MID-WEEK MUMBLINGS

My recent review of the new Lookies split-single had me going back to the group's CD-R from way back 2005 way, a release that certainly didn't make that much of an indent in my life or else I would have remembered it before writing last Sunday's review. After re-reading my original opinions regarding that "mini-CD" (five tracks only) I could tell that I wasn't quite that enthused by the thing, perhaps soured by way too many very-similar-minded endeavors o'er the past twenty-some years to really care. However, a replay last night proved that, if anything, the Lookies of '05 were just as good as the present-day model with a nice slowed-down sorta hardcore/heavy metal cusp sound (again) not that too dissimilar from the likes of various Jeff Dahl aggregates of the early-mid eighties. Of course Powertrip came to mind, but then again there seems to be a nice tip of the hat to various other young upstarts of the eighties making up the Lookies' DNA that kinda has my head swirlin' way back to the days when TAKE IT! seemed to be the true standard-bearer for such underground squall. And a note to Brad K., I am in a bad mood today and this review hasn't been tempered by any negative vibes on my part. For modern-rock enthusiasts searching for jamz in an ever-decreasing genre.

Getting humongous spin-time on the chairside laser launching pad's David Bowie's THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD, a strange admission for someone whose own personal opinions of the man have ranged from extreme wonderment (mostly during my teenage years) to rabid hatred depending on which issue of KICKS I have just read. I will say one thing about this 1970 release (acc. to Nick Kent a pair of bookends to the rock of that year with FUNHOUSE being the other), and that is it's sure a lot more pleasurable listening to Bowie rip off Black Sabbath for a change instead of Donovan or James Brown. This even tops all of that Ziggy-period glam and glitch that everybody says was a Stooges goof but to me came off more or less like Elton John after his latest hit of amyl nitrate at the White Swallow gay bar. I remember reading the always wonderful (even when he's getting into his underage teenage-idol gal lust mode) Metal Mike Saunders praising this one to the rafters in his must-read heavy metal history that PHONOGRAPH RECORD MAGAZINE published back in '73...of course a few years later Saunders was making "controversial" statements along the lines of "show me a punk band that was listening to the Stooges in 1972 and I'll show you a great band. Show me a punk band that was listening to David Bowie in 1972 and I'll show you a bunch of glitter faggots." Which kinda makes me wonder which year Saunders was listening to MAN... Care to retract anything, Mike???

Here's one that I picked up and reviewed in the latest ish of my own rag, and at the time I remember being rather iffy about it despite the fact that Crystalauger's TERRANAUT album was presented as an outta-nowhere self-released early-seventies artyfact with hefty Velvet Underground references. And yeah, this ain't no Hackamore Brick, but I gotta admit that I love the way TERRANAUT has this sorta early-seventies "hip" swivel filtered through primitive garage band playing and recording techniques. Kinda reminds me of the great albeit low-budget early-seventies vintage album by some here-now/gone-later guys from Los Angeles called White Light that I reviewed way back in issue #20. At times Crystalauger sound as if they don't know if they want to be the Velvet Underground or Steely Dan...well, what else would you expect from a group that were supposedly American soldiers (and American Indians too!) stationed in Southeast Asia recording this disc in Thailand!

Since Drag City's re-released this 'un on good ol' vinola (with additional tracks) I thought I'd yank my CD of Mayo Thompson's 1970 solo album CORKY'S DEBT TO HIS FATHER out just to see just how much it resonates in my ever-decaying brain this far down the underground rock turnpike. A long-desired platter for this long-time fan of the original Red C/Krayola (as well as those late-seventies forays with various Pere Ubuites adding some hotcha brownie points), I must admit that I originally wasn't that jazzed by CORKY, in fact likening it to a load of late-eighties mid-Amerigan underground recordings being made by way too many kids mixing their punk up with hippie rumblings coming to the fore. Nowadays I gotta say I really like it a lot more than I originally had...true this isn't an extension of GOD BLESS THE RED KRAYOLA like Greg Prevost said it was in the pages of FUTURE, but it's highly-engrossing late-period psychedelic singer/songwriter (in the best sense) rock with a garage credo still intact and running on good ol' down home Deep South hardsauce rather'n Southern Californian cocaine karma. These mixes of avant garde music and rural upbringings always worked wonders for groups like the Hampton Grease Band and Debris, and of course it shines fine when handled by Thompson on this attempt to "blow Van Morrison off the map" as he once stated in THE NEW YORK ROCKER. I had a good joke lined up about the cover engraving of a Victorian missy making goo-goo's at a chimpanzee behind bars, but for the sake of good taste I won't mention it.


And finally for today's chitchat's this relatively new platter that's certainly flew under my radar to the point of stealthness. Didn't know about this HARMONIA LIVE 1974 CD (Water) until recently and it's a good thing I got this 'un when I did because who knows how long it's gonna stay on the market! I mean, I lollygagged when that Harmonia with Eno disque was available about ten years back and just try getting a copy now! Anyway, you may be fooled into thinking this is a Harmonia studio album because not only are all the tracks previously-unreleased, but there is no audible applause or any indication that there's an audience out there grooving to Harmonia's rather hypno-beat electronica! I guess everyone there was stoned outta their minds to give any sign of life! It's a nice slice of mid-seventies krautopia, not as dynamic as their debut nor is it as electro-pop as DELUXE but still it has this great analog synth sound with a beat-box rhythm and Michael Rother's fine guitar lines weaving in and out when appropriate. At times this almost has the same ambience as a typical mid-seventies Suicide tape, without Alan Vega's over-the-top Stoogeisms and Byron Coley heckling the guy to fisticuffs, that is.

SPRINGTIME FOR FASCISM

A recent post from the Taki's Top Drawer site that's just custom made for many of you spiritual leftoids (dunno how many neocon readers I have) out there who just love to spout now-meaningless terms and accusations at people such as I! And yes, I do hope you will consider the source!

THE LOOKIES-"KEEP IT ROLLIN'" b/w TRUCKSTOP LOVE CHILD-"THINKIN' AIN'T DRINKIN'" 7-inch 33 rpm single (Zodiac Records...try Bona Fide for availability)

I thought I'd better review this 'un before Rick Noll (who sent the dang thang to me like last...December???) personally removes my giblets via an orifice to be named at a later date. The reason Noll's all hopped up about this seven-incher on pink vinyl's the fact that the drummer for the Lookies, none other than L. Ron Rummager a.k.a. Jay Spiegel used to be a member of the Velvet Monkeys, a group that got quite a bit of notice back in the mid-eighties American pseudo-garage scene thanks to the help of Mr. Noll. Special interests aside, this split-disc (other side featuring none other than a group called Truckstop Love Child...no relation to that other group) reminds me of a whole passel of those late-eighties/early-nineties self-produced underground recordings made my kids in their garages who had the money to press up all sortsa singles and perhaps even albums, but unfortunately only about .01% of 'em had any talent, imagination or just plain gumption with regards to what they were doing, or at least trying to convey to a miniscule but awaiting audience. And sure it was great back in the mid-sixties when even the most suburban-bound punk band would get some limited-edition single out that got posthumous praise fifteen years later when one of those clandestine garage band compilations finally brought their hard work to a larger audience, but if the same kinda groups are gonna scrounge up the same five Stooges/Sabbath/Nugent... riffs and grind them into the ground to the point of cliches what really is the moral of the story anyhow???

Not that the Lookies or Truckstop Love Child are the same kind of typical no-promise/no-deliver "amerindie" bands we've been plagued with for the past umpteen years. Far from that...in fact I'd say that both of these post-teenage (perhaps way-post-teenage!) groups do continue on the more exciting path of what Amerigan underground punkitude-cum-post-hardcore rock did give us twennysome years back before it all slid into the mire. Sorta heavy metal chordings of the seventies filtered into a new and more violent eighties outlook (I'm thinking early Angry Samoans putsch) only slowed down a bit pretty much like Jeff Dahl used to do in Powertrip. And of course there's the loud, raw-throated screaming vocals that I hope still will not settle well with current satellite-radio-listening garage thudders part and parcel to the mp3 generation. Really spiffy, especially for a couple groups that've sprung up from outta nowhere and who'll probably just end up right back there thanks to the usually uncaring public brainwashed by thirtysome years of hippie mewl.

BOOK REVIEW! RADICALS FOR CAPITALISM (A FREEWHEELING HISTORY OF THE MODERN AMERICAN LIBERTARIAN MOVEMENT) by Brian Doherty (B.B.S., 2007)

As time crawls on there's certainly no doubt in my mind that the "l" in front of my own particular brand of libertarianism (or perhaps "paleo-libertarianism") is shrinking smaller and smaller, perhaps at this point in time even more miniscule than that "c" that Pete Seeger says keeps shrinking in front of his own communist allegiance. The reason why really isn't that difficult to discern, especially when the entire genus at this stage in the political game seems to be anything but libertarianism as I knew and understood it with various high-profile members of the movement (most notably the staff of REASON, the flagship periodical regarding just about anything and everything libertarian or so it would seem) alienating me more than a few times with what seems to be a severe confusion between "libertarianism" proper and "libertinism". I really don't know if I can count all of the occasions when it seemed that a good portion of the magazine's staff (the usually annoying Cathy Young as well as equally odious Nick Gillespie come to mind) went out of their way to dig into people like myself and my social strata for going against what they now consider the libertarian-bearing standards of the day whether it be various aspects of gay rights (read: "marriage") or certain matters regarding the lives (and deaths) of people that seem to woosh away a good two-thousand years of solid Western values. It only goes to remind me about a certain bunsnitch (no names please) who once claimed that I certainly wasn't a "libertarian" but a reactionary (golly!) because I stood firm against those special "rights" that have been given to politically protected classes whom I believe, nay, know do not deserve them no matter how hard they stamp their feet in self-righteous indignation.

But then again, what can I say about a movement that is so fractured and can go just about any way anyone wants it to go (for their own personal purposes) that yet another internet scoundrel, a "man" who claims to be a tip-top libertarian and gosh, he even used to read books by movement biggie Murray Rothbard during his days of adolescent self-discovery, actually went out of his way to endorse not a staunch libertarian in the truest sense like Ron Paul but Rudy (I am tempted to say "Benito") Guiliani for the Presidency of These Here United States! A guy who seemed so transparantly New York liberal republican that I was so glad my prayers were answered when this career-ruining deca-phony was flushed out of the race long before he could cause any real damage. But as for myself, although I still will admit to having a clear libertarian "streak", my sympathies lie a lot closer these days with the paleoconservative movement (which does overlap with libertarianism, only not the kind that the aforementioned bozos bank their pseudo liberal beliefs on) and the likes of Paul Craig Roberts, Charley Reese, Joseph Sobran, Pat Buchanan, the late Sam Francis and the people at CHRONICLES magazine as well as the TAKI'S TOP DRAWER site where you can read a more traditional Old Right view of today's miasma with a load of commentary from people who may come off too "racist" (not honest appraisals of modern day race relations) and "anti-Semitic" (not fair critiques of Israeli policies) for my own personal tastes. But they sure read, venom and all, a lot more honest and in-tune with where I as some mid-Amerigan wastrel stands on the issues than a bunch of these new libertarians trying to outdo each other by seeing just how many mid-Amerigan holy cows they can take out in the name of "freedom".

Anyway there's this relatively new (last year) book out that might just add a few more controversies to the "what is and isn't libertarian" brouhaha that has been going on, but nevertheless it's still a wonderful, perhaps the first concise history of the Amerigan libertarian scene that I at least can recall and for that maybe we should all give it a read before we make any more self-congratulatory pronouncements as to our own breed of rugged individualism. Author Brian Doherty, besides being a senior editor at REASON and long-time contributor to a number of libertarian and conservative magazines (as well as MOTHER JONES) is also a rather well-rounded writer in the non-political world, perhaps even a modern-day renaissance man or about as close to one as you can get in the 21st century. Regular BLOG TO COMM readers might remember Doherty not only for his tenure in the Sawdust Caesars (way-above-par modern application of sixties garage aesthetics filtered through late-eighties Amphetamine Reptile sonics) but his late-eighties/early-nineties SURRENDER 'zine (this was way past the fanzine era, ifyaknowaddamean...) as well as for being the author of a book on the hippydippy Burning Man phenom, but like I said Doherty sure knows how to cover all the bases no simple punk he! Of the two issues of SURRENDER I have gazed upon, the first seemed more or less like one in a million of the CONFLICT imitations of the time (in the sage words of Spiro Agnew, "no comment") while the last one was a marvy mix of extended essays passing as multi-functional reviews, a funny Faust article, thorough interviews with various under-the-underground figures and even a large book section touching on many of the libertarian and even paleocon aspect of today's subject at hand. (And add to that the man's very own Cherry Smash record/cassette label which released a number of items that I probably would pass on in favor of cruddy-sounding Syd Barrett outtakes, but that's just my horse-blindered vision of music.) But it sure was a joy reading Doherty's smart-set assessment of everything from the Hampton Grease Band and a wide range of Milton Friedman books, all topped off with a current playlist that had everything from the standard "hip" underground rock to late-sixties psychedelia, classical and big band (a genre I probably would love to this day if only my father hadn't pushed the stuff on me heavy-like in an attempt to keep me away from that evil rock & roll when I was barely into the double digits!). If anything, Doherty was the intellectual punk descendant of the likes of Russell Desmond of CAN'T BUY A THRILL and the MIA Tim Ellison, and although SURRENDER will probably be remembered in the same sordid back-pages of eighties/nineties 'zinedom as BLACK TO COMM I'd certainly rate it, at least from the final issue, as one of the highlights of those rather tepid despite what anyone says times.

SURRENDER, the Sawdust Caesars and even Cherry Smash are not mentioned in Doherty's dustsleeve profile which did disappoint me a tad (THIS IS BURNING MAN naturally is), but that doesn't mean RADICALS FOR CAPITALISM is going to be a stodgy textbook case history of a political movement most BLOG TO COMM readers would probably care less about. Au contraire, RADICALS does live up to its freewheeling subtitle with Doherty mapping out a more thorough than one would expect history of American libertarianism, starting with the early roots of the likes of Lysander Spooner (a New England abolitionist who believed that the South had every right to sucession) up through the early pre-form movers and shakers such as the irrepressible H. L. Mencken and John Flynn (who didn't get as much space as I would have thought probably because they were more Old Right than libertarian) and onto the big guns of the twentieth century who, if anything, were the guiding lights of a movement that was extremely fractured then and will remain so given its inherent nature and perhaps inherent irritability for all I know!

Naturally all of the libertarian high and mighties are trotted out, starting with Albert Jay Nock whom I guess Doherty considers perhaps the first true jumpover from Old Rightism into the libertarian (and perhaps anarchist-right) camp, with the Austrian Schoolboys (von Mises, Hayek) and Chicagoans (led by Milton Friedman) firmly in tow. Especially enlightening is the section which Doherty calls the "Three Furies of Libertarianism" dealing with the femme torchbearers Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane (daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder of LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRARIE fame) and the infamous bulwark of reason Ayn Rand, a person whom I guess I can be ambivalent over (and my opinion hasn't budged a bit even after reading the massive amount of space RADICALS FOR CAPITALISM allots her). And from there the story goes on and on through more twists and turns and in-fights than even I could stand. But even with the back-stabbings and banishments from the Ayn Rand camp, you can still hear the cry of freedom throughout this book as these libertarians were fighting a good fight against not only what many thought was a losing battle against Government, but the stupid lackeys that kept the Machine well-oiled. After all, it was a fight for freedom against all manners of incursions via regulations and all sorts of "do-gooderisms" that today seem to be loved only by surviving New Deal chowhounds still buying the old line about benevolent leviathan, as well as their spiritual (and flesh and blood) children who somehow think it's a God Given DUTY of Big Government to satisfy their every whim and need because they were born East/Southern European blue collar workers which somehow entitles them to something. I dunno exactly what or even why the blind faith has lasted so long other than a sick form of tradition ("My pappy voted democrat and so did his, and I ain't gonna change!"), but its kinda strange hearing kids who were only being hatched when Big Nemesis Ron Reagan (not "quite" a libertarian icon) was prez still muttering vague obscenities over his cold body.

And like I said, this book does live up to the "freewheeling" nature of libertarianism with the strange ins and outs that this philosophy was capable of producing in a wide array of up-and-coming new minds whose ideals on the basic tenents of freedom certainly made strange bedfellows. Take the aforementioned Rothbard, a New York boy genius who shocked his typical-for-the-times liberal relatives by sticking up for Francisco Franco as a kid (good enough start) before campaigning for Strom Thurmond in the '48 presidential election (not because of Thurmond's staunch segregationist policies but because of his support of State's Rights, a concept Rothbard thought was much to be preferred over the Federal Government's encroachment into way too many facets of life via the New Deal), only to end up hobnobbing with the likes of Tuli Kupferberg and other hip radicals in an attempt to find "common ground" between the libertarians and the anti-Marxist youth rebels of the day! (And to make things even more confusing, Rothbard pretty much ended his political life working for the '92 Pat Buchanan campaign once again reconciling the libertarians with the paleocons, although he and his cohort Lew Rockwell never could get Pat to accept the tenents of free trade!) Perhaps Rothbard was the true cheerleader of a libertarian anarchism that transcended the usual boundaries to the point where hey, maybe some free-thinking kid who grew up reading his works could somehow metamorph into a Guiliani supporter. Stranger twists in the political evolution of people have happened...just ask me!

And of course all of the other latterday (anti)-movement heads from Boaz to Browne show up as does the birth of the Libertarian Party ending in what I would call a pretty accurate discussion of just where libertarianism stands in the here and now. Many of the plusses and minuses as to the state of freedom in the late-oh-ohs are contrasted and compared, and Doherty's assessments do seem fairly balanced even if you may personally disagree with the general "outcome". (And I should say that I do take issue with a few points here and there but I won't bring 'em up else this book review might just turn out to say more about me than it does its subject.) But really, the concept of "freedom" in general (at least in the United States, and perhaps a good portion of the world) is looking a lot better than it has in some respects...after all, the recent Ron Paul presidential campaign brought together disparate factions almost as diverse as the people Rothbard courted throughout his career. However for the most part I think the average Amerigan is so hooked on the big boobie of Benevolent (hah!) Government happily swapping freedom for security to the point where the upcoming presidential election is gonna be nothing more than a contest to see which side can offer up more goodies to the "Average American" dolt who pulls the lever for either major party. A hundred-year war to make the world safe for "democracy" (or whatever it passes for these days) for the Republicans and massive government door prize New Deal redux giveaways for the Democrats. Wow. And true, more freedoms have evolved over the years (perhaps in some ways to detrimental effect) and generally there are more choices and more opportunities for the everyday common man available now than ever, but my guess is that most people would be glad to chuck it all away in order to get whatever handout they can from their pal Big Brother. It looks as if libertarians of both the big and little "l" variety are going to have their work cut out for them for a very long time.

SHOCK OF THE DAY

While checking out Tim Ellison's MUSIC CHAMBER blog in the hopes of getting an update on the latest issue of his ROCK MAG/MODERN ROCK MAGAZINE which has been in the works for the past few months, I saw that the man has, for reasons only known to him, effectively "pulled the plug" on said blog and deleted its studious and very informative opinions for perhaps all time. Because of this unfortunate incident, efforts will be made to remove the blog from the "Links You'd Like To See" listings on the left, but in the meantime I'm just wondering what caused Mr. Ellison to yank about three years or so worth of pertinent writing from the internet-sphere. One can only hope he hasn't come upon some grave "moment of crisis" (something which I should know about having suffered through a series of them during the course of getting issues #24 and #25 of my own rag out to an unsuspecting, and uncaring public), but whaddeva, I hope things are going swimmingly well for Mr. Ellison and the missus and perhaps the death of MUSIC CHAMBER only means the birth of something even more glorious in its wake, like a new ROCK MAG into our greasy paws very soon!

NEW ZOO REVUE OUTTAKE!

Well, it's either an outtake from that infamous 70s kiddie show (which still can be seen on small low-wattage stations very early in the morning) or perhaps a look-see into the lives of a couple of infamous bloggers having a spat. Whatever, as the sage once said, guaranteed to offend:

Various Artists-DO THE POP! REDUX PART ONE 2-CD set (Savage Beat)


Awlright AWLRIGHT!!!! I'll review these blasted Aussie things I received inna mail yesterday even if it is against my better judgement! An' besides, last night's Radio Birdman listenin' sesh has suddenly got me all stoked on the post-Detroit underground rock scene that began on that forsaken continent way back in the late seventies and continued for a good decade or so thereafter, and as any casual reader can tell you I sure am a sucker for the Detroit "heavy metal" sound even if it is being played by Antipodean dorks who wouldn't know the right end of a glue bottle if it was shoved up their noses!

Anyway, y'all remember the Great Australian Underground Detroit Rock Scene of the eighties, right? You better, because during those rather pallid "hip to be square" days Australian Underground Rock was perhaps one of the few saving graces of an otherwise horrible era in music, rock & roll or otherwise. Let's face it, with the seventies breed of underground rock either dead of with members devolving into sunshine superman visions and twee-pop machinations and with hardcore fizzling out into New Left bromides that were more or less a throwback to the radicalism of the early-seventies (and those 1971-vintage hippoids came off so one-dimensional and stupid that NATIONAL LAMPOON, heck, even the underground comix had a field day makin' funna 'em) there really wasn't that much music being made that would soothe the savage boobs of any self-respecting rock & roll maniac! 'cept for the new Australian groups of the era, who seemed to be taking alla that fantastic Velvets/MC5/Stooges/Up-styled crank of the latter portion of the sixties and running with the ball towards an end goal of total unbridled eruption! And lemme tell ya it certainly went down a lot more pleasing to mine ears than listening to some self-loathing pseudo-punks tell us why our craving for barbeque was beyond the pale (and why massive intrusion into our lives by "well-meaning" do-gooder social worker and government types wasn't!).

There were rumblings back in the late-seventies when the first Radio Birdman album was released on these shores and got a pretty caustic thrashing at the hands of a variety of rock mags (TROUSER PRESS comes to mind). By the early eighties more hints were cropping up, this time via Byron Coley in his article on the new "six-oh" revival that was taking place thanks to the likes of Bomp!/Voxx records and the recently-released superfine BATTLE OF THE GARAGES sample from whence came a Deniz Tek (of Radio Birdman fame) solo cover version of the Four Speeds aka Beach Boys classic "RPM". (A track I must admit I originally thought way too over-the-top for a garage band revival disc, and considering the variety of sixties-styled aggregates on the thing maybe I was right to begin with!) By the time FORCED EXPOSURE #7/8 came out as well as a string of Lindsay Hutton's unparalleled fanzine THE NEXT BIG THING back in the middle portion of that decade the word was out to the long-suffering high energy rock enthusiast...there actually was an entire new generation of hard rockin' high energy bands comin' from "down under" that people like you 'n me hungry for the seventies-sense-of-rock were just waiting for, and with all of those tales of hot bands sprouting to and fro (as well as Au Go Go catalogs being flung our way with almost-instantly deleted rarities for sale) who could resist sending well-concealed money down Orstralier way for what promised to be a total hard-rockin' affair unheard since the likes of Rocket From The Tombs morphed into the pale-in-comparison early-eighties variety of Pere Ubu?

There was another DO THE POP 2-CD set released earlier in the decade and if you want to read my review of it just pick up a copy of BLACK TO COMM #24 here. Keeping in typical feet-dragging record label time it took five years for the second volume of this presumably ongoing series to come out, and Thank Goodniz that I'm not as anal-retentive as I used to be about these things or else I would've burst and given the walls of my bedroom a nice brown coating long ago! But this is a beaut, another fantastic lookback into a scene that really was vibrant, happening and totally in-gear with the fanzine-bred rock fans of the day (and totally ignored by all of the people who shoulda given it that li'l push), and I hate to say it but who ever thought I'd be nostalgic for the (eck!) EIGHTIES like I am after hearing these aural torpedoes bludgeon my frail inner child!

Great selection too, like two tracks from Radio Birdman proper appear not counting all the ones with various spinoffs like the Hitmen (soon the subject of their own review), New Race, New Christs and the Visitors amongst others. (And those "others" include an early TV Jones recording of "Skimp the Pimp" which I believe did come out before though not on disque...too bad Deniz Tek's pal-sy with two former BTC contributors turned deadly enemies or else I would really be praising this platter to the rafters!) The Saints also appear here not only as they were in the late-seventies but as they originally popped up as Kid Galahad and the Eternals (with an early version of "I'm Stranded" that sounds like it coulda been recorded in the Rocket From the Tombs/Electric Eels loft), and for a bloke like me who passed on that early Saints demos CD for "personal" reasons all I gotta say is...boy I sure can stick to a vendetta despite the overwhelming odds!

Not that DO THE POP! REDUX is a total tribute to the sounds that came outta the Grande Ballroom and into your mind via Sydney and other areas o'er there. A good hunkerin' portion of these disques do show the ever-present influence of the British variety of punk which did coagulate into the minds of many an impressionable teenager of the day whether they knew it or not. But that's no reason to pass on this set even if you were one of those guys who got sick and tired of punk turning into "punque" as the days rolled on, because DO THE POP presents solid, hard-edged, energetic rock and I'm sure a good portion of it coulda passed a Grande Ballroom audition with flying colors, if not flying bottles!

Liner notes in the well-endowed booklet are by Dave Laing (please note spelling) and they would be good if only I could read 'em. Black on red printing is rather hard to discern to these eyes suffering from macular degeneration and danged if I could make anything of what Mr. Laing wrote in 'em! But the pix are sure nice and I'll bet that booklet's a treasure trove of fun information both old and new if I can only find my magnifying glass! And hey, if I really wanted to rack my eyes up good I could do a lot worse, like re-read one of the old issues of my very own fanzine with the cootie-sized print, right???

R.I.P. WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.

...and perhaps r.i.p. to the political movement he founded as well.

Radio Birdman-JUNE 2, 2007, THE BLENDER THEATER, NEW YORK, N.Y. CD-R (burn sent to me by Paul McGarry a long time ago though I'm only seriously getting to listen to it now)

"These reunion things are the bust." Can you (the ever-discerning BLOG TO COMM reader) guess which World-Famous rock critic made the above statement? Was it Mike McGonigal? Chuck Eddy?? Parke Puterbaugh??? No, none of these well-known rockscribes we've been paying attention to all these years in order to decide where we dump our hard-begged moolah have said the above (though choice #1 once scribbled something to the effect that only jazz groups can do the reunion thing OK), and come to think of it, neither did I make that very same remark either in my writings or via the ether (though I am disqualified, for I am NOT a "rock critic" [sheesh!] nor am I famous by any stretch of the imagination). If you do know who made this statement, please write me in care of this blog.

Actually, for a guy who was paying attention when the Velvet Underground briefly reformed in the early-nineties (although they turned their entire oeuvre into a warmed over greatest hits package with a few new turdballs thrown in whilst doing so) and actually dug not only the Stooges' TELLURIC CHAOS live set but THE WEIRDNESS, I'd probably be the LAST person who would even conceive of dumping all over the reunion of past glories even if said regroupings would somehow tarnish our old memories of cashing in pop bottles in order to scam these groups' latest recordings. But sheesh, I gotta admit that looking at recent snaps of the Sonics live had me feeling like I too was just about ready for the rocking chair and Depends...I mean, couldn't these guys've gotten back together twenny years back when they at least looked a lot less ready for the Social Security rolls???

Anyway here's this Radio Birdman reunion disque I got like late last summer or early in the fall from Paul McGarry (who else?), and although I spun the thing was back when I first got it just to tell Paul "I heard it" it wasn't like I was exactly paying attention that closely. Frankly, Radio Birdman were one of those groups that I thought was extremely hotcha way back in the eighties, although by the nineties I wasn't exactly busting down the barn doors in order to play any of their albums 'cept maybe for that great SOLDIERS OF ROCK & ROLL documentary LP. And besides, their "locale" wasn't exactly a zipcode where I'd prefer ro spend any great amount of time, at least if I weren't packing any heat, and sure Radio Birdman were from Sydney and not Melbourne but to this Yankee Doo-Doo it's still too close for comfort!

Anyway this recording was taken from an En Why See appearance last summer at the start of a tour that I understand was such a bust that promoters hadda drag people in off the streets to help fill up the venue a la Von Lmo's infamous Palladium gig. Maybe not, but I guess the group finished up their tour of the states pretty whipped and dejected o'er the lack of response, but then again what can you expect from a general music populace that takes banality at both extremes to heart and has foregone high energy for muzak even schmoozier than the Vicki Carr of their parents' generation!

SQ's surprisingly thin, almost sounding like an audience tape circa the early-nineties when the technowhiz was getting better but glitches were par for the course. However the performance is still pretty high-energy and a lot more vivacious than the recent Rocket From The Tombs' attempts at the same post-Detroit whirl (albeit nowhere as good as what the Stooges could cook up on TELLURIC CHAOS). Rob Younger still sounds as mid-Amerigan garage as he did on those old recordings (and the fact that he now looks like one of those balding fifty-plus longhairs that always sit next to you at the free clinic only makes us follically-impaired ones a lot more at ease!) and the rest of the band seems to be playing it just as hard as they were back in the seventies, almost as if they just picked up where they left off almost as if 1978 segued directly into 2007. Maybe they're not as energetic as they could've been on some of those live '76 tapes true, but it still whips the butt of most Amerigaindie rock 2008 so quit complainin'!

The old material's cooked up just fine enough although I frankly thought that the new stuff wasn't up to par. Too same-y in its sameness I guess. Still the overall performance and jams being kicked out are just as nut-twist as they were back inna day, and not only that but the covers of BOC, the Who and Kinks show that Birdman were most certaily heavy-duty contenders in the hard rock game and if they played their cards right they could even have been as big as...the Imperial Dogs???

If you think that this writeup is a harbinger of things to come then you may just be right! Y'see, in today's mail I happened to get a package from something called Shock Records in (eck!) Melbourne, the garbage scow of the earth, featuring some CDs that I may actually PLAY despite my better judgement. Two of 'em are by the Hitmen, that hotcha aggregate featuring Chris Masuak ex-Birdman (a guy whom I understand is difficult to get along with, and if this is so MORE POWER TO HIM!) while the third is yet another edition of DO THE POP!, a sampler of even more seventies rarities from some of your Australian faveraves crammed into two CDs making for an instant party in your ears, or instant insanity depending on which side of the vomitorium you crawled outta. But the question is...shall I review these items even if they come from the City that also houses the one called You-Know-Who??? (I mean, what if the guy even touched these???? Ooooh the cooties!) As usual, your votes will tell.

(An' let's give a little hand, for the boys in the band...no, give it for Rick Noll for letting me use these Younger snaps he sent my way! A twenty-one straw-shoot salute to you, Rick!)

TRACTOR CD (Ozit/Kerrang, United Kingdom)

Harmonia-MUSIC VON HARMONIA und DELUXE CDs (Brain Germany and Brain/Polydor Japan respectively)

Over the past twenty or so years the term "proto-punk" has been snapping my nerve-endings in arpeggios of eternal rockism joy. And yeah, I know that to you Johan Kugelberg's article on "punk before punk" (a clunkier variation of the form) in the latest UGLY THINGS was some sort of major musical epiphany opening your mind to previously-unheralded worlds of music collecting, but for me it was just a rehash of loads of fun facts I pretty much already knew about crammed into a nice package. Don't get me wrong, I really loved the article to the point where a number of pages are actually stuck together, but like I've been a proto-punk fan (perhaps even more so than an actual punk fan!) for a long long time and will continue to be long after I'm chucked into that big hole at the popper's cemetary!

I dunno exactly how I first got to be such a fan of the pre-punk punk groups in the first place, but even during the late-seventies days of rage I was more intrigued with the under-the-counterculture scene that was happening way back when than I was with the then-current goings on in underground rock music! Well, not really, but frankly I can recall spending more than a few hours at the library scouring through THE MUSIC INDEX trying to locate information not only on a wide array of classic mid-sixties garage bands but late-sixties then-obscurities that captivated my tiny dago-brain just as much as I did combing through the back pages of THE VILLAGE VOICE just to see what hot upstarts were playing CBGB and Max's that very week! Nothing much else to do while stuck here in God's hemmorhoid (that's Western Pee-YAY! to you), and come to think of it I was probably more stoked by the old Flamin' Groovies albums and NUGGETS at the time than I was with a lotta the goings on in New York and London! And Pere Ubu appealed to me more or less because of the Seeds references than anything else you'd care to think of, unless it was the Hawkwind comparisons.

But back to my trowling through THE MUSIC INDEX trying to find shards of info on all of those groups from the sixties until the mid-seventies that sorta wooshed right by me the first time around. Still wouldn't mind reading that Deviants interview that I believe Richard Williams conducted in the pages of MELODY MAKER (or even the article on them that I searched through the bound edition of late-'69 ROLLING STONEs for, only to find out that the ref. I had was for the English edition!) as well as a whole slew of late-sixties/early-seventies scraps o' info documenting a whole slew of groups both well-known and instant-obscurities, which only proves that once I get obsessive about something I stick with it until I've beaten that dead carcass for all it's worth. The sign of a true fan (or true anal-retentive...never could get the two straightened out).

But why this obsession? I can trace it to a perhaps a few articles read in CREEM (and maybe even GIG) or a number of freebie Cle-area college papers perhaps. Y'know, back when there still seemed to be this big tie-in between the then-current underground rock and all the great stuff that was getting pumped out in the late-sixties, a sorta limbo where it was too late for the Dolls and Stooges yet too early for the Sex Pistols which is why all those references to Television I was reading made 'em out to be one of the strongest attempts at rock creating a new language based on old dead tongues. And it sure seemed rather tempting at the time. Of course the little asides here and there, such as in the Z. Z. Top article ("Whorin' and Scorin' with...") in the Feb. '76 CREEM where the guys talked about their own past in now-infamous local punk groups the Moving Sidewalks and American Blues mentioning the greatness of loco hero Roky Erickson as well as this group called the Red Crayola that had some guy who used to play electric razor in it added to the (inner) mystique. Also sticking out in my mind are various tossaway reviews of late-sixties punk gems in STEREO REVIEW written by kultured kritics who couldn't handle the rising mass of primitivism led by such thud-stalwarts as the MC5, Stooges and Black Sabbath, a trend which lasted well into the late-seventies as a tasty review of Devo's DUTY NOW FOR THE FUTURE with the scribbler in question saying that our Akronites reminded him of a group he saw at a frat party about a decade earlier that had a member of the group that played the fender of a '59 Edsel or some equally antiquated auto which eventually turned into a riot...well shucks, if that just wasn't the sorta tonic that a guy who was forced to listen to the latest Juice Newton single to and from school was looking for, and don't let anybody out there tell you different!

And as the days roll on and I get crochitier and crochitier, those early budding days of what would eventually be called "punk rock" mean all the more to me. Maybe it's because this kind of soundspew is what was happening in many a joint back when I was a kid, and man I sure wished there was some crazy proto-punk group in my neck of the woods, perhaps even in a garage near my very own home back when I was young and sprouting just so's I could spy on 'em and get some free entertainment whilst they were rehearsing. (Which is a true enough story for me because when I was like four or five my neighbor Eddie Barton was in a group where he played drums, and one day when they were rehearsing in the basement I was looking at 'em in awe through the basement window giving Eddie a load of grief in the process! It took not only Eddie's mom but my own to pry me away, but not without a lot of tears on my part. Still don't know why my espying on what seemed like a momentous occasion could have gotten Eddie all discombobulated, but my presence was really upsetting to the guy and I guess it was his house anyway and what right does a mere turdler have espying such a thing as a rock & roll rehearsal!) And of course, this is the sound of punk before punk really got a name thus opening up entire new vistas of musical possibilities to...boring kids who really needed a roadmap to know which way the wind was blowing in their typically 2-D lives. Like heavy metal, when punk rock got a name for itself it lost a lot of its inherent power in the process and never really was the same again.

***

Here are three disques culled together not only because they all seem to have some proto-punk credo but because they just happened to by top spins on my Cee-Dee launching pad this week. One of 'em is a reissue of an album I had heard about a decade back and poo-pooh'd. The other two are longtime faves that even made it onto a top ten list of then-current boppers about a year ago, but since I never did write about 'em on the pages of this blog I figured that perhaps now was the time to take advantage of their existence and maybe hip a few readers even though I'm sure anyone who didn't accidentally stumble across this writeup in search of the "Gay/Feminism and Bestiality" blog already has these platters in their collection. Such are the dangers of "cruising" the internet. Tractor's self-titled debut's the first on the chopping block today, and frankly when I first head this way back in the early-nineties I didn't exactly dance the polka to it. In fact I thought, especially after all of the proto-punk hype surrounding this long lasting (even until today!) group that it was a wee bit too progressive rock for my high energy tastes. I believe I mentioned something about how Tractor would have fit in snugly on the Famous Charisma Label in one of those early-nineties issues of my own fanzine and if you thought that this one was going to get a heavy-duty spin in the years following then brother you haven't been paying attention that closely.

But onna lark I decided to give Tractor another chance, and whaddya know but this "30th Anniversary Special Edition" of our heavy duo's debut had made it into my greasy paws just inna nick o' time for me to do a nice writeup of the thing. Talk about luck, and after spinning this 'un after a good twelve or so years all I gotta say is that I must've been on the rag back then because TRACTOR really is a hit straight outta nowhere! Now that I've hit menopause I can settle back and enjoy Tractor's great high energy rock which spans so many genres and styles that it's no wonder that the punk rockers as well as the KERRANG heavy metal enthusiasts (who put this platter our since I guess John Peel's Dandelion imprint is once again deep-sixed) both claim Tractor as one of their own. TRACTOR slips and slides between hard rock of an early UFO/Hawkwind/Pink Fairies nature (hence the true proto-punksterisms of the thing) with a few sidesteps into early Black Sabbath (who coulda been proto-punk contenders had they fizzed after MASTER OF REALITY) and hey, this one swings swell enough that even the acoustic proggy numbers surprisingly don't offend me like they usedta. But that don't matter because most of TRACTOR is good hard throb-rock of the best early-seventies variety, and it's amazing when you think that this two-man band is still playing around after a good thirty-eight or so years and can be hired to play your next orgy if you supply the air fare and appropriate pharmaceuticals. Hmmm, and come to think of it even the acoustic number "Everytime it Happens" is just as much a cooker as the hard-edged tracks complete with a Mike Karoli-esque guitar lead that has you looking twice for Damo. Additional bonus tracks including this great Indian Raga Whoop are more than worth the price of admission. Damn, are these two good even if they look like Uncle Biff at his retirement dinner these days...gonna hafta check out their flesh and blood punk rock track on my long-buried STREETS collection just to remind myself of what these guys were up to during the late-seventies "upheaval"! (And it's so well-organized that even those acoustic "bopping gnome" tracks that were stuck on at the end were OK by me---hope you have the smelling salts handy!)

***

And while we're talking about proto-punk, the krautrockers did that trip with much aplomb back in the early-seventies. I'm sure this strange fact would have shocked a few outright punks back in the day since krautrock was more or less associated with hippies getting high on things besides life and hey, I remember the time I was at this West Covina shopping mall record shop in '77 seeing a display of classic Ohr albums amidst an artsy layout of bongs and other paraphrenalia! I even remember the long outta-circulation Jade Hubertz telling me about the days when he was working in a record shop and hippies were trading in horribly scratched copies of PARADIESWARTS DUUL and ya hadda be careful taking the records outta the sleeves because hypodermic needles were more'n likely to start pouring out! Not exactly an atmosphere for punkism proper you may think, but in many ways a lotta these early krautrock pioneers sound just like what those Amerigan garage bands were cranking out in the 'burbs of the oft loathed states at the time, and true a lotta these krautsters were pushing-30 collegiate types who had only recently discovered rock music after playing avant classical or jazz, but at least these aging hipsters had it made over their Amerigan counterparts (especially the ones in San Francisco) because the music they were making sounded a lot more like that of some sixteen-year-olds who learned to play while spinning Stooges albums, maybe mixed with Stockhausen but it still came off pretty scrunchy if you ask me!

Don't know exactly how Harmonia would've exactly fitted into this scheme of proto-punkdom but they sure have two things going for their inclusion into the p-rock hall of fame even if the whole of Cluster (not exactly one of my top-notch echelon of German Expressionist groups) is in it along with Neu!'s Michael Rother (for me the hippie half of the band counterbalanced by Klaus Dinger's extroverted punk stance). One fact that can place 'em squarely in the punk rock arena is that none other than Volcanic Tongue's very own David Keenan once declared Harmonia a punk rock group (wish I could re-read the exact review, but all of the Harmonia albums at Volcanic Tongue are sold out), and if Keegan sez Harmonia are punks then so be it! Another pertinent fact is the fact that member Dieter Mobieus himself said Harmonia were influenced by "the Velvet Underground, Mozart, Coltrane, Brel, Arabic, Hindu...the list goes on and on" which seems to me like a statement that your standard artsy-punk in a fit of braggadocio would have made around the same time (mid-seventies)! And hey, I'm sure you remember that story about the band Peter Laughner wanted to form with Paul Marotta which would have had influences as far-ranging as the Velvets and Mozart? Maybe Harmonia were really onto something even if I doubt that the Laughner/Marotta group, had they ever made it outta that night alive, would have sounded anything like this!

MUSIK VON HARMONIA does "have it all" or at least enough to qualify it as being as much a proto-punk contender as RAW POWER or maybe even the first Blue Oyster Cult album had they ended up struggling for a good seven more years playing Wednesday night CBGB gigs with the Brats. It does have "it" more than Kraftwerk outdoing them at their own electronic rock game, and in many ways they even equal the likes of Can, Amon Duul (I and II) as well as Faust, three groups who could have easily survived as late-sixties Amerigan garage bands triple billed with the Stooges and Alice Cooper at the Ludlow Garage (even though Umela Hmota 2 and especially 3 would have mopped the floor with alla 'em!). But still, the Velvet-inspired repeato riffs and general seventies electronic whirl (I dunno about you, but back in the day I really had an "affectation" for that old warm Moog synthesizer sound that seemed so state-of-the-art! Was I crazy or what!!!) sounds a lot more engaging and experimental than a lotta the stuff that Harmonia was eventually made obsolete by. I know that's sorta like comparing Supercar with all of the flying jets and other air travel one may see today, but then again the general stylistic warmth of the 1959 model sure has it beat over the cyborg coldness of technology as it eventually turned out, and the same can be said about Harmonia tenfold!

Followup DELUXE seems to veer even closer to that Euro-take on Velvetisms than the debut...dunno if that's because of the presence on some tracks of Guru Guru drummer Mani Neumaier (who certainly could be a devotee of the primal steady-beat thud a la such legendary hamfisters as Maureen Tucker, Scott Asheton, Twink and Jaki Leibzeit!). Maybe it was the opening title track which sounded more like a mid-seventies Eno number down to the chanted vocals. And sure it's "treacly" at times but then again so were La Dusseldorf and I'd certainly consider them hefty competitors in the mid/late-seventies Velvet Underground groove sweepstakes. The rest of DELUXE ain't that bad either, pleasing enough riff-garage rock that's not as electronic as MUSIK VON... but closer in style to Neu!'s more street-rock take on the "motorik" style (is that the "hypno-beat" Criswell was predicting?) complete with Rother's glissando guitar playing that I guess was actually good enough to get him a contract with the snazz late-seventies British underground label Radar, and at the same time they were issuing a lotta Amerigan proto-punk classics so don't say that he wasn't in good company!

Whaddeva, it makes a good hunk of what came after that great late-seventies surge in underground music (most of which gets bantered around using that horrid term "post-punk" which always crawed my throat!) sound positively tepid. And yeah, a lotta it was, and what's even more surprising about it all is that 2/3rd of Harmonia (the Cluster part to be precise) weren't exactly spring chickens with Hans Joachim Rodelius pushing the big four-oh when these recordings were being made! And yeah, I know we've thrown all of those old notions about ageism out the window long ago, but remember this was inna seventies when it sure seemed strange that Alex Harvey was old enough to be our dads and Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts were so desperately trying to hide their ages from the public. Kinda gives hope to all you geriatric readers out there that maybe you too can recapture a lost youth with your own punk batallion, eh?

***

Since writing the above windbagger I chanced upon a couple of related platters that fit into the aforementioned screedathon. (Which I find pretty dullsville if you ask me...too bad I'm outta Maypo!) As for the first...well, I must be the only person on the face of this earth who enjoys the NEU '72 LIVE disc that Captain Trip in Japan released well over a decade back. It's amazing just how many people really tear into this 'un, but (once again) going against the grain of "conventional" thought I'll declare this perhaps Neu!'s most defining moment. Sounding more like a clandestine recording of an EPI-period Velvet Underground performance (or that of one of those very early Velvets-inspired aggregates who knew enough to absorb the energy from the get-go), the low-fidelity of this rehearsal tape actually lends an air of grace as the trio of Dinger, Rother and Kranemann weave in and out of some rather majestic twists and turns that seem to plunge the Sargasso just as much as Lester Bangs said Can did. The recorder is left on even after the group finishes their extended workout, and strange utterances in the German language can be heard making us dumb Amerigans wonder what all the fuss is about. Then the three get into this hard cranky tangent that sorta reminds me of the Germs' "Sex Boy" more'n anything! Dunno about you, but this proto-punk racket that Neu! cranked out sure comes off a lot smoother'n what alla that post-punk doldrums groups that took their cues from the krautrock movement were whipping up in their botiques back in the eighties! Also getting the spin was Thomas Dinger's FUR MICH, a disque I got over a decade ago even though I've only played it all the way through in the here and now. Kinda candy-coated like the latterday La Dusseldorf releases true, but frankly FUR MICH still made a nice enough impression on my late-night listening even if I thought that the occasional trips into twee-dom were pretty much...well, evocative of a more eighties-styled music scene that sorta trashed all the good the seventies promised. But it's still way tops over most of the underground pretensions that poured outta the chasm of "artistic license" back in those sorry days. Don't let the glammy cover fool you, FUR MICH is an undiscovered krautrock/proto-punk in a modern "new music" world platter that I'm sure you'll get more'n a little enjoyment outta especially during those more hormonally-challenged moments alla us male menopausers have to fight off!