Hey, guess what today is! The seventy-third anniversary of the (so they say) sneak attack on Pearl Harbor but that's not ALL! It's also the fiftieth anniversary of the first time I can recall my dad telling me it was the anniversary of that infamous day in history (which brought a big smile to Winston Churchill's mug) thus beginning a multi-year tradition here at the ranch complete with the usual "it all seems like just yesterday" comment tossed in for good measure. Of course in later years it wasn't like he was bringing it up that much, probably because real life was more apocalyptic than what transpired lo those many years ago. I can still vividly recall those Pearl Harbor anniversaries of yore and in fact today's in very similar to the ones I used to encounter, only I'm much older and fatter and balder and in fact there ain't nearly as much good stuff onna tee-vee now as there was then.
***Ann Hoohah*, here's this week's miscellany of mostly old fanablas I found in the collection, not to mention a couple of Bill Shute drop offs because he knows what a shallow life I must truly lead. Maybe things will perk up in the near future when I can get some scratch together but I doubt it. Right now I'm pretty much on a self-imposed austerity kick brought about by a general lack of savings as well as lack of anything I'd really like to plunge into musicwise. Unless I come across some rare recordings by the Yarbles (the mid-seventies Boston group) or Iggy sliding his Hawaiian guitar at that John Sinclair Halloween Party way back '67 way.
Part dos of my ongoing DMZ revisits, this being the Cee-Dee that not only contains the whole of the RELICS album but some interesting radio-only and studio outtake tracks that really do add to the teenage rambunction of it all. Gotta admit that I really like the freshness DMZ exude here---for me too many of those eighties garage band revivalist types lacked a certain set of something or others that dangle between your legs, but DMZ really knew how to take the hard rock of the sixties and play it like the mid-seventies hard rockers they were, making all of those connections between Sky Saxon and Iggy Pop that fanzine writers were blabbing about for years on end all the more plausible. Highlights include not only the boffo originals but the true-to-life yet not carbon copy covers, the theme to the Oedipus Show sung by Mickey Clean of the Mezz, and a high-larious attack on the English punk rock scene done to the tune of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" proving that Monoman is not only a true patriot but a true Irishman who remembers alla that horrible stuff that the limeys did to his mother country for years on end.
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More old time radio, only these shows clearly date from the very very late-fifties which means that they were the lasty-last-last of the original radio dramas that had been running for quite some time not counting various brief attempts that continue on until today. JOHNNY DOLLAR was a good 'un too starring Bob Bailey as an insurance investigator who never seems to get those easy open 'n shut cases...naw, every week the guy was comin' up against these big deal matters having to do with (as on this Cee-Dee-Are) a phony mattress distribution set up and a Wild West celebration with a jealous boyfriend and a gal who ends up with a bashed in head! Sheesh, why can't the guy get something easy to investigate like a torched mob nightclub or a widow living off the policies of six dead hubbies, and she's only twenny-five!
But if you like old tee-vee like I do and love those ideas of what is cool and masculine and energetic (or at least were before the geldings took charge) you'll dig these episodes to the max. If you want to listen with a maximum effect you should try hearing these in a 1959 Studebaker Lark while dressed in the same work suit you wore to the office during a dark night while waiting for your daughter to finish her piano lessons at the local music store. A nice rain'd help as well along with an ashtray fulla butts to add to that old familiar aroma you just don't get anymore. Works every time!
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Here's the "official" explanation of it all"
Acconci explodes the notion of an artist’s creation, his creative act being the build-up and discharge of saliva, an activity more properly belonging to the realm of necessary and autonomic bodily functions than art. Positioning himself as a hyper self-conscious artistic subject, Acconci fuses the terrains of body art and process art, formulating the body as process, and art as a natural function of the body. This title was in the original Castelli-Sonnabend video art collection.
Dunno exactly what WATERWAYS entails en toto, but it does sound like Acconci had recorded his very own tastebuds drooling away at the thought of a nice juicy steak complete with greatly magnified snorts and sniffles added to give it that realistic feel. You can just hear the slobber gushing from those little pores and if you don't start getting your own mouth a waterin' after listening to this then you really must have a will of iron. Well, it does make for a better time'n watching some man-hating dykazoid cramming yams up her twat, and for all of you late-eighties self-righteous NEA chest beaters out there I hope you are offended!
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Cage's '61-'62 composition realized by flautist Eberhard Blum multi-tracking three different versions of his instrument with all of the appropriate gaps of silence adding just as much of a pounce to this as the actual sound parts do. Bound to get the less-enthused amongst us muttering about where art is headed, but the concept is clear enough to me at least as far as these esoteric zen-influenced chance operations go. Grab a bag of stale doritos, don a beret, stick your cigarette in a fancy holder and pretend you're in some New York loft ca. 1962 while this 'un spins and who knows, you might even bump into Marian Zazeela somwhere down the line!
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For me the music on this particular release is one of the many representations of the dark dying gasps of the boffo 1964-1981 rock et roll generation that managed to hang on this bloody long down the line after most would have believed it dead 'n buried. I'm not talkin' 'bout that hippoid generation that gave us all of those delightful ideas like AOR (later to be tagged as "classic rock") or mudfests either...naw, I'm blabbing about the hard-edged sounds birthed from the Brit Invasion and nurtured through high energy Detroit Rock, early-punk screedings and metallic konk outs. A sound that pretty much had died out around the time Max's Kansas City closed up shop and Lester Bangs deep sixed in his apartment and the music just didn't have the same bared-wire intensity it had if only a few years back. Or so we thought, and with good reason I might add.
Basically a mishmosh of various Ratcage acts that were plopping around a good decade or so back, this Cee-Dee proves that maybe the spirit of decadent under-the-counterculture rock didn't croak in the early-eighties like ROLLING STONE had boasted at one time. Lotsa hot faves show up here from Day-z Daze (SEE HEAR's Ted Gottfried's ukelele band) to Joy Ryder without Avis Davis and Florida's Psycho Daisies as well as some of the bubbling unders on the En Why scene who never did make it humongous, and they really do bring back those goodtime memories of when you knew you were living through a vibrant age in rock 'n roll and the music that was being cranked out was happening now 'n not then, and everybody thought you were a turd for liking it but then again, it's thirtysome years later and you have your MX-80 and Von Lmo to keep you occupied and all they have are their lush Emerson Lake and Palmer reissues digitally remastered!
Personal faves include the pair of Ruby and the Rednecks tracks that remind me of just what a classic All-Amerigan rock 'n roll spinner her own album (due to re-eval in these pages) remains as well as Jayne County and her new Back Street Boys doing an extended version of the old fave "Max's Kansas City" which really does stir up the ol' rambunctious feelings that I used to get hearing songs like this. If you're still stuck with your rock 'n roll head in the ROCK SCENE era this is one to cuddle up to in your fart-encrusted bedroom while staring solemnly at your Aerosmith poster.
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Various Artists-LOBSTER GIRLS GOSSIP CD-r (Bill Shute)Picked this 'un outta the pile because of the Buddy Hackett track featured onna cover, but personally I thought that one was about as funny as all of the woofs and meows my dad'd make whenever I'd eat Chinese food. But the rest really ain't that bad. Starts off really high-larious like with an instruction record (to the toon of "Ballin' the Jack") on how to eat lobster and goes from funny funky comedy (Effie Smith) to early sixties nerdo-cum-teen idol wackiness (Oliver Cool) with a pre-Deep Purple Ritchie Blackmore (Outlaws) and I don't know what the hell it is (Microbe Ensemble) in between. There's even some of that lame-o British comedy courtesy a Tony Payne that reminds me of nothing but circa.-1978/1983 PBS and indie television during the late hours. Freddie Cannon was hokay though even though I should loathe him for putting down Link Wray while the two were headin' towards some gig resulting in Wray kicking Cannon's ass out of the car stranding him inna middle of nowhere!!! In all, a better reminder of the past'n those horrid home movies my mom made of me and my cousin running around in front of my grade school (yech!).
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*If you get this ref there's a special no prize or at least a back issue of your choice waiting for you! You're welcome.
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