BLOG TO COMM

Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me? Why it's none other than the GREAT ROCK 'N ROLL HERALD OF SONIC SUBSTANCE himself, welcoming you to yet another exciting episode of BLOG TO COMM. Also known as Ameriga's ONLY High Energy Blog or a hagioblog if you so desire, but whatever it is you know you're gonna be in for a whole buncha thrills you certainly can NOT get by tuning into any other the other comparatively ersatz blogs that have made their way to the screen as of late. It really amazes me just how I can keep pumping out this pure, unadulterated pure rockist energy transposed into print week after week, and considering just how much of a post-post-post rock world we're living in that certainly is a deed of Herculean taskitude if I do say so myself!

Why I haven't been nominated for a Bloggy Award by now certainly is a question that needs answerin', but rather than pout and scream about the indignity of it all plow on I must! And although you may tell people of your disgust and hatred of not only this blog by me personally I know that deep in your blood pumper you do find a sort of affinity for the thing. Of course admitting so in public might be akin to admitting that you skid your underwear---let's just say that its one of those things we hate to talk about in public but as we all know EVERYBODY's got them brown stripes down there and I know that a whole lot people out there love BLOG TO COMM even if 'fessing up to the fact might not be the key to any popularity in your cloistered chi-chi set!

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The new Mahogany Brain album: "Smooth Slick Lights" (title that can be translated as : "Soft Lights Ill") projects us into a spooky and terrifying universe : "the immense blinking of amphetamines ..." as written Michel Bulteau in his book: "Ether mouth, Slit, Hypodermic" published by Seghere editions.

Michel Bulteau and Patrick Geoffrois have poured their images both sumptuous and lacerating throughout the eight tracks that make up the record.

Note that "Green Winter of Revolvers" (first piece, first side), constitutes the soundtrack of the film "Main Line" (1971), which in the junkie slang means the "good vein", film that Bulteau has made with the mime "ghosts" musicians / actors (including Patrick Geoffrois, another electric poet) ac are between pilfering pilots. Needless to say that after a series of plans quite clean (the long apprêt arm, pavane of the approaching syringe and the needle "pulling his tongue crazy" (Bulteau, Slit), the tension of a white face, their eyes fixed, with serrated teeth), the camera, the inoculated substance making its effect), is more and more imprecise manice and the picture of Plun in addition (involuntarily) abstract wrote a critic in the magazine 'Living Art'.

We think of the Velvet Underground of "White Light / White Heat". "Green Winter of Revolver" that opens side 1 is another "Sister Ray" even more ruthless.

"Silkskin Dawn", another fascinating piece, is sung by Adeline, a character from Bulteau's films.

This music, this group Mahogany Brain, because it has something mythical, will adepts and imitators, but can we imitate such groups (Velvet Underground, Stooges) so that such music coincides with the life of those who do it.

The above was taken from POLE #1, a mid-seventies French fanzine that was put out by Pole Records' Jose Ferre with a bit of involvement of Helden leader Richard Pinhas. A definitely loose translation so-to-say, but I sure like the way it came out in that English as a third/fourth/fifth language style that made things like Reiko Kose's letters to DENIM DELINQUENT and HONEY THAT AIN'T NO ROMANCE so fun to read!

Needless to say it was this particular piece that spurred me on to give both Mahogany Brain albums a recent play which I must say was a treat that cant be beat! I do adore both in that whacked-out true rock 'n roll decadent European fashion that rock 'n roll as a third/fourth/fifth musical language that always brings out the more feral elements of the music so much in need of these days. With France burning the way it is right now perhaps Mahogany Brain are the true muses for the current uprising, even if this music is pushing the fifty-year mark in late-sixties metallic dissonance and purist punk concerns.

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I think yer gonna like the batch of writeups that I pumped out for you this week. Of course I've been wrong once or twice before, but who knows, I might just luck out this time.  Nice batch if I do say so myself, only made better by being written about by a nicer than usual guy, ifyaknowaddamean...

The Third Ear Band-ELEMENTS 1970-1971 3-CD set (Esoteric Recordings, England)

Bee-youtiful reissue of not only the debut Third Ear Band platter but the second (ABELARD AND HELOISE) along with a whole load of goodies like outtakes and BBC sessions that'll get you howling and throbbing like the mammal you are and will most certainly remain. Great quality recordings here which bring out the nuances that sometimes slip by ya, and the familiar blended with the new all slapped onto disques lasting an hour or more really did make for a funtime afternoon for me, and it just might make for one for you too!

Not "quite" hippie music as in West Coast "so laid out I haven't been outside of Marin County for five decades" West Coast swilldom, the early acoustic Band put as much psychedelic pounce into their style without electricity as Pink Floyd did with the entire Con Edison corporation churning away. ABELARD AND HELOISE remains a powerful confluence of Medieval and psychedelic styles and goes down fine, even if you are aware of what happened to the famed French intellectual Peter Abelard after he knocked up Heloise----ow!!

The new material is copasetic with the previously released sounds, at first not exactly engaging to me what with that electric guitar that was added to the stew, but after awhile the thing blends along fine in your mind like (really!) a long extrapolation by 1974-vintage Can would. Of course all of the BBC session material is great, and I especially enjoyed the '71 live in the studio Peel one which, besides featuring Elton John arranger or something like that Paul Buckmaster on cello and bass guitar also gets into a good growl that, thanks to the recent inclusion of an actual drum set, takes on a more straightforward rock style than anything these guys had previously slapped onto vinyl!

Big kudos go to Imants Krumins for turning me onto these guys long ago (and at a time when I probably woulda thought the whole batch yet another Incredible String Band snoozerino!) or else you might never have read this review in the first place! Wonder whatever happened to that man's massive record/tape/etc. collection anyway...I thought it woulda been tossed to the ebay winds by now.

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David "Honeyboy" Edwards-DELTA BLUESMAN CD-r burn (originally on Earwig Records)

I even surprised myself last Sunday when I slipped on one of my Spivey Records samplers to give their Sugar Blues tracks a listen to! Well, it was more outta me once again giving a frequent performer on the Max's Kansas City/Club 82 New York City rock scene of the mid-seventies a spin rather'n due to the fact this guy's a blues performer, but play Sugar Blues I did and I enjoyed his contributions greatly. Maybe I am ready to treat these old performers in the definitely non-Robert Cray/George Thorogood fashion they most certainly deserve, and this Honeyboy guy really does fit in with the music as is always shoulda been presented. Early recorded live-on-the-plantation recordings by Alan Lomax start this 'un off sounding as primal as you would hope, while the later electric tracks, while showing a tad bit of "maturity", still have that grit and grime that I've always associated with the best of the genre. Sorry to get redundant with the Cray/Thorogood and primal/grit references, but sheesh what else can I say about this music that seems to be screaming from the bowels of existence anyway???

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(New England) Patriots-PATRIOTS LP (Feeding Tube Records)

Hardcore, at times slowed down a pace or three to neo-grindcore standards, that should remind one of what was goin' on as far as the hip-de-la-creme of mid-eighties under-the-counterculture fun and jamz went. Not bad actually, even if by the late-eighties I began to tire of these sounds to the point where I couldn't wait to snuggle myself in the lactating boobies of fresh 1964-1981 bared-wire intensity that seemed to have  been washed away by the advent of rock music presented as pure glitz and a brave push against it all by a movement that was only jealous that it wasn't PART of that scene (as we found out much to our chagrin a short time later)! Might stir up a few phony anarchic memories in your own long-suppressed punkitudinal lobes, unless you're the kinda guy who proudly marches for trans-species rights these sad and sorry days!

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Various Artists-PSYCH SPANIOLOS PRESENTS THESE ARE THE TENDER YEARS VOLUME 15 CD-r burn

Well, first off this record does not contain solely Spanish or Hispanic-related recordings unless you count the Premiers who open the thing, and second off these tracks are only psychedelic in the NUGGETS "first psychedelic era" vein meaning you ain't gonna be getting any of that phased out craziness that made those 1966 singles so tasty. In fact this disque contains pretty much the usual "soft rock" as they called it back then downer sounds that sure make a good backdrop to your own personal teenage crisis which, come to think of it, lingers on even this far down the ol' proverbial line! My track listing notes are rather shall we say blurry, but various names well known to sixties collectors can be discerned...the Springfield Rifle. Something Else, the Mystic Tide...

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Big Boy Pete-PSYCHO-RELICS CD-r burn (originally on Bacchus Archives Records)

Never having to my knowledge heard this legendary psychedelic popster before I got the hankerin' that I was gonna be in for a pretty good time. Nothing especially transcendental or fluorescental for that matter, but I sure got the idea that I was gonna be in for a nice enjoyable listening excursion that wasn't gonna make me angry with those various and flagrant obscenities against the rock 'n roll credo that have ruined many a listening excursion for me. I was right, for this set's got more'n a few nice tracks featuring what could be called a more restrained yet still pop take on late-sixties lysergic sounds, the kind that wouldn't've gotten your dad mad at the hidden drug references unless you have my dad to contend with (nothing went by HIM)! If you wanted to hear what Donovan woulda come up with had he been born with balls, this 'un might be a better than usual place to start.

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SOD CD-r burn (originally on Decca Records)

I am tempted to say that only a sod (in the strictest English vernacular) would like SOD. I mean, how many of those Chicago/BS&T-styled horn bands were around back at the turn of the 60s/70s anyway? I guess every big and little label hadda have one, and unfortunately for us all Decca got stuck with these turdburgers. Sheesh Bill, if yer gonna send me something with wailing horns abounding with a rock music frame howzbout Nucleus or something a li'l more copasetic with the entire BLOG TO COMM reason for existence in the first place?

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Various Artists-HIT THE SAVAGE CLIFFS! CD-r burn (Bill Shute)

Shorter 'n usual but still packed enough Bill-Burn here, and ya gotta admit that putting LYLE TALBOT on the front of a Cee-Dee-Are cover is one way to grab my attention! Lotsa tracks from the British Invasion-era warbler (who never made it here!) Cliff Bennett show up here and he is quite a power-packed performer even if you get the idea the gals woulda trampled over him to get to Ringo. Le Chats Sauvages prove that France was a much bigger rock 'n roll haven for the wild Big Beat than snoots ever gave 'em credit for, while a sound reel from the lost film HIT THE DECK shows that if that 'un had somehow survived it woulda been a big hit on the late-night tee-vee circuit of the sixties and seventies. The little ads filling it out help too. As usual, Bill brings back the spirit of Saturday afternoons without me having to either go to the barber shop or poke around the record departments while dad's looking at power tools.

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Have I been getting too HARD SELL on these BLACK TO COMM back issues? Well, howzbout this...oh won't you pleeze buy these up so's I can have food on the table, money in my pockets and (with a little luck) pay off all the mortgages I placed on the house just so's I could print these magazines up in the first place??? And they say you young up and coming types are compassionate 'n caring----sheesh!