Gotta can the planned moom pitcher review I had lined up for today (George Cooney, Mickey Rooney, Sonny Bono, Yoko Ono and Splash the Wonder Carp in THE WRIGHT BROTHERS FAIL TO GET IT UP) in order to bring you this important bulletin...the latest issue of UGLY THINGS is finally out! Actually it's been out for a few months already but I just happened to get it, and all I gotta say is that I'm glad I got it now rather than later because like, these things are important to the health and well being of just about every supreme being to turns to this blog for something more'n the usual quap. And besides, if I got it later I might be too blind to read it!.
Gotta say that I only breezed through this one not only because I wanted to spread the news faster'n I want the information herein to absorb into my sponge-like consciousness, but because I wanted to see if my name was dropped anywhere (and it was---twice!). But what I have read's got enough power-packed info and heretofore unknown facts in 'em to make me an awe-inspired admirer of this rag 'n everyone who writes for the this oft-unheralded effort And each and every article, sentence, phrase, word and period to be found in here has an all-important and powerful worth to it...take the cover story on the elusive Andrew Loog Oldham (y'know, I actually fell for R. Meltzer's line that slop-popper Andrew Gold was actually Andrew LooG OLDham back in a 1975 CREEM!) which deserved to be the main selling come on for this issue considering the guy's all-importance in the history of the Rolling Stones. Not only that, but the snaps of him and Mick with the ever-popular Nico (singer with "the Underground Movement") are worth the price of admission alone!
To be honest about it, some of the pieces don't jibe with me like the one on the Radiators From Space (who weren't exactly my idea of a top notch British Isles p-rock aggregate in the first place) which makes these Irish guys come off too self-consciously sensitive as is wont the new generation of paddys over there, but most of this ish does have that standard UGLY THINGS sorta flair that I like. The Haunted saga part two was interesting if not exactly spine-tingling as was that piece on Craig Smith/Matreiya Kali even though I ain't goin' anywhere back to that rather dismal platter again at least in this lifetime! I was especially bowled over by the history of the Dutch rockers who called themselves the Motions, not because of any musical revelations that might have been found therein but because they endorsed Chukka Boots! Y'see, when I was a little boy my mother always bought those for me and I thought I was a cubeoid for wearing them, but since seeing the Motions' ad endorsing 'em I now feel like I was miles ahead of the rest of the kids who thought saddle shoes were the tops in high fashion!
Records reviews are helpful even if there's very little reviewed I'd actually want to fork over money for (depression-era wages, y'know), and of course the books and DVD sections are filled with the usual minutiae that'll take me at least a year to absorb. And hey, if you didn't think that Cyril Jordan's continuing commentary on growing up in sixties San Fran wasn't my favorite part of the mag you'd be wrong as usual. Right now he's up to right before the Summer of Love, and as you might not expect he's really taking it all in telling us about his experiences with LSD (which actually raised his grades from C's and D's to A's and B's!) and life/music as it was right when the whole thing was about to reach its peak and then come tumbling down into hippie visions of the Old West. But Cyril, I always thought you were a punk!
Ask me in a few weeks and I'll probably give you an entirely different, detailed to the gills review of this 'un. But as it stands here inna middle reaches of February UGLY THINGS is a top bedtime read which goes well with anything on the bedside boom box, and I'd rather it be this fodder to flow my way into slumberland than doing my taxes. At least if I stay awake all night it'll be because of the excitement found therein, not the fact that I owe Unca Sam a ton of bread!
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