The biggest surprise about this 'un's the fack that this burn was sent to me not by Bill Shute, but by Brad Kohler! Yes, one would find it hard to believe that Kohler would actually be interested in olde silent films but I guess he's about as much a fan of those old classic mooms as I was when I was 15, and the strange thing about this is that there ain't any bare titty or gratuitous sex anywhere in this feature which I always thought was the only reason Brad would wanna go and see a moom inna first place, unless the Three Stooges were in it of course!
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
The biggest surprise about this 'un's the fack that this burn was sent to me not by Bill Shute, but by Brad Kohler! Yes, one would find it hard to believe that Kohler would actually be interested in olde silent films but I guess he's about as much a fan of those old classic mooms as I was when I was 15, and the strange thing about this is that there ain't any bare titty or gratuitous sex anywhere in this feature which I always thought was the only reason Brad would wanna go and see a moom inna first place, unless the Three Stooges were in it of course!
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Yeah, I know that I'm leaving myself wide open to a whole array of sneers and putdowns for posting this snap, but(t) I thought it would be rather appropriate to show you readers yet another side of me that's rarely seen by the public at large, a side that's not always delved into and in fact may even be too painful to probe. If you have any juicy witticisms to add to the above, feel free to send 'em in. Which doesn't mean I'll necessarily publish 'em, but I can sure use a whole lot more interesting jokes and asides to swipe from and claim as my own.
Before I get into the standard if not-so-inspiring reviews let me say a word or two about Facebook. Thanks to the many who wished me a happy birthday, but for some strange reason I couldn't post any direct comments thanking you for the well-wishing (or post anything else, at least comment-wise, for that matter) which is really vexing especially when some of you reg'lar commentators come up with some wingding political comments that just beg to be rectified (hmmm, shoulda worked that word into the above somewhere!). I have in the past posted a few li'l asides regarding somethingorother once in a blue ball, but frankly as far as being a huge part and parcel upfront Facebook aficionado I'm afraid that technology has somehow stumped me this time. Dunno what ever happened to the "publish" button on the comment section, but until this problem is worked out I will remain a rather frustrated li'l computer ignoramus.
***Venison Whirled-XIBALBA mini-CD (Kendra Steiner Editions)
If it weren't for Bill Shute you probably wouldn't be reading anything special this weekend, for the guy actually made sure to send me a heapin' hunkin' envelope filled to the brim with not only this particular effort recorded for his very own label, but a burn of a rare Archie Shepp album (see following writeup) as well as some DVD-R's that'll probably get interspersed with the various Brad Kohler and Lou Rone items that have been taking up my ever-shrinking leisure time as of late. And this one is a doozy, twenty minutes of fine free form flanging from an act known as Venison Whirled (a name which I believe derives from what happens to a lot of deer on dark country roads), otherwise the efforts of a lass named Lisa Cameron who sure knows how to handle a whole lot of electronic equipment with the same dexterity that Marlene Dietrich had in snapping off Hattie McDaniel's bra straps!
Two songs here (yeah, Don Fellman always gets on my case for referring to compositions or any sort of musical endeavors with the vague and misleading terminology of "songs", but can you think of a better way for me to keep up my image as an earthy, uneducated yet maniacal fan and follower of the free bop? Besides, I always forget what word I am supposed to use!). "Dark Rift" features Cameron on a lap steel guitar and Tibetan bowl, which I guess is the thing that the Dalai Lama relieves himself in since his b.m.'s are sacred unlike our stinking offal and they gotta be kept somewhere special. If you can imagine Jimmy Page bowing his guitar with an electric carving knife while running it through an ARP you might get an idea of what this one sounds like. You might also get a good idea of just how dry the well of creative comparisons in my mind has become these past few eons, but then again that's my problem not yours.
"Vortex Compression" is an equally haunting number, perhaps even a downright calmer as it is nothing but electronic tones akin to a pretty hip refrigerator turning itself on which helps unwind the knots in your neck and clip off the split ends of your nerves like nothing since Valium. A good late-night relaxer which, according to the back cover, was performed on an "amplified space/time membrane". Hope that's not what I THINK it is!
Bill gave us a pretty good 'un with this Whirling Venison offering. You know where to get it (check the blog link ups on the left!) and you know you'll have to hurry, since there were only 89 of these buggers pressed and I'll betcha they're gonna sell faster'n pirohy in Youngstown!
***Archie Shepp-LIVE AT THE DONAUESCHINGEN MUSIC FESTIVAL CD-R burn (MPS, Germany)
The other Shute giveaway, and an expected ear-opener at that considering how alla these small label Euro Shepp albums always had a certain raw gut feel to 'em that was lacking on the Impulse albums I've heard. This 'un was recorded 10/21/67, just over four months after the death of Big Daddy of 'em all John Coltrane (a guy I definitely would appreciate a whole lot more if only dweeb hippie types and ditzy fru fru religions didn't seem intent on making him a bloody saint which his personal life would tend to say otherwise), and you can hear the angst of it all strongly in Shepp's angry playing, which this time seems a whole lot angrier'n it had been and would be once the black power mantra became a little more driving and perhaps downright seditious!
One track here split over two sides, and it's appropriately titled "One For Trane" which I guess predates all of those other Coltrane tribs that began pouring out for a good five or so years after his own deep-sixing. It's a fitting one too starting off with this percussion workout soon abetted by the bass of Coltrane alumni Jimmy Garrison and some trombone intercession (there are two of 'em here, Shepp regular and token whitey Roswell Rudd's and Grachan Moncur III) before Shepp himself enters into the picture playing some pretty fringe scree before gettin' all soulzy just like we like him. Mood goes from dark to flippant and fast, and given the high energy quotient of this set and Shepp's own imaginative stylings it's not hard to see just how much the MC5 were swiping ideas left and right not only from Shepp but a good hunk of the players on the new thing circuit which only goes to show you just how far back the avant garde jazz and punk rock continuum was intertwining even before anyone was smart enough to give it a name!
One final thing, the drummer on this set's none other than Shepp regular and eventual leader in his own right Beaver Harris. Fellmen was telling me a funny story about how Harris earned his unique nickname, and it wasn't because the guy has buck teeth or anything along those lines! Let's just say that ol' Don thought that Harris should have had another nickname, but given the family orientation of this blog I will refrain from divulging it unless I am invited to speak at a sex education seminar or perhaps a Lamb's Club smoker!
***Various Artists-BEAT THIS; THE BROOKLYN BEAT COMPILATION cassette (Brooklyn Beat)
I've already prattled on many a time about how I'm more'n willing to take a chance on some obscure New York-area underground obscurity from the seventies on if only to discover what could be a really great albeit unheralded act that shoulda made it as big as alla them winners who made flea market and bargain bin hunting all the better throughout the 1976-1983 season. And true, I might not exactly be lookin' for a new Velvet Underground or Television in the batch, but I'd be more'n happy if I could latch hold of a new Sidewinders or Hackamore Brick. Yeah, many of the groups that I do get to hear fall way short of the, er, proper criteria, but I have the feeling that the ways the odds are I'm just BOUND to hear a group that'll certainly snap the synapses in my cranium more sooner than later.
Foolhardy chance-taker that I am, I decided to latch onto this particular cassette collection that came out during the certainly non-underground friendly year of 1990. Considering that these acts were being pushed by a small local label and that many of the acts here have popped up on various CBGB bills t'boot, I just had this strange feeling that some might've captured that certain oomph that made for rather interesting outta-the-way listening. And hey, for years I've been looking for more'n a few groups that would've excited even jaded me this long after rock 'n roll as a fabled youth movement had become deader'n Chuck Eddy's writing career! Yeah, I did get the feeling that the strange spectre of eighties MTV-era music "criteria" would ooze into the mix, but I figured that if I could enjoy various new wave-y efforts by a number of seventies survivors of worth (Velveteen, Comateens...) maybe I could derive some pleasure outta these local yokels who were probably aiming for the same big time that got the Del Fuegos endorsing beer back when nobody even knew who the guys were!
Needless to say, there really ain't any new Hackamore Bricks or even Tuff Darts on this sampler of "Brooklyn Beat" acts. A durn shame considerin' the ever-growin' hunger inside of me (or is that just my musical tapeworm acting up?) that's making me yearn for the return of Richard Robinson with a greater vengeance'n anything! Most if not all's just reeking that typical En Why mid/late-eighties style, definitely post-seventies underground accomplishment yet nothing near as exciting as a Thundertrain or Manster for that matter. Yet it ain't exactly of the ginchy goochy eighties glop wave that made me discharge of a good portion of my late-seventies collection figurin' that any music that could lead to the gunk being produced during the eighties perhaps wasn't as forward looking and cutting edge as all of those high class rock critics said it was.
To be totally honest (as opposed to being just halfway honest in order to spare your easily bruised feelings) the tracks which had some definite sixties garage influx and pop sensibilities did sound fine enough for me to seek out yet another Brooklyn Beat collection recorded live at where else but CBGB, Formaldehyde Blues Train, the Original Rays and the Squirrels from Hell fell enough into this category to have me thinkin' that maybe they woulda fared better with a more 1976 frame of mind 'stead of the mid-eighties production values that were pumped into this effort. The Moe had a good handle on pseudo-reggae protest pop, while Frank's Museum and Marcel Monroe actually came off palatable once I got the sleek ooze of their def. 1986 pop orientations outta my system.
Even old pros Jing and Chemical Wedding whom I've written about before sound nice albeit not as strong as they were on that CBGB sampler that came out a few years earlier. And yeah, the kinda post-wave pop which appears on this tape that was trying to retain some semblance of seventies grit doesn't always work and in fact drove me to fits of rage at the time, but given a good quarter-century rose-colored rear-view mirror lookbacks I now find acts like these way more engaging than they were in the mid-eighties. Considering just what there was on the eighties under-the-counterculture scene during that grade zilch decade maybe I shoulda been paying more attention to groups like these and less towards the ever-flagging pseudo-garage band revival as well as the hippie hardcore rantings and ravings of people I wouldn't trust to run a brothel let alone an entire nation, but then again given what a structural mess eighties punkitude was I'm lucky I got to hear what I did so maybe I should keep my trap shut just this once!
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Wednesday, August 24, 2011
POLICEWOMEN's a realy mid-seventies period piece, and while I was watching this 'un I could just imagine myself sitting in a reconditioned '63 Valiant on my lonesome while all of the other vehicles were sprouting female legs flying way up inna air. This 'un stars zilcher Sandra Currie as a liberated kinda police gal who wants to hit the big time and help the Male Chauvinist Pig-dominated force capture a gang of curvaceous gold smugglers led by a craggy old lady and her muscle-building showhubby. Nice turns here and there and better yet a good 1974 sense of cheese abounds, but if this 'un's hardly "a gritty police action flick" as the Dee-Vee-Dee cover come on says. In fact, I've had grittier bowel movements, which only proves to you that too much bran can wreak havoc with your hershey highway.
But still it's got it all from the flaunting gals of the gang to a racially-charged kung fu catfight and those tender bedroom scenes which always made the school gals woo and pine tellin' us all how beautiful they were when all I wanted to do was hit the snack counter. Y 'know, hand on bare back and moaning roll over stuff accompanied by cheezy string glop that always was a good way to kill a few minutes. But then it was back to the action and the martial arts and a plot that pretty much was lifted and changed from some late-forties b-movie western with some occasional titzenazz tossed in to liven up the party. Really, this would be the perfect movie for all of ya spiritual adolescent jagoffs whose biggest thrills came in a hula-girl laden issue of

A couple of nice 'uns here (actually, more'n just a "couple"...hee!) that have that nice early-mid-seventies feeling that could only make somebody like me want to absorb the better portions of that era (Stooges, CREEM, indie tee-vee...) and toss alla the pukka shell curtains, "relevant" youth mutterings and mood rings into the dumpster of eternal feh where they belong! And yeah, those days are long gone and for those of you who lived through 'em they musta been a drag, but in retrospect this point in history was the last one where total smarm could will out long before the chintzy cheerfulness of the eighties ruined gulcher for good! If your taste for the seventies runs more towards gettin' your film cues from CREEM 'stead of TIME I have the feeling that you, like might actually enjoy this double bill!
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Sunday, August 21, 2011
***
Back inna late eighties, I seriously thought that groups like the Droogs were the only hope that we (meaning the remnants of whatever became of high energy rock fandom) had as far as returning rock et roll to its original, gnarly intent. Shows you what kind of a wild-eyed fanatic I sure used to be, but really, what groups out there (at least those who had the facilities to release produce) WERE fighting in the battle against squeaky-clean eighties aesthetics whether they be post-disco gnu wave, fluff metal, material gurl posturing and whatever else there was that made that decade such a tooth-pulling drag to live through? Sure there were plenty of worthwhile acts pounding the eighties pavement, but given the total miasma of those times how many of 'em really had a chance to make a difference? Did the Droogs have a chance to make a difference? Twennysome years later I gotta say that, despite all of the hard work and altruism and trying to create a rock-inspired kultur or scene to exist in, it all eventually went down the crapper of good intentions and naturally we're all the poorer for it.
Not that groups like the Droogs didn't give it more of the ol' college (radio) try, and on WANT SOME they sure knew how to rock out even if the mode of the music was speaking in more Bobby McFerrin kinda terms. Powerful high energy rock with more than just the sixties garage roots of the band showing. Imagine the second MC5 album filtered through the Flamin' Groovies circa Kama Sutra with perhaps a little nudge of what the Sonics should've sounded like around 1968, and what's even more surprising about it is that on this 'un the Albin/Clay team are supported by various Dream Syndicate special guests, and those guys're one act that I gave up on early in THEIR career. Maybe if at least four other acts sounding like this made their way into my record collection at the time I wouldn't keep thinking about how dismal the entire eighties/nineties/oughts era was for my own sense of personal being!
But its' a pretty great 'un from a group I kinda wish made more of a noise in the seventies back when their indie singles were boss enough that even mainstream mags would mention 'em in their "look, I'm hip" moments of inspiration. Considerin' just how much I've ben ignorin' this group's latterday efforts it's probably a good time to do an in-depth record dive and try to excavate everything that I can...
***Screamin' Jay Hawkins-ITTY BITTY PRETTY ONE LP (Koala)
I always used to wonder about this Koala label outta Hendersonville TN which used to issue grey bordering on black market albums back in the v. late seventies A company known for hijacking various old rarities and slapping cheap generic covers on 'em, Koala has issued, amongst a set of mid-sixties vintage Fendermen tracks presumably recorded in Canada as well as various Monkees demos, this collection of some Screamin' Jay Hawkins hens teeth material. Turns out these crafty pseudo-bootleggers merely copped the 1972 release PORTRAIT OF A MAN AND HIS WOMAN (Hot Line) and halved it up, the other part being their LAWDY MISS CLAWDY album which has continued to evade my grasps but whadevva, chances are you ain't gonna be able to find the original and this one just might still be cheapo enough to latch onto via ebay or maybe even some outta-the-way record rack inna middle of Fartsville that still seems to be wallowing somewhere in the age of 8-Tracks.
It's still a mandatory winner though, not only with the title track (authorship credited to Mr. Hawkins) but a moving, operatic "It's Only Make Believe" as well as some throbbing r&b originals including the side one closer "Same Damn Thing" which really gets the heart a' pumpin'. Recording quality is good enough in that old pre-pristine style, while the instrumental backing does a good job of taking the Hawkins style from the beer can fifties into the creaky early-seventies with some typical SHAFT wacka-wacka guitar thrown in here and a li'l wah wah nodes there. But it still sounds as 1959 exciting as a suburban shopping plaza complete with a 99-cent theatre and department store that smells like buttered popcorn. A verifiable winner that I hope has made it into the digital age intact if only for the sake of humanity.
***Mickey Hawks-BIM BAM BOOM LP (Sun Jay, Sweden)
After reading the HOUND BLOG appreciation of the Mickey Hawks and the Nightriders sides last year I just hadda latch onto this rather important North Carolinian's contribution to the world of proto-punk faster than you can say "Bomp Records Credit Slip"! Looked near and far for his recordings and almost gave up hope until...while pouring through years of neglected wax I discovered that I already owned the thing! And hey, get this but I probably even reviewed it somewhere down the line!!! It only goes to show you what a sieve I have for brains anymore...sheesh, I thought that I knew my records as if they were my children and I often can remember the day, time and even situation when I picked up a classic album back during my young 'n impressionable days, but for the life of me I didn't remember latching onto this 'un at all!
Addle-mindedness aside, Sun Jay's BIM BAM BOOM is a decent enough collection of those early sides, even the one with Richard Speck lookalike Moon Mullins taking over the act for a 1960 single side! Overall the music is loud and pounding rock 'n' roll which does fit in with what the creme-de-la-punks were cranking out back in the late-Ike/early-JFK era around the same time pop was beginning to take some strange and perhaps incomprehensible turns. A correlation with the pounding garage bands of the Northwest could easily be drawn up, especially when you consider just how much the Nightriders and the NW groups were swiping ideas left and right from Little Richard and his compats. And Hawks' voice does fit in with the late-fifties screamin' rocker types, and given one listen to his gruff growling it's really not that hard to make a connection between the Nighthawks and various mid-sixties aggregates such as the Sonics who still had a foot in the late-fifties while driving the mid-sixties sound into even harsher territory.
One big caveat: most of this album is in fact taken up by more recent recordings, some from the late-sixties and early-seventies which were released on small labels as well as others from the mid-seventies to late-eighties which didn't see the light of day until this album's release in the early nineties. In a nutshell these numbuhs really don't cut the headcheese either taking on more of a late-sixties mid-South local studio production feel (such as the track where Hawks duets with an unidentified femme) or just plainly reek perhaps too much homage to Hawks' fifties r 'n' b heroes like Fats Domino w/o adding anything special or exciting to the legend. Yes Hawks is a talent and you can tell he really likes the black New Orleans sound much more than he does his own Southern white musical roots, but it's not like you'd ever be moved emotionally or spiritually by his takes on such chestnuts (as Jane Scott used to say) as "Mother In Law". Maybe there's an all-inclusive collection of pre-British Invasion era single and unreleased sides lurking out there, and if it fills its grooves with the hotcha stuff and omits the newer filler I'm all for latching onto a copy myself!
***The Who-LAUGH TO KEEP FROM CRYING LP (Marquee bootleg)
Hardly ever get to drag this eighties-vintage boot out, but just this evening I did just that. Supposedly recorded live at the Marquee in '63, this is reputedly High Numbers era Who back during their r 'n' b days churning it out pretty hard and heavy romping through one future elpee track ("Here Tis") and a slew of pretty extreme for the time standards that kinda stymie you considering how the Who would become pretty intricate themselves within a few years time. Daltrey sounds particularly rough here trying to imitate aging black singers with ten packs a day habits and the ability to drink gasoline even if they ask for water, which the rest of the group play so primitive it they make the Troggs sound like they were practicing! Sound ain't that bad despite one big tape mangle, and overall one of those great bootlegs that nobody seems to remember, or even acknowledges to exists for all I know!
***The Holy Modal Rounders-ALLEGED IN THEIR OWN TIME LP (Rounder)
Y'know, I got to thinking after spinnin' one of the Muscular Christians platters (actually their debut DAN MARINO IMPORTANT MESSAGE) just how much I've ignored this particular Rounders album for quite a longer time than I'm sure any of us could care to imagine. Like maybe twenty or even twenty one years for that matter??? Well, tossing personal shame aside I decided to slip this one onto the ol' Sphinctrola and see just how well it holds up, and given the timeless urban folkie growling sound and style of this 'un it sure sounds as fresh off the shelf as the day I snatched it up! That's no mere feat in a world of instant garbage (and bland, unfunny garbage at that!) passing as music that's supposed to speak to you as a throbbing, overactive human sort of being.
Good folkitude here coutesy of Mssrs. Stampfel, Weber, Robin Remailly and former Insect Trust Luke Faust, and they all do the hipster folk trip here just as good as when it was first being laid down in early-sixties beatno joints where the battle lines between the kumbaya crowd and the narcotics brigade were being drawn up. Lotsa old time Rounder faves were first fermented here ("Low Down Dog", "Sunday Morning" and "Voodoo Queen Marie" amongst 'em), and they sure sound good in that old-timey acoustic manner which thankfully still retains the New York gutter credo these renditions were born of. True, this might not be the hard-buzz high energy rock et roll you so desire, but this sure ain't Melanie and Jame Taylor mewling their liberation anthems either!
Don't let the looks of Stampfel and Weber in hippie shag fool you, this is the down 'n dirty New York transplanted Okie folk with proper psychedelicizations that you've been quite accustomed to for a longer time than you'll ever remember. And the back cover notes about how it was the Rounders who in fact INSPIRED the Rounder label are quite informative...too bad the enclosed "X-Rated" notes by Stampfel and longtime collaborator Antonia were missing from my copy...guess the Vice Squad got to it long before I did, right?
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11:59 PM
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Wednesday, August 17, 2011
I wonder exactly what motivated Brad Kohler to send a Dee-Vee-Dee burn of this particular pelicula my way. I mean, a film like this ain't exactly the kinda sit down 'n eat snacks evening fare that I surely would have liked to have enjoyed the same way I watch ABBOTT & COSTELLO. It really is bugging me...what was it that drove Kohler to even consider having me watch an arthouse kinda foreign film like this anyway? I guess it's because he's still mad at me for a "hot" racing tip I gave him to dump all of his hard-begged on "Marcia's Honey" in the eighth...I always so go for them horses with the double entendre names and gosh, I thought that a horse with a track record of ten straight lag-behinds just hadda be due in typical b-movie win the race or lose the farm fashion!!!
DODES'KA-DEN is an onomatopea, and that's about all it is to me since this Japanese moom is nothing but the boring antics of some down and outers who happen to live in an automobile graveyard somewhere in the Land of the Rising Prices. Y'know, the ins and outs of these losers in life and how their existences intertwine and interact and all of that UP WITH PEOPLE jive. Not that the characters themselves are bad...I kinda liked the old guy named Shima who wears a 1940's-styled suit who has the occasional tics which are supposed to make him a sympathetic character, or lovable, or at least something like that. He kinda reminds me of the people I used to see when I was a li'l boy, like this old guy who always wore these suits that made him look like Lt. Trask on PERRY MASON, who drove this late-forties auto for years because he got it when he retired and believed it was to be his last car, and it would be only he ended up living for a good thirtysome years or so afterwords! Maybe they shoulda made a moom about him, because acclaimed director Akira Kurosawa just has his characters lump around and nag and tease each other without any real oomph to get us lumpen audience members to feel anything about 'em whatsoever.
There's one bitta redeeming value to all of this, and that's this wrecked out automobile that this old greasy coot who dreams of owning his own mansion and his young son who's equally greasy live in. It's of thirties/forties vintage and really sleek looking, with a bit of the thirties French style in what's left of its magnificent body. If any enthusiasts out there can identify the make of this particular vehicle please let me know as soon as possible!
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Saturday, August 13, 2011
***
***LINDA HUDES POWER TRIO CD (lindahudes.com)
***
***Les Rallizes Denudes-LE 12 MARS 1977 A TACHIKAWA 2-CD set (Over Level, France)
It's kinda funny thinking that with the way I've been pouring through tons of Les Rallizes Denudes Cee-Dee box sets and reissues of varying quality I haven't touched this, the first easily-available Denudes reissue, perhaps since I first purchased the item a good decade or so back. And since I've been wearing all of my other Denudes platters down to a nub I figure why not give this 'un, a set which I'm sure introduced most of you to the sounds of this long-lived Japanese underground rock aggregation, yet another go? Well, it would be a better (and cheaper) bet than re-buying up all of those recent reissues of the Phoenix label that I've already had for quite some time.
Great sound and a pretty good selection of the standard Denudes set of the day. Includes all of the show stoppers that were part and parcel to the seventies Denudes set including their grande finale "The Last One" which features that same ominous riff for a good twenny-five-plus minutes. Also standing out are such winners as "Fire Ice" which also takes the repeato-riff base mode and tops it off with some fanatastic distorto feedback screech courtesy Takashi Mizutani and of course that one with the imitation fifties riff that reminds me of something Peter Laughner might have whipped up in his spare time. Overall the performance ain't as grabbing as some of the other shows floating around but hey, it's here and it's NOW (Forced Exposure has 'em) and if you never heard the group before well like, this could be a good place to start.
***An interesting bit of whimsy that seems to be making more and more sense as time bubbles on:
There was Mr. Edward Carpenter, who thought we should in a very short time return to Nature, and live simply and slowly as the animals do. And Edward Carpenter was followed by James Pickie, D.D. (of Pocohontas College), who said that men were immensely improved by grazing, or taking their food slowly and continuously, after the manner of cows. And he said that he had, with the most encouraging results, turned city men out on all fours in a field covered with veal cutlets. Then Tolstoy and the Humanitarians said that the world was growing more merciful, and therefore no one would ever desire to kill. And Mr. Mick not only became a vegetarian, but at length declared vegetarianism doomed (“shedding,” as he called it finely, “the green blood of the silent animals”), and predicted that men in a better age would live on [Pg 17] nothing but salt. And then came the pamphlet from Oregon (where the thing was tried), the pamphlet called “Why should Salt suffer?"-Gilbert Kenneth Chesterton; THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL
***
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Wednesday, August 10, 2011
MOOM PITCHER REVIEW! "CATALINA CAPER" (1967)
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Sunday, August 07, 2011
Nothing much else to report to you kultur-wise...in order to stave off boredom I've been pouring through my storage box filled with those early/mid-nineties vintage EC reprints which have been bound into nice POPULAR MECHANICS-dimensioned collections making for handy reading. A nice diversion if any, but then again I sure don't get the same testicular tingle outta these that I did when I was reading those "East Coast" reprints of the same material back in the mid-seventies. Come to think of it, nothing gets to my eternal psyche like it might've back when I was a kid which I gotta say is depressing, even if it is par for the course given what an over-the-hill hasbeen I am and shall remain.. Sheesh, when I was four EVERYTHING used to affect me in a positive, mystifying way to the point where some Old Maid deck of my sister's might as well have been the Holy Grail, and if you don't think I miss those much-to-be-preferred days then brother you are sadly mistaken!
As far as previously-mentioned gunch that has passed into one ear and certainly not out the other...the Les Rallizes Denudes CDs (including those 10-CD sets that "Illegal Alien" records out of Germany had released a good eight or so years back) have been getting the frequent pre-beddy bye spins perhaps egged on by the recently-discovered blog that underground scronk great Fadensonnen has blessed us with. Other favorites include 50% of the extant Rotomagus releases that have appeared on the TETES LOURDES collection of early French heavy metal and the Guru Guru live CD which also has some Uli Trepte solo material that's not quite as engaging, but then again why did you think he put the Guru stuff on it in the first place if only to get somebody to listen to the later-on iffy stuff in the first place! The Rotomagus material continues to amaze, especially considering how these guys, if they had some strong label backing, could have become a continental MC5/BOC/Stooges/MX-80 Sound with relative ease! Has anybody ever heard the '73 post-Rotomagus album by Phoenix, featuring the act doing a few Zep covers amongst who knows what else???
Anyway, here's the latest batch...a nice selection if I do say so myself and one which might just go to prove that perhaps I'm not exactly the horse-blindered, one-track-mind type of writer that too many fabricators out there have always tried to pigeonhole me as. True you won't find anything on the last four remaining "underground" rock acts out there that you can read about on every other "hip" blog, but then again BLOG TO COMM was born of truer ideals, dontcha think?
***
***Brian Sands-FIXATION LP (Bizart)
Nice packaging too (even with the sexually perverso cover snap taken in where else but Norway) and pressed on green vinyl in keeping with the late-seventies froth from which this one arose. And hey, if you want a copy bad enough you can just contact Brian through his myspace page listed on the left and probably get one at budget prices! Who knows, he may even autograph one for you which doesn't mean you can sell it for beaucoup in twenny years, but think of how the property value will go up in your collection!
***THE GOLDEN AGE OF MOTT THE HOOPLE bootleg LP (Berkeley)
***AN AFFLICTED MAN'S MUSICA BOX LP (United Dairies, England)
My Kruminescences regarding the Nurse With Wound album reviewed last week had me digging out this collection which, gosh darn it, reminds me of the guy on principle alone. A great selection of NWW-sanctioned tuneage as well, featuring French genre-breaker Jacques Berrocal, oft-forgotten krautsters Anima, Foetus, AMM live '67, Operating Theatre and of course the Nurse guys themselves all creating a good cross section of music begatting noise in various stages of abstractions and sound carvings. Actually makes a good case for a living and vibrant avant garde scene in the late-seventies, a time when I kinda thought that it was all dead because, if I was only getting around to discovering it at that time it just HADDA be!
***Pere Ubu-THE U-MEN LP (Tri-City bootleg)
Still, it's better to dwell on the gnarly and appreciate what these guys as punks using the great Stooges-to-Dictators-to-Ramones/1973 CREEM mag aesthetics definition meant. Great sound quality considering these recordings were probably taken from audience tapes...nothing glitzy mind you but still sounding sweaty enough like a typical humid August night that always gets the tornado sirens wailin'. Great selection too. For a long time this was the only place you could get to hear "My Dark Ages" which somehow didn't make it onto the DATAPANIK IN THE YEAR ZERO collection like it shoulda. But for those of you who bought and cherished THE MODERN DANCE as soon as it hit the racks (or waited a few months before it hit the cut out circuit like I did) this should bring back a few haunting memories of the power and energy that made up seventies underground rock whether it been urban, suburban or even Euro for that matter!
For historical purposes, I have reproduced the exact same track listing translation that I laid down on that fateful day I first gave this platter a go circa March, 1979. Not that it means a heckuva lot in the face of actual historical archival finds and digs (face it, what does it really matter next to an original Laughner manuscript?), but ya gotta admit it sure looks interesting as some sorta blog eye-catcher not to mention as a doorway into the inner workings of a blogschpieler like myself! And after looking at my lettering abilities from a time when I certainly was not as much of a nervous wreck as I have become all I gotta say is, boy have I degenerated these past thirtysome years!
***Scott Morgan-"Take a Look"/"Soul Mover" 45 r.p.m. seven inch single (Detroit)
Talk about unexpected surprised. This was supposed to have been reviewed for BLACK TO COMM #24 only the dang thing wound up missing somewhere around press-time! And y'know what? It took the thing a good eight or so years to finally turn up to which I say whatever suitable enough cliche you wanna pop in here (I love cliches...in fact, I AM a cliche!) to describe my utter amazement and fascination that after years of searching the dad-blamed item has finally made itself known.
And it's about time too, because I can always use more of that high-energy Detroit o-mind resensification in my life and this one does a pretty good job of deliverin'. Now, I never thought that the Rationals were exactly one of the top-notch Detroit metal acts extant (though "Guitar Army" was their defining post-MC5 moment) but Morgan sure shines here with a buncha future Sonics Rendevous types (including Fred Smith himself) doing an impassioned hard-rocking variation on the ol' "stop and smell the roses" take life easy theme on the "a" side as well as a good hard riff on his Motown heritage on the flip. Sound quality ain't too hot (though it was taken from an unplayed original which was pressed on cattle turds) but the energy shines through and is perhaps even enhanced by the rawness of it all. Limited to 1000 copies, and although probably not as rare as the '73 original it's gonna be the dickens to find. Comes on grey vinyl which'll remind you of all of those dodgy indie releases that also got the color wax treatment to the point where whenever I saw a non-black release the thought of gooshy emote just overtook my blood sugar levels.
***That's it for now (as if you were even thinking of expecting more!)...don't forget to tune in this Wednesday for a writeup of the Tommy Kirk beach party favorite CATALINA CAPER 'n until then, don't take any woodies!
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Christopher Stigliano
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7:38 PM
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Wednesday, August 03, 2011
The second in a series of three DVD-R's sent to me by Bill Shute (the third, CATALINA CAPER, will be reviewed next week!), this 'un's an Eyetalian production starring none other'n Jeanne Crain and Vincent Price as the fertile Sun Goddess herself and the High Priest of Pain respectively. A cheap yet interesting enough endeavor, this is one of those films Eddie Haskell would watch if only to check it out for historical inaccuracies.
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Christopher Stigliano
at
6:04 AM
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