As the old saying goes, another week another week, and like a bad penny here I turn up with this weekend's batch of reviews of the hits the keep on hittin' or something like that. I'd love to tell you that I had a really fun time putting this post together and that I most sincerely hope you will enjoy this particular entry of rock writing of a kind you won't find anywhere anymore, but then again I would be lying.
Massimo Magee-TENOR TALES CD-r (Kendra Steiner Editions)
Maybe I should stop reviewing these Massimo Magee platters considering how I might be digging myself into a groove I'll never be able to crawl outta given my, er, "limited" vocabulary with regards to the world of jazz. After all, how many times can I draw comparisons to Magee's work and either a) Roscoe Mitchell, b) Anthony Braxton's early solo saxophone album or c) various English experimentalists of the AMM/Scratch Orchestra variety. What do you think? Send your cards and letters to Bill Shute (or better yet contact him via the Kendra Steiner Editions link above) and let him know. He will no doubt drop the ax on me at a future date. (But in all honesty this is perhaps thee best, most swingingest in the Magee canon, especially the tracks where he sounds like a squealing synth or electronic static from planets yet to be discovered...)
BOLD CHICKEN 7-inch EP (Lysergic Sound Distributors, available via Forced Exposure)
I've always dug these early outta-nowhere kinda releases featuring forgotten bands of the pre-gnu wave era when punks were PUNKS and not pUNQuEs, and this recent release ain't no diff'rent. Like many of these future punk rockers (this band was formed by Buzz Clic of Rubber City Rebels fame) Bold Chicken delivered some hot and PRIMITIVE neo-heavy metal riffage that I'm sure pleased somebody in the dank bars and high school gyms these guys played. But I really doubt it. But it's fantastic stuff that I'm sure fans of groups as diverse in the hard rock brigade of the time as Status Quo and the Stooges could bond over, and the seventies aura this platter exudes is amazing. After all, side one features tracks about the midunderstood homo and the teenage boy who can't get his rocks off while the flip's got the obligatory good looking prostitute number as well as an ode to VD. How SEVENTIES is that for you anyway?!?!?
***So what have I been up to these past few days anyway? Well, on Eas-turd I decided to dig out my box of the original run of CRAWDADDY (or actually the reprints that I bought a few decades back) and give 'em a nice visual scouring so-to-speak. Now CRAWDADDY, especially the famed monthly prozine it became in the late-sixties, was never my idea of a full fledged rock-spirited professional newsstand read like CREEM or FUSION were, but these early fanzine-like issues (which sure come off like your standard early/mid-seventies fanzines albeit without the punk spew of Stooges/New York Dolls news) do have their merits what with the reviews and writeups of groups worthwhile (Love, Velvet Underground) and not (you can guess the rest). Plus the contributions of the WRITERS WHO MADE ROCKISM, the Gene Sculattis, Richard Meltzers and Wayne McGuires (maybe even Robert Sommas) are worth more than their weight in gold especially if you happen to be gung ho (like I was) to read Sculatti's early pre-suck San Francisco scene report. Or for that matter McGuire's "Universal Music Form" piece which comes off like the PERFECT encapsulation of Velvet Underground sound and aesthetics (along with other pertinent late-sixties touchpoints) worked into an audio-visual wowzer I sure wish I could experience! I also enjoyed the various Sandy Pearlman, Allen Lanier and Al Bouchard offerings found in these pages. It all makes me wonder sheesh, what happened between this original spurt of critical genius and the hypesheet scribbles that began popping up all over the "rock journalism" world sometime in the eighties?
***Here's something else that's been taking up much of my youtube time this past week, and for being a Walt Disney product I gotta say that I, surprisingly enough, really enjoyed the thing. Yeah, Disney has been known for ultra-saccharine entertainment (though FUN saccharine entertainment at times) for years, but this KING NEPTUNE cartoon is a whole lot more enveloping than some of the fodder that came outta Disney's studios 'specially after the death of the Mussolini of animation himself. And oh those topless (complete with bullseyes!) mermaids! Well, it's a lot better'n those MIGHTY MOUSE cartoons that I thought were kinda creepy even when I was a mere turdler!
***Gotta say that the passing of Cecil Taylor was yet another signpost of impending DOOM on my part given how I had been buying the guy's records on and off for nigh on forty years, but given that none of us who read this blog are exactly spring chickens what else can I say? What I CAN say is that Taylor was one of the bestest of the leading lights in that music we call jazz (especially that of the new stuff) and that, as you'd expect, his passing is gonna be wooshed over in favor of reporters trying to be the first to count the chancre sores on Lady Caga's twat. And yeah, Taylor's classic platters are "old" (remember when "old" had always been associated with "bad"???---heard that 'un for years!!!!!) but they sure hold up to repeated listening and sound as fresh and as driving as ever. My personal fave of his recorded output just HAS to be the infamous NEFERTITI, THE BEAUTIFUL ONE HAS COME (also known as LIVE AT CAFE MONTMARTRE) on Arista Freedom, reissued over and over again and certainly worth your effort what with Taylor's performance on that outta tune yet fitting piano, Jimmy Lyons' post-bop sax and Sunny Murray keeping it all together in ways John Phillip Sousa never woulda dreamed of! Here's hoping that Bill Shute'll deliver on his piece relating to the three days he spent with Taylor in the seventies back when Bill was co-producing (or something like that---I forget the details) a show at a Denver jazz radio station where he actually guest hosted as a teenager!
***All FREEBEES this week 'cept one (a late cummer) for which we must give thanks to Bill and Paul. Gotta hand it to them for keeping this blog going singlehandedly and no, I am NOT going to give their addresses and phone numbers out to you so you can "thank" them personally. I'm sure they get enough letter bombs as it is. Anyway as Ethel Merman once said, on with the show...
Maybe I should stop reviewing these Massimo Magee platters considering how I might be digging myself into a groove I'll never be able to crawl outta given my, er, "limited" vocabulary with regards to the world of jazz. After all, how many times can I draw comparisons to Magee's work and either a) Roscoe Mitchell, b) Anthony Braxton's early solo saxophone album or c) various English experimentalists of the AMM/Scratch Orchestra variety. What do you think? Send your cards and letters to Bill Shute (or better yet contact him via the Kendra Steiner Editions link above) and let him know. He will no doubt drop the ax on me at a future date. (But in all honesty this is perhaps thee best, most swingingest in the Magee canon, especially the tracks where he sounds like a squealing synth or electronic static from planets yet to be discovered...)
***
I've always dug these early outta-nowhere kinda releases featuring forgotten bands of the pre-gnu wave era when punks were PUNKS and not pUNQuEs, and this recent release ain't no diff'rent. Like many of these future punk rockers (this band was formed by Buzz Clic of Rubber City Rebels fame) Bold Chicken delivered some hot and PRIMITIVE neo-heavy metal riffage that I'm sure pleased somebody in the dank bars and high school gyms these guys played. But I really doubt it. But it's fantastic stuff that I'm sure fans of groups as diverse in the hard rock brigade of the time as Status Quo and the Stooges could bond over, and the seventies aura this platter exudes is amazing. After all, side one features tracks about the midunderstood homo and the teenage boy who can't get his rocks off while the flip's got the obligatory good looking prostitute number as well as an ode to VD. How SEVENTIES is that for you anyway?!?!?
***
They're not sure whether they wanna be late-sixties punks or mid-seventies ones, but either way St. Phillips Elevators do a good job of cranking out rock 'n roll that doesn't sound like an apology for being young and unpretentious. Fast and rip-roaring rock here that, although nothing that startles you and makes you wanna go out and beat up babies, sounds good enough to make one think that there still is some rock 'n roll life even a good thirtysome years after I thought it ALL went down the poop chute. Yet another interesting outta nowhere surprise that reinforces my belief in.....well.....SOMETHING...
***
Not as hubba as the first, perhaps because the repeated takes do tend to wind me down a bit. Especially the various versions of "Dark Shadows" with vocalist Earl Coleman which I'm afraid have nothing to do with the television series of a good two decades later! The instrumentals do me fine and made for good Sunday afternoon reading as Parker and crew plowed through various takes of "Cool Blues", "Relaxin' at Camarillo", "Cheers", "Carvin' the Bird" and "Stupendous". It all makes me anticipate the NEXT BIG MOVE in jazz expression which was so out-there even those phony beret types who went for Bird were totally surprised by the next logical step...
***
Bill Haley and The Comets-IN MEXICO-TWIST ESPANOL 2 CD-r burn set (originally on Jasmine Records, England)
Here's a beaut I never knew about, not that I was up and about trying to FIND OUT ABOUT IT! A collection of tracks recorded by Bill Haley and His Comets Suid of Der Border especially for the Mexican audience! Well, I guess Bill hadda go fishin' where the fish were during the lean early-sixties, and I must say that his efforts down there produced some pretty tippy top recordings that stand up straight and tall even a good fifty-five-plus years later when for the most part, the idea of rock 'n roll let alone FUN seems to have been banished into some strange abyss from whence it shall never return, or something as equally corny as that.
The instrumental tracks (mostly covering the familiar tuneage of the times) really sates a soul like mine which thrives on these kind of tracks that seem to have fallen by the rock mindset once the Beatles came along, while it's really cool hearing Haley singing in Spanish and doing I good enough job that I doubt the locals would be laughing at him! (He does one song en Ingles but it's a Hispanic Hotcha one at that!) Too bad that Haley and company hadda be branded as counter-revolutionary cubes as time rolled on (have you seen the PBS history of rock series which presented the form through hippoid ROLLING STONE glazed glasses? Boy did Haley get the shrift!) because frankly, this one ranks as more proof that the early-sixties weren't the dog days as most wire-rimmed self-conscious politically-drenched rock critics would have you believe!
***
Approached this one with "apprehension" considering how I feel that much of Mr. Frond's output is howshallIsay "chance-y". Thankfully this one is "chance-y" but in the right way. Frond's psychedelic guitar stylings are prevalent true, but the music seems to switch from olde tyme Gaelic folk (not yet rock) to straight-ahead late-sixties onslaught to even mid-seventies punk rock in the days before it all pUnQueD out. (Oops, used the imitation patchword version twice in one post...sorry [not!]) Not as straightforwardly level as that one Frond platter I reviewed two years ago. I even enjoyed the final track entitled "On a Liquid Reel" which says about as much about the late-sixties London cooler-than-thou scene as Hawkwind's "Days of the Underground" did!
***
I remember the bitta-a-hubbub this 'un got back when it was released, though for some strange reason I can't recall seeing a copy of SHRI CAMEL in any of the record shops I inhabited. It was probably one of those special order things which woulda been expected given that most of these rekkid hangouts were concentrating on THE BIG DISCO BOOM which capitulated around the time the seventies began to clock out. At times Riley and his organ sound like interstellar church music while at others the strains of the East can easily be discerned. If you still have your copy of Riley's PERSIAN SURGERY DERVISHES double set handy for those hot and humid summer nights (well, that's when it works best for ME!) you might want to give this one a late nocturnal try during the tornado warning of your choice.
***
This 'un doesn't get to the quick of my being the way a whole lotta other boffo instrumental rock (especially from the '59-'61 era) does. Bill and the rest, despite their high-falutin' rock credo, just don't crank it out on all cylinders the way they should as they wank their way through a number of originals, near-originals and cover takes. Of course it's better than most anything recorded since 1980 at the latest, but for a real boffo instrumental rockin' time I'd suggest a few faves along the lines of any Link Wray, early Johnny and the Hurricanes and of course that infamous INSTRUMENTAL GOLDEN GOODIES available at a flea market near you.
***
Bill must have known that I was on an instrumental rock jag because this particular fave popped up in the same package the above Bill Black 'un did! Of course this's obviously not of the early-sixties stratum but much later as the inclusion of a number of mop top faves from the likes of the Beatles and Kinks, done up all sax and guitar style, would prove. Cheap yet satisfying enough versions of the hits that I'm sure would have pleased some star-struck teenage gal spinning this on her cheapo portable. Would have made a fine 1972 flea market find on my part that's for sure!
***
As usual, a wild and wooly mix of things only Bill Shute could gather about and slap on a Cee Dee Are for (supposedly) my entertainment. And boy does he entertain swell, what with the cheapo soul of Roosevelt and the 7C's and the Ragtime rollicking of Die Ragtime Specht Groove who, contrary to what their name sounds like, are not a kraut rock group! I personally preferred not only the Walter Brennan Christmas single even if it is a bit outta season but Oscar Pettiford doing some down-groove jazz, the Runaways (no, not them!) late-fifties teen duo heart-throbbing, Los Voiladores' Argentinian takes on various Sex Pistols/Heartbreakers moves and the Exports doing some hot car cruising instrumental numbers ca. 1963-65 before the mop tops wooshed it all away! And with that I woosh you all a happy week and hope to see you probably Thursday if I'm still alive after this particular post that is!
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