the music being made by some of the more-plugged name groups on the New York Scene poised for stardom. And yeah, even at that early point in New York Rock time the likes of Blondie, the Ramones, Talking Heads and Television were certainly being groomed for bigger and better things, but frankly except for Television and the early Ramones I find very little of these acts' music
that engaging. And true, Talking Heads were an interesting post-Modern Lovers-esque band in their trio days, but I gotta admit that I haven't even listened to any of my tapes of those early gigs in over a quarter century! As for Blondie, they might have had some nice retro-surfy moments but I would hardly consider them a Music Machine for the seventies as Lester Bangs might have
hinted at in his
VOICE review. And as for those other new wave bigshots of the late-seventies/early-eighties, while a good portion of 'em were certainly miles ahead of a lotta the drekkier moments of seventies rock I'll bet the whole lot probably couldn't hold a candle to any of the Velvets-driven upstart bands that were coming outta the garages of not only New York and Jersey but Podunkville USA or even Boston for that matter, which is where this
RAT album comes in.
And although it was almost universally-panned for a variety of reasons, some perhaps actually
understandable,
LIVE AT CBGB'S was influential enough to have spawned at least two imitation double sets within a year of its release. One, recorded under the "auspices" of Kim Fowley and Rodney Bingenheimer at the Whisky-A-Go-Go in June of '77, never did get off the ground with only the Germs' set getting the official release after Darby Crashed himself into p-rock oblivion. It may have been all for the better (especially after reading Don Waller's cutting putdown of the proceedings entitled "Looking For a Hook" in
BACK DOOR MAN), because although
BDM faves the Zippers were slated to appear on this set who really would wanna dish out the precious dinero for a comp of quickies exploito punk bands with names like Boys in Bondage anyway? (And I should know, having been in the family car passing the ol' Whisk' on the way to Tower Records and seeing the marquee proudly proclaiming that very set!) Thankfully the Boston twofa
didn't get deep-sixed and this double-disc package recorded at the Rat (then beantown's #1 underground hangout with a history almost as interesting as those of the New York haunts) made it out, mainly because at the time the city had finally shaken off that "Boss-Town" hype saddled on it by MGM and was once again producing some pretty good rock & roll groups just as innovative (yet still steeped in a non-pretentiousness) as some of the New York offerings who were getting shoved aside in favor of some of the bigger names who were just
reeking pretention at that point. (Though maybe I am getting ahead of myself...Debbie Harry's pretentions didn't come to full flower until she lent her name to the early rap genrre while I gotta excuse myself for not catching onto David Byrne's artsiness until it was way too late!)
It's easy to see just how much this Rat album (as well as owner Jim Harold) owed to
LIVE AT CBGB'S as well as to Hilly Kristal, with an innersleeve layout very similar to the CB set and Hilly himself thanked in the credits. However, this Rat album did the CBGB offering one better with a more cohesive roster of groups and a general idea of where underground rock was heading at the time, from the proto-punk hardness of the earlier portion of the decade to a more scattershield variant of the familiar Stooge roots as the seventies eventually clocked over into the tired eighties. Not that the CBGB set didn't portray a good cross section of the same class of upstart rock band, but the energy level and general demeanor of
LIVE AT THE RAT was pretty spot-on as they say, with only occasional lulls in the overall
crunch of the thing. Otherwise this is high energy mid-seventies rock & roll the way I like it, even when the groups may be taking trips into familiar mid-seventies pop territory with garage crunchiness thanfully still in place.
LIVE AT THE RAT starts off with Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band, a bunch who were starting to acquire a following of sorts not only in Boston but in En Why See with their frequent appearances not only at CBGB but friendly rival Max's Kansas City during that Bicentennial year, and their song about the Rat functions almost the same way as Wayne County's "Max's Kansas City" did for that venerable dive. And although I have to be upfront and tell you that I never was what you would call a big follower of either he or the Boom Booms (though I must admit to liking his sixties group the Lost) I'm gonna stretch my neck out a bit and claim that "At the Rat" is perhaps the group's shining moment with the kinda hard-pounding thrust that made mid-seventies underground rock so appealing to more people than your average Big City Rock Critic would have wanted you to believe at the time. (Won't say the same thing about Alexander's "Kerouac" which, although still firmly rooted in what could be called a seventies Boston style, never impressed me as much either as a single side or done live here.)
Also popping up on
LIVE AT THE RAT are such Boston stalwarts as DMZ (sounding more mid-seventies Stoogerock punky than mid-sixties garage band!) and none other than
BTC all-time faves the Real Kids, a group that seems to have epitomised the entire Boston post-Velvet Underground/sixties influx scene more'n most shallow pretenders ever could.
The entire portion or at least a good hunk of the Kids' set was eventually released by Norton and you definitely should have that snuggled towards the front of your collection, but for those of you awaiting the latest care package from Billy 'n Miriam (see link at left, and they do take Paypal!) these snippets will do fine. And as far as other "big-names" on the Boston scene go, Thundertrain perhaps act as the same heavy metal counterpoint here as Sun did on the CBGB album with their all-out raunchers, and I gotta say that it was a shame that these guys never did make it big like a lotta lesser metallic names of the day. I'm sure you older goombahs remember just how
lame heavy metal got in the mid-seventies to the point where you coulda easily have said that the only real metal was being made on punk turf so-to-speak (MX-80, Von Lmo...)? Well, I'm
positive to the point of fanaticism that Thundertrain coulda easily mopped the stage with any of those Big Name FM-rock heavy metal bands they opened for, and still eat Ted Nugent for dessert! And stepping onto my soapbox once more, may I just state for the record if there is any real justice in a world where Thundertrain would have to be reduced to playing cheap gigs and opening slots while people would actually line up to see Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow???
The "also rans" on
LIVE AT THE RAT fare pretty snatly as well, even better than those flashes that wound up on the CBGB discs. The Third Rail were a pretty
tasty cross twixt the Velvet Underground and Blue Oyster Cult and their two tracks ("Rondy Rush", the same version to end up on their single a few years later and "Bad Ass Bruce") were solid hard-rockers that weren't quite metal but
still seemed to have the same stamina that coaxed some of the more open-minded metallic fans of the day over to the punk side of things. It's no wonder that these guys got a gig opening for Von Lmo at Max's Kansas City...after all, both acts seemed to play on the same hard-rock past for an underground present! The Infliktors had quite a rep as a solid hard punk rock band and their tracks here don't give us any cause for letdown. It's not difficult to see why Aerosmith's Steve Tyler would not only wanna produce 'em, but joined 'em live onstage for a spirited rendition of "Milk Cow Blues". Susan (maybe not, along with the Rail, deserving of the "also ran" category), were a good hard-rocking local pop/underground group with commerciality and an underlying intense streak, certainly nothing along the lines of fellow Bostonians the Cars as one rock critic mused. Their major-label offering from a few years later certainly toned down on the almost-New York hardness and tried remaking them into this year's model, but hey I still got a kick outta it so I won't complain. Sass, Mark Thor, the Boize and all the rest (were there any?) also manage to invoke everything from the Velvets to Stones to typical hard-pop, and although the results may vary I can't complain...it
all sounds better'n a lotta the same genre a good decade later after way too many people "discovered" this stuff and the music went from underground to punk to new wave to new music to some unspeakable horror that continues to get lumped under the dread "indie"/"alternative" label which this far down the line means nothing in the face of all of the musical atrocities it was supposed to
rebel against.
So (in all), what can I say?
LIVE AT THE RAT is a great slab detaining a good portion of what exactly was happening in mid-seventies Boston and although there are a number of conspicuous absentees (the Count and Atlantics amongst 'em) it still fills the proverbial bill at least as far as these bands wallowing somewhere twixt early-seventies underground garage bands and late-seventies punk accomplishment go. Not only that, but the thing is just begging for a reissue, either in vinyl or Cee-Dee format for that matter. Anyone out there wanna lose a whole slab of money for a good cause?
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Living Colour-LIVE FROM CBGB & OMFUG TUESDAY 12/19/89 CD (Epic)Speaking of CBGB and original music groups getting thrust into the bigtime from its stage, these guys were probably the last big name band to ooze outta the now-caved in club and make any sorta noticible splash on the rock world and frankly, I was glad to see it happen! Living Colour's success was a miracle especially in a late-eighties music scene which was certainly even more decayed than it might have been a decade before...after all, they were a band that came from nowhere albeit with a guitarist of some notoriety (you gotta remember that Vernon Reid was a member of early-eighties CBGB faves Ronald Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society), and what's best is that Living Colour didn't have to make any humongous concessions to the current sway of musical opinion to achieve such a lofty goal as international stardom! Not that they
weren't readymade for the late-eighties rock world which was pretty much destroyed beyond all repair, but their mix of heavy metal, jazz rock, punk and various black pop music forms made me think more of the mid-seventies CBGB scene than the late-eighties one. Bands like the Planets, Manster and even Rocket From The Tombs had more in common with Living Colour than the various featherweight metallic aggregates of the day, and although Living Colour was pretty much part and parcel to a scene that I wanted hardly anything to do with (I mean, what else could you say about a group whose first album cover looked more like a Fruitopia ad 'n anything?) I merely shrugged off the excess and enjoyed what I thought was a rather tasty debut by one of the few decent groups to have made it to mainstream status at the time.
Natch if my love for Living Colour didn't quite last until their second disc (after all, as I wrote at the time, any group who would even think of writing a "love song in the age of AIDS" was
asking me to hate them!), but it wasn't like I disliked Living Colour even as they were flailing through the deca-nineties rock putsch. Until this very day I gotta say that
some interest in Living Colour remains in my musical psyche of psyches which is why I bought this live Cee-Dee recorded where else but CBGB right when the band was about to break out back in the latest-of-the-late-eighties. Dunno how I missed on this 2004 release, or why Epic would release something like this so late in the game, but whaddeva it seemed neat enough to latch onto this disc if only to cling onto past rockism iconology which ya gotta admit I do a pretty good clinging job of!
Nice live vibe as the hippoids would say, and all of the big hits more or less are here including their cover of the Bad Brains' "Sailin' On" which does inject a bitta vim vigor and verve into this mid-energy set. However, I must admit that I was bored silly in part perhaps because of the striving professionalism of the band, or the less-than-energetic slow numbers, or
something. Or nothing for that matter. Well, it's not like I hate the group now and there certainly are worthwhile moments not only including the signarure "Cult of Personality", but if I told you this wasn't gonna be one of those back-of-the-collection once-in-awhilers I'd certainly be lying to you.
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BINKY PHILIPS 12-inch EP (Caroline)Here's one that's been whatcha might call a personal favorite for a good twenny years which sure makes
me feel old! In fact, my love for the
BINKY PHILIPS EP became so well known at the time of its late-eighties release that when Fire in the Kitchen (a then-contempo NYC band of some reknown whom I was championing until leader Bob Bannister decided to do a little Politically/Socially Correct oneupmanship o'er myself in his
ON SITE mag) were signed to Homestead records, their hypesheet mentioned that I thought FITK were the second-best band in the burgh with Binky Philips being the first as if to say my tastes were rather
askew considering I would prefer this (I dunno...
mainstreamish???) act over Bannister's bunch! And yeah, it's hard to believe that I was astute enough to cheerlead for the great hard-power pop being made by the likes of Mr. Philips (ex-Planets in case you didn't know, and if you thought the above mention of said Planets in my Living Colour album didn't have me diggin' this classic outta the pile you'd certainly be a whole lot denser'n I originally gave you credit for!) because all these years later it's so easy to see that the music that Philips and band were cranking out was way superior to all that stuck-inna-mud alternadrivel I had the good sense to ditch around the same time this long-forgotten disc came out!
Anyhoo, after the collapse of the first Planets reunion of the early-eighties, Mr. Philips got together this power trio featuring Mickey Leyland of Susan on drums (and if you thought my review of the
RAT album didn't
also make me hustle to my record collection pronto you'd
still be denser'n a Scottish fog!) and none other'n Sara Lee of League of Gentlemen/Gang of Four fame on bass, and believe me when I say the three really put on a surprisingly good show that continues to inspire especially considering how dismal the rock scene generally could have gotten at the time. This grouping lept forth from the CBGB stage with a sound that came off part early-seventies Cleveland pop, part mid-seventies New York underground, part seventies AM radio of varying stripes with a nice dash of heavy metal (the
original kind back when it was still called "hard rock") to make a racket that was pretty refreshing to late-eighties ears bombarded by some of the worst amerindie musings imaginable longing for the days when energy and excitement weren't being replaced by a shallow appreciation of the form.
To no one's surprise this disc
was recorded at CBGB but not during a scheduled gig. Philips was taking advantage of the sound board at the dive for his recording debut but the session turned into a live show when too many passersbys expressed an interest in the sounds emanating from this Bowery bistro as Fred Kirby would have put it. And
live it is, with that great glossy sound like all those FM radio tapes you used a chrome dioxide cassette for so it wouldn't sound like mud and a pretty boffo performance at that with nothing but show-stopping hard rocking pop that may have seemed at odds with what was passing for popular music at the time but sure settles well twennysome years after the fact. Owing more to the CBGB of the mid-seventies than the late-eighties you could say that the Philips band, like the various post-Shirts outfits of the day or Living Colour or even Tulpa (who weren't from NYC but played there enough to count) were more or less settled in a mid-seventies garage band bag with influences drawn from all sorts of places (I spotted a bass-line swipe from Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust" on "Out Of My Life"!). Add to that the sleek three-part harmony vocalese and you got yourself a winner of a bargain bin classic (easy enough to pick up for a mere bag o' shells on ebay!) that should get top mention in the BB section of the third issue of
FLASH if that magazine ever does make it out to the public at large!
And if there is anything negative I can say about
BINKY PHILIPS its that the disc is only of EP length (fifteen/twenny mins max!) and the music is so energetic that for once I wish the thing was a full-length platter! Too bad Philips got unceremoniously axed from Caroline records (about a week before I called that label on my dime trying to set up an interview!) because if this 'un had only done better perhaps an album would have been coming our way within a few short months...who knows?
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The Screamin' Mee-Mees-PLASTIC HONG KONG DOOR BELL FINGER CD (Gulcher)
Even a fan of the Mee-Mees such as I has gotta admit that some of their releases have been, shall we say,
patchy, but when they're popping on all cylinders the Screamin' Mee-Mees are one hot dog of a group that's every bit as good (and as primitive) as they were back in the seventies when bands like this cluttered up the garages and bedrooms of rock & roll maniacs world-wide. Their latest is certainly an all-out effort not only with more of that great addle-minded garage rant that hovers somewhere between early Smegma and the Electric Eels ("Gas For All" and "Slapped By Reality" coming the closest), but the Mee-Mees even engage in some outer-garage-y soundscapades such as on the two "Top Secret Mysterious Unknown Bonus Tracks" which close out the disque (which shoulda been titled "Top Secret Audio Generator Wheeze Straight Outta Hawkwind"!) as well as the eighteen-plus-minute "Flying Skull Fragments" which sorta reminds me of this certain cut that ended up on the first Bruce Hampton solo album back in '76. That one was a doozy and so's this, a contender for
"BEST NEW ALBUM OF '07" unless something humongous hits the pad in the ensuing month before the year clocks off for good. Whaddeva,
PLASTIC HONG KONG is a solid winner and I'll betcha that it's gonna be one of those perennial pre-beddy-bye time spinners like all the greats, right?
***
THE BEATLES COMPLETE VOLUME ONE 2-CD set (Secret Trax bootleg, probably of European origin)It's amazing when one ponders that here we are in 2007 and the Beatles
still matter! Of course they matter in different ways to different people...naturally to the hidebound leftover aged sixties flower power types (now in
their sixties!) the Beatles still evoke images of dull pacifist meandering polly-tix and the sappy music that usually accompanies such horse-blindered feelygoodisms. True at least this form of armchair radicalism on these greying armpit-haired hippoids' part did give us the likes of a living and breathing genius like David Peel, but frankly as far as these former building/bra-burners go the Beatles are nothing but a handly latch on to a long-gone youth that continues to find solace in ultra-radical social organizations and the Green Party. To them, the Beatles have more to do music-wise with James Taylor, Carole King and that whole whimpering early-seventies scene that was so awash in self-flagellation. But for the rockers, the Beatles were a great mid-sixties
impetus, a catalyst for rock & roll that drove an already-hopped-up music into overdrive to the point where even those aforementioned aerie-faeries so into folk and ancient madrigals couldn't ignore it anymore. To these rockin' types, the Beatles were at their prime when they had greasy hair and were playing a particulary potent form of (I hate to say this but) pre-
BEATLES garage band rock that really doesn't sound that much different than the records the Fendermen or Astronauts were making at the same time. Try runnin'
that by some brain-fried Whole Earth Catalog pensioner type and see what he says!
Dunno if this double disc-set is
"thee" complete Beatles from their early Quarrymen days until they started hitting the big time in suits and Moe Howard hairdos, but it will suffice for now. A snippet of the earliest Quarrymen recording extant from '57 shows up, but things really don't get into gear until the '58 acetate of "That'll Be the Day"/"In Spite of all the Danger" which not only shows the penchant for Buddy Holly the British Isles had at the time but a sound that, if honed a bit, could have made the Quarrymen every bit as big as the Rock-a-Teens! The '60 rehearsals are of course boss hoss even when the group gets into these instrumental improvisations on disc 2, but ya gotta admit that the sound these Silver Beetles churn out are really the hot boppin' most that have nothing to do with the usual "pip pip" atty-tood that a lotta the mid-sixties groups seemed to wallow in in order to gobble up them Amerigan bux! And of course the Tony Sheridan outtakes and "Ain't She Sweet"/"Cry For a Shadow" also end up here (nice although not tip top), but these numbers along with the rest of the Beatle tracks appearing here are still exciting in an early-sixties punky sorta fashion that fits in with my own concepts of cheeseburger culture and
NANCY more than any decadent Philadelphians (hint!) would care to 'fess up to. Perhaps just as potent as all that music that was "bogging down" the American scene according to way too many wonks out there, the same ones who say that the Beatles
saved us dumb yanks from ourselves more or less! Frankly, it
is kind of a surprise to think that the same bunch who cranked out awesome wonders along the lines of "Wild Cat" would end up recording such yawn-inspiring offal as "The Long and Winding Road" not to mention "Wild Honey Pie", a number that probably ranks as one of my least-fave Beatle tunes of the batch!
AND IN CLOSING, I gotta say that in many ways things have been looking upup
UP here at
BLOG TO COMM central over the past few weeks. I can't put my finger on exactly what the reason for my recent jovial nature is, but I sure do feel pretty chipper these days. One of the reasons for my current bouyant state just might be the current presidential campaign of Ron Paul which I guess gives most if not all of us "real" Libertarians, Paleoconservatives or what-have-you some reason to be optomistic about our future. With the battle between Hillary and Barak seemingly like the old Louisiana choice between hanging or firing squad (though I gotta admit to lightening up so to speak on Barak after reading
a nice appraisal of the man from longtime conservative columnist and current fave Charley Reese) and the "opposition" frontrunners either Rockefeller Republicans who are ashamed to admit it (Guiliani and Romney) or nothing but a buncha dwarves it's sure sweet seeing Dr. Paul get as far as he has strictly from the big grass-roots push he has been receiving o'er the past few months! That of course is thanks to a strange coalition of the old-time peace Republicans (something I'm sure the likes of Tim Ellison have a hard time believing ever existed in the first place, but yes, the republicans
were the party of peace at least until George W.), disgruntled Democrats who have finally seen the light, that portion of the antiwar gang who have some shred of decency left, and just plain fed-ups like I and presumably you smarter readers are at this point in Amerigan History. Pretty strange gathering of the tribes so to speak, but at least every one of these groups has
something onna ol' ball which is certainly a sign that there remains some
sanity on a political scene that really has become one big amoebic mess of goo sans any semblance of natural common horse sense amongst the entire lot of 'em! Heck, I've read that Paul's even getting big kudos on various on-line polls that are appearing on certain racialist (as opposed to racist) sites though I dunno if that's because of the usual internet Paul supporters or perhaps a wising up to some extent on these peoples' part.
True the man doesn't stand that much of a chance to really make a dent despite what all those Lew Rockwell fanatics may want us to believe, and true Paul has faced a
great hostility for his smart antiwar opines and near-anarchistic government ideals (
NOT the anarchism of way too many communists out there who don't want people to catch on that they really are redski wolves in pacifist sheep's clothing!), but any guy who can go as far as Paul has with his
true believer plans for changing this sick world of ours,
and manages to put together a coalition of the above disparate types really has gotta be commended. Sorta like what Nixon once did back when he was starting out in in the political arena, only a far better way for us to go if I do say so myself! And with the inevitable choice of Ilsa Koch Jr. battling it out against the reincarnation of Thomas Dewey making for one big sour stomach at least here at
BLOG TO COMM central, it's at least nice watching Paul go up and at 'em if only to ease the
pain a li'l smidgie bit! Mark my words, Ron Paul is to the new stream of Paleocon/Libertarian political action what Barry Goldwater was to the same movement fifty years back, which only makes me stubborn enough to wanna stick around another fifty years to see how the entire shebang ends up!
On that nice note I'll leave you until whenever. And hey, if you appreciate this blog and think it's the bee's knees don't bother letting me know. I have enough trouble handling all of those "get in touch" comments being left by former comrats of whom I usually want little if anything to do with (my email being a hopefully closely guarded secret) as it is! Not counting Tim Stegall of course, but the rest of you...feh!
I also gotta tell ya that my repeated pre-bedtime playing of 67 ET LIVE is only heightened by this new "catalog" that I got of an exhibition honoring the fortieth anniversary of the release of THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO. Its filled with all sorts of then-contempo items that certainly will warm the cockles of any Velvetoid's heart, and true it's overpriced like most of these catalogs are and the inclusion of some "modern" items tends to ruin the aura a bit, but maybe if you squint your eyes and play some Velvets (or even some solid Velvets-inspired musings the likes of Les Rallizes Denudes or whatever valid group of choice you may have at hand) all of that great energetic power that the Velvets played and spawned for a good decade after their demise will make you realize that there certainly was a lot more to these guys than some wimpass alternative "amerindie" group that took all of the Velvet sizzle but none of the raw steak would lead you to believe.
Since I already had the thirtieth anniversary edition with the mono mix packaged in a special CD holder complete with a Hipgnosis insert, plus the single-only sides included on disc three probably sounded better on that "Masters of Rock" Pink Floyd album where the gatefold from MEDDLE was repro'd with Syd's 1971 face strangely pasted onto Dave Gilmour's equally-'71 body, maybe the inclusion of this newie in my collection would have been a bit...redundant? I mean, who knows what EMI's gonna cook up for the FIFTIETH anniversary of this epochal platter, like maybe a giant-sized package with more outtakes and remixes "convienantly" discovered deep in the vaults complete with actual relics taken straight from the body of St. Syd himself for your very own shrine perhaps? But rather'n wait the extra decade I thought I'd pick this up and y'know what...this package does satiate the cynical-yet-compulsive beast within me to the point where I don't mind that two of the discs are exactly the same 'cept one's in mono and the other stereo (if you must know, such things tend to bore me!). For once, it's the THOUGHT that counts!
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