Hello again from the vast wasteland (or considering my girth, the vast waistland...must get my cornball jokes in!) of BLOG TO COMM! It's always good to see your happy smiling faces each and every weekend, and (as usual) boy are you in for an ever-hotcha treat! Nothing extra-super-duper special true (let's face it, I just don't have the same vim, vigor or verve that I did back when it seemed as if rock 'n roll was still a vital youth interest that continued to have some shard of potency) but considering what else there may be out there in rock blogger land (mostly rehashed ROLLING STONE-styled journalistic snob appeal paens) be lucky I'm around to dish this grog out like so much bread to the carp at the spillway.
Hope you're enjoying this Mother's Day, which I plan to celebrate by spinning some old Mothers of Invention albums in honor of the occasion. Like Easter, Mother's Day has a special meaning for me that dates back to my stoolboy days because although this holiday wasn't exactly custom made for rough 'n perhaps not-so-tumble boys, at least its arrival signaled the plain fact that SUMMER VACATION WAS ON THE HORIZON and thus us ranch house kids would undoubtedly be OVERJOYED looking forward to three months of nothing but FUN 'N JAMZ!!!! Of course in my advanced age all I have to look forward to is more work and additional outdoor not-so-recreational activities like weeding and mowing the yard, but those kiddoid feelings still resonate even this far down the suburban slob line which must prove I still have some sense left in me.
Anyhoo got some nice 'uns for you to discover and hopefully get hold of...once again thanks be to Bill, P.D. and Guerssen, but not Paul McGarry! (Didn't get to any of his this week, but just wait until next time!)
Brian Ruryk-ACTUAL SIZE---DEGRESS AGAIN CD-r burn (Kendra Steiner Editions, see blogroll for more information)
KSE scores another victory with this new release that has me flopping my lobes from left to right and back again. Dunno exactly what Ruryk's gameplan is (probably because I'm too lazoid to check out anything on him via duckduckgo right now...it's been a loooooong day) but the sounds he creates really do span a whole lotta avant garde styles, at some times with a guitar (?) sound that makes Derek Bailey sound like Carlos Montoya and at others like some long lost recording of John Cage's "Variations Kazillion" where pipe cleaners are inserted into tonearm cartridges which are then inserted into Merce Cunningham's gaper 'n wiggled around. If you happen to get hold of this, make sure you have your beret and stale doritos handy because you're gonna be in for some of the craziest sounds to come outta the new music scene since Yoko Ono accidentally backed into an overheated stove.
MACARTHUR CD (Out-Sider Spain, available via Guerssen Records)
Even though I am whatcha'd call an avowed hater of what has been goin' 'round under the "progressive rock" tag throughout the late-seventies, I gotta admit that some of the genre's more punkier moments via krautrock or French expressionism are just as satisfying as spinning a classic Velvets or Stooges platter. Then again a whole load of the prog rock tag's nothing but the usual half-baked trips trying to take Stravinsky and baroque ideals and cramming them into as much pretentious bad-trip comedown as ya can! For MacArthur, there's a balance between these two seemingly polar opposites, with a load of middle Amerigan takes on the genre (Kansas, Styx) that I will admit quite bore me on the front side and some interesting if you stretch your parameters a bit guitar interplay battling it out with the standard prog keyboard lineup on the flip. Nothing crucial to your being and certainly not for the everyworkaday BLOG TO COMM reader, but if your tastes do slip into the standard seventies synth trips boy have you got a platter bong away to while dreaming about battling dragons and damsels with cleavage bigger'n the Grand Tetons!
A FLEETING GLANCE CD-r burn (originally on Aquila Social Club, England)
And speaking about prog rock, there really must have been tons of these home-produced progressive rock albums coming outta not only the USA but England during the glory daze of syph-phonic music. This is but one of 'em, a weirdo hodgepodge of poetry, twenties jazz, instrumental goosh and just plain creepy spoken word. It's all incongruous and lacking in any single vision (I mean, any album that has a Jose Feliciano-styled rendition of "Light My Fire" and the old jass standard "Tiger Rag" certainly ain't aiming for any proggy concept cohesiveness) but at least side one's closer "Fly To The Moon" starts off like any good late-sixties English psychedelic single and ends in a massive roar of..."Interstellar Overdrive"!!! If your older brother's still tripping on those mid-seventies Tangerine Dream and Moody Blues albums slip this one in between 'em and see if he doesn't do a double take in between pages of his favorite Tolkien 'zine!
LOBBY LOYDE COMPENDIUM DISC 4---COLOURED BALLS LIVE 12/22/1974
Heh! On the same day as the infamous Extermination Music Night gig at the Viking Saloon in Cleveland (but not at the same time, this being halfway around the world) comes this particular gig from Lobby Loyde's old Coloured Balls band! It's a pretty hotcha show too even if the sound quality is typical seventies hand-held cassette. Thankfully the concept of high energy rock 'n roll was still up and about at the time, for the Coloureds really drive through their numbers like they were being chased through town by a buncha starving aborigines with the guys wearing hamburgers strapped to their butts! Only beef I've got with this is the heavy duty renditions of them old rock 'n roll favorites (mainly "Johnny B. Goode" and "Whole Lotta Shakin'") which kinda remind me of a whole lotta "guitar hero" types who kinda took the fun and mystique of the fifties and wrenched all the life outta it by overdriving the originals complete with effects and a blue collar worker kinda tough guy atty-tood!
Sandy Nelson-ROCK 'N' ROLL REVIVAL CD-r burn (originally on Liberty)
Sandy "Teen Beat" Nelson gets in on the rock 'n roll revival bandwagon with this crank-out of late-fifties faves that must have seemed quite "special" in that old innocent way when these were re-done a good decade later. However I gotta say that the resultant redos of these all-time greats just don't measure up and in fact sound like they coulda been incidental music for either one of those cheap AMERICAN GRAFFITI knock-offs that were hitting the drive-in circuit or an episode of HAPPY DAYS for that matter. It's kinda funny that the same fifties nostalgia revival that spawned CRUISING WITH RUBEN AND THE JETS also resulted in this particular offering, but I guess with all of the cheezy teenybopper junk and heavy rock that was climbing up the charts during them days even Patti Page woulda sounded like a fresh alternative!
Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney-CHIPS OF WISDOM CD-r burn (originally on Aamco)
Sermonette-level philosophizing complete with syrupy strings courtesy of famed (and once television-omnipresent) ventriloquist Paul Winchell and #1 dummy Jerry Mahoney. I guess the recitations of these introspective and moralistic sagas wouldn't really have worked if Knucklehead Smif was seated on Winch's lap, but gawrsh if I wasn't suckered in by not only the appearance of these old time tee-vee favorites but the homey and even touching fables being tossed at us without the goosh of modern-day humanistic values. If this was one of those kiddie platters that my mother used to spin for me during my afternoon naptime sessions I'm sure I'd have longtime warm and fuzzy feelings about this being part of my favorite years in life as long as I have one! But then again if it was a kiddie fave and I had picked it up for a nostalgic spin during my misguided adolescence I'd probably think it was a load of hooey! Well, it happened to me with TALES OF THE RIVERBANK so why not this particular album???
Various Artists-MUDDY SHUFFLE IMPROPER VACUUM CD-r burn (Bill Shute)
I think Bill coulda done well enough by leaving the Shadows off this, but otherwise I ain't gonna complain (well, much!). Lotsa late-sixties bright pop that somehow didn't make it big like it shoulda appears, while the Committed fare about as well as some those nth string English punk rock bands could without coming off too lower class yob. Muddy Wires did a fair enough cassette culture kinda electronic murmur tho, the Standells perhaps a but too obvious but so what, and ZZ Hill sure sounded a whole lot more commercial than I ever thought he woulda. And yeah, I get the joke behind the use of that Bozo cartoon at the bottom of the sleeve (enlarge for detail)...after all if Wayne Cochran's hair wasn't "cotton candy" then I don't know what it was!
Hope you're enjoying this Mother's Day, which I plan to celebrate by spinning some old Mothers of Invention albums in honor of the occasion. Like Easter, Mother's Day has a special meaning for me that dates back to my stoolboy days because although this holiday wasn't exactly custom made for rough 'n perhaps not-so-tumble boys, at least its arrival signaled the plain fact that SUMMER VACATION WAS ON THE HORIZON and thus us ranch house kids would undoubtedly be OVERJOYED looking forward to three months of nothing but FUN 'N JAMZ!!!! Of course in my advanced age all I have to look forward to is more work and additional outdoor not-so-recreational activities like weeding and mowing the yard, but those kiddoid feelings still resonate even this far down the suburban slob line which must prove I still have some sense left in me.
Anyhoo got some nice 'uns for you to discover and hopefully get hold of...once again thanks be to Bill, P.D. and Guerssen, but not Paul McGarry! (Didn't get to any of his this week, but just wait until next time!)
KSE scores another victory with this new release that has me flopping my lobes from left to right and back again. Dunno exactly what Ruryk's gameplan is (probably because I'm too lazoid to check out anything on him via duckduckgo right now...it's been a loooooong day) but the sounds he creates really do span a whole lotta avant garde styles, at some times with a guitar (?) sound that makes Derek Bailey sound like Carlos Montoya and at others like some long lost recording of John Cage's "Variations Kazillion" where pipe cleaners are inserted into tonearm cartridges which are then inserted into Merce Cunningham's gaper 'n wiggled around. If you happen to get hold of this, make sure you have your beret and stale doritos handy because you're gonna be in for some of the craziest sounds to come outta the new music scene since Yoko Ono accidentally backed into an overheated stove.
***
Even though I am whatcha'd call an avowed hater of what has been goin' 'round under the "progressive rock" tag throughout the late-seventies, I gotta admit that some of the genre's more punkier moments via krautrock or French expressionism are just as satisfying as spinning a classic Velvets or Stooges platter. Then again a whole load of the prog rock tag's nothing but the usual half-baked trips trying to take Stravinsky and baroque ideals and cramming them into as much pretentious bad-trip comedown as ya can! For MacArthur, there's a balance between these two seemingly polar opposites, with a load of middle Amerigan takes on the genre (Kansas, Styx) that I will admit quite bore me on the front side and some interesting if you stretch your parameters a bit guitar interplay battling it out with the standard prog keyboard lineup on the flip. Nothing crucial to your being and certainly not for the everyworkaday BLOG TO COMM reader, but if your tastes do slip into the standard seventies synth trips boy have you got a platter bong away to while dreaming about battling dragons and damsels with cleavage bigger'n the Grand Tetons!
***
And speaking about prog rock, there really must have been tons of these home-produced progressive rock albums coming outta not only the USA but England during the glory daze of syph-phonic music. This is but one of 'em, a weirdo hodgepodge of poetry, twenties jazz, instrumental goosh and just plain creepy spoken word. It's all incongruous and lacking in any single vision (I mean, any album that has a Jose Feliciano-styled rendition of "Light My Fire" and the old jass standard "Tiger Rag" certainly ain't aiming for any proggy concept cohesiveness) but at least side one's closer "Fly To The Moon" starts off like any good late-sixties English psychedelic single and ends in a massive roar of..."Interstellar Overdrive"!!! If your older brother's still tripping on those mid-seventies Tangerine Dream and Moody Blues albums slip this one in between 'em and see if he doesn't do a double take in between pages of his favorite Tolkien 'zine!
***
Heh! On the same day as the infamous Extermination Music Night gig at the Viking Saloon in Cleveland (but not at the same time, this being halfway around the world) comes this particular gig from Lobby Loyde's old Coloured Balls band! It's a pretty hotcha show too even if the sound quality is typical seventies hand-held cassette. Thankfully the concept of high energy rock 'n roll was still up and about at the time, for the Coloureds really drive through their numbers like they were being chased through town by a buncha starving aborigines with the guys wearing hamburgers strapped to their butts! Only beef I've got with this is the heavy duty renditions of them old rock 'n roll favorites (mainly "Johnny B. Goode" and "Whole Lotta Shakin'") which kinda remind me of a whole lotta "guitar hero" types who kinda took the fun and mystique of the fifties and wrenched all the life outta it by overdriving the originals complete with effects and a blue collar worker kinda tough guy atty-tood!
***
Sandy "Teen Beat" Nelson gets in on the rock 'n roll revival bandwagon with this crank-out of late-fifties faves that must have seemed quite "special" in that old innocent way when these were re-done a good decade later. However I gotta say that the resultant redos of these all-time greats just don't measure up and in fact sound like they coulda been incidental music for either one of those cheap AMERICAN GRAFFITI knock-offs that were hitting the drive-in circuit or an episode of HAPPY DAYS for that matter. It's kinda funny that the same fifties nostalgia revival that spawned CRUISING WITH RUBEN AND THE JETS also resulted in this particular offering, but I guess with all of the cheezy teenybopper junk and heavy rock that was climbing up the charts during them days even Patti Page woulda sounded like a fresh alternative!
***
Sermonette-level philosophizing complete with syrupy strings courtesy of famed (and once television-omnipresent) ventriloquist Paul Winchell and #1 dummy Jerry Mahoney. I guess the recitations of these introspective and moralistic sagas wouldn't really have worked if Knucklehead Smif was seated on Winch's lap, but gawrsh if I wasn't suckered in by not only the appearance of these old time tee-vee favorites but the homey and even touching fables being tossed at us without the goosh of modern-day humanistic values. If this was one of those kiddie platters that my mother used to spin for me during my afternoon naptime sessions I'm sure I'd have longtime warm and fuzzy feelings about this being part of my favorite years in life as long as I have one! But then again if it was a kiddie fave and I had picked it up for a nostalgic spin during my misguided adolescence I'd probably think it was a load of hooey! Well, it happened to me with TALES OF THE RIVERBANK so why not this particular album???
***
Various Artists-MUDDY SHUFFLE IMPROPER VACUUM CD-r burn (Bill Shute)I think Bill coulda done well enough by leaving the Shadows off this, but otherwise I ain't gonna complain (well, much!). Lotsa late-sixties bright pop that somehow didn't make it big like it shoulda appears, while the Committed fare about as well as some those nth string English punk rock bands could without coming off too lower class yob. Muddy Wires did a fair enough cassette culture kinda electronic murmur tho, the Standells perhaps a but too obvious but so what, and ZZ Hill sure sounded a whole lot more commercial than I ever thought he woulda. And yeah, I get the joke behind the use of that Bozo cartoon at the bottom of the sleeve (enlarge for detail)...after all if Wayne Cochran's hair wasn't "cotton candy" then I don't know what it was!
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