BLOG TO COMM

Still reeling from the Fangsgiving banquet I indulged in three days ago to really get into whatcha'd call any thought-provoking opening schpiel. Not that there's really anything of a socio-political nature that I would care to bore on about, but I'm still pouring through a stack of recently-purchased platters that I sure enjoy enough to blab onto you regarding their worthiness. So without further a-doo-doo...

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The Gruberger Brothers-GREETINGS FROM READING PA LP (Rerun)

And right when I thought the entire well of archival fanzine rock had been spent for all eternity! I mean...who woulda thunk that anybody outside of Bear Richert'd even care about releasing an entire album of rarities that were birthed from the brains of the Gruberger Brothers (Solomon and Jay), they of seventies-vintage fanzine scum fame! But hey, the smart brains behind Rerun Records have, and this doozy of an album featuring the pair cranking out their bedroom (too primal for garage!) recordings has come just in time to lift me from the bitterness of cultural despair.

And for that all I gotta say is...now when are you gonna get to the rest of the plethora of fanzine writers fantasizing about being rockstars in their beswetted boudoirs laying down early-seventies riffage that wouldn't find a viable audience until at least five years after the fact? (So I guess the well of seventies fanzine bedroom recordings hasn't been as spent as I surmised!) The Kenne Highland tapes (with the verifiable anthem "I Got a Dagger For You Jagger")  are just beggin' to be released as are the Metal Mike Saunders recordings which feature future Angry Samoans riffs that would be put to good use a whole lot later in his career. And you thought he was swipin' 'em all from Ted Nugent, eh?

Not to say that Solomon and Jay don't utilize enough early/mid-seventies hard rock watermarks on this platter...after all late-sixties garage band moves and early-seventies heavy metal equaled late-seventies punk rock, and if anybody could work out this equation with any semblance of intelligence it would have to be the kinda guy who spent the years 1968-74 immersed in Cream via Zep via Iggy via Sabs and digested it all with the entire written screed of Lester Bangs. After which defecating it all out as the p-rock that millions of disaffected if aging scions of the Atomic Age still act as if it only happened this past afternoon. That would be a good approximation of where the Grubergers were headed with this album, a hard churn out that takes the already minimalist/animalist natures of the Gizmos, O. Rex and Afrika Korps and reduces it to even tastier depths.

Kinda like eighties Ramones meets "Muff Dive" Gizmos with one of the best unassuming vocalists (who I assume is Solomon) doing some of the tastiest talk-singing ever since Lou Reed. So packed with all of the better ideas to come out of the seventies that it would look just swell if it were stuck in some $1.99 bin at one of those cheap-o record shops that used to be all the rage at least until they deep-sixed just because they were so great they just hadda die!

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Malcolm Mooney and Tenth Planet-INCANTATIONS LP (Milvia Son)

Sheesh, I woulda thought that an album of Can covers by Mooney and his long-time backing group Tenth Planet would have been a little...you know...too obvious. But whaddaya know, this album doesn't go out of its way to offend you like I always do. Mooney may sound like he's ready to head for the Social Security office, but he can still manage to belt out a throaty vocal just like he did when he was in Can, and Tenth Planet sound just as good as any truly off-the-wall, experimental outfit from the seventies that snuck Can recordings in between spins of Iggy and Beefheart did..

The live performances (in front of what seems like a small, invited audience) are faithful to the originals yet refreshingly different enough that these don't come off like some exploito re-recording to sucker in whatever audience there would be for ancient krautscapading out there. Energetic and punky, and all through the entire spin I kept thinking about how this would have been the perfect 1979 surprise outta nowhere had this only transpired a good three decades before it actually did. But then again, given the archival, almost sacred aspect of its mere being you know that it couldn't.

I've read that one of the members of this group was previously in Negativland, that eighties SF group who used to go nuts on the samplings (to the point where Brooce Springsteen dealt out some workingman's legal action) and were obv. kraut-oriented in their approach to underground sound spasm. Never did pay attention to 'em because frankly, from what I've heard they seemed too eighties experimental 'stead of seventies high energy, but after spinnin' this soiree I'm having thoughts about checkin' 'em out a good three decades after all of you decadent snoots living off trust funds in large city enclaves most certainly did! If any of you have any concrete, honest and typically snide comments regarding whether or not I should shed shekels over old Negativland albums please lemme know via the combox listed at the end of this certainly pallid posts!

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AT HOME WITH SCREAMIN' JAY HAWKINS LP (Rumble, UK)

Gee, the guy was pretty busy...not only pumping out records, but pumping out babies as well! Make Father's Day a special one with an album by the daddy (in more ways than one!) of them all Screamin' Jay Hawkins! A repress of his Epic debut longplayer, this one's not only got the all-time biggie hit "I Put a Spell on You", but Hawkins gasping, choking and gurgling through a whole slew of standards ("I Love Paris", "Old Man River", "Deep Purple"...) and creepy non-PC plastered plunkers like "Hong Kong" which  no doubt about it goes to show you that black people can be downright racist despite what Dick Gregory sez!

But hey, I can overlook a few lapses into bad taste, which I must say come off so refreshing here in the teens when the modern-day variation on the "uplifters" have pretty much turned the entire planet into one sick sad concentration camp where we all gotta smile and march in unison. At least records like this exist to show us just how fun, wild and uninhibited those "repressed" fifties really were, and like Bo Diddley and Link Wray Hawkins was one fifties survivor who certainly remained meaningful in a rock/blues sense long after everybody on this earth seemed to pronounce 'em all dead! (Hokay, I never heard his disco cash-in sides which Byron Coley so valiantly railed against, but somehow I get the feeling that even I would appreciate those in their [and my] own twisted, unnatural way!)

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Primal Scream/DTK-MC5-MUSIC FROM THE FILM BLACK TO COMM LP (Easy Action, England)

I don't think I told you this, but I actually swore that I wasn't gonna snatch up any record, tape, Cee-Dee or neural implant for that matter that was related to the recently-reformed (whatever's left of the) MC5. Naturally this was for purely aesthetic purposes, since really I kinda thought a buncha sixty-plussers romping around on a stage like they were still eighteen would seem about as silly as an aging doof like myself still writing about long-dead rock 'n roll ideals. But since I figured that the best thing to do with aesthetics of any kind is to toss 'em out the window, I not-so-promptly changed my mind and decided to snatch this live platter of a show where the new "Five" take to the stage with an act called Primal Scream, about whom I know nada about, and hear for myself what was happening for better or (hopefully not) for worse with regards to what the revised "MC3" were up to long after you woulda thunk nobody on this earth'd care anymore.

Sure glad I did too, because this superjam is one of the more exciting records to grace my turntable in quite awhile, a throbbing mass of aural matter that doesn't sound as contrived as something along these lines could get but way better'n alla those revived bands cranking out the old hits for an audience that can now afford 'em. The opening blast of the Them/Troggs classic "I Can Only Give You Everything" sets the pace as the two acts scramble through a couple Primal Scream numbers, a rousing "Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa" and a side-long take on the title track which combines the best avant-rock proclivities of the original Five along with a free jazz feeling that you woulda sworn was ripped right from the soul of a BYG Actuel session! Only the mid-song appearance of John Sinclair reading one of his post-beat poems drags the energy levels down, but otherwise this is a great screamer of a platter that equals Ascension, the Sonics Rendevous Band, Destroy All Monsters and the better of the eighties Australian aggros for total all-out energy assault!

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Various Artists-FILLING THE GAP volumes 1-5 5-CD box set (Psychic Circle, available through Forced Exposure or CD Universe)

Yeah, I know...just why would I want to splurge my heard-begged depression-era wage moolah on yet another sixties garage band punk rock sampler! Especially since, for all intent purposes, most of the  recent ones (and I'm talking twenty-five years of recent ones!) are either one-spin-only affairs featuring good if lackluster crank outs, or worse yet one-spin struggles to get through thanks to the plethora of late-sixties fringe jacket Grateful Dead-inspired jackoffisms inherent therein. Yeah, I have been burned on way too many of these collector/fan-oriented AMAZING GARAGE PUNK ROCK CLASSICS collections that have turned out to be nothing but ENDLESS HIPPIE TRIP NOODLINGS, and if I could get my money back on all of the erroneously-advertised collections I've been known to purchase then maybe I could afford not only all of those other expensive records that have escaped my grasps but that lifetime membership in hair club for men that I've been desperately in need of these past few years!

Glad to say that these FILLING THE GAPs ain't quite the duff choice even if there are what I would call a few "questionable" entries to be found. And true, a lot of the material here is, as they say, psychedelic (something which I wouldn't exactly think was a dirty word even if some of its practitioners weren't exactly the most hygienic people), but it still has that punk rock feeling and attitude even if the music might trek into questionable early-seventies terrain. At least the connection between the hard romp of the mid-sixties and the post-wail that at the time was more often than not being ignored in favor of more relevant Cat Stevens and JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR fluff has been made, and frankly if you ask me it's about time more aficionados of the form were coming to the exact same conclusion!.

The obscurities mingle with the class of NUGGETS, and even if there are a few hunhs? here like Jake "Dazed and Confused" Holmes there are also such in-place rarities as the post-Red Krayola Saddlesore single side "Old Tom Clark" and some non-LP Moloch, a group who did live up to their tangential connections with the Stooges and MC5 even if their background was pure mid-South. Makes for a fine high-energy listening session for those simmer down evening hours as well, and not only that but the enclosed booklet's as informative as these fan-bred archival digs can ever hope to be!

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...AND IN CLOSING, YET ANOTHER SNIPPET FROM A ROCK 'N ROLL-RELATED DREAM I RECENTLY HAD. Editing all of the extraneous jizz outta it, what was I doing but finding myself in my basement listening to (get this!) the Imperial Dogs roaring through a particularly potent rendition of "Sweet Jane", only with a slightly different if better chord progression and lyrics that were being extrapolated on a whole lot more'n even what Lou Reed was apt to do during his height in the Velvet Underground. Stronger than the Third Rail take and in fact coming off particularly Rocket From The Tombs-ish, the "raw" sound quality (complete with a drop out during the second verse...talk about dreams imitating low fidelity reality!) certainly adding to the overall high energy effect as lead singer Don Waller was tossing lyrics along the lines of "the kids just wanna hear some rock, with a lotta cock".  'n yeah, I don't exactly know what that means either but since Waller sang it with such conviction I just hadda sit up and take notice.  Could use more dreams like this 'un, especially since the other dream I had was one of those innervoid nauseating grossouts with disturbing images galore that kinda make you not wanna go back to sleep for at least the next fifty years!