Well, """""I""""" made it through April Fools Day intact---howzbout YOU??? Nothing dreadful happened to me this year...managed to miss the hidden turdbombs that were planted in the laundry basket, plus I caught that suspicious bar of soap placed in the bathtub long before I was to insert it up my nether regions in order to get a nice and clean scrub in that hard to reach area (of course I also use a bottle washer!). However, I did con my Aunt Flabby into believing that Unca Ferd was in the emergency room suffering from acute fartitis and boy did she look silly once she got there only to discover that he was hanging out at the corner tavern all the time! I think she took it all as the joke it was s'posed to be, but somehow I get the feeling that the only thing I'll be gettin' from her come birthday time's a bottle of Holy Water. Boy, when we go all out to make the best of a day, we sure do make the best of it!
Unfortunately I don't remember THE PATTY DUKE SHOW that much even though I was front and center for many an episode during the show's first run and can remember various lines sputtered by not only Patty but her cultured "cousin" Cathy (not to mention the series' own British Invasion cash-in which had Cathy actually knowing the new mop topped singing sensation from her days in Blighty), but from what I do remember it was rather fun 'n mindless teenbo stuff custom made for the baby boomer type yet to discover his own disgusting peace 'n love side. Not as ranch house realistic as LEAVE IT TO BEAVER remains, but frankly how would you have rather spent your post-school days, watching PATTY DUKE reruns or some slobberin' fifties feature on the other channel?
True her post-sitcom career has been rather snoozeville...I mean, wasn't VALLEY OF THE DOLLS nothing but total soap opera and who could forget a slew of tee-vee pilots (one with ex-hubby Gomez Addams which had the two taking a bath together on-screen!) and dullsville tee-vee movies that still pop up on those women's kinda cable networks inna afternoon. But then again I'm sure you're still chortling at Duke's 1970 Emmy Awards appearance where she accepted her award with a totally spaced out and incoherent speech (everyone thought she was high but it was that dreaded chemical imbalance we all know and love) looking into the audience making a total fool of herself! Yeah, only a fanabla such as I would bring up a career low like this in an obituary, but frankly it's this kinda quirky behavior that draws me closer towards a celeb's freakier side! And with Patty Duke you couldn't get any freakier when it came to her post-teenage bipolar career which could get kinda sleazy at times! (If only Ross and Richard could tell all they know!)
Though really, maybe Patty should be remembered for going public with her personal demons unlike so many actors and actresses who covered up it all up until it was way too late and THE NATIONAL BLABBER had 'em plastered all over the front page shocking generations of check out old ladies who couldn't resist those headlines. I mean, that would almost be akin to me coming clean about some of my own not quite-so out inna open problems like painful rectal itch and flaky balls, but considering the "family magazine" status of this blog you know I would never bring up anything as disgusting and disturbing as that, right?
The Styrenes-CLE 76-79 UNRELEASED three 7-inch EP set (My Mind's Eye)
I mean like---here's thee release I've been waiting for for a good portion of my musical listening and enjoying life, and although I sure coulda used this one back when these songs were being laid down to tape it's sure great to get to hear 'em all in the ever-lovin' present! Believe it or not but this package contains not one or two but three eee-pees fulla classic and uncirculated Styrenes tuneage straight outta the fertile and way underdocumented late-seventies Cleveland underground, featuring tuneage that we may have heard many-a-time before but not exactly in this way/shape/form!
Sound quality's typical late-seventies low-grade which definitely adds to the proceedings, and the performance is killer enough that you too will go back in time and reminisce about the days when seventies underground consciouness really meant something as in the re-molding of sixties accomplishment for a new and perhaps even more expressive decade. Everything from the Velvets to Left Banke and Troggs can be discerned, and if you think that I'm lying when I tell you I could just feel an early Mothers of Invention vibe here you'd be wrong again as usual! And, in the best rock 'n roll drool off fashion, this set leaves you wanting moremoreMORE, making me wish this was a SIX platter affair 'stead of only three!
And it even comes with a neet booklet detailing the history of the band in Paul Marotta and Jamie Klimek's own words and like, if you don't get bowled over the rare photos and heretofore unknown info presented then may I call you Bruno Bornino?
Klimperi & Eric Chabert Sing John B. Cornaway-DEALINGS LP (Bruit Direct Disques, France)
Crazy sounds here, man. Reminds me of a freaked Red Crayola trying to play Kevin Ayers with a French Wild Man Fisher, courtesy of vocal coach Syd Barrett, singing some rather whacked out lyrics that don't seem to make any sense to your dad at all! The home-made instruments give this 'un a kinda junkyard feeling yet it does sound like music from an Armenian restaurant and it's still together enough to ooze more'n just a tad of enjoyment outta the thing. Believe-you-me, if this 'un was some long-forgotten release on the original Obscure Label you still wouldn't be flinging out hefty collectors prices for the thing...sheesh, I thought you guys were a lot smarter'n that!
Sun Ra-DISCIPLINE 27-11 LP (Saturn)
Those two Ra spins I laid my opines down about last week really got me into lookin' into my platter collection for other Saturnine specialties, and lo 'n behold but didn't this record I forgot I even owned (even though I bought it last December!) jump right outta the pile! Yet another rarity from the once-impossible to obtain (unless you were really in the know) Saturn Research Laboratories, DISCIPLINE 27-11's got that early-seventies Ra swing down pat and I don't mean Nixon as in that old DEEP THROAT joke that was goin' 'round back inna seventies!
Three tracks here, the first being a standard big band arrangement flyin' all over the place and the other two being vocal workouts that sound as if they do have somewhat of a commercial potential. Well, at least commercial enough to the point where they coulda been outside FM hits on some of the stranger stations that were up and about. And that goes especially for the side-long title track where Ra, June Tyson and a number of the Arkestra cadre get into these long and somewhat funny philosophical discussions while a stripped-down band plays in the background.
Could be the party record of the year, especially if you happen to be holding the party on Skylab!
Spacecraft-PARADOXE CD (Spalax, France)
Here are some early/mid-seventies recordings from one-a-them French-type groups that sorta fit in with the whole experimental electronic soundscreeding that was going on really big o'er there at the time. The duo of Ivan Coaquette on guitars and former Red Noise/MEV clinger-onner John Livengood on various keyboards electronic or not might start out with a Yes-like glop of total mass refrain goo on "Lumiere de Lune", but the rest of these tracks are hard electronic musings that'll have you recalling Harmonia and other continental acts from the same time period in your obviously European-saturated mind. The combination of the soaring guitar lines of Coaquette and the screeching synths of Livengood can get out-of-bounds when they want to, and if you're still of the mind that all of that mid-seventies electronic stuff is just progressive rock without the tinkerbells then you're really in for a surprise! A neat once-in-awhile spinner that ought to make it to your own personal NWW-styled list.
Milford Graves-BABI MUSIC CD-r burn (originally on IPS)
Never was able to get hold of the original (always outta stock @ the NMDS) so thanks to the graciousness of one P.D. Fadensonnen I was able to finally hear this legendary platter which does rank up there with the best of the mid-seventies self-produced platters that were comin' outta the jazz underground back then. Taken from one of those old WBAI-FM "Free Music Store" broadcasts, Graves hits and bangs a whole slew of wild percussives on his freaked out set while Hugh Glover and Arthur Doyle do their best to break the lease what with their totally atonal bleating which has to be some of the best since the glory days of Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman. Graves' vocal pants and whoos might not exactly endear him to your typical light jazz fan, but it does contribute to the general anarchy that ensues on this half-hour platter. And to think that people were ignoring this sonic mastery then, just like they do now!
The Kinks-LIVE AT COBO HALL/ANOTHER ONE FOR THE ROAD CD-r burn
Taken from some sorta Euro bootleg that undoubtedly came out during the early-nineties glory days of boot Cee-Dees, this 'un captures the Davies boys'n co. during a part in their career that settled well with Bill's digestive system but not mine. After all, by this time in the rock et roll game the Kinks were teetering between British Invasion mop top mania and bonafeed fanzine cult status, and all of the sudden they were on Arista and HUGE as if they were indeed the Stones with all of the commercial rectal clench those over-the-hills were milking the moolah outta equally staid listeners with. Personally I found the entire proceeding captured here rather snoozarama compared with some of the live tapes (even from a good five or so years earlier) my ears have had the pleasure of listening to. I can see the likes of Edgar Breau and others comin' after me for my decidedly anti-Kinks vision but hey, that's the price you have to pay for being the kinda iconoclast I've been these past thirtysome years!!!
Mundell Lowe-TV ACTION JAZZ CD-r burn (originally on Camden)
Tee-vee jollies galore can be found on this collection of various popular early-sixties themes done up nice 'n spiffy West Coast-like that's custom-made for the hi-fi nut in your life who's got one of those high-falutin' stereo systems in his knotty pine rec room. They don't sound anything like the actual themes, but they're sure great listenin' to after one of those hard days at the salt mines and besides, you can just feel the vibes of LONG LOST AMERIGAN MANHOOD resonating in each and every one of these rip roarin' cool jazz jaunts that'll take you back to better times'n these. Sure wish they woulda done up the theme to CHECKMATE here but hey, this is Camden records so don't expect one of those 100% quality jobs!
Wilburn Burchette-OPENS THE SEVEN GATES OF TRANSCENDENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS CD-r burn (originally on Fifth Dimension)
From all reports this Burchette guy was a hippydippy occult creep of the creepiest order, but man does this record sound like everything in the world you wished a hippydippy occultist would come up with even though if he did he wouldn't be hippydippy anymore! Even with the gnu agey song titles and complete inner peace through looking at the inserts packaging this platter moves ya more'n prunes, what with the "affected" electric guitar and occasional electronics coming off like the perfect cross between your sixties folk guitar faves (Fahey, Basho, Bull...) and the wafting sounds that were being uttered on alla those Loren Connors platters that got the critical hoo-hahs but never did register with anyone outside of your own little clique. Well, if ya just gotta open up them seven gates of transcendental consciousness which might lead to a better job or even some nookie can ya think of a better way'n this outerworldly platter?
The Ruts-LIVE AT THE MARQUEE CD-r burn (originally on Caroline)
Given that my appreciation of late-seventies English punk rock hasn't been as strong lately as it should be (and by "lately" I mean like since 1993), maybe I ain't the best candidate to review a recently exhumed Ruts live gig. Still I find the performance energetic, the songs pleasantly monochromatic and the overall results a whole lot better'n 99% of the competition for the big bucks of youth music aficionados world-wide. Nothing that I'd want to subsist on for the next twenny years of my life true, but as far as these punk types go ya gotta admit this has got a whole lot more slam bang pow energy'n anything that the music which was being made for strange men to exchange bodily fluids with to listen to that was so popular at the time could come up with!
A. J. Kaufmann-STONED GYPSY WANDERER CD-r burn (Kendra Steiner Editions)
Here's a completely different from the usual fun and jamz Kendra Steiner Editions release, an addition to the catalog that is in fact perhaps the most difficult of the entire run of KSE spinners to categorize. I mean, just what (let alone who) is this A. J. Kaufmann guy supposed to be anyhoo. He might just be a singer-songwriter in the classic Jon Landau sense, but not exactly the timid young minstrel of the Laurel Canyon set though I do detect a tad bitta Donovan. A bigger bit of Syd Barrett might also be discerned, not to mention some Tim Buckley or Mij or even some Brian Sands as if any of you will buy a copy of his REHEATED CHOCOLATE TANGOES or FIXATION recordings no matter how much I plug 'em here and elsewhere. The lyrics are mystical beyond belief, the performance ranks with the best late-sixties productions one could have found on Warners, and Kaufmann himself is a world class talent who recalls a whole buncha past while presenting it in the here and now. And the best thing about it is it hardly if ever gets twee!
Various Artists-CELLOPHANE CAVEMAN WATERMELON SWEATER CD-r burn (Bill Shute)
I really like the garage band vibe on this 'un what with the infamous Lyrics "So What"/"They Can't Hurt Me" single and the Sopwith Camel (well, they come about as close to the garage band idiom on "Cellophane Woman" here as they ever did) and Cap'n Beefheart. Buffalo Springfield do pretty good as well (never thought I'd say that considering that all-time doof Stephen Stills remains a burr-like irritant in my rock 'n roll cowboy boots) as do Don and the Goodtimes and other old tyme faves in the BLOG TO COMM pantheon of somethingorother. BIGGEST SURPRISE OF THE BUNCH!-the flipster to the Associated Soul Group's 45, mainly "Wild Times" which is much better known to me from the infamous INNER SOUNDS OF THE ID album! Bill even tossed on a couple "song poems" for good measure and I wonder if Greg Prevost is aware of the Cavemen (who open and close this classic) who hail(ed) from none other'n his home stomping ground Rochester New York!
***I guess given how this blog is up 'n supportive of all of that classic Suburban Slob UHF tee-vee kinda entertainment that most of you innerlektual snobs like to up nose at I should mention something about the passing of Patty Duke. Well, even though I never really cozied up to her probably because she looked like too many of those old teenage gals of the day I thought were so Plain Jane, maybe I should say a few good things about the recently departed star despite her not-so-hotcha features.
Unfortunately I don't remember THE PATTY DUKE SHOW that much even though I was front and center for many an episode during the show's first run and can remember various lines sputtered by not only Patty but her cultured "cousin" Cathy (not to mention the series' own British Invasion cash-in which had Cathy actually knowing the new mop topped singing sensation from her days in Blighty), but from what I do remember it was rather fun 'n mindless teenbo stuff custom made for the baby boomer type yet to discover his own disgusting peace 'n love side. Not as ranch house realistic as LEAVE IT TO BEAVER remains, but frankly how would you have rather spent your post-school days, watching PATTY DUKE reruns or some slobberin' fifties feature on the other channel?
True her post-sitcom career has been rather snoozeville...I mean, wasn't VALLEY OF THE DOLLS nothing but total soap opera and who could forget a slew of tee-vee pilots (one with ex-hubby Gomez Addams which had the two taking a bath together on-screen!) and dullsville tee-vee movies that still pop up on those women's kinda cable networks inna afternoon. But then again I'm sure you're still chortling at Duke's 1970 Emmy Awards appearance where she accepted her award with a totally spaced out and incoherent speech (everyone thought she was high but it was that dreaded chemical imbalance we all know and love) looking into the audience making a total fool of herself! Yeah, only a fanabla such as I would bring up a career low like this in an obituary, but frankly it's this kinda quirky behavior that draws me closer towards a celeb's freakier side! And with Patty Duke you couldn't get any freakier when it came to her post-teenage bipolar career which could get kinda sleazy at times! (If only Ross and Richard could tell all they know!)
Though really, maybe Patty should be remembered for going public with her personal demons unlike so many actors and actresses who covered up it all up until it was way too late and THE NATIONAL BLABBER had 'em plastered all over the front page shocking generations of check out old ladies who couldn't resist those headlines. I mean, that would almost be akin to me coming clean about some of my own not quite-so out inna open problems like painful rectal itch and flaky balls, but considering the "family magazine" status of this blog you know I would never bring up anything as disgusting and disturbing as that, right?
***But other'n those warm 'n toasty old tee-vee memories well like, here's what you've been waiting for this week. I tried to be brief, but if I do run off at the typewriter just blame it on my own emotional shortcomings! Thanks to Bill, P.D., Paul and the rest of the charitable out there (not to mention me and my own moolah, of which I dreadfully parted with some in a brief moment of mental incompetence...).
I mean like---here's thee release I've been waiting for for a good portion of my musical listening and enjoying life, and although I sure coulda used this one back when these songs were being laid down to tape it's sure great to get to hear 'em all in the ever-lovin' present! Believe it or not but this package contains not one or two but three eee-pees fulla classic and uncirculated Styrenes tuneage straight outta the fertile and way underdocumented late-seventies Cleveland underground, featuring tuneage that we may have heard many-a-time before but not exactly in this way/shape/form!
Sound quality's typical late-seventies low-grade which definitely adds to the proceedings, and the performance is killer enough that you too will go back in time and reminisce about the days when seventies underground consciouness really meant something as in the re-molding of sixties accomplishment for a new and perhaps even more expressive decade. Everything from the Velvets to Left Banke and Troggs can be discerned, and if you think that I'm lying when I tell you I could just feel an early Mothers of Invention vibe here you'd be wrong again as usual! And, in the best rock 'n roll drool off fashion, this set leaves you wanting moremoreMORE, making me wish this was a SIX platter affair 'stead of only three!
And it even comes with a neet booklet detailing the history of the band in Paul Marotta and Jamie Klimek's own words and like, if you don't get bowled over the rare photos and heretofore unknown info presented then may I call you Bruno Bornino?
***
Crazy sounds here, man. Reminds me of a freaked Red Crayola trying to play Kevin Ayers with a French Wild Man Fisher, courtesy of vocal coach Syd Barrett, singing some rather whacked out lyrics that don't seem to make any sense to your dad at all! The home-made instruments give this 'un a kinda junkyard feeling yet it does sound like music from an Armenian restaurant and it's still together enough to ooze more'n just a tad of enjoyment outta the thing. Believe-you-me, if this 'un was some long-forgotten release on the original Obscure Label you still wouldn't be flinging out hefty collectors prices for the thing...sheesh, I thought you guys were a lot smarter'n that!
***
Those two Ra spins I laid my opines down about last week really got me into lookin' into my platter collection for other Saturnine specialties, and lo 'n behold but didn't this record I forgot I even owned (even though I bought it last December!) jump right outta the pile! Yet another rarity from the once-impossible to obtain (unless you were really in the know) Saturn Research Laboratories, DISCIPLINE 27-11's got that early-seventies Ra swing down pat and I don't mean Nixon as in that old DEEP THROAT joke that was goin' 'round back inna seventies!
Three tracks here, the first being a standard big band arrangement flyin' all over the place and the other two being vocal workouts that sound as if they do have somewhat of a commercial potential. Well, at least commercial enough to the point where they coulda been outside FM hits on some of the stranger stations that were up and about. And that goes especially for the side-long title track where Ra, June Tyson and a number of the Arkestra cadre get into these long and somewhat funny philosophical discussions while a stripped-down band plays in the background.
Could be the party record of the year, especially if you happen to be holding the party on Skylab!
***
Here are some early/mid-seventies recordings from one-a-them French-type groups that sorta fit in with the whole experimental electronic soundscreeding that was going on really big o'er there at the time. The duo of Ivan Coaquette on guitars and former Red Noise/MEV clinger-onner John Livengood on various keyboards electronic or not might start out with a Yes-like glop of total mass refrain goo on "Lumiere de Lune", but the rest of these tracks are hard electronic musings that'll have you recalling Harmonia and other continental acts from the same time period in your obviously European-saturated mind. The combination of the soaring guitar lines of Coaquette and the screeching synths of Livengood can get out-of-bounds when they want to, and if you're still of the mind that all of that mid-seventies electronic stuff is just progressive rock without the tinkerbells then you're really in for a surprise! A neat once-in-awhile spinner that ought to make it to your own personal NWW-styled list.
***
Never was able to get hold of the original (always outta stock @ the NMDS) so thanks to the graciousness of one P.D. Fadensonnen I was able to finally hear this legendary platter which does rank up there with the best of the mid-seventies self-produced platters that were comin' outta the jazz underground back then. Taken from one of those old WBAI-FM "Free Music Store" broadcasts, Graves hits and bangs a whole slew of wild percussives on his freaked out set while Hugh Glover and Arthur Doyle do their best to break the lease what with their totally atonal bleating which has to be some of the best since the glory days of Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman. Graves' vocal pants and whoos might not exactly endear him to your typical light jazz fan, but it does contribute to the general anarchy that ensues on this half-hour platter. And to think that people were ignoring this sonic mastery then, just like they do now!
***
Taken from some sorta Euro bootleg that undoubtedly came out during the early-nineties glory days of boot Cee-Dees, this 'un captures the Davies boys'n co. during a part in their career that settled well with Bill's digestive system but not mine. After all, by this time in the rock et roll game the Kinks were teetering between British Invasion mop top mania and bonafeed fanzine cult status, and all of the sudden they were on Arista and HUGE as if they were indeed the Stones with all of the commercial rectal clench those over-the-hills were milking the moolah outta equally staid listeners with. Personally I found the entire proceeding captured here rather snoozarama compared with some of the live tapes (even from a good five or so years earlier) my ears have had the pleasure of listening to. I can see the likes of Edgar Breau and others comin' after me for my decidedly anti-Kinks vision but hey, that's the price you have to pay for being the kinda iconoclast I've been these past thirtysome years!!!
***
Tee-vee jollies galore can be found on this collection of various popular early-sixties themes done up nice 'n spiffy West Coast-like that's custom-made for the hi-fi nut in your life who's got one of those high-falutin' stereo systems in his knotty pine rec room. They don't sound anything like the actual themes, but they're sure great listenin' to after one of those hard days at the salt mines and besides, you can just feel the vibes of LONG LOST AMERIGAN MANHOOD resonating in each and every one of these rip roarin' cool jazz jaunts that'll take you back to better times'n these. Sure wish they woulda done up the theme to CHECKMATE here but hey, this is Camden records so don't expect one of those 100% quality jobs!
***
From all reports this Burchette guy was a hippydippy occult creep of the creepiest order, but man does this record sound like everything in the world you wished a hippydippy occultist would come up with even though if he did he wouldn't be hippydippy anymore! Even with the gnu agey song titles and complete inner peace through looking at the inserts packaging this platter moves ya more'n prunes, what with the "affected" electric guitar and occasional electronics coming off like the perfect cross between your sixties folk guitar faves (Fahey, Basho, Bull...) and the wafting sounds that were being uttered on alla those Loren Connors platters that got the critical hoo-hahs but never did register with anyone outside of your own little clique. Well, if ya just gotta open up them seven gates of transcendental consciousness which might lead to a better job or even some nookie can ya think of a better way'n this outerworldly platter?
***
Given that my appreciation of late-seventies English punk rock hasn't been as strong lately as it should be (and by "lately" I mean like since 1993), maybe I ain't the best candidate to review a recently exhumed Ruts live gig. Still I find the performance energetic, the songs pleasantly monochromatic and the overall results a whole lot better'n 99% of the competition for the big bucks of youth music aficionados world-wide. Nothing that I'd want to subsist on for the next twenny years of my life true, but as far as these punk types go ya gotta admit this has got a whole lot more slam bang pow energy'n anything that the music which was being made for strange men to exchange bodily fluids with to listen to that was so popular at the time could come up with!
***
Here's a completely different from the usual fun and jamz Kendra Steiner Editions release, an addition to the catalog that is in fact perhaps the most difficult of the entire run of KSE spinners to categorize. I mean, just what (let alone who) is this A. J. Kaufmann guy supposed to be anyhoo. He might just be a singer-songwriter in the classic Jon Landau sense, but not exactly the timid young minstrel of the Laurel Canyon set though I do detect a tad bitta Donovan. A bigger bit of Syd Barrett might also be discerned, not to mention some Tim Buckley or Mij or even some Brian Sands as if any of you will buy a copy of his REHEATED CHOCOLATE TANGOES or FIXATION recordings no matter how much I plug 'em here and elsewhere. The lyrics are mystical beyond belief, the performance ranks with the best late-sixties productions one could have found on Warners, and Kaufmann himself is a world class talent who recalls a whole buncha past while presenting it in the here and now. And the best thing about it is it hardly if ever gets twee!
***
I really like the garage band vibe on this 'un what with the infamous Lyrics "So What"/"They Can't Hurt Me" single and the Sopwith Camel (well, they come about as close to the garage band idiom on "Cellophane Woman" here as they ever did) and Cap'n Beefheart. Buffalo Springfield do pretty good as well (never thought I'd say that considering that all-time doof Stephen Stills remains a burr-like irritant in my rock 'n roll cowboy boots) as do Don and the Goodtimes and other old tyme faves in the BLOG TO COMM pantheon of somethingorother. BIGGEST SURPRISE OF THE BUNCH!-the flipster to the Associated Soul Group's 45, mainly "Wild Times" which is much better known to me from the infamous INNER SOUNDS OF THE ID album! Bill even tossed on a couple "song poems" for good measure and I wonder if Greg Prevost is aware of the Cavemen (who open and close this classic) who hail(ed) from none other'n his home stomping ground Rochester New York!
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