Once again, the PHANTOM PHANABLA strikes with a boffo weekend post to make your funtime even more ginchy-gooshy what with alla the reviews and nooze that I have in store for ya. As you can tell from the music that flowed through my eternal being (oooh, I better stop reading Rod McKuen!) I've had a boffo week listening to some new musics that continue to speak for my existence more than people like you (who think you know more about me than I do myself!) ever will. Ah, but why be such an old turdball when I got this music to protect me more'n Paul Simon's books and poetry ever did! (I threw that line in only to razz Don Fellman...I'm sure he'll get the gag even if you don't!)
***Gotta give thanks to the ones who deserve it, like Bill Shute, Paul McGarry and (now get this!) BOB FORWARD for the items sent for review. Ditto Feeding Tube Records, who keep sending me these things at such a fast rate it'll take centuries for me to get through it all! Managed to work three of their longplayers into the post, so I am catching up kinda/sorta. And heck, even one of the items found in this week's gab was earned from the sweat of my own brow, or in my case the sweat of my buttcrack considering the weather, and although the item didn't set me back monetarily that much well, you can tell that I am not the Jack Benny-esque tightwad that some consider me when it comes to spending my own moolah!
With the term "avant garde" inserted into the title of this double-header I had visions of this trumpeter guy blasting forth in pure Lester Bowie frenzy while dressed in a dashiki and rattling a whole slew of gourds in the process. Oh, I guess they meant "avant garde" in that pre-freeform sorta way meaning that the music at hand was being judged on its foresightedness instead of how much of a ruckus it could raise. But eh, this set is still hot boppin' what with the thirties-vintage small group jazz that Red and company (including such names as Fletcher Henderson and the inimitable because she's so good doofs don't know who she is Victoria Spivey) roar through with heart palpatatin' results. Full takes, mis-takes and other surprise pop up on this seventies-vintage throwtogether that I'll bet has really received the royal reissue treatment by now.
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Dunno what the origin of this is or whether or not the name of the group is the title or vice versa. Y'see, Bob has the habit of sending me disques with loads of cover copies and like, sometimes the covers get away from the disques so I don't know what I am listening to! But no matter what the shitsuation is this platter is great! It starts off with some instrumentals that have this Tad Gros Och Stenar-sorta repeato riff communal jam sound, while the only vocal piece reminds me of some better'n usual West Coast 1969 garage band attempt at karmik whooziz. Much of the rest has what I would call a "kosmiche" sound or better yet comes off like synthetic Harmonia buzz and jerk. Not bad at all, and if this act whoever they are is a current affair I would be all the more surprised since a lotta this sounds like it came straight from some late-sixties college dorm right before the cops came bustin' in!
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I oughta dock a whole slew of Christgoo-styled points offa this for the mere fact that these guys copped their cover design (and record labels!) from the old Korneyfone bootleg series! It's just part of an ever-growing (amongst these self-produced platters made by kids who spent the seventies buying Korneyfone product!) move that reminds me of all the EC cover scheme swipes that permeated fanzines and other kultural forms from the mid-fifties well into the late-eighties! But considering what a hotcha platter this is I'll leave my growl on the back burner for once. As with most Feeding Tube efforts, this is hard to describe to the usually non-astute reader...part sound like typical free flowing music (Anima comes to mind) while others try to outdo that Folkways sounds to the junkyard platter I reviewed a good decade back. More like THE SOUNDS THE ROBOT ON "LOST IN SPACE" MAKES WHILE BEING SODOMIZED BY A BROADCAST TOWER, but if you go for that kinda ideal in strikingly different music you'll like this 'un just as much as I did.
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Does the world really need another post-blues guitar picker in the John Fahey/Robbie Basho tradition? Of course it does, and this Collin character just might be thee guy who keeps up on the tradition long after lesser minds (or even minds I never heard of before) pass to the wayside. Collin's playing might be way looser than those pioneering performers were, but it is clearly in the same sphere what with the slide twangs heading into even more amorphous than usual twists and turns that do make for a rather engaging listening experience. The results are quite "dreamy" as yer standard mid-teen galpal might put it. Only wish that the final track didn't end with the addition nature sound tape giving it a bit of a "New Age" feeling---sheesh what is this s'posed to be, Windham Hill'r sum'pin'?
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There's this gadfly goin' under the nom-de-somethin' of "MoeLarryandJesus" who keeps commenting on my blog, sometimes with words of advice even """""I""""" can easily enough follow without scratchin' my bean too much. Just recently he's been razzin' me to get hold of any and all recordings by this duo called "Tarp" who, from MLJ's description, just hasta be the bee's knees. Well, the latest Feeding Tube package arrived just this day (Wednesday if you do care) and wonder of wonders but a Tarp album was comfortably snugged in this package just like a sardine in a can and like, this just hadda be the first thing for me to pluck outta the box because...why not?
Musically it works even though some might say these two guys are just gaggin' around with their new found electronic booty. I don't care if they are or aren't...the sounds Tarp make are fittingly good enough tonearm cantatas that move and swerve sorta like those old dagos who were making futurist records in the twenties, only shuttered forth into the here and now. Words like "Cluster" and "Kosmiche" have been bandied about in describing the music created on this particular spin, and frankly who am I to disagree?
Byron Coley's notes act as just as much a juicy enticement to give this one a play with a proper mindset, and if you can't dig up your own copy just print one off the Forced Exposure website (link handily available just above). Makes the music even better just like R. Meltzer's liner gab re. the Innocence, Gizmos and that Eric Clapton/Jeff Beck/Jimmy Page collection turned those into items par excellence!
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Well whaddaya know! A live recording from the Shadows of Knight about a good year or so before they hit the charts with "Gloria" has been issued and like, its everything I kinda expected an early Shadows of Knight show to be! All covers, and good ones at that as the nasal whine of Jim Sohns roars its way through the expected crunchers oif the day as well as a surprise or two, including Link Wray's infamous "Rawhide"! (No "Gloria" tho---and wouldn't that just figure!) Jim doesn't sing on "Rawhide", in fact NOBODY does but who cares because it is an all-out rocker anyway recorded in an era when the likes of Wray were definitely (and sadly) on the way out! A nice slice of mid-sixties music, and a whole lot more'n just fodder for rock historians who tend to look upon this music the same way that pudgy next door neighbor kid looks upon his bug collection!
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Most of this ain't exactly "lost" and has been reissued in various forms o'er the past decade or so, but these BBC tracks are great to hear no matter how many times they do turn up! You know me---I'm not gonna cry over the duplications like I would had this been a Madonna album in which case one would have been more than enough! Some new to my ears items do pop up making this 'un a definite chart topper around here (mainly, my bedroom) such as the new version of that psychedelic creeper "Maybe the Madman", not forgetting drummer Ronnie Bond's boffo lead vocalized "When the Rain Comes" which should be front and center in any true Troggs fan's heart.
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Sure they're twee, but they're a FUN twee! And besides, who else but the Royal Guardsmen would have thought of recording an instrumental version of "So You Want To Be a Rock 'N Roll Star" complete with phony crowd noises throughout? Some of it is weaker than you might have liked, but it still cooks...even the cover of "I'm a Man" has some semblance of Yardbirdsy oomph to it that belies the Guardsmen's bubblegum (as if there was anything wrong with that!) credo. Actually a pretty neat piece of pre-relevance teenage goo rock if I do say so myself!
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AND IN CLOSING, the usual and by now "traditional" Bill Shute burn of the week, a doozy of a dooze if I do say so myself. The usual Shute oleomargarine of purloined sounds grace this one, some of these tracks pretty hotcha (Rebel Truth's better'n average speedmetal) while I can't make durned sense outta what this "Lee" person was up to nohow! Things like Ray Sharpe's "Help Me Get The Feeling" (actually a soul rewrite of "Gloria"!) help get the bloodflow a' bubblin', while the early Jimmy Castor track and these Gaylord guys doin' the old hits in Dagoese are certainly a nice diversion from the usual quap one is bombarded with in public places. I also dug the weird synthesized takes on Erik Satie and sheesh, I hope that Bill knows that I've been familiar with both versions of Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Louie Go Home" for a longer time than I can remember!
You want 'em, and I got 'em! Back issues of BLACK TO COMM that is, and if yer tryin' to fill in those gaps in your collection or if the sogginess of modern day pap that passes for rock writing (or in my case "screeding") has gotten you down you might wanna try a few of these if only to resensify your droopy demeanor. What have you got to loose, other'n a good portion of your latest paycheck that is! And ya know, if there are any old out-of-print issues you're in the market for I can photocopy 'em for ya, for a more than minimal fee that is.***
2 comments:
"Gadfly?" - read in voice of Astro when he asked, "Tralfaz?"
Plankton Wat and Planets Around The Sun are two different bands.
Now I'm going to see what Royal Guardsmen I can find on YT.
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