BLOG TO COMM

Now this is

Lately I've been occupying myself (and in the privacy of my own boudoir at that!) by having lotsa fun on the web by scouring the Internet Database on the hunt for those old issues of NATIONAL LAMPOON that are up and available for such suburban slobs as myself. And frankly, don't you think that this miracle of the modern age is certainly an asset for folk like myself who only used to read 'POON at the newsstands, not only because of depression-era wages that prohibited us from buying this esteemed publication but because hey, it wasn't like anybody was gonna let us in the house with a copy of that mag! Boy, it sure is great re-appreciating that old, offensive, decidedly non-proper and pissing off to the left and right humor that the mag was known for once again (and it's sure nice to know that there were other people on this planet who THOUGHT LIKE I DO) which goes to show you just how advanced I was even at that early teenbo stage in my life!

what I call

really funny

These early issues of 'POON (roughly up to the early-eighties---after that, ptooff!) also show just how much we've devolved since those freewheeling days when offensiveness could apply to the sorta people I've grown to loathe since hey, when was the last time any of us free-living beings on this planet able to make fun of such deserving targets as handicapped people, the retarded, stuck up radical youth, concentration camp survivors, gerbil-ridden sodomites, clueless Social Justice Warriors and all sortsa human turds just beggin' to be given the scathing 'POON treatment! All of these jagoffs (and more) were the target of  'POON wrath and if you don't think the jibes and pokes at the now-untouchable types are even more meaningful these sorry days may I call you Elton John's prolapsed rectum? After all, you probably have just about as much feeling as it does!

The regular features (especially the comics!) also bring back them toasty ol' fond memories of mag rack carousing. "Dirty Duck" still holds up well while "Trots and Bonnie" could be more hit than miss. Gahan Wilson's "Nuts" as well as Charles Rodrigues make me laugh more than Chuck Eddy's corpse ever will, while B. K. Taylor's "The Appletons" was such a mindless gut groaner that I sure wish it'd appeared in the local papers 'stead of the dreadfully unfunny offal that now appears in those sorry fishwrap pages. And believe-you-me, I sure miss the days when things like "Aunt Ron's Crafts For Boys" and "Son O' God" could actually be published which just brings up the proverbial question---when will we second/third-class citizens be allowed to LAUGH again?

humor in a thankfully non-jugular vein!

However, I must admit that I am having some trouble locating a couple of undoubtedly guffaw-inducing items that appeared in 'POON (or perhaps one of the special book editions which is why I can't locate 'em online)...one is a cartoon of Richard Nixon on the receiving end of a prison rape with the caption "He screwed you, now he's getting his!" as well as what is allegedly an "unretouched photo" featuring some aborigine from who knows where whose well-oversized manhood is tied in a knot. If you happen to know which issues these gems appeared, I'm sure you'll keep your trap shut as usual.

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I dunno about you, but there are times when I just can't get enough of that late-seventies En-Why-See zeitgeist that still resonates a whole lot brighter'n what actually followed. Thankfully this li'l site devoted to none other than the late-lamented EAST VILLAGE EYE noosepaper has appeared on line, and boy (girl) is it a godsend (krishnamurtisend) for those times when I do get them no wave blooze. Fantastic layout, great articles (James Marshall on the Cramps, PLENTY on the Contortions) and perhaps the next best thing to being caught up in a local heroin epidemic! Every time I go through I find loads of interesting information on long-forgotten local groups and other bits 'n feces I sure wish I knew about the first time 'round! Check it out yourself since hey, you'll never take my word for it!

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WEIRD THING ESPIED AT THE LOCAL PERKINS FAMILY RESTAURANT LAST SUNDAY MORN: And eyed while heading towards the "gents" room too...a small pinball-esque kiddie soccer (or football if you prefer) game that was very similar to those old baseball arcade games seen well into the seventies only scaled down to tot-size, the winner of the game getting a FREE kiddie meal t'boot. However, what made this particular game of chance interesting wasn't the fact that it was adorned with drawings of soccer players but because...now get this...a picture of the ENGLISH "Dennis the Menace"  was also being proudly displayed if you can believe that! Definitely something that definitely had me doing a double-take worthy of Shemp Howard if I do say so myself, and almost as strange as the time I saw some lass with a Tintin t-shirt on whilst at this outdoor antique show/flea market which I also thought mighty peculiar until I overheard her talking Frogese with her mater!

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This week in music did turn out a li'l spicier than I had thought. No new/recent exhumations or up-and-coming blast out music in a decidedly early-seventies high energy vein true, but thanks to Bill Shute, Paul McGarry and Bob Forward I was able to turn this post into something other than the usual long-winded blast of gaseous fumes these posts could be. Naw, this post is filled with nothing but unusual long-winded blasts of gaseous fumes, and I hope you appreciate my rather limited sense of humor.

Massimo Magee & David W. Stockard-INTERROGATORIES CD-r burn (Kendra Steiner Editions, see link on left)

Even more (if you can believe it!) rigid and nerve-gnawing freedom music that takes up where those mid-seventies AACM discs (and John Cage) left off, with reedist Magee playing a definitely post-Braxtonesque sopranino sax either straight or electronically altered and Stockard playing a snare drum and nothing but! They used to call this "minimalism" but in this case a whole new balla term is most definitely needed!!! I guess this is the thing that Leonard Feather nightmares were made of, and in more than one way I'm sure glad!

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The Challengers-WIPE OUT! CD-r burn (originally on GNP-Crescendo); the Agents-THEMES FOR SECRET AGENTS CD-r burn (originally on Sunset)

The Challengers album features a whole lot more prune-juicy than usual covers with Richard Delvy and company doing their own versions of the big 'uns that always sounded better in their own environs. Still makes for good enough clean out the bedroom backdrop, but I (and probably you, the discerning BLOG TO COMM reader) couldn't see myself taking this sort of crankout over the original gunch. I must say that I prefer the Agents doing the mid-sixties spy craze theme songs their way even if they ain't as good as the $3.99 stuff. Maybe that's because these numbers bring back early grade school memories of...come to think of it, I wanna smash this particular platter to SMITHEREENS, and I hope that you feel exactly the same way I do!

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CELEBRITIES AT THEIR WORST VOLUME 2.9, BITCH BITCH BITCH! CD-r burn

This collection is far from outrageous, or at least far from the outrageousness that I was hoping for given some of the wild off-color outtakes out there committed by people your parents always told us were nice and lovey-dovey. No Martin and Lewis it'll make ya shits or Casey Kasem yapping on about some dead dog, but you do get to hear Roger Waters swearin' about some pyrotechnic-lighting puds as well as Courtney Love's expletive-laden audience banter and phone message. In other words, sowhaddelseisnew? 

The rest ain't anything to call home about, what with some cutesy Christmas appearance from Mommie Dearest herself Joan Crawford and her adopted punching bags, a slightly-funny spoof of the old NBC jingle reflecting Fred Silverman's lousing up of the network, and a collage of clips that, for the life of me, have no meaning other than what they were originally intended for.

Some of it, like the Mark Lindsay commercials, don't have any double-meaning snicker value whatsoever nor do they show any signs of teenybop corniness, which must mean that I'm an old turd who still upholds the values of uberstraight Ameriga before the advent of the brave and just anti-middle class upheaval. However, the best of the batch for me was a radio interview conducted with an ailing Nina Simone who more or less sounds as if she was in the middle of a bender coming off like LaWanda Page after a few trips to the punchbowl! Boy did I feel sorry for the interviewer trying his best to make sense of that situation!!!

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WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO FAUST CD-r burn

Can't find any whys or wherefores regarding this collection of 1996 John Peel sessions, but it's supposedly downloadable somewhere out there so if you want one, you can HAVE one. 'n although I never thought that the reconstituted Faust was as interesting as the seventies variety the material they've left still has some of the original screwed sensibility that made krautrock the kind of genre that drew many an introspective nerdoid to its powers from the eighties onward. Avant pus spurts all over your sensibilities while trash can clangs do their best to upset your psyche they way they did during the Golden Age of Import Bins. And whaddaya know, but at times I can even detect a melody here and there!

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Jack DeJohnette-MADE IN CHICAGO CD-r burn (originally on ECM)

DeJohnette returns to his Chicago roots for this '05 live session also featuring AACM regulars Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams and Henry Threadgill (dunno who this Larry Gray guy is). For an ECM album it's more like ECM in the early days before they got into that soft exterior chamber sound, roaring all over like it was still 1975 and the loft scene was still something for bored VILLAGE VOICE writers to hype. DeJohnette sounds a whole loads better'n he did on some of those seventies platters of his I felt were snoozeville, while Mitchell and Threadgill once again prove that they were the real heirs to the sixties upheaval 'stead of those bowtie bozos who got alla that choice DOWN BEAT exposure. Even Gray shows himself a perfect bassist for this gathering of well-knowns and like I said, if you're put off by the ECM reputation this might just jar you ever-so-slightly in a different direction.

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THE JACK BENNY SHOW (CD-r burn)

Wait, shouldn't that be THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM? Whaddeva, here are a couple of radio classics that'll probably mean nothing to you, though I get the impression that if they were fulla s*xual innuendos and white/hetero guilt mongering some of you MASOCHISTS out there would be eating these up faster'n Elton John going down on a starving newsboy! Great stuff here with plenty of Rochester, Dennis Day (gotta admit that I fast-forwarded through the musical numbers because Day was always better as a doofus comedy foil than he was a tenor), Mary Livingston (who does deliver a slightly naughty joke when she sez that Jack's kiss wouldn't even make THE KINSEY REPORT!) and of course Don Wilson. Even Benny Rubin gets to do his "I dunno" routine and longtime fave Frank Nelson once again gets into the fray acting as obnoxious as ever! (BTW didja ever see his appearance on THE ADDAMS FAMILY where he plays it totally straight? I sure wish he did his obnoxious "Yeeeeessss" routine on that one!). And heck, where else is anyone gonna get to hear a musical quartet made up of Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye, George Burns and Groucho Marx??? As Brad Kohler would say, "You don't have to hate Dick Cavett to like Groucho Marx's singing voice," or something like that.

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THE SONS OF HERCULES CD-r burn (originally on Unclean)

As you all know, I PURPOSEFULLY missed out on most if not all of the nineties new high energy bands that were floating about not only here but abroad. Too many bad feelings after being cheated by some of the late-eighties practitioners of the form who just didn't have the same hard-nosed gunch that the originals oozed outta their syphilis-riddled guts. Now there may have been a few worthy of my ears, but given the lack of $$$ on my part it wasn't like I was scouring the record catalogs to see which new hype out there that was just begging me to shed my shekels..

After giving the Sons of Hercules a listen all I gotta say is that maybe I haven't missed that much. Sure they're high energy and pretty good if you want a quick rock fix, but these sons (and many of their compats) just don't have the same bash and vigor that those 99-cent cutout faves of the seventies that had mags like FLASH thrusting themselves  into existence sure did. Maybe if the members of the band had that suburban slob upbringing they'd know how to crank out a hard-edged platter worthy of the 1972 CREEM awards, but next to that swill I hear repeatedly at Dollar General well...it's pretty good if I do say so myself.

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Soundtrack to the motion picture ILLUSION, starring Charles Rogers and Nancy Carroll CD-r

Although the celluloid is gone the soundtrack lives on for this 1929 feature, but that won't stop us from enjoying it one iota! Of course it ain't anything much without the visuals considering that the discs used are so worn and hard to understand, but having it play on as I'm doing other things inna room really did bring back some old memories. That is, if you want to pretend you're a turdler again playing with your dinky inna other room while the folks are watching some old movie elsewhere inna abode. For anal retentive film historians and those of us who love them.

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Various Artists-CHESTERFIELD DOGGIE NEWBEAT CD-r burn (Bill Shute)


The track listing here seems to go off course somewhere after the appearance of Evil Hoodoo's "Black Strings" (aka the music they used for the old Benson and Hedges 100's commercials) and before Key Larsen but so what! Other'n I kinda wonder what is what and who is where and all that, but it's still a good selection what with some neato radio ad for Dr. Pepper as well as a couple of spoken word tracks from Taylor Mead who for once sounds like his mouth and throat ain't awash in some sorta white slimy substance.

The avant garde trax (including some Brian Eno thingies that don't sound so bad) are a whole lot better'n some of the sound jagoff out there, while the teenage thumpers from the likes of Larsen and Jim Cava don't sound as hideous as the folks at KICKS magazine usedta make 'em out to be (though it ain't like I'd actually BUY any of their wares in a million years!). 'n hey, even the hardcore punk offerings from the likes of the False Prophets sound boffo here even if we all know that band was nothing more than a buncha hippies who were in on the big eighties radical left bandwagon that sure petered out into totalitarian abstractions once that decade rolled on!

Kinda wondered who actually did that Jack Ruby-esque all-out punk scraper (I think its the Fat Worm of Error but I could be wrong), and the Beanie Baby/"Be My Baby" spoof is good enough for one of those afternoon drive radio shows and nothing else, but who can complain about ANY Cee-Dee-Are that's got the opening theme from the AUGGIE DOGGIE cartoons! Stuff like that (and the old radio commercials Bill snuck in) really make my day because hey, we all know that this sorta true art wasn't created by some bitch with a brick up her ass about not being invited to the prom or some ingrate immigrants or some pouting preeners who complain about how bad the old days were when they weren't, and frankly these old examples of mid-Amerigan GREATNESS purify my SOUL all the more! And if you disagree, may I point you out to some spiffy workshop advertised in THE VILLAGE VOICE???