I dunno how you have been occupying yourselves as of late (nor do I care), but I'm still going through boxes of old fanzines, letters, flyers and whatnot deciding which flotsam I should keep and which jetsam I should throw out. I'm having fun doing this even though (once again) those memories of former friends who back-stabbed me to advance their own personal status creep up every time I come across an old issue of SUPERDOPE (a mag whose title certainly fits me for even being in touch with that purveyor of personal destruction in the first place) or Ken Shimamoto article still in the envelope. All I gotta say is that when I get back to selling on ebay I'm gonna have a lotta magazines and whatnot to get rid of (as well as scrap paper to print these posts to send off to Brad Kohler, who is computer-less as we speak), and frankly the sooner the better I rid this offal from the sanctity of my fart-encrusted bedroom!
Big disappointment I'm having right now is not being able to find a whole slew of items I would desperately like to give a look at after all these years like my first issue of I WANNA BE YOUR DOG, my TEENAGE WASTELAND GAZETTEs and of course the rest of those LOVE AND LAUGHTERs which I gotta say were perhaps the last burst of seventies-styled fandom writing albeit stuck in an eighties anti-rock 'n roll (and don't kid yourself) environment. I think they were all in a special box I had reserved just for those rock-starved times we're ALL experiencing, but where that particular box may be I certainly do not know. It's kinda driving me nuts not being able to locate these true rock gems, but you know that when I do, and when I'm well stocked up with Diet Dr. Pepper and some junk food with a good drone rock blare on my bedside boom box I'm gonna be in SUBURBAN SLOB HEAVEN and don't let anyone tell you different!
Big disappointment I'm having right now is not being able to find a whole slew of items I would desperately like to give a look at after all these years like my first issue of I WANNA BE YOUR DOG, my TEENAGE WASTELAND GAZETTEs and of course the rest of those LOVE AND LAUGHTERs which I gotta say were perhaps the last burst of seventies-styled fandom writing albeit stuck in an eighties anti-rock 'n roll (and don't kid yourself) environment. I think they were all in a special box I had reserved just for those rock-starved times we're ALL experiencing, but where that particular box may be I certainly do not know. It's kinda driving me nuts not being able to locate these true rock gems, but you know that when I do, and when I'm well stocked up with Diet Dr. Pepper and some junk food with a good drone rock blare on my bedside boom box I'm gonna be in SUBURBAN SLOB HEAVEN and don't let anyone tell you different!
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Whatever, it's been forty long ones and like, we still remember you just like we did way back when you were still around. Maybe someday Laughner will get his just dues and exposure to that wider audience he so deserved, but until then well, I still got the tapes to keep me company.
***Good enough week what with the weather, the music and even romping through them boxes and uncovering something that is of worth to have and to hold. Anyway, here are some of the newies I've been listening to that who knows, might be inspirational enough for you to ignore just like you do most of my reviews! But at least this time you will suffer pangs of guilt to which I say...."serves you right!"
Well, I certainly could not find any of the punk anxiety and total eruption I was hoping to find given the writeup the group got in IT'S PSYCHEDELIC BABY magazine, but if you're in one of those English dark folk rock moods reflecting long gone musical modes rocked up to a 1970 level this is the group to get. Unfortunately right now I am NOT in an English dark folk mood so this is not quite having the kind of impact I sure hoped it would. Or could it have been the liner notes by MELODY MAKER head honcho Chris Welch who hated anything that wasn't overblown art prog with a vengeance? Still a good bit of neo-jazzy acoustic rock with slight Fairport connections/connotations (thanks to Dave Mattacks) and if you like that,
you'll probably luv this!
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Since I was cleaning out my room while these platters spun it wasn't that bad experiencing yet another Bob Dylan roboperformance, this time done for a whole batcha starved English types who were so in awe of their idol that they didn't realize they were being fleeced once again. Still I liked hearing that ever-ratcheting voice go through the biggies and heaving up a whole lotta memories for people who coulda waited until the bootleg came out thus saving a whole lotta moolah on the price tag. One thing that has been bugging me all these years...on "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" does Dylan really sing "I dreamed I saw St. Augustine/Peeing off a bridge/I went and got my umbrella/So I wouldn't get all wet"???
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When I think of the word "golden" I immediately think of showers, and when I think of "dirty fingernails" images of not having enough toilet paper rush into my mind. It's funny what your mind can conjure especially when it's not trying, and its even funnier when I get copies of recordings like this one and try to think up all sortsa ways to explain it to you lumpen proles while being witty and perhaps even informative at the same time. But even that can get to be a drag after hearing the umpteenth power pop punk revision to hit the boards these past fortysome years, and although I champion them for their brashness and youthful exuberance I sure wish the Golden Boys had one of those intense bared-wire streaks that made a whole slew of seventies groups both famous and not a whole lot more fun to slap onto the ol' turntable. Stick with the originals, but if you had enough of them maybe this can fill in the cracks of yr teenage psyche somewhat.
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Hey, weren't the Rooks one of those Wailers spinoff groups back '65 way? This sure don't sound like the Wailers---comes off more like that late-seventies pseudo-Beatles meets Monkees in the Byrds' nest Pop stuff that Greg Shaw was hailing to the rafters. Only watered down if only a bit. Nothing evil here, though considering that I'm also not in a Power Pop mood I can't ooze into whatever "universe" the Rooks are trying to glom onto here. You might like it, but with all of those Faust disques I'm goin' through...
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Somerset strikes again with this budget crankout that mixes a few recent hits done up "their" way with a load of generic instrumental music that must have been laying around the vaults for years plus a track from their earlier Beatlemania cash-in. Actually this stuff sounds about as good as it can get even if Lou Reed wasn't involved.
But no matter how you slice it, had this one miraculously fell into your palms way back in them Good Ol' Days your parents still woulda thought it nothing but a load of wild 'n raucous music for them bad kids that smoked that should be banned from the house IMMEDIATELY!
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Since I keep losing these Cee-Dee-Ares that Bob Forward always seems to be sending me (or just ain't interested in listening to 'em right now like I am with the McCoy Tyner one), I thought I'd spin this '80 effort from former Wire frontman Newman before that too entered into the vast reaches of my bedroom. Golly gee am I the psychic here---I thought it was gonna be a rather arty excursion like the latterday Wire albums with perhaps a tinge of eighties pop-a-rama thrown in, and I was right! Nothing fantab mind you, but I thought it good enough as an example of the kinda music that the eighties was gonna be renown for. Thankfully it's not as sickening as much of the "new music" that came out during those dank days could get, but I'm glad I got to give it at lease one spin before I do the ol' dipsy doodah goodbye.
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There were a lotta these 1967 El Lay rock-takes getting pressed to vinyl at the time, and this one is no diff 'n the rest in its copping of various Byrds/Doors/Love stylings and reducing them to suburban slob levels. Blue Bus really have those jazzy Doors moves down good and I can't say a thing bad about their faithful rendition of "Signed DC". However the recording and overall production is strict cheap-o local studio located somewhere in the 'burbs, and for once that does take something away from this making the results sterile yet shaky. Bonus points for having that ranch house feel, and somehow I can see EACH AND EVERY ONE of the guys in this group getting marched off to the barber shop once the cover snap was taken.
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Most of this "floor sweeping" disque is taken up by some budget hit remake platter from the mid-sixties featuring talented kinda guys doing a kinda sloppy job at it. Actually this one is better'n some of the quickies I've heard, or at least the versions of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and "Needles and Pins" are about as good as something the Flamin' Groovies woulda whipped up a good forty years back. The rest of this is taken up by a variety of rare singles as well as an old Country and Western radio show which is entertaining in various degrees. Most notable amongst this batch is an early solo single by Larry Tamblyn of Standells fame called "My Bride to Be", a gooey neo-doowop number which just might get his membership in the Punk Rock Hall of Fame revoked faster than you can say "I'm the man, I'm the man"! (And yeah, "Dirty Water" was sung by Dick Dodd so don't go writin' in tellin' me what a fanabla I may be---you know the intent so get lost!)
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