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It's beginning to look a lot like somethingorother, so let me use this time to give one and all ('cept for the people I hate of course) a hale and hearty Happy Holidays, something which ain't exactly "Merry Christmas" (can't offend the pagans no mo') but since "holiday" is actually derived from the even more scabrous "holy day" I guess even that's too religious to mention lest I "put off" a good 99.999...% of you readers. But whatever your spiritual affiliations may be I know that all of you out there will use any occasion to get stoned and make total fools outta yourselves, and if the Yuletide Season is one of those opportunities for over imbibing with a variety of stimulants both legal or not well, go to it you crusty old hedonist you!
But once again it's that time of year which naturally brings a tear to my eye and a lump to my throat (usually a Christmas cookie) thinking about all of those family traditions that have passed by the wayside. Christmas always brought out the true side of all of our personas and feelings (not always the "good tidings" ones!), and I fear a lot of the old ways have been totally lost ne'er to return which really does make me feel all boo hoo and waah! All of those Christmas parties with us kids fighting, breaking each other's toys and of course getting whooped (in front of everyone as if that was going to humble me!) for acting up are but mere memories, almost as merrily mystical as the time I got my cousin's new Barbie with the movable joints (there was a big trade in of the old Barbies for the new which had gals ditching their earlier models for the more swinging late-sixties edition --- thankfully cyster was smart enough to keep her original which had that classic snazz style that had given way to a variant that kinda irked me) and I spread the legs apart like a wishbone snapping a leg off in the process! Boy did that induce cousin into a crying jag to end 'em all---I mean the gal turned into a regular Victoria Falls (ol' Vickie was a gal I knew who really could blubber!) right then and there and there was no way to turn off that faucet! I hadda buy cuz a new one with some of the money that I got for the holidays (and the rest hadda go into the bank y'know!).
That naturally threw a few burrs into my sleeping bag, but what really irked me is that years later when I offhandedly reminded her of this ordeal...SHE HAD TOTALLY FORGOTTEN ABOUT IT and started laughing her head off! Cuz said that the real reason that I spread them legs because I wanted to take a peek at Barbie's sweet patch taking it all in har-dee-har-har stride, and here a good umpteen years earlier she was flipping out because of my innocent error which got me into plenty hot aqua. Maybe I thought she actually had a Gumby doll instead...it was so long ago. Who knows?
But eh, every year you have to put up with their olde tymey memories of dazed gone by, but oh what fun it is to remember 'em all and think about just how things used to be before it all tumbled into crass consumerism and the point where kidz already get what they want so why bother with Christmas in the first place?
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But still, when it gets towards the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one I can't help but slip back (even further than I usually do) into my suburban slob upbringing thinking more about the comic books I'd read during those long nights after I'd rush off my homework and before the hotcha pre-prime time reruns hit the screen. Real hog heaven salad bar days for someone such as I, and yeah on a dark 5:30 PM in December a good late/silver-early bronze age or EC comic or collection of old FERD'NAND comic strips really does hit me in the ol' braciola the same way it did oh-so long ago when I kept discovering strange things happening beneath my belly button.
Naturally there ain't no mo' pre-prime time wonders for me to sit through like there usedta be but eh. I can survive with some youtube clip or the incessant westerns that continue to hold my attention despite many a viewing. In many ways I am still glad that I never did give up my ranch house living birthright and still hold close to my innards a whole lot of the things I thought fun and maybe even downright sacred back when I was three and at the dawn of my memory. YOU can keep all of your hentai and chemical stimulants...what need of those do I have what with a lifetime collection of comic strip anthologies and Soaky bubble bath bottles to keep me amused!
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I do hope that you will like these reviews even though memyseldand"IIIIII" think they suck more'n a lamprey eel convention. My writing's way too convoluted and contrived like the "best" of my various eighties efforts were, and frankly I gotta admit (as if you couldn't tell) I have lost a whole load of the vim and vigor that has exemplified some of my better work which really ain't say' much. I'll also 'fess up to the fact that I am not exactly in the mood to do any writing (haven't these past four or so years to be honest about it), but plod on I must because this blog seems to be my only lifeline to whatever there is left of the real world these days. That and I still need to recoup my losses on many unsold magazines of mine (see come on below).
Yeah I know, so what, but for an OCD under-the-underground fanatic like I am things like the music I listen to and rant and rave over are the only things that I find it worth existing, as the complete human being) for. In other words, if I were somehow forbidden to listen to and write about the more feral aspects of what people classify as music well, I might as well just scrambooch over to the Old Fanablas Home and get myself hitched up to a whole number of life support systems that Karen Quinlan sure don't need these days!
There's still a whole lot to be discovered/uncovered regarding what I would call the Glory Years of High Energy Rockism (of an above or underground nature) that it seems that I and only myself cares about lo these many years later. I mean, I really gotta unearth, listen to and write about all of those groups who were the Velvet Underground of Norway, Belgium, Hungary... (France has claims to three, Mahogany Brain, Dagon and Crouille Marteau---Japan Les Rallizes Denudes, Italy La Stelle de Mario Schifano and Sweden maybe Parson Sound) as well as discover what all of those outliers on a variety of local scenes who never did put out records sounded like. It undoubtedly means little if nothing to you in the here and now but hey, a hundred years from now there's gonna be an entire generation of tight assed brainy bedroom-stranded doofs who are gonna be eating all of this information up!
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Paul McGarry and Robert Forward. You know what they did. You know where you can find out where they live.
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Yet another one of those Cee-Dee sets that have been popping up on ebay auction lists in recent times featuring loads of tracks you woulda hadda pay beaucoup for a good forty-plus years back. These days a whole lot of the music that'd cost you $10 a pop via some list procured from the TROUSER PRESS classifieds can be snatched up for a mere bag of shells, a bargain even if these come in those horrid multi-Cee-Dee cases that are extremely hard to open without spilling disques all over the place.
The quality of these audience recordings ranges from a good "C" on down, but hefty fans of the early Banshees (like I actually am!) will enjoy hearing those classic songs even if they do sound as if they were recorded on a cassette player rammed up your butt. Thinking about the direction the group eventually went (one reason I won't be buying Volume Two) it's hard to fathom just how much part of the whole BTC pantheon of essential bared wire sounds Siouxie and her compatriots were during their early days. The high energy of these sides which transcend the cassette malfunctions sure proves it.
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I gotta say that I liked Waits' homage to Captain Beefheart that started off FRANK'S WILD YEARS, but the sudden shift into decadent Europeanisms had me thinking New York intellectual chi-chi cocktails and noshes to the point of madness. Halfway through I actually slipped on a beret and smoked a cigarette placed in a long thin holder while perusing the latest issue of THE NEW YORKER. Sheesh, I'll take the Waits of the late-seventies ROLLING STONE-approved Ricky Lee Jones 'n Bette Midler watered down beatdom over this any day. And throw in Leon Redbone or even a rectal probe, for good measure.
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I gotta say that Bobb Trimble's outsider music comes off better than Tom Waits', and these early-eighties tracks, thank goodness, dredge up more than just a few moments of past accomplishment. Elements of the late-sixties lush baroque pop of the Cherry People and Montage can be discerned along with a few moments swiped from various Brian Sands records that were recorded around the same time Trimble decided to do the whacked pop thing himself. The fact that Trimble's vocals have been sped up to sound like that of a gal (I assume) ain't really something that sets well with cis me, but I still gotta commend this 'un for not sounding like typical eighties music era that was being pushed on 'luded up braincell-blown kids by the likes of MTV and various Cleveland-area rock critics.
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I'm sure most of you mid-seventies import bin prowlers remember Frith's solo guitar album that came out on Virgin's even more non-commercial than the non-commercial stuff they were already putting out Caroline label. I'm sure a few of you might have even absconded with a copy thinking it would make for great make out music a la John Fahey...sure woulda like to have seen the looks on your faces when you and your lay were snuggled up in bed and the needle eventually hit the vinyl!
Enough college dorm humor jocularity. Here's a '24 release not only reissuing the original platter but an extra one celebrating the fiftieth year anniversary of its initial release. If you were one to miss out on it way back when well, not only do you have a second chance to snatch this legendary spinner up but you get another one recorded a good half-century later that sounds more than just plain "homage", if you get my drift.
The original's just as much of a stunner today as it was way back when I first gave it a twirl sometime in the mid-eighties as if I could have afforded it when it first came out (didn't even know it EXISTED when it first came out but that's neither here nor there). I know that some of you just don't quite cozy up to the whole Henry Cow "Rock in Opposition" movement and I do understand your aversion but eh, despite your opinion who could deny that these tracks are still stunningly ear-opening even this late in the game. Far from the Gnu Age aural Lucky Charms one would expect from a solo guitar effort, you'll be amazed just how much aural fortitude Frith could get out of one simple instrument...with a lot of prepared doo-dads and electronic manipulations added.
As for the second platter well---kinda imagine that there was a movie that you really liked that came out fifty years back and you hadda wait all this time for the sequel. Well, here it is and it's just as much of a wowzer as the original. Frith undoubtedly picked up a few ideas in the interim but this ain't no showoff look how avgarde I can get bedroom jerkoff experiment...the path that the original album forged has been traversed upon and like fifty years after the fact Frith has created a sound that perhaps even surpasses the original, and how many sequels have done that? And if you were one who actually waited all this time well...feel sated for once in your miserable lives!
Listen, I too am far from being a fan of the RIO movement, finding a lot of the music to have come forth from it mostly obtuse stodgy experimental snoozeisms (only RIO act I like's Etron Fou Leloublan not only for their Beefheart homage but their admitted MC5 influence), but GUITAR SOLOS/FIFTY ain't quite the intellectual brain clog that those other acts were. Not that it moves and inspires you the same way that all of yours and mine save the world groups have, but for being a sonically inclined free music venture, especially the second album recorded in the musically abysmal twenties well, it'll sure more than just "do".
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Country music used to be filled with some rather "striking" and downright decadent personalities, at until the entire genre got pussified 'round the time that the "new country" trend de-balled everything Nashville once stood for. And even though I'll sound even more codger-y than my usual codger self I'm gonna remind you that it was guys like Charlie Rich who injected a whole slew of beautiful nastiness not only into the country star image but the music itself.
Those of you who have already gobbled up Rich's myriad asst. of singles throughout his career will undoubtedly be blessed by the numbers that pop up on these '63/'64 recordings which, thanks to Rich's smoother than all the booze I'm sure he guzzled down voice, even transcend the usual string-laden glop and gal backup singers that gooed up many a record, both country or not, back then.
Maybe they shoulda passed a law that only Charlie Rich and a select few others should have been permitted to sing ballads. Sheesh, its records like that that make me wanna re-glom Metal Mike Saunders' Rich article in PHONOGRAPH RECORD MAGAZINE just so's I could swipe a few bits on insight to pass off as my own.
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Smegmate goes it alone on these crucially important to somethingorother out there recordings. The early repeato riff mania of them LAFMS notables is evident in this collection of banjo plunks, chord organ drones, hypnotic tape loops and vocal mangipulations that sound just as stick it to the hippies now as it did fifty-plus years ago. Pretty neat mess o' atonal barrage ya got here, Meate!
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If it weren't for Robert Forward I dunno if I would have ever heard any of the recordings from the WKCR archives that were recorded way back when it seemed as if even the everyday doof on the street was well aware of the works of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. Well, considering the publicity these guys and other new thing advocates were getting back in the sixties and seventies even in the straighter than straight press one would think that they were about as popular as Donny and Marie.
Redman's trio (with Sirone and Eddie Moore)'s a good enough revelation even for a man like myself who's been around the avgarde block a few times. The all-string track that finished out his set where the guy sets down his horn to handle a zither making the kind of music that comes really close to COSMIC TONES-period Sun Ra really did throw me for a good ol' loop.
Howard's quartet was recorded live at Columbia U with Earl Freeman on bass, Jean-Louis Mechell on drums and guitar Glenn Dong, a name I haven't heard before now and, after doin' some Googlin', feel sad that his career as a jazz guitarist is particularly slim. He reminds me of Joseph Dejean from Archie Shepp's Full Moon Ensemble (who reminds me of Sonny Sharrock) and the fact that this guy's probably starving while all of those light jazz players are rakin' it in oughtta make ya mad!
Next comes an interview with Anthony Braxton who sounds much older than he did on those spoken word moments you heard on his early records but still talks some interesting if most of the time dry musical theory. You might or might not agree with him but then again did you ever have the chance to have your triple orchestra album released on a major label?
Also heard on this effort's an excerpt from TRILLIUM X, Braxton's opera which at least to me reminds me of five separate operas being played simultaneously while someone taps into a party line. If your mother wants you to get some culture via opera just spin this in her presence and I'll guarantee she won't bug you anymore!
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More'n a few people already know my earlier-on opinion regarding Little Richard which was influenced by his mid-eighties umpteenth try at a comeback, a time when you couldn't escape the guy coming off like a total douse in front of the already doused Phil Donahue. Boy did that period in the Little Richard saga make me wanna puke more'n just Cheerios.
Perhaps I was a wee bit premature in my heat of rage comment, but at least Richard wasn't as petite as he eventually would become on this '71 comeback effort for the then-hipper than anyone else on the planet Reprise Records.
The only thing I clearly can recall about this album from all my years of music "press" reading's a Rockin' Ronny Weiser's letter to BOMP! regarding the man's vain attempts to get Los Angeles radio station KHJ to play "Dew Drop Inn". Obvious Weiser's noble efforts resulted in nada but I do commend this true fan for his persistence and general fortitude taking up such a daunting task.
Not bad considering the way Richard's style was updated for the then-current tastes in black sounds which were still rather solid (these being the pre disco days). There's a whole lot of urban soul in these numbers and that ain't bad at all considering some of the other trends in "rock" that were bubblin' 'round at the time. If anything, this makes me wonder if the scourge of Emerson Lake and Palmer crept into Richard's lone single for Manticore a few years later. Sheesh, couldja imagine what Richard would have done to "Karn Evil 9"... "Welcome back mah frens...ooh!"
The guy even does the Beatles, not surprising even through Richard couldn't stand John for farting all over the place!
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It's not too late to get hold of some BLACK TO COMM back issues before the holiday season really kicks into gear. I mean, can you think of a better way to celebrate National Hemorrhoid Research Week than with one (or more) of these babies in your ever-decaying rock mag collection?
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