The Paisley Plaid-SLITHER SPACE CD-R (visit the Paisley Plaid at www.myspace.com/thepaisleyplaid)

Remember back in the eighties when magazines like OP would praise to the rafters this new trend in musical evolution called the "cassette culture"? I sure do, and in fact how could I ever forget scouring that periodical's special cassette-only column just to see what home-cooked doo-dahs would fit in snugly with my own sense of addled rockism! Finds such as the Information/Mofungo/Blinding Headache tape and an early Hawkwind-ish roar from F/i as well as this strange electronic offering from David Solomonoff of Cleveland's Harlan and the Whips/Criminal Mystics fame were just as important to my bubbling under ever-growing sense of musical greed as the latest hotcha underground singles I'd also discover in OP's fruitful pages. Of course the vast majority of these cassettes were probably just some Joe Blow joking around with his tape recorder trying to create an "artistic statement" that perhaps added a few more "posts" to the post-post-Cage idiom, but I guess the real point of all this tapefoolery was that now with an easier and cheaper access for getting one's music out and about it wasn't like one had to spend major portions of one's trust fund to show one's pretensions for a much wider (for what it was) audience to hear!

The cassette culture of the eighties lives on, although by now we have entered into the digitized generation where not only can people make their music known and at even cheaper rates and perhaps better clarity via CD-R's, but now they can present themselves to an eagerly awaiting audience via mp3's and their very own myspace page. This release from what I guess is a "studio"-only affair called the Paisley Plaid is but one of many of these spiritual children of the eighties cassette culture days, featuring interesting instrumental grooves courtesy Rob Keay, whose brother David was involved with the Day Care Center twofa reviewed last year while a Dan Folkus provides vocals and other overdubbed speak usually uttered through loads of distortion, filters and perhaps speed modulation making his voice about as irritating as talking to me with a sinus condition over the phone during a tornado warning.

Definitely bedroom studio quality here, and like I said Keay's music makes for nice psychedelic (even Hawkwind-y) backdrop for evening reading sessions. These sounds would do just fine if they only weren't marred by the irritating manipulated vocalese which reminds me of some of the lesser eighties experiments that the aforementioned cassette culture could dump on us at times. If this is your cup of herbal then by all means go to the Paisley Plaid's myspace page (by the way, with a name like the Paisley Plaid you'd think these two'd be part and parcel to that other eighties under-the-counterculture trend, mainly the sixties garage band revival!), but frankly I was hoping for something that veered closer to brother David's kraut-y free rock structures that continue to keep me from further annihilating myself. But whatever, I guess eighties nostalgia (eck!) does continue to roll on...

I COULDN'T RESIST!....MORE FERNWOOD 2NIGHT!

Part One:


Part Two:

Be Bop Deluxe-SUNBURST FINISH; MODERN MUSIC cassettes (Harvest England)

Be Bop Deluxe burst outta the import bin scene and onto your stereo back in the mid-seventies with an album called AXE VICTIM which sounded like a shotgun marriage between British glam rock and the progressive post-psychedelia of Pink Floyd that Be Bop's label Harvest was raking in beaucoup with at the time. Followup FUTURAMA sorta broke the ice with an all new group backing up leader Bill Nelson and it even got a US release which seemed strange for an up-and-coming English rock act on a progressive label, and since CREEM even gave the thing a good review even I knew enough that I just hadda buy it! That one was a dilly of a dooze, with a particularly high-energy and erotic sound permeating each and every second not forgetting Nelson's post-post-post-Hendrix pyrotechnics that gave me the overall impression of a hetero Bowie or perhaps even the Pink Fairies getting the Queen production treatment. Even today I find this a once-in-awhile pleasure, though the last time it got a spin 'round here was when I was laying out issue #25 and you know how long ago that was!

It took me a whopping 32 years, but I finally got hold of these two followup Be Boppers in that same big cassette sweep that yielded me the Electric Light Orchestra tape reviewed last week. The reason for my procrastination was very simple. I figured I already had one record by this band so why bother snatching up another? And with that sorta attitude you know that there are gigantic hunkerin' gaps missing in my rock & roll education, but at least I am solvent.

But all cheapness aside, I gotta say that I found SUNBURST FINISH and MODERN MUSIC both to be rather plain, nay, tepid romps compared with FUTURAMA's over-the-top guitar freakouts and Ferry-esque double-entendres. Both of these albums seem to borrow ideas from that righteous masterpiece while contributing little that really involves you outside of having some slightly-perked up music to play the soundtrack to your last toke. Now don't get me 100% wrong (as you usually do), I find the music generally good enough for late-seventies jazzy-hookdom sounds and Bill Nelson's playing, lyrics and vocalese are always entertaining enough for what they are, but otherwise all this has me thinking of is that big fat juicy order Fusetron's gonna be sending me soon. After all, some of this seventies English progressive twaddle might be palatable in spurts or, if you're Brian Eno or Kevin Ayers, in elpee doses, but an entire afternoon of it is more or less likely to send one to a group therapy session where everybody looks like Dave Lang!

Strangely enough, MODERN MUSIC did warrant a page-length article/review in BACK DOOR MAN of all fanzines, although the author of the piece was not one of the regular gang of idiots and in fact had not been heard from before or even since in their hallowed pages. Maybe the writer of this piece was blackmailing Phast Phreddie and Don Waller into printing this piece lest some pretty tainting information fall into the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department? One may never know! But yes, I was surprised when I read that review, but then again should anything really surprise anyone anymore, especially in these ultra-jaded times?

***

Of course there is more to life than scarfing up old Be Bop Deluxe cassettes and writing 'em up for a clientele who couldn't give two whiffs of a rock critic's ass enough to care...there's also TEE-VEE!!! Naturally the medium as it exists today, even with its 100-plus channels and stereo sound, really can't hold a candle to the days when you were lucky enough if you only got three channels, maybe four during a tornado warning, yet if you played your cards right you could get enough good down-home viewing with just those three stations and a smart-enough local programmer to last you a good evening of solid television viewing, or more if you happened to have the day off! And, as usual, it seems that some of the best stuff that was once available at certain times of the day is now 24-7 thanks to youtube.

And yeah, I know that most people think about youtube as a place for someone to show cutesy-pie pics of their toddlers toppling over brimming full potty chairs that they just happened to catch on their cell-phones or better yet a place to resensify yourself with years of classoid rock viewing that we may have missed out on because Beat Club just wasn't shown on Amerigan tee-vee, but it's also a boffo place to pick up some of those great programs that you or I never had the chance to see for whatever reasons. Or at least its a good way to cop an eyefulla stuff that we used to watch way back when but haven't in decades because some doofus out there thought that "Jot" was a lot more beneficial for our minds and our souls than TALES OF THE RIVERBANK (and besides, they were free!). But for me, old television programs being made available on youtube certainly is a godsend, not only because these pushing-fifty shows are naturally fun, classy, low-fidelity and thus perfect for my own sense of suburban slob living, but because now I don't have to dish out the big $$$ just to refresh myself with something that maybe I could have passed on in favor of GOMER PYLE USMC DVDs!

As far as recent youtube finds go, I was very pleased to see that FOUR FEATHER FALLS has popped up, at least for the time being, on the youtube roster. Being a humongous fan of the early Gerry Anderson "Supermationation" programs, I've always wanted to view this western which never did get aired outside of Merrie Olde since those were the pre-Lew Grade days before Anderson could hitch up a world-wide distribution deal. Anyway, watching FOUR FEATHER FALLS was certainly an eye-opener at least for this early-sixties maniac...when I first discovered that this show even existed I pondered for the longest time as to just how a non-sci-fi Anderson series would fare. I also had the strange feeling, at least until I found out about the "fantasy" aspects of the show (hero Tex Tucker is in possession of four magic feathers which not only grant speech to his horse and dog but cause his guns to fire at will!) that FOUR FEATHER FALLS was going to be in the then-popular "adult western" vein of GUNSMOKE and HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL. As I should have suspected from the beginning this was pure kiddie western, the kind where the hero talks to his horse, only this time the horse answers back in an upper-crust English accent!

The overall quality isn't quite up to SUPERCAR standards (not to mention the mid/late-sixties Anderson productions) but it's sure one giant leap up from those saccharine mid-fifties Anderson puppetshows that only lend credence to us Amerigans that Archie Bunker was right in calling the English a bunch of fags, cuz if they grew up watching TWIZZLE how else would them kiddos mature other'n into a nation full of bowler-wearing "Pip Pip and Cheerio" types trying to outdo each other in the Oscar Wilde/Lord Alfred Douglas game! All kiddin' aside, FOUR FEATHER FALLS is a transitional program from the early Anderson-era primitive "puppet" style to the high-tech wonders we still know and love, and in some ways such characters as Pedro do foreshadow future Anderson villians as Masterspy down to that great expressive look on his equally spherical face. Others (such as the elderly couple) seem to be nothing more than leftover stock from the TWIZZLE and TORCHY, THE BATTERY BOY days so if you're expecting the early-sixties space-race class of SUPERCAR and FIREBALL XL-5 you will be let down to say the least. But please be aware that FOUR FEATHER FALLS does show technological upheaval in the making. In all, it's a weird mixed lot, and not an unimportant piece of television history from the true Golden Age t'boot!

Unfortunately I was unable to embed ("by request") the two parts of the "pilot" episode here, but if you just click Part One and Part Two you'll be taken directly to the youtube site where you can watch 'em and decide for yourself whether or not FOUR FEATHER FALLS was just more hokum or perhaps a real lost tee-vee classic that should be remembered at least as much as CRUNCH AND DEZ. As for me, I gotta say that it sure woulda been swell watching this 'un pop up on the old weekday morning cartoon show on channel 33 as a pre-school kid, perhaps as a respite from that station's tendency to run the same LITTLE RASCALS short where Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat run away seemingly each and every week!

From the sixties to the seventies...y'know, I actually gotten heat from people for admitting to liking that decade which I guess was way too sick for their particularly "cultured" digestive systems, but I will stick to my guns and say that I'll take the seventies (tee-vee, music and magazines included!) o'er the eighties (now in the throes of nostalgiamania even as we speak!) and nineties for that matter because there was a whole lot more interesting stuff happening in those times than there were later on, unless you're a computer geek or suffer pangs of sadness over the cancellation of MAX HEADROOM. While the eighties were cornball hokum and the nineties faux-decadent, the seventies were the real deal when it came to multi-faceted slobboid suburban living, and that includes in the humor department as well as tee-vee, music and nekkid broads for that matter.

And you really couldn't do better on the humor front than on the boob tube, not only with MONTY PYTHON and the original SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, but with surprise finds like such long-lost classics as FERNWOOD 2NIGHT. I hardly got to watch this summer replacement series for MARY HARTMAN MARY HARTMAN since the local station that was airing that 'un passed on FERNWOOD, but whenever I did get the chance (when channel 43 in Cleveland was coming in, perhaps thanks to that aforementioned tornado) I was sure to have a ball. Like PYTHON, SNL and NATIONAL LAMPOON there was bound to be a load of bad-taste and just plain offensiveness packed into some of these episodes of FERNWOOD (and later on AMERICA) 2NIGHT, and not like the kind today where uptight knowitalls love to tell hardworking ethnic Americans how evil they are in the most unfunny fashion possible, but one where the humor knew no race, creed or color but rammed it into them all!!! And that's what I call real brotherhood!

Too bad (for you) that I couldn't dig up any of the truly acerbic (note spelling, Jeff!) and oh-so-non-"Pee-Cee" bits from the show like "Dial-A-Jew" or "Yankee Doodle Gook" (not forgetting that UBS, THE FIRST FIFTY DAYS special where the retired general/president of the UBS network gave that Patton-esque speech completely in military terms relaying in shock about catching a program on another net that showed a white man kissing a Chinese woman), but here's a pretty good 'un that I believe in my heart o' hearts typifies an average episode of the series.

First, part one:



Then, part two:



And how about this beaut of a scene hawking the "Wunda Blenda"????



Finally there's this bit with none other than Frank DeVol proving that his contributions to the small screen amount to a lot more than I'M DICKENS HE'S FENSTER and writing the theme to THE BRADY BUNCH (note: audio not uppa par):



Anyway, a Happy Easter to you all. Sure looks like Christmas out thar right now, but from what I hear it's all gonna melt into slush in a few days which all you schoolkids can kick up and splash your fellow students with. And what better springtime memories can you make outta all the times that I got splashed by rowdy kids like you anyway!

BILLY MILLER INTERVIEW!

Just one of those catch-ya-by-surprise things that I discovered while doing reconnaissance on other blogs in order to steal an idea or two. Click here and prepare to be taken away!

The Electric Light Orchestra-THE LIGHT SHINES ON cassette (Harvest England)

Not really that much diff between this 'un and the MASTERS OF ROCK/SHOWDOWN compilation I reviewed in these blog-pages four years back. I believe there might be a few minor track changes (perhaps---too lazy to dig my copy of SHOWDOWN outta the pile), and the cover showing the Move unto ELO in eighteenth-century wardrobe does look classier than the television studio snap on the earlier Harvest cash-in. Still it is kinda neat having the cassette version of this release featured prominently in my collection...y'see, when I was a teenager I used to marvel at the differences between record and tape releases in the United States and elsewhere and found it totally amazing that an act which appeared on one label here would actually pop up on another overseas! You know...inna US of Whoa both Deep Purple and Black Sabbath were on Warner Brothers, but over there the Purps were on Harvest while the Sabs ended up on Vertigo! The international complications were staggering as well...for example, Columbia records here was CBS there, and although there was a Columbia there it wasn't the same Columbia as here and in fact was run by Capitol, or actually EMI! Whew! I kinda felt like Barbarino taking all this in...y'know, "I'm so confused!"

Like sex education or living bra commercials, the workings of international record labels was a mind-boggling experience for a lad such as myself, and such an anal retentive was I that I also wondered whether or not cassette release artwork amidst the various nations were also universal or not. Island releases were pretty much the same ('cept that the song titles on the rear "flap" were vertical rather than horizontal sans any indication of which side said tracks were on), but the rest had their own interesting diversions that really piqued my attention in a way algebra never could! And yeah, such self-absorbed prattle's bound to turn off 99.999...% of you readers tuning in for a writeup on some long-gone bargain-bin find, but if I can reach just one savant out there who shared the same manic devotion to small details that I did, then I'll know I wasn't the only goof who paid attention to such weirdities as part and parcel to a hefty rockism upbringing!

Surprisingly good sound (for a cassette) on this "Harvest Heritage" release that became a used-bin filler back in the eighties, and although a load of you readers might think these early ELO tracks pure progressive twaddle (and who can blame ya!) I still find them pretty good early-seventies UK pop applications of classic late-sixties style, at least until Roy Wood drifted off to dabble in Wizzardry leaving Jeff Lynne to indulge in his own Paul McCartney preening. Nothing to get whacked up over, but loads better'n the Lynne-helmed band of mega-hits and surpringly effete playing that most people remember with fondness. And the rehashing of 1967 psych with and without hefty "Eleanor Rigby" refs sure must've sounded refreshing in the early-seventies...no wonder the likes of Greg Shaw and Alan Betrock seemed to find hope in the various Wood/Lynne moves (sic) back then!

One caveat...primo megahit "Roll Over Beethoven" is hacked up and edited (perhaps due to time constraints) to the point where I kinda thought that some editor in the throes of Burroughsian cut-up mania decided to take scissors to the master tape in order to create something a lot more feral than originally intended (he failed, natch)! I certainly don't remember this junior-high romper sounding so jagged onna radio, and if it had I don't think "Roll Over Beethoven" would've charted as high as it did!

The Velvet Underground-LIVE AT THE GYMNASIUM LP (Velvet bootleg, Ireland)

When I first read that the legitimate flow of Velvet Underground "official" bootlegs was (perhaps) forever lost after the surviving Velvets sued to have their contracts re-examined, I feared that it was going to be a long and painful haul in between new-to-mine-ears VU wonders wasting away in whatever Welsh mineshaft John Cale deemed to dump all those reels down. Well, I have been wrong before, but this time I'm glad I was for as of late there has been a bit of Velvets fluttering on the bootleg market which has at least satiated my craving for these ultra-obscure rarities, and frankly I thought a good portion of those rehearsals, studio recordings and live treats never would have made it to our lobes no matter how hard us unreconstructed/unrepentant Velvet Underground fans stamped our feet and turned blue. I mean, those tactics may work for womyn 'n self-conscious hippoids, but as far as REAL PEOPLE like us...

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the live at the Gymnasium tape from '67, the Velvets' last stand in En Why See until the Max's gigs in '70, was available online at the mere click of a mouse. And imagine my BIGGER surprise when, for the life of me, I could not download said bugger onto disque to listen to in the privacy of my own prison cell! Well, no need to worry if you don't have your own computer nor the knowhow to make your own shiny pancake of the thing, for some enterprising bootleggers from Ireland of all places (who pressed this 100-copy run on green vinyl just to prove so!) have made these recordings available to the analog generation and given the neat cover (with an outtake from the Vox ad sesh) and sound you woulda thought they'd've been Japanese, eh?

Cale fans will rejoice in the discovery of another recording with their hero on board. Of course that feeling of elation will turn to abject dismay when they find out that he certainly has taken a backseat to Reed's showoffy self (plus his organ playing on the debut performance of "Sister Ray" seems to be reduced to a bizarre electronic hum akin to an Ondes Martenot), but all-encompassing Velvets fans like myself will find this recording yet another on-target on-schedule live gig. It reminds me not of the original satanic Velvets but the ones of the 1969/70 season (live and otherwise) who would be cranking out those fantastic extended romps with atonal guitar solos that eventually ended up on some of the brighter boot spots in Velvet history such as the indispensable HILLTOP ROCK FESTIVAL disque, which this GYMNASIUM show ultimately reminds me of!

"I'm Not a Young Man Anymore" does sound more like the hard-riffing Velvets of '69 as opposed to the more "avant garde" (or so we thought) earlier band, and even though it eventually got jettisoned for good within a short time I have the feeling that Reed might've resurrected it for a ne'er to be future Velvets platter just like he did with "Cool It Down" on LOADED.

"Fever In My Pocket"/"Guess I'm Falling In Love" is yet another take that doesn't appear either on the PEEL SLOWLY AND SEE box set nor the '82 John Cale radio show. It's somewhere in-between the two, not as crunchy as the Cale version nor is it as tossaway as the box set take. Still it's a boss song and I love the way Mirrors "deconstructed" it a good seven years later. Almost as good as the way Mirrors did the same to "Sweet Sister Ray".

"Waiting For My Man" again sounds more '69/'70 than '66/'67...ditto "Run Run Run" which riff-wise is almost a carbon-copy take on the '69 Hilltop version. It's interesting to hear that the group "evolved" these songs in such a fast time considering how they sounded on the November '66 Columbus shows that are available on more bootlegs than I'd care to dish megabucks out for. I'll bet that once this one gets out it's going to stymie all of those Yule-period haters (that Peter Laughner himself hated!) who thought the Velvets took a nosedive once Cale was unceremoniously kicked outta the camp!

And then there's "Sister Ray"...and y'know, I dunno if this really is the numbuh's premiere performance as is stated on the sleeve considering that the tune actually came outta a Poor Richard's (June '66 sans Reed) track called "Searchin'", but until that comes to the surface I guess we'll never know. Slightly slower than the WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT version and perhaps all the more sinister for it, "Sister Ray" almost sounds like one of the various arrangements that the Velvets would take this song into well up until the end at which point it would be bent, sped-up, slowed-down and inverted beyond belief. However it's pretty funny hearing Lou not only speak-sing the lyrics in smacked-out cyborgness but add a "Sock it to me" after each stanza! I know that LAUGH IN was a big hit at the time, but I never thought that the ultra-cool Lou Reed woulda been watching it!

Seems as if 2008's already shaping up to the a pretty good bootleg year (keep turned for a future post featuring a massive boot review of wares pilfered from the vaults of a notoriously fleshy colored English progressive rock band...as soon as I can make my way through all of the rarities I scored a good month back!), and I'm talking about on the vinyl front as well. Sheesh, who would've thunk that there'd still be honest-to-goodniz long-playing records available at this late a date, but frankly I'm sure glad there are! And I'm sure glad that I instead of YOU scored this much-desirable beauty because I'm such an egomaniacal devotee of this bunch who livesbreathesfarts Velvets, but fear not for if you really do wanna hear what my green vinyl doozy doth entail just click here and you can listen to this year-end contender in its entirety for free!

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Just a small note before we part: got an email from none other than Don Waller of BACK DOOR MAN fame who writes that he just came across an old videotape of his old tactical assault rock & roll band THE IMPERIAL DOGS performing live '74 at California State University Long Beach! The Dogs were being video'd as part of a planned documentary on "decadence" and Don says it's a pisser of a performance in front of their biggest audience ever (over 200!) and shows the Dogs "playing their balls off" as Don so succinctly put it, not only on songs off their legendary Dog Meat album but on a few unreleased gems as well. Now what Don (and I, come to think of it) would like to know is...are there enough raving proletariats out there interested in seeing this thirtysome-year-old vid enough to warrant a DVD release and, are there any enterprising entrepreneurs out there willing to release the blasted thang??? If you can give an answer to either of these questions please let us know via the comments box. Your input would be greatly appreciated.

Andy Haas-HUMANITARIAN WAR CD; Radio I-Ching-THE FIRE KEEPS BURNING CD (both available through CD Baby)

I've been getting hold of a lotta CD and even vinyl wares as of late mostly from people who would like me to review their offerings on this webthing, and although I'd love to tell each and every one of you BLOG TO COMM readers about these various platters all in one great lump of a post frankly I don't have the time right now to get into all of this wondrous booty and do it justice. However when I do get a chance I will fill you in on what new listening pleasures I have been subject to, just so's alla you will have the grand opportunity to know which "hip" and "important" records there are out there for you to go out and scarf up before you're reduced to bidding $195.43 for 'em on ebay like I am with many musical mysteries of these past fiftysome years.

Here are a couple I got from none other than Dee Pop of Jazz at Jimmy's fame (and a few udder things) which I believe you all should know about lest you end up even more lumpen prole than I think you already are. And considering that one of these platters is from none other'n Pop's current group (or one of at least ten) while the other features a longtime bandmember in solo setting, what else would you expect Pop to send me...Jan Garber outtakes? HUMANITARIAN WAR is the solo one, and fellow Radio I-Chinger and Hanuman Ensemble player Andy Haas is the guy responsible for it. You may remember Haas from a number of places including his membership in the early eighties Canadian new wave hugga-bunches Martha and the Muffins amongst other things, but as any smart cookie knows right now he's into the avant garde jazz improv bag and man he sure does a good job of doing the one-man band gig without coming off like an effete snob! On HUMANITARIAN WAR, Haas does everything from electronics to fife and a number of more "ethnic" instruments inclulding the shofar. That would figure, because most of the time Haas sounds like the Bar Mitzvah boy blowing his ram horn...right in the middle of the Gaza Strip, but as in Radio I-Ching and the long-gone Hanuman Ensemble Haas doesn't
come off like some kid goof off making noise just to annoy the Mr. Wilson next door! Naw, he turns out a nice, entertaining and dare-I-say pleasant album that I sure can find stimulating, engaging and downrignt brainy even while reading old rock fanzines just-pre-beddy bye time!

True it can get a bit cacophonistic (yeah, I know there's no such word but it sure sounds swell!) and perhaps HUMANITARIAN WAR isn't for some of you meeker readers, but I find this solo improv with elements of jazz and rock tossed about a lot more exhilarating than a load of the one-man jackoff music that I used to get inundated with during the so-called glory days of cassette culture. And true, this disque is (believe-it-or-not) a politically conscious platter dealing with the ruins of war which makes the thing rather contemporary even though all of a sudden the Iraqi situarion's been bumped off the front pages and into the classifieds, but I'm sure anyone who reads this blog'll like it even if they tend to have some sorta hawkish streak embedded into their DNA. Nice motives with this 'un but hey Andy, how are you gonna sell these things when peace breaks out? Oh yeah, the way things are going you better have a thousand year supply handy...you'll be making more moolah once they stretch this thing out, savvy?

As one-third of Radio I-Ching, Haas has laid down a good ethno-electronic backdrop for this current-day avant/improv/jazz group that of course hasn't gotten nary a notice from the rock-headed press that's more concerned with Britney Whazername and all the rest of these new age Jenny Linds at the expense of real-life high energy music! Too bad, but that's no excuse for you to miss out on Radio I-Ching's latest endeavor, yet another great rock/jazz improv setting where Haas along with Don Fiorino and of course Mr. Dee Pop himself do their darndest to bring some of the best musical classics of the past up to date along with some original material that surely knows how to soothe more than savage beasts. Those you you who liked LAST KIND WORDS, Radio I-Ching's debut splatter from '06, will be sure to like this as well which has more of a mideast bent to it (perhaps keeping in line with Haas' war-themed disque?) that sounds strangely enough 1950s exotica even with the patented avant skeweredness jolting you back into lower Manhattan reality. Between Haas's saxophone and electronics (as well as "Piri", which Wikipedia defines more or less as a Korean oboe), Fiorino's various guitar and banjo pluckings and Pop's free drumming you're in store for a nice free musical excursion unheard since...those old cybercasts of the even newer jazz that we used to catch at the CBGB Lounge every Sunday night. (In fact, I could swear that a few of these numbers, perhaps the re-do of Captain Beefheart's "Abba Zabba" or even Alfred Neuman's "Moon Over Manakoora" sounded very similar to the long-missing Noisetet, another jazz-cum-rock group whose cybercasts at the CBGB Lounge were so intensely entertaining that I woulda sworn they coulda played the main stage and held their own!)

CD Baby has both of these available as well as the previous Radio I-Ching offering in case you, like me, tend to make procrastination a high art. All are highly recommended and perhaps a nice addition to your "all-encompassing" record/CD collection. Well, you can do worse, and if you do want to may I recommended a number of blogs out there than can just help you accomplish that task withough nary a drop of sweat?!?

BOOK REVIEW: BOMP! SAVING THE WORLD ONE RECORD AT A TIME by Suzy Shaw and Mick Farren (Ammo, 2007)

Y'know, it's strange when a natural-born illiterate like myself is handed not just one, but three books to read o'er the course of two whole weeks. But that's just what happened to none other than your not-so-humble blogger...first came Brian Doherty's RADICALS FOR CAPITALISM, a spry tell-all detailing the birth and growth of the libertarian movement in the U. S. of Whoa that for once names all(most all) the names (positively a keeper!), and right after that arrived another item to be named at a later date of which a review can be read in the forthcoming issue of UGLY THINGS. And now comes this gem, a nice hardcovered history of not only the entire ever-lovin' BOMP! empire but its founder and chief doer/shaker Greg Shaw! I mean, what gives???? Who would have ever thunk in a millyun years that such a book giving us the unvarnished lowdown on Shaw and his various writing/publishing/recording endeavors would even exist in the first place, and I'm not only talkin' in the here and now but in a thousand years when rockism culture is going to be dissected and studied to all get-out in college courses worldwide. Greg Shaw and BOMP! ain't exactly the things that even people in the underground rock "know" are going to be talking about even these sorry days, not with all of the hot air being wasted on the current flash-in-the-underground-pans that seem to be feasting on all of the innovation and hard work Shaw was pumping out a good three decades back. Yes, it really is strange that in 2008 there exists a book whose only reader is seemingly going to be ME!

Hopefully I'm not the only goober who's digging deep into this rough guide to creating your own underground rock fanzine/label because SAVING THE WORLD ONE RECORD AT A TIME rilly is an eye-gouging all-out saga detailing the Greg Shaw empire from humble fanzine beginnings up through seventies "new wave" domination and beyond (mainly snarfing up the remains of the late-seventies via the garage-punk revival scene). Sometimes I'd like to think that there are at least a few people out in the great unwashed who also have an interest in rock & roll fanzines, seventies underground rock and all of the jam-packed high energy that went along with it...I'm probably wrong, but man you all know just how much I flip when I get my grip on some old fanzine with a rare Metal Mike Saunders or Richard Meltzer article, not to mention a tape of some under-the-covers band of the past that was wreaking havoc with the same Velvets/Stooges influences that many a group namby-pambied to oblivion these past twennysome years. I have the sneaking suspicion that there may be a few more of you out there, but I wouldn't know. Actually, I'm having way too much fun re-reading my hefty collection of GOLDEN AGE OF ROCK WRITING (not "rock criticism") fanzines and books while listening to the umpteenth spin of Can cranking it out like the bestest late-sixties punk band to ever hit the boards to really care what you think. But if you wanna come along for the ride, feel free to latch on!

I must admit that I have been a great admirer of Greg Shaw for a very long time, perhaps well on over a good quarter-century but who's counting. In fact, there was a period in my life when receiving the latest BOMP! catalog was considered a major pocketbook-draining affair in my household...after all, those catalogs were like a life-line to some REAL WORLD out there where the past via PEBBLES and BOULDERS samplers and the present via the vast array of BOMP-label wares were coming together to give me a rock & roll education that I certainly wasn't getting on either the AM or FM bands here in the Light Metal Western Pee-YOU! area!!! I can still remember that rush I would get listening to a whole slab of six-oh reissues straight from the fabled BOMP! warehouse, then-current underground indie rock (before that went the way of too many cooks spoiling the broth by pissing in it!) as well as the reams of (who put the) BOMP! and PHONOGRAPH RECORD MAGAZINE back issues that really helped set me straight in a world that was becoming increasingly twee when it should've been going crunch!

So in a hundred words or less BOMP! helped this kid through an otherwise blanded-out eighties (one of the worst decades in modern gulch living not counting the '90s and '00s) and if it weren't for Shaw and his obsessive rockist vision where would I be today? Certainly not pecking out this blog nor would I have been spending my precious free time throughout the eighties and nineties cranking out my own fanzine to general obscurity and unrelenting hostility!

It really is a fine book, perhaps the best one of the year unless someone comes out with the secret diary of Dave Lang's "kept" koala. Authors Suzy Shaw and Mick Farren certainly did a good job in capturing the mad rock aura surrounding Greg and the empire he built and (of course) why not! After all, Suzy was the first wife of Mr. Shaw and was just as much the brains behind BOMP! as her eventually ex-hubby, and for the most part she pretty much ran the mailorder biz while Greg was more preoccupied with other more pressing matters like keeping a card catalog of just about every pertinent band he knew existed! (BTW, back in the eighties when I told onetime Blue Ash/Dead Boys member Frank Secich that Greg and Suzy were splitsville he couldn't believe it! He said that everytime he saw the two they were so cuddle-cuddle and kissy-kiss that you never would have thought they'd ever be torn asunder!) And of course just about everything that Mick Farren rattles on about, at least in the realm of rock & roll, is worth lending eyeballs to...you gotta remember that the guy wasn't just an ex-Deviant but one of the stars of the NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS stable in the seventies and eighties that gave us the likes of Nick Kent, Paul Morley and Charles Shaar Murray, some of the best writers to come outta the English rock scene despite the staggering odds given just how dismal the British Weekly scene could have gotten at times.

Nice selection of early Shaw fanzine covers, his Sci-Fi biggie ENTMOOT amongst 'em, start off the book (this was a period in time Shaw seemed to be a bit leery in telling us about so the better-late-than-never info surely came in handy) after which we're treated to a whole lotta pages taken straight outta the infamous MOJO NAVAGATOR, Shaw's attempt at covering the nascent San Francisco rock scene long before some ineffectual bi named Jann Wenner decided to push Shaw outta his own game with his twist on Youth Rebellion as a marketable product. Lotsa neat repros direct from the pages of MOJO NAVAGATOR are included such as the interviews with the Doors (where Shaw and band discuss the latest syntheses of LSD and various other psychedelics [which was used in Joe Carducci's ROCK AND THE POP NARCOTIC to needle Shaw as revenge for sitting on the Black Flag tapes so long!]) and the one with Big Brother and the Holding Company where Janis said the Fillmore was just a hangout for sailors to get laid thus earning the wrath of Bill Graham who got into a big hitting and swearing fit with Joplin as she tried to enter his venue shortly afterwards! Talk about scenes we'd hate to see, but despite the fawning over the likes of the Dead and the usual hippoid pratfalls (and sheesh, for years I used to imagine Greg Shaw as this Brian Jones-haired guy who loved his surf and garage band records despite the oncoming hippie influx, but just take a gander at what he looked like in 1969!) there are nice and pertinent bits of important info on decidedly non-hippie local punks which does show the roots of bigger things yet to come. And as far as presenting San Francisco '66/'67 as something that was vibrant and exciting (long before the hackdom ensued) MOJO NAVAGATOR sure did a heck of a better job than most of the hipster underground press of the day ever could hope to!

By the time WHO PUT THE BOMP! showed up on the scene a good two years later we finally get to see the Shaw of garage band/surf/rockabilly fandom and discographies that has enraptured me ever since I started laying my paws on then-plentiful back issues of his rag way back in the early-eighties. It's sure great to once again gaze upon Lester Bangs' legendary Troggs article as it originally appeared with the Jonh Ingham cartoons showing notorious pud James Taylor getting run in with a broken wine bottle way back in '71 (and those snaps of Bangs accosting Lillian Roxon in a Superman shirt are really something else, aren't they?). Too bad the Meltzer piece on the Troggs and beer was lopped off the thing, but at least we once again get to see that famed photo of a drunk-outta-his-skull Prince Pudding in the company of a geekier-than-thou Dave Marsh back when Meltzer was less careful about choosing his friends. It sure is intestinal-fortifying reading all of those fantastic seventies-era BOMP! pages as they originally appeared (the sixties-punk pieces on the Seeds and Standells being particular standouts if only for the subject matter), as well as some of the non-BOMP items from PHONOGRAPH RECORD MAGAZINE such as that big New York Dolls piece where Shaw, Alan Betrock, Ron Ross (a Dolls insider who later wrote a positive review of Genesis for the paper!) and Lester Bangs get to give their all for the cause of decadence!

And it goes on from there through all the ins and outs of Shaw and BOMP! from the label and his growing dissatisfaction with the way underground rock was developing as the eighties progressed (thus resulting in his pushing of the sixties garage revival which never did seem to catch on despite his opening of the now-forgotten Cavern Club and the signing of more than a few newer generations of punks for his label). Unfortunately the book ends on a sad note with Shaw's 2004 death, and for a guy who seemed to be pronounced dead more times than Forrest Ackerman (who once hit on Shaw at an early-sixties Sci-Fi convention!) it's any wonder he lived as long as he did. Frankly I didn't know that Shaw was such a partier and imbiber even though his life-long diabetes and eventual organ transplant deemed such behavior verboten; who would have thought so given the time he had writing articles for magazines and running a record label (not to mention answering letters from ineffectual shrubs like me!).

But high-styled living and general burned-outness aside, SAVING THE WORLD... is one of those compilations that's custom-made for my kind of intense and heated rockism. Every page is a surprise whether it be something out of the early MOJO NAVAGATOR which mentions a heretofore unknown garage ideal (and in many ways it's funny to read Shaw rip on "teenybopper" groups he would later champion like Paul Revere and the Raiders while praising local SF punks, especially since both of these once-opposites would be lumped together into the great stew of sixties glory in less than a good five years!), or a page or three taken from a mimeo-era BOMP! that I only had access to via the great back issue xerox sale of 1981. But what really got my life-energy force flowing was the appearance of what's more or less left of the never-published issue #22 that was supposed to come out around the same time those great back issue photocopies were being sold at exorbitant prices! And when this issue was being advertised in the BOMP! catalog back in '81 even I sent my buck in hoping this promising magazine would wing its way to my door more sooner than later only to grumble ten years later thinking that giving away my hard-begged was all for naught! Little did anyone know that the masters to that legendary non-issue were considered lost until this very book was being compiled, but anyway here it is seeing the light of day looking a lot worse for wear and pretty much like the BOMP of the pre-new wave days which exactly was Shaw's point! It's sure swell reading all of Shaw's opinions on the then-latest garage band reissues (not forgetting a class rundown on the then-recent PEBBLES, BOULDERS and PSYCHEDELIC UNKNOWNS collections that were certainly inspiring awe in me) as well as informative pieces on the likes of the Barracudas and Blasters that gives blokes in on the rockism game (like myself and presumably you) a nice warm 'n toasty feeling of nostalgic pudding just remembering how much this stuff mattered at the tail end of one of the more fruitful rock eras in our lives. Not that it doesn't elicit such pangs of rheumy-eyed rose-colored rear-view mirror looks now, but ya gotta admit that back then the impact was surely stronger considering what we were (eager-beaver rock & roll lovers) and where we were coming from (some of the most boring places on the face of this earth!). But why the crack about these original pages to #22 showing just how fanzines were put together in the days before computers? Listen, every issue of my own fanzine well up until the year 2003 was laid out pretty much in the same way as BOMP! was and under much more primitive conditions, and frankly any future ones will be done even cheaper, if you technowhiz readers can fathom that in your underdeveloped ape-like minds! Still, if you value those memories of getting tons of garage band reissues via BOMP!'s mailorder business and discovering new groups that really did seem like they were going to save the world, a book like this is indispensable.

DVD REVIEW-GHOST ON THE HIGHWAY, A PORTRAIT OF JEFFREY LEE PIERCE AND THE GUN CLUB (French Fan Club/Powell Factory Films)

Flakier things have happened in the strange world of celebrity documentaries, with the likes of Rodney Bingenheimer and Roky Erickson being featured in their own flash-inna-pan tell-alls over the past few years. Now it's Jeffrey Lee/Lea Pierce and the Gun Club's turn, and if anyone woulda told me that this denizen of the long-gone bubbling-under-of-the-underground scene of the eighties was ever gonna be the subject of any sorta filmatic excursion I woulda thought 'em a pretty thick headed sorta batch of individuals. Well, now that a Pierce documentary is not only out but readily available for you rich-enough aging punk rockers out there all I gotta say is what's next...THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EDGAR BREAU??? Don't laff, I heard one was in the process!

Anyhoo GHOST ON THE HIGHWAY is a decent enough despite the usual pratfalls documentary, especially considering that most of this is made of of interviews with a buncha late-seventies SoCal scene survivors looking older and much grottier for the wear. And considering that there is no Gun Club music to be heard (only some typically nada incidental synth-string heart-tugs) and Pierce himself is in such short supply himself, seen only in photographs and brief bits of home-made video, its not like your'e getting the E! HOLLYWOOD STORY treatment here. But for what it is, GHOST ON THE HIGHWAY is an average yet at-times informative enough for you film about the former Gun Club leader and all the carnage he wreaked not only with audiences, but with former friends and associates who I'm sure felt a lot better after venting some of their anxiety and frustration for all to see.

Former Clubbers Ward Dotson and Jim Duckworth (from the "classic" lineup) take up a good portion of this flick giving their two cents as to what a great talent and guy as well as utter fiend Pierce could be when the right mood or drug took effect. Kid Congo Powers (looking real El Lay Vice Squad lineup) also takes up a hefty portion of this documentary as does none other than drummer Dee Pop which kinda surprised me at first until I remembered he was a member of the band somewhere around the time I kinda vamoosed from a lotta the eighties underground rock scene lest I go bankrupt. Also on hand telling us all about the BOMP! janitor made good are everyone from onetime BACK DOOR MAN editor Phast Phreddie Patterson to John Doe, Dave Alvin and a few more from what I would call the Slash contingent...even Plimsoul Peter Case pops up here which I guess is to be expected (big name from the same day and scene) but why did they get none other than Lemmy to make disparaging remarks about the music biz whilst sitting at a bar anyway? I mean, the closest Pierce and Lemmy probably ever got to each other was maybe a few yards at a Motorhead gig with Pierce in the audience so what's the purpose, hunh?

But as far as creating a portrait of yet another troubled young soul who joined the music-go-round only to end up a member of Kurt Cobain's fabled "Stupid Club", I'm sure GHOST ON THE HIGHWAY fulfilled whatever promise it may have had. And I do think it fulfills at least some. What I mean is...Pierce was just a young rock fan kid like I and presumably you who wanted to be a big star and was swept up in the vast tidal wave of underground music that enveloped the whole lot of us way back in the dreaded seventies, and yeah when big egos, drugs and instability enter into the picture only a fool wouldn't think some sorta disaster is in the cards. But at least I gotta stick up for Pierce for being a young upstart who made good (or at least better than most of us in the underground rock game), and whether GHOST ON THE HIGHWAY is exactly the right vehicle to tell at least part of the saga will probably be pretty much up to you and how this music figures into your very own sphere of rockism obsession.

QUEEN ELIZABETH, 1972 (?)

Gotta question the date here (seems more like it would be '73 considering the Dolls refs.) but who really cares given this rare video find of Wayne County and band (with the Wyndbrant brothers of Miamis fame as members) doing the unplugged thing way back in the day.