True, I've long been in the habit of ignoring various "necessities" in my life whether it be doing my homework, yard duties or trimming my protruding nostril hairs for that matter. Perhaps I remain under the impression that if I just shove these various burdens on my life to the back of my brain they'll just go away and I can just settle back and relax as these various demons dissipate into the ether.
As you may have noticed, at times this blog does get lumped into being more of a once-in-awhile fulfillment of my OCD rather than being a downright funtime experience. Not that BLOG TO COMM isn't an overall pleasure in my rather humdrum existence, but sometimes each and every one of us has got to engage in a little bit of sloth, something which I will admit was one of the highlights of my single-digit ranch house suburban slob growing up days that maturity thankfully never did wash out of my system. Of course, ignoring things doesn't automatically make life more bearable as Uncle Ferd learned after acting like that strange sore on his chest was nothing to worry about for months on end.
Maybe that's one reason it took so long for this particular post to make its way into your living room. Maybe 'tis because real life doodies (and I sure have had my share of them these past five years!) have been piling up as of late. Maybe it's just because I couldn't care less anymore but then my feelings of gettin' up and goin' expressing the deep passions I have in life get the best of me and well, sometimes it is more fun to write these things up on a Sunday afternoon rather than scour the television screen looking for anything worth laying eyes upon.
As usual the ol' moolah shortage has been taking a toll on my listening experiences which is yet another reason why It has been way too long between these megaposts. Sure I have tons of interesting burns sent by the likes of Paul McGarry and Robert Forward to choose from, but at times those get scattered across the floor like chiclets. I do manage to find a few of them as the following reviews will reveal.
There are some big items out there I wouldn't mind hearing mind you, but the lack of decent cashflow is preventing me from latching onto all the fun. Take f'rexample that new re-re-re-RE issue of the Mothers of Invention debut album FREAK OUT now done up in a six-Cee Dee plus Blu Ray (something which I don't have access to but eh!) package. Now a concept like that sure sounds enticing considering just how much I would have drooled over such an item back when I was a mere sixteen, but I'm not exactly in the position to buy this three-digit sucker lest a load of you readers snatch up a whole buncha BLACK TO COMM back issues (see below) which would make me a happier than an adolescent locked in a bathroom with a stack of SUCKEMS magazines. I'll bet that Jymn Parrett (who says this double-LP set was the thing that kick-started his love of heavy-duty rock music) has already latched onto this one by now!
Oh yeah, and while I'm at it I'm on a heart monitor now! Family tradition y'know. Things seem to be going normal so far but as we all know situations do change, and not always for the better!!! Well, maybe a palpitation or two will lead to even more goof off time that I can sure use.
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| The artist also did the cover to FUTURE LANGUAGE |
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With a name like Metteyya's Voice I thought that this mixed combo (men and wimmen) would have been a wild Hindu-inspired Hawkwind-y psychedelic space trip that, fortunately for us space rock fans (and I don't mean "Classic Rock FM" space rock either!), was stuck smack dab in the middle of the seventies. However, some recently discovered demos that have popped up on Youtube have proven me wrong which doesn't exactly make me want to run to the nearest cliff but is still somewhat of a letdown. For a group that played not only CBGB but Club 82 twice, I find Metteyya's Voice waywayWAY more in the funky Latin with a touch (and sometimes more) of disco range which might not have been so strange for the 82 clientele (fierce division between disco and rock crowds there) and not quite (if at all) up to BTC standards. I'll still post these three (at least the three I could find) out of six tracks from their demo if only for you to make up your own mind even though I do know what all of you will think anyway. But as the old saying goes YOU BE THE JUDGE!
Some (including myself) may think Metteyya's Voice is total cringe, though I will give hefty thumbs up to "Love Bullet" not only with a spooky harp (!) introduction which should have gone on for much longer but an interesting funky riff trumpet solo that actually got my own antennae perked. Otherwise this act really did prove the old saying that CBGB stands for "We'll Book ANYBODY!". Anyway, yet another New York scene mystery solved, one out of many more that need a little revealin' before it ALL tumbles into historical mindnumb.
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While I'm up and about maybe I should comment on the reams of deaths that have been cropping up as of late. Like that of Gloria Steinem, the ex HELP! magazine staffer who used her sexual wiles to get the likes of Jackie Gleason and Jerry Lewis to pose for their covers and later uttered such stunning bon mots as "a woman without a man is like a fish without an aquarium" or something like that. I guess the clump of cells that she used to be is now being reduced to a clump of wormfood.
Also hitting the carbon cycle is Gene O'Connor better known as Cheetah Chrome who managed to live so long despite the torrents of abuse he put his body through. Well, if Iggy Pop could make it as long as he did why should I be surprised that Mr. Chrome actually made his way into the Septuagenarian arena.
Peter Max also maxxed out his life which I gotta say was about fiftysome years too late given how that weirdo's pop art kitsch was being pushed on everything from 7 Up ads to school notebooks during the age of right on relevancy. Hippiedoodle for the iron-haired girls who played Bobby Sherman records on their cheapo portable record players and made color peace sign posters in art class. The weird thing is...for quite a long while I believed that Max didn't even exist and that he was some boardroom creation used to push that art which might as well have been conjured up by Yacoub in his lab and thrusted upon a whole load of unsuspecting early-seventies teenbo mushskulls!
An overlooked passing is that of former (?) Mansonoid Bruce Davis, and considering how the Family is starting to dwindle down to a precious few we better honor the ones who are left before they too eventually come face-to-face with the ones they helped butcher!
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Again here be a whole bunch of new to my ears thingies that I spent the past few months spinning. Now a whole load of these efforts may be older'n Methuselah to you rich and with-it types but for me they're about as fresh as had I heard 'em the moment they popped up at my local record shop, as if that place would have stocked any of these obscuros in the first place. 'cept maybe for the Dream Syndicate one maybe.
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Don't expect any real cohesiveness here what with a few well-known krautrock goodies scattered amidst various obscurities and names that for the most part convey the least appealing moments the genre managed to toss our way. And to make matters worse I wouldn't even consider many of the hard rock acts that pop up here such as Birth Control, Jane and Lucifer's Friend krautrock in the slightest. Unfortunately, the punkier aspects of what the German expressionists gave us is not fully revealed...I guess that will all have to wait until the AFTER THE FEEDBACK box set finally gets released. Well, at least I was given the chance to hear a few longtime goodies by the likes of Can, Faust, Guru Guru and Harmonia again.
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Naw, I still feel nothing special listening to these live tracks recorded throughout the group's career that were released under the same name of that famous eight-sided Rolling Stones album. Now, the performances are fine and ability to convey various artistic aspects do hit their targets, but the paens to past perfection come nowhere close to the influences that made up the spiritual backbone of the entire under-the-underground these past fiftysome years. Not that this breed of vibration is bad or even downright evil, but sure as shootin' it lacks a whole load of the hardness and grit that typified the sort of sounds that made people like me scour used bins for a good number of years when the hard-edge could be bought for mere pennies. If it is any consolation to you Dream Syndicate fans I gotta say that I like the way "Morning Dew" was incorporated into "John Coltrane Stereo Blues"...now are ya happy?
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More synth drive from Richard Pinhas that should thrill the fanabla outta anyone who took my advice and bought the guy's earlier platter reviewed in these "pages" a month or ten ago. Seventies synth sludge that for once has a pair of danglies thus separating it from the usual batch of prissies heard during them days. Add some Stoogian riffage and this could have been Metal Urbain.
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While we're on the subject of furriners, this French trio might have outdone even their earlier freak sounds on this live effort. Given it was recorded in that rather transitional year of 1982, PENETRATION should either signal the end point of the 1964-1981 era of deca-rock drive or the beginnings of the eighties experimental musical age done up during a time when few gave one whit about anything that wasn't squeaky clean.
Now, PENETRATION might be somewhat over electronic-y slick (at times) for my tastes but there are some interesting avant-punk moves which are tossed in between the usual classical snatches and New Think bleats. Jac Berrocal was always a good representative of the more outer limits portion of the European portion of the jazz and punk idioms, while Jean-Francois Pauvros has more than a little bit of Gallic avant greatness behind him (check out RINCURES which he conjured up with Mahogany Brain's Michel Bulteau). And of course, there's Gilbert Artman who had spent more than a few years in Lard Free and Urban Sax where he honed whatever it is that needed honed for such a warpo vision as this. They really did make for a team that mooshed it all up and did it right!
I could call PENETRATION some high point in the post FUNHOUSE breed of classic jazz punk amalgamation heading out for the same stratosphere as the rest, but you all already think I'm nuts enough already what with my long-undiagnosed OCD. Still, I'd take this over a lot of the snooze passing for underground music that was coming out of the eighties just about any day!
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For those of you who love the music of Keiji Haino here's more to let your Japanese-bred musical psyche gnaw on. Drummer Masahiko leads this rather spaced group that takes the various sounds and textures (oooh!) of the late-sixties New Thing and does it up in an even more unique Japanese fashion the same way that Toyota took Studebaker styling nods and went in their own distinctly different direction. Saxophonist Mototeru Takagi might come off as somewhat subdued in this style when compared to Roscoe Mitchell or Frank Lowe but fits in swell, especially when he whips out his "corn pipe" which I most sincerely doubt is one of those Popeye-like things the folks used to always get me only for me to chew 'em to splinters. Elements of Milford Graves and even Jimmy Giuffre's chamber jazz circa FREE FALL can be discerned, and the fact that this was originally released on Victor really does make me wonder where all the balls that the big deal labels once had and have long been lopped off went.
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I haven't heard much if any of Chadbourne's music ever since them days when he was spreading himself on real thick so this was like a nice li'l re-introduction. But I don't remember any of those tossout tapes or actual recordings to have this sorta downhome kick up your footsies feeling what with Chadbourne most of the time plucking on a banjo while "the Indian of the group" Jimmy Carl Black pounds away and gets nary the vocal time I sure hoped he would've. Worth it for Black's Bertram Redneck-ish vocalese on "Willie the Pimp" and other old Mothers numbers that only go to prove that the guy shoulda been the vocalist and Zappa shoulda just shut up and played his guitar. (Speaking of guitar, Chadbourne does some fairly "there" Zappaisms on his own electric.) But putting that kid whoever it was through having to do all that singing...I hope someone reported Chadbourne to Child Protection Services!
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It's that Beatles album I used to see in the racks as a kid wondering why it existed in the first place because it was nothing but one of those quickie cash-in documentary thingies custom made for that teenbo fatso cousin who had pimples on her thighs and a strange sinus-reaming odor. Maybe she still has those pimples (we all know about the odor) but anyway, if you were a female pus packet back then who was wrapped up in the whole Beatlemania hype complete with all of those bubblegum machine pins and Flip Your Wig Milton Bradley games you probably woulda gone gaga for it too. Whatever, here's the inside scoop on the group complete with snippets of real deal Beatle tunes mixed in with the Hollyridge Strings and a narrator who probably digs these guys about as much as he does Khrushchev. I like the Radio Birdman one much better.
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Listening to this 'un somehow reminded me of back when I was a kid on some rainy day in the rec room in the basement pouring through old magazines and it's kinda chilly and humid which is making you all clammy but when you're eight years old things like that don't matter much. Funny thing is that Kyu Sakamoto's "Sukiyaki" does the same thing to me as well! Anyway there'd be some music along these lines coming atcha from my dad's workshop radio which I guess would have gotten him really mad since his tastes were more tonal, but since the station would probably play something along the lines of "Swinging Safari" next he could sweat it out. Who knows, these fuzzed out instrumentals might have the exact same effect on your own kiddoid memories but given how I think all of you readers out there grew up in upperclass snooty chi chi cocktail parties and noshes environments I'm sure you can't see the outright pleasure in lowclass suburban slob growing up fun and jamz.
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