THE SADISTIC MIKA BAND!

My lack of a Cee-Dee player has upped my appreciation for my vinyl collection just like I knew it would, and amongst my recent traipses down into the dungeon I have been immersing myself in some Japanese pressed Sadistic Mika Band albums that I shoved to the rear of the stack at least until now. I reviewed a compact disc collection of theirs but a few scant years back but must admit that it ain't been getting the spins it should, perhaps out of lethargy more than anything. I dunno, perhaps with my infatuation with the Japanese underground rock of Les Rallizes Denudes and their various acolytes the comparatively commercial rock of Mikas was bound to be forgotten, but given the lack of digital gratification and the fact that the weather is cooling (which always reminds me of the more aware, maturing aspects of my youth for reasons you'd never believe) it was high time that I gave the Sadistic ones a serious listen at least to remind myself whether or not if those rock crits and import bin aficionados of the mid-seventies were RIGHT or just yanking at our sense of wonderment over new LP's arriving at our local shop daily!

If someone were to ask me what we really needed in 1975, I would've answered "a Japanese Roxy Music". Well not rilly since at that time I really didn't care for Roxy one whit (though I was a fan and follower, at least to the best of my abilities, of the more rock & roll-oriented aspects of Eno which is something I proudly hail!), but if I were as up on the international music scene like many of you undoubtedly were I MIGHT have given the Sadistic Mika Band more than just a passing glance! Really, maybe what the world really needed in 1975 was a Japanese Roxy Music or Sparks or Jet or Fans, and if any group was up on giving this decadence a twist it would have had to have been the Mikas, a bunch who at least on the surface looked as if they could have produced a good Far Eastern twist on the same English upper crust mirror gazing!

HOT MENU I guess is the one that broke the ice in England and was available only as an import here in Yankeeville, and surprisingly enough it appeared on the Harvest label which is a tad strange in retrospect because these Japanese Misters and Missus were more attuned to the Island label's infatuation with snazzy sexual decadence aimed at trolloping teens on the lookout for hidden throb thrill music. Maybe Harvest wanted to dig into that audience kinda like the way MGM would attempt to "do" a Warner Brothers with a gangster film like DEAD END, and besides since the Sadistic Mika Band was signed to EMI over there why not have Harvest appropriate 'em over here?

Soundwise HOT MENU seems about as much of a Japanese take on Western Decadence Music that a Japanese act could bear to muster up, though the Roxy Music let alone King Crimson influence touted by this group is minimal at best (the latter of which is OK by me, not being that much of a fan of the Crimsons for at least three-plus decades, and before that as well). Even the bound-to-make-me-drool ref to Velvet Underground white noise mentioned in a NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS tome of the time is MIA which naturally would depress me, but overall the resulting sound, finely tuned and all, is that of a extremely honed, Far Eastern pop-cum-rock (yes, the Kyu Sakamoto effect does come in as you would expect) Roxy without the brash guitar/electronics interplay that made those guys out-there enough that even Rocket From The Tombs would want to cover their numbers. Even Mika's vocals which you'd think would be a tremendous selling point for this group are kept to a minimum making me wonder if what I've heard about Japanese men and their treatment of women as either lust objects or hate figures (see Brian Eno discussion on pornography with Chrissie Hynde in a '74-vintage NME) is true after all, and in fact had carried over into this chart-topping Japanese act.

Still there is a nice lilt to this, nothing I'd want to have a steady diet of but it sure comes in handy when I do get into my occasional mid-seventies progressive/proto-punk blur moments (see Deaf School, Sparks) and feel like re-living those days through rose-colored rear-view mirrors of course. Oddly enough, the LIVE IN LONDON album sounds almost exactly the same as the studio tracks making me wonder if the Mikas are in fact automaton perfectionists and if so why didn't they tour with Kraftwerk! But I sure found it way more enjoyable than much of the hotcha rockmag putsch music of the day even with the lack of a high energy freak rock quotient and they certainly put the other import fodder of the day in the shade with their natural Japanese smart pop quotient mixed with the better moments England had to offer us at the time. And besides, you know that I could look at Mika all day even if she was just propped up there doing nothing but radiating that boffo Japanese femme pulchritude!

If you're able to you might want to latch onto the US Mika album which takes bits and pieces from HOT MENU and that other one which had Mika and band samba-ing on the front cover though don't be confused since thus domestic brand uses the same cover as another SMB album with the group floating in mid-air, only major diff. being that the US cover comes complete with new liner notes used to sucker the unwary prog fan into snatching this one up in the hopes of discovering a new Crimson or Beatles. The live one might set you back a few more dollahs, but it sure fits in swell with that Amon Duul II live London set as far as quickie cash-ins celebrating recent arrivals to the British shores go. And if you're still not sated there is at least one relevant youtube link up that is taken from what looks like a mid-seventies Japanese variation on BEAT CLUB which will give you a sweet taste. As far as later recordings post-Mika go you might want to caveat since even these shoulda-known-better types decided to fall prey to the dread disease of disco for at least for a short spell and why should you forgive 'em!

Interesting aside: after Mika split from husband/group founder Kazuhiko Katoh right at the brink of fame she eventually ended up marrying Harvest head Peter Jenner, while former member Yukihiro Takashi drummed for the Yellow Magic Orchestra, I guess a fate that would befall someone performing this style of Japanese electro rock well into the eighties long after its shelf life had ended. Meanwhile, none other than band leader Kazuhiko himself committed suicide just this past October 18th, presumably not due to any anticipation of this blog post though given some of the reactions I get to this I wouldn't doubt it one bit.

THE ONLY THING MISSING IS THE INCENSE USED TO COVER UP THE SMELL OF YOU-KNOW-WHAT!

Well, at least that's the feeling I get going through my 35+-year collection of record albums moiling away in the basement since it does remind me of some small outta-the-way record shop/back of the bookstore from the seventies/eighties where not only were a wide array of budget albums, imports and bootlegs (some which I might have even wanted to buy!) readily available, but more likely than not there was some clerk sneaking into the back room during the slow hours to imbibe in a li'l illegal substance, usually right when I'd enter the shop to espy some recent release of ill-repute! But it sure is fun thumbing through albums that I haven't given the time of day to in years (some perhaps for good reason), and hey this lack of a Cee-Dee player in my pad has even spurred me on to buying a few new slabs of vinyl which sure does bring back that tingling thrill of record listening days long gone. Here's just a smattering of some of the music that has been gracing my ears in that good ol' analog way that sounds oh-so-pure surface noise, snaps, crackles, pops 'n all...

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Nazz-RETROSPECTIVE FORESIGHT LP (Slipped Disc bootleg)

I'm sure a good portion of you readers would probably agree when I say that I don't think the Nazz were a good choice for inclusion on the infamous NUGGETS collection of sixties garage band/punk rock hits and near-misses. True there were a few questionable entries on that otherwise epochal set...Sagittarius weren't exactly a punk group by any means while the Blues Magoos and Amboy Dukes would have been better served by their hits rather than the covers of "Tobacco Road" and "Baby Please Don't Go", but the Nazz always did seem more of a late-sixties/early-seventies hard pop group closer to the spirit of the Raspberries and refurbished Hollies rather than a mid/late-sixties punk act. True Todd Rundgren became one of the few interesting forces in AM pop radio at least for a second or two once he went solo and began recording some definitely askew numbers that even had the fanzine forces bowing their heads in unadulterated homage, but the Nazz seem more or less part of that world, filed next to Badfinger in one's collection rather than the Seeds, Sonics or even Stooges.

Not that there's anything wrong with pop rock when done right as any look-see into an Alan Betrock fanzine would tell you, and it's no surprise that this obscure seventies-vintage bootleg album would only go to prove what a hot group the Nazz could have been if their albums were only...uh, livelier. And as far as pop documents go RETROSPECTIVE FORESIGHT is pretty "up-there" as far as continuing on a power-pop rampage that seemed to pass by a good portion of the record buying public at the time. Amongst other things, this 'un's got a smart update on the Raiders' "Kicks", a fun spoof of "Tighten Up" and even a gloppy string laden popster that sounds OK in the mix because everything else is so teenage pop-punk you really don't mind the gloss. (Hmmmm, so maybe their inclusion on NUGGETS wasn't a mistake after all!) There's even a live version of "Open My Eyes" that rocks out perhaps because of the poor sound quality, though the inclusion of this and perhaps other unidentified live tracks only beings up yet another bizarre question...it has been reported that the live numbers that were used here weren't even recorded by the Nazz but by the Sickman of Europe, a group that I guess (correct me if I'm wrong, gently!) featured not only former Nazz member Thom Mooney but future Cheap Trick Rick Nielsen amongst perhaps others Tricksters (I believe Tom Petterson was in there as well). The weird thing about the Sickman of Europe name is that it was used in the eighties after Cheap Trick's fame had eventually deep-sixed and Petterson and perhaps Nielsen dug it up for a go 'round in a new combo which I doubt had the rest of the original members. The data regarding this group is still sketchy and I'm sure adds to the confusion for anyone doing a Pete Frame-styled family tree. Even more puzzling for me is why would two guys who were in a major league rock group have to start from the bottom only a few short years later playing the club circuit in hope of another big chance in the limelight? I guess this music biz is a lot tougher than I had imagined! If you do want to hear the Sickman of Europe in their original state they might actually be on here and if that is them then they sure were as hard-edged pop rock good as the band they eventually morphed into! (I didn't want to bring this up since it would only add to more confusion, but the Mooney-era Sickman used to bill themselves as the Nazz whenever they'd hit Philly which is perhaps why they are on this album to begin with. I'm sure that the bootleggers themselves weren't too sure either, and who knows even at this late date which is what!)

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Amon Duul II-PHALLUS DEI (Sunset UK)

With the ol' Cee-Dee player being outta commish for what looks like forever (and me dreading to go on another bargain hunt for a new box all over town) it looks as if it's gonna be records for the duration. And what a better rec to start with than this long-time import bin stuffer, an English budget cash in on Amon Duul II's popularity complete with a low-fi chroma-key cover that belies the high powered music to be heard therein. Finding this one back in the old days was about as easy as finding John Travolta cutouts, and even though the rec didn't look like much with its stripped-down cover we all knew differently. Like most of this krautrock fodder there's a heavy influence of San Francisco before the plunge, but (as usual) what keeps this from being yet another nod out fest is the group's penchant for mixing in a nice does of mid-Amerigan sixties trash aesthetic and Zappa/Pink Floyd rumblings w/o coming off a whole lot pretentious like the Airplane did when they would attempt to inject some free jazz ideals here and there in order to get out of their own self-imposed rut. You may have the original, or even the eighties reissue which restored this to its "rightful" look, but whatever PHALLUS DEI sure brings back them teenage record store hopping feelings from a time when $5.98 seemed like a way too high price to even pay for a quickie job from the pimple faced slut in hygeine class.

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THE REVOLUTIONARY ENSEMBLE LP (Inner City)

In order to pay homage to the recently departed free bassist Sirone I decided to pull out the first album with his presence to grace my eyes while pouring through a stack or two of this long-ignored vinyl. This finale from the Revolutionary Ensemble couldn't've been a better choice with the trio of Sirone, Leroy Jenkins and Jerome Cooper playing one of their last ever shows in Austria (this originally came out on Enja) showing us yet another "dimension" of exactly what a co-operative jazz group of the late-seventies loft era could aspire to. Great jazz/classical/third world merging in the grand AACM "Great Black Music" trad with those fantastic moments of seemingly muddled free play intermingling with outrageous flash-burst. Burundi meets Bartok before the utter violin strain of Leroy Jenkins somehow works its way into your bare-wired nervous system. And Sirone is no slouch handling not only bass but flute as does percussionist Jerome Cooper, who switches between his balafon, a Marueen Tucker-esque drum kit and smart-enough piano for an added strange dimension that really would be hard to define if you had no prior knowledge of this group. Along with Air one of the better moments of mid/late-seventies co-operative free jazz that I guess was making waves somewhere, that is if you could believe what THE VILLAGE VOICE was daring to tell us at least music-wise.

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The Rolling Stones-CRACKIN' UP LP (Beeb bootleg)

Kinda looks like old bootleg week here at BLOG TO COMM not only with the Nazz album above but this Stones boot of mid-sixties BBC session appearances done up in a fantastic mid-eighties fashion. Fortunately bootlegs had come a long way since RETROSPECTIVE FORESIGHT because CRACKIN' UP sports not only a deluxe color cover that expertly mimics the time and place, but the labels resemble the BBC's very own reference discs which of course is a needed touch even if I have no idea what an actual BBC reference disc label looks like! Not only that but the pressing and general sound quality for most if not all of these bootlegs had shot up quite considerably since the seventies, and who could doubt that the eighties were perhaps the real Golden Age of Bootlegs given this upsurge not to mention the reams of releases by both familiar and cult artists that had begun to appear at the time!

Other'n that this is classic Stones taken right off the radio and (for a change) from some pretty swell sounding tapes that don't sound like they were recorded off shortwave in Belgium during World War II. And you know they were recorded from the radio because you can hear those stodgy BBC "presenters" trying to be hip and swinging yet failing considerably given their cultured voices. Side one's all studio while the flip was recorded live for I believe the SATURDAY CLUB program capturing the Stones long before they became but a belch in the stomachs of a bloated "classic rock" mindset. Really, who in '64 woulda thunk that the same guy bellowing those Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley ravers would ever wrap his tonsils around "Angie"? Me neither, but that's what happened! Just a reminder that "The World's Greatest Rock Band" might have been just that, if only for a few nanoseconds in the mid-sixties.

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PEBBLES VOL. 7 LP (BFD)

Closing out this treasure trove of albums is a longtime fave I haven't spun in years which in many ways makes it all the more desirable, almost like listening to a great album for the first time once again if you can fathom that! I pretty much forgotten just how much pleasure I derived from the first ten volumes of the PEBBLES series of then-obscure garage/punk rock single sides and this one's no exception...it's perhaps (along with the first three as well as volume 8) my fave of the batch complete with such then-rarities as the Chocolate Watchband's "Sweet Young Thing" as well as the Edge's Left Banke paen "Seen Through The Eyes" amongst a whole slew of crankouts that really captures the sound of '66 w/o nary a hint of Simon and Garfunkel. And who could forget the inclusion of the Craig's all-out raver "I Must Be Mad" which I must admit sounds much better speeded up ever so slightly like it was here! It's a real surprise to find out that the drummer for this English group was none other than a 14-year-old Carl Palmer, making me wonder just what other future dinosaur rock icons might have been playing in the groups to be found not only here but on other PEBBLES/BOULDERS albums! If I only knew, I could only make a fortune blackmailing 'em with these records!

Another boss thing about these PEBBLES discs is the definitely fandom-oriented packaging complete with the satirical liner notes that remain funny thirty years later, which is more than I can say about Bill Maher. Whereas volume two sported imitation Meltzer this one as well as the followup spoofed the infamous Tony Parsons/Julie Burchill THE BOY LOOKED AT JOHNNY tome (here called THE BOY LOOKED AT ROKY, penned by the Reverend and Mrs. Tommy Parasite!) to high-larious effect, making that particular slab of rock reading look like the excrement it truly is. Too bad Greg Shaw couldn't have expanded on the format...I mean, wouldn't it have been a gas if the liner notes to say, volume 9 or 10 were done as an imitation Christgau Consumer Guide? The mind reels as to what something along those lines would have been like!

ROKY ERICKSON LIVE, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2009, HAMILTON, ONTARIO---special guest review by PAUL McGARRY!

(Editor's Note: most people familiar with the BLOG TO COMM "universe" will undoubtedly recall who Paul McGarry is. A longtime friend as well as onetime contributor to the BLACK TO COMM fanzine of yore, Paul is one guy who stands up tall, never lets you down and is more or less front and center when called to action. Which is why he wrote this review of none other than Roky Erickson's visit to his [Paul not Roky's] hometown Hamilton Ontario this past week and decided to share his impressions with all of us. Y'see, I blackmailed him!)

This was not your typical Tuesday night in the Hammer. Legendary Texas Shaman Roky Erickson was in town for one of two Canadian dates. "This Ain't Hollywood" was the club of choice for the gig and was the perfect venue for the "Roky Revue." The place was decked out in its Halloween best, with a lit Jack-O-Lantern on the actual stage. The club had been a drinking establishment since 1893 and had changed hands numerous times over the many years and is now the best kept secret for live music in Hamilton.

I got there just in time to see the opening act's sound check. There were a few regulars hanging around, but you could feel the energy of the club getting ready for something special. I wandered around a little, checking out the Roky merchandise table and a trip to the classic looking wooden bar, which has propped up many an elbow in it's day. It was nice to see some of my old friends there that I hadn't seen since the last legend (Cyril Jordan) pulled into town a few months back.

The opening act blew through their set and promised Roky would be here shortly, following a stage makeover. The scene was set, the place was pretty much filled up with the likes of some Teenage Heads and Simply Saucers, a Mole was also spotted in the house. Can't be a great gig without a Mime and Old Drunk Guys doing tricks to add to the festivities.

The crowd shifted towards the stage area as the hustle and bustle of the stage door produced what appeared to be three young dudes and their Grand Dad making their way to the front....oops my mistake that wasn't Gramps, that was Roky Erickson slightly plump and in full grey beard. They took the stage, there was some smiles and waves and then it was strictly business. Roky and his merry men pummeled through a set list that would make even a Zombie smile, including opener "Cold Night For Alligators", "Creature With The Atom Brain", "The Wind And More" and "Starry Eyes". Need I say more? Decked out in his Hawaiian shirt, Erickson delivered his unique blend of Horror Rock to the audience with a new found confidence that was great to see. His band of young guns, (nobody over 30) brought a solid beat and a no-nonsense approach to give Roky everything he needed in supporting the songs.

From the first chords of "Cold Night For Alligators" until the final screams of "You're Gonna Miss Me" the voice was in it's finest form. That's the one thing that Roky could always count on and it didn't let him down tonight. Finally the evening had to come to an end as he left the stage to a roar from a satisfied audience. It was now time to get back to the real world for all us non-aliens. As I drove home I realized this was a once in a life time experience for me, who knows when Roger Kynard Erickson will cross my path again. I been listening to his records for 30 years, and to see the former 13th Floor Elevator Visionary in the flesh gave me a reverberation I'll never forget!

And a Happy Halloween to youse and yours! Hope this holiest of seasons is treating you fine and dandy because I can tell you for sure that it ain't doin' me any good! Y'see, just this past Sunday my trusty and not-so-old ghettus blastus clunked out which sad to say has made a big indent in my typical compact disc listening routine. Not that I'm that much bugged by the unexpected croaking of said machine since I got the thing free a few years back, but the li'l mofo was nice enough to play most if not all of my burnt Cee-Dee disques (the more elitist players in the house had solidly refused to spin such low-life forms of music reproduction!) and its compact size took up much less space besides my comfy chair unlike my original boom box which, not surprisingly, continues to rest upon the shelf in my bedroom waiting to go into action whenever I dare to call it to duty. Might just crank that one up and play only the brightest and best of my collection, at least until I can find another inexpensive box that respects disques regardless of their race, creed or color, Until then it's the old vinola that will be tingling these hoary old stirrups of mine!

In many ways this mini-tragedy may be nothing but a blessing since I've only been venturing down into the dungeon only once in awhile to indulge in the pleasures of analog. At least I'll now be able to re-acquaint myself with a number of old faves as well as some recent acquisitions I haven't had the chance to make friends with yet busy loafer that I am. And yeah, as we all should know picking up a vinyl album, looking at the bee-yootiful cover art and holding that foot-wide disc in your paws when placing it on the turntable sends quite a shock into the ol' system, one you can't get by thumbing through boxes of Cee Dee (an unpleasant task if there ever was one) and a feeling of yore that reminds me of my misguided youth thumbing through albums at the record shop when I was barely into the double digits. The memories would have been much greater if I could've only afforded to buy some of those by now obscure sides, but it's sure a lot more fun remembering things like this than all of the degradation I hadda endure thanks to teachers, classmates and family!

So until I get hold of a new cheap and undependable box or have to take a long car trip to Bizoo and back it's records all the way here at BLOG TO COMM central. Here are but a few of the slabs of plastic I've dug up as of the past week which might interest you, but then again if you decides to forgo this 'un for a Pieroghi dinner I wouldn't blame you one bit!

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The Frenchies-LOLA COLA LP (Harvest France)

I don't think I reviewed this one on this blog, but I know I wrote it up twice (first as vinyl, then as a CD) inna mag so I guess this would count as "new" in a kinda/sorta way. I'm sure that you were (as was I) probably first made aware of the Frenchies' sole album after reading Greg Shaw's review of it in a mid-seventies issue of BOMP!, and his description of these obscure-os being a Gallic New York Dolls certainly seemed interesting enough to a guy like me who was on the hunt for every shard of proto-punk energy he could get his hands on during the early-eighties. Unfortunately when THE FRENCHIES would come up on a set sale list the price was usually very prohibitive which is maybe one reason we should all be thankful that a market for outta-the-way rarities such as this popped up so's that long gone albums could get reissued on Cee-Dee by small labels that are helping to fill in the cracks regarding our rock & roll curiosity. Either that or we'd all go broke in order to hear a lotta items that we otherwise mighta gone "eh!" to while being too poor to buy discs we'd definitely go "aah" all over!

As far as being "Dollsy" go the Frenchies sure had a long way to go if they wanted to catch up to even the likes of the Harlots or Queen Elizabeth. It's still entertaining enough French rock & roll that's certainly not as bad as people make the French scene out to be. Still, THE FRENCHIES lack the energy that drew many disaffected youth to the likes of the Dolls and Stooges back in the early/mid-seventies with a few high points being smothered by others that might be passable, but are far from the overdrive needed to sustain the necessary energy levels. Imagine it to be kinda bubbling-under glam rock with some punk inspiration to be heard here/there and a load of funny Amerigan gulcheral references tossed in for the sake of who-knows-what and you'll come close enough. It still sparks up in places, but even at their worst the Dolls sounded better than these guys at their best which would figure.

But even when all is said and done I love this 'un just for its manic attempt at trying to be a decadent Parisian version of the Dolls that frankly could have been a lot worse. A record of mystery true, but the biggest one would have to be why Harvest, a label hardly known for its punk aesthetics, signed these guys in the first place!

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The Third Ear Band-EXPERIENCES LP (Harvest England)

Now when I talk about a Harvest label "sound" I more or less have these guys in mind. True, if you wanted to pick nits there probably never was a "real" Harvest sound since at one time or another Harvest was home to everyone from Pink Floyd to the Move/ELO, Richard Brautigan, Barclay James Harvest, Can and Be-Bop Deluxe, but when I think of a style and ideal that would be unique to that label it would be that of a post-Psychedelic rock mixed with what some might call an English whimsy and/or psychosis dobbed all over it. Talking more Syd Barrett and Kevin Ayers than the Saints and Shirts, and I'm definitely talking these English trolls who seemed to be birthed from some fevered dream of a Tolkien fanzine convention. Yeah they're acoustic and yeah they play oboes, cellos and tablas, but these Third Ear Banders really knew how to put a lotta electricity into their performance. How else would they have gotten a gig opening for the Pink Fairies and MC5 otherwise?

Another "Harvest Heritage" collection, this '76 offering's got tracks from all of their extant albums which helps me out since I'm missing MUSIC FROM MACBETH and besides, the cover art is top notch imitation-Hipgnosis anyway. (I remember seeing a documentary on MACBETH in English Class hoping that, because of this Polanski film's PLAYBOY backing, I'd get to see some bare somethingorother from the chick playing Lady Macbeth during the nude sleepwalking scene. No such luck occurred.) Nice selection too with that great drone sound that does qualify as "rock" (or at least it did much more than Genesis and ELP did) and was quite mesmerizing in an Amon Duul I way. The tracks from the MACBETH album seem tainted by the occasional use of an electric guitar, but as far as a first time spin goes I found them satiable, even if their dischordancy did break up the spirited drive of the rest of the platter. But whaddeva this collection is just another reminder of some of the more interesting items one could find if one searched the import bins long enough...and wisely knew enough to not give the Manticore label albums a second look.

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Tangerine Dream-ALPHA CENTURI/ATEM 2-LP set (Virgin UK)

Speaking of seventies progressive rock labels, remember when Virgin was up there with Harvest, Vertigo, Charisma and Island as far as those types of labels went? Of course that was before Richard Branson hop skip and jumped onto the reggae and punk bandwagons thus skyrocketing Virgin into something that meant a lot more than those hippie record shops he used to run all over England. Anyway, right around the time Virgin was beginning to re-think their image they released this "twofa" of Tangerine Dream's second and third albums for English consumption. Having signed the group to Virgin in the wake of those earlier Ohr-label discs I guess this was Branson's way of getting some of those by now rare albums into the English progressive mainstream and again at budget prices.

Not having played either of these since at least 1994 it was almost like listening to two new albums. In many ways I'm surprised that both of these still had an undying allegiance not only to A SAUCERFULL OF SECRETS but the Dream's very own ELECTRONIC MEDITATION debut (y'know, the one that still gets tagged as an unbridled Velvet Underground/punk homage by retrogarde collector wags). However unlike that outta nowhere debut these two did seem a little sparse in the sound/production department perhaps pointing the way towards those Virgin-era albums that really made a splash with people who still had their lava lamps in order so's they could listen to PHAEDRA while watching the psychedelic spermazoid effects. Nice enough blah blah but you heard it done better before and after by Floyd, Can and Amon Duul II. I did notice just how much Tangerine Dream's use of wailing synth and church organ influenced the Kongress sound, though those guys had a heavy swing to 'em while Dream were seemingly past the rock & roll state heading towards the dawning of a NEW AGE (music). Nurture the inner amoeba in you!

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MIRABAI LP (Atlantic)

With special thanks given to Peter Grant and Led Zep for their help in making this album a possibility not to mention a track entitled "Stairway to Heaven", I was kinda hoping this Mirabai chick, mystical Krishnian name and all, was going to be some hard rock standard bearer helping to bring the original age of heavy metal to a grand close. Well, once again it only goes to show you just how wrong a feller can be. MIRABAI (the album, the group and the singer) really ain't nothing but more seventies singer/songwriter in the worst ROLLING STONE/Stephen Holden sense that's perhaps made slightly digestible by a scant few interesting shards of downright tasteful melodies here and there. Otherwise this is nothing but instant seventies eclectic gunch with a dab of seventies folkiedom tossed in with downhome country sprinkled about in a mad dash for the eclecticism so needed in these types of recording acts. Of course the usual emote so attuned to the seventies in rather omnipresent. Given Mirabai's chance gig opening for Orleans??? at Max's (don't laugh, they used to play the Mercer too!) I was hoping for perhaps some sense of guttural snide. Sad to say, none could be found which I guess only proves that this Mirabai gal actually believed the Krishna Konsciousness rant she was dishing out after all! (Oh, and by the way "Stairway to Heaven" is not the Zep song but an original gospel kicker, one of those joyous numbers about dying and how happy she is to be doing so which is oh so tempting as far as witty retorts go, but for now I think I'll pass up any snide remarks just begging to be made due to this blog's new credo of SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. Given the involvement, however tenuous, of Grant and the Page Boys I sure would have thunk otherwise!)

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Before I leave you, I gotta congratulate all of you BLOG TO COMM readers who are tuning in for boosting my stats way up this month, not quite a record as far as visits to this blog go but pretty impressive nonetheless. Strange thing, I've been checking in to Site Meter to see just what kind of a person would be reading this blog and for the most peculiar reason I've noted that a lot of my readers are emanating from the continent/nation known as Australia, many of them from none other than the city of Melbourne! Gosh, I guess I must have a lot of fans down there in the ol' outback to which I say tie me kangaroo down, and get out the KY jelly! Anyway, glad to see that some of you dingos are getting your daily dose of some real high energy rock & roll scribing and whatever, don't make yourselves scarce, y'hear?

ANOTHER ENTRY INTO THE BLOG TO COMM READING ROOM!

(As you have known for quite some time)...boy do I hate Autumn! At least I hate it until the leaves are raked/bagged and the place "winterized", not to mention the rain gutters cleaned out of leaves and cat doody...then it's pretty much smooth sailing until the winter season arrives and I have to awaken at five in the morning to shovel the massive driveway! But then again I love those short winter days because I don't have to toil in the outdoors until sundown like I during the hot summer months and can snuggle up with a load of fanzines and other reading sundries for an entire evening while choice music purrs from my bedside Cee-Dee player. Only wish I had my vinyl turntable and collection up here with me so's I could enjoy plenty more music at the reach of my fingertips, but there's only so much space that can be utilized without crowding me out of house and home!

But read on I will in between doing all of that sundry outdoor work, and thankfully there's been a lotta good reading entering these portals over the past few days to keep me from digging into well-stored boxes of various eighties examples of fanzine nada that has clung to my collection like fat to the inner portions of my heart chambers. All pretty good reads too that have kept me captivated at least as much as my aging brain can stand...not as captivated as I was when I was 13 reading old comic book-era MAD paperbacks Friday after school (being forbidden to read comics during the school week until the grades zipped upward) but captivated enough that I thought I should write about some of my recent acquisitions in order to make this more of a fun extended mid-week article 'stead of some quickie record review churnout that you (and I) are most accustomed to.

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If I can believe what I read (and nowadays, one has to be mighty cautious to venture very far from this blog lest the truth be damned), there were a few rock snoots out there who really upped their noses at FUSION magazine. I remember reading an interview in which one well known critic of a Bruce Springsteenish hagiographical design really tore into this not-so-long-lived magazine of Boston origin, calling it a load of subpar sputum hooey that certainly would not be worth the time and trouble to remember, let alone read. Such a statement only goes to show you that the more some "critics" get puffed up and promoted and write reams of books on whom many would consider superficial fluff entertainers (making them out to be larger-than-life demigods straight from the top of Mount Olympus), the more they can spout off whatever inanities cross their pointy heads and people will lap it all up as if it were the honest-to-Meltzer truth!

Contrary to this person's offhanded dismissiveness, FUSION was not quite the bastion of poor writing and lousy "hip" journalism that this still-active hack made it out to be or else I wouldn't be writing about it and pardner, let me tell you that this mag was definitely one of the better of the late-sixties/early-seventies rock rags that not only looked way more striking on the stands than ROLLING STONE, but read better. Much better. Almost as good as CREEM but that had punkitude going for it and the Scions of Walled Lake knew enough to jettison the New Left Youth Revolt schtick to the point where even Lester Bangs was hoping they'd keep John Sinclair in prison for a long time! FUSION...well, their politics might have had a tad bit of a similarity to STONE's radical paens to...I dunno, longhaired kids smoking pot in a peaceful new civilization or something like that but like CREEM they had an ear for high energy rock and intelligent scribing as well, something that seemed to become less and less of a matter at STONE as they slowly sunk from their hip radical self-consciousness to settling into the whole singer/songwriter comfiness of downhome!

So whereas STONE was infested with the worst aspects of the San Francisco New Left hipsterisms soon to manifest itself in the far fringe of the Democratic Party FUSION took a more serious and perhaps cynical look at their subject matter. They also had a way more intelligent array of subject matter to write about, from Wilhelm Reich to the mindnapping Michael Metelleca/Spirit in the Flesh religious hippie scam to even the New Youth Press of STONE and fanzines. And they didn't even come off like vegged out Marin County rejects, even when they'd get into their way more digestible Nixon bashing which came off a lot better than the stuff heard once everybody started jumping on the hate Nixon bandwagon. Plus where else was anybody going to read Wayne McGuire's "Aquarian Journal" or Lester Bangs reviewing long-gone sixties garage band albums for that matter?

The ish that I just received (#78. September 1972) is one of the better seen not counting the early fold-over tabloids like STONE, PHONOGRAPH RECORD MAGAZINE and CREEM used to have before getting into a handier format you could read on the toilet. Nice touch putting Lou Reed on the cover, he still being a cult figure and not quite the star he would be after "Walk on the Wild Side" and ROCK 'N ROLL ANIMAL thrust him into the ranks of superstardom. After all, the Velvet Underground had pretty much held court in both Boston and Cleveland throughout the late-sixties (and if there happened to be a major Cleveland rock publication coming out at the time I'm sure Lou woulda been front and center on its cover!) and what better way of Boston reflecting its ginchy-goochy thanks than by putting Lou on the cover of a mag that typified Boston's response to the new rock anyway. I mean, they used to print his poetry and gave the Velvets plenty of article and review space in the past which even prompted a letter to FUSION by one John Felice so why not?

It's a good try of an article, but too short especially for a cover feature. And it ain't quite as much an interview as Lou and some guy by the name McCormick talking about before Lou gets drunk and goes home (don't laugh, that's exactly how this was billed by FUSION during its run as a back issue!). A few nice comments here/there (I liked the one where Lou relates telling a reporter about the difference between the Grateful Dead and the Velvets, where the Dead take kiddies backstage and turn 'em on while the Velvets take 'em backstage and shoot 'em up!) and a few nice pics that were probably unseen since their publication are used, but I was hoping for something meatier in the Velvets dept. here. (I did get it, in editor Robert Somma's magazine forward as well as a review of the Max's album in which Gary Kenton actually drops the Modern Lovers name a good four years before that became trendy!)

The rest of the magazine is pretty up-to-snuff as far as youth-oriented intelligent publications went. The article on William F. Buckley was surprisingly copasetic as that it showed exactly what is was in the sixties and seventies that made Buckley an outta-right-field household name and pretty much nails down his politics and behavioral traits long before the guy tried to become "nicer" just so liberal people would like him (as if they ever would). In many ways this article could have been written at least in part by the Buckleyite fanzine editor Mark Jenkins during his HYPERION days even though it is plainly obvious the piece's author ain't exactly gonna join the YAF any day soon. This particular tome, oddly enough, reminded me as to what that weird concept of conservatism used to mean in the days before it became waylaid, it then being a lot more hard hitting and offensive (and perhaps downright mean, an attribute if you haven't caught on yet) making me wonder where the new Sam Francis or Joseph Sobrans might be hiding these days. Heck, it all fell into the ocean a good decade back anyway.

That's just some of the more interesting things in this ish and if you're a fan of J. D. Salinger and Randy Newman there's more, but what I'm more concerned with at this time are those few choice moments when punkitude rears its pimply little head. It can be found on the letters page, where Alan Betrock writes in about his fanzine JAMZ and corrects author David Newberger for saying that the 'zine did not bother much about discographical data (let's just say that Newberger couldn't've been further from the truth!). The record review section has a nice, for once positive write-up of the Velvets' Max's album which I had mentioned earlier, and hey that's Greg Shaw writing a long piece on Phil Spector, how about that! (And given Spector's recent legal troubles these early histories seem to come in handy making a fella like me wanna mutter "wha' 'app'd?") And one big surprise can be found at the end of I. C. Lotz's "Quick Cuts" mini-review section where she gives a nice long 'n well-deserved plug to that new and upcoming fanzine FLASH which at that point had only published two issues...and that's all they were gonna publish unfortunately but it was still nice to read some professional kudos for a kitchen table enterprise such as that.

Unfortunately FUSION's fortunes would eventually fade and the magazine go the way of all of those other youth culture cash-ins that never did make it out of the seventies alive. The worst thing is that most of the mags that didn't make it out alive weren't that good to begin with, while FUSION had more than its fair share of above-competent writing and snide wariness to have made it compatico with the early/mid-seventies' general air of jadedness. Maybe it would have turned into a terrible late-seventies travesty like CREEM eventually did not to mention STONE (which really never did make it outta Wenner's womb intact), but for the time FUSION would have remained vital I'm sure it would have left a good portion of the competition in the dust. And at least scuh things as the Mad Peck cartoons and Richard Meltzer articles did live on...in other, maybe less-deserving publications.

***

Did I ever review an issue of COMSTOCK LODE in these "pages" before? Oh yeah, I did a few times...here's one in case you're interested. It was a rather above-par fanzine, heavy on the San Francisco which doesn't always suit me but at least editor John Platt and crew tended to "view" the SF scene from the fresh viewpoint of how it was in '66 rather than STONE's appreciation of it through consumer hack eyes. As you may know, I've learned not to hate San Francisco Rock but to appreciate the burgh's finer moments during those mid-sixties days of discovery, and for me that "scene" was at its best when groups like the Charlatans, Mystery Trend, Moby Grape, Big Brother and the Holding Company and naturally the Flamin' Groovies were rockin' away. Everyone else...well, let's just say that I do have to set my rockscam meter on full blast before treading into Grateful Dead territory, not that I have done that much if at all these past thirtysome years.

So whereas mags like RELIX reportedly dove head first off into the entire cliched peace/love fashion, at least COMSTOCK LODE had their tastes and appreciations on pretty tight which is why I just love the dickens out of each and every issue I possess. And thankfully I now own the entire line, for the once-obscure #4, the "International Artists" issue, has finally arrived after years and years of fruitless searching and ebay outbids at the last minute!

Now, I've owned that special Red Crayola fanzine which reprinted the interview Platt did with Mayo Thompson here along with some lyrics and the snap of Mayo Thompson with Epic Soundtracks, Gina Birch and Laura Logic for ages, but having an actual flesh-and-pulp issue was another thing entirely. But let me tell you one thing...it sure woulda served me better had I latched onto this magazine then rather than now, mainly because immediacy and instant gratification are what rools and maybe some of its initial impact is lost to time, kinda like those movies that were blockbusters but you waited until they played the 99-cent theatres at the shopping plaza and by then the adrenalin rush was long gone.

But despite the near-three decade wait it's a boffo addition to my library. It has a fannish and informative for the day International Artists rundown/discog which I know has been updated many times since this '79 publication, along with the aforementioned Mayo Thompson interview and a saga on SF poet Gary Snyder for those readers who bought this for more of the boho West Coast coverage that still had quite a following. There's even part two of a Pete Brown interview conducted by Pete Frame where you can find out more about those Battered Ornament albums that mailorder businesses were trying to dump on us back in the eighties! Now tell me, which would you rather do, read this groundbreaking fanzine (in the English trad. starting with FAT ANGEL and living on through BUCKETFUL OF BRAINS) or spend your time reading the current stack of rock mags with that dribble that passes for rock criticism these days? And once you get down to it, the only real thing that comes close as far as West Coast worship goes would be Alec Palao's CREAM PUFF WAR and how many of those have come out lately?

***

Finally on today's reading schedule's this late-eighties English rarity I knew nothing about until recently, a mag that I must say should have won some aware for "Most Peculiarly Packaged" or "Boy You're Gonna Tear This One To Shreds Trying To Get It Out Of The Envelope" or something to that effect! Y'see, A LETTER FROM HOME is a fanzine that comes in a large envelope which more or less serves as its cover. Once you open the flap and carefully pull the magazine out from the rather flimsy sleeve you will find a fanzine printed on color paper, one-sided at that, with articles on a whole bunch of late-sixties psychedelic/proto-punk groups complete with discographics and typical fanzine-ish record reviews of the latest sixties reissues and the like. The magazine actually reminds me of JAMZ, especially the final issue which was so big that Alan Betrock had to divide it into two portions, and frankly knowing that something like this existed in the late-eighties, a time when fanzines more or less moved on to better things, is quite mind-boggling!


The two issues I luckily latched onto are, as I said, pretty much in that glorious pre-tech early-fanzine style highly reminiscent not only of JAMZ but the early WHO PUT THE BOMP! and a few other similar-minded excursions into early-seventies amateur rock screeding that will come to mind within a minute or two (NEW HAVEN ROCK PRESS anyone?) Issue #2 of A LETTER FROM HOME features the Nashville Teens on the cover and the Misunderstood, Sharon Tandy and Fleur de Lys, "Hey Joe" covers and loads of reviews of then-current psychogaragin' rock & roll records that we were too poor to get back then! (Strangely enough, the only thing this magazine made me really nostalgic for was the old BOMP rare records catalog!) It's only twenty years old (and thus far out of the Golden Age of Fanzine range) but this ish of A LETTER FROM HOME ranks with the classic early-seventies mags with its xerox/mimeo look and of course those pages filled with classic reprints from the British weeklies and record labels that always made these fanzines look all the more sophisticated despite their limited printing capabilities.

The following ish is the one that got me all hopped up due to the promise of a Deviants article, and I must admit it a success even if it's only an edited interview with drummer Russell Hunter. Anal retentives like myself will be thrilled with the heretofore unknown shards of Devie infor which are presented (such as that these guys used to do the Mothers'"Hey Punk" (or as it is known on the WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY album "Flower Punk") and that before becoming the group's full-time bass guitarist Duncan Sanderson was more of a backup singer/"straight man" in the group!) plus we do get to learn more about their mysterious original drummer, this short-haired fellow who was either a Born Again Christian or a Born Again Zionist depending on who you talked to who used to chastise pot smokers at Deviants shows as well as tell scantily clad girls to cover up! Kinda makes me wonder how he put up with the usual Deviant antics that were going around, especially when they'd use some of the sex toys found at the Happening 44 club as part of their stage act.

There's also a good interview with Thom Mooney about the Nazz, filling us in on some of the lesser-known things that I certainly wasn't aware of regarding their partnership for wont of a better word with the future Cheap Trick guys, plus a piece on Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders that perhaps said more than I wanted to know (not being familiar with them outside of their two US hits) but it's there if I want it. The same wonderful quality as #2 is resplendent here, and it's too bad A LETTER FROM HOME didn't get out the way that it should or perhaps the entire history of rock music from the late-eighties on might have been changed for the better! Just kidding, but don't you think we could have used a lot more A LETTER FROM HOME and a lot less ALTERNATIVE PRESS back in those confused times?

R.I.P. Norris Jones, a.k.a. Sirone

Just so you found it out through me rather than some dope, let me be (one of the) first to inform you that the noted avant garde jazz bassist Norris Jones, later to be known as Sirone has died age 69. Click the ESP-disk link for a neat obit, but as far as me putting my own two cents in let me just say that the jazz world, if it were still meaningful enough, would be mourning this great loss but of course they won't since their collective heads are still burrowed deep inside Ken Burns' hiney to notice. Sideman for everyone from Cecil Taylor, Noah Howard, Sonny Sharrock, Charles Gayle and Billy Bang amongst many others (his playing with Bang and Gayle on the live CBGB Lounge CD that Silkheart released is incredible and worth the effort to snatch up despite its obscurity), Sirone was probably best known as the bassist/pianist/trombonist/percussionist in the co-operative group the Revolutionary Ensemble along with Leroy Jenkins and Jerome Cooper, a trio who not only released a slew of albums between 1971 and their disbandment around '78 (I count five) but made a wonderful cacophany mixing jazz, classical and Burundi in a way few have since. Highly recommended is the trio's only major label foray, A&M/Horizon's THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC from '75 which not only has them operating under professional production and studio standards, but features some of the group's best moments in a digipack sleeve if you can believe that! Undigitized as far as I know, but I got mine for a dollar, still sealed, at a flea market in 1982 and maybe you can too!

MORE BLATHER, OR IN THE SAGE WORDS OF CHARLES STARKWEATHER "WHEN YOU PULL THE CHAIN ON A TOILET, YOU CAN'T BLAME IT FOR FLUSHING"

Before we get up and runnin' with today's typical batch of "I got it and you don't" infantile oneupmanship, I thought that I'd better say what will hopefully be the final word regarding the recent "controversy" that has been going on between myself and a certain Australian blogger who operates under the name "the Barman". Y'know, the riff twixt us regarding his description of my Stooges '71 "box set" review as "blather", something which I'm surprised has caused as much of a kerfuffle as it has but given the fighting nature of some out there in the blogworld who knows. In case you haven't been tuning it much, I recently strongly objected to the Barman's description of my review of The Stooges' '71 5-CD YOU DON'T WANT MY NAME set on Easy Action using that choice adjective while commenting as to why the guy would want to become a "follower" of this blog given his use of such a derogatory term! Nothing more or less as you an plainly see, especially given how the guy's choice of words would save him a lotta money at the oral surgeon's should he want to opt out for false teeth. Surprisingly enough, I actually got a response from this Barman who said that my objections were just another heavy duty example of my "paranoia" (?) because, for some strange reason, this guy says that he has used that particular adjective more or less in jest (a "playful descriptor" as he puts it) which if you ask me is sure a strange way for one to show any sorta affinity or camaraderie for a guy and his writings! But what kind of judge of human character am I anyway...I mean, there was a time in my life where I actually thought Dave Lang was a fit human being and how wrong can a guy get?!?

The whole thing stinks. I mean, yeah, maybe the guy does think that my writing is foolish nonsense which is his own mislaid conclusion, but the Barman's crying crocodile tears over my response (one that was comparatively subdued compared to the reaming he could have received) is something that suspends all manners of belief. I refuse to believe that the guy used such a negative term in jest because if he only would have responded to my post in a relatively civilized way telling me that I was mistaken I would have immediately retracted my entire story and shrugged it off. I even would have re-invited him to become a follower of the blog even though he only tunes in ones every six months but gee, that's the congenial kinda person that I can aspire to. Unfortunately he didn't want to correct any misgivings I might have had but decided to do a little more deriding of my character while engaging in some amateur psychiatry by calling me paranoid, a description the man doesn't back up in any way shape or form in his reply which only makes this whole garbage heap of an issue reek to high heaven.

Hokay, so maybe "for the sake of argument" I am engaging in a tad bit of paranoia like the Barman says. Or maybe I'm just being "cautious" or better yet "suspicious", mandatory attributes while dealing with strangers on and off the web. After all, I've been in many a situation where I trusted someone and trusted 'em pretty good only to have 'em switch gears and rip deep down into me when it became career-climbing expedient to do so. Perhaps the name Ken Shimamoto rings a few bells, Barman? A guy like myself who's been around the fanzine block a few times and has encountered more than a few shady and self-centered/righteous characters and still comes across 'em once in awhile BETTER know better, even though I do occasionally get suckered in by some fandom-infused mountebank even this late in the game which, sad to say, is my own stupid fault. Naturally I learn the error of my way usually after said person does his typical turnabout, making me just another stepping-stone on that big road to Universal Rockworld Acceptance and always at my expense!

So hey, for a guy who was on good terms then bad with more than a few Big Time Bums maybe I should be wary, especially of people who think that describing my writing as "blather" is actually some sort of accolade I should be proud of. And horror of horrors, if the Barman liked that particular piece I wrote like he claims, I'd loathe to know what adjectives he'd use had he hated it! Note that he described Jim Marshall's review of the same Stooges set as "erudite" making me wonder why he'd go and give me the bum's treatment had he some occult ax to grind (some theories abound of course, or is that just my unstable mental state?).

Many questions do remain though, like if the guy only reads my weblog twice in the past year why did he want to become a "follower", something that I thought only the true-bluest aficionado of said blog would be proud to sign up for? There's something extremely foul regarding this Barman's "rant" despite his in-his-own-mind act of innocence, but perhaps none of us outside of the guy's small enclave of toadies will ever know. Not even the mysterious "Jimmy", though judging from his own comments on buttboy Lang's blog (DL cheerfully chiming in with his own little tee hee) I doubt he would have the cranial capacity for anything quite that mentally stimulating.

But after all is said and done why should I care? I just made my own harmless little response to the Barman's hate-spewed word usage, and if anyone really got blown outta shape it was the Barman, not me. And like I said, if he had only responded in a non-threatening gloves-off way saying that my objections were indeed misguided I'd have shrugged the whole thing off. But he's the one who went on the defensive and instead of acting what you or I would assume to be in a logical manner tore off on a rant while calling me paranoid in the process, and that ain't exactly the best way to make buddies! And really, it ain't too late for the Barman or anyone else who wronged me to get in touch and apologize, but for some strange reason I don't think anyone who has would want to living in their own worlds of righteous self-deceit.

Some might point to this particular post and twisto-change-o it into even more proof of my own mental imbalance, and if so I guess that's my tough luck. But hey, I guess that I like my writing to be called "blather" just about as much as the Barman would like his to be, or about as much as Dave Lang would like hearing me call his wife a whore...whether those things are true or not is open to debate but I do have the strange feeling that these people would probably react to such exclamations as I did to my review being labeled as "blather". So please Barman and the rest, lay off that phony shock routine for once...I got enough of that infantile false indignation all through kindergarten and that was enough as it is!

And really, I hope that will be the last word. At least for today. As time rolls on I guess we'll see who the real paranoids are and who the perpetrators may be, and really, I have a pretty good hunkerin' feeling that history will bear me out. Probably about a thousand years after I'm croaked, but hey, I'm sure I can have a good chuckle or two in the afterlife no matter how much the likes of the Barman and his ilk continue to sully up my good name for what may seem like an eternity!

***

Now that we got the children's portion of this blog outta the way let us tend to matters more, er, pressing. I've been feeling quite lazy as of late, and that coupled with the annual drudgery of leaf raking and raking in the moolah at work has been cutting into a lotta my blogtime so you'll have to settle for two reviews and nada more. I was gonna dig into my Cee-Dee collection and find an oldie I haven't played in years or perhaps lift a few heavy stacks of vinyl to rediscover some mid-eighties underground rock rarity that I probably dismissed at the time, but given the above defense and the reviews that I have already written I figure that this post is quite long enough as it is so there's no need to say now what I could say in a later post that might need lengthened just a tiny bit. And besides, the writeups I have presented for you today are rather top-notch stop-the-presses good if you ask me, so why should I bring their statures down any by adding some quickly-churned padding to the mix?

I know you're all waiting for my blather (yeesh, now I'm really making myself sick with the overuse of that word!) to get into full gear now, so without further ado...

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BOMP!---BORN IN THE GARAGE, edited by Suzy Shaw and Mike Stax (Bomp and UT Publishing, 2009)

I guess that the BOMP! book from last year must have been quite a success, what with this addition to the library comin' at'cha right on its heels. As we all (should) know, that first BOMP! treasury was quite a treat and as I would have expected SON OF BOMP! follows well in its footsteps, helping to fill in some of the little gaps left by the original while creating all new gaps in the process! And since when that something like that not been a good sign?

Mike Stax had a big hand in getting this BOMP!/UGLY THINGS co-production out of the frying pan which would figure since if anything UT is the logical successor to the BOMP! way of rock fandom and if anyone has picked up the mitre dropped by the fallen Shaw it is Stax himself. And as far as this book filling us in on bits and pieces that didn't make it into the original volume goes BORN IN THE GARAGE sure does its duty with regards to giving to us even more of the unabashedly strange BOMP!/Greg Shaw story, with more rare pages taken directly from BOMP! throughout its history (even those early issues nobody seems to remember) as well as from some of those earlier Shaw-edited fanzines, a few of which were even running concurrently with BOMP!, that sometimes delved into the nature of rock & roll proper in that great old time fanzine mimeo style that seemed to go out of fashion once photocopiers began coming into general use (an issue that irked Shaw as you can find out just by reading one of his choice early rambles to be found herein).

It is in these early magazines that the creative, fandom-nurturing side of Greg Shaw, the sci-fi fandom hippie who wanted to be a punk so bad, comes through in the proverbial loud and clear. Even at this early mimeo stage you can see Shaw's early-seventies appreciation of rock evolving to the point where even a choice sentence from ALLIGATOR WINE (last paragraph on page 81) is very reminiscent of something Richard Robinson might have written regarding the promise that the seventies held as far as the development of an "abstract" kind of punk music. It's this early heretofore unknown era of the Shaw Dynasty that really got my rapt attention, and although a pretty good job was done collecting these extremely-limited edition fanzine articles to appreciate from a good forty-year perch all I gotta say is why did Stax tease us about a review of the Deviants' PTOOFF! album from MOJO ENTMOOT yet neglect to reprint it???

But hey, this is Stax's baby I guess so he can write all he wants about Shaw and BOMP! from his own perspective which is spot on perhaps 99.999...% of the time. He does make a few boo-boos which are reflective of that whole seventies punk thing that rejected what became of new wave around 1980 (see KICKS, the writings of Jim Marshall and Todd Abramson etc.), like in his dismissal of the last few issues of BOMP! which ironically were my favorites just because they mixed up-and-coming underground rock with crazed sixties garage band information, but if that's what he believes well, I'll take it with the fab reprints and new commentaries that sorta round out not only what Shaw meant, but what his particular brand of rock fandom had come to mean even this far down the line.

For a guy who has most all of the original issues maybe this book ain't as mandatory as it could be for you, but it's sure handy to have the choice pages all in one page even if there are some things that I really would have liked to have seen reprinted along with the rest (like this article on the aesthetics of the new underground from that loathed final issue, one which is barely represented here!) if only for handiness sake. I must admit that a lot of the more professional, typeset pages from the mid-seventies onward issues are repro'd rather ickily, but I guess they hadda work from the actual mags 'stead of the masters which probably went missing or got sold down the line along with all of those letters Gene Simmons wrote to Greg Shaw back during their science fiction fandom days!

And although there is much care given to the reprint aesthetic (for wont of a better term) I have spotted a few "additions" craftily snuck in here/there, and although I shouldn't let such minoot things like that bug me I kinda get the idea that Stax and Co. were kinda tampering with the past when they snuck some Troggs Japanese pic sleeve into the British Invasion issue that clearly wasn't there before. But hey, Stax and I guess Suzy also did show some good judgement by reprinting some of the original ads (mostly for long gone items we now have to pay mucho dinero for) which I thought was a nice touch both graphically and aesthetically. Too bad they didn't reprint that great ad for the Sonics' EXPLOSIVES comp from the back pages of the very same British Invasion issue...that was just about as informative and as fun as many of the actual articles in that very issue were, kinda making me wonder why the Sonics didn't rate their own piece in the following issue's punk rock rundown!

Once I get down to it how can I argue about all of the history and pure genius that can be read within these pages? Sometimes I do marvel at it, like in that aforementioned ALLIGATOR WINE remark where Shaw, in describing a concept for a new "liberation music" in 1971, pretty much predicts the growing underground/avant-punk trend that would come to fruition only a few short years later. Or how about the reams of letters featuring the stars or soon-to-be's of fandom...not only the familiar names but such upstarts as Eddie Flowers, Michael Weldon and hey, even Imants Krumins clocks in with two letters even if they spelled his name wrong in one of 'em ("Imants Kru Mins"!!!!). Yeah, I know, some people don't care what is written about 'em as long as their name's spelled right, but I wonder how Mr. "Mins" felt when Kim Fowley wrote in correcting him by saying that Megan Davies from the Applejacks was not the sis of Ray and Dave! And really, to this day I do not know whom to believe (not wanting to offend Imants)!

Of course there's the personal side to this book that draws me not only to BOMP! the magazine/record dealer but BOMP! the tastemaker/monger, since this magazine was pretty much instrumental in getting me outta the usual everyday music fun-and-games that you, I and everybody else heard on the radio (AM band as well as it equally geeky FM brother) into something way more meatier with regards to music as teenage punkitude. You could say that this book even had some rheumy sentimental value to me, gushy softie that I am. And given my recent marathon pre-beddy bye re-readings of BORN IN THE GARAGE o'er the past few nights you know that this one will be sticking to my ribs a lot longer than say, some of the old ROLLING STONE record review guides where tough guys Lester Bangs, Mike Saunders and Richard Meltzer battle it out with the Stephen Holdens and Jann Wenners to see whether or not the Asheton Brothers or the Taylors are really "the first family of rock". (By the way, Meltzer's companion piece to Bangs' immortal Troggs article has finally been reprinted here, better late than youknowtherest...)

But whadevva, this one's a godsend and if I ever see Mike Stax or Suzy Shaw I'll shake one's hand and kiss the other (no jokes!) because BORN IN THE GARAGE is that kind of an exciting, high energy read and after years of fluff presented as to-the-matter rock writing we can all, you know, use more of this instead of that...savvy?

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Snatches of Pink-DEADER THAN YOU'LL EVER BE 12-inch EP (Dog Gone)

Never would have thought that a good group would have come out of Athens Georgia! All kidding aside these Snatches of Pink guys have little if anything to do with the standard "Athens Sound" as typified by a whole number of groups who might have had enough charm and stamina at one point that even I liked 'em but eventually fell into a mire of anti-commercial commercialism of the worst kind. Snatches of Pink come off more like what you'd expect some tough eighties/nineties Amerigan local band who was still operating on seventies gas fumes would. Hard rockin', high energy and with a backlog of influences that transcends the usual names kinda sounding more like what the fare at CBGB (where most of this was recorded 1/90) was like before the fashion and pose began to set into the underground consciousness to undoubtedly negative results.

Live side's hot. Hard but not quite heavy metal and perhaps one part punk rock (talking ROCK SCENE 1975) and the other part the better aspects of dinosaur FM around the same time frame. I only say this because the side ends with a particularly rousing version of Neil Young's "Rocking in the Free World" which might have been 1990's version of Peter Laughner and his Wolves playing "Rock On" in '76. Flip side's the lone studio track which reminded me of Simply Saucer's "Low Profile" more than anything. I'm sure that Bruce Mowat and even Edgar Breau would probably object, but if you ask me the hard drive and negative energy are pretty well matched up! A nice outta nowhere surprise from twenny years back that proves that there still were hard-rocking unpretentious garage bands who seemed to be playing their music despite the prevailing winds of sameness that characterized rock music that far down the line.