Saturday, March 05, 2016

So what's there to talk about anyway...howzbout the current political situation, mainly the race for the big house with alla dem pillars an' I don't mean Leavenworth! Kinda yawnsville if you ask me, though I gotta say that I am sorry to see Bernie Sanders flopping about like he is especially since compared to Hillary just about anybody seems better. At least the admitted socialist (as if anybody else out there on his side has admitted their own pinko tendencies in that sorta fashion) puts up a false face and says he even cares about the welfare and being of nobody suburban slobs like us, though somehow I get the feeling that if the ex-folkie ever gets in charge we slobs'd be the first fanablas rounded up for CAMP BAEZ where we'll all learn to be productive citizens for the dictatorship of the even newer than new left proletariat, or at least have all of our fat rendered and made into organic KY or something equally gay-friendly if that don't work.

As for Trump well heck, I gotta say that I'M ALL FOR HIM if he indeed will destroy the Republican Party as we know it, or at least dismantle the concept of what conservatism has become here in the 'teens long after the entire movement went off course sometime around the fall of Robert Taft. Sure I wanna hate the guy (rich kazillionaire snob who seems more concerned with Eastern Euro p***y than any normal hetero type should), but given the kinda people who hate him and go into all sorts of hissy fits comparing him to every evil entity of the past few hundred years other'n Stalin, Mao, Lenin or Yohannon he definitely seems like the kinda guy I'd wanna see with the finger on the button 'n that's a fact! True a lot of my rah-rahing for him is driven by pure spite, but sometimes voting is like having to choose between Ex-Lax and an enema, ifyaknowaddamean.

What's funny about the whole shebang goin' on is how the olde tymey establishment press 'n tee-vee, both of a leftoid and neocon variety, is going all hog wild in their denunciations of the man throwing out every kinda slam bam accusation regarding things we've known about for years as if anyone really cares about what these seventies heartbleed leftovers have to say in this day 'n age! I mean, if people don't read my usually astute commentaries regarding everything from rare euro underground recordings to reprints of seventy-year-old comic books, why should they give a fig about whatever TIME magazine or the excruciatingly unfunny Gary Trudeau have to say about the political situation in their obviously put on "true" patriotic ways (and man, next to them I am an anarchist!)? I mean, when I want to get an idea of which way the political/social winds are blowin' its TAKI'S MAGAZINE for me and precious little else! And Trudeau, at least Al Capp could draw, was funny and had your type pegged (you know what I'm talking about!) perfectly!

I for one sure would have loved to have seen a Sanders vs. Trump battle royale but I guess that's ne'er to be (unless something bad were to happen to the ex-first pearl diver...or is that clam digger?), but if Trump does survive the expected GOP night o' the long knives and has to face it up against Miss Excess Baggage boy will that be a fun 'un to watch! Not for the politicians themselves but the indignant press, academia and Social Justice Warrior crowd types if Trump would just happen to cream his expected opponent into oblivion! A Herculean task in itself but sheesh, somebody's gotta do it and why should the job of destroying the postmodern world be all left to me?

PREDICTION: if Trump does win in November all of those cackling people in Hollywood and elsewhere who said they were going to move out of the United States because of his election.....................won't! However they will still refer to his inauguration as a "coronation"...I mean, what else?
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How'dja like that li'l bitta filler fluff anyhow? I figure that I just gotta stay all current events 'n all just so's people'll think I'm a hip 'n uppa date and totally "with it" cool kinda guy! Hope it worked, just so I can up my standing in the post-hippie dippy music community which has been steadily declining due to my unwillingness to take part in the latest Five Year Plan. But all seriousness aside here're the latest offerings to pass muster here at BLOG TO COMM central, and once again thanks to the USUAL SUSPECTS (Bill, Paul and P. D.) for the donations. Yes I still am on my self-imposed austerity drive trying to save the shekels for future endeavors like eating, though thankfully I just might have enough lucre to spare once April rolls around to order at least a few recordings out there that just might fill the ever-popular bill. And hey, maybe some of you three might be seeing a little surprise come your own way in the near future...details to follow (more or less).
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But before we get to this week's writeups it's time for...15-60-75 THE NUMBERS BAND LIVE @ KENT STATE UNIVERSITY 1977!!!







Bob Dylan-SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT CD-r burn (originally on Clodumbia)

It's like an old MAD magazine spoof come true! I mean sheesh, if this 'un had only come out in 1966 would cornballus older generation Ameriga have STOOD UP AND TAKEN NOTICE! Bob Dylan, the protest generation's answer to Julius LaRosa, singing the old standards that made Mom 'n Dad forget alla that long hair crudola you've been wasting your time on these past umpteen years! What more could you have wished for...not only would they've quit buggin' ya about yer curly locks (at least for a few minoots) but they might even have congratulated you for your fine taste in music! "Some Enchanted Evening"..."Autumn Leaves"...man, they'd've been so happy that they'd even forget about that copy of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC (the hula girl issue) they found hidden under yer mattress!

Of course once they get a good earfulla Dylan's bullfrog voice and off-key singing all bets'r off 'n it's back to bein' just another suburban slob fanabla fighting with the folks alla the time. But still I can see that MAD article right before mine eyes..."TODAY'S ROCK SINGERS' ALBUMS OF TOMORROW" or some such fol-de-rol complete with illustrations by Jack Rickard! Sure beats Dave Berg's "THE LIGHTER SIDE OF BORING NEW YORK FIFTIES-LIBERALS LIKE MYSELF TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF THE SEVENTIES".
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Various Artists-BEEFIER THAN A DRESDEN DOLL CD-r burn

Bill Shute burned me this collection of "song-poems" which really must prove the old Barnum adage given how many of these platters are around. Obviously Edith Bunker wasn't the only one saving up money inna cookie jar in order to have her poetry set to music, though one wonders if her lyrics would have fit in with any of the melodies that are presented on this particular spin. From early-sixties pop to old time country and big band (even a Bobby Rydell/Darin/Vee... swipe), the song poem people really knew how to set a set of so-so lyrics to some halfway, even fullway decent music.

Sure I kinda feel like a cad listening to something that was written by a 57-year-old housewife in Terre Haute around 1963 (almost as bad as if I were to have snuck into her house, crept into her bedroom AND...thumbed through her photo album!) but this is the age of TRANSPARENCY. Bill also put some vintage radio ads in between the tracks which really bring back fond memories of...the last time Bill did something like this!
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Various Artists-ANATOMY OF COINCIDENCE CD-r burn (originally on Clandestine Recordings)

The eighties cassette revolution lives on...somewhat kinda sorta. Long before confused college kiddies began doing the white mea culpa trip on campuses nationwide they were too busy cloistered in their fart-encrusted dorms recording music that sounds exactly like this. Some of it halfway decent (like the neo-funky opener) but most just seems to be the usual home synth blurpy stuff that's been the rage with someone somewhere. It's stuff that means a whole load to the people who actually gathered in those dusky rooms with their gear 'n all but I, bein' in a hard-edged dissonance and blues mode 'n all, just can't swing into the same abstract if paranoid mindset of the people who made these sounds. I'm sure I'll be whole hog for this 'un after the colostomy.
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The Milford Graves Trio-LIVE 6/16/1976 CD-r burn (courtesy of P. D. Fadensonnen)

I don't have the trio's now rare-beyond-belief Ak-Ba album so this 'un was a long awaited surprise. The chatter and audience hoo-hahs kinda make me wish I knew what was goin' on (it seems as if Graves was talking to the assembled without the aid of a microphone) but the free play between Graves and reedmen Arthur Doyle and Hugh Glover is a true fury of beyond-the-beat splendor. Of course I sure would love to hear the Ak-Ba platter (which I tried ordering via NMDS way back when only it was outta stock...like they shoulda dropped it from their listing like they also shoulda DAILY DANCE stedda gettin' alla my hopes up like that only to be left flat!) but until the day it does get a proper reissue this'll do.
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The Packers w/Packy Axton-HOLE IN THE WALL CD-r burn (originally on Pure Soul Records)

Hooo boy, what a cheezeball of a record this be! Low-energy soul that even beats the usual lowness in power and oomph some soul records just oozed. Its got that instrumental organ and sax live from the Down 'n Dirty Club on the bad side of town kinda sound, only the performance reminds me of Jimmy McGriff coming outta the haze right after his vasectomy.

Sounds like something you would have heard on one of those "Unsold Pilots" that used to end up on many a summer evening tee-vee schedule. Y'know, the ones that were chock fulla hipster relevance in the hopes that the makers were about to hit on a "new" ALL IN THE FAMILY or SANFORD AND SON only for it to end up fodder for a jumbled up schedule just waiting for the new season to arrive.

'n hey, notice how I didn't make any homofaggic comments regarding the name of the group and the leader's "Christian" moniker, hunh? Betcha you guys are all proud of me for being so heartbleed and deep-felt and all of those nicey things towards those who are less than the rest of us, right?  Naw???? Oh fudge!
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Freddie McCoy-LONELY AVENUE CD-r burn (originally on Prestige)

Bluesy enough vibist playing the pre-bop sound not moving any earth in the process but still pacifying enough for those late-night instrospective moments. I'd still trample on a pile of these to get to a Tony Williams Lifetime album (at least the ones with Larry Young and John McLaughlin), but the soulful takes on such olde tymey faves as "Harlem Nocturne" and "Willow Weep For Me" coupled with a whole buncha unfamiliar trackage ain't really that bad, especially when you get an earfulla the kinda stillborn music records like this ULTIMATELY led to! And if ya don't believe me just switch yer cable tee-vee to the jazz channel for some sorry examples of what I'm gabbin' about!
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CHILDREN OF THE MUSHROOM CD-r burn (originally on Outset)

You probably thought this reissue of some late-sixties outta nowhere (if you consider Sherman Oaks California "outta nowhere") tracks by a buncha guys who thought they were the Doors but couldn't even ascend to the same levels as Teddy and His Patches was gonna be straight-A grade turdsville, right? Well no, for Children of the Mushroom were actually a really good buncha teenage big name wannabes that remind me of none other than It's All Meat in the way they merge late-sixties organ-dominated hard rock with just enough mid-sixties ranch house action in it to keep this from being just another hippie artifact. Some of it may be a tad too overwrought, but that driving organ and knotty pine rec room sound'll having you wishing you were the next door neighbor kid huddling by the cellar window while these guys were rehearsing way back in that decade which dare not speak its name (or was that the fifties? Hard to tell anymore...).
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Terumasa Hino Quartet-INTO THE HEAVEN CD-r burn (originally on Takt Jazz, Japan)

Remember the old saying "Whites create, Asians imitate"? Well that is true to a certain extent even though it might not be the "proper" thing to say so in fru-fru company. But this group not only proves that ol' adage but the other well-known one which sez "Blacks create, Asians imitate"!!!!

Trumpeter Hino does elicit a fair amount of Miles Davisisms on the side-long title track (and elsewhere) while the rest of the group (sporting names which in no way could be mistaken for Amish)  perform what could be taken for a nice late-fifties sorta bop approach that (at least for me) evokes a whole lotta that Blue Note feeling that had its own special aura about it.

Surprisingly good jazz that even borders on various early avantisms yet doesn't take the plunge into all-out abandon. Lemme make one small change..."Whites/Blacks create, Asians emulate"!
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Various Artists-DUSTER LOUISE CARPENTER SERENADE CD-r burn (Bill Shute)

And closing out today's gathering of the tribe's this collection of weird rarities including a guy called Marty Roberts doing these funny rockabilly dribblers (including the high-larious "Baby" which ventures into Stan Freberg ridicule territory!) and the Dusters (no relation the automobile despite Bill putting an ad for the Plymouth vehicle on the cover of this smacker!) doing some r 'n b vocal group-ism the kind that just ain't heard no more! Akron's Cross-Walks sound rather hippydippyish to the point where I just start to sizzle thinkin' how the Numbers Band were probably slaving away at some seedy dive right at the same moment these guys were undoubtedly getting heavy doody luvvin' because of their laid-back style. Jazzbo Hank Crawford's attempt at a commercial hit (or so I think) is hokay though its nothing that'll make me dribble, while the country twang of Ralph Pruitt, and Shorty Underwood is pleezin' enuff and who wouldn't want to run out and buy an Edsel after hearing a radio ad like that!

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