BLOG TO COMM

2012-01-26T09:49:00.000-05:00

BOOK REVIEW! MORE CRACKED (Ace Books, 1961)

Really, it does seem strange that I would even possess such a book as this because for the life of me the one thing that I used to avoid like the enema was CRACKED magazine. Wait, I will take that back, since I actually bought one of those CRACKED specials featuring nothing but old fumetti reprints which were clearly inspired by the photo caption book trend of the early-sixties as well as some much better (and far more adult in intellect and subject matter) variations in HELP! As you can prob'ly guess, I was totally nonplussed by these satires lampooning everything from horror mooms to politics and the milking of the memory of Laurel and Hardy with silly word balloons which added nothing to the pair's mystique, so that partic'lar ish ended up in a box stashed in the basement which also contained various grade/high school weekly reader-type magazines, an EMMY LOU paperback, parts and pieces of cut up comic books, and examples of my own ten-year-old cartooning abilities including such long-forgotten faves as IMPY (named after the Lone Star diecast car company natch!) and of course RATS REAGAN. While prowling around in the basement looking for various flotsam to use as clip art for BLACK TO COMM #18 (hey alla you readers who wanna scarf up some available back issues of my long-decayed fanzine and keep writing to me personally or via the comment box...just click on ANY of the highlighted mentions of my shoulda-been-infamous crudzine and be taken to a post which not only lists the various back issues that are available, but the prices and how they can be obtained with relative ease!!! No need to burden yourself with the fact that your collection isn't complete anymore...so dial up and make your choice AS SOON AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!!!)...like I said, while in the basement looking for some old bits to use in that now long-gone issue with an in-depth interview with Edgar Breau featured on the cover what should I find but this long-forgotten mag that I was rather embarrassed in picking up back when I was naught but a wayward thirteen-year-old and you know what...I thought it still sucked worse than a La Leche convention!

That particular mag is now snuggled comfortably and cozily in a box filled with MAD and other comic magazines of my youth and not-so that is stacked in a closet about twelve feet from where I'm pecking this, but then again what in the world possessed me to snatch up this copy of MORE CRACKED, a collection of various late-fifties vintage articles from that exact same publication which was purchased (along with a paperback fulla old HAZEL cartoons) at an outdoor antique/flea market about a good fifteen years back? Dunno, though for some reason I thought that it woulda been a great buy even if I never thought very much about this verifiable MAD imitation even when fifties-vintage flea market copies were being thrust upon me like potrzebie. I guess that I just couldn't pass up on a bargain, kinda like Wally when he bought that rusted out wheel-less mini-scooter for 75 cents on some old LEAVE IT TO BEAVER.

So as far as this particular slice of late-fifties snidedom goes, all I gotta say is that it sure holds up better than I thought it would! Dunno if that's because nowadays the notion of humor is so phony and piously preachy to the point where COMEDY CENTRAL and Bill Maher are nothing but ranters and ravers pretending to rage against the powers that be when in fact they are the powers that be, but it's come to the point where even an nth-rate cash-in on the teenage/college humor mag market like this can run rings around the entire nation of comedy circuit "moralizers". Not that CRACKED couldn't get preachy themselves (after all, they were always peeking over at MAD to see which way the prevailing winds of teenage sentiment were blowing) but at least in the late-fifties humorists knew where their audiences lied, and I'm sure they didn't want to fall into that Lenny Bruce/Dick Gregory rut where unfunny and threatening rants were somehow to be construed as "educational" commentary about the state of everything from race relations to the "hypocrisy" of everybody out there but themselves!

Thin volume here, but it does present a nice sampling of where the magazine was rotatin' back when more'n a few MAD imitations and emulations were popping up confusing many an ignorant twelve-year-old out there. Of course it was a real coup getting MAD originals John Severin and Jack Davis to work for 'em (Bill Elder, fresh from HUMBUG along with Davis, was an early recruit although he sure bailed out fast!), and although the satire certainly coulda used a little beefing up it ain't anything that drives me as bonkers as some of the turds that eventually would come out (Joe Simon's SICK, who also boasted Davis as an original staff member, comes to mind). True a lotta the stories are old, too indicative of MAD (as with the beat talk primer spoof) and perhaps hackneyed, but they still pack a whole lot more amusement into 'em than a George Lopez monologue and are digestible in their own cornball way. Of course the Severin art is excellent (too bad he didn't stick around at MAD so he could at least illustrate something written by better satirists of the postwar sphere), and although Davis's art ain't in that fine-lined detailed style that made HUMBUG (and a few of his magazine-era MAD contributions) such a fun read it's always nice to see the guy doing everything from spoofing HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL (which he also did for HUMBUG but why cry over it) to LASSIE. And true they coulda been funnier, but next to Robin Williams I guess even the phone book's packed with a lotta laughs!

So really, nice going here. True, CRACKED wasn't exactly the tippie-toppest of the teenage satire heap, but nowadays these old comics at least hearken back to not only a hot time for such fun and games, but a great time to have been alive unless you were some sexual pervo freak. And next to some of the others that were floating around at least CRACKED had some testosterone pumped into it by the artists who could take feh scripts and work some magic. And as far as I can tell, in these early stories there are no sly references to the biggie mag that CRACKED and their minions were swiping more'n a few ideas from unlike some of the other short-run efforts who weren't ashamed to sneak an Alfred E. Neuman into a panel (and this even went for TRUMP, and of course HUMBUG couldn't have survived as long without one ref per issue to Harvey Kurtzman's creation which would figure since once you get down to it that mag was more or less born directly from the loins of Moxie Cowznofski!)...naw, the MAD refs would come much later as CRACKED had risen up the spoof pole mostly on the coattails of the big one. But that was much later...and did I ever tell you how I was once shocked to see this one cover where janitor/mascot Sylvester Smythe was ramming pins into a voodoo doll, whose shadow looked ominously like the head of none other'n Alfred E. himself???

2012-01-22T15:15:00.000-05:00

Looks like it's gonna be one of those poop it out and paste it together kinda blogposts this weekn'd...not that it's exactly what I would prefer but the lack of 1) moolah, 2) free time, 3) inspiration and 4) lotsa recordings both old 'n new to stimulate my nerve endings have been keeping me from doing my doody of pree-senting for you information on alla them hotcha platters that we should all know and care about deep in our already deepified hearts. Hope ya dig it anyway...hadda do some hearty creepy crawling into the archives to find these things but it was worth it, if only bccause I probably haven't heard most of this stuff since my early fanzine wallowing days way back when!

Sorry to see Etta James go. Actually have a record with her doing "Dance With Me Henry" (which my mother used to sing to toddler-era Jillery as she danced with her clown doll [which she still has!] named what else but Henry!) which of course is a bigtime spin when I get into one of my occasional mid-fifties r/b moods. Funny that the woman didn't die earlier considering her heavy duty jones which has taken many a weaker soul o'er the years, but I understand she did put up a brave front and after what I've read about her life I gather that the entire span was one brave trek despite her slides into the murky end. Naturally the first thing that I think of when I read about her passing was not the also recently-departed (by one day) Johnny Otis but none other that Sleep 'n' Eat himself Willie Best, the Stepin' Fechit clone who also doubled as a pimp and dope dealer when not doing his slo' mo' routine. Best actually tried his darndest to make sure that James kept away from the white stuff, obviously to no avail, though the thought of this oft maligned actor as a dope dealing pimp does make one wonder. Strange bitta H-wood gossip there, tho I still gotta ponder (considering Best's extracurricular activities) just what none other than Bob Hope meant when he said that Best was "the best actor I know"...perhaps if "actor" was replaced with a coupla other words knowing what we now do about Hope and his own free time frolics we might get the true meaning behind it all!

Before I get into the actual reviews maybe I should mention these three items that have been hanging around in my Cee-Dee pile since December at the latest. Seems that the old Soul Note label, the same Eyetalian company that released a whole slew of ultra-rare albums back in the mid-to-late-seventies (the kind that THE VILLAGE VOICE used to say that you could only pick up in local specialty shops, which naturally were very few and far between in the tri-state area) have reissued a nice portion of their produce in boxed sets, and surprisingly enough these platters won't set you back an arm and a leg to procure like these albums in their original forms mighta a good three-plus decades back. Of course we're a whole lot richer now, right?, but frankly I wish I didn't have to wait so long inna first place because a lotta the spirit that I had when I was 18 is like...well, dissipated and I don't know where the hell it went.

The Cecil Taylor volume's by far the best (well, at least if ya ask me and why else would you be reading this swill?) featuring five platters fulla rare Taylor material most of which I never thought I'd ever get the chance to hear no matter how many flea markets I would have traipsed throughout the early-eighties. All are highly recommended hard-crunch avant scrank, though I must admit that I really enjoyed the double disc HISTORIC CONCERTS series featuring Taylor along with Max Roach doing some amazing full tilt percussion. And get this, not only do you get to listen to the two live at the McMillan Theater 12/15/79 but they even get to talk about what it was like performing with each other. Really, if two saints meeting is s'posed to be a humbling experience, the long battles to prove if this one even made it out to the racks back when it was first unleashed upon an unsuspecting public.

As for George Russell...well, I will admit that I have tremendous respect for the guy not only as one of the originators of the jazz avant garde back in the late-forties but as a fellow who knew how to roll with the new trends and be creative with the new tide of atonal glory, then go back to the Ellingtonian bop of his earlier days when the mood fit. The guy did crank out a grand number of albums for Soul Note (nine total!) which range from innovative fifties-styled avant jazz not that dissimilar to what Sun Ra was doing during his Chicago days to more conventional musings that remind me of some of those early-seventies Gil Evans recordings to stuff that you think you have to wear a suit and tie to listen to. Nice pick grab bag here, though if you're one of those guys who like to put the freedom into the free jazz you'll probably be nonplussed.

Lester Bowie only managed three platters for Soul Note, though they're OK in their own way. Not Bowie at his AEC or Muse best, but a good representation of the trumpeter's late-seventies output when he was starting to pull in the free reigns and emit some comparatively subdued output. Maybe it was the ghost of the late-seventies tellin' him that things weren't gonna be the same for quite a while. Given the way those latterday AEC albums sounded, I think the entire AACM mighta gotten the same message as well.

Must say that there are more of these box sets comin' out, though due to financial restraints I'll probably be passin' on 'em faster'n you can say fanabla. (The Bill Dixon one looked enticing, if only because the man has been such an ignored free jazz figure for way too long.) For now, these three'll keep me busy, at least until the next great underground upheaval gets into gear sometime in 2100 but I'm not holding my breath.

Dredd Foole and the Din-TAKE OFF YOUR SKIN LP (PVC)

First dredge up of the week's this long-forgotten splatter by an act that unfortunately has been passed over in the ranks of GREAT HEAPING BIG AMERIGAN UNDERGROUND EARBUSTERS by the likes of such deserving aggregations as Rancid and Rage Against The Machine. Which (as the old saying goes) is too bad, because those early Dredd Foole records were some of the better hotcha hard-edged post-Velvet Underground Bostonian rock to grace just about anybody's ears, and not only that but at a time when "underground rock" was splintering off into various factions that never could comprehend what the other tentacle was doing these guys seemed to stay on a straight path of no-holds-barred pure adrenaline high energy rock that come to think of it was rather unfashionable ever since the days when THE NEW YORK ROCKER began catering to the more obvious amongst us and CREEM decided to bank their bucks on the stadium rock and hair metal bands sans the keen rock acumen that the mag built their reputation on back in the early-seventies.

Yeah that's all turdism that's long been flushed away, but I gotta admit that this '88 release is some of the better blare to have made it outta that sick decade known as the eighties, a time when it seemed as if all of the hard promise and exploding nihilism of the sixties and seventies got wooshed away under a rising tide of sameness and preachy goody two-shoeism straight outta THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF MISTER ROGERS. At least Foole and his Din were one of the few to plunge through those days (Sister Ray and the Droogs being just a couple of the others) who acted as if the stultifying sameness had never existed, and when I look back at those pacifying years I'm sure glad that I stuck it out with groups like this who really knew how to kick out jams at a time when the only thing that really needed kicking was the collective hindquarters of laid back squeaky clean teenage Ameriga!

Probably a cheap "buy it now" on ebay, and I would do what the seller sez. Highly recommended forgotten fave that would have been a bargain bin find of 1994, if they still had bargain bins then (did they?).

David Peel and the Lower East Side-AND THE REST IS HISTORY; THE ELEKTRA RECORDINGS CD (Rhino Handmade)

It doesn't surprise me that more'n a few goofs (and some goofs that I even admire) think the lowest of the low of David Peel. Maybe that's why I've taken a shine to the guy, especially after reading the reams of negative record reviews that have been directed towards our fave "Hippie From New York City" for nigh on fortysome years...not because I have sympathy for some guy whose entire career seemed to be trashed from the get go, but because in all of the reviews that I have read demeaning Peel the description of his music (cheap electric guitar gutter garage primitive teenage rock) sounded like something that I certainly would appreciate to the max! Kinda like that review in STONE of the debut Stooges platter with all the mention of wah-wah pedals and fake leather jackets...I mean sheesh, if that wasn't something that would have every goofus suburban teenage pimplecrop kid rushing to the nearest record shop with his last $4.99 jangling in his pocket I don't know WHAT would!

Back in 2000 the enterprising souls at Rhino Handmade reissued both Elektra-era Peel platters on one shiny pancake along with a couple outtakes (including one entitled "I Am a Runaway" which was later recorded for Peel's oft-banned Apple outing from '72 THE POPE SMOKES DOPE), a nice move by Rhino considering how I was just too scared to pick up both the HAVE A MARIJUANA and THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION albums back when they were filling up the flea market bins of the seventies. Now that the LPs have been reissued on one disc with a rather innocuous cover (no hemp plants or fake crossing the Delawares in sight) now I can sneak it into the confines of my abode without fear of reprisals, as long as I keep the volume way way down!

All funnin' aside, I find that both MARIJUANA and REVOLUTION hold up rather swell-like even though the former's forbidden indulgence is now the subject of serious legal scrutiny regarding both its medicinal and extracurricular benefits and the latter hasn't made a dent in teenage Amerigan thinking since at least 1972 when the revolution in question seemed about as phony as many of the rabble who were promoting it. MARIJUANA, recorded on the streets of the Lower East Side as it happened in true documentary form, comes off like old timey hootenanny music only with boss six-oh garage riffage and ratty drug/protest rant replacing the earnest brotherhood angst. Yeah I know that this was the sound that was probably comin' outta the bedrooms and dorms of thousands of wannabe revolutionaries and hanger-ons back when this '68 platter was unleashed, but in many ways don't you think that was the reason why this 'un came out inna first place? Heavy duty kudos must go to Danny Fields who knew a good teenage hype when he saw it, and thankfully he continued to see it for years afterwards or else we would have all been the poorer for it.

By the advent of THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION in '70 Peel and the Side stepped up a bit, to cheap electric guitars and the kinda drum sets you used to see proudly emblazoned in low rent thrift shops that the poor people used to shop in back when I was a kid. Y'know, the kind with the sparkles that usually adorned banana seat bicycles and seemed cut from the same kiddo cloth in many respects. Of course the music represents this low budget set up remarkably well, kinda like a slightly dippier Deviants or the dolts from that weird school in BILLY JACK if they had chanced upon the Stooges 'stead of James Taylor. Downright punky grasp and feel here that doesn't offend at all, even when famed somethingorother Marshall Efron gets into the act doing some passably funny cop and guy onna street imitations.

So yeah, count me in with the Peel fanatics...all ten of 'em... for this guy not only delivered but continues to dish out some pretty hotcha late-sixties via early-sixties rock vibrations that do sound rather conspicuously suburban at times. And even though the old turd's still out there twangin' away for the occupied people (who I get the feeling don't even know who David Peel is, or care for that matter) I gotta like him for NOT being a bandwagon jumper like onetime mentor John Lennon or the rest of those sixties relics. Unless you actually count Howard Stern as a bandwagon, that is.

THE MEAT PUPPETS II CD (MVD Audio)

Yeah, I know that the eighties were such a drag time for underground rockism unless you were part of the underground, but gosh ding ya if I don't think that the Meat Puppets were one of a good hunkerin' 100 or so groups to have sprung up from '80 to '89 that shall we say had a certain Gennesee Quah that separated 'em from the vast majority of hardcore zealots, hair metal morons, pop-squeakers and asst. other freakazoids who cluttered up that particularly vile decade. And this second outing of theirs does hold up pretty nice...far from the Deadhead vision that many rockque critics seem to tag it as, II in fact comes off like one of those Great Amerigan Rock Albums of the seventies that I still seem to squeal over, maybe not up there with LOADED or ONE KISS LEADS TO ANOTHER but pretty straight-ahead in its own way. Nice bounce here twixt "old school" h-core and early-seventies mid-Amerigan suburbanisms make this sound either like the big lost indie album of 1983, or perhaps even 1973 for that matter. A definite winner that goes to show you that maybe the folks at SST weren't as potsmogged (or maybe they were, but it a positive way) as I kinda thought they were inna late-eighties.

***

Gonna try to scrape together some more forgotten newies and well as long-lost oldies for next time. However, considering the current situation on all fronts combined with the lack of folding jack and general lethargy within a once seething underground (with a load of stress from work 'n real life dolloped on like sour cream on a big messy taco) next week's post might actually come off weaker 'n this poor excuse. Well, considering how the teens will probably be the decade which finally kills of all semblance of hot music from rock 'n' roll to free jazz, don't say that you didn't see it comin'.

2012-01-18T08:41:00.000-05:00

BOOK REVIEW! THE NEW AMERICAN CINEMA, a critical anthology edited by Gregory Battcock (Dutton, 1967)

Ever since I developed an interst in film as something other'n what the tee-vee stations would air in order to fill up time between network feeds, just about every aspect of history and perhaps even style of cinematic blunderment has graced my ever-shiny beanie. And naturally the underground or avant garde if you will cinema had caught my attention ever since I began prowling through film books, making me want to glom loads of mooms that certainly weren't being made available via my local tee-vee outlets. Of course actually being able to appreciate such films back in the seventies and eighties wasn't exactly an easy enough task...I remember when trying to see something along the lines of, say, SCORPIO RISING meant a trip to a distant college campus for a rare Wednesday night showing in some cramped classroom (usually during a winter month on the snowiest night of the year). Thankfully, with the advent of home entertainment and video trading it has become possible for even somebody like myself who's way outta the hot and chi-chi loop to view such items as these old underground films but way back then the best thing that I could hope for was that some local college branch'd maybe have an evening of everything from twenties dada/surrealist shorts of forties innovation up through sixties breakthrough when even the likes of TIME 'n' NEWSWEEK saw a hot story when it bit 'em on the ass. Or better yet hope that maybe PBS'd get the brains to run something innocuous yet still within the avant realm like an early James Broughton short to fill up the time between the ten o' clock documentary and the captioned ABC news repeats they used to sign off with.

Therefore, THE NEW AMERICAN CINEMA is a handy book when it comes to disseminating info about the mid-sixties underground film explosion, not as handy as Parker Tyler's own book or some of the other collections that were popping up from the sixties onwards, but good enough if you wanna fill in some of the myriad assortment of blanks that might have popped up in your mind. Mainly a collection of essays that appeared in all of those "important" publications I'm sure every high school phony intellectual's scarf up in order to impress someone that he wasn't the noodge everyone has him pegged as, THE NEW AMERICAN CINEMA has a wide array of writers (all coming outta the same channel of new hip Amerigan thought) who, in twenty-plus chapters, all have the same message to zap right into your unaware suburban button down plastic mind. Naturally these tomes all have that brainy, allegedly witty, allegorical and at times obtuse in its flowery style that you don't what the hell you're reading, but at least you can sift through the references to Greek Philosophers and the bloated nature of Hollywood and find something concrete regarding whatever hotcha mid-sixties underground filmmaker you'd choose to research.

Of course that's the problem when say, you'd like to know more about Gregory Markopoulos and you'd like a concrete filmography and descriptions of his work in a way that a ten year old would understand, but I guess you have to put up with the likes of Susan Sontag dredgin' up some of the most intellectual gobbledygook ever in order to lay on the line just what it is 'bout Jack Smith's FLAMING CREATURES that makes it such a powerful and evocative film. Well, at least I haven't come across the word "redolent" yet, but that doesn't mean it's not gonna pop up within the next closer reading since sometimes my mind skips a few words when it gets so late at night...

What I woulda liked to have read was something a whole lot more "concrete", like how did Markopoulos' "in camera editing" work, or just what exactly was PULL MY DAISY (which you'd never know was a neat li'l personal film dealing with the meeting of some of the bigger beats of the fifties narrated by the biggest one of 'em all!)...most of this reminds me of that old comedy gag from the twenties and thirties where the stereotypical fake intellectual black guy spouts loads of big words (some even with actual meaning!) at his audience of old black men in a meeting room who react in righteous "amens", when all the while what we ALL could use is some plain talk without the socia/political aspects as to what we are about to receive! I will say that reading something like Carl Linder's notes for his debut film THE DEVIL IS DEAD made for wonderful reading, but if someone had only bothered to give me a shot-by-shot like has been done with everything from UN CHIEN ANDALOU to SCORPIO RISING I sure woulda appreciated it especially since there's no way that I'm gonna be catching this on youtube any day soon. But I still am hoping.

If you saw 'em all this'll make a good toothpick, but the rest of us lumpen proles need something a lot different, like a big book with lotsa shiny pix and large print and solid descriptions/appreciations. Since that moment has long gone all we're gonna get are textbook lessons and rheumy reminiscences, which might do a lotta good for Jill Johnson if she hasn't dyked herself outta existence but does practually nada for curious cubes like myself!

2012-01-15T09:30:00.001-05:00

I don't know whether I should be proud, ashamed, or just plain ol' flabbergasted, but it finally took me over thirty years for the debut Siouxsie and the Banshees platter entitled THE SCREAM to finally worm its way into my not so often wormed heart. I'm not exactly sure as to why this 'un finally hit the core of my being or whatever flowery rockcritic jargon you'd care to dredge up, since just about every word of praise and exaultation regarding this album that your mind can think of has been directed at me regarding this (as some would say) "epochal" release. I kind of get the feeling that it was because of the Nick Kent writeup in a long-lost NME dropping everything from the Velvet Underground to Can that finally clenched gears within my rockist sense of well-being, which only translates into I'll listen to this guy shovel the rock evaluations and opinions anyday though if some schmuck next to me deals out the exact same schpiel I'll be more'n apt to IGNORE the upstart sucker. After all, if I'm going to be dishing well up to two hours worth of pay (before deductions) for a platter that I might have some reservations about, I might as well hear it from a well paid professional 'stead of some knowitall off the street! Besides, if the record turned out to be a dud it ain't like I can go all the way over to Gay Paree 'n slug out Kent like I could some Joe Fafoofnik who works in a bakery and skids his underwear just like everyone else!

But for being an "experimental" punk rock album (perhaps even "avant punk" in the best Velvets/Imperial Dogs sense) THE SCREAM ranks up there with Wire, the Pop Group, the Slits and the rest of those English art rockers mentioned in that Talking Heads/electronic possibilities piece the adorned the cover of the final issue of BOMP. True the entire format seemed like way too much English Weekly fodder once 1982 rolled in, but at least when the idea of taking various sixties epiphanies and deconstructing them to the point where rank amateurs could do with nth the musical abilities (but with all of the acumen) what the Velvets did with their inborn genius groups like Siouxsie/Banshees were able to pull it off with much elan. Great spidery sound here gives this the same starkness of that last dream you had when you flashed back to mid-teen loneliness and angst and lived it all over again in your modern day hulk of a remnant post-man...uncertain past meets stark present.

A latch onto the Peel sessions is a definite possibility, though what I would like to know is, is the 100 Club set featuring the original free splat variation with Marco Pirroni and the one called Sid available anywhere (and in better fidelity than the horrid mess that's been flying around for some time)? I coulda sworn there not only was a bootleg featuring this set floating around, but that somebody (one of my adoring fans, no doubt!) had sent me a cassette of this show and it sure sounded better'n the mass of wallow that had been made available to tape to traders everywhere for years on end!

Essra Mohawk's one of those singer/songwriter fringe rabble (who's been associated w/Zappa and the Grateful Dead as well as hung around the Laurel Canyon area a little more than any sane person would dare) that more'n a few people, some of whom I even admire, claim a strange if almost clandestine allegiance to. As far as cult figures go Mohawk doesn't quite live up to the expectations I'm sure that her SoCal compats like Tom Waits or even Joni herself can deal out to disaffected and way-too-introspective for my tastes kinda people, but I gotta admit that she sure did a better job on these two WEA discs back inna seventies than I would have given her credit for. Downright rocking, jazzy and driving at times, both PRIMORDIAL LOVERS and just plain ol' ESSRA MOHAWK (here double packaged in a 2000 Rhino handmade edition complete with rare b-sides and the like) come off like Carole King's toughest only done even tougher, Joni Mitchell with a prescription for Celexa and as some of the best solo seventies woman rock since the Shangri Las or at least Yoko Ono's APPROXIMATELY INFINITE UNIVERSE (OK, that's an inside Metal Mike Saunders joke which I hope you get!). Once you get the fact outta your mind that this lass wrote songs for Tina Turner and Cyndi Lauper (and nicked her Asylum LP cover offa Maxfield Parrish, one of my least fave artists) you might even consider Mohawk one of the few people outta the SoCal land of la la to make it into the present without losing much sanity or strength in the translation! A nice once in awhile spin that I thought actually had the intelligence, move and swing that the rest of the competition, cult or mainstream, just totally lacked.

You already know about my natural inbred weakness for the Velvet Underground and the utilization of various forms either developed or extrapolated on by this musical act which have been borrowed, lifted or developed on throughout the late-sixties and seventies ny more than the handful of acolytes the likes of Jann Wenner would care to admit. And, as you also undoubtedly know, I still have an almost infantile weakness for the Velvets and their various progeny who have helped create some of the most vibrant and electronic energy throughout those years. This weakness is evident even to the point where I continue to cherish coming across a variety of references (mostly written while the group was still functioning or recently deceased) where various scribes would compare certain acts boht up-and-coming as well as established to the Velvets in various musical capacities as if this was perhaps one of the most intelligent and crowning achievements in said group's entire kultural makeup.

A reference to the "early" Velvets will get me more than champing at the bit to search through three decades of flotsam for a certain tape that will reveal said act's abilities to decipher the Reed/Cale period in rock history when the Velvets were such an alien force that only the fringiest of the fringe (or the nerdiest of the suburban fanboys) could comprehend the addled might. A '73 VILLAGE VOICE piece on Patti Smith which compared the Lenny Kaye/DNV Sohl backup to a cross between the early-Velvets and Kurt Weill had me giving the Max's portion of THE POETRY PROJECT bootleg a good three nights worth of pre-beddy bye spins, while a recent writeup of the Smith boot PATHS THAT CROSS which described "Farewell Road"'s early VU lilt had me spinnin' that with the repeat button goin' on ad infinitum (even though the piece was written well after the allure of Velvets-unto-rock decadence had long worn off thanks to the news filtering down to where just about every amerindie dork could take the magic and ruin it. But somehow the idea and mood was just right and...). I know that Mick Farren's writeup of Dylan's HARD RAIN live set with the early-Velvet Underground refs (though with good ol down on Maggie's Farm fresh air and sunshine replacing the gutter homo drug visions) had me scurrying to latch up a copy if only because Farren's such a deep into the soul writer, while even dorkoid Robert Christgau comparing the Fugs of FUGS FOUR ROUNDERS SCORE to the '66 vintage VU in some '75 "Consumer's Guide" was enough to...well you know the entire schpiel anal retentive exactness of it all.

Gotta admit that even though I do consider myself an up 'n front Velvets fan I rarely play their legit albums anymore, or even a lot of their bootlegs for that matter. This is mainly because I don't want to become overly familiar with 'em even afte a good 30+ years of knowing these platters by heart, and besides the call hasn't been overcoming me as much as it did when I was a mere 18 and for some strange reason rock 'n' roll seemed to have a deeper, more invigorating meaning in my life than it even does now. When I do spin theVU it's (once again) the early stuff...or shall I say the real early surviving and downright experimental entries from their ESP "Noise" track of pure undistilled beauty or the CHELSEA GIRLS soundtrack where shards of neo-Asian tuning are performed to Ondine's maddening monologue. And not-so-surprisingly this particular platter, the first disque in the '95 Velvet Underground box set which gets way too much play as of late which isn't at all that strange. But as far as the early-EARLY Velvets go, these embryonic versions of the big hits of '66 affect me as much if not more than the original takes, showing a Angus Maclise-less act as they probably sounded back when they were still the Falling Spikes and Electrah Lobel was doing the guitar parts that Sterling Morrison would eventually make his mark with. Sparse, driving and downright intense, these acoustic demos only go to prove that Lou Reed and company didn't need electricity to make highly-charged sounds though when they did it sure helped!

Yeah, perhaps there's a bit too much of a Dylan influence where there shoulda been more Reed, and instead of hearing all of those takes I woulda preferred whoever compiled this to choose the best versions of each song and add more early rehearsal tuneage if only for historical reference, but for what it is what else can I say but I sure love it because it packs just as much of that oft-needed resensifying force into my still-teenage beenie as Smith or Hackamore Brick or all of those acts that tried so grandly to be the Velvets of the seventies while everyone else was looking for the new Beatles. Sends me way back to when I was a young teenage goof trying to latch onto something interesting for once in my life, and that progressive rock and disco sham just wasn't cutting it. Now that I'm an OLD baldoid goof well...I gotta admit that I sometimes get the original feeling which does help connect me, at least spiritually, to a time and place when I thought that music like this was being created for me only because who else did I know of who would even go near the stuff!

Besides collecting rockist-oriented fan publications, I have been known to dabble a few tootsies into the fountain of other forms of fandom that have been sprouting up like lily-livered spots across my face. Amongst the various branches of "amateur" publications that I have been purchasing over the past fifteen or so, comic book fanzines have made a big indent in my own 'zine collection. This is perhaps because the beneath/beyond the mainstream work to be found within the pages of a wide array of long-deceased amazine pubs have somehow registered with my own adolescent comic art fantasies which have produced such beloved if forgotten titles as FEEBLE FABLES and RATS REAGAN. Not that there weren't an inordinary number of "crudzines" out there featuring work that woulda made the above titles look like Steranko, but there sure were a whopping batch of characters, stories and downright decent fan artists out there who did a pretty good job approximating the previous twenty years of comic book history and distilling it into whatever they could get outta some spirit duplicator or (if very lucky) offset.

LABORS OF LOVE was a fanzine-styled history of comic fandome written by former SENSE OF WONDER editor Bill Schelly, who later extrapolated on the idea with a large softcover book that filled in a lotta the missing details and general historical background that clued more'n a few newcomers about such crucial comic fanzines as ALTER EGO, XERO and STAR STUDDED COMICS. A nice and breezy li'l read that'll take you at least two pre-beddy bye sittings to complete, LABORS gives the basic backgrounds and general impressions regarding the birth and grown of comic book fandom courtesy Schelly, a guy who has a takent to really show ya just how much of an importance comic fandom was in the sixties, enough that he can actually zone you back to that early/mid-sixties teenage gulcher fun and games attitude that permeated itself into everything from comic books to tee-vee, rock 'n' roll, slot car racing and even the kind of new pleasure foods were being pumped at us from cathodes nationwide. Makes me feel sorry for kids today who have nothing but computer gadgetry and their genitals to rely on!

When you're done reading this 'un you'll undoubtedly want to give Schelly's GIANT LABORS OF LOVE a try. Reproducing some of the better dittoed fanzine sagas (nicely reproduced so's you don't get stuck with a faint page as was wont some of the ditto 'zines you'd get back then), GIANT's got some of the better stories of the sixties era front and center for you, featuring such stars of the spirit duplicator as Biljo White's The Eye (sorta like the early Batman w/o the grotesque badskies), the infamous Ronn Foss's "Velvet of Venus", future undergrounder Grass Green's "Speed Marvel vs. The Laughing Phantom" and the legendary (at least in comic fanzine circles) "Death on Night-Tide World" where a famous fandom hero actually bites the dust in action! Won't tell you who it is because you might want to latch onto this 'un and read for yourself, but let me tell you it's a real weeper!!!

Even future FANTASTIC FOUR artist (who got the job because he could do Jack Kirby better'n anybody else) Rick Buckler pops up with a Captain Liberty story that shows that the only limitations of ditto were in the mind of the creator. A great find if you can latch onto a copy, and if you consider youself any sorta fan and follower of the fans and followers then I'm sure you're more'n intereted in these long gone tomes'n I'm giving you credit for! Try ebay, or maybe even publishers Hamster Press (PO Box 27471, Seattle WA 98125) have a few left. Well, you could spend your ever dwindling lucre on something a whole lot worse, which I have the sneaking suspicion you undoubtedly will...

AND YOU THOUGHT THAT DREAM I HAD LAST WEEK WAS WEIRD! Well, here's an even weirder one that I can't make any real heads or tails outta. The whole night was filled with strange occurances in dreamland, but the part where I came home after a hard day at the nerve gas factory and found out that none other than well-published pipsqueak CHUCK EDDY was there to visit me was something that was really taking the cake! I naturally was irritated that this mental munchkin had invaded the sanctity of my abode especially after being run through the wringer, so while my parents "entertained" Mr. Eddy as if he were some visiting royal dignitary (y'know, like ask him what he does for a living and how many kids he has) I spent my time hiding in my bedroom and the bathroom where I did things like pluck a big long hair on my scalp resembled a black leek. After awhile who should bust into my vary toilet area but Mr. Eddy himself, looking a lot like the schlong I've seen in pictures o'er the years only smaller as if he were a mere ten-year-old loudmouth deserving of a big walloping!

Well, after putting up with his insults (like "nice bangs" in reference to my current Yul Brynner 'do) I actually piledrive the kiddo a few times which doesn't do much for him, given his spine seemed to be made of a slinky. I did this with no effort, as if I was play-acting studio wrestling with a three-year-old only with a ton of anger in my heart! The rapier-like witticisms kept on a'comin' (I remember him shouting "Keep your cholesterol-laden hands off me!" as I tried yet another debilitating wrestling move) though soon the social intercourse (no, not that!) was broken up by none other than mother, who chastized me for treating company in such a way even if that company was an annoying rock critic bigmouth who was more'n responsible for helping destroy the Generation of Bangs and Meltzer and turning it into one big Voice of Whoredom!

Too add even more turds to the toilet, I noted that yet another former BTC touter now on my condemned list had come to visit as well, but we got along fine, even to the point where I complimented him on the Leo Gorcey impression he did! The strange thing about this is, that I did not take any pain or allergy aids that night and those are the things that usually give me sharp, vivid dreams! Well, all I gotta say is that it wasn't one of those dreams that give me the creeps so much (like the ones where I observe gross mass genocide or various wartime atrocities first hand-like) that I don't wanna go back to sleep for another century or so. With this one make it at least a good month, because once you get down to it Chuck Eddy is Chuck Eddy and there's no way gettin' 'round that disturbing fact!!

2012-01-11T09:46:00.000-05:00

DOUBLE-BARREL BOOK REVIEW: MAD'S DAVE BERG LOOKS AT THINGS (Signet, 1967)/MAD'S DAVE BERG LOOKS AT MODERN THINKING (Signet, 1969)

Well, given these are the post-Holiday slumparoonies what else would you expect? Hadda dig deep into the paperback bin to pull these longtime mid-seventies-era flea market finds out and yeah, I guess you could say that I'm the poorer for it. It's not that longtime MAD cartoonist and scrutinizer of all things midclass Dave Berg was a lousy artist...he wasn't although his style certainly had an awkward look to it that matched his own typically middle twentieth-century New York Progressive beliefs. It's not that Dave Berg didn't come up with many good zingers (he did, much to my surprise), and it's not that Dave Berg was the summation of just about everything that lay dead and rotting about depression-era morphing into baby boomer morality...but PUT 'EM ALL TOGETHER and they spell out just about everything that I can't stand about the guy from his mealy sixties homilies about us all loving one another to his generation gap quibbles that even a nth-rater like myself saw through when I first laid eyes upon his more preachy work during my mid-teen years!

After perusing these cheap-o paperback reads maybe you can see just why this guy sticks out like an even sorer thumb with his rather "blinkered" as they say observations that got even more outta whack as the years crept up and Berg, along with the mag he'd been toiling at since the late-fifties, came off as an even bigger crank 'n the ones he self-congradulatorinly has been exposing to all of us pre-teens for the past twenny-five years!

MAD'S DAVE BERG LOOKS AT THINGS, page 35, a "strip" as we shall say entitled "Declaration of Independence" begins with a middle-aged father talking to his faux bohemian, Joan Baez-ish daughter with acoustic guitar in what looks like a typical mid-sixties suburban living room. Father: "What the heck was that you were just singing, one of those protest songs? What do you have to protest about?" Daughter: "Unreasonable, oppressive authority." SECOND PANEL: Father: "By that you mean parental authority, I presume?" Daughter: "Well, if you wanna put it that way, yes! We've a new spirit of freedom and revolt amongst all American youth. I want to cut the umbilical cord, snip the apron strings, fly the coop, flee the nest and leave this house. It's not a home, but a womb. I WANT MY COMPLETE, UNEQUIVOCAL FREEDOM!" THIRD PANEL: Father: "My poor darling, I didn't realize you felt that strongly about your independence. Well, if that's how you want it, I'll even help you find a little place of your own - away fron the family. And I suppose, under the circumstances, you'd be much too proud to go on accepting an allowance. LAST (AND THANKFULLY FINAL) PANEL: Daughter: "Oh no daddy, I didn't want that much independence!" with father putting on one of those smug "I gotcha" parental authority smirks old folks used to display as part of the whole "we know the true meaning of life and you don't!" act that thankfully has lost its potency as the years rolled by.

Funny, if I were writing the strip, I woulda changed it to having the gal take dad up on his offer, then he opens up a newspaper a good year or so later and finds out that his own progeny had become Lydia Lunch! Or maybe even the newest porn sensation best known for her manyfold deep nostril abilities!!! But even that would need a little bitta ironing out. Still, it is a whole lot funner (and "relevant", in a true, non hipster sense) than the stuffy New York suburban credo that has permeated Berg's work ever since Bill Gaines or whoever consented to having him do that "Lighter Side Of..." feature that the guy sure ran into the ground.

Of course anybody who's been reading MAD since the early days of Berg can recite the entire credo by heart...slobs who don't shave and wear undershirts while watching lowbrow tee-vee bad, greaser kids in fake leather jackets bad, hippies bad, but they can be a good bad, everyday schmoes are good though they can be good fodder for exposing the foibles of midclass Amerigan living, and adolescents really need to be put in their place! Of course Dave Berg loves the whole world, which I guess would have made him an even bigger idiot than anybody reading this mess coulda guessed!

Really tough reading...at least with a MAD rag in hand you could glance over at the always entertaining Don Martin and "Spy vs. Spy" 'toons but here all you've got as far as giving your eyes a break is the spider crawling about on the wall. At least the vapidness that many have argued about as being part and parcel to bourgeois living is brought to life thanks to a guy who was a one-man definition of just about everything that was wrong with it!

OK, I'll try to find a better selection for the next mid-week gap filler. But sheesh, was this a rough ride through all of those mid-sixties humanist kumbayaisms straight out of THIS IS THE LIFE that were supposed to change us all for the better! Only makes one shudder at just how much of a failure that comfy-cozy midclass suburban liberalism has been here from the vantage point of a good fortysome years. I mean, here it is 2012 and we still don't have a black president!

2012-01-07T08:55:00.007-05:00

Considering this is the first "real" jambus packtus post I've produced for the new calendar flip, maybe I should introduce it as such if only to set the tone for what hopefully will transpire for the rest of yet another uneventuful year. Yeah, I know that this just might come off downright stodgy 'n pretentious, but perhaps a few words regarding just how I feel entering into yet another ~~365~~ 366 should be in order if only to pull off yet another lame attempt at showing some sort of dignity and class thus stymieing you reg'lar readers even more. And, in keeping with form, I'll try to make it as rambling and as incoherently stream-of-unconsciousness as possible.

Perhaps I should start off by mentioning something along the line of how weird I feel having even survived this long into the new century, which I would say is long enough to have experienced the "no future" that Johnny R 'n company have told us about a good 35 years back. Only now we're over a quarter century into that mass of blahdom that some consider the bright new future but I find an alternative universe worse than any Hell Dante could've imagined. Maybe the weird chill that it's been over a century since a lotta the things I used to hold near and dear to my heart were created (the modern comic strip being amongst 'em) and that all of the originators and extrapolators of the form were just hitting their stride a good 100 solar spins back also tends to make me feel older'n Methuselah. Of course that doesn't say much about comic strips TODAY, but then again any industry that would even remotely think that DOONESBURY and CATHY are anywhere the spiritual successors to LI'L ABNER and NANCY has taken a wrong turn long ago. If you ask me, the comic strip, along with the entire newspaper industry, deserves to die a long, agonizing death, and that goes for the rest of the so-called "media" which has stayed afloat on hackdom and a playing up to the worst aspects of Mr. and Mrs. Boob Ameriga for a longer period of time than I'm sure even the most curmudgeonesque amongst us would have ever believed.

The third place showing of personal political fave-rave Ron Paul in the Iowa Caucuses did incur the usual mixed feelings, especially after all of the exit polls showed him to be a strong frontrunner this past Tuesday night. Naturally deep in whatever's left of my once overly-bled-out heart I knew that he wouldn't do as well as many of us hoped he would given the stupidity of the average Republican lever-pusher (which is only equalled by the average Democrat who never did graduate beyond the "Kumbaya" level of social consciousness), but at least I can dream a li'l, eh? And if Lew Rockwell could be trusted (and why not?), the reactions amongst the usual ~~elite smirkers~~ commentators at MSNBC towards a possible Paul victory were typically hilarious...I really liked the way Rockwell described Rachel Maddow as having "the expression of a woman giving birth to a bowling ball" when discussing Paul's exit poll first place showing, while compat Chris Matthews "looked like a man who has just been told that his pet dog was run over" which I guess would be too much for a guy who has to talk down to his audience like a Sunday School teacher trying to describe what "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery" means to a class of six-year-olds! I'll bet that the facial scrunching was just as bad over at Fox News, who like the rest of the "mainstream" (read: "yawn") conservative media is just praying for the return to the steady, hard-driving and clear vision of a George Bush via Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum! As for myself, I sure wish I had the chance to check in on the vastly superior Fox Business News Channel to see what the blowhard-y (in a nice way!) yet etapoint Judge Andrew Napolitano, who has been perhaps the only visible Paul cheerleader seen on the tube these past few months, had to say about Paul's showing! Naturally I feel glad in my own ginchy-goochy way that Paul has done as well as he has so far, though I was hoping for a better placing considering all of the ups and downs that the polls have been spewing forth for the last month or so that gave more'n a few spectators like myself the queazie-weazies!

But still, Paul's twentysome % does prove that there is some hope for this wretched land of ours and that perhaps he will be able to do stronger in other states thus giving massive gut thrompings to the yakking heads on both the left and the right who see him as being one of the biggest threats to (their own personal sense of, and at the expense of everybody else's) liberty! And with regards to his enemies on both the left and the right, I gotta say that if a candidate such as Paul can really get these rumor-mongers and armchair Criswells frothing like they do then he definitely will remain my fave as long as I live! After all, anybody who could be such a threat as to actually "want to establish, at the state level, a male-dominated religion that will stone gays to death" (???) must be doing something right if his ideological enemies are stooping so low as to actually spew something THAT outrageous! All I gotta say is keep it up Ron...the unhinged comments your enemies are spewing make for some of the best laff parade material I've come across since they took GILLIGAN'S ISLAND off the air!

In case you're keeping track, I will now come out of the closet so to speak and say that, after about eight or nine years of really not paying attention and having it on in the car if only to keep my mind off of my driving, I have now sworn to never again flick on the radio to give Rush Limbaugh or any of his substitute hosts (perhaps even Walter Williams) a listen to again! The man's own political journey and mine have certainly swayed o'er the past few, whiat with his disavowal of the paleoconservative roots of his own credo to the abject dismissal of the likes of Ron Paul (no wonder the new nickname for the radio host amongst the more enlightened has become "El Neoconbo"!), a man whom Limbaugh has previously praised though now dismisses with the same half-truths and outright prefabrications you usually hear amongst the no-name commentators at CNN! Now I will say that there was some animosity twixt us brewing back when Limbaugh turned on Pat Buchanan with a typical party-line vengeance, and Limbaugh's paranoia at the paleo politics that could be found at CHRONICLES (not to mention his obvious dismay at having to mention Joseph Sobran's name when plugging THE CONSERVATIVE CHRONICLES, no relation to the other pub!) just helped piss me off even more, but his recent railing against Paul is how shall we say the camel-back-breaking last straw for this radio tuner-inner. Guess from now on it's gonna hafta be Neal Boortz (not exactly a fave rave though he's at least a shard interesting---forget it when that "Red States USA" Ericson guy substitutes for him!) when I'm out driving, and as far as the new media goes it's Lew Rockwell, Taki's Top Drawer and CHRONICLES all the way!

I hope that's enough blab passed off as viable sociopolitical speak in a lame attempt to make myself come off as something more'n an overgrown adolescent anal-retentive pseudo-autistic music obsessive! X-mas money's starting to wear thin, but I was able to eke out a few items (not including the freebies received!) to make this yet another one for the annals of history, at least as far as self-important one-dimensional fannish bleats go...

Tim Buckley and the Starsailor Band-LIVE AT ESCONDIDO, CA 10/1970 CD-R (burnt offering)

Yes, while the rest of you were out galavanting this past 12/31, I was spening the waining hours of the year listening to this rarity sent to me via the kindness of Mr. PD Fadensonnen, who also sent the Loren Conners and what else but Fadensonnen platters which also get the royal treatment below. Yes, lonely me wasn't getting plastered outta his skull whilst surrounded by friends (not that I have any!) while ringing in the New Year, but I will say that I truly had a fun time giving this particular one a spin even without the enhancement of various body stimulants/depressants which I'm sure many of you folk rely on daily. And considering its nature (Buckley during the height of his avant garde phase which was represented via one-and-a-half albums that puzzled most fans and critics of the day) I'm surprised this hasn't been pressed up into either a deluxe double-record set complete with the fannish liner notes and the deluxe color cover let alone a fashionable Cee-Dee via whatever's left of the bootleg industry these days. Hey TMOQ, if you're still in business here's one that'll just fly off the racks!

Sound quality is OK some times, pretty clear at others, but it's the band that really gets hot as Buckley 'n crew try to out-do the likes of Shepp and Sun Ra with this total mass upheaval! Naturally there are traces of Buckley as the SoCal singer/songwriter tortured soul that he had originally made his mark with, but most if not all of this can easily pass for a live show by one of the up-and-coming freedom explorers of the day even with Buckley's yelps and screams permeating this platter! Brilliant improvs abound, and the "chorale" is even stranger'n that over-tracked title cut on the STARSAILOR album to the point where if someone passed it as some 197X work by a then up-and-coming "serious" composer most avant sneers'd probably believe it as such! One deserving of wider distribution, and if you google hard enough you might even find a free download!

Loren Connors-RED MARS CD (Family Vineyard)

The second of Fadendonnen's gifts, this 'un's a recent ('10) recording from the famous "out" guitarist on electric accompanied by a Margardia Garcia on electric string bass. And as you'd expect this is moving as it is pleasing, with Connors' wafting electric lines giving you that floating feeling with just the right touch of pathos and ennui and all of those fun things that you like to have pounded into your music. Reminds me a lot of "The Hymn to the North Star" in its enveloping beauty, and you know that if I could use such descriptive language as that this one really has affected me in a positive, life-reaffirming way! Of the many Connors albums out there to choose from, this one is, like, perhaps a mandatory if you want it kinda pick!

Fadensonnen-LIVE AT ACTIONIST STUDIOS CD (Fadensonnen Music...check the blog on the left for address and other important info)

The final of the three, LIVE AT ACTIONIST STUDIOS just happens to be the latest release this unheralded (and under-documented, under-appreciated and under-weight for all I know) musician has dared to unleash on us modern music maniacs , some of us who still harbor some hope that there's interesting underground avant garde rock being made a good thirty years after it all sorta went 'n deep sixed!

A lotta the same aspects of previous Fadensonnen releases can be discerned, but I was able to pick out a whole batch of new influences here (or was that just my ears hallucinating?) from Les Rallizes Denudes to even some of those Kongress workouts that I thought had only graced mine ears (esp. the one where Von Lmo was extrapolating on his own trapology!) It is heartening to know that people still play with stylophones! A pretty hotcha way to begin the new year if you ask me, and if this is any sorta start I just hope my hard can stand it these next twelve months!

Balloons for the Dog-"Tuna Tonight"/"Assassination Candidate" 45 (Baltech Industries/Random Radar)

Gee, I never bought any balloons for my dog, though it I did I'd bet he'd chew it until it popped in his face! The thought still kinda makes me feel guilty for neglecting him this way, even though it would have been fun to see the look on his face as the thing went kablooey!

But all kidding aside here's a weirditie that I snatched up if only because I saw this group's name on some old Max's Kansas City flier. The fact that the usually prog-in-opposition oriented Random Radar label had something to do with this also piqued my attention, and although these Balloon people sound nothing like the Muffins or Art Bears they do put up a pretty good pre-ginch new wave sound on these sides. The use of synthesizer and electric organ gives this group a rather Kongress-ish sound which certainly seperates this from the typical new unto gnu wave acts that were appearing on the scene at the time this was unleashed. Not only that, but Balloon had a hard New York-ish (strange since they were from Washington DC) sense of drive in their approach kinda making 'em kith 'n kin to the likes of the Comateens, Dizzy and the Romilars and other local acts that still had a sense of late-seventies dirt and grime in their style which would soon get wooshed away after the major labels and rock video movement discovered this untapped potential geek goldmine!

Nice sleeve for this which in actuality is an envelope that you probably coulda used for mailing purposes had you run out of one and needed to get your order to Bomp! in like quicksilver. Of course a collectorphile like yourself never would even consider doing something as destructive as that but hey, there were times in my life when the idea kinda popped into my brain when the envelopes just weren't to be found.

Nevertheless, this sure was a nice kinda package for an interesting group that's somehow slipped through the cracks and crevices of underground rock consciousness. Any more information on this group would greatly be appreciated! (And while we're at it, check the Max's listing to see who the opening spot for the 12/10 gig was...none other than Lou Barone soon to be Lou Rone, ace guitarist who was by this time rockin' out in his own band featuring none other'n Iolsa Hatt on vocals! And while we're at it, that's none other'n the famed beat hippoid Copernicus playing 12/3 on a bill alongside other than the Mad and Howard Wuelfing's old group the Nurses!!! Betcha can't guess where I'm going as soon as the Wayback Machine is tuned to peak perfection, and it ain't to the founding of the Temperance League that's for sure!)

WHITE CLOUD LP (Good Medicine)

Y'know how much I like to take chances on early seventies obscuros hoping that I might find a new Sidewinders or Hackamore Brick in the batch. And this one looked a li'l promising if only because vocalist Joanne Vent later had a notable career of sorts singing backup on Lou Reed's CONEY ISLAND BABY album as well as leading her own aggregate (who were scheduled to appear at CBGB 11/76 yet canceled out---even more underground mystique to to dig into my own hook-laden psyche!). Alas, li'l early-seventies rockist magic transpires on this country bumpkin effort featuring the talents of one Thomas Jefferson Kaye who was put to better use producing the first Barbarians single on the Joy label...naw, this group's pretty much in that New Nashville rocking vein that was probably too freaky for the old country fans yet too cube for the rockers.

Now I will admit that Vent has a good set of pipes on her (sounds more Sally Struthers than Janis Joplin) and some of the material is what I would deem pleasant enough, but I sure coulda used a buncha good cheap fast rockers interspersed twixt the Mid-South twang. As it is, WHITE CLOUD is pretty much a stuck in neutral drag that only proves these guys 'n gal were custom made for backing the likes of a New Folkie moosh like Loudon Wainwright III after all!

The Flamin' Groovies-SNEAKERS 10-inch LP/EP (Skydog, France)

'n finally (at least as far the music reviews go) heres' a recent acquistion which I know will look good in the collection, the 1975 Skydog reissue of the debut Flamin' Groovies ten-incher, also done up as a ten-inch platter which certainly does lend an air of authenticity. Nice, european look to the cover and label ('s funny, this must be the only bootleg extant which advertises the group's legit albums on the back cover) and overall cool production make this 'un a definite keeper. Strangely enough, even though I didn't quite care for this early Groovies side when I first spun it way back inna early-eighties I find that these definitely post-Moby Grape-ish cuts have a whole lot more to say about what San Francisco was in the mid-sixties, and should have been in the late-sixties, than the entire recorded output of the Dead 'n Airplane combined! (And frankly, it ain't like I'm as much of a hater of this stuff as I was a good decade or two back, but the Groovies still trounce 'em on all counts!)

Of course, the sad part about the story is that, although I now have whatcha'd call a hotcha, excitement-prone vinyl collection which I could only have dreamed about when I was sixteen, who on earth would really want to pour through it to marvel at the obscurities and other such jetsam that is now in my possession? Sure it woulda been a thrill way back when...y'know, "come on over to my place 'n I'll show ya some REAL records!"...but now with the seventies age of music relegated into the restricted "classic rock"genre and most of the people I knew back then (thankfully) scattered across the globe, not only is there nobody I know who would want to see my collection, but nobody around to see it even if somebody would be interested! I know I told you about my wish to turn my record collection into someting that resembled one of those old record shops you used to see, the outta the way kind where you could get bootlegs, cutouts and imports at sometimes reasonable prices and there was some grumpy twenty-something guy keeping his eye on you behind the counter unless he decided to sneak back for a quickie you-know-what. A place where I could just go 'n prowl the racks 'n look at the goodies like I did when I was a mere adolescent and could only dream about owning this stuff, only now I have it and somehow it sates this raging feeling that if I didn't have these records I would be less the man that I am now. If that were the case you know I'd drag everyone who ever prowled a record rack to come down to my basement and pretend it was the old days skimmin' through the albums as I regale a whole slew of stories surrounding the whys wherefores and circumstances connected with my purchasing of said platter. It would make me feel proud, though you know I'm gonna watch out for the usual shoplifting subjects with a typical eagle eye, especially those skinny kids with the big raincoats! They're the ones that "boost" (as they used to say) tons of platters to sell to unwary classmates at undoubtedly bargain prices and I'm sure many a record store went under (and record collection got depleted) because of cads like them!!!

BOY, IF YOU THOUGHT YOUR DREAMS WERE WHACKED OUT I JUST HAD ONE THAT COULD MAKE ME A MILLION! A million of what might be the question, but while the rest of you were out ringing in the New Year I had a dream spurred on by a combination melatonin/dirixoral/vicodin gulpdown (and maybe the spin of Tim Buckley mentioned above) that not only was clearer than a satellite beacon from Mars but would really make a good idea for a hotcha Britcom because that's exactly what I was watching in the dream! Somehow I was in some strange setting watching WVIZ-TV (that's channel 25, the PBS station from Cleveland) on some futuristic JETSONS-looking screen, and what was being broadcast was, suprisingly enough, a well-crafted if at times incomprehensible BBC-created comedy that seemed a little bit RED DWARF and a whole lot SUPERCAR combined! In fact, the show was so SUPERCAR-esque to the point where I could ideantify the obviously early-sixties looking Amerigan lead actor (clean cut style) as a Mike Mercury clone, and the old (albeit female) German scientist as a take on Professor Popkiss on down the line. No Jimmy or Mitch in sight, though the storyline, or what there could be of it in a dream such as this, had to do with the main characters being part of a rescue team or sorts which was centered around the all-purpose vehicle that was used for a variety of purposes, this flying, submarining creation somehow resembling a late-model De Soto. The strange part about it is that parts of this comedy were cheaply animated, including a scene where the hero has to rescue a family of African heritage who were stranded in some arctic-like snowstorm, the hero muffing his rescue to the point where the entire family get dunked into the freezing waters and come up encased in ice-cubes! This was something that not only the studio audience but all of us viewers in the dream laughed at, but for what reason I do not know! There was also a reference to the vehicle (which was draped in a variety of cape-like cloth attached from the wings!) being called "Superbilko" after an episode of the famed Phil Silvers sitcom, and if there was such a program which featured our bald hero as a flying righter of wrongs I'd sure like to see it!

Oddly enough, the only other thing that I can remember about this dream is that I was chagrined that it was being aired on channel 25 since that meant it would most definitely not be airing on channel 45, the local PBS outlet. Y'see, there's been quite a squabble between the two stations going on for years regarding what "syndicated" PBS shows can or can't be shown since the signals of the two overlap thus causing a whole lotta similar programming to be aired in the same market. For whatever reasons there may be, this really got the people at 25 upset perhaps because more people were watching certain shows on 45 'stead of their station. It even came to the point where the people @ 'VIZ actually got channel 45 to stop airing DR. WHO back inna eighties because of this conflict. Because of this perhaps not-so-strange setup, channel 25 can air MONTY PYTHON, MR BEAN and Canadian import NEW RED GREEN while 45 can't, though in retaliation 45 can run ARE YOU BEING SERVED? and a variety of programs that 25 will never be able to broadcast! Now, this sort of programming scheme might be just fine and dandy for the folk at 25, but for people like myself who can't get that staion in anymore even if there is a tornado warning it can lead to a whole load of frustration! Funny I should be concerned about something like this in a dream, which must go to prove just how nitpicking my subconscious can get!

Yeah, I know it's filled with so many loose ends and all, but if anyone at the BBC wants to turn it into a series be my guest! Maybe if you mention this was based on a dream of mine, and perhaps give me a cameo...

2012-01-04T08:10:00.002-05:00

Not since Christmas '71 have I received such a bevy of comic-related booty as I have this year! And thanks to Bill Shute, a man who knows my tastes better'n my own personal chef, I am now in possession of the original run of BLONDIE dailies that IDW (The Library of American Comics) released a good two or so years ago!!! Well, not the entire run, but this book does contain each and every one of the courtship-to-marriage BLONDIEs that span a good three or so years, and for a person like myself who never really knew much about the trials and travails that Blondie and future beau Dagwood hadda go through before finally tying the knot this 'un certainly was a real education! In fact, these strips are so revealing and (at times) passionate that I'm sure that the early, pre-marriage years of the strip will be discussed in detail once the universities of this land decided to give such important topix as comic strips the same care and dignity they do to queer studies and shock art!

Gotta say that I really never knew just what a tooth-pulling struggle it was for the pair to finally get hitched, what with Dagwood's millionaire folk trying to break up the engagement by pulling every trick in the book extant, some of 'em downright nasty and perhaps even illegal! Dagwood himself seems quite the playboy himself, only quite mealier if you know what I mean, and easily dragged by the nose courtesy his parents who keep pushingevery society femme and family friend within their grasp on him if only to further their own social standing. Extremely wealthy true, but these people are are downright crud once you scrub the not-so glamorous veneer off. At times it looks as if the relationship has already snapped apart such as in the storyline where Blondie moves back with her mother and falls for Gillespie McDonald, the rough and tumble guy next door who wants to open his own garage, but right when that affair goes kaplooey in comes Dagwood after an extended sojurn who more or less out of frustration goes on a month-long hunger-strike in order to marry the only gal he ever really loved!

Good thing Dagwood's folks weren't Margaret Thatcher because despite their self-centered stubbornness they eventually gave in even if they disowned Dagwood for going against their social standing-oriented wishes. Well, at least it was the start of a new and perhaps much more successful life for not only the pair but for creator Chic Young who settled the strip into the domestic variety that it's been for a good 77 years awlready and for once I am glad that some things out there just don't change!

I don't plan on getting the second volume or any subsequent ones that will undoubtedly be published in the future, but I did splurge on some old BLONDIE paperbacks that seemed to have just what I was looking for as far as giving me an idea of what the thing was like throughout the rest of the thirties. And at least the first two of these reads have a special meaning for me...y'see back when I was eight

or so I was smack dab in the middle of a hefty comic strip obsession and, perhaps spurred on by my dad's own recollections of the joy he used to have reading the funnies as well as that special on NBC that Carl Reiner hosted (aired at 10 PM which really bugged me since it was being shown on a school night and I really needed my beauty sleep!) I was transfixed on doing such things as studying the evolutionary developments in various cartoon styles as well as the entrances and exits of various characters ne'er to be seen again. Well, it sure was a lot more fun than sports or exercise, but you can imagine just what kinda chill thrills a kid like myself got outta not only the variety of comic strip reprints that were making their way to the local paperback racks but some old comic strip section that just happened to've been found in a box or wrapping some long-stored piece of china stashed in a box somewhere in my aunt's basement!

Well, whaddya know but right around the same time that I was going gaga over comic strip trivialities (and undoubtedly as a tie-in to the then-new BLONDIE tee-vee series which had Will Hutchins stashing his boots 'n spurs to play Dagwood) two collections of vintage strips made their way to the 'stands which naturally was cause for much joy around my own personal bedroom! Unfortunately the best laid plans of moose and men were to once again get shot into kablooeydom, for although my mother promised to pick up both of these collections for me on her weekly shopping trip to downtown Youngstown Ohio (this was back inna days when the area was booming and the wives of over-paid steelworkers were squandering their hubbies' hard-earned dough at such department stores as McKelvey's, Strouss's and of course Livingston's) there were no BLONDIE books to be found that PM when I came home after a typically demoralizing day hoping to get some comic strip jollies in! Mom said she couldn't find 'em, and although I originally harbored my own doubts about this (yeah, she probably didn't even try!!!) I found that any future attempts to snatch this 'un off the shelves to have been futile! Really, these BLONDIE paperbacks I so desired seemed to have vanished about as fast as they first appeared, and fast enough that even years of flea market searching could not dig up any trace of the things!

I dunno if finally obtaining these books has brought some sort of "closure" to my life, but while I was reading 'em the notion as to how I would have felt as a kid while osmosing these did cross my mind (since a pre-double digit mind sure knows how to digest such things as classic comic strips a whole lot more'n an over-the-hill brain headin' for a future of Alzheimer's!). But whatever, these comics at least give me an inkling of what BLONDIE was like then and how it developed into the family sitcomic it had been at least since the children ("Baby Dumpling", eventually to be Alexander and his just-post adolescent sis with the big guffs Cookie) finally stopped growing. And it was a fun enough venture, with the first volume encapsulating the entire courtshop and marriage into about twelve panels and the rest concentrating on the early domesticated days when the strip was just getting its bearings switching into the mode in which it's been known for a good three-fourths of a century.

Lotsa interesting differences in these 'uns...some small (hard to see Dagwood sleeping on the right side of the bed 'stead of the left) and some big (the "Baby Dumpling" ones show an interesting child-strip quality to 'em that reminds me of many of the kid comics of the day and even beyond), but for a guy like me who still retains at least an inkling of love 'n respect for the olde timey comic strips long gone 'n forgotten (and, in the case of BLONDIE not so) I really liked zoning back to the days when comics like these really meant a whole lot more to people because there frankly was a whole lot less stuff out there to get excited about! It's interesting to see the origins of a whole lotta running gags from neighborhood kids walking in on Dagwood in the tub to Dagwood's relationship with boss Mr. Dithers, who actually comes off rather nice in these early strips compared to the raging tyrant he would eventually become! I guess being exposed to a wastrel like Dagwood'd make even Gandhi wanna bop him a few after awhile, but at one time it seems as if Dithers was the kinda boss one would really yearn for!

I gotta admit that the reprint quality of some of these strips wasn't exactly the best, and as in the case of some of the supposedly well-produced Library of American Comics collections a few panels are actually printed out of sequence which I will admit makes for confusing reading. Don't be too alarmed though, as Byron Coley once said about NANCY and HENRY, the mix and matching of panels does make for a rather surrealistic reading affair only in this case the whole thing was done unintentional-like making for an even bigger mentally-stimulating surprise! Let your brain do a few synapse/syntax snaps with these comics, and don't come crying to me when the results get deadly!

Along with the classic thirties reprints I got a paperback fulla mid-seventies strips which sorta put the cherry on toppa the nice and gooey BLONDIE sundae I've been indulging myself in this past week or so. THE BEST OF BLONDIE might not be exactly that, but it does contain a nice selection of mid-sevenites strips which is fine by me considering how the seventies seemed to be the final era in which the old standbys were intermingling with the new upstarts which I never could wrap my psyche around. Still pumping on all cylindars, these comics surprisingly show BLONDIE to be a top-notch effort even though the strip hadn't changed much other'n in developing a finer style than it had even in the thirties. And as the times changed so did the strip if ever-so-slightly...like with the Bumstead kids now teens the infamous Elmo began turning up as the neighborhood waif who always pops in on Dagwood when he's taking his bath! Other'n that much of the same quirks and qualities of BLONDIE remains constant...nice smooth gags that like the best old-timers continue to catch you by surprise, clean and crisp artwork, and yet another good item in your life that connects you to a childhood that you kinda wish never did go away even with all of the indignities and insults you hadda put up with. It's kinda like if you had some relatives who were living in some old house the family owned for a good many years, and it was still furnished the same way it was in the late-thirties only with a few modern appliances like a tee-vee and air conditioner inna window changing the effect just a little. And y'know, once you go in you can remember what you were doing back in 19XX when you were a kid and aunt so-n-so served you some lemonade. Yeah, that's what reading these BLONDIEs is like, and though the strip of today ain't quite the same (I blame it on the ever-shrinking size which can't develop in three panels the same rhythm it did in four) it does make one feel tingly inside knowing that the family's stil there'n intact, societal mores be danged!

2011-12-31T00:00:00.001-05:00

THE END O' YEAR WRAP IT UP I'LL TAKE IT!

Being in a particularly NATIONAL LAMPOON-ish mode as of late I thought I'd use this classic '74/'75 cover to adorn my by-now "traditional" year-end summary of just what the year 2011 doth wrought for good and (especially) for bad. And given how this particular issue appeared on the stands right around the time I started to morph from a creepy kinda kid to a creepy kinda teenager, I felt that its inclusion on this blog would have been particularly fitting in a personalist sorta way though I sure would have loved (for the sake of accuracy) to have been able to change the dates on Father Time and what's left of The New Year's banners to reflect something more, er, up-to-date. But I think you get the message and besides, considering just how hotcha the mid-seventies were and not just in retrospect but even at the time (at least for UHF-watching, comic book-reading, perennially underachieving louts such as myself) I sure enjoyed seeing this cover if only to remind myself of just what a fun time I did have in those definitely non-sacrosant years, at least during the times when teachers and old people weren't pestering me and I was bound to find some thrill on tee-vee with only a few channels to choose from unless a tornado was drawing in the Cleveland and Akron stations. Now if I were only smart enough to go see Rocket From The Tombs like I sure wish I was able to even if I couldn't get a ride to the Viking Saloon if my life depended on it!

Nothing too hotcha happened this year, but that's par for the course considering how the past thirtysome years haven't been whatcha'd call prime with regards to high energy rock 'n roll. Not that there weren't or aren't any wowzer rock acts crawling about long after the Big Beat died an inglorious death (1982 AT THE LATEST...afterwards all we're doin' is pretendin'), but it ain't like they're gonna jump up and bitecha on the butt like they did way back when fanzines and moles in the mainstream (Lester Bangs, R. Meltzer) were more'n anxious to tip you off to the new and mighty acts you dare not miss. But I will say that 2011 did have its moments, even if they probably went by so fast you thought they were one of those "floaters" infesting your inner eyeballs that make it seem as if there are insects crawling all over the place!

So w/o any further ado, here's my choice for best of '11...nothing earth-shattering as usual, but when all's said and done this'll probably look better'n all of those VILLAGE VOICE polls and blogschpieler top choices seen throughout the web to abject shame!

ALBUM OF THE YEAR: hard choice really...I mean, which Fadensonnen Cee-Dee should I pick? Well, of the three I guess it's platter #1 that earns the highest honors for this year. Given the overtly squeaky-clean image that "rock music" had saddled on in since the eighties it's sure wonderful to hear something overdrive again.

SINGLE OF THE YEAR:...you mean they still make 'em? They sure do, but that don't mean that I buy 'em! Of course a few good spins have passed my ears these past twelve months, but the best of the seven-inchers to have affected me in a totally uninhibited, frank way just has to be the by-now aged Electric Eels' "Agitated"/"Refrigerator" single coupling two oft-spun faves onto one quick-fix platter. Not as good as the oft-repressed Rough Trade 45, but fine enough that it sure looks good snuggled in my collection next to various seventies underground goodies of the same musical strata! In fact this is so good that it kinda makes me wanna get some of the extreme rarities that are floating around in my tape collection and press them to vinyl thus creating some instant underground musical collectables (many of which I have been writing about for decades on end, and those Eclectic Eels recordings do deserve a proper dissemination amongst the rabid rock followers who have survived the years!) but...naturally I'm too nice a guy to want to venture out to do something even that devious.

EP OF THE YEAR: the Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble ZULU 45 COLLECTION
box set of some of the most primal looking discs I've seen since the death of Moxie Records! Undoubtedly some of the best jazzy r 'n b made by this under-the-radar former mate of Sun Ra whose own fame enver did reach the heights of the interstellar one. It's really great to discover some of these long-forgotten musicians whether they be in the jazz, rock or whatever idiom, and getting these seventies-vintage self-released platters was just one of the few joys I've encountered these past 365 rotations. One can only hope that '12 delivers more funtime listens along these obscuro outta nowhere lines, but I'm not holding your breath.

BOOTLEG OF THE YEAR: Patti Smith's THE POETRY PROJECT 1971 CD, which not only contains a ne'er before heard by me poetry reading but those three no-wave-ish tracks taken from an old one-sided bootleg EP as well as a Max's Kansas City show from '74 you really have to crank up to enjoy. More please!

ARCHIVAL DIG OF THE YEAR: No bout a doubt it the JACK RUBY Cee-Dee that ugEXPLODE felt worthy enough to spring on us unsuspecting peons this past October. A typically over-the-edge, wild-eyed treat that should only go to show most of them nouveau punques of the past thirtysome years that all they're doin' in but a pale copy of the original hard blare that perhaps died out before everybody (including myself) was astute enough to know.

REISSUE OF THE YEAR: DO WHAT THOU WILT, an album of extremely rare (if issued at all) sub-garage sides from early-seventies English thud rockers who perhaps listened to too much Hawkwind and snorted too much white powder, but despite their overall lack of success never did get the chance to get written up in the NME like they undoubtedly hoped they would have been. Call it a PEBBLES for the Possessed, if you so desire.

BEST QUICKIE CASH-IN COLLECTION OF THE YEAR: FRANK ZAPPA'S CLASSICAL COLLECTION which is nothing but an unauthorized usage of the famed freak's visage along with recordings of the classical tracks he most loved and swiped from in his own work. Kinda like those quickie garage band/heavy metal/New York Rock/CBGB collections seen for the past decade or so, only with Stravinsky and Varese tracks 'stead of Sonics and Motorhead.

BOOK OF THE YEAR (ROCK 'N ROLL DIVISION): none other'n C'EST LA GUERRE, that collection of the early writings of Byron Coley that's got an entire nation wondering...who's Byron Coley? Well, blame the sickoid "rock critic" mentality that's permeated the scribing business for that horrid mishap, but otherwise osmose to these great writings created during the final gasps of the Golden Age of Rock ~~Criticism~~/Fandom-centered writing that just happened to get published in ritzy journals.

BOOK OF THE YEAR (SECULAR DIVISION): the eleventh edition of the ongoing DICK TRACY series which seems to be hitting an even more fever pitch as the stories roll on. This one features the entire Coffyhead and Mumbles sequences as well as the Heels Beels/Acres O'Reilly saga which extrapolates on the already heavily-imbued derangement of the strip, and to new heights of ugh! I'm surprised they didn't cart Chester Gould away after he dreamed up this one!

MOOM PITCHER OF THE YEAR: strangely enough, I didn't even review this year's fave on the blog! In fact, I only saw the thing via youtube and in about nine ten-minute segments but despite that still thought that FAREWELL MY LOVELY (1975) was the best flick to grace my eyes these past 365. A grand meshing of Old Hollywood and the New here (captured at a time when there at least was some Old H-wood still around), FAREWELL features Robert Mitchum as Phillip Marlowe in a role he shoulda played thirty years earlier working on two strange cases that eventually intertwine into a pretty good hotcha climax. Supporting cast is pretty good from Charlotte Rampling (one of those actresses I'm not supposed to like because of the people who do like her, but I do anyway) to that guy who plays the typical-like dimwitted thug who hires Marlowe to look for his long-lost sweetie, plus then-perennials such as Joe Spinell, Sylvester Stallone and Sylvia Miles (who still excites Don Fellman in that HELP! fumetti she did with Tom Poston) show up. As does Harry Dean Stanton, a guy who Bill Shute waxes poetic over but I never saw his special appeal...well, he is good as the corrupt detective who eventually chickens out right before the climax. The youtube version has the nudity in the whorehouse scene matted out, though whose idea was it to let the expletives go undeleted as we used to say during the Watergate days? So even with the titties boxed out, prepare to blush is you are of the faint-hearted.

POST OF THE YEAR: Golly, I've been on such a roll pumping out enough sharp and witty screeds that should have earned me a Pulitzer in bullshitting, but amongst all of the snat 'n sassy writings I've managed to crank out these past 365 the bestest and personally fave-ravest just has to be that SOUNDTRACK FOR THE SEVENTIES collection of the toppest and boppest longplayers to come outta that decade which I whipped up for you a good month or so back. Subjective and biased perhaps, but I think it zones into the cheap-o flea market and bargain bin aesthetic that people like myself reveled in at the time rather accurate-like. And besides, I think my own record-scouring credo sure made a whole lot more sense'n those of most of my seventies compats who spent them years either drooling over their copies of DISCO FELCH VOL. 7 or tried their best copping their fashion sense from the covers of Melanie records. As for the women...

BLOG OF THE YEAR: Some ups, some downs. THE HOUND BLOG (which just happens to be a personal top tenner) hasn't been the same since Jim Marshall began posting sporadically, while Lindsay Hutton over at THE NEXT BIG THING just ain't cranking out the reviews, news and what-you-chooze with the vim, vigor and verve that you kinda thunk he would. As for my no doubt about it fave blog this year, IT'S ALL THE STREETS YOU'VE CROSSED NOT SO LONG AGO (see link on left, stoopid!) is the hands down winner. Esp. since they've been printing those old gig listings swiped from none other'n THE VILLAGE VOICE which not only helps me with whatever research on New York nth string acts that I need to do, but saves me the time from trekking over to Youngstown to check on the microfilms at the library! I only hope they get to make it to 1981 just so's I can remember the name of that "country and western heavy metal group" from Austin Texas that played both CBGB and Max's on two consecutive nights.

DEATH OF THE YEAR: no question about it...IMANTS KRUMINS. I still can't believe it, and it tops all the others, even the likes of Sean Bonniwell's, Sam Rivers, and who could forget Cheetah!

THE "WELCOME BACK" AWARD: Flamingo Road

PREDICTIONS FOR 2012!

Once again it's time to slip on my Criswell fiberglass wig'n do some predictin' as to what the following ~~365~~ 366 have in store for us. Nothing esoteric or brainy here...none of that so 'n so's gonna win the presidency quap that all of those other psychics would predict on the covers of the once-bountiful tabloids cluttering up your local supermarket check out lines. Just the real hard deal and nothing but, mutt!

THE NUMBER OF ARCHIVAL UNDERGROUND RELEASES WILL DWINDLE TO NADA! Yes, if you think my boast about releasing an Eclectic Eels bootleg would ever come true...ferget it!!! 2012 is gonna be the first of many years where private tapes made by once promising underground aggregations remain locked away in dresser drawers and closets worldwide. No more rare surprises, and don't even expect Feeding Tube or ugEXPLODE to release any no wave rarities while yer at it. If you want your seventies thrills to linger on, it's gonna be PUREPOP all the way!

THE ONLY ITEM RESEMBLING THE FANZINES OF YORE TO MAKE THEIR APPEARANCE THIS YEAR IS GONNA BE UGLY THINGS! Gotta admit that SHINDIG and the rest of the new mags I've seen don't exactly thrill me the same way that an old UGLY THINGS or DENIM DELINQUENT do. Not that I read that many new rock mags considering that if I wanna read something that insults my intelligence I can always go on-line and dial up a number of totally disturbing blogs and sites of note out there in pixel-land. I will say that UGLY THINGS at least continues to sate my rockist being, and receiving a bi-yearly issue is akin to the good ol' days when I'd get a huge packet of long o.p. Marvel comics in the mail and just bliss out in their majestic energy for a good afternoon and even part of an evening t'boot! Which I guess does make Mike Stax the new Stan Lee (but does that make Johan Kugelberg the new Jack Kirby?).

SOME TROLL IS GONNA WRITE SOMETHING EXTREMELY STUPID IN THE COMMENTS SECTION, TOTALLY MISSING THE POINT OF WHAT I HAVE WRITTEN WHILE EXPOSING HIS LACK OF GENERAL COMPREHENSION FOR ALL TO SEE! It's happened many times before and it will occur at least once within the next five months.

I'LL PROBABLY REFERENCE THE VELVET UNDERGROUND WITH REGARDS TO SOME SIXTIES/SEVENTIES PLATTER AN AVERAGE OF AT LEAST ONCE EVERY OTHER POST. A bad habit I am trying to break.

SOMEBODY WHOM I'VE PUT SOME TRUST IN WILL DOUBLE CROSS ME IN THE MOST UNKIND WAY POSSIBLE. It's happened before and it will happen again!

I MIGHT ACTUALLY GET TO HEAR ROCKET FROM THE TOMBS' VERSION OF "SONIC REDUCER" IN ITS ENTIRETY! But I would say the odds are at least 500/1.

AND IN CLOSING, MAY I WISH YOU A NEW YEAR THAT YOU MIGHT ACTUALLY MAKE YOUR WAY THROUGH W/O ANY OF THE INDIGNITIES, HASSLES, WORRIES AND GENERAL DEGRADATIONS THAT I UNDOUBTELY WILL HAVE TO ENDURE!!! AND SO BE IT!

2011-12-29T05:20:00.000-05:00

ANOTHER MAD PAPERBACK REVIEW! THE ORGANIZATION MAD by the usual gang of idiots! (Signet paperback, 1960)

Hope you had a merriest of Christmas...wish I did! But as the old philospher said, despite all the amputations there were a number of great moments to be had this past December 25th, including the receiving of a number of hotcha gifts that really helped to sate the soul so t' speak. These gifts include a collection of DENNIS THE MENACE DVDs replicating that series' second season courtesy of Mr. Lou Rone, the entire run of the legendary JOHNNY STACCATO private dick thriller featuring John Cassavetes thanks to Brad Kohler, and none other than volume one of the daily BLONDIE comic strip (featuring the very first right up until the wedding of Blondie and Dagwood) via the graciousness of one Bill Shute, a name that better do a few ringy-dings in your mind after all these years! All of these items are whatcha'd call necessary to retain the proper BLOG TO COMM frame o' mind, but for now they'll have to wait their turn w/regards to their time in the blog spotlight because frankly, I'm gonna hafta eat 'n digest everything about these items before I can give 'em a fair shake! For now, I'd like to talk at'cha 'bout a tried and true book that's graced my library in one form since at least 1970, and if it coulda survived all those years w/o being tossed into a wastebasket or sold at a garage sale (which come to think of it is what happened to my first copy!) then it coulda survived in yours as well!

THE ORGANIZATION MAD's got a boffo Kelly Freas cover (tho no actual Alfred E grin guaranteed to sucker at least 100,000 early-sixties adolescent geeks into buyin' the thing!) and innards that reprint some of the earliest post-Harvey Kurtzman material at a time when you could see the shakiness in transition from Kurtzman's particular "chicken fat" style to Al Feldstein's more sleek, cosmopolitan humor vision. This 'un also contains some of Jack Davis' last MAD work before he joined up with just about every imitation in sight willing to milk his rep before returning to the fold a good decade later, and although it ain't as finely detailed as the stuff he was doing for HUMBUG (as well as some of his earlier MAD work) it's sure eye-grabbing. No Elder in sight, but there's a lotta Wally Wood which helps not forgetting the newcomers along the lines of George Woodbridge (who was better off doing westerns at Atlas), Bob Clarke and of course Don Martin who was at least two years away from perfecting his famous bulbous-nosed style which we all remember him best by.

No comic strip spoofs, but ya do get the classic tee-vee takeoffs on DISNEYLAND and GUNSMOKE which are boss even if they were edited for paperback form. (Not uncommon in these early collections...in fact I even noticed that Wood's "Wedding Album" had the needless narration excised which did improve on the thing!) As usual, some succeed while others flop. I mean, it's sure funny watching Walt Dizzy try to hide the millions of megabucks he's made o'er the years (especially for a Disney-hater like myself), yet "High School Dance" couldn't even hope to reach the level of an ARCHIE comic strip dealing with the same subject matter! And even this early in the game you can see the usual ideas and gimmicks that MAD'd be milking well into the late-seventies (when I stopped paying attention) well into perhaps today's variation on the mag which I assume is the usual pale image of that pale image everybody seemed to loathe with a passion as far back as the mid-sixties!

Not a high-rated collection true, but a definite keeper (this time). And lo and behold, whoever had previously owned this particular paperback was so possessive of it that he even wrote his name on the inside front cover in a show of true MAD loyalty or something like that. Nice move "Brian Davis" or whatever your name is, but if you want to get thie copy back you're gonna hafta fight me for it!

2011-12-25T00:00:00.004-05:00

THE SICKENING SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF CHRISTMAS...aka JUST A FEW OF THE WORST TEE-VEE SHOWS, SPECIALS, SONGS AND RELATED FLOTSAM FROM THE HOLIDAY SEASON!

Like I'm sure a good portion of you readers are, I too and filled to the brim with great memories of Christmases past to the point where I can even remember what I was doing on certain December 25ths when I was but a mere tot. In fact, the earliest one I can remember (age three) is still deeply etched in my brain, especially the part when, at the family Christmas party, I snuck up on my cousin and bit him on the back of the neck because he wouldn't let me play with his new lithographed pressed metal filling station/garage, though I do recall cuz crying his eyes out while sitting on the toidy upstairs as somebody rubbed ointment on his bite (which I was too young to consider an insult, as I've had all my shots and have shown no signs of any disease venereal or otherwise...and not only that but why weren't the grown ups worried about any infections I'd occur biting into his neck!), and recall my absolute dismay that it was he who was getting the sympathetic treatment since """"I""""" had been the snub-ee who was not allowed near that classic fifties-styled garage complete with a car park lift and a number of plastic vehicles to go with it!

The next year was also a fab 'un with me not only receiving my own more modern-looking gas station which also came with a garage park and a slew of plastic Jaguars and Lincolns to go with it but a rifle similar to the one Chuck Conners used on tee vee's THE RIFLEMAN which I would walk around pretending to blast away crotch-level just like in the opening of that famed western series. While we're on the subject of deadly weapons, I also got this dart plunger mini-automatic machine gun with various BEETLE BAILEY cardboard characters to mow down, something which in retrospect I find reprehensible since the guys from Camp Swampy were on our side. Why no Viet Cong or even leftover Koreans, or maybe that wasn't keeping too much in the BAILEY spirit one would surmise. I also remember watching THE BARNEY BEAN SHOW that afternoon as the family party roared on in the basement, the only Christmas show of his I recall in which he actually appeared even if it was only to tell us that since it was Christmas there wouldn't be any kids on or even drawings using one's initials today but cartoons and nothing but. (I remember the set coming off rather dark as if they wanted to save $$$ by using only the barest lighting essentials, though perhaps it was filmed in advance and given the quality of some of the local station film reproduction in those pre-videotape days I wouldn't doubt it.)

After that Christmas well...they were a mix and match affair. The one I had when I was six or so was OK until I kicked my cousin (same one I bit a few years earlier) because he bust my toy drum pounding it really hard like the drummers in the rock groups did on tee-vee...I certainly remember getting hauled off and whipped for that while one of my aunts was laughing her head off because I told my dad I kicked him because "that's what they do in PEANUTS". The Corgi Toy X-mas a few years later was also a joy to behold (still remember staring lovingly at the Ghia L4-6 for minutes on end as if it were a moon rock, only snazzier) while Christmas age 12 was pretty good considering the stash of comic books and collections of old Golden Age reprints I lucked out on. Getting into my teenbo years, '75 and '76 stick in my mind if only because I was buying records and well...that sorta figures into fun times really big, y'know? (12/26/75 continues to resonate not only because we went to Cleveland that day but because I bought a cutout copy of the Reuben and the Jets' FOR REAL album on cassette [a comparative snoozer though I wouldn't mind giving the thing another listen] and got sick after my first visit inside a Red Lobster restaurant [the one in Niles Ohio...still there!] which I blame on the greasy fish I ordered. I guess that's what I deserved for passing up on the first ever copy of CHELSEA GIRL to grace mine eyes, though I recall also passing on a Tanned Leather album I had seriously been considering buying for some time and for the life of me I wonder if that was something smart to do or not considering their mid-ranking, and rather mixed reception, in the krautrock hall of fame!)

Nowadays Christmas is just another time for me to reflect on past funtime excesses, the boffo gifts and all of the shenanigans that seemed to go woosh once the whacked out seventies clocked over into the giddy squeaky clean eighties. Oh, there were a few good holiday periods sprinkled throughout the "Reagan years" as they say ('82 and '86 being particularly spunky, though '83 was a loser considering the midnight shift job in a junkyard that all but practically ruined my reason for being) but really, along with sleds, stuffed stockings, meringue cookies and those kid fights every party was bound to create the Christmases of past as just about as much a memory as all of those relatives who used to populate those parties who are either now gone or just too old to cut the cheese anymore. All I do on Christmas is eat leftovers and spend recently given moolah via ebay...certainly not the wild kiddie party look at the presents times we all used to have during that great baby boom-dominated tee-vee throbbing rock 'n rolling post-World War II/pre-Politically Pious days that now seems about as distant as the Triassic Period.

But I am not here to praise Christmas, but to bury it! Yes, along with the funtime frolics and ginchy greed there was, and most definitely REMAINS, a lotta bad baggage to go along with the holiday season. And considering that you readers are probably on a pretty hotcha holiday high as we speak its time that somebody was around to drag you down to where you belong! And that someone is me...

So, here are the top twelve (one for each day of Christmas) lousiest things about the Holiday Season which I know you will agree with me about (and you better...after all it's my blog!).. Yes, for every MISTER MAGOO'S CHRISTMAS CAROL or A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS there must be about ten THE CHIPMUNK WHO PLAYED WITH HIS NUTS THROUGH CHRISTMAS, and for every great Christmas song there must be a dozen or so barfers, all not surprisingly written within the past thirty or so years! So why spend the holidays thinking nothing but world peace when you can Vex the Halls with these definite X-mas low points both past and present...

1) THE CHRISTMAS EPISODE OF THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW-I'm sure at least a good 25% of us can agree that this series was one of the best ever (a def. top forty placer no less) which is no mean feat in an era that produced plenty of good television viewing which continues to stand the test of time. But hey, this reworking of the old Scrooge saga from the series' first season was definitely one of the ten worst this 'un pumped out. (The ten worst ANDY GRIFFITH episodes is a task worthy of a future BLOG TO COMM, and as usual your imput would be unceremoniously tossed by the wayside.) The fact that the ever-sickening Ellie played by Elinor Donahue (who was put to better use on FATHER KNOWS BEST, not exactly one of my top forty classy-era tee-vee choices!) is a featured player in this Dickens rewrite only adds more lump to the rump. Better the umpteenth rerun of EIGHT IS ENOUGH's own sappy mom is dead X-mas schmoozer than this, and I loathe that 'un with a passion!

2) THE CHRISTMAS EPISODE OF THE ADDAMS FAMILY-Given the general irreverence and sexy nature of the boss mid-sixties series, it's sad to see them ruin the chance to do some funny holiday skewering and turn such an opportunity into a gosharootie who's gonna play Santa Claus complete with sappy "Meaning of Christmas" epilogue that's so atypical of the show's entire reason for existence. Oh the wasted opportunity, like seeing Santa subjected to the usual Addams hospitality with all of the telegraphed in advance gags and gaffes with St. Nick making a quick getaway! Now I woulda loved to have seen that!

3) THIS REMARKABLY TERRIBLE NEW CHRISTMAS SONG ABOUT AMERICA I HEARD IN THE SUPERMARKET TODAY-For new heights in jingoistic patriotic fervor this 'un can't be beat. It starts off with lyrics along the lines of "Merry Christmas America" complete with a few cops from other well-known hymns crooned in that typically gruff pseudo-country male singing voice heard so often these days. Then if you can believe it, things get worse as the spiritual successor to Roger Whittaker begins moaning something about This Land Of Ours and the holiday season. If you thought "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" or the recent rash of "updated" goody-two-shoes happy birthday Jesus Christmas songs were beyond the realm of the puke pail, this 'un makes those come off like Fear's "Fuck Christmas"!

4) THE CHRISTMAS EPISODE OF THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW-Back to the tee-vee. Not that this particular installment of the Van Dyke show bugs me the same way that the Griffith one does, but that's only because I've always held Griffith's in a much higher regard. Y'see, although DVD's first series was one that was always on the tube throughout my growing up years and even when it was being syndicated to all heck, but that doesn't mean it was exactly a top-tenner in my book! But anyhoo...you probably remember this one which was being presented as an actual installment of the fictitious ALAN BRADY SHOW, a "very special episode" as they used to say where the usually egomaniacal Brady hands the reigns of his very program over to his writers (and of course Dick's very own wife 'n kid) to do the singing and entertaining while he sat on his throne dressed as Santa the whole time. First off, whose idea was it to have the no name hired help do the entertaining in the first place, Mel Cooley's? I mean, couldn't they wrangle the Redcoats into making another appearance thus boosting the ratings through the roof? Secondly, if you thought that the likes of Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam and that kid who played Richie singing in that irritating version of "Little Drummer Boy" was a great way to enjoy the holiday season you must have really loved those specials and failed series that Van Dyke had been tossing at us ever since the demise of the original. For mushies only.

5) THE LITTLE DRUMMER BOY TEE-VEE SPECIAL (narrated by Greer Garson)-Speaking of the drummer boy...for all of the people out there who complain about "the true meaning of Christmas" being lost in the wave of crass commercialism here's what you get! Aren't you glad??? Don't worry, someone's old timey aunt or next door neighbor'll think this 'un reflects a wholesome, traditional approach to the nativity but hey, if somebody came up to me and played some horrid drum and told me that the resultant raa-taa-taa-taa was a present, I'd bop him one!

6) MISTLETOE-Yeah I know, given my obvious ugly features it's the only chance for me to do any smooching any time of the year, but why does it have to be octogenarian old ladies which hefty denture breath? Why no hotcha young 'n giggly gals of Asian heritage??? If you see the dreaded weed hanging above you in a doorway or arch, be on the lookout for the Miss Grundy in your life.

7) YOGI'S FIRST CHRISTMAS-Of course I like Yogi Bear! After all, he's one of the more identifiable visual if not spiritual icons of the boss late-fifties to mid-sixties baby boomin' funtime entertaining conglomonolith tee-vee world alongside everything from THE TWILIGHT ZONE to Conelrad. Not only that but his personage, along with that of the rest of his Hanna-Barbara brethren, was perhaps as easy to spot during the 1959-1965 growin' up years as Coca-Cola logos and Green Stamps. Best of all, his original moom pitchers still hold up even for alleged oldsters like myself which would figure since these early Hanna-Barbara 'toons were designed not only for the toddlers but the parents and babysitters watchin' 'em with the brood, as if a four-year-old'd necessarily know that Yogi's persona borrowed heavily from Ed Norton or that Augie Doggy's daddy and Snagglepuss were Jimmy Durante and Bert Lahr swipes cleverly enacted by the long-missed Daws Butler.

But after the relative fun energy of the early/mid-sixties gave way to hippydippy sheesh, the entire Hanna-Barbara stable seemed to be drawn into the hipster jive of the day dragging the kids who liked the old fifties-oriented cartoons kicking and screaming the entire way! And naturally the Yogi Bear persona got muddied throughout the transformation into early-seventies social relevance...first off there was YOGI'S GANG, a Saturday morning series on ABC where the entire H-B outlet to date would fight all of the evils in the world from smog to prejudice with typical 1971 relevant gloss. (The particular scene where Ranger Smith utters the unlikely line "How I hate people who are different than I am!" still resonates deep within my beanie!) After that Yogi was used in a variety of Saturday fodder from the LAFF-A-LYMPICS to some vaguely STAR WARS cum disco cash-in series (I think it was called YOGI'S TREASURE HUNT) that went out with a standard late-seventies plop, along with any shard of respect I might've had for the famed bruin who undoubtedly'd been hot stuff back during the days when he was plugging Kelloggs' Oh's but nowadays was just more flea market fodder.

And from this period in Yogi's stellar career came this particular bit of dribble, a Christmas special that not only reunites Yogi and his li'l butt bear Boo Boo with the old Hanna Barbara lot but has the pair fighting to stay awake through the holiday season in order to meet none other'n Santa himself. By this time the pretext of getting anybody over seven to wanna sit through this boring X-mas dross was dropped, though frankly I couldn't even see the kids who might still be catching the old Yogi's on tee-vee wanting to view this turd either! A shame on just about every front, from the tiresome dialogue to the dull musical numbers that always dragged these specials down to the old animation hands from the forties who were ending their careers working on this dross.

Oddly enough, despite the title this was not Yogi and Boo Boo's first animated Christmas (according to YOWP, they celebrated Christmas via the Golden Books series way back in '61!), since the two actually appeared a couple years earlier in the strangely incongruous CASPER'S FIRST CHRISTMAS (never saw it) of which a spot in Christmas Hell might just be in store if only for the bizarre concept.

8) Fish on Christmas Eve-A tradition I sure could do without, especially when this tradition stenches up the house with the odor of strong fish fried in grease that nobody outside a starving Nigerian would want to eat. If you want to replicate the same effect in your abode, just invite some Zoroasterians to stay at your place for a few hours. At least on a good day my own armpits'll curry the aroma of McDonalds hamburgers!

9) "PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TOWARD ALL MEN"-Not that I'm particularly against peace or treating honest, holy and loaded with bucks men with cheer, but such things sound so phonus balonus when mouthed by some of the most two-faced, one-dimensional louts to walk the face of the earth. I mean yeah, there will always be people protesting for "peace", though when there's a war they want you can bet they'll not only be the first to wave the flag, but the first to make sure YOU'LL get inducted (forget about them...after all deep down they're still for peace!). And as far as that good will stuff goes, nowadays there's so much baggage packed onto that phrase that when starry-eyed world-huggers utter it, the "all" seems to be truncated into something along the lines of "all people who tend to share our world view and you BETTER tow the correct line because we've got a billion dollar media industry and politicians at our beck and call to make sure your life is ruined if you don't!" These are the people who think "Happy Holidays" translates into the start of the Winter Solstice as if the past two thousand years was just a gross sidestep towards that perfect world where we can all love, throw frisbees and have somebody else pay the bill in peace...

10) "JINGLE BELL ROCK"-I remember when I was a high school frosh, or a sosh for that matter, and I was in the gym when a buncha gals from my class put on this quickie, impromptu show for some teach where they sang this song while kicking it up Rockettes-style. Naturally the teacher smiled with sublime approval. The whole thing makes me glad I was the high school champeen striker-outer if this is the quality of gals who I hadda attend class with!

11) "IT'S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR"-Yeah, the Johnny Mathis favorite which ain't so offensive offhand, but that line about "scary ghost stories" really gets me. I mean yeah, telling horror sagas has really been a Christmas tradtion right? And don't go 'round sayin' that the song refers to A CHRISTMAS CAROL because that ain't exactly like a horror tale that's supposed to scare the bajabbers outta ya 'r anything.

12) IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE-Last but most certainly least, the doggo that is best known for spawning a whole load of equally saccharine ripoffs from the likes of a Marlo Thomas tee-vee movie to THE FACTS OF LIFE (who were unique enough to substitute Santy himself for the angel trying to get his wings). A movie so nauseating that I must say that it's turned me off of the entire career of not only James Stewart, but I can't even watch THE DONNA REED SHOW w/o doin' a little wincing myself.

Now, I will admit that I once did not have such an animosity towards this particular moom...in fact the first time I became aware of the thing was long before the recent (mid-eighties on) rash of retropraise heaped upon the thing. Oddly enough, I was doing a bitta channel surfing on a sunny summer afternoon (!) around 1975 or '76 when I just happened to catch the scene where the gymnasium floor opens up during a dance and the attendees go plop right into the water, and gotta admit I thought that scene was pretty funny 'n keeno neat in a typically goofball kid way! After awhile between household chores and the usual fights with my sister I managed to catch the part where Stewart was shown just what a rotten and horrid state of affairs his li'l bubble of a world would be if he only hadn't been born. Seemed dramatic enough but nothing that special. However, since this was during the era in Amerigan tee-vee/moom pitcher culture where the Hollywood of the past was being bombarded atcha on the cathode of today and old movies/tee-vee shows were such a rage it wasn't like I was harboring any great loathing towards IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE...at least not yet.

That would come later, during a time when the "essence" of feeling good about one's self would beat actually being something/one to feel good about in a throbbing, seething, o-mind kind of way. Maybe it's because it's the same kinda people who would be more'n glad to evict a 99-year-old widow if she's late with the rent before tuning in to sniff and slobber over this diabetic delight that I hate the thing. But it's the moom pitcher itself...sappy, sentimental, gooey and just plain ol' cornier'n a sharecropper's tootsies that really gets to me. And the fact that none other than Frank Capra (the same guy who almost derailed Harry Langdon's career and wanted to turn the OUR GANG comedies into gritty urban realism) glopped his hokum charms upon this mess is enough to make me wanna slaughter the next starry-eyed gooch to sing the praises of this moom with a repeating tape-loop of Margaret O'Brien at her pig-tailiest!

I'll bet Hitler and Stalin woulda loved this film with a passion, though since Hitler croaked before it was made we'll never know what his opines were. As for Stalin...well, I wouldn't doubt that a copy of the film was snuggled into the Kremlin for his personal perusal and maybe he was so moved that he requested a Soviet rewrite of it for the local market...something called IT'S A WUNNDERFUL POLITBURO where Stalin himself sees what life would have been like if he, Lenin, Trotsky, Marx, Engels etc. weren't born, then has the angel shot!

And on that "wunnderful" note, Merry Christmas, hokay?

2011-12-21T09:15:00.002-05:00

BOOK REVIEW! GOOD 'N' MAD by the usual gang of idiots (Signet, 1969)

Well whaddaya expect right before Christmas, flat broke me dishing out even more hard-begged money for the usual inanities? Naw, it's gonna be old books at home this time courtesy of none other'n Brad Kohler, a man who rescued this particular read from a Coraopolis PA Goodwill and sent it to me under the impression that I probably never saw it before in my entire life. Well, in the words of Lou Reed hisself it just goes to show ya how wrong a BLOG TO COMM contributor can be, for GOOD 'N' MAD was actually the first actual flesh 'n blood reprint of MAD material and the second MAD-related paperback to make its way into my library (the actual debut book being THE MAD ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN KLUTZ), a present for me from my mother who bought it on one of her shopping jaunts thinking that this was just the kind of book her li'l progeny'd gobble up with typical addled glee. Nice choice mom, but what'cha gonna get me next time...PLAYBOY'S LITTLE ANNIE FANNY????

All jesting aside, that original paperback eventually became neatly bisected due to over-reading (though I never had the heart to toss it out and it still remains in my paperback collection snuggled against other single-digit comic strip reads that haven't been gazed at in eons) so Brad's gift sure came in handy. And considering that this particular paperback heralds a whole lotta things of importance (since it contains stories from the last days of '63, a very crucial time in gulcheral history as well as some of Wally Wood's final contributions) I couldn't have been happer even if Brad had sent a bound edition of ancient TAB DIGESTs, for the sagas reprinted in this 'un sure capture that great era in pre-hippoid Ameriga that continues to hold up (via reruns, auto shows, non-renovated shopping plazas...) long after the bell bottoms and headbands have been tossed into the trashcan hopefully ne'er to be retrieved!

Some pretty hotcha stuff here, like four Don Martin comics, two Sergio Aragones, and of course a couple of Spy Vs. Spys which always get my mind piqued. The Walter "Crankcase" hosted tour of a Chinese restaurant was also good for a laugh esp. if you still go for that Three Stooges short where Moe and Shemp think they're eating a dog and cat freshly chopped up by Larry, something that my father used to tease me about incessantly when I'd order takeouts complete with the meows and barking. Heck, even the "Government Greeting Cards" piece was boss, and I HATE it when MAD gets into their more literate poetry/greeting card spoofs which had made up a bulk of their lampooning throughout the sixties and seventies!

But it's done so swift here to the point where I didn't even skip over "The MAD Hospital Primer" like I would have only a few short years after first latching hands upon this collection. Even that ol' New York Liberal schmooze Dave Berg ain't as annoying as he would get as soon as the hippoids themselves put his own credo to test. At least his observations regarding automobiles and early-sixties college students doesn't annoy like his later deep insights into rebellion and the generation gap which only made him look like an even bigger fuddy duddy than he originally was!

Naturally it's the comic strip send ups, something which originally drew me to MAD inna first place, that makes GOOD 'N' MAD the must-have book that's been rotting away in my library for a good forty-plus. "Future Educational Comic Pamphlets" features the likes of Dick Tracy, Joe Palooka, Popeye and Mary Worth in wild takeoffs of those freebee comic books that various special interest groups circulate in order to teach us about everything from National Parks to rectal probes. This 'un does hold a special place in the MAD canon if only because this was Wood's last comic spoof in the pages of that hallowed read...after his departure the job of comic strip depictions was handed over to Bob Clarke, a man who could not accurately copy the styles of the originals the way both Wood and Bill Elder did with relative ease. This particular story also has a special meaning in my own life due to the mention of a comic pamphlet in the introductory schpiel that (believe it or not) just happened to be published by none other'n Planned Parenthood! ESCAPE FROM FEAR was the title ("Joan and Ken Harper's marriage was on the rocks, because they loved each other!"), and when I got this book I didn't know what Planned Parenthood was so innocently enough I went and asked the folks! Well, you shoulda seen the look on their faces especially when I told 'em where I found out about them (and hearing the rather watered down explanation of that institution that certainly didn't clear anything up on my part!), but the strangest thing was they didn't forbid me from reading MAD and certainly tolerated me buying up the entire paperback range as well as a whole buncha issues when the mood struck me! And to this day, I still don't understand why (esp. when a relative had his copy with the SUMMER OF '42 spoof confiscated with a stern warning never to even go near an issue of MAD as long as he lived!) considering how my parents used to be overly protective of my reading material to the point where I was once sternly lectured when found reading a collection of comparatively mild generation gap cartoons at a local paperback rack!

Gee, just goes to show you how funny things could get before all of this sexual revolution crap was being shoved in all of our faces! At least we can re-live those pre-sickoid days with a copy of GOOD 'N' MAD, coming to an overpriced "buy it now" ebay auction near you!

2011-12-17T09:29:00.003-05:00

A word to the wise (and perhaps not so) may be in order. Reviews #1 and 3 are more or less standard writeups of important product that's been on the market for quite some time only I've gotten around to it now for whatever reasons I harbor in my simian-like brain. Review #2 is yet another one of my attempts to do an essay-length themed piece in the tradition of Russell Desmond, Brian Doherty, Lester Bangs and various other scribes whom I've been swiping from for nigh on thirty years. Whether or not my efforts to emulate the rockscreed stylings of the seventies and beyond work or not is up to you, but at this time I couldn't give two flying figs...I'm having too much of a damned time trying to figure out this new blogger "interface" as it is to be pestered by your at-time inane musings!

Cradle-THE HISTORY CD-R (available through CD Baby)

This is that all-gal Detroit-area band that future New York Doll/Heartbreaker Jerry Nolan drummed in, which wouldn't necessarily have made 'em an all gal group at the time but at least they were one when they recorded the music that appears on this Cee-Dee!. And it ain't the fact that a future rock icon like Nolan was once a member of Cradle that anybody remembers 'em...nosiree, the only reason these femmes're even getting the reissue treatment is because three of the four members were the Quatro sisters, y'know, as in Suzi, Patty and Nancy, two of whom later made it big in seventies rock circles, one as a Fanny fill-in and the other as a solo star/HAPPY DAYS semi-semi-regular in her own right! Other'n that, all Cradle were wuz yet another local group on the Detroit scene who were tryin' to grasp at some of the glory that the MC5 were lucky enough to accrue which in my book is a whole lot more important'n the fact that half of 'em were making music that I might be interested in hearing one of these days. Maybe not this month, year or even decade, but when I'm 112 like, why not?.

The tracks here were taken from two pretty hotcha live shows (one opening for the MC5 themselves on New Year's Eve), with a sound that's surprisingly clear and not in that high-end FM radio way either which seemed more attuned to the ears of downed out dropouts and various breeds of dog. Performance is particularly snat in its commercial appeal...close to the Detroit ideal in an early Alice Cooper-ish fashion complete with vocal harmonies that add yet another tasteful dimension to Cradle's show. These almost baroque stylings give the act a maudlin but often driving sound, adding to an image which thankfully doesn't put titzenazz up front and musical whatziz behind like many all-femme aggregates do yet it doesn't come off feminist militia complete with the mandatory nutcrackers. Like the best non-male rockers, it puts music ahead of agenda or titty-lation and for that I'm sure we could all be proud.

Really, this is a surprising set that has an ethereal, dream-like slow burn to it (or is this because I'm more or less reminiscing about Christmas holidays past fill'd with youthful erotic exuberance?), and how could I not mention the interesting choice of subject matter from transvestism ("Man is a Man") to dildos ("Peter Porno") and even Iggy Pop ("Funny Man"), perhaps the most disgusting subject in the whole lot!

Suaka-EPISODE 1 CD (Stonedeaf)

White Stone-LIVE IN NYC CD (CD Baby)

Heavy Metal Will Stand! Now how many times have you heard that war cry being uttered from the pages of your favorite rockscapading read o'er the past thirtysome years? Now if you ask me (and why not?) this particular phrase certainly made a whole lotta sense when it was first bellowed, (see Metal Mike Saunders for more details), though by the mid-seventies or so it seemed to ring rather hollow what with all of the "lite metal" acts that were beginning to dot the FM scene like chancres on a teenage whore's lips. Nowadays such musical call to arms are laughable considering what has become of the entire heavy metal "idiom" which managed to go from Sabbath to Ozzy to Autograph with a couple of calculated flops.

Naturally when Lauren Agnelli used this phrase as the title to her review of THE DICTATORS GO GIRL CRAZY in CREEM it seemed the most fitting thing in the world to say, and when Don Underwood uttered the exact same words in his RADIO ETHIOPIA writeup I could easily concur. And when Lester Bangs and a whole number of card-carrying rock scribers both pro and fan would utter the most magnificent metallic praise upon such Stooges classics as FUNHOUSE and RAW POWER I felt like signing up for the heavy metal fan club myself. But along the way, something strange happened.

I think Frank Kogan, for all of his faults, hit the nail on the head when he said that the spawn of the seventies rock generation wasn't exactly looking for raw ear-bleeding energy in their music but technical precision, professional performances and an over abundantly clean sound without any spec of distortion, atonality or energy for that matter. Where listeners such as myself and perhaps you were interested in music as a violent catharsis tonality/metre/chords/any semblance of cold humanity be damned, the majority of the ever-popular 18-34 (give or take) market was looking for a music with a clean sound, professional playing, clearasil vocals and worst of all a total lack of energy. It may have been loud, grating and perhaps even sludge-y, but it certainly signified nothing!

The heavy metal groups, hearing the clarion call of mega arena bucks, were just itching to dish just that out to a world fulla youth who somehow decided that a guy playing a guitar fast was akin to good musicianship no matter how lameass the entire solo might have been. I blame it on a lotta things from bad drugs, bad upbringing, bad examples and Andy Secher, who turned HIT PARADER into one of the shallowest, one-dimensional excuses for a rock music of any genre let alone heavy metal which, judging from some of the brilliant pearls of wisdom he's spouted, he knew about as much of as he did quantum physics.

But hey, when heavy metal did click on all pistons via the speedgrindcore movement...talkin' early Metallica, Slayer and even a more trad outfit like Anthrax who I found rather entrancing...it was some of the better original music to make its way outta the dump that most of us readers remember as the eighties. Pretty refreshing in fact, especially when the hardcore punk groups who seemed to be the last gasp of the seventies regime was flaking away into meaningless political diatribes or experimental piddle and what had held so much promise for us (such as the New York Underground) had pretty much fizzled out into nada with the survivors more or less making bigger fools of themselves than the "dinosaur" groups they oh so loathed. (Or so we thought...) Heck, even the spawn of Pere Ubu were making horrible records and with MX-80 Sound temporarily out of action it wasn't like there was that much to really sustain a person like myself. At least speedmetal helped fill a gap, no matter how minuscule in might have been in my own listening parameter.

Of course I liked my metal a whole lot more when it was mixed with that high energy (early) punk that had been my bailiwick for a few years prior. Naturally the best metal always had a load of punk rock credo to it...take the Stooges and even UFO, whose early platters with Mick Bolton on guitar seemed just as much born of NUGGETS as they did Zep. Face it, for me heavy metal was always best when focused through a gritty punk lens 'stead of the progressive professionalism that most heavy metallics seemed to cherish...the distorted quivering amped up drive sans the pyrotechnical blah Eddie Van Halen "hey look at me play fast c'mon 'n worship me!" stylings that continue to make me wanna cringe even though that era is long dead 'n buried with the corpse of "classic rock" still lingering on somewhere on your FM dial.

Yes, consider that Rocket From The Tombs were originally billed as being "Dumb Metal" (a term that could have applied to most of the HM practitioners of the day, but I guess they meant it differently) and that their live radio broadcast was part of a "heavy metal showcase" where they opened for not only longtime Hendrix cover group Paragon but Youngstown's Left End just beginning their long slide into collector's heaven. And over in New York recall the various heavy metal festivals at Max's Kansas City not forgetting Von Lmo's "heavy metal dance rock/electroshock" depending on which "Voice Choice" you happened to read, and if anybody can tip me off to the name of that "heavy metal country and western band" that played a CBGB audition one night and Max's the next (autumn 1981) I will be eternally grateful, especially since you'll save me a trip to the Youngstown Public Library microfilm department which should cost me a pretty penny in gas! (And I recall the story about the bass guitarist from Bitch Magnet talking to someone I used to know with the bassist saying that when they played CB's in '87 all of the other groups on the bill with them were heavy metal, he even making the assumption that CBGB was now a metal club and nothing but which does surprise me because if so why book Bitch Magnet?)

But all kidding aside, I sure do like my metal and punk mixed up nice and heavy (Wurm and Rotomagus should also fit in here somewhere), which is why I tend to pick out a whole lotta metallic recordings that have emanated from the bowels of the New York underground from the seventies until the final days of CBGB's. Call it nostalgia if you will but I'll only bop you on the nose...let's just say that it's more spiritual, like listening to a music that has roots from way back during the birth of feedback into redlined teenage recordings and late-sixties blind rage mixed with avant garde inclinations that might or might now be intentional, all the way through to more modern applications of all of these influences and ideas that cranked out goes to show you the logical end result of a good thirty years of rock emulation and bared-wire intensity!

Anywah, the two groups on today's itinerary have at least one thing in common other'n being of the metal idiom, and that is they were both alive and perhaps even kicking during the final days of the last gasp at CBGB, a haunt who as we now know never really shied away from heavy metal from the Dictators and Sorcerers down through a number of eighties acts on whom I will probably discover sometime before I do the big check out into the great record shop in the sky. And for a guy who had more or less tuned into the various live CBGB cybercasts throughout the early-to-mid-oh-oh's I can tell you that as far as metal went the folks at CBGB were probably more conscious of it as an underground form to be reckoned with as most of the labels who were willy-nillying signing some of the worst ever heavy metal acts back in the mid-eighties. I can recall seeing a number of metal acts who were worth their weight in stud leather via these cybercasts, from Karen Black to Crisis and the Electric Magic Side Show (OK, I missed their set by a few minutes!) There was even was rather obscure band I caught called Cherry Hill High who were being touted as metal via some website that had linked up a number of archived CBGB 'casts...and these guys were pretty great not only because they had a seventies look down (with the lead singer kinda looking like a sneako perv with an Australian army hat and mirrored shades) but their sound seemed to take the early Dictators credo and muddled it out as if these guys didn't care that much whether or not you liked what they were doing for you. But what I did experience was pretty good hard rockin' in that cool seventies style I sure do miss, and although I fear that any recordings by Cherry Hill High let alone the cybercast I saw are perhaps lost to the ether I can only HOPE that somebody, a member of the group or someone from their inner circle will read this and provide me with all of the information, snaps, sounds etc. that I can use if only to sate my inner turmoil regarding what I had experienced oh so long ago.

Enough rheumy reminiscences...first on today's bill so-to-speak is this Indonesia transplanted to En Why See metallic batch who go by the name Suaka. Dunno what that means, but if you were to tell me that it means an Indonesian version of Pantera or Metallica I'd probably believe you. A group whom, like many acts both famous and not before 'em, got their break via a CBGB audition night, Suaka may tread some metal cliches both old and new and throw in a li'l progressive influx here and there. However, its their devotion to a more punkist frame of mind that keeps me interested in these guys as a variant on the same (and tried) forms that don't tend to bore even though you've heard that hotcha boiler room blast passing as a guitar solo many times before. No real meaning of the world here, but every group can't be Von Lmo!

Suaka might not have the same sense of forced submission that early Metallica had and they do have the kinda demeanor that could appeal just as much to the prog leftovers as the metallic bunch, but their sense of addled punkitude, when it rears its ugly li'l head, drags this recording down to the ragged level of grovel that I most certainly enjoy. And although I personally don't expect much success (critically/financially/muff-wise) in Suaka's future...frankly they're too nice to make it big...at least they present a heavy metal vision that doesn't reek of the eighties fake glam devil-sign trappings that were just about as indicative of the entire decade's blandness as rubic cubes. And that's something we can believe in, even after grunge replaced metal as the new choice of teenage addledness a good two decades back.

Frankly I got a bigger kick outta White Stone, whose LIVE IN NYC was recorded at the hallowed CBGB haunt in front of what seems like one of the smallest audiences they've had in quite awhile. Might have been one of those 7:00 PM opening gig slots that the club would have during their later years when up to six or so groups would get booked per evening and of course the opening act always gets a duff reception because hardly anybody would be in the club so early in the first place. But whether or not this is true it sure looks like White Stone got the crap end of the stick trying to warm up a handfulla people who were just starting to get into their evening jollies. Hey, I guess even the better groups got stuck in worse situations on their way up, even if most of 'em probably never got anywhere at all in their nefarious climb to the top of the rock 'n roll slag heap!

Can't help but like this group. First off, White Stone are heavy metal in the classic, CREEM sense just like in that 1981 special issue where what was left of the bullpen was once again stretching the boundaries trying to explain just why acts like the MC5 and Amon Duul I were just as important to the heavy metal canon as Ted Nugent and Molly Hatchet. Second off, this group is a duo consisting of guitar and drums, though don't expect this to sound anything like Randy Holden's POPULATION TWO for (#3) White Stone's overall musical abilities are very loose and matter-of-fact (dare I say amateurish?) in the same way I'd see these weirdo off-the-wall groups at the CBGB 313 Gallery on the Kenny McLaughlin-hosted rock 'n roll party nights or whatever they were called and these acts outta nowhere'd come on and perform their original compositions only to vanish into the ether as soon as they were through. I remember one show (which started on a Saturday afternoon...and you could tell it was gonna be a LONG night!) where McLaughlin had booked this duo consisting of a Lenny Kaye lookalike on a cheap electric piano and his drummer pal playing some of the most untogether jazz-rock-y music as if they were a low budget Steely Dan thinking this was the first stop in their trek towards fame, fortune and perhaps a lip synch job on AMERICAN BANDSTAND (which was long gone by this time, but the thought seemed to be there!). Naturally I didn't hear a thing from this duo after their CB's appearance, but sheesh would I love to hear that set they did again as well as anything else they may have laid down in their boudoir or basement for that matter. Had more soul 'n feel than the entire recorded output of the eighties-nineties combined I'll tell ya!

And for a buncha guys who say they had been doing this metallic pounce since the mid-eighties (!) White Stone's resultant sound is pretty amateur hour grasping for life! It comes off kinda thin considering the stripped down setup, but as usual its primal nature and general approach makes this platter a definite metallic must have. I am reminded of the reviews that such critics as John Rockwell (THE NEW YORK TIMES) and Fred Kirby (VARIETY) gave this similarly endowed act that went by the name of Ice (featuring future Necessaries/Love of Life Orchestra member Randy Burns/Gunn) back during their CBGB Summer Festival gig in 1975 where both scribes mentioned this duo's comparatively "thin" sound due to their lack of a bass guitarist. And yeah, White Stone also can sound "thin" especially for an act that purports to be metallic (I mean, you should check out the under-miked, weak singing courtesy of guitarist M.C. Cancassi!), but then again I really find no fault with this group or their music, which has a whole lot more going for it entertainment and energy-wise than a good portion of what was being pumped to the locals with regards to what heavy metal (as a movement/style/marketing ploy) was supposed to mean and supposed to be for that matter.

Because once you get down to it what this heavy metal stuff was supposed to "be" all along is "fun", and although something along those lines would undoubtedly be foreign to those stiff punque rock elitists of the eighties (sorry if I can't get the image of this blahed out representative from Existencil Press on the old MAXIMUM ROCK 'N ROLL radio show vehemently denying that the music of Crass or they labelmates was in any way to be construed as "entertainment"...glad that I have people like her telling me how evil I am for seeking pleasure outta something meant to change the world for the betterment of all) well, it sure makes sense to me! Gotta say that I love White Stone on all levels, from their primitive performance to their use of seventies metallic chords long discarded as well as the fact that they just durn lack a bass guitar, and even if sometimes their material can be a li'l rote I'm not throwing out any babies or bath water at this time. When I listen to their guys all I can say is that "Long Live Heavy Metal" still has a shard of meaning and dignity left in its oft-hollow cry, and although I might have sniffed at the prospect at one time now I am full front and center for the least-pure, least-talented metal money can buy, or obsessed fans can beg from long-gone groups for that matter!.
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WHITE STONE POSTSCRIPT-I just hadda find out more, and it turns out there is a li'l bitta information on the group available via the web that perhaps sheds some light on this act. Por ejemplo, it seems as if White Stone are not as flybynight obscure as I thought, and in fact they even have a number of Cee-Dees available (via CD Universe) which really surprised me considering how they sound as if they're barely able to get the music they recorded here out of their systems and into the air! Also the group was only a duo for this particular recording (or so I would surmise), also utilizing a bass guitar on most if not all of the rest of their output. One release currently available is an instrumental tribute to their favorite guitar heroes from Leslie West to Steve Hackett (!) and yeah, they consider this above release not metallic in nature but more in a "post punk" vein. I'll still be drawing my own conclusions for quite a long time, though right now I'm really hungerin' to hear that electric piano/drums duo who played that King Kenny's ~~night~~ afternoon at the Gallery oh so long ago...
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Little Diesel-NO LIE CD (Telstar)

Betcha wond'rin why I snatched this particular spinner up a good five years after the blasted thing was released. If you must know, this is the reason why I bought it! Yes, the UGLY THINGS review was less than complimentary, and although it ain't like I stake my curiosity on any item on just one review it wasn't like I was champing on the bit to rush out 'n buy the thing!

It wasn't until reading the aforementioned WAITAKERE WALKS post entry, coupled with memories of ex-Diesel Peter Holsapple's article on the Winston-Salem proto-punk scene in the first issue of KICKS that I decided that Little Diesel were actually worth whatever $$$ that Moviemarz were offering for this li'l slab. And it's a pretty hotcha one too. If your idea of punk rock was a buncha kids who got together in somebody's garage and did their best to pound out music tightly based on the standard CREEM/ROCK SCENE credo with loads of mid-seventies bargain bin wonders tossed into the mix well, this'll bring a smile to the face of anybody still mourning the loss of the late Gizmos!

It's got that Mid/South style and swerve down, that's for sure, with an approach that comes off like FLAMINGO-period Flamin' Groovies with a few Ludlow Garage audiences tossed in for good measure. The choice of covers are definitely atypical...yeah I'm sure there were more'n a few local garage bands out there who were adding MC5, the Electric Prunes and Bowie in with their own originals, but Little Diesel were also doing everything from Beatles filtered through Blue Ash ("Anytime At All"), Spirit ("I Got a Line on You") and even Kool And The Gang's "Hollywood Swingin'". Why the Stooge-influenced version of the Osmonds' "Yo Yo" was left off I'll never know, though you will be glad to hear that the platter ends with a hidden treat, a cover of Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" which I guess proves that Jymn Parrett was right all along to call 'em "punk rockin'" in the fourth issue of his sainted DENIM DELINQUENT fanzine! So good that I wouldn't even mind hearing the pre-Diesel Rittenhouse Square's take on Yes' "Yours is no Disgrace"!

Little Diesel also crank out some good originals too, the strongest of 'em being the New York Dolls "tribute" "Kissy Boys"! And the mix of these originals and the covers works swell as a lighter side to the at-times hard, underground and avant garde rock that was coming out of places as distinct as New York City, Cleveland and Prague during the same time. Nothing wrong with that naturally, but Little Diesel have a nice, suburban freshness to their sound which easily enough correlates to just about everything else that was retaining the wholesome ranch house picnic ideal during a time when Ameriga was suffering through everything from Watergate to STAND UP AND CHEER. I can relate to Little Diesel on this fun, UHF tee-vee potato chip 'n mayo kinda level, and really, maybe YOU should too!

2011-12-14T04:45:00.006-05:00

NOV SCHMOZ KA POP ROCK!

Maybe I ain't the most credible sorta rock scriber to pump out a post on power pop.

So what!

As if I'm any sorta "expert" on just about anything I blab on about here on this blog, and that goes for moom pitchers to old tee-vee shows to music itself! But since I have maybe """some""" information on a subject at hand and you don't, it's me who comes off looking like Encyclopedia Brown when it comes to such banter that anybody in his right mind woulda known or cared about long before the creation of this internet made the world so small that sometimes I feel like I'm engaging in a footsie fight with a Mongolian. And I know...I could leave the subject of power pop to a number of more talented and knowledgeable writers whom I sure could put to pixel just exactly what it was that made the "movement" so interesting way back in the seventies when any music of a rock 'n roll variety that was outside the extremely limited AM/FM sphere was looked upon with extreme suspicion.

And hey, I for one can recall the closing days of the seventies when even such a comparatively quaint character as Nick Lowe was considered to be the most shocking, despicable and bad apple evil punkster in that otherwise wholesome world of "rock music", even to the point where a relatively pleasant chart-struggler like "Cruel to be Kind" would get the quick flick offa the car radio! To just about everybody I knew, it was just more of that pesky punk rock that shouldn't be cluttering up our precious airwaves, which is one good reason why the Youngstown/Sharon/New Castle area has remained such a rust-bowl when it comes to high energy music to the point where a group such as Sister Ray hadda struggle to make any indent while lesser acts (all covers even!) were given the red carpet treatment in an area that claimed to be so big on the rock & roll ideal but were closer to the Snooky Lanson groove once you really got down to it!

Kinda makes me wonder how some of the teenage denizens of 1979 woulda held up to a CLOCKWORK ORANGE-styled listening session consisting of some of the harsher aspects of what was passing under that "vague rubric" (copyright 1985 Robert Christgau) of new wave that was being hawked via a larger underground cabal than anybody up there on the surface would dare admit existed. Yeah I know...at least we could dream...

The funny thing is, after listening to a load of the power pop quap that was making its way out back inna late-seventies it's surprising that the music as a whole never did find a huge following on the AM band (even in this area which admittedly was basking in some of the radiation being emitted from the Cleveland scene of the Raspberries, Circus etc.). Perhaps that would have been a vision only Greg Shaw would have thought feasible, but given how the movement could have pumped out some mighty strong, hard rockage while retaining the mid-sixties British Invasion feel you woulda thought that more'n just a few "radicals"'d latched onto powerpop as the return of mid-sixties triumph. I guess the proliferation of sopors and rise of disco and AOR put the kibosh on all of that, but really, wouldn't you think that for every pilled out arena rock kid stoked to the gills on Journey (and Anastasia Pantsios) there woulda been ten wholesome and 35% less cavities kids out there who sure coulda used some power pop in their lives???

Yeah, that's all water under the bridge and rock et roll as we knew it has ceased to exist outside our own personal fart-encrusted bedrooms, but that doesn't mean we can still LOVE it the same way that all of those silent majority types who were reminiscing about the Big Bands in 1971 did while the world was hippie-ing out around them. Here are just a very few "power pop" offerings that I've been listening to as of the past few weeks, hardly enough to make up an article worthy of Greg Shaw's BOMP! issue mind you but just the right thing for a mid-week musing that's bound to send you straight to the late-seventies when a more'n a few kids were more content to look back to the mid-sixties at that.

Of course I know why I ignored the Atlantics back when they were actually making some headway into whatever there was of a late-seventies power pop market. Given how my tastes were being drawn towards a more...how shall we say...avant garde mode being affected into a rock 'n roll frame of being (see Clevo/Ako/Kento sphere of sound) music like that of the Atlantics just didn't seem to phase me in light of whatever Roky Erickson (who you believe me was just as "new wave" to mine ears as Pere Ubu!) was apt to be doing. And hey, I gotta admit that the looks of the guys as espied on the left wasn't exactly conduit to my own sense of sartorial inelegance...talk about new wave morphed into gnu wave (copyright 1977 Don Waller) and a fashion sense that seems to have been birthed from the mind of a fellow who walked in on his parents goin' at it age three and thought dad was on top strangling mom thus twisting his own sexual identity into something I'd prefer not to get into on this family-oriented blog.

But hey, after listening to these three recent Atlantics exhumations that were released via the Something Hot Communications label (and available via CD Baby) I've gotta admit that these Bostonians were just the right mix of pop and hard rock to almost (operative word) punk (and even metal!), and the combination makes me wanna go and search out the group's own late-seventies big label release that most definitely got lost under the tide of a whole load of subpar sputum. Aural visions of weep wimp sounds got quickly flushed outta my system with these disques that prove hometown Boston certainly did have a life outside of the perennial Velvet Underground worship that it banked its rock 'n roll image on in the seventies. Not quite Raspberries or Cheap Trick, but still hotcha enough with potential AM weirdities like "Pop Shivers", "Lonelyhearts" and "Television Girl" that, in another world, might have broken outta the local scene ghetto and onto national acceptance, but frankly the kids were too album-oriented braindead to catch on. These guys might've been the best pop group to have come outta Boston since the Sidewinders, and they certainly were tough enough to match that hallowed act in the teenage potential top 40 outta nowhere hit department.

The two studio disques are definitely the best place to start since ATLANTICS LIVE has too much of that FM radio live sound that kinda irritates me due to the special frequencies that were aimed towards car stereos and dogs. It's a good slice of the live action the Atlantics could whip up but leave it for last. The rest, dug up from rare studio sessions and self-produced singles recorded twist '79/'81, are about as "representative" of what the power pop movement could have aspired to if only a few more spiritually-endowed teenagers out there realized it as the music speaking to their lives and bought these records up faster'n Fonzie (I know...repetitive, but I won't shut up until each and every person on this planet agrees with me, and after that it's straight to Mars all the way!)..

One interesting aside...see the guy on the far left in the first pic with the standard evocative of the mid-sixties snazz-looking suit 'n tie, the modified Moe Howard Beatle hair and the large birth control glasses? That's none other than Fred Pineau, a name that should ring bells if you were a fan and follower of the Boston fanzine scene throughout the seventies. Music-wize he was a member (along with John Horvorka) of Joe Viglione's typically Velvets-minded Astral Projections before ending up with garage band Aerosmith rockers Bonjour Aviators before becoming an Atlantic, and not only that he was a contributor to Viglione's much needed/missed fanzine VARULVEN. Smart credentials for a seventies icon of BLOG TO COMM proportions, and I gotta admit something that does add that special dimension to the music, considering that sometimes what goes on behind the stage is just as important as what's happening in front of a load of wild, screaming teenagers (or aging hipsters like ourselves pretending that this is what their image of what wild, screaming teenagers was supposed to be!)

Took me awhile, but I finally latched onto 2010's Poppees collection entitled POP GOES THE ANTHOLOGY that Bomp! Records unleashed on a public that we all know couldn't care less. But since the folk at Bomp! knew that and released it anyway I couldn't offer them any more kudos than possible. Along with the Planets, Best, Cross, Great Mistaque and a few dozen other groups due for an exhumation, the Poppees were part of the third-string underground New York scene, though where many of these groups drew their energies from various late-sixties/early-seventies rock movements the Poppees' credo was strictly of an early/mid-sixties vintage...mainly the early/mid-sixties Beatles back when the Fabricated Four weren't into their cosmic consciousness phase and could still belt out a Little Richard number with a surprising amount of conviction. Even with this retrogarde stance the Poppees were able to make a dent on the local scene, at least enough that various local critics could point to 'em as if they had just made some sort of big discovery worthy of Columbus..."hey, look at this new rock group I discovered all on my lonesome...they're so great, and while you're at it NOTICE ME for discovering 'em as well!!!"

Gotta admit that it's a good collection with both of the Bomp! single sides sounding about as clear as a good Beatle Cee-Dee bootleg of 1963 studio outtake vintage, 'n not only that but a coupla tracks I think were supposed to have appeared on the LIVE AT CBGB album power pop up. And (of course!) how could anybody forget some powerful in themselves demos and live throw-ins (including one from the old 82 Club, a subject matter I had been thinking of devoting an entire post to one of these days, at least when things start gettin' slow!) that present the Poppees as something more'n just a throwback nostalgia trip for girls who iron their hair and still proudly display their "George" buttons. I would have thought that the cash-in album under an assumed name they did in '76 during the Beatlemania Revival woulda found their way here, but I guess that dealing with Laurie Records ain't exactly the easiest task in the world so that'll have to wait for a future release.

***

Finally for today's power pop skim over comes this 'un, an album that was hot off the presses in '77 yet a flea market find in '82! Yes, here's none other than the first platter from the Chicago-area power poppers who were roamin' under the name Pezband! Like many of you, I remember the press this group, who were actually signed to the Passport record label, best known for importing progressive rockers like Nektar over to these shores as well as signing some of the local proggy home grown acts like Larry Fast's Synergy, had garnered back in the late-seventies. Heck, I even remember all of the stories about 'em in the pages of BOMP! and TROUSER PRESS which gave me the impression that Pezband must have had a mighty good press on their side if they could get all of the boffo print that they were sure grabbing up! And true these guys were just one of the many fine outta nowhere acts that made up the musical vocabulary of the seventies, but when this generation of music got washed away by the time of post-disco wave fluffy metal giddiness a few years later, didn't you shed a tear even though you were one of those sophistacados who thought they were nothin' but Raspberries whitewash?

The debut album is a little too slow and perhaps even maudlin for many (and whose idea was it to get Clarence Clemmons to guest on sax anyway...Little Steven?), but I like it if only for its smart seventies aura and abilities to, like the Raspberries, take the mid-sixties English rock these guys "grew up with" and beef it up for a seventies audience. Smart, sharp and quite sophisticated in its own mop topped way...too bad stuff like this failed to make an indent into the beanies of mid-Amerigan youth while Foreigner did, or maybe we wouldn't be living in the current state of duh that we most certainly are!

For a kiddo who grew up with the sounds of music like this blarin' from teenage radios and carpool drives long before I could even fathom the fact that someday I'd possess thousands of sound artyfacts let alone a few platter here 'n there, these recordings positively fit into my perhaps preconceived notions of what power pop had been and should surely remain. And although the genre certainly has lived on (I recall writing about a comparatively recent act called Morgan Taylor's Rock Group in the lastest issue of my very own fanzine) it ain't like it's as prevalent as it once was a good thirty years back when we were all younger, a whole lot more innocent and certainly stupider than we are now.

Still, ya just gotta wonder about what youth has become if it would reject hotcha high energy musics such as those of the aforementioned acts for the comparatively pallid sounds of most everything which has transpired over the past thirtysome years! I mean, kids can be wild, vile murderous and all of those other cool things just as they were in the past, but the music that backs their rage is definitely some of the most hollow to reach ear in quite some time. Dunno about you, but I could see small teenage cabals surrounding free jazz, or the Velvet Underground, or even the seemingly innocent strains of power pop come to think of it, but only a starry eyed geek or VILLAGE VOICE reader would actually believe that the rap and hip hop, not to mention the sickening strains of Lady Caga (the Patti Page of the teens) has that societal force or whatever other leftover Marxist jargon you can think of to transform people. But hey, I guess that's my aging image of what youth is supposed to entail so send me to the old fogie's home and slip me a bottle of Geritol and like pronto!

2011-12-10T13:15:00.000-05:00

So after last week's post what were you expectin', another blabathon only this time detailing the last 5000 years of civilization complete w/footnotes? Sheesh, it's like a blogschpieler like myself can't take a li'l break once in awhile!

Some oldies, some newies, and all are guaranteed to affect you, or not affect you, in one way or another. That's for wishy-washy nonjudgmental sure!

Mars-LIVE AT ARTISTS SPACE LP (Feeding Tube, 90 King St., Northampton, MA 01060)

From the same brains that brought you the boffo Gary Wilson album a month or so back comes this outta nowhere gem, an LP featuring the infamous no wave gang Mars live at the "legendary" Artists Space gig struttin' their atonal spew for those lucky and/or aware enough to have caught this act back when the catching was good. Each side features an entire set of typical Martian blare (the kind you've been accustomed to ever since the debut of NO NEW YORK oh so long ago) and although both of 'em are whatcha'd call "identical" in setlists there are quite a few variations that will make the more ass-tightened amongst us want to engage in some extremely close listening. It would be great if one could spin both sides in unison to discern the remarkable differences simultaneously but even after a casual listen I'm sure even a dolt like you will notice some remarkable variations twist the same numbers recorded on the very same evening!

Nice sound abounds too even if these were recorded by two different fans on two different machines (straight outta the audience!), and of course it's always fun giving this venerable group yet another listen because once you get down to it all of these seventies variations on sixties accomplishment were just as important and as crucial to the high energy listening attitude as the originals. As soon as the eighties clocked in the kicks really did get harder and harder to find until today it's all such a memory that even the smart hype regarding the latest in a long line of bared-wire intensity acts is nada but wishful if hopeless thunk.

Forced Exposure has been carrying this (still in stock!) and I'm sure even a casual perusal of the web'll turn up a few copies here/there. But whatever, along with the recent Jack Ruby platter this is living proof that maybe the true promise and potential the seventies underground possessed is still waiting to be discovered via archival digs such as these. One can only hope for more Artists Space-recorded bounty to make it's way to our ears, since acts like the Gynecologists, Daily Life, Terminal and of course the Communists (with former Kongress warbler and galpal to Von Lmo Iolsa Hatt) are just beggin' to be heard!

Bunwinkies-MAP OF OUR CONSTELLATIONS LP (Feeding Tube)

At last, an album that answers the question "Is Folk Rock Dead???" And, judging from the debut platter from this New England-bred group, the answer is nada! A pretty good album for these first-timers who sure know how to do a highly decent approximation of the Fairport Convention sound and sway right down to the charming femme lead singer, coming off very 1969 without the stultifying airs of hippoid pretension. Not only that, but the opening track sounds just about as Velvet Underground as all of those songs that both well inbred rock critics and fanzine upstarts were just itching to compare to the Velvets back in the early-seventies long before that became the de rigeur must do thing for these knowitalls to gain underground cred by!

THE SIAMESE STEPBROTHERS CD (Cuneiform)

Here's one that, despite the presence of MX-80er's Bruce Anderson and Dale Sophiea in the mix, I rarely play and perhaps given the company they keep (as well as the label they're on) it's not hard to see why. After all, any group that would boast not only Henry Kaiser (who never really lit any ass-fuses here even when teamed up with Anderson, whom I consider a vastly superior guitarist) but former Grateful Dead keyboadist Tom Constanten isn't exactly begging for me to give up precious pre-beddy bye time. But considering the presence of longtime faves Anderson and Sophiea I figured that this '95 obscuro'd be one worthy of the occasional drag out 'n reassess treatment, and if I didn't do just that you'd probably be reading my umpteenth review of LIVE AT CBGB's here so quit your bellyaching!

Thankfully the results more resemble one of the better (and frankly, there have been worse!) MX-80 side projects and not a Kaiser solo album nor Dead community of living and breathing denizens of Marin County morphing from psychedelic karma to Whole Earth Mental Retardation. Although Kaiser's guitar does feature prominently it's Anderson's soaring lines that hold this one together. Even Constanten's keyboards have enough of that hipster avant garde inclination that Dead pundits used to rave about in the sixties...a little Ra here and some nice Cecil Taylor posturing there...and doesn't get in the way like anybody with two braincells to rub together might have thought. And it all goes by smoothly on these mid-nineties reworkings of various smart-rock moves of the past, the most exciting which has to be the remake of Sonny Sharrock's "Blind Willie"...a fitting tribute to the recently-deceased guitarist whose presence certainly was felt, at least by people like Anderson and undoubtedly even Kaiser who've glommed on his playing for the previous quarter-century.

Not bad at all, and I didn't even mention that the drummer on this 'un was one Lukas Ligeti, a trusted name in various jazz and rock circles to this day and his dad was even György which only goes to show you that genes don't pop that far outta the pool after all.

THIS IS...THE SAVAGE YOUNG SONICS CD (Norton)

This bugger's over a decade old but (considering my advanced age) it sure seems like yesterday the thing was unleashed onto a public that had only then began to realize that if it weren't for the Sonics the Stooges or even Henry Rollins never would have existed. Well, nothing that obtuse, but it's sure grand listening to this noted Northwest Rock group during their oat-feeling days in the early-sixties when the Brothers Parypa were taking their cues from the Wailers and proceeding to thrust the entire local scene sound into warp drive. Naturally there are a lotsa Wailers covers not forgetting the familiar NW standards, current hits and vocals done with the addition of singers Marilyn Lodge and Bob Goldberg which make this a pretty hotcha trip back to a time which too many hippies say were dullsville, but with music like this who can believe 'em! And for fans of the "hit version" of the group the infamous SONICS HOUSE PARTY EP with Gerry Roslie handlin' the keyboard and vocal chores pops up at the end as to say goodbye to one era of rock 'n roll and hello to another! Snif!!!

The Mystery Trend-I'M SO GLAD I FOUND YOU CD (Big Beat UK)

Frankly, if it weren't for Greg Shaw's occasional name-dropping and that article on 'em in the oft-ignored COMSTOCK LODE I doubt if I'd even know who these guys were. But given the above hip creds plus the fact that the Mystery Trend even got their own mega-feature in the first issue of the essential CREAM PUFF WAR I just hadda latch onto this collection of what I guess is their "best" material as judged by some of the brainier collectors and anal retentives in fandom extant! I'M SO GLAD I FOUND YOU is a boffo set at that, a gathering of sides that gives us a good idea of where this group was coming from back during the early days of the "San Francisco Scene" when even the likes of the Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead could have been mistaken for the Chocolate Watchband and Teddy and his Patches if you squinted your ears just a li'l bit.

The Trend do have the early boss San Fran ideals in place from their Lovin' Spoonful-inspired folk rockisms to just the right touch of pop, sorta like Moby Grape and the early Flamin' Groovies did even when the Spoonful became the uncoolest group after Zal Yanovsky blabbed to the cops. In fact, you can also hear a li'l Great Society and Final Solution in their sound which would figure since all three bands were minglin' about at the time and surely some aspects of the groups mighta rubbed off on each other. This is San Francisco long before the acid burnouts took charge, way back when even punks like the Groovies coulda been mistaken for hippoids because nobody but a select few could tell the difference. Pleasant top forty-bred at one time, then quite chilling as on the infamous Verve side "Johnny Was a Good Boy" not to mention the shoulda-been-controversial "Mercy Killing" and overall a fine testament to just what the Bay Area could have accomplished despite the wave of publicity and ever-swelling egos.

The package set up's good as well, complete with liner notes from CREAM PUFF WAR's own Alec Palao as well as some back cover blurb which states that "the Mystery Trend are renowned as one of the first alternative rock bands..." An interesting assessment, but if this is so what does that make ABC???

THE MEAT PUPPETS CD (MVD Audio)

Missed out on the Pups' platters way back when for a number of reasons like the lack of money, not enough interest, and the blamed fact that by the time SST got 'round to sending me freebees for review all they felt like doling out were those fusion-y albums of varied quality, some of which were even recorded by label stars Black Flag! But what I did hear, via various live and radio sessions sent my way by Imants Krumins, was rather impressive as were the occasional tracks that would pop up on various SST samplers and the like. Plus I gotta admit that the way this group had become entangled within the nefarious web of BREAKFAST WITHOUT MEAT (perhaps thee best fanzine of any stratum to make its way outta the dungheap I refer to as the eighties) was a rather noble effort, This is especially true considering that the Puppets, like the fanzine itself, were lurching about in all directions with regards to their musical mayhem making them perhaps the biggest omni-inspired musical act to hit the rockism boards since MX-80 Sound!

This debut, reissued complete with a load of rarities the group produced on their lonesome prior to their signing, is the proverbial bee's knees as it takes the then-already decaying concept of "eighties punk" and begins to deconstruct it into terrain I'm positive a good portion of the local fashion plate underground shuddered in fear at. Taking punk rock to yet another strange level, the Puppets can mangle and tangle the best ways possible...then when you're expecting the crash through the hymen of perception they draw back on stylish instrumental forms and whacked out covers of "Everybody's Talking"! Don't ignore the inspired take on "I Got a Right" which is bound to blow every bad eighties variation outta the water! Genius untampered with and molded into its own personalist form...I like it!

BAD NEWS I JUST HEARD, SO MAYBE YOU HAVEN'T HEARD IT YET DEPT.: r.i.p. George Kuchar.

2011-12-07T06:14:00.021-05:00

Are me 'n Robot Hull the only doofuses on the face of this earth who remember WHEN THINGS WERE ROTTEN with any sort of seventies-inbred fondness? A product of the boffo 1975-1976 television season (perhaps the best season for television since 1962-63, although a few nebbishes will say '71-'72 had 'em beat all hollow), WHEN THINGS WERE ROTTEN sure burst out of the gate with some of the biggest network push seen on television since Sandy Duncan or at least Paul Sand's own woosh in the footrace of fame. I guess that ABC was banking plenty on this 'un along with Howard Cosell's own SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE hoping that the pair of 'em would help boost the net outta their perennial dungeon, but whereas the Cosell SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE turned more or less into a repeat of ABC's 1963 Jerry Lewis fiasco (plenty of advance hype and no audience) ROTTEN was the new JAMIE McPHEETERS...something that I'm sure most insiders thought had the oomph and pizzizz to be a definite shoe in but was either too good, too obscure or too sight-gagged for the standard television view of the day whose brain might have become too tapioca'd by repeated viewings of PETTICOAT JUNCTION coupled with a few CELEBRITY TENNISes tossed in for good measure. (And where does that put DON ADAMS' SCREEN TEST???)

Too bad about that, because after watching the entire thirteen-episode run of the series (something I could never have hoped to have done at the time considering the abnormal amts of homework thrusted upon me during my bootstrapp'd days) which were, surprisingly enough, lifted from some ancient A 'n E 'casts I gotta wonder just why this show flub-a-dubbed the way it did. Anybody with a leftover testicle for brains'd've thunk it'd be a big hit considering how it mixed standard mid-seventies sitcom fare and fast-paced whacko humor courtesy creator Mel Brooks (who surely was hoping that recent BLAZING SADDLES/YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN box office bonanza'd translate into big time Nielsens), and given how it was about time for a return to mid-sixties weird fantasy sitcoms a la THE MUNSTERS a show like this seemed custom made for the big sitcom revival I sure was hoping for. At least it sure made a biggo imp. on me, especially the way it mixed and matched hotcha GET SMART-styled humor with pre-Bicentennial whiz custom made for a suburban pudge like myself who was just starting to get a grasp on the good 'n cheezy side of life as it manifested itself in used record bins and flea market traipses during one of the more fruitful periods in Ameriga extant.

Great choice of cast with former Hymie the Robot Dick Gautier in the starring role and future late-seventies ABC regs Dick Van Patten and Bernie Kopell (himself an ex-SMART alumni!) as Friar Tuck 'n Alan-a-Dale respectively doing their best to keep the show from becoming too snide for the more stody members of the viewing community. Richard Dimitri's so boffo in the twin role of Puerto Rican Merry Man Renaldo and his prissy twin brother Bertram that I sure wonder why the Mel Brooks and spinoff cadre of the late-seventies didn't put him to use other'n a brief role in the mockobrooksian WORLD'S GREATEST LOVER. As for Peter Sabin as Big John well...at least there would be a few years of bit parts on THE LITTLEST HOBO and maybe even a PASSWORD PLUS if yer lucky, and why the roles of Little John and Will Scarlet weren't filled I dunno, but Billy Barty and Fred Travalena mighta had some steady work if somebody had only thought about that!

Can't complain about Misty Rowe taking a brief sojourn away from HEE HAW in the role of Maid Marion even if you can tell she's trying to ape Madeline Kahn when the precise moment arises (and there's nothing wrong with that even if you couldn't stand the original). Can't argue with success and while I'm at it future MONSTER SQUAD vampire Henry Polic II (who Bill Shute was raging against with an atypical fag-hating rage back when Polic was hosting a short-lived ABC daytime game show) does a pretty good Harvey Korman as the Sheriff of Nottingham making me wonder if the guy sat through at least ten showings of BLAZING SADDLES straight while taking notes. Well, I guess if you couldn't get the real thing imitations would be good enough (after all, this was tee-vee) and the pair do rise to the occasion especially since they're doing this for Wednesday night prime time and not the silver screen.

Another tasty treat that's in store for those of you hungerin' to cop a sight of this series are the myriad asst. of great guest stars. Old timey tee-vee fans like me were (and remain) heartened that the likes of Carl Ballantine (McHALE'S NAVY) and Joe E. Ross (CAR 54) showed up briefly but impactly if you know what I mean. And, in an episode directed by none other than Marty Feldman, Dudley Moore plays a Middle-Eastern prince from an olive oil producing nation that's part of OOPEC who chooses to wed Marian as part of a trade agreement. Considering the vast array of talent on both sides of the set and the smart ability to try pleasing not only the doofuses but the snide humor lovers and the intellectual bores you woulda thought that this show'd stayed at the top of the ratings for a heap long time, but I guess it was too good to last which is why you eventually saw Gautier taking on bit sitcom roles for years on end kinda like the way Louise Lasser (whose own MARY HARTMAN MARY HARTMAN was a '75 breakout hit) was doin' the same despite being Ameriga's Sweetheart a good year or so earlier.

But at least we got these thirteen episode to glom, and I'll forever (or at least until I croak) cherish the great sitegags and snoot humor and weirdo gags and literalisms taken to their bizarrest levels every time I give these discs a spin. You might too...I think a legit version without the poor editing and "bugs" is wallowing around out there somewhere...you would do yourself a favor to snatch it up, y'know...

2011-12-03T07:02:00.007-05:00

A SOUNDTRACK FOR THE SEVENTIES---DONE MY WAY!!!

I just happened to be thumbing through Nick Kent's boffo seventies history/memoir APATHY FOR THE DEVIL last night, and while perusing the handy-dandy list of albums scrunched in the back of the book that Kent mentioned as being the creme-de-la-best of that decade the idea struck me that """""I""""", no bout-a-doubt-it hands down and all that, could do a much BETTER job of compiling a more accurate collection of seventies longplaying movers and shakers! Not only that, but the idea struck me as something that would be an excellent topic for a weekend post, especially considering how I really don't have any fresh material to write on about at this time down and out blogschpieler that I am. I must humbly admit that although our tastes certainly do overlap I pretty much topped Kent's choices all hollow (and on a number of levels as well)...it's non-debatable that most of his choices are "spot on" as the English say, but as I've mentioned way too many a time the guy was, and remains, bogged down into a lotta dull singer/songwriterisms for my constitution! And in a field of Iggy/Dolls/punk worship, his paens to the likes of Joni Mitchell stick out like a pretty sore Canadian-transplanted-to-Southern California thumb!

OK, I guess that's his business, and at least the man ain't no Chuck Eddy which is something we can all be thankful for! And although I probably haven't heard all of the best records to come out of the seventies I know that I've made some rather excellent choices in these selections along with the prerequisite (and much desired) explanations/analysis, all the while of course being totally subjective to my own personal tastes and beliefs which I have no compunction but to force down your throat! (As if Kent's own choices weren't subjective, but I guess he has the right to spout off his faves considering his punk credo not to mention all of the drugs he imbibed during his creative height!) I know you'll beg to differ w/regards to some of my entries and will tell me so in the most uncomplimentary, vile way possible, eh? Anyway, I dare you to...feh!

1970

The Mothers of Invention-WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH (Bizarre/Reprise)-The seventies might have been Frank Zappa's decade, but by '69 he had already disbanded the original Mothers of Invention and was slowly but steadily getting his comparatively dull jazz fusion chops down pat. At least this final album by the original group stands as their best ever despite or perhaps because of its cornucopia of styles and downright nerve-bending appeal. My personal favorites include "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbeque", Little Richard's "Directly From My Heart to You" (with special guest Don "Sugarcane" Harris), "Dwarf Nebula Processional March and Dwarf Nebula", the Lowell George-yelped "Didja Get Any Onya?" and of course the feedback-drenched title track even if Zappa just has to put on his typical airs of condescension towards his typical audience lapping it all up when it's all over and done with. Did I ever tell you that I (with the encouragement of my teacher) did a presentation on Zappa in high school music appreciation class (senior year) and played the "Dwarf Nebula"/"My Guitar..." pairing as well as a track from 200 MOTELS and ended up getting a "C" anyway...undeserved because the teach was mad at me for (allegedly) inadvertently knocking the knobs off of his new stereo system. Wha' th'...so he turned out to be an unmitigated jerk. What else is new?

Tim Buckley-STARSAILOR (Straight/Warner Brothers)-One thing you can thank Zappa for is helping along the career of this oft-neglected singer/songwriter who sure did a helluva better job at it than most of the El Lay types who cluttered up the days of Vietnam protest with their whole wheat mental breakdown we were supposed to feel sorry for them about. After filling up one side of his Elektra contractual obligation album LORCA with a heavily avant garde jazz-inspired vibe Buckley presented an entire album of his post-Coltrane visions which were just too "out" for the fans who had latched onto him during his HAPPY SAD days. True this eventually was the inspiration for a lotta Joni Mitchell jive to come but Buckley did it first, and a whole lot better.

The Stooges-FUNHOUSE (Elektra)-Although fans of Cat Stevens would say otherwise, this album was perhaps thee ultimate way to say WELCOME TO THE SEVENTIES to hoards of maladjusted teenage rock and roll mouth-foamers worldwide. Can't think of a better way to get anybody ready for the sleaze, decadence, degradation and utter stupidity that decade would unleash on us. Massive hard rock blare which used to get called heavy metal permeates through a primitive pulse music that owes as much to the Troggs and Seeds as it does the Velvet Underground and Who, all ending in a mass of avant garde wail thanks to the appearance of mystery saxophonist Steve Mackay. Do you think that this album has a cult following? Judging from the name dropping mentions throughout various mid-seventies issues of CREEM and DENIM DELINQUENT I would kinda think so myself.

Sonny Sharrock-MONKEY-POCKIE-BOO (BYG Actuel)-Between the above items and this 'un the seventies sure got off to a rollicking start, or at least these platters served as the proper counterpoint to the various embarrassments that were taking place within the once wild and woolly world of rock 'n roll. Not that MONKEY-POCKIE-BOO was a rock album, but given the atonal spree and outright sonic splatter it sure as shootin' coulda been one!

David Bowie-THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD (Mercury or RCA, depending on whether or not you were cheap enough to pick up the cutout version so prevalent in mid-seventies bargain bins)-By the early eighties Bowie didn't just seem like but was another industry joke, but those who could remember his pre-Ziggy persona would always point to this particular album as evidence that the guy could play rock 'n roll without anybody pouring hot lead up his hiney. Considered Bowie's heavy metal masterpiece by people who remember what that term meant before a lotta subpar swishers co-opted it, THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD's dark, depressing air certainly did fit in with the general mood of the world making me wonder why it didn't do better during its original Mercury release days. A winner from a guy who shoulda done more for stylophones than Rolf Harris ever did!

The Flamin' Groovies-FLAMINGO (Kama Sutra)-Amidst the rock (no "roll") scenes prevalent on both the AM and FM mindwaves this one certainly stood out amongst the utter dross that era is still known for. But then again, who was looking for a straight-ahead rock 'n roll platter with nods to the fifties and sixties all wrapped up in a neat early-seventies package? Not the kid across the street who used to parade about with Grand Funk Railroad albums in hand, savvy?

The Velvet Underground-LOADED (Cotillion)-Like in the case of the Stooges, was this record the death knell for the sixties or the harbinger of seventies things to come? For their final album foray the Velvets reached back to their early days for inspiration and came up with an album that in many ways set the tone for a whole lot of garage-induced efforts to come out in the following ten years. And when the likes of Blondie, the early Talking Heads and Television were making their recording debuts a good six years later this sounded all the more current!

Alice Cooper-EASY ACTION (Straight/Warner Brothers)-The Zappa/Herb Cohen sausage mill was really on a roll in '70 not only issuing an inordinate number of Mothers albums that were bound to sell bazillions by their covers alone but records by a whole slew of acts signed to the Bizarre/Straight family of labels that were intended as tax writeoffs but were pretty gawrsh-it-all good in their own right (well, at least some...). The second Alice Cooper album being amongst 'em, a true winner despite the hippies at ROLLING STONE relegating it to their "condemned" section. Okay, it might not be a smooth sail all the way through (esp. with the atypical SoCal-styled soft schmoozers "Shoe Salesman" and "Beautiful Flyaway") but it sure kicks the tarts outta Melanie! Along with STARSAILOR proof that Zappa at least had some musical appreciation that extended beyond his phony public persona, and given the hybrid of PRETTIES FOR YOU-era psychedelia, heavy metal and plain post-Stooges styled addledness a strange one for Zappa to have associated with, dontcha think?

1971

Hampton Grease Band-MUSIC TO EAT (Columbia)-This one sure came and went faster than you can say "death or ugha-bugha!" Not that the concept of mixing the burgeoning Southern rock stylings of the day with Frank Zappa-derived weirdness was something that was totally out of the ken of human comprehension, but this Atlanta group did just that with two platters fulla downhome RFD riffage mixed with West Coast freakdom that kinda reminded me of a mad mashup of the Allman Brothers, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Captain Beefheart. A unique experience featuring a crazed redneck vocalist with about as Deep a Southern accent as you can imagine hollering out non-sequiturs while the rest of the group keeps up in a particularly post-psychedelic manner that you think woulda got 'em a contract with Bizarre Records like snap! Columbia eventually signed these guys through future Capricorn head Phil Walden and rushed this out to a public that couldn't care less back in the spring of '71 where it stiffed and earned its reputation as the second-worst selling rock album in the label's history! That tale might be about as apocryphal a quote as the Eno one about the Velvet Underground's first album and how everybody who bought it formed a band, but that's how these legends are made, eh?

Hackamore Brick-ONE KISS LEADS TO ANOTHER (Kama Sutra)-Is this post just another excuse for me to re-write about musical acts that I've blabbered on about for the past thirty years awlready? It sure would seem so, but compiling a list of the most important rock 'n roll albums of the seventies and leaving this particular bargain bin wonder out would be more than criminal. If the cover shot of four New York City punks posing on a tenement fire escape wasn't enough to sucker you in then maybe a spin of the group's definitely garage-oriented music would. Imagine a mix of Crazy Horse with or without Neil Young and LOADED-period Velvet Underground, then conjure up some moves that wouldn't be heard at least until the debut of Patti Smith's HORSES a good four years later. Now let it sink into your minds that this music was being created by some of the most unassuming, down-to-earth guys who had no pretensions about being "rock stars" or big time hustlers of any kind. No wonder it went from the "New Artists" rack to the cutout bin overnight!

The Flamin' Groovies-TEENAGE HEAD (Kama Sutra)-Looking back from the perspective of a good four decades it's sure strange to think that the Groovies would have been allowed to record three albums to date. You'd think that a band of their sub-punk caliber would have been lucky enough to make just one before being consigned to the trash heap, but stranger things have happened and these San Franciscans fortunately were given the go ahead at the forward-thinking Kama Sutra label for this winner that jumped the guns on a lotta seventies epiphanies. You can hear everything from rockabilly revival to pre-punk on this party discs to end all party discs, and not only that but, as in the case of Hackamore Brick, Richard Robinson produced the entire shebang making me wonder when somebody is gonna give this guy his dues even though he was an industry whore (but one I could only have wished to have been!).

Black Sabbath-PARANOID (Warner Brothers or Vertigo if you prefer)-It's amazing just how much of the heavy metal oeuvre has oozed from the pores of this album; everything from Tony Iommi's stark guitar leads to Ozzy Osbourne's demonic-torment vocals has manifested itself in the metal to come for years on end. However, it's even more amazing how metal as a whole REJECTED a whole load of lessons to be learned from PARANOID---the slow burn jazziness of "Planet Caravan" or the spine-twist ending of "War Pigs" being just two subtle examples. Of course judging from their following albums I don't think Sabbath learned themselves either.

T Rex-ELECTRIC WARRIOR (Reprise)-The beginning of a legend, and one putting an end to the sixties psychedelic dream while giving birth to the seventies glitter punk stomp. I've spilled enough regarding this album but the mere thought of those days when I'd stare at the cover in the record department just dying to hear what was inside is enough to fill even longer and more boring reviews than the ones you're reading today!

Alice Cooper-LOVE IT TO DEATH and KILLER (Warner Brothers)-If '72 was Alice Cooper's breakout year then '71 was the Cooper band at their creative peak. After two entertaining if (perhaps) uneven albums LOVE IT TO DEATH showed the band focused and ready not only for attack, but to successfully take the Stooges formula and run to the bank with it which is more than the Stooges could do back then. KILLER was even more direct in its approach and also direct in the way that it influenced the early-seventies punk rock contingent (talking Rocket From The Tombs and the Electric Eels) the same way the Stones and Yardbirds influenced Alice and company back when they were mere Earwigs. Once Cooper made it to the top most of the magic was gone, and by the time he was hanging out with Jack Benny and George Burns we knew it was gonna be lace and whiskey from here on in. But hey, better him than Iggy, who would have just made a big fool of himself had he ever got lucky enough to get booked on HOLLYWOOD SQUARES!

The Pink Fairies-NEVER NEVER LAND (Polydor)-It's funny, but at a time when it seemed as if most of the record buying populace wanted to forget that psychedelia had ever happened in the first place acts like Hawkwind, Kevin Ayers and these guys were keeping the memory of '67 alive. Well, at least the Fairies were doing it with a heavy helping of Detroit-styled rock tossed in making this the album the MC5 could have made but they went with HIGH TIME instead. Okay, sometimes NEVER NEVER LAND does drag when it gets into the Floydianisms of "Heavenly Man", but when the guys cook on everything from "Uncle Harry's Last Freakout" to "Teenage Rebel" they're taking 1967 and adding it to 1971, and getting 1977 punkitiude as a result! A surprising outta-nowhere hit from a group that (thankfully) never did get outta the Ladbroke Groove of things!

YOKO ONO/PLASTIC ONO BAND (Apple)-Ono, like former Fug Tuli Kupferberg, was one of those innerlectual avant garde types who couldn't tell a Gene Vincent from a Joe Clay unless Lamonte Young was standin' right between 'em. But when Yoko was thrust into the rock 'n roll world she made a number of albums that stand the test of time more than her subsequent singer/songwriter platters which were vain attempts to get people to "like" her (as if they every would!). One of the bloodiest scars passed off as music since FUNHOUSE, complete with that fantastic track done with Ornette '68 of which I would like to hear more. And if you don't believe me then believe Eddie Flowers who was ranting and raving about how it was this particular platter (or at least b-side "Touch Me") which readied him up for the big avant punk explosion of the late seventies and perhaps his own solo work!

David Bowie-HUNKY DORY (RCA)-A marginal choice considering how this one is less rockin' than THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD yet more engaging than the followup releases. At least "Queen Bitch" has that teenage punk drive to it and even if Bowie never did have his images down pat at least that'n a selection of the tracks he did with clear Velvet Underground influx would have made a good album, y'know? Jacques Brel meets Andy Warhol might be a good summation.

The Rolling Stones-STICKY FINGERS (Rolling Stone)-I don't really think so, but I don't want to earn the ire of the rabid Rolling Stone lovers who might tune into this blog. Well, if I wanted to be really jugular-aiming I coulda put JAMMING WITH EDWARD here (or was that '72? Soooo long ago...)

The Mothers of Invention-200 MOTELS (Bizarre/United Artists)-Again, a "controversial" inclusion, but next to the blah for blah's sake of JUST ANOTHER BAND FROM LA and the dialogue-riddled even if brilliant in spots LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST the mix of orchestra favorites, straight-ahead rockers and usual bizarraties made it a fun enough farewell to the second-generation Mothers. Hey, has Rhino Handmade ever reissued those Flo and Eddie albums that came out on Reprise? I remember special ordering 'em way back in 1975 and they were out of print even then!

Amon Duul-PARADIESWARTS DUUL (Ohr Germany)-Best of these commune thumpers' brand of totally whacked out psychedelic discs recorded around the time when psychedelic certainly seemed like a dirty word. Mike Stax (in the pages of one of his late, lamented Beathaven Records catalogs) said it sounds like a three way jam between the Jefferson Airplane, the Velvet Underground and the Manson Family which only goes to show you that he'd say just about anything to sell records! Especially if it's true...

1972

ROXY MUSIC (Island, Reprise or Atco...take you pick!)-I still find it hard to comprehend how these guys ever made it so big time. Really, with an album as good and as uncategorizable as this (owing enough to the English progressive cause with glam overtones and enough Velvet Underground Stoogianisms to confuse even the staunchest adolescent out there) you'd think Roxy would have been a one-shot wonder raved about in hushed tones a good forty years later. But I dunno, I still think that the shuffling of influences with such smoothness is an asset, and better these guys had a career than some of the also-rans who were cluttering up the import bin scene at the time!

Sandy Bull-DEMOLITION DERBY (Vanguard)-I usually hate folkies but this guy's mix of everything from country to blues to rock 'n roll really has an appeal to my own sense of underground credo. Too bad this one didn't get around more or else the seventies would have been less hippydippy singalong and more varied even!

Yoko Ono-FLY (Apple)-Gotta say that after this 'un it was all over. True you can hear the roots of her faux singer/songwriterdom creeping in even this early in the game, but when Yoko's yelping and bellowing like a wounded hyena and the guitars are cranking up then the spirit really does move me. True it doesn't know whether it wants to be John Cage, Carole King or Iggy Pop but it's kinda fun watching the three of 'em wrassle each other!

Can-TAGO MAGO (United Artists)-Living inna USA this 'un totally passed us by (in fact the "mainstream" press over here didn't start mentioning these guys until 1974, and then in an offhand, sidebar sorta way) but I guess that if you were in England there was no way to escape this German onslaught of sonic fury and other teutonic delights. Get the new 40th anniversary edition complete with an additional live disque that's bound to clear up the acne on your butt!

THE SIDEWINDERS (RCA)-Along with the Velvet Underground, Stooges, Dolls and Magic Tramps these guys were getting touted as being the "house band" at Max's Kansas City which wasn't quite the case, but considering all of the other house bands who played that famed haunt what's wrong with creatin' a li'l mystique anyway?. Eight years later it would be Von Lmo, the Zantees and BMT's who would be getting that honor, but in '70/'71 it was the Sidewinders et. al. who were sorta laying out the battleplans as to what would transpire in the East Coast underground rock sphere at least until the likes of Madonna came about and washed it all away. But man, why these Sidewinders (as opposed to the later-on post-Giant Sand ones who surprisingly also got a contract with RCA!---not that I can pass judgment on 'em never havin' givin' 'em a spin!!!) never made it I'll never know. Some called 'em a good group in the Rolling Stones trad while Richard Nusser in the VOICE thought he heard Velvet ruminations but whatever, these guys put out a good kicker of the buttocks platter which certainly didn't deserve to go deep six the way it obviously did. Now if it came out in '77 and deep-sixed, that would be better!

Mott the Hoople-ALL THE YOUNG DUDES (Columbia)-Yes, there are many reasons one could hate this album, but just because a whole load of eighties-rock dolts and doofs went gaga over Ian Hunter and Mott the Hoople ain't good enough a reason for you to dump on 'em. Oh yeah, I did forget about Mick Ralphs...sorry.

T. Rex-THE SLIDER (Reprise)-This is one of those albums I keep meaning to pull outta the pile yet either forget to or can't find it. But whatever the case, wasn't this the one that the fans who discovered 'em when they just started to go electric thought was the last good 'un before the big fall? Hefty points though for containing a number of bona-fide classic numbers like "Baby Strange" and "Ballrooms of Mars", not to forget one of the earliest references to Max's Kansas City (and Patti Smith) on record!

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band-CLEAR SPOT (Reprise)-Nice cover concept and a pretty enticing if comparatively subdued effort from Beefheart and crew. Still has enough of that strange spider sound that bored Britishers would ape with relish on self-produced EPs a good decade later, only with a lot more taste and lack of finesse that's always made rock 'n roll that edgy music I like. After this one well...I did mention how I thought UNCONDITIONALLY GUARANTEED sounded fine in the light of the teens so maybe even a spin of THE SPOTLIGHT KID would be fitting in a seventies context? Or should I just sit 'em all out until SHINY BEAST like everyone else? As usual, your vote counts!

Various Artists-NUGGETS (Electra...later on Sire)-OK, this double set contains nothing but mid/late-sixties punk/psych treasures that were mostly forgotten by the general populace at the time, but oh what a set it was! Along with the Dolls, Stooges, Modern Lovers, Sidewinders etc. a huge influence on what was to transpire in the latter portion of the decade, and not only that but a platter that I'm positive helped renew interest in the likes of Sky Saxon and Roky Erickson long after most people had written 'em off as a buncha sixties hasbeens.

1973

The Stooges-RAW POWER (Columbia)-Predictable choice true, but can you think of a better if obvious inclusion when it comes to post-Vietnam/pre-disco brain muddle? It's funny, I can remember 1973 yet I can't recall hearing anything about the Stooges or their big comeback album and subsequent career which pretty much fell apart before everybody's eyes. I guess that's what I got for sticking my nose inside copies of SPIDEY SUPER STORIES rather than CREEM, but no matter what my excuses may be it can't hide the fact that if RAW POWER had only entered my life a lot sooner than it had maybe I wouldn't have been the miserable wretch I was during my youth. I would have been locked up in a padded cell, but at least I would have retained my dignity

Doug Snyder and Bob Thompson-DAILY DANCE (New Frontiers)-There always was plenty of talk going on about the similarities and perhaps even cross-influences between punk rock and the avant garde jazz scene, but this album's the first that I know of which can claim to be equal parts both yet is alien enough that neither camp would dare claim it to be part of their particular clique. Doug Snyder plays the guitar as if he's trying to imitate the sounds heard on a tour of a steel mill working beyond capacity during the height of World War II while Bob Thompson's vast array of percussives come off like a million Maureen Tuckers sending log drum messages inside your head. Reviewed by myself at least four times throughout my stellar "career" so I guess one more mention won't hurt!

Eno-HERE COME THE WARM JETS (Island)-Even I can still remember the huzzuh bubbling about when Eno's first solo album came out in the waning days of '73. Well, HERE COME THE WARM JETS certainly was a fresh and unique platter that you knew was gonna inspire an entire generation of morons and it did, but I won't hold that against Eno. But in retrospect, it's sure nice to know that somebody could have made an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink album like this which took ideas such as electronics and distortion to new heights, without ending up sounding like Todd Rundgren.

Can-EGE BAMYASI (United Artists)-Judging from the likes of everybody from Ian MacDonald to Hot Scott Fischer (and Eddie Flowers via two fanzine writeups!) EGE BAMYASI was the last real expression of early-Velvets-styled avant rock with hefty doses of Stooge mania tossed in, and judging from the majority of doofs who worship at the altar of this platter maybe they were right.

THE NEW YORK DOLLS (Mercury)-The first and best from the leaders of the New York glam parade. Why labels didn't take a cue and start signing the Magic Tramps, Ruby and the Rednecks and the rest of the glitterboys after the success (for wont of a better term) of this one remains one of the great mysteries of life.

Sparks-KIMONO MY HOUSE (Island)-By the time the seventies had clocked out the Brothers Mael and whoever they were with were being portrayed as the biggest nebbishes that ever came out of the seventies English cuteboy rock brigades, and maybe that's why even I wasn't exactly champing at the bit to pick up any of those latterday Sparks albums no matter how cheap they were and easy to find. But at least in the mid-seventies there seems to be a certain coolness to Sparks...dunno if it was their playing up to the English smart pop (T. Rex, Roxy Music...) contingent or Ron Mael's mustache. Probably was their album covers, but anyway I'll stick by these guys even if their eighties spawn was pretty disturbing to say the linn-drum least!

The Pink Fairies-KINGS OF OBLIVION (Polydor)-Good enough to warrant a US release! Larry Wallis takes the helm of the group and helps drag out the Deviant legacy at least another two years!!! Of course it was so good you knew it wouldn't go anywhere.

1974

Eno-TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN BY STRATEGY (Island)-Eno's second, and last good dive into the cesspool of sound. Again many moves here reverberated in not-so-wonderful ways throughout the following eight or nine years but I can't really fault the man. I can fault him for most of his new age career misfires, but I'll leave that for another place and another time (maybe).

Roxy Music-COUNTRY LIFE (Island or Atco, depending)-Eno may have been doing fine on his lonesome during this time in his "career", but Roxy's output proved that his departure surely wasn't the death knell that I have the feeling a few pundits out there thought it was gonna be. Nice, slick (to its overall advantage) and thoroughly decadent in the boffoest CREEM way imaginable. Not only that, but the gal on the right really has a nice set of juggins on her!

Big Star-RADIO CITY (Ardent)-Boy I've really had a hard time thinking up enough good albums to have made it outta the year of '74 intact, but this one does stand as perhaps one of the best even though that mere fact would surely slip by the usual FM-bred rock dolts. And just about every one else come to think of it. Perhaps the last great early-seventies proto-punk album before the era of quickie cutout garage masters such as this and the Sidewinders gave way to the era of punk records that were actually taken note of by the public in a good year or so's time.

Sparks-PROPAGANDA (Island)-OK, I never got to hear the late-seventies Sparks records, but considering what a snoozer INDISCREET turned out to be this was the Brothers Mael's last top-notcher for quite a long time. It's got enough of that gooshy mid-seventies lush deca-pop to it that I immediately want to revert to those days while hearing it, and have on numerous occasions had to be restrained from running into the bathroom with a copy of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC and a jar of Vasoline upon hearing the opening strains of the title track!

1975

Lou Reed-METAL MACHINE MUSIC (RCA)-After Reed's comparatively pale post-Velvet Underground career got off the ground in the early-seventies this double LP set came off like the aural equiv. of those snuff films from South America whose legend were circulating amongst the denizens of High School USA. My mental idea of what this sounded like was quite different than what it actually was, and in some ways I think my take woulda made for a much better release! But until I become an aged faggot junkie who led a sixties cult band I guess my MMM would just be a buncha jagoff unlike Lou's effort which remains an unquestionable masterpiece

NEU '75 (Brain)-Saying goodbye to the early-seventies krautrock scene on one hand and hello to the late-seventies punk rock era on the other. People who thought that krautrock was just Genesis with a lotta schnitzel tossed in should listen to this one and see where all of those British fops got their own ideas in a short while!

THE DICTATORS GO GIRL CRAZY (Epic)-Never has an album received such a buildup in the hip press (fanzine or otherwise) yet suffered such a humiliating defeat in the marketplace. Thirty-six years later we all know who has been vindicated, but back then it was like they sure coulda used a little filthy lucre their way, y'know...

Patti Smith-HORSES (Arista)-Unlike the Dictators, at least the huzzuh surrounding the arrival of this platter translated into decent sales and visible teenage recognition, two important elements of any real seventies deca-chic success. Of course it helped that Patti had a great band and the music took everything that we liked about the sixties and molded it into a seventies frame of mind. And it permeated enough into the mindsets of everyday teenage psyches that I can even remember one schoolmate who just hated that loud and obnoxious punk screech (he being more of a Cat and America guy) but he loved Patti, and if she could get this guy to give her a spin who knows what she could've done with the rest of mellow teendom?

The Sweet-DESOLATION BOULEVARD (Capitol)- The Sweet's shelf-life didn't quite last as long as some would have hoped...after all, by the time the seventies clocked out they had lost their lead singer and were trying to survive by cranking out some mighty tiresome offal. But at least when their cylinders were clicking they were able to produce some mighty surprising high energy wail that had the folks at CREEM and BACK DOOR MAN crawling the walls as if it were the second coming of John's Children. The English writers didn't care for 'em one whit, which I guess is one of those things that doesn't translate across national boundaries or something like that.

Zappa/Beefheart/Mothers-BONGO FURY (Discreet)-It must've been a disgrace for Captain Beefheart to have been reduced to being a member of the Mothers of Invention, but after the poor sales of his previous albums he was lucky that he could get any job! And Zappa, then riding even higher on the FM/progressive rock scene than he had even in the sixties, was lucky enough that Beefheart was around to make this live album sound as good as it was. Even better than ROXY AND ELSEWHERE (which only made it because of the cover pic where Frank gets a hand job onstage) because of Beefheart's natural talents and the way he could make usually duff Zappa numbers sound good if he sang 'em!

1976

MAX'S KANSAS CITY 1976 (Ram)- Along with the LIVE AT CBGB set perhaps the first taste most got of the New York rock scene that was getting so much attention thanks to a buncha rock crits who were trying to be the "first" to "discover" this group or that. Notable for three Wayne County songs, Pere Ubu's "Final Solution" (and at a time when its reissue was being held up because of Max's!) and of course the dreaded Suicide.

Patti Smith Group-RADIO ETHIOPIA (Arista)-Boy do I remember the hoots of hate this 'un produced during the final days of 1976! I mean, finding a positive review of Patti's sophomore longplayer anywhere was akin to finding a virgin in West Middlesex but I still thought it was the best, a record that mixed everything from MC5/Velvet Underground-styled free rock to pre-suck heavy metal that typified where rock 'n roll really stood in a year where groups like Boston and Journey (or were they big in '77?) had suddenly climbed to the top of the scrap heap. The title track alone is worth the price of admission with its free-jazz like assault that was directly influenced by the MC5's room-clearer "Black to Comm" as well as that obscure group Lenny Kaye had with former Insect Trust/rock critic Robert Palmer, tapes of which Patti and Lenny would listen to for their own musical (amongst other things) inspiration. How about releasing those for us hungry rock maniacs anyway...after all, it's obvious from this blog that I sure could use a li'l inspiration myself!

The Flamin' Groovies-SHAKE SOME ACTION (Sire)-I'm sure that many people who had written the Groovies off as dead 'n buried in '72 were surprised to see this one come out, and not in the cutout racks either. Don't worry though, since SHAKE SOME ACTION would eventually join the Kama Sutra albums in the $1.99 bins within a short while which is of course where I picked mine up. But the Groovies' mix of mid-sixties Beatle rock done in a mid-seventies punk drive manner was something that certainly set the stage for at least one aspect of that monster which was comin' at us known as new wave, but don't blame 'em too hard.

THE MODERN LOVERS (Home of the Hits)-The rockpress putsch regarding this 'un still resonates within my beanie, but although I was really really really tempted to get this one so bad I hadda wait a good three years to get my copy! And do you know why? Because this one was originally distributed by PLAYBOY records and I didn't want my folks catching me with a copy thinking I supported the pornography business! I hadda wait until ABC records did the Beserkley dist. job before laying a hand on this legendary platter, but after all's said and done and I've heard this powerful and teen-honest music all I can say is...what a putz I most certainly was! Like, I coulda gotten the cassette release of it which woulda hid inna collection a lot easier, or just stuck it in the back of the stack where they were least likely to look. Of course, it wasn't until I was at least nineteen when I figured out to do stuff like that!

Elliot Murphy-NIGHT LIGHTS (RCA)-Hooo boy, was this one also hated by the rock crits of 1976 who really were tryin' to outdo each other with their snide asides and comeuppances regarding the once-laureled "singer/songwriter" Murphy, who was (I supposed) hitting the skids once this third album of his arrived on the scene. But sheesh, with a group consisting of ex-Mod Lovers Jerry Harrison and Ernie Brooks plus drummer Andy Paley backing him up on about half the tracks, not to mention special guests like Doug Yule (taking a break from his snooze-like American Flyer) giving NIGHT LIGHTS the proper underground credo, how could anything go wrong? The Patti tribute holds up loads more than critics such as James Woolcott and Georgia Christgau (I think) claimed, and the general feeling is so MAX'S KANSAS CITY 1976 (and a li'l '77 even!) that this shoulda been on the jukebox there post haste! Sure the lyrics come straight outta pretentious city, but at least the Arp String slush helps this one out quite nicely....and I HATE Arp Strings too!

THE RAMONES (Sire)-More than Blondie or Talking Heads (both of whom showed their true colors as time and fame rolled on) the Ramones' debut stands as the beginning of the reconquista of rock 'n roll after a good two or so years of relative calm. Funny how I thought these kids were actually high school students (and just as nerky as me!) back then who got their chance to make a record...if only my preconceived images were true, but hey, this one is still a real killer.

Brian Eno-DISCREET MUSIC (Obscure)-Definitely not a rock item, but back then this was a pretty brainy choice of spin for a guy who was taking this avant garde thing in for the first time. Ambient mush turns you into Karen Quinlan on the a-side, while Baroque goes Bop on the flip.

1977

Zappa/Beefheart/Mothers-CONFIDENTIAL (Wizardo)-I was gonna leave bootlegs offa this list but only once in a lifetime does a platter such as this come about to startle and inspire, as well as throw down the gauntlet to those who say that such music should not be allowed to be heard. What this was, was that somebody got hold of a Zappa/Beefheart radio "interview" (mainly just Zappa and Beefheart reminiscing to old recordings) made during the pair's '75 tour and edited it in between various classic Magic Band/Mothers rarities and, using an offhanded comment by Zappa himself, made it look as if this were in fact an authorized bootleg. Besides getting our first taste of "Metal Man Has Hornet's Wings" from the Zappa/Beefheart group the Soots circa '63 there are tracks from the more recent jazz-oriented Mothers (who weren't bad mind you, at least compared to what Zappa would eventually become), the original group doing the first ever take of "King Kong", a TROUT MASK REPLICA track being passed off as a demo and other funzies which will appeal to fans of both the Zappa and Beefheart camps. Wouldn't mind hearing the entire tape of the first honest-to-goodniz Mothers of Invention gig! Splattered color vinyl means that you're gonna be paying a lot more than the $4.99 I laid down for the thing oh so long ago!

Wire-PINK FLAG (Harvest)- Wire has had more of an influence on what was to come than any of their compatriots. More than the Sex Pistols or any of the English p-rock exponents, Wire's mix of Ramones punk and Velvet Underground art rock was special enough to earn them a berth on the Harvest label at a time when they were just starting to flounder away from their joss stick roots. Even a guy who is not that crazy for a good portion of the late-seventies UK punksterisms can settle back and enjoy Colin Newman and company help nudge rock 'n roll to its next logical level.

SUICIDE (Red Star)- Next time anybody comes up to me and sez that Suicide were great because they gave way to the likes of Soft Cell and Human League I'm gonna bop 'em inna ol' schnozolla! Next time anybody comes up to be and sez that Suicide were great because they were one of the better exponents of late-sixties bared-wire intensity reshaped for the decadent seventies I'm gonna buy 'em a steak dinner. Unless it's Brad Kohler...found out he's a vegetarian so it's strictly Morningstar Farms for him!

The Stooges-METALLIC KO (Skydog, or Import Records if you're Amerigan)-The big Iggy comeback of the year is something that thirty-five-years later (!!!!) remains about as controversial as any major rockism disturbance in the atmosphere. That year saw no less that four legitimate longplayers featuring him with or without his Stooges in tow being released, and from what I can tell these records did pretty well in making a dent in the consciousnesses of the teenage record buying audience to the point where at least that gal in Calculus class knew that Iggy had something to do with Bowie, or something like that, y'know. But for my money this 'un was the tops, better'n his RCA albums as well as the infamous KILL CITY...recs which weren't bad by any measure and in fact quite aerie! Live and uncensored in Detroit making for perhaps "thee" ultimate live experience ever captured on wax until Suicide's 23 MINUTES IN/OVER/UP BRUSSELS.

Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers-ROCK N ROLL WITH THE MODERN LOVERS (Beserkley)-This one was hated by many of the people more attuned to the new wave uprising of the late-seventies, but I find myself liking this late-seventies Richman a lot more'n the other Beserkley releases which I thought were nice in and of themselves. Maybe that's because when I first heard it I was going through yet another one of my sickening ennui-laden bouts with existence and the acoustic melodies seemed to smooth over the rocky chasms like resin sealant on a ridge-laden tooth. It does make for nice Sunday afternoon settle-back enjoyment but sheesh, even this far down the line all it does is make me feel as insecure as I was when this album first flew in and out of the racks nationwide.

MX-80 Sound-HARD ATTACK (Island UK)-Notice the relative absence ('cept for the Wire LP) of English punk rock gunch in this column? Well, sticking my neck out even further on the guillotine I'll let you know that I left the usual Sex Pistols/Clash types off this list because frankly, I feel that although their efforts were fine enough they just can't measure up to what was being done elsewhere as far as suburban teenage punkisms go. In fact, I could make the argument that English punk rock's finest hours were during the early/middle portion of the seventies when groups like Spunky Spider and Stud Leather were releasing singles on small outta nowhere labels and getting little monetary or critical compensation for it. I could make the argument, but right now I'm a li'l tired and don't want to get into it for the sake of saving a li'l energy...

What does this have to do with MX-80 Sound? Well, they were about as Amerigan as you can get, and thought they seemed to fall into that "punk" category because they had short hair and played something that didn't sound like ELP you could only call 'em punks if you wanted to call Neu the same. Actually these guys were rehashing the best of early-seventies heavy metal moves filtered through an equally early-seventies punk motif (back when the metal/punk interface was mighty blurred) and added a whole lotta satire, sarcasm and influences from all over the hotcha rock boards into their sound. And this, their longplaying debut, was a mighty example of just where all of that mid-Amerigan rock was supposed to be headed, though I guess there were too many roadblocks (and not of "sound") being tossed in all of these groups' way.

Still, a brilliant debut from an act that still seems to be creeping and crawling as if 1976 never did end. You can't really understand just how much of an impact MX-80 has on my life to the point where I can recall the exact day, time, moment and spiritual haze I was in when I first heard 'em on that hot summer day way back when.

Television-MARQUEE MOON (Asylum)-Total surprise, especially since this group was being hyped so much at the time that you woulda thought that an album woulda come out in '75 when the news regarding these "punk flashes" was fresh. Well, I will admit that I'd take the Eno demos and related recordings of the day over the legit debut, but MARQUEE MOON still has not only the group's best-known numbers (at the time) but a pretty intense slow burn that does come off about as jazz rock or as psychedelic as it does punk. Ex-TV Richard Hell's Voidoid's BLANK GENERATION album figures along the same lines as well, and shows the perfect dichotomy that had made the original group tick so, only to tear everything apart like you knew it would.

1978

Pere Ubu-THE MODERN DANCE (Blank)-If you were the kinda guy who could afford to read every underground rock-oriented fanzine available during the late-seventies you woulda thought that Pere Ubu were the Stones to Devo's Beatles, or some other equally ridiculous analogy. But while it didn't take Devo too long to go from being underground to industry it took Pere Ubu at least two albums before going from underground to happyhappy. At least this debut platter presents the group during their early post-Laughner days before the mood swing back when David Thomas was still Crocus Behemoth and the specter of Laughner was still lurking about somewhere.

Various Artists-NO NEW YORK (Antilles)-Kenneth Anger once wired a Woodstock film collector asking him for money so he could make a movie about an artist whose work was consuming him to the point where it would eventually overtake him unto death and he wanted to capture it all before the grisly process had taken its toll. Maybe Brian Eno had the same thing in mind when he recorded the New York no wave before it too splintered into various other forms that would bear little semblance to the sound at its height. And Eno was right, for not too soon after no wave would evolve/distort with groups breaking up or reshaping and end up something quite different (and less enthralling), or better yet turn into something that was a pale shadow of its former self making many aficionados of the form mutter...wha? But at this point in time the sound was fierce and pretty potent, the logical end point in the previous twelve or so years of rock's evolution from the Velvets through the Stooges through Sonny Sharrock through the New York underground. Maybe after this nothing really did matter anymore.

Various Artists-STIFFS LIVE (Stiff)-Nick, Elvis and Ian before that whole Stiff aura began to waft into giddier new wave-y musicianship even the flacks at ROLLING STONE could appreciate. And Eric and Larry did well too, the former unfortunately not able to replicate the success of his labelmates and the latter pretty much acting as the underground connection between early-seventies thud and late-seventies smart pop. It was an exemplary live set once you get down to it from the days when even those more commercial gnu wave bands we've come to loathe sounded a whole lot sweller'n that gaggy AM/FM twaddle that Chuck Eddy built an entire writing career on.

The Dictators-BLOODBROTHERS (Asylum)-Like a few noteworthy fans of the day, MANIFEST DESTINY doesn't quite grab me the way I guess it should, but this 'un certainly was a return to Dictators glory past. Hard rock (or heavy metal in the classic CREEM sense) with hefty nudges to '67 Who tossed in, drenched in the tough vocal maulings of the one called Handsome Dick Manitoba. It'll even break your heart, like on the sad teenage lament "No Tomorrow" which is the big hit Alice Cooper shoulda had but by then it was too late.

1979

THE CRAMPS GRAVEST HITS (IRS)-Yeah, just a collection of early single sides rushed into the shopping mall record shop market to mingle alongside a wide array of Jackson Browne wares, but whatta collection!!! Shows the talents that they were at the beginning of their long career and gives an inkling of how that talent would grow and be nurtured blah blah snooze snooze you know the schpiel already so why read any further?

Chrome-HALF MACHINE LIP MOVES (Siren)-Can you think of a better way to close out the decade than with this apocalyptic piece of avant punk that still sounds as futureshock as the day it came out? Monster vocals hovering over electronic crash mixed with percussive clang sounding like the Familiar Ugly being tossed off a cliff in the back of a trailer. This was supposed to be the sound of the eighties only a buncha twee types happened to get hold of the reigns and what we ended up with was...Madonna?

Pere Ubu-DUBHOUSING (Chrysalis)- Ubu's last stand before the big deep-six into areas I'd prefer not to talk about. Better production and execution than the debut, and the thought of "Thriller" playing through the night during the month of April that year still reminds me of the incessant pressure and mind capsize that I hadda endure during that sorry period in my existence. Along with Swell Maps, the Raincoats (see below) and the Red Crayola (ditto) the sound of Young America (and Young Canada, Young England, Young Germany...) going belly up.

THE RAINCOATS (Rough Trade)- As you know I loathe the term "post-punk" with a passion, and I find it really snobbish to refer to groups such as the Raincoats with such intellectually skewered terminology that was probably invented by some brainiac rock critic whose attention was turning from punk rock to British Weekly flash-in-the-pan faster than you could say Gary Bushell. True these gals' power would eventually diminish in the light of the pale eighties but the Raincoats sure released a doozy with this debut platter that had a stronger Velvet Underground lurch to it than many of the groups who were getting the Velvets tag hoisted upon 'em left and right. So good that even the irritating English lower class socialist wonkisms don't get me down.

The Red Crayola-SOLDIER TALK (Radar)- I really liked this record because it proved that the garage band rock of the mid/late-sixties was still in full force and alive under the new guise of seventies underground screech, which is something that the likes of Greg Shaw and Lenny Kaye knew already but it was grand that the news was filtering down to people on my level by this time. And hey, SOLDIER TALK was a special treat because all of the guys from Pere Ubu were aboard to help out in one way or another so it was like getting even another platter outta that crew, who obv. were becoming very busy in the midst of their new-found "success" if you wanna call it that. Along with the original C/Krayola albums which were being reissued by Radar at the time a prime example of the old saying "if you wait around long enough anything will come back in style"!

The Contortions-BUY and James White and the Blacks-OFF WHITE (Ze)- In this part of the country everybody thought New York was all disco and Studio 54 but the people who lived there knew better. To them it was more of the gritty underside of life, the hard scronk of the likes of Suicide and the Contortions, groups who seemed to be saying goodbye to the seventies in the harshest ways possible outside of Throbbing Gristle. The Contortions especially were very notorious in the burgh, and their two albums for Ze released towards the end of the year pretty much give you an idea of at least one side of the avant garde coin which was packing 'em in at clubs such as Max's Kansas City as well as all of those flybynight outfits trying to cash in on the new thud. BUY may take a little getting used to with its brittle sound though the herky-jerk of James Chance will overcome you upon impact. The funk punk of OFF WHITE, while sounding pretty thin and white itself, works in its own universe and doesn't care one whit about you. Frankly the music this led to (mainly the free jazz contingent on punk turf) was a whole lot more to be desired but BUY and OFF WHITE were something pretty large in their own right at least when it came to things like New York and underground rock and hypodermic needles...stuff like that.

Brian Sands-REHEATED CHOCOLATE TANGOES (Bizart)-OK, so like I'm perhaps the only diz on the face of this earth who waxes poetic o'er this 12-inch mini-LP/maxi-EP release on colored vinyl'n all, but maybe I won't stop yapping until everybody on the face of this earth agrees with me. Ex-Milkman Sands whipped up a nice stew here, more'n just the "juxtaposition of sound" that Anastasia Pantsios dismissed this as, and hearing him and his band (including ex-Milk/Circus/Andy Gerome guitar mauler Al Globekar) take on various Tyrannosaurus Rex, Buddy Holly, Gerry and the Pacemakers and Captain Beefheart forms sounds just as meaningful to you (as an unrepentant rock 'n roll fan) today as it would had you heard this 'un when it first hit the stores late-'79 way. Oddly enough, a lotta future Amerigan underground stylings in the eighties seemed to echo the same retro-cum-futuristic ideals that Sands laid forth on this debut. Not surprisingly, none of 'em even came close.

TOM VERLAINE (Asylum)-Considering that ADVENTURE didn't quite live up to MARQUEE MOON's promise of an actual beyond-cult career for Televlsion, this Tom Verlaine solo debut sure comes off like what I woulda hoped LP #2 woulda been. Not to detract from ADVENTURE's own special approach, but TOM VERLAINE has that special spark, grace, approach and feeling that somehow made me more of a TV fan than I originally thought I could have been! Now please, somebody release that "unissued album" Television did when Peter Laughner was in the band for an entire week...that might revisionize my opinions re. this group even more!

2011-11-30T11:55:00.003-05:00

BOOK REVIEW! MISS FURY BY TARPE MILLS (The Library of American Comics, 2011)

Betcha wonder why I bought this particular collection of forties vintage Sunday Funnies, hunh? C'mon, like you can't guess??? I mean, lemme give you a hint! Or how about TWO nice, big, JUICY hints at that!!! Y'know, sometimes I just wonder about just how much of a mental capacity you readers (let alone myself) really do have!

But yeah, it should be pretty obvious why I purchased this new collection of MISS FURY reprints, though even if I weren't such a sucker for tits I woulda bought the thing anyway. Y'see, I've always wanted to know more about this long-forgotten newspaper strip featuring the first ever costumed female superhero (who made her grand appearance before the grandmama of 'em all WONDER WOMAN!) ever since Wally Wood drew her with typical Woodian hubba-hubba-ness in that "Comic Strips Old Folk's Home" spread that appeared in some late-fifties MAD. And while I'm at it, the plain ol' fact that Timely soon-to-be Marvel then Atlas until finally settling back on Marvel used to reprint her Sunday travails did add somewhat to the mystique even if technically Miss Fury was not whatcha'd call part of the superhero stable at that venerable company. Naturally the whys and wherefores behind just exactly why Miss Fury was never invited to join the All Winner's Squad remain under wraps, though if you ask me I think Marvel was secretly coveting her costume which would, with few not-so-minor alterations, become virtually the same one used for the Black Panther a good two or so decades later!

So, I finally get to read these Sunday strips and well...I gotta admit that MISS FURY ain't exactly the kinda comic that I was hoping it'd turn out to be. Unlike that other comic strip-bred costumed crimefighter the Phantom, you rarely see Miss Fury in her panther-skin costume which is a real disappointment for a spiritual Saturday Afternoon Barbershop Kinda Kid like myself. In fact, most of these sagas feature Fury in her "secret identity" as young debutante Marla Drake getting into the undercover espionage racket without the aid of her magic costume making me wonder, for all intent purposes, just why this strip was conceived and billed as being even remotely superhero-oriented! Well, considering how the actual panther skin works "black magic" when Drake dons it, and that for every good deed done its power invokes two bad ones you can see why the gal fears the use of her special powers! But gee, this is supposed to be a superhero(ine) comic and ya'd think what the boys were more'n anxious to see was some gal with nice guffies dressed in a skin-tight panther costume fighting axis spies and various other underworld shadies 'n not a lotta soap opera love and secret identity shenanigans!

So yeah, MISS FURY can creep on at times, but when the action picks up and Drake slips on the ol' skin (though unfortunately no scene like the one on the cover transpires in this tome!) the strip is about as good as any other red-blooded comic to hit the papers of the forties. Artwork's snat too even if more comic book-y than strip and best of all the plots can get kinda creepy at times, like when this certain Nazi badski is about to dissolve the toddler son of Drake's old boyfriend in a vat of acid (he already did it to the brat's pet rabbit!).

Some pages are inexplicably in black 'n white (like you'd think the publishers woulda paid someone to color 'em up!) and the forward by noted underground cartoonist/feminist Trina Robbins only proves that she probably likes just about anything as long as it was done by a woman (well, not quite but it sure reads like it sometimes), but despite the occasional if expected gaffes and goofs I gotta say that I mildly enjoyed this volume. Not enough to dish out extra for any future ones mind you, but as far as what it is and where it stands, MISS FURY is like...pretty enveloping.

2011-11-27T10:10:00.005-05:00

Still reeling from the Fangsgiving banquet I indulged in three days ago to really get into whatcha'd call any thought-provoking opening schpiel. Not that there's really anything of a socio-political nature that I would care to bore on about, but I'm still pouring through a stack of recently-purchased platters that I sure enjoy enough to blab onto you regarding their worthiness. So without further a-doo-doo...

The Gruberger Brothers-GREETINGS FROM READING PA LP (Rerun)

And right when I thought the entire well of archival fanzine rock had been spent for all eternity! I mean...who woulda thunk that anybody outside of Bear Richert'd even care about releasing an entire album of rarities that were birthed from the brains of the Gruberger Brothers (Solomon and Jay), they of seventies-vintage fanzine scum fame! But hey, the smart brains behind Rerun Records have, and this doozy of an album featuring the pair cranking out their bedroom (too primal for garage!) recordings has come just in time to lift me from the bitterness of cultural despair.

And for that all I gotta say is...now when are you gonna get to the rest of the plethora of fanzine writers fantasizing about being rockstars in their beswetted boudoirs laying down early-seventies riffage that wouldn't find a viable audience until at least five years after the fact? (So I guess the well of seventies fanzine bedroom recordings hasn't been as spent as I surmised!) The Kenne Highland tapes (with the verifiable anthem "I Got a Dagger For You Jagger") are just beggin' to be released as are the Metal Mike Saunders recordings which feature future Angry Samoans riffs that would be put to good use a whole lot later in his career. And you thought he was swipin' 'em all from Ted Nugent, eh?

Not to say that Solomon and Jay don't utilize enough early/mid-seventies hard rock watermarks on this platter...after all late-sixties garage band moves and early-seventies heavy metal equaled late-seventies punk rock, and if anybody could work out this equation with any semblance of intelligence it would have to be the kinda guy who spent the years 1968-74 immersed in Cream via Zep via Iggy via Sabs and digested it all with the entire written screed of Lester Bangs. After which defecating it all out as the p-rock that millions of disaffected if aging scions of the Atomic Age still act as if it only happened this past afternoon. That would be a good approximation of where the Grubergers were headed with this album, a hard churn out that takes the already minimalist/animalist natures of the Gizmos, O. Rex and Afrika Korps and reduces it to even tastier depths.

Kinda like eighties Ramones meets "Muff Dive" Gizmos with one of the best unassuming vocalists (who I assume is Solomon) doing some of the tastiest talk-singing ever since Lou Reed. So packed with all of the better ideas to come out of the seventies that it would look just swell if it were stuck in some $1.99 bin at one of those cheap-o record shops that used to be all the rage at least until they deep-sixed just because they were so great they just hadda die!

Malcolm Mooney and Tenth Planet-INCANTATIONS LP (Milvia Son)

Sheesh, I woulda thought that an album of Can covers by Mooney and his long-time backing group Tenth Planet would have been a little...you know...too obvious. But whaddaya know, this album doesn't go out of its way to offend you like I always do. Mooney may sound like he's ready to head for the Social Security office, but he can still manage to belt out a throaty vocal just like he did when he was in Can, and Tenth Planet sound just as good as any truly off-the-wall, experimental outfit from the seventies that snuck Can recordings in between spins of Iggy and Beefheart did..

The live performances (in front of what seems like a small, invited audience) are faithful to the originals yet refreshingly different enough that these don't come off like some exploito re-recording to sucker in whatever audience there would be for ancient krautscapading out there. Energetic and punky, and all through the entire spin I kept thinking about how this would have been the perfect 1979 surprise outta nowhere had this only transpired a good three decades before it actually did. But then again, given the archival, almost sacred aspect of its mere being you know that it couldn't.

I've read that one of the members of this group was previously in Negativland, that eighties SF group who used to go nuts on the samplings (to the point where Brooce Springsteen dealt out some workingman's legal action) and were obv. kraut-oriented in their approach to underground sound spasm. Never did pay attention to 'em because frankly, from what I've heard they seemed too eighties experimental 'stead of seventies high energy, but after spinnin' this soiree I'm having thoughts about checkin' 'em out a good three decades after all of you decadent snoots living off trust funds in large city enclaves most certainly did! If any of you have any concrete, honest and typically snide comments regarding whether or not I should shed shekels over old Negativland albums please lemme know via the combox listed at the end of this certainly pallid posts!

AT HOME WITH SCREAMIN' JAY HAWKINS LP (Rumble, UK)

Gee, the guy was pretty busy...not only pumping out records, but pumping out babies as well! Make Father's Day a special one with an album by the daddy (in more ways than one!) of them all Screamin' Jay Hawkins! A repress of his Epic debut longplayer, this one's not only got the all-time biggie hit "I Put a Spell on You", but Hawkins gasping, choking and gurgling through a whole slew of standards ("I Love Paris", "Old Man River", "Deep Purple"...) and creepy non-PC plastered plunkers like "Hong Kong" which no doubt about it goes to show you that black people can be downright racist despite what Dick Gregory sez!

But hey, I can overlook a few lapses into bad taste, which I must say come off so refreshing here in the teens when the modern-day variation on the "uplifters" have pretty much turned the entire planet into one sick sad concentration camp where we all gotta smile and march in unison. At least records like this exist to show us just how fun, wild and uninhibited those "repressed" fifties really were, and like Bo Diddley and Link Wray Hawkins was one fifties survivor who certainly remained meaningful in a rock/blues sense long after everybody on this earth seemed to pronounce 'em all dead! (Hokay, I never heard his disco cash-in sides which Byron Coley so valiantly railed against, but somehow I get the feeling that even I would appreciate those in their [and my] own twisted, unnatural way!)

Primal Scream/DTK-MC5-MUSIC FROM THE FILM BLACK TO COMM LP (Easy Action, England)

I don't think I told you this, but I actually swore that I wasn't gonna snatch up any record, tape, Cee-Dee or neural implant for that matter that was related to the recently-reformed (whatever's left of the) MC5. Naturally this was for purely aesthetic purposes, since really I kinda thought a buncha sixty-plussers romping around on a stage like they were still eighteen would seem about as silly as an aging doof like myself still writing about long-dead rock 'n roll ideals. But since I figured that the best thing to do with aesthetics of any kind is to toss 'em out the window, I not-so-promptly changed my mind and decided to snatch this live platter of a show where the new "Five" take to the stage with an act called Primal Scream, about whom I know nada about, and hear for myself what was happening for better or (hopefully not) for worse with regards to what the revised "MC3" were up to long after you woulda thunk nobody on this earth'd care anymore.

Sure glad I did too, because this superjam is one of the more exciting records to grace my turntable in quite awhile, a throbbing mass of aural matter that doesn't sound as contrived as something along these lines could get but way better'n alla those revived bands cranking out the old hits for an audience that can now afford 'em. The opening blast of the Them/Troggs classic "I Can Only Give You Everything" sets the pace as the two acts scramble through a couple Primal Scream numbers, a rousing "Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa" and a side-long take on the title track which combines the best avant-rock proclivities of the original Five along with a free jazz feeling that you woulda sworn was ripped right from the soul of a BYG Actuel session! Only the mid-song appearance of John Sinclair reading one of his post-beat poems drags the energy levels down, but otherwise this is a great screamer of a platter that equals Ascension, the Sonics Rendevous Band, Destroy All Monsters and the better of the eighties Australian aggros for total all-out energy assault!

Various Artists-FILLING THE GAP volumes 1-5 5-CD box set (Psychic Circle, available through Forced Exposure or CD Universe)

Yeah, I know...just why would I want to splurge my heard-begged depression-era wage moolah on yet another sixties garage band punk rock sampler! Especially since, for all intent purposes, most of the recent ones (and I'm talking twenty-five years of recent ones!) are either one-spin-only affairs featuring good if lackluster crank outs, or worse yet one-spin struggles to get through thanks to the plethora of late-sixties fringe jacket Grateful Dead-inspired jackoffisms inherent therein. Yeah, I have been burned on way too many of these collector/fan-oriented AMAZING GARAGE PUNK ROCK CLASSICS collections that have turned out to be nothing but ENDLESS HIPPIE TRIP NOODLINGS, and if I could get my money back on all of the erroneously-advertised collections I've been known to purchase then maybe I could afford not only all of those other expensive records that have escaped my grasps but that lifetime membership in hair club for men that I've been desperately in need of these past few years!

Glad to say that these FILLING THE GAPs ain't quite the duff choice even if there are what I would call a few "questionable" entries to be found. And true, a lot of the material here is, as they say, psychedelic (something which I wouldn't exactly think was a dirty word even if some of its practitioners weren't exactly the most hygienic people), but it still has that punk rock feeling and attitude even if the music might trek into questionable early-seventies terrain. At least the connection between the hard romp of the mid-sixties and the post-wail that at the time was more often than not being ignored in favor of more relevant Cat Stevens and JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR fluff has been made, and frankly if you ask me it's about time more aficionados of the form were coming to the exact same conclusion!.

The obscurities mingle with the class of NUGGETS, and even if there are a few hunhs? here like Jake "Dazed and Confused" Holmes there are also such in-place rarities as the post-Red Krayola Saddlesore single side "Old Tom Clark" and some non-LP Moloch, a group who did live up to their tangential connections with the Stooges and MC5 even if their background was pure mid-South. Makes for a fine high-energy listening session for those simmer down evening hours as well, and not only that but the enclosed booklet's as informative as these fan-bred archival digs can ever hope to be!

...AND IN CLOSING, YET ANOTHER SNIPPET FROM A ROCK 'N ROLL-RELATED DREAM I RECENTLY HAD. Editing all of the extraneous jizz outta it, what was I doing but finding myself in my basement listening to (get this!) the Imperial Dogs roaring through a particularly potent rendition of "Sweet Jane", only with a slightly different if better chord progression and lyrics that were being extrapolated on a whole lot more'n even what Lou Reed was apt to do during his height in the Velvet Underground. Stronger than the Third Rail take and in fact coming off particularly Rocket From The Tombs-ish, the "raw" sound quality (complete with a drop out during the second verse...talk about dreams imitating low fidelity reality!) certainly adding to the overall high energy effect as lead singer Don Waller was tossing lyrics along the lines of "the kids just wanna hear some rock, with a lotta cock". 'n yeah, I don't exactly know what that means either but since Waller sang it with such conviction I just hadda sit up and take notice. Could use more dreams like this 'un, especially since the other dream I had was one of those innervoid nauseating grossouts with disturbing images galore that kinda make you not wanna go back to sleep for at least the next fifty years!

2011-11-24T07:50:00.004-05:00

I know it...I'm not supposed to come out and admit that I like early eighties new wave acts like the Social Climbers. I mean, why should I show my insecurities in public even more than I already have? And really, why should a living and breathing lump such as myself care if the likes of a Gerard Cosloy or Patrick Amory think I'm "cool" or not even if throughout my growing up years the first and foremost thing that was rammed into my mind was to be popular and "with it" just so's people would like me. Those days are (perhaps thankfully) gone forever, and since people still loathed me even if I tried so hard to be one of the gang why shouldn't I just come out and say that I don't give a flying fanabla what you think regarding what I think of the Social Climbers' LP/EP-set that Drag City has rescued from the chasms of eighties new wave obscurities.

I like this not only because the group has enough "hooks" they can sink into my rockist psyche from leader Mark Bingham also being the mastermind behind Bloomington Indiana's Screaming Gypsy Bandits of yore as well as MX-80 Sound producer not to mention the Climbers' omnipresence on the early-80s CBGB scene, but because for being an early-eighties new wave band complete with the usual trappings (though not as retch-inducing as what the mainstream concept of new wave was at that time) the Climbers sure put out some rather energetic and definitely non-rote music. Yeah, in some ways it is typical 1980 beatbox electrofodder, but good electrofodder at that which coupled with Bingham's smart set songwriting certainly doesn't bug ya the way too many of these New York acts rife with members trying to look like early-sixties heartthrob pop singers of Italian heritage, and I'm even talking the girls, most certainly did!!!

It's true that the Social Climbers sound "dated", but at least they're stuck in a rather good warp twixt New York innovation and scene disintegration. You already know the score I've been ranting for ages about how the downfall of Max's Kansas City (where bonus track "Tickhead" was laid down) and the passing of Lester Bangs heralded a new era of Ameriga goin' squeaky-clean 'n flabby, and where Ameriga goes the rest of the world follows 'n all that which certainly doesn't add up to funtime jollies on any count. The sounds to be found herein do straddle the punk generations rather swimmingly, even though at some point I would say that Bingham and crew seem to be falling way too hard into then-contemp Talking Heads art emote with a bit of sacrificin' on the rock 'n roll. But before you're ready to head for the nearest vomitorium the crew can cook up some hotcha and unique ideas, at a few points even coming pretty close to what the Monks were up to on "That's Why" and hey you know that they never even knew who the Monks were until a few years later like the rest of us! And thankfully these guys ('n gal) spare us the horrid new wave whine vocals that were so prevalent amongst various acts with David Byrne haircuts and trust fund bankrolls.

Only real bummer to this 'un is that Drag City blew a good opportunity to pad out this platter with the wide array of Social Climbers material available on various samplers (such as the SEGMENTS cassette as well as the one-minute slice of a live jam recorded with jazz guitarist John Scofield taken from the STATE OF THE UNION album) and elsewhere for all I know. As it is, the only bonus fodder that pops up here's the aforementioned Max's track as well as version of Bernard Herrmann's "The Day The Earth Stood Still" that was laid down when ex-Theoretical Girls drummer Wharton Tiers joined the act. C'mon Drag City, you coulda done better, unless you were saving all of this stuff for a future endeavor...

If you can't get enough Mark Bingham here then why don't you try this solo album of his entitled I PASSED FOR HUMAN that was released on the Dog Gone label during the decidedly non-musically interesting year of 1990. Although the lingering dinge of post-new wave pop moves does permeate this platter I found myself enjoying this for what it was, an outta-nowhere mildly rocking effort that doesn't offend even if it doesn't quite inspire. Jazzy in spots, experimental all over and even the eyeballing towards mainstream pop moves doesn't make you wanna rip it off the laser launching pad perhaps because Bingham does have a sway with the lyrics and the music isn't anything to wanna slay crippled nuns 'n orphans over. Not only that, but Bingham gathered up some good name musicians to help out in one way or another including Scofield, bassist Steve Swallow, Peter Stampfel (who once joined the Social Climbers onstage at CBGB during their first anniversary concert, something I wish would have ended up on the Cee-Dee reviewed above!) and none other than famed Man Boy Lover Allen Ginsberg who fortunately doesn't get into his kreesh-na-kree schtick or any explicit ravings about the kid fresh in from Biloxi he met in some bus depot last night.

I'm sure some would find it strange that jazz guitarist Scofield as well as former Ayler bassist Swallow would be working with the likes of Bingham, but in actuality the two camps go back quite a ways. At least as far back as '80 when Bingham was producing the Scofield trio's BAR TALK album for Arista. And hey, I still recall that day eons back when I picked up the VOICE and noticed that the Scofield trio were opening for the Social Climbers at CBGB, thinking that either Scofield had gone underground no wave rock or at least was peddling his music to the jaded New Yorkers the same way everybody on the new jazz scene from Joseph Bowie to Sonny Sharrock were! Boy was I a stupe back then, though as time rolled on and I bought the STATE OF THE UNION platter I proved myself to be even stupider because when I saw the Social Climbers track (the one-minute segment of a jam to a tape loop of Jerry Falwell of all people!) and Scofield's name mentioned in the credits I thought he was a bona-fide member of that band as well!

Now that I'm older and can sort things out a whole lot more'n I could thirty years back the truth is plain to see, and that is BOY COULD I JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS ON THE FLIMSIEST EVIDENCE!!! Still, I am curious as to what might have transpired on that night when Scofield, Swallow and (I believe) Adam Nussbaum traipsed upon the CBGB stage, and although BAR TALK is going for a pretty penny these days at least OUT LIKE A LIGHT might give me an inkling of what the three were up to at least until a tape of the actual CB's gig makes its way to mine ears. Recorded 12/81 in Munich for the Enja label, LIGHT shows the three in a polite if restrained atmosphere trailing through various jazz forms from mainstream to avant, relaxing to engaging, and keeping my attention held throughout which I must say is a stellar deed considering my naturally born ADD. Nothing that I'm gonna feast heavily upon mind you, but still miles ahead of the dinner tie and jacket jazz mindset that's unfortunately overtaken that entire movement to the point where you know the Art Ensemble of Chicago might as well be Jan Garber to the whole lot of 'em!

And hey, considering how some guy (no names please!) once gave me the razz because he thought I was a fan of Scofield's, now that I've heard and digested more of him all I gotta say is hey...razz away! Don't do nothing to me and besides, the guy's gotta be a whole lot more lyrical and open to different variety of jazz and other modes'n the majority of recent experimental guitar players who have lost any semblance of swing and verve along with their hairlines ages ago! And yeah, a further dig into his back catalog just might be the thing, especially if other vistas of underground expression are being withheld from me as the years roll on...

In the interest of trying to adhere to at least a shard of a human nature, let me wish each and every one of you (at least here inna states) a Happy Thanksgiving Day. Thanksgiving was always a fun time of the year for me especially since back in the old days us schoolkids were guaranteed two days off right before the weekend, and considering this is the time o' year where it's usually too late to mow the yard and too early to plow the driveway there was much freebee time to be had! Nowadays overworked/underfunned me would murder for a good four-day weekend, and while I'm at it I sure could use some additional time off like I usedta get so's I could spend precious hours scouring the record shops looking for rare albums and new arrivals that would certainly tingle my tootsies. Only there ain't any record shops left nor can I find albums outside of the internet anyway and even if there were record shops they don't stock the kinda music they did back inna seventies an'... Awww, just forget I said anything! (drat!)

2011-11-19T09:18:00.009-05:00

And you readers don't think I live a normal, agony-filled life! Well I do, and considering the pain and turmoil I'm going through this weekend I'm positive it's probably a whole lot normal-er than anything you'll be up to with all the fun frolicking the average BLOG TO COMM reader likes to pack into his two days off! Yes, although I do not like to admit it I am subject to the pains and strains of everyday life, and right now I'm going through a pretty big 'un myself in the form of an abcessing tooth which is driving me battier than a Monogram-era Bela Lugosi flick!

Yeah, those voodoo darts aimed at my face sure did their job, and although this 'un ain't as painful as the abcessed tooth I had right next to this 'un back June of 1983 way lemme tell you it's still a smarter. Enough that I have been waking up countless times during the night usually by weirdo dreams brought forth by the jucily-pulsating throb taking place within my jaw so you know this pain is a killer! Some of these dreams have been rather vivid as well as entertaining in their own way...however for the sake of brevity I'll refrain from giving you all of the funny, if convoluted details regarding the rather realistic if bizarre goings on I've been conjuring up during my nightly snoozeathons. (Though the one where none other than a scruffy-looking JONATHAN RICHMAN was performing at a family gathering taking place in my uncle 'n aunt's old living room was a really winner even though I was flinching during one song he was wailing on regarding his adolescent days, especially the part where he mentions something about masturbating! Fortunately he slurred that word and my father couldn't understand what he was saying, thus saving a whole lotta agony on my part.)

I'm still digesting the latest Forced Exposure order and want to save my opinions re. that untamed and at this point mostly un-listened to booty I have received for a future post, though during my toothache travails I have had the opportunity to settle back and read a whole buncha the comic-related bookage (copyright 1985 Byron Coley) which has been making its way to my abode these past few weeks. Well, I did mention in an earlier post just how this autumn season brings out the pre-teen pudge in me, and frankly there's nothing like an overcast or downright rainy November day, a stack of silver/early-bronze age comic books and a bag of artificially-flavored orange "belly guts" to bring back the days when I knew what was best for me, and it wasn't more homework or learning the social graces I'll tell ya!

Lessee, which one shall I start with? Howzbout the Marvel Masterworks edition of THE AVENGERS, VOLUME 9???? Gotta say that considering the extremely jacked up prices on these hardcover and full-color collections of classic Marvel wares I've only been able to splurge for a few of 'em, but since this particular volume not only features the infamous superhero squad during one of their heights but the famed Women's Lip story "Come On In, The Revolution's Fine" (a tome which fit in snugly enough with the rest of the "relevant" early-seventies garb both Marvel and DC were puttin' on full display at the time) this was just one book that I wouldn't dare pass up on! And besides, trying to get a flesh and blood copy of AVENGERS #83 (the ish featuring the aforementioned feminist frenzy) was gettin' to be a costly affair, but for a few added shekels I could own a good ten ish reprint run so like, why piddle about on something I woulda murdered for when I was a mere thirteen?

The saga featuring the appearance of Valkyrie and her Lady Liberators was a good 'un...a whole lot less didactic'n the DC morality plays that National Perodicals was dumping on us long even after the entire "relevant" trend fizzled out 'round '72, and a winner mainly because it does a good ol' fashioned cop out to avoid digging itself in way deep! Really, don't you think we've had enough comic book controversy nigh on these past forty years already, what with the introduction of gay superheroes and many a story of questionable taste?!?!? Can't argue with taking the easy way out, and it's sure great readin' something that, while trying to be hip 'n uppa date in order to not look too L-7, still had that classic sixties-styled post-Jack Kirby artwork, action and attitude that drew me to these funny books inna first place!

Considering the roll Marvel was on at the time these sagas undoubtedly rate as the best the company was putting out back when they were riding a good four or so year tide that unfortunately would come to an end that fateful day in '73 when Stan Lee decided to hang up his editorial cap and push Marvel into a wide variety of new vistas and markets. TRANSLATION: by 1978 all the Incredible Hulk really was was a green variation of Snoopy product tie-ins and all, but between these stories and the upcoming Kree/Skrull War saga the Avengers were at their hotcha best'n only a stick-inna-mud Charlton fan woulda said otherwise! Hmmmm, methinks that I'd better dig out my nineties-era collection of that famed K/S battle in order to resensify myself, perhaps reading the final installment on New Year's morn around two thirty in order to re-live past comic book accomplishments to the fullest!

Changing gears slightly, here's a collection of comic panels that shame-filled me'll admit that I never even knew about before, but now that I have read, digested and spewed these funnies out all I gotta say is howcum nobody mentioned this'un to me before??? Not that MR. TWEEDY was exactly a upper-echelon panel but sheesh, I woulda thought that at least somebody out there in comic strip loverland'd mention this to me at least in passing! Of course it's easy to see just why the standard comic strip fan woulda upped nose regarding these sitegag-laden comics...I mean, look at the stiff art, the definitely pre-seventies silent majority stylings, the decidedly non-CATHY reflections on a modern workaday world. In other words...JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT I LIKE IN MY NEWSPAPER FUNNIES, and to be totally honest about it the downfall of the funny page began when comics of this caliber were being jettisoned by space-conscious editors and young upstarts trying to make their comic sections just as modern and as monochrome as the rest of the paper which is one good indication as to why these fishwraps are going the way of the Edsel!

Yeah, I gotta admit that I sure miss that old style of comic fodder that I grew up with and sure hated to see cut loose oh so long ago, and MR. TWEEDY definitely ranks with such long-ignored faves as OFF THE RECORD and THEY'LL DO IT EVERY TIME as one of those reads you always thought your Uncle Ferd 'n Aunt Gladys woulda loved the same way they used to rave about OZZIE AND HARRIET and how that song the Browns did about the bells and Jimmy Brown always gave 'em a lump in the throat. Kinda old-timey 'n hokey 'n all that but sheesh, it still makes me feel sad to think about my long-gone relatives and how they used to like these things and how they mourned for years about the loss of their grandparents as well as pets in a down-home, quite humble way. Yet they enjoyed old movies and comics like this in their own innocent, definitely anti-decadent smarm kinda way and I have the feeling that had they known about MR.TWEEDY they would have had fond memories of him as well.

Not to say that MR. TWEEDY was some kinda cornball strip that only appealed to the yokels (who come to think of it need something to appeal to them, though the yokels of today who drool over Thomas Kinkade sure ain't the same kind of yore who used to at least settle in for fun frolics like THE REAL McCOYS or Norman Rockwell)...in fact I would call MR. TWEEDY a downright sophisticado comic in its own way. Creator Ned Riddle might not have been a Milt Gross, but his use of those aforementioned sightgags and surreal humor worthy of GREEN ACRES made for some pretty whacked-out situations as you can see from the samples (admittedly not the best) that I slipped in. And hey, I gotta say that I really enjoy the antics of Tweedy, a guy who has drawn comparisons to MR. BEAN (or at least the blurb regarding this recently-issued collection on the Ken Pierce Books website sez so!) not only because of the crazed humor (ranking up there with MR. MUM in the bizarreness dept.) but due to the simple, unassuming style which would never "make it" with the new breed of comic strip snob who tend to go for the fast and loose style with none of the meat 'n substance!

Like the best comics old timey and not the gags in MR. TWEEDY catch you off-guard and can either be so heavy you feel like you've been slammed with a sledgehammer or they could be so sublime you feel like somebody knocked you over with a feather. Either way they hit you pretty good, kinda in the same way a good old NATIONAL LAMPOON gag panel would only without the references to sagging boobs, genital warts or race riots.

Anyway, like I said Ken Pierce is sellin' this nice hardbound collection that was done up by the same people who were also puttin' out those ELLA CINDERS and SQUIRREL CAGE collections I was writin' up last year. I believe a good portion of the comics reprinted herein were lifted from a "legit" TWEEDY paperback collection that came out in 1960, but a whole slew of 'em are actually of an early-eighties vintage which seems strange considering the post-WW II/pre-hippie generation look and appeal of these panels. Some might call these out of place/time, but I call 'em the last gasp of hotcha, to-the-point and funny comics that you just can't find anymore outside of maybe the new DENNIS THE MENACEs or even BC now that Johnny Hart and those overbearing bible-based strips he was churning out are a thing of the past.

The arrival of the latest COMPLETE DICK TRACY volume is always cause for celebration here at BLOG TO COMM hindquarters, and the latest (#12) is certainly no exception. Even though the Golden Era of Tracy was probably over by this time (or at least you would get that impression after reading various "nostalgia"-oriented comic histories written by the usual old-timey suspects for whom life seemed to end somewhere around 1949) it's clear that TRACY was still popping on all cylinders with all of that stark art, the bizarrely convoluted story lines, and best of all loads of gratuitous, gory violence! The kind we ALL love!

TRACY creator Chester Gould must have sensed the sorta zeitgeist that was about to befall the latter portion of the twentieth century with the big bang he produced with these particular storylines! First off, longtime Police Chief Brandon's forced to resign from the force after unwittingly being involved in (and thus responsible for) the murder of Diet Smith's adopted son! Lotsa shades of the Joe Paterno situation that's happening even as we squeak can be found in this particular segment, and like in the Paterno case I get the feeling that Brandon was gettin' treated unfairly for something that wasn't entirely his fault and one thing we don't need on the police force is a scapegoat, especially the chief! But as the Mayor told Tracy, this wasn't the first goof up that Brandon had made so out he went in yet another surprise move from the mind of Gould! Funny, if he was making lotsa errors as of late, I wish Gould would have at least told us what these other indiscretions were because frankly, I was caught off guard!

It's clear that a new day's a'dawnin' in the strip, with longtime sidekick Pat Patton getting kicked upstairs to chief and the easygoing Sam Catchum introduced as Tracy's new partner, and with the marriage of Tracy and his fiancee of eighteen years Tess one would think the strip was gonna fall into the same aura of mush that ruined a great number of once-hotcha reads that settled into domestic duh. Wrong again puzz, for the storylines in TRACY remain just as hard-edged and the product of a sick mind as ever. I especially liked the episode dealing with the disgusting Wormy, a willy-nilly murderer worthy of the forties TRACY villains deformities and all, but your personal fave might be the ones with Pearshape (who surprisingly looks like Chet Gould himself [above the waist, that is!] making me wonder...) or Sketch Paree, a pretty sickoid fellow in his own right and don't say it's because he's French (a people who I kinda admire!). Really liked the way Gould worked a thinly-disguised parody of none other than Spike Jones into the story, and come to think of it that radio personality who hires Wormy does bear a passing resemblance to Arthur Godfrey without the ukelele! Sheesh, if Wormy stayed on the radio show a li'l longer I think he woulda gotten fired faster'n you can say "Julius LaRosa!"

Also included in this volume's an eye-opening rarity, a limited run story tied into a real-life contest which TRACY's home paper THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE and eventually a number of local papers were publishing in order to boost circulation! The deal with this open-ended saga was that you had to help Tracy solve a mystery regarding the whereabouts of a satchel filled with a million dollars in bills, and not only that but any reader who could do so in fifty words or less was privvy to some pretty hefty monetary reward! It's a wild saga too, with Tracy trying to find out what happened to the briefcase (as well as the situation behind the strange death of a rich widow) complete with the strange twists, turns, and even comedy relief courtesy the B. O. Plentys that were usually found in a classic Gould-era TRACY story. Unfortunately the winning answers were never revealed to the public which makes me wonder...who was responsible for running off with the loot anyway??? Personally I think it was the secretary who is in cahoots with the president of the bank, but how they actually tie in with each other has me stumped at this point. (Volume 13'll print the best response from you, the modern-day reader, though unfortunately no reward money is in sight so like I ain't gonna bother sending my answer in!)

In closing, perhaps a small note regarding the death of Laura Kennedy, whom most all of you reg'lar readers remember as the bassist for the infamous Bush Tetras (an act that never did grab me by the kajoobies, though I must admit that a good majority of the post-no wave groups who were rising from the ashes of the original generation didn't), but was first and foremost to me a member of Tender Buttons during her Cleveland days along with the likes of Serena WilliamS Burroughs, CLE-editor Jim Ellis and Carol Rutz. Dunno if any of the obituaries popping up across the web mention this important fact, so I thought I would stickler for Cleveland underground details that I am.

2011-11-16T09:15:00.001-05:00

UGLY THINGS #32 (A WHOPPING GREAT READ)

Considering that I received and reviewed the previous UT a scant few months back, getting hold of the latest 'un fresh off the press is a mind-overloading affair! Really, I hadn't even time to digest the previous ish and now this beaut turns up...sheesh, this reminds me of the good ol' days when so many fanzines and other proper forms of reading material were flinging their way into my life to the point where I felt like that guy who gained all of the knowledge in the world and ended up with a swelled head I saw in some long-ignored episode of THE WILD WILD WEST! So lo 'n behold this new ish, one that's got the same great writers, the relevant to your personal way o' livin' articles and best of all enough interesting and heretofore unknown information/trivia/whatnot that's bound to get your head swelled like the globe in your third grade classroom, esp. when you consider the hefty amts. of pertinent facts the previous thrity-one of 'em have already crammed into your bean!

Some of this I skimmed through, some I dove into schnoz-first, but whatever the situation may be I know that this 'un'll stick around for quite some time serving as pre-beddy bye/toidy reading as well as fodder for one of those rainy Sunday afternoons one comes across during these autumn months that makes ya wanna revert to your adolescent comic book snugglin' sessions complete with stocking'd feet and perhaps the tee-vee on to give ya added company. And if you too are marooned in your own boudoir and wanna do something to get your mind off the terrible stinky foot/encrusted fart smells to be found therein then why not whip this one out and be taken to spaces far beyond the reaches of your rather pallid existence!

Skimmed over the Them piece, but what I read of it is pretty interesting esp. the Rolling Stones putdown which I guess still appeals to my late-seventies sense of SOME GIRLS loathing. Speaking of the Stones, Greg Prevost's piece on Rolling Stone collectables (similar to the Kinks collectors scum piece of last ish) was mildly enjoyable, though I gotta wonder just what kinda guy (especially one like Greg who ain't exactly holding down a FORTUNE 500 kinda job) would have enough of the long green to be able to afford some of the rarities he obviously got long after the fact! (I wonder if he has the same kind of a side business as other record shop clerk-types that brings in the buckskins such as...naw, not Greg!) The Raiders material was also invigorating, especially the Mark Lindsay interview where he talks about everything from Charles Manson to the group's late-sixties output that I'm sure glad has been reissued because I've wanted to hear COLLAGE ever since reading Lenny Kaye's review of it in ROLLING STONE way back in '78 or so and that's a pretty long time! And while on the subject of the Raiders, the Brotherhood piece (regarding the famed Raider mutiny of '67 when Smitty, Drake and Fang struck out on their own) was especially good even if I didn't quite care for 'em back when Mike Stax himself jetted a tape of theirs my way a good decade and a half back. It's sure interesting to see what kind of animosity there was between Paul Revere and the rest of the group considering the lawsuits he was racking up against 'em for splitting the Raiders (not to mention some negative comments directed by Mr. Dick himself against Mark Lindsay!) because hey, I always thought the group got along rather nice and swell-like! Well, that's the impression I got watching WHERE THE ACTION IS when I was but a mere turdler!

Rambling on, the Vibrators article had the good insta-zoneback aura that I always go for in a good piece, while I will prove my eternal cube-ism and admit I liked the $27 Snap On Face story even if Brad Kohler thought they were nothing but hippoids because they used to open with a Grateful Dead song (not exactly a hot-headed thing to do, but it doesn't anger me the same way it would have thirty years back so you know I'm growing senile!). Of course the other pieces from the Limey and the Yanks, Sloths, Wimple Winch and so on were fine even if I am saving them for marriage (wanted to rush this write-up out!), but you know they'll be getting close scrutiny once I'm done staring at pix of Betty and Veronica and need to give mine eyes a rest!

Dunno if I can call this a beef or not, but I thought the review sections (books, recordings, Dee-Vee-Dee's) were way too skimpy. I guess this is because there just ain't as much archival hotcha material worthy of UGLY THINGS stature being churned out these days, and not because the well has run dry but because this material just ain't sellin' up a storm like it used to. Given how up-tapped the seventies underground scene has been I know that there are tons of tapes molderin' away in collections world-wide, but if you readers just sit around trying to protect your assets by saving it for the bare necessities (but what could be barer'n rock et roll?) these reissues and archival digs just won't be comin' out! I suggest that you stimulate the economy, loosen your purse strings and buy up all of the records reviewed in UGLY THINGS that you can thus ensuring a fine and music-laden future not only for all of us, but for me.

2011-11-12T09:37:00.007-05:00

Like the Big Man in the Sky, this blogger has been known to be slow to anger (although not exactly quick to forgive), but frankly there are times in which even calm, cool and collected """""I""""" am bound to...no, driven to blowing my stack worse'n Mount Vesuvius during a six-point earthquake! Take this particular piece of agitprop on the left that I just happened to come across while strolling about the internet a few days back, and if you think that I would just wanna shrug it off like the good li'l eunuch you all want me to be well, you better have another thought comin'! And yeah, I know that the WWW ain't exactly the most reliable place to dig up factual information and there are half-truths and dribbles being tossed about on it all the time (just check out wikipedia, then try to change something on it you find downright incorrect or even misleading!), but when I happen to chance upon such things as this well, let's just say that this definitely is one no-truth slur that I will not let go of in my typical leave 'em alone and they'll leave you alone kinda mentality that's been my credo for nigh on my entire life! OR...like yet another Great Amerigan once sorta said, "If you're runnin' down my candidate, you're walkin' on the fightin' side of me!"

Frankly I dunno how such a distorted (and preying on the fears of people set within a certain frame o' political mindset) piece could even be conceived, but considering some of the downright lies being passed off as undeniable facts o' life all over the place maybe I answered my own question. But this 'un really got my gall not only because of the playin' 'round with facts (which a good portion of the political spectrum has done w/regards to the John Birch Society o'er the years despite calmer claims to the contrary) but because it defames a guy who I consider one of the few if not ONLY truly honest and trustworthy man working in that slut-riddled thing we know as Congress (let alone any of the other branches of govt. which also need a good pruning). A man whose enemies seem to be the most controlling, micromanaging and downright altruistic people to stroll the face of this earth and if you ain't willing to march lockstep with 'em with a nice smile on your face right off of a Cultural Revolution-era Chinese poster well then, better get ready for the blindfold and cigarette because you're gonna need it!

So many bubbles to burst in the above hitjob that I don't know where to start, but duty deems that I must. First off, isn't it time that we all just faced the fact that, despite what all of the enlightened minds at work have been telling us for nigh on fiftysome years, the John Birch Society is not some ultra-drooling barbaric organization that is having a hard time hiding its Nazi-like slip. 'n yeah, I also read the MAD articles and how HELP! used to make light of the Birchers with old Nazi-era photos just like the rest of the sixties cadre of wishy-washy commentators would, and for years I believed the exact same thing about them as Dave Berg. However, after some perhaps not-so thorough investigation my opinions have changed somewhat, at least to the point where I believe that all of the ire directed towards the Birchers by various postwar commentators and satirists was heavily due to the fact that they were anti-communist, and as it has been said for quite a long while it might have been uncool to have been a communist even in the chic confines of lower Manhattan anything goes-ism or press rooms for that matter, but it was way more uncool to be an anti-communist!

But in actuality, the Birchers, despite the innuendo and downright prefabs directed against them, held and continue to hold many political positions that I must admit to finding very admirable. While some might call them "isolationist", I find them to be more in the old paleo-conservative and libertarian mold, concerned about the United States trying to shape the world in its geopolitical image and all of the negative ramifications years of "democracy building" has left us. Face it, the last number of presidents we've been blessed with, including the current Commander-In-Chief, were/are way too concerned about spreading our influence overseas instead of keeping its nose in its own backyard where it pretty much belongs. And although many would find me to be an alarmist in saying so, I truly believe that the way the United States is handling its foreign policy will only lead to more situations the nation will never be able to wiggle their way outta, anti-American ire (and deservedly so) and perhaps even a "war without end" as we battle on in the Middle East trying to get the populace to be nice 'n friendly and maybe sell a few McRibs to 'em in the process. Frankly you didn't see any Birchers coming out solidly for war the way the last few decades of both democratic and republican administrations had, usually to the point of mass destruction of populaces who for some strange reason seem to have it in for us all. Maybe it should be noted that the founder of the John Birch Society, Robert Welch, for all of his hatred of communism, was adamantly against the Vietnam conflict which is more than I can say about the "enlightened" politicos of the early/mid-sixties who didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground when it came to foreign policy.

Secondly, I gotta laugh when I see both Rush Limbaugh and David Duke's names crossed off the above list, as if the John Birch Society would even consider inviting them to speak at their Golden Anniversary celebrations. Both of these gentlemen are strictly off the Birch reservation, and I could assume that the only reason they would have been included on this list was for the purpose of misleading the uninitiated into thinking that these two somehow share the same values and beliefs of the Birchers (but I guess if you've committed one sin against "the people", you've committed 'em all!) . First off, let's deal with Limbaugh who is a standard post-NATIONAL REVIEW conservative who has on at least one occasion lambasted the JBS in the tradition of his spiritual forefather William F. Buckley, a man whose purging of the Birchers and libertarians from the pages of his magazine is perhaps the only positive accolade the guy has received from the Old Time Television/Radio/Print establishment who somehow thought slightly better (but not that much) of him for doing so. Frankly, I can not see the Birchers inviting Limbaugh to speak at any of their functions considering how the two are diametrically opposed on such issues as the use of the military overseas, nor could I see them even considering the possibility of having noted klansman David Duke speak for them. Although airbrushed out of the memories of quite a few commentators over the past five or so decades, the Birchers were anything but racist or even racialist in their opinions. Their wariness of the civil rights movement had more to do with the communist infiltration of these groups and how certain elements were more or less for agitation real equality be damned, and considering the heavily Marxist makeup of many in the movement history did bear the JBS out. But the Birchers as a whole were far from being racists and in fact expelled such highly-visible members as Revilo Oliver and Westbrook "You Stink" Pegler for opinions and actions that most civilized humans would find reprehensible.

So where does this leave Ron Paul? A highly principled man with many opinions that I believe would lead to the betterment of those around us, unlike those usually being spouted off by the republicans who are interested in starting an even newer Cold War with the Middle East and the democrats who are still buried deep in the old sixties liberal mantras to the point where you kinda get the impression that their idea of a good time would be singing "Kumbaya" around a campfire. He's for a constitutional government (an idea which might be considered treasonous nowadays and if so try me and lock me up!), an end to those hideous overseas military excursions which even our "peace" president (whose rings of "bringing all of the troops home" rings about as hollow as Woodrow Wilson's pledge to stay out of World War I) has been fuddy duddy on and drug legalization which should benefit people who need to smoke weed for medicinal purposes or those who just wanna get high, as if any of it is our business unless you're an old maid busybody who likes calling the cops all the time. And what's more, he's for a more localized idea of how your government and life should be run, meaning that perhaps the same standards that would be fine and dandy in Bumhole Iowa wouldn't pass the test in San Francisco, and vice versa for that matter!

Or, as a commentator on a recent TAKI'S TOP DRAWER article said:

Simplistic maybe, but these words pack a whole lot more meaning and vision than anything I could find coming out of the Tea Party as it stands, or the Occupy Movement which as time goes on just seems like a jumbled rehash of old Lower East Side politics being re-lived in hooded jackets 'stead of flannel workshirts.

So to the people who "crafted" the above li'l smear directed towards the Good Doctor, well I gotta congratulate you on your propaganda skills. Not as good as those people who did the ventriloquist dummy head videos on youtube which really played fast 'n furious with the facts, dates and intent, but at least your hearts are in the right place. Also gotta heave hefty congrats to all of those eighties punk rockers (such as the survivors of the DC hardcore scene) who were so anarchist and anti-government back then but now line up to shill for the same state they once loathed, all happy about doing their duty paying taxes and putting down the other p-rock survivors who at least held on to their original vision which now manifests itself in a particularly healthy anarcho-libertarianism. I gotta give yez all an "A" for the way you played the always-boffo guilt by association card as if being associated with the Birchers in any capacity was something to hang head in shame about, all the while attempting to categorize a person like Paul (who I would not exactly call a "Reagan Republican" like some have...in fact, he's miles ahead of that neo-conservative as far as smashing the state goes!) in with the likes of Limbaugh and Duke. And yeah, I know that the majority of Paulistas, the people who are disaffected by both major parties and see Paul as the real Third Way, could care less about a cheap shot like the one espied above. They know that the guy is perhaps the only honest man to set foot in the Capitol these days, and that although his views on crime and race can, like Pat Buchanan's unfortunately have, be twisted and molded into something that many enlightened types might find "racist" (but are more or less truthful given some of the statistics and future we are facing) he is perhaps the most color-blind representative we've had in years. This typical sniping unfortunately is just more personal reputation destruction, the kind that seems part and parcel to sticking your nose into anything public-minded these days. Even if you dibble your little pinkie into the waters this is what you're bound to expect, usually from the same breed who would shudder at getting the same anal probes they're more'n apt to be handing out to anything they deem against "the revolution" or whatever they're calling it this week. (And for a person who has been called racist amongst other equally damning epithets online I know just what the ramifications are...first hand!)

Take it for what it's worth. Even throw a few grains of salt in if you like. But in the words of the famed philosopher Charles Starkweather "when you pull the chain on a toilet, you can't blame it for flushing", and as far as chain pulling goes the above is enough to yank the entire water closet off the wall! I only wish that I could find this other anti-Paul pixel-placard I once espied, this time from a "conservative" perspective railing against Paul for being an "anti-Semite", but I guess I'll have to save that one for another post.

Whew, bet you thought I'd never end, eh? Well, as the famed French philosopher Pierre Giscard de Fafoofnik once said, "let's cut the crap'n get to the hotcha stuff!!! And, thanks to a well-timed series of orders and ebay purchases, I've been reveling in a whole slew of new items that have been making their way to my front porch! After all, I gotta do more'n just stare at the same ol' ARCHIE comic strip collection (even though I could look at a Bob Montana-delineated Betty and Veronica for hours on end!) while spinnin' rare Les Rallizes Denudes disques dredged up from the nether-regions of my collection, so in order to break up the monotony, here goes...

Rocket From The Tombs-BARFLY CD (Fire)

Brad Kohler really is a guy who can, and with little if any effort at that, have you rollin' 'round on the floor in stitches! In his last missive to me, the verifiable #1 BLOG TO COMM grouper (he's too mature to be a groupie) actually wrote down, and in Stigliano-ese at that, what he thought my review to this Cee-Dee was going to come off like complete with the usual adjectives, cliches, snide remarks and arf-arf asides that I like to toss into a wide variety of writeups in order to prove what a gonzoid, envelope-pushing scribe I have been these past XXXXX# of years. And it was a good 'un too---accurate to a "T" and so on-target that even I shuddered at the thought that this man could channel my inner thoughts so thoroughly and without me giving him express permission to do so!

I could have printed his parody of a review of this platter for you and just slapped my name on it but as Leo Gorcey might have said, it wouldn't be mythical. Besides, there were a slight number of discrepancies twixt Kohler's concepts of what I think of this digital disque and what I actually do, so in the interest of honesty, truth and all sorta flag-waving stuff here is my down and outright opinion of the new Rocket From The Tombs album, BARFLY (though really, I should print Kohler's pee-take if only to spice this post up a li'l bit!):

It's true that having a Rocket From The Tombs up and running in the teens is probably about as relevant as if I had kept my own fanzine extant into the present day (though for all intent purposes the thing did not have a valid reason to exist past '89 at the latest!), but I will admit it does break up the monotony somewhat. And y'know what, BARFLY is such an upgrade from the reunited Rocket's earlier REDUX spinner which sounded too much like some old chart-topping act reduced to re-recording their old hits a good ten years later. And although a few of the tracks on BARFLY don't quite grasp the kajoobies the way I would have hoped, some of this is rather inspiring even if the former Crocus Behemoth does not sing in his patented bellowing style like he used to ages back (it's more of a high-pitched mewl these days which I in no uncertain terms think benefits the high energy music he is accompanying).

Still, certain tracks have a distinct post-Velvets drone that doesn't offend the way most giddygiddy VU aficionados have these past thirtysome years and although in no way could I confuse the 2011 Rocket with the '74/'75 season variation at least I do see a firm, bared-wire intensity lineage between the two even if it was interrupted by 27 years of inactivity. Nice stuff, but the big surprise for me was the inclusion of a previously unreleased Rocket number from way back when entitled "Maelstrom", a "Brainstorm"-derived ditty which I always believed was a Craig Bell composition even if the entire group gets credit. It also reminds me a whole lot of "Read 'em and Weep" and is so in-sync with the original impetus that I sure would like to hear how it was originally performed, hopefully on the upcoming ten-CD "collected works and improvisations of Rocket From The Tombs" set that I hope will be coming out sometime before we all hit senility.

As far as Brad's version of what I think about this 'un goes well...I don't think I'll be printing it anyway. Brad put a few good lines in that 'un I'm surely gonna wanna "appropriate" for future writeups and all I gotta say's is...I better do my swiping while the swiping is good!

Comus-FIRST UTTERANCE CD (BGO, England); EAST OF SWEDEN CD (Gnostic Dirt, England)

As anyone who's read my scribblings o'er the past few decades can attest to, I will look for anything in a music to latch my hooks into, and with Comus that hook-latching thing was the fact that they evolved outta a folk singing duo who used to perform Velvet Underground covers on the London club scene back in the late-sixties! Good start true, but how does Comus, the full-fledged acoustical rock group that grew out of these humble beginnings, fare themselves? Well, on this FIRST UTTERANCE reissue from the nineties they do sound rather er...cabalistic. Nothing like the at-times frilly and fruity Steeleye Span, nor are they that close to the Fairport Convention scheme of things. Comus seems bred of that late-sixties/early-seventies occult trend that gave us everything from Black Sabbath to all of those groups on the DO WHAT THOU WILT sampler, the same dull thud only with acoustic gear. Sounds like a cross between the Third Ear Band and Tyrannosaurus Rex if Marc Bolan was getting his beanies crushed in by one of Cthulhu's tentacles, or even Donovan falling down an empty elevator shaft and how long have you reg'lar readers longed to hear that???

Lotsa patterpatter bongos and whatever those Indian clunky-sounding things that pop up on Ravi Shankar albums are, along with acoustic guitars and even some droning violin/viola to add to the weird East/West sound of it all. Conjures up feelings of late-sixties English period piece dramas set in the 17th century, perhaps with some occult-esque theme considering the coven-ish tone of the shrieking vocals of Roger Wootton, and although I certainly don't feel like making a steady diet of this stuff I like the way it fits into the entire spookshow atmosphere of the English scene of the day. Even if it is acoustic and aimed towards the same kinda people who press leaves in books and make gravestone rubbings.

Not so surprisingly, I found the group's reunion show at a Swedish music festival, released as EAST OF SWEDEN on the ever-popular Gnostic Dirt label, far most engaging, superior, entertaining and a whole lotta other interesting descriptors that I call pull off thesaurus.com with relative ease. Thirtysome years after the fact Comus come off a whole lot more punchier and go-gettum...in fact they sound a whole lot younger and if it weren't for the obviously moderne recording techniques which can make even your $25 boom box sound like a four star stereo system of yore I might even have mistook this for some recently-unearthed archival dig up! But it's a recent platter, and surprisingly enough I'd recommend that you'd start with this 'un if you just happen to wanna know what the aging English post-folk mysticos are up to in between incantating at Stonehenge and occupying whatever there is of worth left to occupy in that sad isle that had to ruin their entire reputation by becoming an "Empire" 'stead of just minding their own business like everybody else shoulda all along.

HOT KNIVES CD (Grown Up Wrong, Australia)

Sheesh, I remember when the Hot Knives "Hey Grandma"/"I Hear The Wind Blow" single was one of those $1.00 budget singles one could get from Bomp Mailorder for years one end. That's where I got my copy, and I sure remember that lonely spring of 1991 spinning this 'un over and over again in some perhaps not-so-vain attempt to keep myself from toppling over into one of those endless chasms that take me just about forever to climb outta. Don't know if this record helped rescue me from doing something that some would consider drastic (and others beneficial to the state of the world at large) but let's just say that if I had been stuck playing the X-Tal album during this rather fragile time in my life you wouldn't have any Chris Stigliano to kick around today!

OK, enough of the semi-factual pseudo-autobiographical quap and let's get to the disque at hand! And it's a pretty snazzy (supersnazzy in fact) one featuring an entire LP's worth of tracks from the should-be-seminal San Francisco band Hot Knives. Best known for containing former Flamin' Groovies members Tim Lynch and Danny Mihm, Hot Knives had little if anything to do with the way the Groovies were sounding during their mid-seventies return to their Beatle Boot Roots...naw, they were more in the early pre-hippydippy San Francisco vein long before the shredding feedback gave way to tinkling acoustic guitars and Marin County karma. They sound a lot like the early Groovies, not to mention early Moby Grape and the Vejtables, and in fact if you could claim any kind of "punk" credo for this act it would be the punk rockers of the mid-sixties who were eventually wooshed away by the advent of psychedelia ever-churning into visions of the disease-riddled past the hippies somehow found romantic.

Brother/sister team Michael and Debra Houpt actually began doing folk hoots in Pennsylvania as li'l kids, but at least by the mid-seventies they had a good sense of what the early SF sound was all about and did their best to scrunch it into a vision that perhaps wasn't that alien even after years of the city's acquiescence into dull hackdom. The addition of Lynch and Mihm added the same power and might to the Knives that they did on those early Groovies sides, and the results are even mind-blowing for a jaded non-romantic such as I. For once the harmony vocals don't sound like something you woulda heard in a music class that would have transpired in the school that ugly lady in BILLY JACK was runnin', and the powerful backing melds the mid-sixties great pop hopes of the day with the mid-seventies punk credo. Put 'em all together and you get some fantastic tracks such as the "Hey Grandma"/"I Hear The Wind Blow" 45 (which does lose something in the translation from cheap vinyl to pristine digitalis), that other 45 I never could find, and a whole slew of wonders from the Vejtable-packed "Secrets About Me" to even a cover of the Knickerbockers classic "Lies". All points in between are worth checking out as well.

Fantab 'un to have around, esp. if you too get into one of those deep funks that just about anything can help set off. Sound's great, the material's eons ahead of the pale emote seen these last few decades, and best of all it's cheaper'n a prescription of lexapro. So what's it gonna be...Hot Knives or sharp ones?

2011-11-09T06:46:00.002-05:00

MOOM PITCHER DOUBLE FEATURE REVIEW! SUPERCHICK (1973, starring Joyce Jillson and Louie Quinn) and GALAXINA (1980, starring Dorothy Stratten and Avery Schrieber)

Hoo boy...another Crown International double-feature taken from the BIG SCREEN BOMBSHELLS set Lou Rone gave me last Christmas!!! Well, if there's nothing much happening on the boob tube and you don't feel like burrowing your way through thirtysome years of records 'n tapes then hey...why not?

SUPERCHICK's a standard early-seventies affair complete with that typically Nixon-era-esque "movie-of-the-week" incidental music that makes me think more about what's on the other channel more'n anything. It stars a lady named Joyce Jillson playing an airline stewardess (this is before they called 'em "flight attendants" for some reason or another...probably due to all of that bad publicity that these stewardess movies were givin 'em) who plays it sweet 'n Moral Majority-like while on the job, but once she hits the city she whips off her Sandy Duncan wig and settles down for a whole lotta hotcha man-hungry action! And like the sailors of yore, she's got guys in every port; a germophobic doctor in New York, a beach bum gambler in Miami over his head in debt (played by the male lead from POLICEWOMAN which I reviewed a coupla months back) and a fading teen idol loosely based on David Cassidy. Meanwhile, the big boss whom the beach bum owes plenty of filthy lucre to (played by Louie Quinn of 77 SUNSET STRIP fame) wants his client to wipe out his debt by having our stewardess be an unwitting accomplice in a mid-flight robbery. Between all this there's loads of bouncing boobs 'n butts for the twelve-year-old boys who are watching from the woods at your local rural drive-in to steam binoculars about, a cameo from Uschi Whatzername getting whipped, and even John Carradine pops in as this sicko who placed that swinging personal ad in a local underground paper so you know this has gotta be a good moom pitcher with lotsa class!

Nineteen-eighty's GALAXINA's a bizarrity, perhaps best known because the soon-to-croak Dorothy Stratten shows up in the lead as an android, but even a class-a star like her (well, that's what Peter Bogdanovich keeps sayin') can't save this typical example of late-period "snide" comedy/spoof in the ANIMAL HOUSE/SNL/MEL BROOKS-style that just doesn't gel like ya hoped it would. Still I gotta admit that I enjoyed what there was of it just because it was a strange period piece that, although failing dismally in poking fun at everything from ALIEN to STAR WARS, kept my eyeballs glued to the screen as if I were watching a clittoradectomy being performed on Anastasia Pantsios in slow motion. Funny how this type of humor really hit the target only a few years earlier, but by '80 it all seemed to get washed down the drain for whatever strange reason there may be (some say the advent of Reagan, others the ravages of cocaine). Still, if you wanna know what people like Avery Schrieber were up to after they slowly began fizzling from the cathode tubes look no further.

2011-11-06T07:41:00.002-05:00

Please forgive the slim pickins this week. Other'n the Sinatras platter which starts off the shebang this particular offering's nothing but old rehashes or long-lost booty that finally rose to the surface like scum inna bathtub, something which only goes to show you either how hard up the real high energy rock 'n roll scene has become as of late (like, these past thirty years!) or the lack of moolah that would only go towards some hefty disque-buying if only I could scrape enough of the long green together! Well, I will try to get an order in to some place (Forced Exposure seems the most likely) this upcoming week just so's I don't have that much of a shortage of fodder to keep me well and happy for at least a couple of weeks, but for now it's rerun time and nothing else but, hole!

The Sinatras-ARE YOU READY! LP (Rave Up)

Ah memories...I remember how these guys along with fellow LESiders the Erotics were the punkier of the various house bands popping up at Max's Kansas City during the v.-late-seventies/v.-early-eighties strata of rock. Y'know, right before that club, along with the punk generation such groups were representing, sorta gave way to a music that might have been more harsh, but ultimately turned out to be less enthralling considering its unabashed traipses into what I would call hippydippy love 'n radical peace territory. My curiosity regarding the Erotics was sated by a now-rare CD they had released way back in the late-eighties (overdrive hard-punk not quite hardcore but still in out there territory---maybe I'll dig it out and review it for you one of these days) and now the Sinatras have this 12-incher to their name, a pretty good effort even if the thing runs shorter than an early Elvis album.

Heartbreakers meet Voidoids here, nothing whatcha'd call English p-rock-influenced but steadily in the New York Rock territory of all-out energy w/o the kultured British class-conscious bleat. Hard driving as well, though the Sinatras had that perfect touch of melody to slip into the mix just so's you could tell they had the TALENT to create instant classics in a Thunders vein. In all, a great reminder of where punk stood in between addled innovation and rote heartbleed, and as a treat the folks at Rave Up even slipped in some actual live @ Max's tracks to pad the album out! Gives this release that certain class I've come to expect from these outta nowhere labels lo these many years. Too bad it took thirty of 'em for this to finally make it out, but then again when you're dead are you really gonna care?

The Tornados-THE EP COLLECTION CD (See For Miles, England)

Also got this supermarket Cee-Dee collection which has what I believe's the group's only Amerigan album and nothing else, but for a few raviolis more I ended up with this neat gatherin' of the "Telstar" boys' English EP collection which not only contains those early slush ravers but a nice slew of rarities that'll sure send you back to the days when the future really did look bright. Nice packaging (with the expected detailed notes), plenty of tracks I and probably you have never heard before (including such weirdies as "Life On Venus" complete with a bad Amerigan accented spoken word opening and more "Telstar" references'n you can shake a stick at!) and even the group's final efforts when only drummer/Ed McMahon lookalike Clem Cattini remained from the original lineup appears. Yep, I'm talking about that one EP where the revamped and leather-jacketed Tornados actually do the dreaded Beatle Beat (with vocals!) in a vain attempt to latch on to the new generation of rock that was unfortunately wiping the likes of the Tornados off the charts. If you're ever having a 1962 party, slip this onto the box and watch the funsters sway and swoon in between showing of SUPERCAR, LEAVE IT TO BEAVER and ROOM FOR ONE MORE (how'd that turkey get stuck in here?).

PHEW CD (Les Disques du Soliel de Paree, France)

Really liked Phew's cooin' and careenin' on those oft-bootlegged Can tracks (making me think she woulda been the logical replacement for Damo Suzuki, but unfortunately that never transpired), but on this debut solo disque she, along with her Kraut masters Czukay, Liebezeit and Plank, fall into the early-eighties gnu wave stylings that by this time had permeated what had been known as krautrock but now seemed a startlingly different muenster. Still, Phew's Japanese charms save this from being yet another relic of a past that wasn't that hot to begin with, as she actually sings her traditional-minded Japanese melodies to the definitely Teutonic backing of the former Can-sters. Although this does have way too much of that early-eighties feeling that didn't quite gel with me compared with what came before, it sure digests smoothly when presented in such an entertaining and perhaps even underlyingly intense fashion. Well, at least it passed the evening pre-beddy bye book-reading lounge-about test. Hmmm, methinks I better search out that other Phew album of mine wallowing somewhere in the vast reaches of my ever-aging vinyl collection.

Allun-ADAN CD-R (Slippytown)

Before falling on hard times (which I certainly hope he has overcome), Eddie Flowers was riding pretty high releasing a wide array of interesting items on his own Slippytown label. I gotta say that it was a pretty neat idea of Flowers, a man who for a good forty years has been a fanzine writer in good standing even though that is one of the more thankless jobs around here, to operate a record label of his own no matter how shoestring the entire project might have been, because for once in our lives we do need more people who are on this side of the aisle to head on over to that side, ifyaknowwadamean. Really, could you imagine what it would have been like if Lester Bangs or R. Meltzer operated their own under-the-counterkultur labels back in the seventies? Well, I'm sure if Meltzer did we'd finally get to hear that conceptual rock act of his called alternately Applejack/the Stump which was being hyped in the pages of CRAWDADDY as early as 1967!

One of the neet surprises that Slippytown had to offer was this particular platter from an Italian all-gal act called Allun. And if you think you've heard all of the off-the-wall anti-music/rock acts that have been cluttering up the space o'er the past five decades you probably missed this 'un in the mad rush...fantastic free sound that seems to owe more to Roscoe Mitchell than it does Lou Reed, toy instrument and violin-dominated music that I gotta say outdoes all of the "cute" (even though they weren't trying to be) eighties feminist agitprop groups like Pianosaurus (I think) and Y-Pants (I know!) who were also dabbling in the noisemaker as musical instrument game. Free splat that drives you to the point of madness before it all ends in the billionth cover of "I Wanna Be Your Dog", only you don't quite feel like puking your guts out at the roteness of the entire affair (because for once, Allun knew enough to make the song itself the punchline to the entire nth generation Stooge worship joke, and perhaps we were part of that entire schtick all along!). A nice diversion from the usual clunk that you'll bet'll have be scouring the Cee-Dee boxes looking for more Slippytown gems that seem to've evaded my singular consciousness.

Last Exit-KOLN CD (Unheard Music Series)

Dunno why I passed on reviewing this free music classic for so long, but whaddaya know, while looking through a pile o' platters guess what I should find but this very passed up platter in question. Made me feel guilty enough to actually take it out 'n give it a spin, y'know? Really can't say enough good things about this all-star lineup who, on this (again) too-short offering plow through a number of ditties that sound like the perfect combination of late-sixties European blare and WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT noise extrapolations. Peter Brotzmann naturally does his best to emulate a boiler room explosion while (Ronald) Shannon Jackson plays on patterns that would have sounded alien even to former boss Albert Ayler as Sonny Sharrock does his best to prove himself the true heir to the jazz/rock guitarist throne 'stead of the usual pretenders who have been topping way too many DOWN BEAT critics polls. And the cohesive glue 'n brains behind it all, Bill Laswell, doesn't come off as the smorgasbord schmuck I'm sure a few consider him if only because he's had his pinkies dibbled in more'n a few projects that mighta seemed a li'l too "commercial". If you wonder what that version of Material ca. 1980 when Sharrock joined the ranks sounded like this might be about as close a guess as any of us'll come, at least until somebody has the brains the release the actual booty for our mortification!

Rancid Vat-ICONOCLASTIC ICONS CD (Baloney Shrapnel)

And in closing...this nice li'l bit of scronkoteria that I (with shame and total remorse) must admit I have ignored for quite a longer period of time than any sane person should. Back inna eighties, it was groups like Rancid Vat along with scant few others (Antiseen and the Angry Samoans come to mind) that set the pace and the tone (amongst other things) for what "hardcore punk" should have aspired to, and while most of the groups from this generation of p-rock ultimately revealed themselves to have been the hippoids that I always thought the punk stood against it was acts like Rancid Vat that reminded us that punk rock started out as a snotty, raggedy afterbirth of teenage addled scronk and, although it was goin' out a totally different animal at least some acts didn't forget where their true origins lie.

Purported a "Greatest Hits"-styled package, I'll admit too many of the Vat's best material was left off...no "Larger Than Life", "Pencil Neck Geek" or "Cluster Bombs" are to be found on this spinner. However, there's more than a good share of true Vat wonders to be found, from the tres-addled (and much improved) cover of Three Dog Night's "Joy To The World" and the Heartbreakers' classic "Born to Lose", not forgetting such originals as "Guest List" (originally appearing on the group's definitive LP BURGER BELSEN), "Sad as a Turd", "Anti Social Disease" and of course the religious ditty "The Ballad of Brigham Young" which I once read actually got some airplay on the Brigham Young University radio station! And what makes this package all so special is that the liner notes were written by one Jim Goad, who now seems to be offending more weaknees than one could have ever imagined on the TAKI'S TOP DRAWER website. Face it, until Smithsonian/Folkways gets around to releasing the definitive Rancid Vat collection sometime 100 years from now this might be your only bet to give Rancid Vat a listen to, unless you wanna spend $$$ tracking down all of the original releases!

2011-11-02T07:10:00.006-04:00

TEE-VEE SERIES/DVD REVIEW!

MAN WITH A CAMERA (1958-1960) starring CHARLES BRONSON!

Sheesh, even sieve-minded I can remember when, right after such films as DEATH WISH and THE VALACHI PAPERS thrusted Chaz Bronson into middle-aged megastardom, rumors of this failed ABC series (running 28 total episodes split twixt two seasons) began circulating in the pages of various local newspaper tee-vee listing q/a sections! Naturally the $98 question goin' 'round 'n round in the head of every newfound Bronson maniac at that time was...is this program gonna be revived by ABC the same way they used to stick DAN AUGUST reruns into their sagging summer schedules in order to cash in on some current hot property? Don't laugh, for the milking of those few 'n far between AUGUST episodes was an idea which worked wonders for a net that lost plenty of moolah on this series the first time 'round since now it was actually zooming straight up the Nielsens, and if that show could get the perennial revival treatment then why not CAMERA?

Well, ABC never did get the hint and MAN WITH A CAMERA stayed buried for quite a longer spell'n any of us would have imagined. No real mystery as to why the net sat on this 'un since a black 'n white series from the late-fifties definitely would have looked outta place in the pukka shell'd seventies whereas DAN AUGUST was in color and at least the late-sixties flash didn't seem too outta place in 1975 living rooms. However, for those of you who still suffer the pangs of missing out on this legendary series heave awe, for whaddya know but the danged thing finally made it out to disque and (thanx to Bill Shute, who sent it to me for X-mas) I've finally digested the thing and have a chance to poop out an opinion which I think will sum up just what this slice of Bronson during his lean, pre-foppy seventies hair 'n mustache days was up to other'n guest starring on more'n a few episodes of PUBLIC DEFENDER/ONE STEP BEYOND-styled television dramas that have been lighting up cathode connections for a longer spell'n any of us could've imagined.

Truth be told MAN WITH A CAMERA ain't exactly the classic tee-vee wonder that made both beer guzzlin' undershirt easy chair types and brainy Big City tee-vee crits sit up 'n take notice. It actually has more of the charm of a syndicated series your local station woulda stuck into the schedule back when the nets would cut out at 10:30 and they hadda fill the space between that'n the late news. But whatever the situation may be the series was at least rather watchable. Nothing fantastic or jaw-dropping the way a good portion of the competition could get. Maybe proto-brainy before shows like TWILIGHT ZONE and NAKED CITY began probing the inner workings of the mind and started injecting big heaping helpings of psychological whatziz into the mix. Good, at least if you're also watching bizarro aliens givin' ya the creeps but alas, none of 'em appear in CAMERA.

The series is kinda neat though...whereas the folks on CHECKMATE solved problems using psychological skills and deft trickery, Bronson solves 'em with his camera expertise. Sometimes he serves as a surrogate private eye type and others when he just happens to be at the scene or does some camera tricks in order to speed up the process of justice. Yeah, the camera as prop ain't as keen as having a helicopter like on THE WHIRLYBIRDS or that fancy gadget-laden car on SHANNON, but it does its job and I gotta marvel at how the writers were able to milk 28 episodes outta such a seemingly simple premise.

The series did sport some good guests including Angie Dickinson back when she was still a brunette, a pre-Batgirl Yvonne Craig, Sebastian Cabot, Howard "Floyd the Barber" McNear and even Harry Dean Stanton, a guy who acted in a number of great films o'er the years though I never could understand why everybody went gaga over him to the point where even Nick Kent wanted to do a piece on him for the NME. And come to think of it MAN WITH A CAMERA must have been a pretty good series because even when the show gets all brainiac psychological on you (like it does on "Six Faces of Satan", an episode which equals TWILIGHT ZONE at its humanistic worst) you don't exactly feel like heaving a can of tomato paste at the screen like you might've watching just about any early-seventies "relevant" comedy or drama that was so preachy you just know that it was crap like BLESS THE BEASTS AND CHILDREN that was the spiritual forefathers of the whiny and deeply moving precocious brats who are littering up the gulcheral landscape these sad 'n sorry days!

Like I said, it sure was too bad ABC sat on the thing when they could at least've syndicated it just so's the Bronson fans coulda gotta an eyefulla it while their hero was hot. It woulda made for a good late-night watch on your fave UHF outlet circa 1975 snuggled somewhere in between the umpteenth rerun of WAGON TRAIN and the late movie, back during a time when monochrome rays were considered the height of broadcast purity and even the snobs who used to up their noses at the boob tube were singing the praises of BOWERY BOYS films. But if you need it now, you got it...check ebay if you wanna good cheap-o deal (I'm sure some idiot has a used copy they just want to unload on ya!), and I'm sure some enterprising soul might have uploaded an episode or two on ebay in case you want a sneek peek before dishing out the $10 a good used copy might run ya.

2011-10-30T09:23:00.004-04:00

Eh, nothing much to pre-ramble on about this time...guess I blabbed myself outta existence the previous weekend post to conduct anything resembling a sane, thought-provoking schpiel this go 'round! Whatever, don't let that spoil your reading these tempting write-ups which only goes to show you that what I deem appropriate enough to blab about in this blog won't be imitated, emulated, copied or downright swiped by others in the rockscribing business...it'll totally be IGNORED. Whether that's proof of my unique take towards music as it stood as a hard-driving, obsessive teenage force in our lives or my total irrelevancy in the post-post-post age of rock is up to you, but I would appreciate if you did spend more'n a few seconds to come to your conclusion.

Flamingo Road-THIS CHANGING TOWN CD (flamingoroadband.com)

After all of the advance hoopla regarding this late-seventies vintage New York band (thanks to Russell Desmond of CAN'T BUY A THRILL fame), you can bet that I was hoping Flamingo Road's reunion disque would turn out to be a classic GREAT AMERIGAN ROCK 'N ROLL ALBUM worthy of the Sidewinders and Hackamore Brick (two aggregates mentioned in Desmond's review of Flamingo Road's CBGB audition way back '77 way), or at least something relatively akin to a hot late-sixties punk rev with just the right touch of metallic electricity to give it that all-important propulsion. Well, after some careful thought and a number of heated spins, all I gotta say is that THIS CHANGING TOWN is just as hotcha a platter that I was hoping for, and who knows, with perhaps a few more plays I might just rank it up there with the aforementioned classics as well as a few eighties brave attempts by the Droogs and scant others whom you might read about in these pages in the near future, but don't exactly hold your breath ($$$ concerns, y'know).

With hefty roots in mid-sixties English Invasion, Flamingo Road take their influences and pound 'em into a sound that comes off strikingly seventies without 'em lookin' like imitators or even emulators...imagine the Zombies, Nashville Teens, Gary and the Pacemakers or even Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas transposed to late-seventies New York City and maybe you'll get at least a li'l drift. Moments of pop brilliance abound (Flamingo Road do sound pretty New Jersey proto-power pop at times) and perhaps the Sidewinders/Brick comparisons do transpire on tracks like "Forgery", a slow and burning-ly intense number that has various elements originally spotted in such bona fide hits as "Moonshine" (Sidewinders) and "Peace Has Come" (Brick). Thankfully the guys in Flamingo Road didn't bother to pay attention to a load of the then-current trends overtaking the music scene which is why this 'un does hold up strikingly well long after rock 'n roll had ceased to be that International Youth Language Jymn Parrett was telling us it was back in the days of his DENIM DELINQUENT in the mid-seventies.

Too short (clocks in at 25 minutes), but I really don't care even with the occasional shortcomings (including a song titled after the band which is a glaring remake of "Tobacco Road"!) because THIS CHANGING TOWN's a definite go-gettum and (dare I say?) even a highlight of a year that I thought had little goin' for it in the first place!

Andy West with Rama-RAMA 1 CD (Magna Carta)

No, I never was whatcha'd call a fan of the Dixie Dregs nor the new progressive metal nor any of the former Dregs/Winger/Zappa/Malmsteen alumni who appear on what I've been told is more or less a solo outing from this ex-Dregs bassist issued back '02 way. However, since I'm always looking for hooks to reel me in to listening to a certain music, and I recall how West/Rama actually did a gig promoting this platter at the long-gone CB's 313 Gallery (a strange place for such a loud, electronic act to perform), and how I clung to what was goin' on at the three CBGB spaces up until their closing because I believed (and still do!) that CB's was one of if not the last connection we all had to a seventies kultur manifesting itself so late in the game well... Let's just say that I'm still curious as to what was transpiring at the club on that fateful night in 2002 when this act made its way to a stage that seemed more attuned to singer/songwriters, toned down amerindie mewls and perhaps a free jazz attack or two, but at least this platter helps.

Not-so-surprisingly, this mostly-instrumental outing's way more engaging than the various Dregs et. al. musings I've heard ever since those guys began getting hefty press in the pages of the same pubs that were pumping Travolta travails until even that became too embarrassing to do. At least to my clogged ears RAMA 1's a dark and intense moderne hard rock romp, kinda like the instrumental MX-80 tracks heard since the eighties only with synths added to give the proceedings a particulary cyborg tone that does appeal. Nothing offensive here, in fact it's all pretty much hard 'n gnarly with perhaps some jazz cliches tossed in to commercialize this album as if it was ever gonna sell like hotcakes in the first place. But despite that RAMA 1 is about as androidal as anything in the post-Chrome/Industrial music genre that one could want these days. Heck, at times this even reminds me of Japanese bass/drums duo Ruins who themselves have been taking the heavy metal/industrial trip to heights that even give me the creeps at times.

Nice li'l surprise ya got here, West! And really, if Capricorn had plunged their dollars into an act like this 'stead of that cornpone Jimmy Carter back in '76 then maybe we wouldn't've hadda endure alla that sissified Southern Rock crap that they were permeating the seventies with, eh? (OK Eddie Flowers...calm down!!! Don't take it so seriously!!!).

Bridget St. John-SONGS FOR THE GENTLE MAN CD-R burn (originally issued on Dandelion UK, though Four Men With Beards have reissued the thing if you're interested)

Funny what things you'll find when cleaning your closet out, though as far as being "funny" goes this particular platter is far from high-larious. Sent to me eons back by a certain fan and follower of BTC (no names, but I will hint around by saying that this fellow left the safe confines of Ameriga quite awhile back for the wild frontiers of New Zealand), this was recommended due to an alleged Nico feeling circa CHELSEA GIRL that I guess was supposed to ooze straight outta the platter...that I cannot deny, but frankly what made that particular longplayer such a dandy wasn't exactly the glop strings and lilting flute, but Nico's natural decadent charms that (at the time) could only come out of a late-sixties New York Warhol frame of mind 'stead of an England that still longed for the moral guidance and vision of a Queen Victoria.

SONGS FOR THE GENTLE MAN has none of that, and in fact sounds more like typical early-seventies mellow wallow that really keyed into the ever-buddin' sense of introspective lurch that was affecting youth at the time. Maybe if it had more of a bite to it I could feign appreciation, but otherwise forgive me if I, to use another phrase of those days, just don't want to get involved.

The Rock-A-Teens-WOO HOO CD (Sparkletone)

Gotta admit that I was having trouble looking for a fourth disque to round this post out, and in fact I had even spun a certain bootleg of worth about half way through before I remembered that I already wrote the thing up way back in 2004! Well, it was a good platter but anyway, after that debacle I decided it was the Rock-A-Teens or bust because I just knew that I hadn't mentioned this '59 wowzer to just about ANYONE for at least a good fifteen years.

And this 1995 reissue on the Sparkletone label is a must have, not only for this mid-South act's smasheroo hit "Woo Hoo" but for the entire knotty pine basement fun of it all. Yes, one spin of this classic will show all of those fifties-haters (read: hippoids who loathe the post-World War II/pre-radical era because it was so stable, secure and fun---if you weren't a jerkoff pinko that is!) the high quality of post-rockabilly garageisms being made during the late-Eisenhower era, and if you so dare do disagree I'm sure that Morris Levy coulda sent a few guys over to your house to, uh, make you change your mind. Or at least make you an offer you couldn't refuse, to use a much-loved cliche from my grade school days.

There ain't a duff track on this spinner...even the slow schmoozers like "I'm Not Afraid" as well as the purposefully clunk-laden "Untrue" soar so high, but that may only be because the drek we've been forced to listen to these past four decades would even make King Crimson sound like the Stooges in comparison. But it all goes down smooth-like, from the twangy darkness of "Pagan" to "Oh My Nerves" not to mention the Gene Vincent cover "Dance to the Bop" which has them lyrics about "pickin' 'em up and layin' 'em down" which I'm surprised never did get any of 'em banned in Boston.

Not only that, but you get those studio track outtakes that originally popped up on another mid-South sampler whose name escapes me (and I even have it in my vast colleciton somewhere...drat!) as well as a mono take of the exact same album if you're that much of a comparative shopper! And as far as the rest of the package goes...well, it's pretty nice though considering this release's importance it shoulda had a little more care put into it, with a nice booklet just bursting with pictures and posters and all sortsa whimsy we've come to appreciate from these well-researched endeavors. You might also notice that the liner notes look mighty familiar and they should, since they originally appeared in a long-gone issue of KICKS which only goes to show you the budget conscious nature of the folks at Sparkletone! Sheesh, I know we all have to cut corners and make best with what he have within our grasps, but even I gotta say this is ridiculous!

2011-10-26T08:55:00.002-04:00

BOOK REVIEW! NUTS (a graphic novel by Gahan Wilson, Fantagraphics, 2011)

Bein' a kid is tough. You knew it when you actually were one but you always got ridiculed for bringing the sordid subject up---kept gettin' called an "ingrate" if you were brave enough to confront your elders on the subject, but as far as I can remember most of us brats kept our mouths shut and suffered in humiliating privacy. As you got older and the past became more in-focus you were positively sure that it was those indignities and horrors during your kiddyhood that made you the grown up sick-o neurotic that you most certainly are! Yeah, all of that talk middle-aged teachers who never seemed to really have childhoods of their own (or when they told you about it made it seem like such a dreadful, dreary existence no matter how hard they tried embellishing it) gave us about how your school days and youth were "the best years of your life" always did seem like a load of hooey, and when you hit your teenage years and were out on the streets or buying records or going to see groups or doing all of those decadent things teenagers used to do ol' Mrs. Cosgrove's third grade pronouncements seemed more and more like the patronizing clapola that you knew it was all along! But back then you were too intimidated to call her out for the Pollyanna-ish opines she was spewing, and besides if you did you'd only get a violent whacking from your father once you got home so like, why bother?

That's why I really like this collection of Gahan Wilson NUTS cartoons that were taken from those alla those old issues of NATIONAL LAMPOON you used to sneak peek at the newsstands. You know, long before the management discovered that this pub wasn't exactly anudder MAD knockoff and started stocking it behind the counter with the rest of those adults only publications! Yeah, I know that in some circles saying that you liked the cartoons in those old NATLAMPs would be akin to standing up in front of the entire 1963 grade school student body and telling 'em your favorite television program was HAZEL but hey, I will admit that I find a whole lot more humor in one episode of THE APPLETONS or (perhaps) TROTS AND BONNIE than I have in the past quarter-century of funny pages espied! And although I never was what'cha'd call a fan and follower of the once-omnipresent Wilson, these NUTS strips sure do capture the entire addled goofed up misery of childhood existence from the viewpoint of the kidz in question 'stead of from some twenty/thirty year rosy glasses hindsight like most kid strips have. Nothing has really done that since LEAVE IT TO BEAVER, which again is the total gulcheral antithesis of what liberated people consider conduit to modern thought processes but then again we're talking the real world not Berkeley, and if I wanted to osmose some real fantasy I'd most certainly take a trek there!

Taking the entire concept of childhood nostalgia 'n tossing it out on its ear, the cartoons in NUTS really do lay it out onna freeway as far as all of those indignities and manipulations that alla us kids hadda endure. They remain relevant even to an old turd like myself because NUTS details that eternal struggle between kids who wanna go on at their own pace and enjoy what they want to and when, and having to endure all of the culture and force that the elders deem proper for a well-rounded education and social nurturing. Not surprisingly the latter's what always messes up the kidz...parents toil under the impression that ramming music lessons, the classics and the social graces will make their children sophisticated elites ready to lead the world but more often than not all they get are a buncha hate-filled, angry adults whose minds have been twisted beyond repair or worse yet...Liberace.

I gotta say that Wilson's understanding of kidhood and all its travails really does act as a firm counterpoint against the usual sickening sweet remembrances of growing ups past, not to mention what I always assumed parents and teachers thought was best for all of us in that disturbing communal way. Not to forget how more often 'n not it just ruins us and comes back to haunt us 'til our dying day. Summer camp humiliation, mangling accidents, death, physicals and all of the prohibitions against having a good time are all trotted out and put on display as if some War Crimes Tribunal case against "the enemy" was being prepared, but man do these comics hit home because hey, I hadda LIVE THROUGH a good portion of it all! Only as far as I can tell we kids didn't break the Second Commandment as much as the denizens of Wilson's world do...for us it was mostly the scatalogical post-poopie pee potty mouthisms with an occasional "big" word, ifyaknowaddamean.

But hey, I do tend to ramble on quite a bit. And hey, these NUTS 'toons have really taken to me like lice to scrotum to the point where I'm constantly re-reading 'em during my pre-beddy bye time thus knocking the ARCHIE collection of 1946-48 newspaper strips off the #1 spot on the book hit parade 'round here! Not too many things can live up to something along those lines, which must go to show you that maybe I am in my own strange and twisted way coming to terms with a lotta things that I never thought I would come to terms with in a million years.

2011-10-23T06:43:00.004-04:00

In the interest of deviating from the abnormal just to spice up this one-track blog, I definitely should gab on about something other'n music, old television programs, DVD-R's that Bill Shute sent me or some other form of ancient gulcheral wonderment that usually makes up the bulk of my writing (and usually only appeals to me and nobody else on this Earth). For a change of pace, howzbout a li'l bitta "current events" like perhaps my own personal take on the current "Occupy Wall Street" movement that I guess is beginning to take the world by storm if the glowing tweets from a variety of obviously wealth-based news sources can be trusted. I certainly do have mixed feelings about these protests...I mean, it's sure interesting to see that such a movement like an Occupy Wall Street can spread like wildfire without the intercession of a Comintern these days, and it does warm the cockles of my heart to see that there are more'n Tea Party activists out there acting concerned about the bailout of the banks and what way too many news programs call "crony capitalism" (which surprisingly seems to go against much of the thrust of these protesters' whole credo...I mean, if the unwashed hoards out there want free college educations then why can't Big Biz ask for more moolah for themselves?), but I do get the creeps when I see the throngs of what seem like leftover eighties rabble still ranting and raving about Ronald Reagan (who I guess is to the left what Roosevelt was to the right for the past eighty years, and we know how far that got 'em!) and how he's still gonna blow up the entire world, all the while chanting what I thought were long-discarded neo-Marxist heartbleeds being pampheted by the local chapter of the "Even more Revolutionary Than That Other Revolutionary Communist Party" staked out on your local campus! I mean really...it was bad enough having to live through the student turmoil of the early-seventies once to have to suffer through the entire shebang all over again!

But hey, once you get down to brass tacks one can only go so far mouthing pieties about "the people" and what everyday working folk go through when for all intent purposes the average Amerigan guy who works for a living is the spiritual successor to those construction workers who bashed the living daylights outta the hippies who were taking dumps on the stars 'n stripes in protest of the Kent State killings! Certainly takes the romance outta any revolutions you care to dish us, dontcha think?

Of course I could add that how could any of these protesters know about work when obviously none of 'em are at work or are too busy sticking up those stoopid "I am the 99%" pix that we're supposed to feel sorry over), but I assume that they're terminally unemployed because of the rich bankers and traders whom they're taking out their anger and angst on while acting so peaceful that police actually pepperspray 'em (yeah, I don't buy that line about this being exactly a "peaceful" protest myself, though I gotta say that this generation is showing more imagination by releasing bowels upon police cars 'stead of Ol' Glory!).

Okay, so the vast majority (if not all) of 'em look like people who would not only hate the music and tee-vee shows (and civilization which spawned such wonders) that I wax on about, not to mention me on a personal basis...let's keep looks outta this and concentrate on the message. What is it, I might ask...well, that's not exactly hard to discern but from what I gathered from some of the people I've seen interviewed on the boob tube their goals can be pretty lofty. Some of the demands being spouted would be rather murderous to the economy and society in general (quick, somebody drop cartoon pamphlets of THE ROAD TO SERFDOM, or at least Steve Ditko's THE AVENGING WORLD via plane!) while others are about as loony as the banter that spaced out health food chick on FERNWOOD TONIGHT used to spout. Most of it's angry kid rant which (when channeled through seventies-vintage punk rock) could be exhilarating, but forgive me if this time 'round it just sounds like spoiled brat generation take two with the new spawn just trying to out-gross their already disgusting hippoid parents in the revulsion department. Can't have any sympathy with screaming pampered scions of DAILY WORKER/VILLAGE VOICE-lapping comrades who think that shouting down your opponents is the true way to justice 'n equality, though you folk really are giving me a laugh the way you echo everything the guy with the microphone says in some spiritual sense of united personhood.

Naturally the only real sound commentaries on OWS that I've come across as of late have emanated from the alternative right. Jim Goad (as usual) had a good (and judging from the combox comments, rather incendiary) piece on it on the TAKI'S TOP DRAWER site, while this commentary from Thomas Fleming of CHRONICLES notoriety done on the DAILY MAIL website perhaps sums up my own personal opinions more'n anything I would dare commit to pixel. Sometimes I think that letting such articulates as these spout off what I believe in is way better'n having someone as inarticulate in the realm of debating as I am (did I ever tell you about how somebody once thought I should try out for the debating team in high school, an even more boring waste of time than the evening I was dragged to a Model U.N. gathering?) do the blithering. But whaddeva, in the long run I thought that those days were gone forever...y'know, the era of the angry anti-capitalist rant and raver who always dreamed of that working man's utopia, then either went to said utopia and returned a neo-conservative (a guy who left the religion, sort of), or stayed there and became one of the most glowing apologists for a regime that would make their visions of evil capitalism look like heaven on earth! In other words...hysteria does repeat itself, and one can wonder just how long it will be before the spiritual successors of the "no pasaran!" brigades get frustrated enough to head for the local cemetery to dig up corpses and affix them in sexual positions. Your guess is as good as mine.

As for me...well tomorrow morn I'm gonna get dressed and go to work for about eight hours (if not more) then go home, and maybe do more work. I guess that also makes me a filthy capitalist, but I am saving my earnings for future use like perhaps a weekly trip to the local restaurant of my choice during my retirement years as well as towards whatever comic strip collections or musical archival digs might be in store in twenty year's time when the stuff I crave'll really be hitting the reissue circuit. And hey, perhaps some of those stock investments of mine might help pay for a few added luxuries like a stereo system for my aging platter collection, or maybe even a new microwave for the kitchen or an extra stock up of toilet paper so I don't have to rush out to the store so often during the cold winter months. Yeah, I know that I ain't "hip" because of this, and neither are the people around me who also sweat through the eight-plus grind, but at least we have some sense of security even if we hardly ain't earning what we most definitely should. But then again, as the famed home builder Jimmy Carter once said, who said life was fair?

Don't take it all too seriously...at least the protesters who snuck in with Ron Paul t-shirts and "End the Fed/Bailouts/War" posters were right up my rather expansive alley. But the rest well...maybe if you just got rid of that whole hippie stench permeating your entire movement then yeah, I could take y'all a li'l more seriously. But until then, maybe if you just went home, took a bath or at least wiped, then returned to Occupied Territory smelling nice 'n dainty 'n with mind more focused and replenished I wouldn't be having this strange flashbacks of early-seventies mock-revolutionary self-righteousness that reminds me of Gloria Stivic more'n anything!

On to udder noose...the recent "passing" of Moamar Howevahyaspellit should also be noted in these pages, at least in a weak attempt at looking like a sophisticated bumbler 'stead of the inept one I always come off as. Not that I ever liked the guy, but I thought he had neat hair that coulda earned him a spot in The Three Stooges had one been available. Actually, the only reason I'm bringing this up is because when I first saw the death photo of him that has been splattered across the globe as of late, I actually thought he slightly resembled the original Frankenstein Monster (played by Charles Ogle) from the Edison Studios' 1910 production of the famed Gothic thriller! Really I did, and although the following two snaps would never would make any of those ol' SEPARATED AT BIRTH tomes you used to see at the local mall book shops I sure thought there was a strange resemblance for whatever reason you'd care to dream up at this time! Sheesh, Che Guevara looked a lot happier in his death snaps! Not even a li'l smile like Sharon Tate managed to put up!

Well, I guess it's time to switch to a much cheerier mode'n get on over to the record reviews! Not much this go 'round (with regards to both items for display and bandwith to display my own personal opines), though what I have received and glugged down has been quite pleasing as you will eventually find out. I will admit that it sure is heartening to see that the year is going out on a better note'n it came in on, what with the recordings listed below not forgetting a bevy of recent releases that I hope to get my paws on once the **ahem** "financial situation" clears up around here---who knows, maybe autumn will be thee rockin'-sockinest time of the year this go 'round making up for the depressing way that 2011 burst outta the starting gate! So please dear readers, keep the economy a 'rollin' and get out and do some serious purchasing (you can buy some back issues of my own fabled fanzine for starters) so's I can enrich my collection a whole lot more'n I'm able to do at this financially miserable time!

Larry Young-LAWRENCE OF NEWARK LP (Perception)

The last in my weeks-long series of Young reviews, this '73 sesh benefits from the likes of James "Blood" Ulmer on guitar as well as a rather decent middle eastern motif that doesn't make you think hezbollah one bit. Might be too conga-drummy for my tastes, but Young's Hammond makes enough good swirls to suggest the shifting sands of the Sahara and the electronic piano highlights help the entire friggin' situation along, giving the entire affair that classy sophistacado jazz feel that made you feel like puttin' on a suit and ti. As far as these early-seventies neo-fusion efforts go, this 'un sure beats Return to Forever and all of those similar-minded efforts all hollow, as if I had to tell you such an obvious fact of like like this straight out!

Gary Wilson-FORGOTTEN LOVERS LP (Feeding Tube, 90 King St., Northampton, MA 01060)

Like I said, for a year that seemed to be rather sparse in the archival digs dept. things sure seem to be picking up at a rapid pace now that we're careening straight into 2012 and hopefuly better finds in the high energy reish/new gunch department. First there was the Jack Ruby disque reviewed last week giving me palpitations of joy, and now this particular piece of vinylized wonder, a collection of rarities by the original king of outsider electronic lounge jazz schmooze Gary Wilson, has adorned my collection like nothing before it or since! This outta left fielder has made its way onto my not-so-sanctified turntable thanks to the gracious efforts of one Byron Coley (who tipped the Feeding Tube label off re. my address---thanks to all parties involved!), and those of you who have gone for Wilson's previous platters will definitely spill plenty seed regarding these bizarrities that were mostly (if not all...actual liner notes woulda helped this thing!) recorded during his golden age in the seventies back when men were men and indie records seemed to have an instantly more satiable air 'n regular mainstream offal!

Some tracks originate from Wilson's ultra-rare debut album that I've never seen offered for sale anywhere outside of an old New Music Distribution Services catalog (not that I was looking closely enough to notice), while others were more or less left in the trash can until now but they all will thrill ya if you go for Wilson's keen sense of nutty twistos on the entire Michael Franks oeuvre. Now I gotta admit that maybe some of this did remind me too much of incidental music for a 1975-vintage ABC MOVIE OF THE WEEK or at least a local public affairs program of the same time-strata, but once you get the image of past and future stars for that net climbing up and down the ladder of success while being inter-twined in some Aaron Spelling production you'll even enjoy these nuggets in a strange, nostalgic fashion. I sure did even though listening to some of the instrumentals on this gave me the willies about rather difficult chemistry tests ever-encroaching upon my "phase two" sense of intellect!

But all jesting aside, FORGOTTEN LOVERS is a true winner from one guy who seemed to have more of a sense of what late-seventies electronic musings were about than Tomita and Rick Wakeman combined. Not only that, but while a good portion of electronic sounds from those days have more or less fizzled worse'n Reddy Kilowatt suffering a case of erectile dysfunction, Wilson's jazz-bop musings sure hold up swell and go to remind me about the better moments from them days that never did seem to "date" and sound foolish once 1980 clocked in. A definite keeper that you'll probably ignore, but then again I never could judge the inferior intellects of some of you supposedly staunch BTC supporters!

The Happy Jawbone Family Band-OK MIDNIGHT, YOU WIN LP (Feeding Tube, see above for address)

Wow, what a surprise! When I first plunked the needle down on this outta-nowhere platter I thought I was hearing a remake of "Joy of a Toy Continued", then after about halfway through side one I kinda got the feeling that this indeed was a remake of the entire Kevin Ayers debut merged with the New Zealand appeal/squeal of the Tall Dwarfs. By side two all of that still remained, although a dash of Eno circa TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN was also reverberating in my mind. Never thought an album like this could still be made, but the Happy Jawbones fortunately proved me wrong!

David Roter Method-FIND SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL CD (Unknown Tongue)

A long time ago there was this certain "fellow" who used (operative word) to write for BLACK TO COMM who happened to meet up with another "fellow" who most certainly did not write for said publication on a New York subway train, and amidst a wide variety of subject matter (including how fellow #2 no doubt about it hates and will continue to hate until his last dying breath my rotten dago guts) none other than the subject of the then-latest David Roter Method, and come to think of it the only David Roter Method album in existence at the time, BAMBO came up. Considering what a dolt he could have been most if not all of the time, it's no surprise that #2 thought this particular platter was a horrid slab of "commercial" mainstream rock whose chords unfortunately have tainted his precious amerindie-attuned eardrums and stirrup, and he made his opinions regarding this album known to former friend #1 in no uncertain terms. Naturally, I disagreed with the assessment of this particular pudenda's pronouncements then, and a good quarter-century or so after I must admit that I have not changed my opines one iota even if it would cause me to turn in my membership card to the "Rough And Tumble Eighties Rockscribes Stupid Enough To Continue On This Dumb Path Club", not that I ever go to the meetings 'r anything.

But mainstream rock paens aside (and there are many here from Brooce to those latterday BOC albums Roter contributed lyrics to) I gotta admit that I really enjoy listening to David Roter and his Method. Even with the slick production and the AOR leanings I can appreciate the guy's crazed sense of humor and unique insight that seems rather barren in the wide fields of nada that makes up the entire "Classic Rock" spectrum. Roter is a rock humorist, a rarity in a genre that can get rather grueling at times, and his rattlings about late-20th-century En Why See living (and mid-20th-century confused kid-dom) will really make you wanna sit down and do a li'l chucklin' yourself. And it'll also make you wonder just what the guy was up to during his early folk troubadour days which were talked about all across the Stonybrook plain long before he ever committed a note to plastic (as far as I can tell...still harbor hope that maybe there's some extremely limited single or even album out there waiting to be rediscovered).

Yeah, some of this might bring back too many memories of eighties dystopian mewls from the dankest of playlists, but at least I can certainly enjoy a number such as "I Think I Slept With Jackie Kennedy", which might also be the exact same 1979 single a-side Roter did for Unknown Tongue and is a high-larious bruiser in its own right. I also felt sympatico with "Middle Age Boy" because, revealing snot that I am, I thought Roter was scraping up my own current-day feelings and blabbing 'em out for the world to hear!!! And of course how could anybody not enjoy a song with a title like "It Was Only a Hand Job Irene", co-written with none other than Roter's old friend and companion R. Meltzer hisself!

The Method themselves should be mentioned even if their sounds might not be as undergroundy as you would like but still excellent in its own way (think second Dictators album), especially when you consider some of the dross that has been passing as rock et roll these past five decades. None other'n Andy Shernoff (co-composer of not only the title track but "Human Timebomb") and Scott Kempner of Dictators fame turn up, as does former Blue Oyster Cult drummer Al Bouchard, a man who certainly tried hard enough promoting Roter on his own Cellsum label in the nineties. Also present is a Tommy Mandel whose main claim to fame is being a former Bryan Adams keyboardist, but since I think he was in some hot late-seventies En Why See-era groups as well I wouldn't come down on him too hard!

Well, I thought it was a nice enough package. You may beg to differ, but then again like I've said many a time I've given up second guessing you lamebrains loooong ago so don't bother me with your hipper 'n thou preenings...and I'm gonna be too busy listening to David Roter to care about any of you terminal snoozers to give a toss anymore!

YET ANOTHER ROCK 'N' ROLL DREAM I THOUGHT I'D BLAB ON ABOUT UNDER THE DELUSION YOU'D CARE ONE WHIT ABOUT IT (which is why I snuck it at the end of the post so's you can skip over it if you like!): dunno why I had such vivid dreams last night, but amidst some doozies including watching "cut down" clips from what was supposed to be either TO TELL THE TRUTH or a MATCH GAME '74-styled celebrity game show featuring (in one segment) Dwight Eisenhower and the Rev. Billy Graham amongst other elderly-looking statesmen types (all wearing what looked like Supreme Court/choir robes!) and (in the other) one of the pinheads from FREAKS as a panelist (different episode) getting emotional and crying into cohort Clarabell the Clown's fluffy collar when another panelist croons to him/her a romantic ballad, I encountered a dream sequence where I happened to not only be visiting Paris (!) but was present at a recording session for none other than the Patti Smith Group's RADIO ETHIOPIA album where, in between takes, Patti and group break into this rather foreboding musical numbuh into which Patti injects her own rendition of (and using a rather amateurish French accent no less!) the Maurice Chevalier chestnut "Every Little Breeze Seems to Whisper Louise"! The song was an obvious goof and fizzled out after the third line where Smith forgets the lyrics and hums the melody, but like the Electric Eels' goof of Mott the Hoople's "Violence" this 'un sure woulda made a good bootleg outtake or at least something to be added on to a reissue like Arista did with "Chicklets" on the very same platter! (And if you think that was weird, howzbout the one I had where I was watching a video of Paul Revere and the Raiders ramming through this obviously Detroit heavy metal-inspired number that clearly had ideas lifted from the Stooges!)

2011-10-19T07:24:00.003-04:00

SHANNON (half-hour series syndicated by Screen Gems/Columbia Pictures, 1961)

Scrapped my original review, mainly because gosh-darn-it I just couldn't help myself getting into this overlong diatribe about how the late-fifties to the late-sixties (stead of '50-'59 and everything after was kitty litter) were the real Golden Age of Television! Now, that's something which I've probably gotten into not only on this blog but elsewhere for years on end, and I just didn't want to once again bore you outta your obviously jaded skulls with my impassioned if (as some would say) incoherent schpiel regarding my not-so-obscure views. But the fact still remains that the '57 to '67 span of tee-vee broadcasting was most definitely tee-vee's real GA, years when you'd have even more trouble crowbarring me away from my boob tube the same way you'd find it extremely difficult to pry Chuck Eddy's mouth away from Robert Christgau's rectum. And frankly, although anyone who'd beg to disagree might not be a subversive, he might as well be and don't let any guidance counselor or lesbian gym teacher tell you different!

SHANNON is but one of the many television series from this true Golden Age that gets me all hot and bothered, especially with that early-sixties look/feel and hard-edged style which never could be replicated even if often imitated for years on end (clever, huh?). And yeah, I know that during the late-fifties/early-mid-sixties we were being bombarded with private eye/cop shows and most of 'em were pretty engaging, but even if some would say that SHANNON was cut from the same patented cop show cloth it obviously was quite different than the competition. George Nader played the lead in this syndicated series, an insurance investigator whose cases take him on some pretty strange twists and turns that were bound to get him into just as much hotcha water as anything Phillip Marlowe or Philo Kvetch could hope to come up against. Film vet Regis Toomey played Shannon's boss at the "Transport and Bonding Surety Company", and not only that but Shannon's brand new 1961 Buick Special was equipped with everything from hidden cameras to a dictating machine and even a special compartment to keep a gun handy! Y'know, additions that I thought would have been standard on cars here in 2011 which only goes to show you how ahead of its time SHANNON really was and perhaps remains!

Plots naturally follow the usual suspicious claims and fraud ripoff attempts, things that would probably bring a yawn to the real life investigator but in this case usually lead to an average of three murders and an episode-capping killing in self-defense or suicide. Yeah, like Beaver once said, you can't beat Wednesday Night on tee-vee because that's when the most killings are, and although SHANNON might have aired on a different night in your market you're bound to get just enough fatal carnage to soothe your savage boobies. Of course, in between the slaughter there's always the boppings on heads and of course the sticky intrusions into the lives of people who usually start out having a grave animosity towards Our Hero, but by the end of the show seem to iron out all of their initial loathing perhaps due to the fat insurance check they're about to receive!

Nader plays it typically cool to the point where you think he was a hypnotist, and does a good job of portraying that essence of pre-touchyfeely manhood that permeated seventies television which only goes to show you how good of an actor the guy was, ifyaknowaddamean. Toomey's naturally great as well which would figure since the guy had been a longtime veteran with enough b-movie footage shot to reach around my waistline twice even. And really, I gotta say that a show like this succeeds a whole lot more'n the variety of MANNIXes that I grew up watching because well, it was shot in black and white, and even though our abode didn't get a color set until 1980 even then you could just feel the multicolor technology fighting it out with early-sixties intensity mano-a-mano.

Hey, if I were an up and running slob during those years you could bet that I would have been glued front and center in front of the box watching programs like SHANNON 'stead of hanging around at the pool hall like I shoulda, though at least for me there would have been one hitch. Y'see, where I live SHANNON was being run on channel 27 Monday nights at seven, yet on channel 33 THE JIM BACKUS SHOW, another downright early-sixties winner featuring the future GILLIGAN'S ISLAND co-star as the editor of a small newspaper, was being aired directly opposite! Both of 'em were hi-quality examples of great early-sixties programming that seemed to get washed away once the late-sixties got their multicolored claws in gear. I mean, if you wanna talk about quandaries look no further!

(Big heapin' hunkin' thanks to Bill Shute for burning #'4 and 5 of his set...now where are the rest???)