BOOK REVIEW! NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS BOOK OF ROCK (a guide to rock in the seventies) 


Gotta kick myself for a lotta things that I didn't do during the seventies, and one of these things (besides not getting up the courage to try the Velvet Underground earlier. nor recognizing the utter 'tardoid brilliance of the Stooges upon first spin and somehow operating under the impression that all intelligent and cohesive rock 'n roll sprang from the font of Frank Zappa instead of Lou Reed) most definitely was not having the money or smarts to have winged a subscription to the NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS my way! Well, considering the extra cost us overseas readers hadda endure to get this British weekly sent here airmail 'n all I'm sure it wasn't like most kiddos'd've been able to afford it, but frankly if I were one of them New York upper-midclass suburban pampered brats with the money to afford not only a NME sub but one to CREEM 'n ROCK SCENE, I wouldn't've hadda put up with having to go to the library once every so often to scam the latest issue of ROLLING STONE like most poor folk hadda. Of course we all know that the minions at STONE had their heads up their expansive Whole World Catalog butts for way too long, but as you might have guessed sure as shit smells I wasn't that smart to realize it from the outset. If you really wanted a taste of what rock 'n roll was supposed to be (as a teenage source of high energy thrills and expression) it was NME all the way.

True that paper, along with every once-viable source for high energy jamz, eventually sunk into the grasps of eighties self-conscious political piousness (as could be judged by the reams of poems and cartoons sent in by readers who mourned the death of Lennon with a snide anti-Amerigan sneer on their faces and jumped heavily onto the no cruise missiles bandwagon which in retrospect just looked as hippie as all of the rest of the New Left ventures over there), but in its prime NME delivered the total eruption no holds barred goods. Great writing, great writers (led by Nick Kent, Charles Shaar Murray, Mick Farren and even Lester Bangs) and a great attitude that seemed to have favored the high energy and smart new bubbling under trends could be found in each and every issue. While chief competitor MELODY MAKER was concentrating on the budding progressive rock market and looking upon the growing punk populace with ever-increasing bewilderment NME had the bared-wire underground intensity all summed up as if each and every reader couldn't've seen the onslaught coming for at least a good five years! Frankly I don't even think Chris Welch and his minions knew what hit 'em, but throughout the seventies NME was on top of the game not only with their bright stable and outside-the-hype suspicion, but with their snide attitude and cult of energy stylizings which really set them apart from the competition. Heck, Cliff Richard wouldn't even allow a copy of it into his abode, and that was something Nick Kent wore as a badge of honor!

The various NME book collections that feature some of the better moments of the paper's then-recent writings are definitely worth owning (especially with the way newsprint yellows and crackles and all that), and no self-respecting rock 'n roll library should be without 'em. The same goes for this 'un, a rock encyclopedia so to speak that was made by collecting the weekly inserts from the paper and puttin' 'em together inside a glossy full color cover. I think this eventually came out as a legit slick book inna early-eighties, but this 1973 timepiece is just the thing for doofoids like myself who really coulda used such booty back inna day but were too poor or too ignorant to find out!

Nice effort, and of course all my faves like Kent, Murray and maybe even future Generation X manager/WHO PUT THE BOMP cartoonist Jonh Ingham have contributed even if their particular writings weren't credited. Well, I'm sure you can sense out who wrote what without much guesswork, especially if you're aware that Shaar and Kent were the "punk" cheerleaders and the likes of Roy Carr concentrated on the fifties aspects of the quest!  And considering how this "encyclopedia" came out during a time which I would call "transitional" (post-sixties rebellion/pre-seventies underground upheaval) it is important in its own right as a gauge as to where rock 'n roll stood at a time when there was plenty of innovation, yet the forces of dull were more'n bound to overtake the landscape and act as self-appointed "spokesmen for a generation" for kidz who were either too stoned or too wired to know or care.

Some interesting listings here...por ejemplo the term "punk rock" was still being used to describe the mid-sixties Amerigan local acts who were or most likely weren't having hits local or otherwise. I was hoping that whoever wrote that entry would have included some then-recent examples of the form if only to spur me onto finding some heretofore lost item but that was for naught. Not so strangely enough, the entry on the Stooges once again brings up that quote about Iggy being "the Robert Johnson of Heavy Metal" which goes to show you that the definite battle lines between musics that seemed the same on some levels yet polar opposites on others haven't been drawn yet. And even more curiouser is the Alice Cooper entry which mentions how their first two albums didn't do "anything to distinguish them from countless other dull and crude garage bands" making me wonder exactly which other groups the writer was thinking about (as you can tell, I am one of the few people who enjoy those early albums!).

As far as the "underground" portion of the book goes this is about as far as it gets (even the Velvet Underground entry is totally lacking in the descriptive verve [!] that say, the Lillian Roxon entry in her own book had). Naturally the rest seems to fall into typical early-seventies place (at least the John Cale entry brings up the use of "the possibilities inherent in noise and monotony" which made up an important part of the early-Velvets style). Most entries fall into standard rock history (meaning, you've known about it before and probably wouldn't want to know about it again), though thankfully the writing steers far away from the weepy and stuck-on-itself narcissism that had overcome way too much "youth culture" writing of the day. So it ain't like you're gonna gag on the usual "we're so persecuted" moanings of upper class armchair revolutionaries when you read it, and thankfully the people who compiled this knew enough to just stick to the facts and don't let any of the rhetoric get in the way.

And perhaps it was nothing special when compared to some of the other rock as an "International Youth Language" bromides that were being pumped out at the time on both a pro and fanzine level, but next to what else was being pushed on us empty-brained peons regarding rock as a part of our lives (everything from gulcheral screeds to weird treatises tracing the early-seventies peace music movement back to "Get a Job"!) this book does rank alongside the better entries in your personal rock 'n roll library. Sweet, smart, and to the point even if the typical bigotries and strange dismissals of potent rockities do seem to creep in at times...

Hokay, one could nitpick about the usual errors (such as Stevie Wonder's real moniker being "Steveland", not "Steven" Judkins or Link Wray's birthday being '29 'stead of '30), but ya gotta remember that back then it wasn't like all of the truths and inner workings of rock 'n roll were being laid out in front of us like they are now. Of course even these days a whole lot remains buried, but as far as representing a good hunkin' portion of just where, what, who and why rock 'n roll was you couldn't say this book didn't try. 

Got some hotchas for you to discover with typical mouth-drooling wonderment this weekend (the Rocket one being perhaps the cream de resistance) along with a few more Bill Shute burns and who knows what else at this point in time, not even I considering how the Saturday morning mail hasn't arrived yet! And as you can probably get a hint of by now, I'm even more excited about this 'un than the time when I accidently found that stash of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICs (the hula girl issues) in the trash can considering the all-umportant credibility of this week's writeup! Yes, bookmark this one because I know you're gonna be referring back to it as the years roll on and you all realise what a brilliant visionary I've been all along 'stead of the doofus retardo that many of you have oh-so-snobbily pegged me as in order to build up your own feeble sense of self-value!

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Rocket From The Tombs-EXTERMINATION NIGHT 1974 download (available through Hearpen.com)

Well, better late'n never that this recent exhumation of the 12/22/74 Rocket From The Tombs gig at the Viking Saloon's "Extermination Music Night" makes its way into our minds and maybe even into our hearts. Given the dearth of recent upheavals of vital worth these days an item such as this is most certainly welcome even if we have to download it straight from the source and for a good $10 at that. Better this had been part of a Rocket box set featuring the group's rarities from their early comedy rock days up through the final bellow of "Search and Destroy," complete with a satin embossed sleeve and 100 page booklet featuring reminiscences from all of the surviving members but hey, it ain't like I'm complainin'. Let's just say that I've been waiting to hear this for well over thirty pain-packed years and I don't care if the folks at Hearpen were issuing this on a cylinder I wanna heat the thing and by gumption I wanna hear it like yesterday!!!

Yeah I know, as Archie Bunker always said "patience is a virgin", but dagnabbit I'm not getting any older and frankly I wanna digest each and every morsel of sixties/seventies underground merriment extant before I dare to venture off any further! And frankly this recording is a good place to start...really good sound, not quite FM clear but good enough to convey some mid-seventies bar ambiance during the Christmas rush. And, as I would have expected, Rocket also put on a rather hotcha show...pretty much the same set list as the infamous WMMS-FM broadcast of February '75 only with two additional Peter Laughner songs and (get this)...NO CRAIG BELL!!! No bass guitarist at all in fact, since wouldja believe that Bell was FORBIDDEN to perform with Rocket that night on strict orders of Jamie Klimek which makes this version of Rocket yet another one of those bass-less Cleveland underground groups along with the Electric Eels, Lepers, the early (and reunited 1986 variety) Dead Boys and even a version of Klimek's own Styrenes albeit this omission wasn't exactly something that was planned on!

I don't think that the lack of Bell has made a particular dent in the sound, but I will say that the group was pumping on all cylinders even if you can tell that these guys were still working out their bugs in their transition from comedy to serious. Many of the songs we've known and loved for years can be heard getting fleshed out before our very ears, with early takes on such classics as "So Cold" (with O'Connor on organ!) and the monstrous "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" sounding great even if you can hear some clutziness ensuing. Laughner's "Aint It Fun" sounds so teenage angst you kinda think it was Bud from FATHER KNOWS BEST doin' the singin' , while the show closer "Down In Flames"/"Search and Destroy" comes off like a beautiful mess and it falls apart then comes back before your very ears.

Naturally the ne'er before heard numbers will make your jaw drop as the magnificent energy reveals itself to you. The Stooges' "Rich Bitch", vocalized by Laughner at his punk toughest, sounds like a remake done entirely from memory the same way that Mirrors took "Guess I'm Falling In Love" and it came out "Hands In My Pockets". It's sure a winner though perhaps improved on by the addition of special guest Robert Bensick on alto sax, he being a long-time Laughner pal who later up formed the artzy-fartzy duo Berlin with his wife who were certainly the darlings of none other than Anastasia Pantsios back during the time she was going out of her way to ignore the true Cleveland underground force. Not holding this against him, I will admit that Bensick plays some mighty good alto here coming off a whole lot like not only fellow Clevelander Albert Ayler but what I was kinda hoping that Crocus Behemoth himself'd done on those latterday Rocket tracks recorded live at the Piccadilly Penthouse.

"Gasoline"'s a nice trip in itself, a still-timely ditty about the Energy Crisis where Laughner rants on about all of the people and things we're gonna have to sell to the Arabs in order to get our fuel. The downloaded liner notes state that it's Laughner himself who's doin' the wild mouth organ wailing here, and if he can do that and sing at the same time like is evident here let me say that he's really pulled off a hotcha coup this time! (I think the actual on-stage guest playing the "harp" is mentioned by Crocus himself though too muffled for my ears to pick up whoever the blower was that night.) And as for "New York Stars" well...if you need any more reason to drag your copy of SALLY CAN'T DANCE outta the pile now you have one! Can you think of any other excuses to listen to it???

I know that 99.999...% of you haven't even read this far into the review and have already downloaded and enjoyed your disques by the time, so for those of you who are too stoopid to have done this let me just say in my own inimitable way LIKE WHADDAYA NEED ANYWAY, AN ENGRAVED INVITATION??? This 'uns definitely the highlight of the brand new year and we can only hope that before we all get tossed into the miasma that '13's bound to be Hearpen'll have a whole load more downloads ready for us, like perhaps the original Rocket line up or rare rehearsals and naturally the many unreleased numbers that need to come to light (such as Crocus' "Redline"). Perhaps even some inter-band arguments would sweeten up the pot. Whatever, I know that its things like this that keep me going, so let's just say that if you wanna off me long before my given time just dry these wild metallic seventies hard gunch sources up and you won't have ol' Chris to kick around any more!

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Jonathan Halper-"Leaving My Old Life Behind"/"I Am a Hermit" 45 rpm single (Puck Productions)

Yeah you can tape this soundtrack from the Kenneth Anger film PUCE MOMENT off the internet anytime you so desire, but dagnabbit if the idea of some enterprising youth making an illicit single version of these classic English-styled folk rockers wasn't just what the ol' collection needed. Evocative of solo Syd Barrett as well as certain Los Angeles post-Byrds outfits, these bedroom recordings not only made for a boffo soundtrack to Anger's ode to decadent Hollywood in the twenties (and replaced the original soundtrack taken from Verdi!) but reflects the entire jaded atmosphere that actress Yvonne Marquis certainly emulates as she slips on her black bangled gown. She's definitely a thespian who portrays the glamor of the twenties moviemaking world so vividly, perhaps as if she herself were a fading silent star who would eventually be eaten up by the powerbrokers that be or for that matter her starving whippets. Donovan should be tied down, poked with hot metal rods and forced to listen to this as punishment for all of the slurpy neofolkadoodle he's inundated us with way back when ("Barabajabal" notwithstanding).

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Figures of Light-DROP DEAD LP (Norton)

"Drop dead!" Now there's a phrase that can be heard around the house and with relative ease at that! Maybe that's why this album of new recordings by the once lost to everything group Figures of Light really resonates with this humble bunghole. Yes, once again original members Wheeler Winston Dixon and Michael Downey are joined by A-Boners Miriam Linna and Marcus the Carcass, not to mention ex-Gories Mick Collins (who also produces) on guitar and as you've probably guessed by now the results do reflect the typical standards this blog has stood by since the very beginning. Rolling Stones '64 meets the Velvets filtered through the Stooges and pureed into the Ramones, a group who weren't even around when the Figures of Light chopped up televisions on stage which only goes to show you how psychic Dixon et. all were. Amazingly enough, this group of fifty 'n sixty-year-olds sound just as teenage and as growly about the world around 'em as the Fleshtones did in '77 which is no mean feat especially in these decidedly anti-rock 'n roll times! Great high energy romp throughs with typical muffled and slurred vocals (on "With a Girl Like That" I thought I heard Dixon singing "don't play with the thermostat" 'stead of the actual title!) and a general baby boom feel that'll make you wanna visit the group in their garage before dad gets home from work and the band beats you up after they find you lurking through the basement scarfing up unattended tootsietoys!

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Archie Shepp-THE MAGIC OF JU JU LP (Impulse)

Considering some of the rather dullsville platters Shepp was presenting us with in the seventies, it's sure great to slip back in time to when the guy was creating some real FIRE MUSIC that really brings out the adrenaline in one's mind. Unavailable for years and going for the usual collector's prices on ebay, it's grand that Impulse has decided to re-release this one on 180 gram vinyl if only to present for us johnny-cum-lately po' boys just what all the fuss over this 'un was about in the first place. Shepp plays particularly outre here in the same manner as he did on those classic BYG sides, honking and screening to a bee-youtiful display of African percussion telegraphing out underworld-ly messages that I'm sure would scare the bejabbers outta you if you only knew what it meant. That's on the title side, whereas on the flip the man plays in a more "conventional" setting yet still gets into the gritty urban gnarl and atonal flare ups that I've known him best for. Yeah, Shepp's recordings eventually did take a noise-dive so-to-speak (though many of his later indie releases, such as the one with Zusann Kali Fasteau, remain unheard) but this 'un does cook more'n a cannibal bake off and ranks along with Coltrane's OM and Sanders' TAUHID some of the brightest moments of late-sixties New Thing morphing into early-seventies comprehension stretch.

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Egg Eggs-THE CLEANSING POWER OF FRUIT LP; Anla Courtis, Okkyung Lee, C. Spencer Yeh, Jon Wesseltoft -COLD/BURN LP (Feeding Tube)

Two of the latest from the same bunch that brought you the Mars live LP released a few months back. Egg Eggs is a real strangity, a total off-kilter thought-splat courtesy a Matt Krefting who some fancy as a cross between Crocus Behemoth, Little Lulu and Col. Bruce Hampton or something like that (it always pays to read the accompanying hype sheets!) but actually transcends those influences into something so incomprehensible that the only reference I can think of offhand is perhaps the Butthole Surfers at their most lysergic addled with special guest Wild Man Fisher on lead vocals. Imagine a crazed retarded yet savant musician whose feasted at the table of the above visionaries and more who spews it all back at'cha with muddled brilliance and had the resultant trips through his various mental and visionary escapades pressed onto a low-fi low-press run platter. That's what'cha got here and if you can't take the cold hard fact of it well I guess that's something you're gonna hafta sort out between yourself and your own personal demons. Of course when all's said and done who's the real crazy, the guys who recorded this, released it, bought it, or ME trying to make some sense outta something that might be yet another example of self-produced beyond-the-ken-of-human-comprehension brilliance or one of the biggest hoaxes to be pulled off in the rock world since SOUND CHOICE magazine?

The COLD BURN platter's yet another interesting affair, an album of heavy duty droning and other squeals that were recorded by this particular quuartet live in Oslo Norway during the grand appearance of the Aurora Borealis nonetheless! Two of the names here, C. Spencer Yeh and Okkyung Lee, are familiar to me from the old "Freestyle Music" series that used to take place at the CBGB Lounge, though the others are totally unknown (though I sure would like to know more about the Argentinian electric guitar that Anla Courtis utilizes here). Together this aggregate performs some of the bestest one-tone noise drone I've had the pleasure of hearing since Lamonte Young. Most of you readers will probably just write it all off as more of that stodgy experimental music that only a mental ward major could appreciate, but I (as usual) tend to find more'n a li'l bitta worth in this type of tone. Brings back fond memories of my early avant garde music interest buddin' away whilst I would scan just about every obscure and usually stodgy publication extant trying to find out more about this music that was behind a lotta the stuff I was listening to, and maybe it's for that I give COLD/BURN a higher moozical grade'n I'm sure most of you booshy trolls out there would ever dare to!

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Alex Chilton-FREE AGAIN: THE 1970 SESSIONS CD-R (burned for me by Bill Shute, no other info available)

Sheesh, I didn't even get through last week's package and here Bill sends me another batch of hot-pressed booty outta that ol' proverbial left field so to speak! And this one is definitely the pick of the litter being none other than the legendary unreleased for ages debut Alex Chilton solo album which was recorded between the fall of the Box Tops and the ascent of Big Star. Unfortunately that 'un never got released at the time for reasons I'm sure someone can dig up with enough internet searching under their elastic waistband, but that don't mean that it's not a definite WINNER.

Now I heard a tape of this that was goin' round back inna eighties but that was far from complete 'n kinda muffled to begin with....these tracks sound like they coulda been recorded yesterday though thankfully lack the modern sterility that makes for a suitable substitute for ipecac! Music-wise this is classic Chilton at his solo-est (and wildest), not that different from his late-seventies work that stymied more'n a few observers. Imagine the best moments of both the Box Tops and Big Star along with hefty references to the early-seventies pop scene back when it gave fans so much hope that even Greg Shaw said it was all coming back. Badfinger, T. Rex, the Raspberries and the Sidewinders combined into a mid-South pop recording and you pretty much get an idea of what this platter'll have in store for you once you download a copy yourself

Dunno if you can find this at the local five 'n dime, but heavy bets are on that a download should be available just as far as your fingertips. Just what you need in an age when tripe like Lady Caga and Nicki Menaste is being paraded across our television screens as if they were 2012's answer to Tiny Tim and Mrs Miller (and just wait until you hear what Chilton did to "Sugar Sugar"!)

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David Hemmings-DAVID HEMMINGS HAPPENS CD-R burn (originally on MGM)

David Hemmings'll probably be forever (give or take 100 years) known for his role in the moom pitcher BLOW UP (y'know, that film your folks wouldn't let you watch when it was on tee-vee), but didja know that he also recorded this album for MGM shortly afterwards? I didn't, and surprisingly enough this 'un ain't an English production like I thought it would be but typical '67 Southern California sunshine folk rock that's also got the imprimatur of having been backed by the Byrds (you woulda thought the Yardbirds'd woulda gotten the job considering the BLOW UP angle!) as well as some of the better musicians the El Lay recording scene could whip up.The results are smooth and enchanting even if they somehow brought back too many vivid memories of early school years insecurity with the gloppy orchestral arrangements and pre-hippie pop trappings. Otherwise its a funzie trip, with Hemmings' rather creepy English-accented vocals playing well against the patented late-sixties pop that's about ten steps up from Rod McKuen and about on par with what I woulda hoped alla them early singer/songwriter albums that eventually drowned out the seventies woulda sounded like. Don't miss the sitar/tabla drones nor the sharp production courtesy of Jim Dickinson, a name that seems to stick out in my mind somewhere...

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SAINT STEVEN CD-R (ABC Probe)

Here's an album that I thought I was gonna have a fun time reviewing! I even had a really good gag lined up for it..."this is an album that you really could throw stones at!"...but I thought that'd go over the heads of most of you heathens so I left it out. In actuality I really think this '69 platter from future Nervous Eater Steven Cataldo's a pretty hotcha release...naw, it ain't anything I'll be spinnin' consistently if at all o'er the next year or so but I think it's great that Cataldo was continuing on the psychedelic path while everybody else was either going whole earth catalog or straight to sopor heaven. It ain't anything that I'd call garage rock, but it ain't hippie either. Like the Hemmings album above. this is something that I sure wish more of the singer/songwriters of the day woulda done 'stead of the dippoid "Peace Train" scuzz and such that these fibre-plus types made their buckwheat with. It sorta straddles the line between decent, well-crafted pop and the kinda murk that teenage gals who used to iron their hair and press leaves in books while writing poems for the school literary magazine woulda liked, and even the bonus tracks from the magic year of '66 lend a bit of intelligent credence to the entire affair. An outta nowhere surprise that might have been trying to cop the James Taylor sensitive junkie market but sure the hell runs rings 'round all of the posturings he and his ilk had inundated us with for eons on end.

DENNIS THE MENACE SEASON TWO 5-DVD SET (Shout Factory)


Golly, does this one remind me of the massive Dennis the Menace obsession that I was nursing age 11! Back then yer humble blogschpieler was scarfing up all of the available paperbacks, reading the current newspaper panels and waking up early during the summer months just so's I could catch reruns of this series that channel 33 would sign on with at eight inna morning!  The station eventually moved 'em into the afternoon because I remember watching this 'un on the divan after I got a big hunka flesh gouged outta my kneecap courtesy of the guy who used to live behind me and hadda walk around like Chester Goode for a good month or so. Ahhh memories. I mean, it was worth having a humongous blob of flesh 'n fat taken outta my knee given all of the goofin' off I was bound to have in store, and darn tootin' you can't get any goof-offier'n than watching old DENNIS THE MENACE reruns!

Anyhoo this second season Dee-Vee-Dee set was sent to me as a Christmas present courtesy of Lou Rone, a guy who really knows a good old time baby boom growin' up 'n stuff program to watch when he sees it! Thanks a mill-yun Lou, because I gotta admit that I've had so much fun watching these comedies (that really conjure up the kinda single-digit fun and games that I wish I coulda indulged of more in!) followed by an episode of THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN which gave me some of the best UHF/indie tee-vee thrills experienced since the Golden Age of Kiddie Slob living way back when!

But boy, did the better moments of funtime just-into-the-double-digits suburban living just come rushin' back into my ever-aging beanie after watching these! Jay North of course is perfect as the saccharine yet deadly Dennis, while of course Joseph Kearns (famed JACK BENNY alumnus) is Mr. Wilson even if his successor in the series Gale Gordon looked more like the character in the comics! Gloria Henry and Herbert Anderson do a real good job as the parents who'd never haul off and wallop Dennis no matter what he does (not that he does anything dangerous here, so don't go expecting any episodes where Dennis accidently neuters Mr. Wilson with a chainsaw) and of course don't you wish you had a grandma or aunt like Sylvia Field as Mrs. Wilson??? I mean I sure did, and the quality of aunts I had remains pretty top notch if you ask me!!!!

Dunno if your standard DENNIS aficionado'd consider season two to be the show at its height (there are those who wax eloquent over the debut season's general kiddie anarchy) but there are some pretty good doozies here that rank as some of the better moments of late-fifties/early-sixties sitcom tee-vee viewing. My own personal fave has to be the one about the soap box derby where Mr. Wilson inadvertantly drives Dennis' car and gets him disqualified! I was kinda hopin' this 'un 'd be an eerie foreshadowing of the famed 1973 Soap Box Derby where the kid who entered fixed his craft with a magnet which his uncle operated from the finish line thus ensuring a certain victory, but I guess even that would have been too out-there for early-sixties television!

Naturally the episode that I was kinda hoping for (but knew never would have popped up) was the one where Dennis discovers the nude photos of his mom hidden in the photo album! The real-life nekkid snaps of Gloria Henry are legendary although I've never been able to, er, "uncover" them even on the web, and the thought of Dennis finding 'em and embarrasing his folk to all heck makes me chortle every time I think of it..."Mom, were you going skinnydipping in the pond when they took these pictures???" "Henry, I thought you destroyed those photos!!!" "Well gee Alice, sometimes I get lonely when you're away and those pictures do come in handy"!!! Just think of all the belly laughs we coulda gotten outta a storyline like that!

Well, it finally came. No, not what you're THINKING (as in "'to' is an adjective..."), I'm talking about TRADITIONAL WINTER WEATHER (the kind that freezes your nostril hairs and makes you don the heavy duty mittens)!!! Sheesh, here we've been having a relatively nice spell of springy (or at least Marchy) weather and whaddaya know, suddenly we've been blanketed with the white freezy matter which sure makes travel and general doin' what'cha wanna do stuff a whole lot more precarious'n it had been...oh well, that only means that there's now more time to stay home and watch old tee-vee shows on the Dee-Vee-Dee and (re)read alla them old books and fanzines that have been clutterin' up my room as of late. Bad weather does make for a good excuse for readin' 'n relaxin' while spinnin' all them old cassette tapes and Cee-Dees that are doin' their part clutterin' up my room as well...hey, at least when I feel that urge to goof off I'm bound to make up a good enough excuse when the occasion arises!

Otherwise, I must admit to you that I am feelin' a li'l glum, and frankly it's that old kinda grade school/adolescent glum that I haven't felt in ages. Remember the way you'd feel when your favorite tee-vee show would get canned? It might have been a classic like TWILIGHT ZONE or GILLIGAN'S ISLAND or perhaps many other olden faves you were most definitely hooked on which would get zapped from your local late-afternoon/early-evening schedules only to be replaced by DIFF'RENT STROKES reruns, and boy would you feel a combination mad/upset/depressed because of it!  Naturally those days featuring this specific kind of grave disappointment are long gone (I mean, just try tuning into these shows on the same stations that would regularly air 'em in the sixties/seventies/eighties) but that don't mean that a tee-vee letdown can't hit me in a new, even more "enlightened" fashion. My current misery is actually centered around the fact that the only show that I watch onna telly with about as much regularity as I can stand (not counting the occasional YOGI BEAR and RIFLEMAN tune-ins) has just been given the ol '86, and this series is none other than FREEDOM WATCH with Judge Andrew Napolitano on the Fox Business Network! And, as the old saying goes, you can bet that I feel lower'n a dachshund in need of a knee replacement!

Funny enough, I understand that the program was drawing in good numbers even though it wasn't on one of the more-watched cable nets out there, but word has it that Fox chief Roger Ailes was rather irritated at Judge Napolitano's more paloecon/libertarian views which went after the Republican estab. as much as the Democratic one. Being a strict no-no as far as Fox News protocol goes or something along those lines, I guess that's why the "fair and balanced" head of the net decided to drag out the old guillotine and put an end to all of the Ron Paul cheerleading and heavy-duty dissertations on everything from state encroachment to Police Achtung that could be found with ease on Judge Napolitano's show. And (as you could guess by the tone of this paragraph) too bad for that, because FREEDOM WATCH was the only program out there that would dare to discuss the sorry state of the ever-encroaching dictatorial powers over the average Joe Blow type as well as dare to have guests on as varying in political tone as one would ever be able to glom on the tube these days. Y'know, people like Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo and even Ralph Nader, a guy whose political visibility really shrunk after he dared to take on Al Gore way back when thus earning the ire of the new breed of leftoids who really tend to hold grudges about as long as I do! Frankly you just don't see this kinda assortment of guests on any of the other blabby political programs out there that are so numb-brained that even Mr. Rogers comes off smartypants in comparison!  Guess my 8:00 PM tee-vee viewing time's now gonna be taken up by watching those infomercials hawking old Greatest Hits collections with Neil Sedaka clips galore---at least those have more of a stimulating intellectual aura about 'em than Ed Shultz and Bill O'Reilly combined!

The burnt offerings that are to be found in the following reviews were sent to me by Bill Shute, as was the Harth release which came out on his own Kendra Steiner Editions. To which I say "huzzuh", and mighty heartily at that! Good thing that Bill exists, or else there wouldn't have been anything really interesting to write about this week given the general lack of stimulation that's goin' on 'round here! I gotta say that I do appreciate Bill's various "gifts" to the max, not only because he sure has a kind heart and all if he even considers sending me this stuff in the first place (I just hope he isn't feeling guilty for saying something about me behind my butt, but then again that's more or less something I would do-------------hee!) but who knows. Maybe he just feels sorry for me being such a pathetic example of a human being who never did amount to anything and never will especially in this internet age of instant revenge and cyberspace backstabs. Yeah, that's probably it---boy do I feel a whole lot better about myself now!

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Can-TAGO MAGO (40th ANNIVERSARY EDITION) 2-CD set (Spoon/Mute)

Sheesh don't these record companies keep thinking up different ways for us to latch onto the same product of theirs over and over again! Like in this case...I mean I already had the original two-disc version of TAGO MAGO (with the English flap cover that I certainly do not want to get squooshed any more than it already has) proudly poised in my collection as well as the original Cee-Dee take on it, but now the crafty folks at Mute thought up this new gimmick bound to get the cards and letters pouring in! It's a special fortieth anniversary edition of this legendary Can release that not only comes in a mini-fold out sleeve somewhat replicating the previously-mentioned English cover but contains an additional disc featuring never-before-released live material that I'll bet had more'n a few longtime fans dishing out hard-to-keep moolah for something they've already had for eons. Nice move, only the new take of the original album doesn't sound any better'n the original plus the live stuff's the same 1972 FM broadcast that's been circulating amongst collectors for a pretty long time. Yeah, I coulda splurged this hard-begged money of mine on something else, though frankly I woulda felt shamed if I hadn't! At least the enclosed booklet's got some informative reading, and besides the discography printed in the back mentions a Can box set to be released this year which purports to contain rarities which I hope haven't been in circulation for ages. Now, that's something for me to look forward to in the upcoming months especially considering how the archival digs have become rather dismal over the past few years, and you can bet your bottom booties that a writeup of that'll appear in these "pages" as soon as it hits the boards and I can scrape up enough lucre to grab a copy for myself! (IN OTHER WORDS, buy more of these before it's too late!).

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Alfred Harth/Carl Stone-GIFT FIG CD (Kendra Steiner Editions, see blog roll call on the left for address + info)


Multi-purpose saxophonist Alfred Harth's at it again, this time making some even more incomprehensible and even newer than that New Music you used to hear about soundage! This time he's doing it with the help of a Carl Stone, a man whose name I believe is an in-joke regarding the old DONNA REED SHOW. Maybe it's kosher after all, but anyway when these two got together they really knew how to whack out a free improvisational piece of total abandon which really is nothing special for the kinda brew that the Kendra Steiner Editions Cee-Dee label puts out!

Harth handles his usual reeds (don't think all 23 of 'em are present), some of them of a definite Russian/Far Eastern origin while others are of the standard saxophone variety, while doing some electronic workage himself. Stone just sticks to electronics and computers, and the resultant music remind me of a whole lotta the avant garde computer sounds that were coming outta college music departments and New Music Distribution Service catalogs (the "classical" section) back in the mid-to-late seventies back when the universities had enough money to prop up these kinds of arts as well as the polo team. Not quite free jazz, the music on GIFT FIG is nevertheless engaging, provoking, all-enveloping and perhaps just enough to drive you over the edge even after years of "having heard it all before" and "that's nothing compared to what Throbbing Gristle would do" self-comforting reassurances. As usual, a very limited edition release which I have the feeling you'll be collecting pop bottles for refund money just so's you can send in a nice li'l order to Bill Shute, right?

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Various Artists-IT'S A ZIMMERMAN WORLD, WE JUST LIVE IN IT CD-R burn (Pet Records)


Personally the idea of listening to an entire Cee-Dee of Bob Dylan ripoffs, spoofs, swipes and downright imitations was something that settled within me about as well as the concept of an entire platter of Ed Sullivan impersonations. Look at it this way Clyde...considering all of the Dylan swipes both legit and cockamamie we've hadda endure since the dawn of Zimmerman, all of the Donovans and Beatles/Stones rips as well as a ton of "relevant" camp counselors and bedroom revolutionaries strummin' the Dylan catalog in their own inimitable droning ways, do we really NEED something like this when we've probably hadda LIVE it whether we wanted to or not? Heck, I'll even take listening to Don Fellman do his Dylan impressions over the phone...at least he's keen enough to insert the right offensive, politically incorrect and tasteless lyrics that always get me laughing my head off more'n an old issue of  NATIONAL LAMPOON that I might chance upon at some flea market/antique set up. And besides, it's free! (And come to think of it, his Sullivan impression's pretty snat as well...just ask him to do his Jane Keane on the Sullivan show with special guest James Brown routine!)

So keepin' all this in mind here comes this burnt platter, a collection of mid-sixties Dylan swipes that ain't as obvious as Mouse and the Traps yet ain't as disgusting as yer least-fave early-seventies introspective singer/songwriter who fell back on the Dylan bandwagon because he maybe just got a li'l too tired copping ideas from James Taylor and Joan Baez this week. Fortunately they ain't all in the way-too-obvious nasal vein that Stealers Wheel etc milked like Farmer Alfalfa, but they're appealing enough w/o coming off like humorless drones. Some of 'em are famous like Johnny "Mr. Spaceman" Cymbal and Tommy Boyce, while others are just outta the suburbs and into the gutter types who wouldn't have been outta place on a classic early-eighties edition of BOULDERS. Most of 'em haven''t been heard by me before (though how could anyone fergit the faux Dylan via Sonny and Cher cop of Boo Boo and Bunky's "Turn Around"?) and it all settles in well enough here in 2012 as it might've a good forty-five years back. Now, I sure woulda preferred giving it  all a listen if only Moxie had pressed 'em up on cheap 1962 floormats and passed it off as the latest in a series of folk rock obscurities somewhere in 1984, but why should I complain!  These cheapities continue to affect ya in a straight on, positive way which I gotta say is perhaps more'n I can say 'bout a portion of not only Dylan's recorded output, but the entirety of his sycophantic soft-schmooze followers from Melanie to Joanie's which only manages to make me CRINGE even these many years down the line!

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Johnny Winter-SIDEMAN CD-R burn (Home Cooking/Collectables)


I'm surprised nobody thought of releasing this back inna early-seventies when Winter was riding high on the hype that had surrounded his discovery and thrust into the hotcha blues rock guitar player hall of fame! Back then there were tons of reissues of Winters' early albums and various garage-level outings to be found in bargain bins nationwide, so why not this collection of the famed albino doin' the sideman routine while finding his way to the top of the ROLLING STONE-approved panthenon of guitar heroes? Just slap a pic of the man with his long white hair and pale complexion onna cover and the thing woulda been guaranteed to just fly off of the shelves of your local record shop and into the flea market bins of the mid-seventies!

Still, this is a proper gathering of some of Whitey's early side-sides so to speak, showing off everything from Winter's country licks to his blues and rock wizardry in a variety of appropriate settings. Some of this stuff is surprisingly Old Timey like on the hokey yet heartfelt "We Just Call Him Sam" (a recitation re. the Vietnam War uttered by a Gordon Baxter) while other tracks present a straight ahead blues holler (Loudmouth Jackson's "Take My Choice"), and wouldja believe that Winter actually worked with Dickey "Patches" Lee on yet another sixties slurper called "Big Brother"??? Yeah, I know that a good portion of you think of Winter as being one of those late-sixties/seventies hotcha big time mainstream guitarists who practically built the entire GUITAR PLAYER/MUSICIAN magazine industry because he could play fast and slick solos utilizing his tonsils it he wanted, but these early sides are mighty hotcha no matter who's doin' the noodlin'! Probably easy enough to find for free on this thing we call the web.

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The Velvet Underground-SPECIAL PRICE SERIES cassette (MGM England)


Funny how just a short while ago I mentioned how I rarely if at all listen to the Velvet Underground 'cept for an occasional bootleg side or better yet the first disc from that complete box set featuring those July '65 demos showin' the group at perhaps their most embryonic state. Well, on the tail of that statement what do I do but pick up this collection on a lark, and yeah like I've had the actual vinyl for quite some time and of course these tracks adorn my collection in at least six other different modes but like, I thought it'd be a good 'un to spin in the car while I'm going about doing my daily duties and y'know, I was right.


Part of that mid-seventies Polydor series that gathered up the hippest of their back catalog in a budget series made noteworthy by the "safety film" motif, I recall a really nasty review of this via who else but MELODY MAKER who ended their capsule writeup with something along the lines of "just how many versions of 'White Light/White Heat' do you need in your collection?" Now, if the MM scribe asked the readership if at least two dozen copies of OLIAS OF SUNHILLOW were mandatory I'm sure that he and the target audience for that paper would heartily agree that the more the merrier but that's beside the point...really, for a rockist maniac like me there's always room for something such as a seventies-vintage Velvets tape in my boudoir, and I gotta admit that although no new ground's broken with these MGM-era numbuhs the tape does lend a certain connection to a past when things such as import cassettes were all but unavailable to a kid who at the time didn't wanna clutter up his home with too much vinyl!

Great selection of material, not as brave as the MGM 2-LP set with the Warhol-inspired lips sucking a straw on the cover, but almost as good as the Pride label VU platter with Lou Reed suddenly getting top billing. Utilizing four tracks from WL/WH was a smart move, plus considering how hard it was to come by the then-elusive third platter it's nice to see that '69's THE VELVET UNDERGROUND earned six tracks in itself. So what if there's no "Sister Ray" or "Heroin"...if ya saved up a li'l more cash you might have been able to afford that aforementioned double disc set which had that'n a lot more, but for budget-conscious 1977 doltoids who've read loads and loads about the Velvets via CREEM and ROCK SCENE and wanted to hear what the hubbub was all about this effort certainly did come in mighty handy!

Anyway, considering how Lou Reed himself has put an end to any new Velvet Underground exhumations thanks to his own personal pettiness regarding copyright and other musical legalese (thus stalling the release of more of those '65 rehearsals which I am agonizing over not hearing right now when the impact is bound to be the strongest) this is all we're gonna have to survive on until the fateful day all of this lawyer garble is worked out! Anyway, you too can now re-live what Velvets fandom meant in the seventies when all we hadda rely on were budget over there (but import priced over here!) albums such as this!

BOOK REVIEW! ROCK 100  BY DAVID DALTON AND LENNY KAYE (Grosset and Dunlap, 1977)


You bet your booties you know what nearly popped my eyes out when I saw this 'un proudly displayed on a shopping mall book store shelf back '77 way...t'was the very sight of none other than the name of LENNY KAYE, he being not only the guitarist for the Patti Smith Group but a neato writer who was one of the few of whom I could really delve into during those whacked out days we used to call the late-seventies! Yes, back when this book came out (during one of the most fertile times for underground music spewing in fact) I was one who really thought that Kaye was cool...spent loads of time reading his old record write ups in ROLLING STONE long before even the thought of being seen reading any of these became kinda creepy (I mean, how could they be with Lester Bangs and Richard Meltzer writin' for 'em...of course that was before I found out about THE GREAT PURGE), and like I once said if there was anybody on the face of this earth I wanted to look like...no, in fact be, it was Lenny Kaye with his cool long hair and of course the glasses which gave him a sophisticated sixties like punk look thrust forth into the early-seventies! This was at a time when my own listening parameters were starting to shake and shimmy, kinda like being on the cusp between late-sixties experimental accomplishment and seventies hard-edged drive, and people like Kaye sorta fit into my weirdly timewarped musical opines the same way everybody from Mick Farren to Pere Ubu were doing the same darn thang! Didn't know who that Dalton guy who shared writing duties with Mr. Kaye was, but I figured he too mighta been in some cool undergroundy rock act that I'd discover once the right reference to the right act fell into my lap...still waiting for that information to make its way into my cranium, but I know that when I find it it's gonna be a cool revelation!

In actuality, I do know that Dalton had previously written some respected though unread by me bios of Jim Morrison, the Dead and other wonders while working for STONE as a self-proclaimed "rock evangelist". Who knows, maybe he was in some boffo outta-the-loop kinda act that I sure would have enjoyed hearing, but that doesn't make ROCK 100  a better book (other'n as to give it a certain rockist backbone lacking in every aspect of the current "rock press" these days). It's cool because the people who wrote it had that great late-sixties/early-seventies sense of high energy fandom, the same kinda fan as rock critic power that you would have sensed in any of Kaye's CAVALIER columns or his appraisal of the Velvet Underground via the Seeds in the first issue of that tacky underground publication NEW TIMES (which I believe evoled into a mid-seventies "New Journalism" slickie that eventually went kaput). And with Kaye being a musician and collector as well as a writer, it was like he was covering all of the bases that a nobody like me sure wished coulda...after all being a musician, fan and exponent all rolled into one hipster longhair mass that still got the fogies uptight was something that I really longed to be! And true the sixties and seventies were filled with way too many false starts, downright flubs and horrid whole grain granola goodness to a music that was supposed to be known for its tension, but when you extracted the hippie credo and counterculture two-faced nature outta the equation the music was the best thing going for anybody and fellows like Kaye and Dalton sure knew where the might and attraction was coming from!

Great tome here even if the publishers hadda do the obvious and slap a pic of the Rolling Stones onna cover just so's a few hundred thousand teenage CIRCUS readers'd nab it up! It's the innards that really count, and the pair do it just about as well as Kaye did earlier with Richard Robinson in those ROCK REVOLUTION paperbacks that not only did their darndest to make 1971 look better'n it actually was but went outta its way to say that the likes of the Velvets, Stooges and Hackamore Brick were gonna be the big stars of the decade. Well, these groups might not have copped as many toothpaste endorsements as Marie Osmond, but their spawn certainly made quite a bang that was so vivid even the cubes at STONE had a pretty tough time ignoring it!

Of course you ain't gonna get the lowdown on any of your favorite outta-the-back-alley garage bands like we all kinda hoped, and in fact a chapter on the NUGGETS period of mid-Amerigan garage rock is sorely missing perhaps due to editorial restraint. However, amidst the straightforward and thankfully non-hippoid writing (meaning you aren't gonna be inundated with loads of "getting high on music" bromides and other unfortunately common rockscreed straight outta some 1971 junior high rap session)  you're gonna get a more concise history of rock 'n' roll as that fun suburban pastime than you ever would in a demi-Marxist tract such as Robert Palmer's tie in with a rather horrid PBS miniseries book which, after years of pondering, perhaps does deserves eternal damnation. ROCK 100 lays it on you straight from the originators to the early-sixties heroes and fops all the way through the mid-sixties accomplishment on and...hey, this book is so good that they even make the late-sixties and early-seventies come off way more intense and exciting than I'm sure most hard-core rockers remember 'em! In an age when the likes of Melanie and Cat Stevens ruled the roost that sure is one task that I would call Herculean!

In other words...ROCK 100's written as if it's aimed at the clientele who were patronizing CBGB and Max's Kansas City during those times 'stead of the squeaky cleans who tuned into those "rock awards" shows on television and thought of drek like STONE as their bible. Strict historical background for the CREEM and ROCK SCENE gang that's so smooth and constructed with the idea that rock 'n' was an "International Youth Language", fortunately without the sick philosophical trappings that have been so often attached to the concept of rock music for way too long.. I mean, smelly acoustic guitar strumming longhairs were a sickening sight back then and they still are, and their spawn pulling the strings and doing their darndest to make this world one big park where we can all throw frisbees and act brotherly and all might just be even worse! At least the power and stamina of the music that's championed as well as Kaye's own career efforts gave me a reason to stick with the music, and the attitude, excitement and everything that made me wait with bated breath for a new fanzine or collection of sixties garage rarites is to be found here  and bountifully at that!

So from Elvis and Little Richard up through the sixties and into the mid-seventies, the good bad 'n ugly are presented for your approval. And hey, you might even approve of this even with the likes of James Taylor and Elton John mixed twixt the metallics and glitter boys...I mean, if a book can make a group like the Grateful Dead sound good then it really gotta have something good going for it! And really, once you think about it how many other tomes of the times (even those gigantic ROLLING STONE HISTORY OF ROCK tombstones that were all the rage yet were comparatively worthless even if the likes of Bangs and maybe even Kaye contributed) would actually devote an entire chapter to what is referred to as "The Outer Limits" (MC5/Stooges/Velvets/Love...)?

(One final aside, besides being a decent detailing of many of the better and some of the lesser moments of the rock/soul/folkie era this book does make for a good historical brush up on my part. Like in the chapter on fifties r/b nurture and growth I am reminded that it was not Etta James who had the hit with "Dance With Me Henry" but Georgia Gibbs unlike what I had written two weeks back regarding Miss James' passing, and although you'd expect me to take the entire flub up onna chin and start grovelling with "mea culpas" all over the place I will most certainly NOT! Naw, I'm gonna spin it all back on YOU the reader and chastise ya for not catching the error, comin' down on ya with the usual "what kinda readers do I have anyway, graduates from Polk State Hospital?" insults which better shame you all into being more observant BLOG TO COMM readers! Not that I would have acknowledged anybody writing in with the correct answer especially if they did so in the usual snooty, oneupmanship way that many of you readers, troll or not, feel free to do so, but it woulda been interesting anyway!)

Sure doesn't seem like February what with all of the rather springy weather we've been enjoying in the tri-county area, but even when the ol' thermometer's been hittin' the mid-forties/fifties Fahrenheit I'm still having trouble enjoyin' the lack of freezin' weather that I usually hafta endure durin' the winter solstice. Dunno if it's the prospect of a Mitt Romney candidacy and possible presidency (which would only make him the new Wendell Wilkie...I mean, why bother voting against Obama if ya hate that iron fister so much with this bozo as the "alternative"???) that's drivin' me to the bottle of non-alcoholic sangria that I bought at K-Mart, or if it's goin' on Facebook and finding out that 99% of the people who I've befriended are down 'n out socialist types who believe in free speech 'n practice for everybody but people who don't think like they do (mainly me!). And I ain't talkin' Eddie Flowers who's more of a rightie 'n he'll ever admit (at least using my own keen definition of the term), nor Barry Goubler whom I usually seem to agree with on almost all fronts, nor Mike Snider who never did check his logic and reasoning at the door before venturing into the house of  sociopolitical theorem!  Let's just say that I'll probably never again go on that "networking" page as long as I live, unless I get one of those notices that I've been "tagged" in a post usually in passing and am curious as to see what negative things are being said (as usual).

Really, there's nothing more down-in-the-dumps 'n reading the rants of the new breed of rabble-rouser who blab on as if the froth in their mouth has suddenly hit the cranium as we all march lockstep into the new era of post-hippie statism with wide smiles on our faces...right before we're all forced to dig our own mass graves, that is. And I guess it's mostly my fault as well...after all, I've associated with many of these people in the past and maybe I shoulda caught on that a good portion of 'em were about as kosher as a huge slab o' bacon, but since I've been so naive about various "pals" o'mine who eventually shoved the big shiv in my back when I wasn't looking in the past then why should this old dog have learned any new tricks all these years later! Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for people spouting off their opinions and hey, at times I may even agree with a point or three some of the new babblers of Modern Dystopianism (or better yet a new kulturkampf) might be espousing, but most of the time when I flick on Facebook or the comment section of certain blogs I end up feeling like Public Enemy #1 with a big bullseye drawn on my hindquarters! 'n not only that, but the blowguns are gettin' loaded up with curare-laced darts and you can guess whose donkey the tail's gonna be pinned on! Y'know, this really is the "no future" that I've been mentioning we've been in for the past two or so decades, only the people who were warning us about it back in the seventies and eighties eventually turned out to be the same ones who, perhaps not so unknowingly, PERPETRATED it!

But maybe I should just shut my trap...after all, I still wouldn't mind getting freebee items from some of these very same people who I am cringing about, and I don't wanna clog up any more gravy trains that I have to in these budget strapped times! Anyhoo, here're some more stream-of-unconsciousness musings that mighta worked well back when Bangs and Meltzer and even Russell Desmond were doing the streaming but in my hands look like utter nonsensical masturbatory goo! Well, at least it's keeping me off the streets and out of trouble, and now that I think of it outta the bathroom and out of trouble there as well!  So come along and shave your palms while digesting some of this prattle which I hope will pass for "cutting edge", "experimental" writing that if discovered by the right big name author out there might earn me my first beret and bag of stale Doritos, or maybe even keep me outta prison for that matter!

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Rob Garcia's Sangha-HEART'S FIRE CD (Connection World)


Moon Pool-ECLIPSE CD (Distinction)


Imaginary Homeland-JUMP FOR GEORGE CD (Imaginary Homeland)


(the above recordings are available via CD Baby)


I gotta admit that I really feel like a bonafeed goof sometimes if only because I must be the only person on the face of this earth who misses the decade that I playfully refer to as the "oh-oh's" but you people tended to call the "oughts"! Now, I don't have the same kinda feelings for those days that I did like say, in the early-eighties when I missed the type of prime-time tee-vee, underground records and general armchair decadence that I experienced in the seventies, but in many ways these bubbling under feelings sure come close. Actually, what I do miss about the previous decade (and there wasn't much!) are the old cybercasts that used to emanate from the long gone 'n sainted CBGB club in New York City back when, from the three stages gathered under that flophouse roof, a wide variety of music that has tingled my tootsies for quite a long time could be experienced and for free! Of course, with all of the goodies came an even greater variety of stuff that I would never think of sitting through in a thousand years but we're talkin' high energy for now and that's the raw meat that I never could get enough of back then and will continue to feast upon no matter how long I've got ears to bleed!

Yeah, I know that CBGB in 2006 was not the same beast it was a good three decades earlier, but if you looked long and hard enough you might have been able to spot the oh-oh's version of Harry Toledo or David Patrick Kelly and Toivo (forget the Blondies and Talking Heads!) on a given night. And during some of the sets I've caught I just might have seen the perfect embodiment of just what the mid-seventies underground outta-the-way garage band ethos might have been during an audition showcase by some group that probably didn't even make the cut. But when I'd tune into the club back during those perhaps not-so-halcyon days it was more or less to espy what was going on during the Dee Pop-curated "Freestyle Jazz" nights (Sundays of course, as if the club'd book something along these lines on a possibly jam-packed Friday or Saturday!) when a wide variety of acts and players both famous (Burton Greene, Eric Gale, Sunny Murray...) and upstart would get their chance to perform for an audience of ten chomping down their sausage pizza on some second-hand davenport. These shows were perhaps the most interesting part of the latter days of CBGB for me, where the bold survivors of the sixties still had meaning and a new generation was poised to grasp the torch, though as far as how far they'd run with it was always open to discussion.

I must admit that some of the musical acts that I never heard of who were performing at the series did seem promising, and some of the even more "fusion" (for wont of a better term) acts like Earth People and Noisetet were rather inspirational especially for a guy like me who kinda cringed at the thought of this music after giving Return to Forever's ROMANTIC WARRIOR a spin oh so long ago!  So maybe it was with some trepidation that I decided to snatch this particular platter by Bob Garcia's Sangha up...after all, they were compared to Return To Forever in the CD Baby listing, but then again I never heard that first album of theirs on Polydor which I understand is different and better than the music Chick and company cranked out later on during the days of jazz becoming just as boring and as pedestrian as the rest of the music being played onna radio. And then again I figured that perhaps Sangha could have had some moments of early John McLaughlin fire before he went the Sri Chinmoy route to wholesome buckskin living and square haircuts. Perhaps this act was in fact the oh-oh's answer to Jatra, this jazz/fusion act that was led by that Cuban guy who used to be in Mandrill that also got a McLaughlin comparison and were popular enough to score a gig at the CBGB Christmas Festival in '75. That would make them at least a footnote to the New York scene even if they never did release any recordings that I know of and could have sounded like typical NPR jazz custom-made for the Karen Quinlan who lingers on in all of the one-dimensional budding high school guidance counselors and reproductive rights campaigners that I've come across in recent years.

Unfortunately Sangha, even with the hipster Eastern Philosophical Nom De, can't muster up the kind of furious freedom that I wished they could have dispensed. In fact, this music is nowhere near anybody's concept of fusion making me wonder where CD Baby conjured up the Return to Forever comparisons unless it has to do with the standard cool jazz references and airheaded peace 'n love lyrics that are as bountiful as those little fly spec marks on my gut flab. From the smooth femme vocals to the tuneful guitar lines and PLENTY FLUTE, this platter really does not convey anything that I particularly want to experience when listening to some jazz trying to escape the banalities this Cee-Dee exudes. After all's said and done, Sangha's pretty much like most music where the noise, dust, crackles and dirt are removed all we're left with is some of the more tinkle-tune pleasantly mewls to have graced my ears since I was unceremoniously kicked off the Atlantic Records gravy train. And I do feel kinda sad about it because I was hoping this would have kicked up a bitta dust, vigor and tension, but I guess something like that would not be conduit to a platter just swimming in Buddhist mysticism, eh?

Fortunately the quartet that goes under the name Moon Pool fare better in their attempts to continue on with the spirit of seventies loft jazz in a world that couldn't give two hoots these days. Now, it ain't like they did an ajax of a job on this 'un since I felt a good portion of ECLIPSE just didn't have the same thrust to it that made similar aggregates so entertaining. But then again, considering the turdburger this coulda been maybe I should be grateful. The musicians who make up Moon Pool have the ability (and the dues, at least according to the insert where each and every member's past affiliation is brought up just to prove to us that these guys ain't a buncha pikers!)  and can present something that clearly sets in the "now" portion of anybody's free jazz collection, but there's a certain sameness and perhaps even sterility to the music that's being presented. Perhaps a few more spins will change my opinion, but for now I'd classify Moon Pool as a possible new hope for the future of avant jazz who just need to work out a few additional engrossing arrangements and attempt something that I would consider more...inspirational?

And now for a recording by a CBGB Lounge vet that I really can sink my fangs into! Imaginary Homeland are/were a quartet featuring two free jazz guys (David Rogers and Mark Stone) who had spent some time in Ghana studying African chops who decided to put their new musical ideas to use in a free jazz output. Along the way they picked up violinist Marlene Rice and bassist Matt Pavolka, and the four really know how to blaze ahead into interesting old directions (Back to Africa jazzisms) in a new and exciting way that ain't gonna make you think you're sitting through yet another replay of ROOTS on the History Channel!

General melodies do a good three-way bend twixt new thing, Africa and even a little rural white hillbilly twang, and considering how Rice's violin playing can get into some hotcha fiddleisms along with the African-influence and free Billy Bang/Leroy Jenkins style this really does make for a "World Record" that does a world of good. Rogers sounds like Archie Shepp at times while Stone plays all sorts of African percussion from water drum to African drum set to xylophone (or as it's called over there a gyil) giving this 'un a distinct sound that I gotta say does recall some of the finer moments of the Revolutionary Ensemble's recorded output. After being inundated with boring bowtie jazz and horrid screeches attempted by people who think all that free jazz is is the atonal honking of one's horn w/o the ability or creativity to take that sound and work some style and flesh into it a disque like this sure's welcome in my collection. Makes for a nice reminder of just why I was drawn to the idiom while I was still a pimple-infested teenager reading sacred screeds about people like Ornette and Braxton being the next "logical" step in a variety of magazines that undoubtedly have no meaning to anybody anymore.

***

Various Artists-THE WEST COAST POP ART EXPERIMENTAL BAND COMPANION CD-R burn (Sunbeam)

There used to be a gas station chain in this area called Workingman's Friend, best remembered by me for their logo featuring a 1940's-era painting of a muscular hardhat with a grin on his overtaxed, Chuck Connors-ish mug. The family used to go there all the time because back in the pre-Energy Crisis days this chain was guaranteed to keep their gas price under thirty cents a gallon, and naturally back in those recessionary times we needed to save all of the pennies and nickels that we could in order that I could scarf up all of the comic books that were being presented to me via flea markets county-wide! Unfortunately for us we weren't the only ones patronizing Workingman's Friends since these usually outta-the-way rural filling stations were one-stops for a wide variety of robbers who took advantage of the easy loot that could be found once closing time came upon us and a day's earnings could be snatched up pretty handily at that! By the mid-seventies the chain was no more, and since those days a Korean War memorial has popped up looking rather outre in the plain grassy fields where once stood a classy old-timey gas station.

Why am I padding this review out with more childhood reminiscences which I'm sure somene'll will include in a biography to be written somewhere in the dark ages of futureshock? Well, because if you ask me Bill Shute is the new Workingman's Friend, and although he looks nothing like the brawny blue collar workhorse that adorned the station signs of old he sure does his gosh darndest best to help out the working man...mainly this working man who usually has to struggle and scrimp to get up enough money for a seasonal order to Forced Exposure only to find out that 75% of the rex he wants are now outta stock! At least with Bill I can get hold of these "Care Packages" that are filled with interesting DVD and CD-R burns (some even playable!) which help to pep up a normally snoozeville evening and, given that I have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER what Bill's slipping into one of those little white envelopes of his you could say that I'm getting a Mystery Package worthy of any hotcha 1960's era game show! Only I don't expect to be getting anything that would be outside the realm of typcal BLOG TO COMM kultur like obscure art films with subtitles written in Sanscrit or parlor recordings of an old blue-haired/skinned lady singing hymns while playing her pump organ recorded sometime in 1953. Then again, next to some of the dross passing for "civilization" these days such items might very well be a godsend!

I never considered the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band a top psychedelic act 'r anything like that. Oh yeah, they were nice, and in fact rather listenable in their own pleasing way yet they lacked the knotty pine basement hipsterism of the Seeds, the rank reek of the Mothers of Invention, the snot punkitude of the Chocolate Watchband and the artistic drive of the Velvet Underground. Oh yeah, they certainly made some records that stand the test of time, but still their disques always seem to get pushed to the back of the collection along with other worthies usually to stay there until I happen to read some interesting anecdote about them and how they cop certain ideas on one melody and rearrange various classical composers on another thus piquing my attention. That usually starts me on yet another one of my jungle adventures through thirtysome years of recordings trying to give a certain track a listen to in order to discover for myself just what aspects I've been not lending my third ear to lo these many years of taking it all for granted!

If you're expecting the fab intellecto-pop of the WCPAEB you won't be disappointed. However, you will have to wade through a variety of pre-band efforts featuring future members which range from palatable to downright wretch-inducing (if you can sit through Lucifer and the Peppermints you can shake your hand!). after which you'll not only come across some fine enough mid-sixties El Lay folk rock like the Rogues' "Wanted, Dead or Alive" being just one good "Hey Joe" swipe you'll approve of! The lack of liner notes of course leave me in the dark 'n since I'm too tired to do a whole lotta websearching I'll just hafta play these tunes wond'rin' just who did what with which, but hey it's a good enough selection of tracks that at least gives you a li'l background as to where the WCPAEB was coming from and would be heading since some of these are def. post-group days.  (And really, some of this, especially the avant garde stuff [and serious avant garde mind you!] does come off a little more freakier'n I woulda expected to come outta sunshiney pre-Doors Southern California!)                                                                                                                                                

Nice surprise here for both fans and not so's, and as an added bonus the compilers even snuck in some rare sides by the Pop Artsters themselves. I know I don't have to tell you folk whose hearts are still in Los Angeles 1965 what to do now, do I??? (Again, this should be an easy-to-find download which would suit me, if this danged computer wasn't always acting slower'n a syphilitic pissing contest. Hopefully your set up's progressed beyond the age of crystals unlike mine.)

***

Don Cherry-COMPLETE COMMUNION CD-R (Blue Note)

Another in an ad infinitum series of burns sent me by Bill Shute, this 'un has onetime Ornette sideman and future gnu age practitioner Don Cherry leading a pretty hotcha bunch including ace bassist Henry Grimes, fellow Ornette alumni Ed Blackwell on drums and future LAST TANGO IN PARIS themester Gato Barbieri long before he jumped onto the late-seventies schmooze wagon which overtook many a once-vital professional! 'n hey, this 'un's turned out to be (to use a favorite cliche) a wowzer considering how I'm not always one to get into some of Cherry's more, er, third world esoterica. Overall this '65 sesh is pure early-sixties Ornette (a name ya just can't get away from when discussing these crossroads freedom platters) with a nice splattering of bopdom in with the new thing that makes for a rather entertaining outing. Barbieri flaunts his Coltrane roots for all to see before even that jazz great's moniker got flogged so much it could have been sold for ground chuck at the A 'n P, while Grimes and Blackwell do the Right Thing with their in and out free play that stands out as much as Cherry's cornet and Barbieri's tenor. A great one to add to your avant garde jazz collection, if you can locate it and burn the thing for free like I'm sure most of you computer savvy readers are doing this minute, eh?

MOOM PITCHER REVIEW! HOUSE OF ERRORS STARRING HARRY LANGDON AND CHARLIE ROGERS (PRC, 1942)


Nowadays when once-viable actors become too old or too relegated to past moom pitcher experiences to cut the mustard w/current day B.O. bonanzas they either gracefully retire to some other moneymaking venture or they end up appearing in roles tailor made for their now-bygone acting styles. More often than not these hasbeens pop up on television dramas that cater to the old fogey types (THE LOVE BOAT and MURDER SHE WROTE were two good eighties examples), or better yet they turn up on direct to video ventures that can be found easily enough via "Buy It Now" auctions on ebay. Of course the only place we see any of 'em nowadays is on afternoon television endorsing Life Alert or some bogus insurance policy for seniors that always seemed scammy to begin with.  However, in the old days when actors found themselves hitting upon hard times they usually hadda rely on friends in the industry to get them bit parts in films, or if lucky they'd still end up starring in big enough features via the Poverty Row studios who specialized in low-budget crankouts that seemed to vanish into the ether once even the lowliest UHF station ditched such programming somewhere in the late-fifties.

Only a spoiled primadonna would have shuddered at such a future of bit roles for aging thessies, but at least  most out of work actors (who perhaps saw their profession as a legit alternative to working in dad's grain store back in Cornplug Idaho) relished the idea of emoting in front of a camera no matter where or why. Naturally Harry Langdon, along with Buster Keaton was one who continued an acting career throughout his long and perhaps even illustrious career long after the film snobs had decided to write him off with a vengeance. A veteran of Sennett, Roach, Educational and Columbia, Langdon was at one time pegged as "the new Chaplin" (as if the old one wasn't enough!) destined for great things...however while Chaplin spent the talkie era making dudsville features that came off painfully stilted, arty and so unfunny that only a stodgy film critic could laugh at 'em, Langdon was romping it up in wacko comedy shorts and in East Side Kids features that continue to hold the attention of true fun loving crazoids like myself a good seventysome years after they were created. And of course he could be found headlining a number of quickies himself including this wonder from  PRC studios, a low-budget wowzer entitled HOUSE OF ERRORS where the comedy great is teamed up with yet another forgotten fave, none other than Charley Rogers (a limey whose fuddy-duddy Edward Everett Horton-esque nature makes for a good balance to Langdon's  overripe natural ineptitude).

Simple enough plot here custom made for the early days of WW II jitters with the team of Langdon and Rogers playing some "errand boys" for a newspaper who, after being fired, decide to become reporters themselves and get the lowdown on a new experimental rifle being developed by a reclusive inventor (shades of Vera Vague!) . Meanwhile this loudmouth reporter for the paper that Langdon and Rogers got 86'd from misrepresents himself to the inventor as being from an American Legion publication thus gaining access to the scoop he so desires (as well as the nurse daughter of the inventor whom he's been making goo-goo's at while in the hospital cafeteria). Of course when you throw in the suspicious-looking family friend (the mustache is always a tip-off!) and his sidekick out to steal the plans you know you're gonna be in for one of those hour-long crazy serio-comedies that have so much life to 'em because somehow, they're acted so every-day like you kinda feel like you're spyin' on 'em from the crack in the bathroom door!

Many nice comedy routines here courtesy Langdon and Rogers, including various old-timey gags that always looked fresh in the hands of such pros as well as with Abbot and Costello and The Three Stooges. The overall effect, perhaps heightened by the worn film and occasional splices, do conjure up memories of past late-night ennui watching the UHF rays at 12:30 AM on an especially sticky August night or maybe MATINEE AT THE BIJOU also during the late-night hours during a time in your life when you were at the crossroads and the only thing you felt like doing was tramping on the grass to the nearest outhouse! A real nice way to spend an hour, and a fine way to re-connect yourself with a past that most Social Planner-types would love you to forget lest you remember that there used to be this thing called "fun" that somehow didn't fit in with the curriculum ifyaknowaddamean... If there's a low-wattage station in your neck of the boonies you might wanna check the local tee-vee schedule for the next three AM showing.