Guess it's time for a middle of the year assessment, and in this hot 'n hazy July all I can really say is that 2012 HAS SURE SHAPED UP SWELL AS FAR AS BEING ONE OF THE MORE EXCITING  ROCK 'N ROLL YEARS IN RECENT MEMORY!!!  OK, its true that almost all of the years that we did have in recent memory were not only downright dullsville but stridently anti-rock, but at least there have been enough good releases comin' out these past six months that warrant a hale 'n hearty all's well in the wild world of rock 'n roll. Now, I'm sure even you will admit that there aren't that many new 'n exciting groups comin' out like there were a good thirty or forty years back, but I must admit that a few of the upstart groupings out there are as good as some of the better underground rockage that we've been spinning for quite some time. Of course many of the old standbys can still kick it out, as I'm sure the hundreds of acts who are playing the various CBGB and Max's Kansas City festivals in New York this month can attest to. The "experimental" music coming out today, whether it be Fadensonnen's deep treks into electronic guitar soundscapades or the current Kendra Steiner Editions offerings, has been just as engaging, awe-inspiring and total envelopment as the entire Columbia Records "Music Of Our Time" series back in the sixties and more personal to boot! And naturally the reissues and downloads continue to enchant, from the Rocket From The Tombs 12/74 wonder (a current car-spin fave) and Rotomagus collection to such outta-nowhere delights like MICHIGAN MAYHEM and of course the new Can boxset (on Mute Records) which has just arrived to save me from yet another grab for the straight razor when all seems lost.

You can bet that I was religiously preparing for this 'un by spinning all of my Can bootlegs incessantly night after night, but even what I was playing in anticipation didn't prepare me for the onslaught to be found on these three shiny platters of pure perfection. Fortunately THE LOST TAPES concentrate on their hotcha late-sixties to mid-seventies years meaning you don't have to worry about those latterday platters that flopped about making people like Carl Mack from FUTURE wonder why they even bothered in the first place! And given the plethora of primal early Can to be found all I can say in typical Aunt Jemima fashion is like, what took you (read: Irmin Schmidt) so long?  For this set is one of the hallmarks of just what German expressionist rock stood for back when various NME critics were looking toward Der Fatherland for signs of rock life and even dorks like Sid Viscous were learning to play bass while MONSTER MOVIE was spinning endlessly in their fart-encrusted boudoirs.

Malcolm Mooney does get more than his fare share of trackage which is fine by me considering how his more DELAY 1968-ish sense of surge (as opposed to his nice if quieter moments) are firmly on display, "Waiting For The Streetcar" and "Deadly Doris" being just two of the primer examples to be found. (Other Mooney-era pieces range from a bizarroid "Your Friendly Neighborhood Whore" to "True Story", a free association monologue to horror organ backdrop which surprises me no end especially when Mooney actually drops the name of famed fifties television space ranger Rocky Jones!) And hey, even if you don't think the post-Mooney years were quite so tip top this 'un'll make you change your mind with the fine choice of rarities which seem to capture the TAGO MAGO feeling to a certain extent while concentrating on a more EGE BAMYASI atonal sense of elegance. Believe-you-me, if this don't give BAMYASI cheerleader  Eddie Flowers a hard-on more'n his Candy Samples photo album then nothing will!

Hopefully the springboard for more legendary Can releases, THE LOST TAPES is one reason that 2012 might be one of the better years for reissues and exhumations. And given just what a dour, anti-rock 'n roll climate we live in I guess this is all we have to bank our booties on right now, pod'ner!

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Given the intelligence and fine taste you readers have procured (mostly from reading this blog), I'm positive that you already know just how much the death of Andy Griffith this past Tuesday induced the same ol' cringe-y effect of impending doom that I got after hearing about the recent passings of everyone from Dick Clark and Frank Cady to GRIFFITH co-star George "Goober" Lindsey. Now it ain't like I was crying all over the place about it, but like I said earlier this sorta news does kinda hit me "there" (pound edge of fist into chest right where heart is for emphasis) considering that the likes of Griffith et. al. have been with me ever since my earliest flickers of memory and how things like watching THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW on Monday nights was a weekly ritual that helped my learn the days of the week as well as a whole load of things they just don't teach you in school then or now for that matter!

Definitely one of the top twenty series of all time, THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW obviously remains a personal fave and it is nice knowing that the series still continues to reverberate on the cathode connection lo these many years later. Who knows, perhaps the show, even in these jaded and unfunny times, will influence yet another generation about Ameriga and its nicer, funnier nature. That's something you just can't say about many of those great shows of the fifties and sixties which sorta got jettisoned from our lives about ten-fifteen years ago when even cable wouldn't run this stuff on a bet. At least you can still find GRIFFITH somewhere on the dial whether it's via the flaccid TV Land or your local outlet, and the thought of knowing that does make me feel a little better inside, for OBVIOUS reasons naturally. And hey, even though I've seen 'em all a good what, fifty times throughout my entire life I find the series remains fresh and vibrant no matter how many times I set my jaded self in front of the idiot box with can o' pop and snax in hand hopin' for at least a moment of revitalization...

Before THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW entered into our lives the guy wasn't exactly alien to the public what with a string of feature films ranging from NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS and of course Elia Kazan's oft-praised A FACE IN THE CROWD (the famed howling image from the poster even earning a reproduction courtesy of Bill Elder in HUMBUG's boffo spoof of AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS). And really, what fifties comedy fanatic could forget Griffith's infamous "What That Was, Was Football" monologue about a backwoods boy discovering the famous game for the first time and describing it in his own addled way? That was so popular it even got illustrated in MAD during the late-fifties when this once-satirical magazine was getting top comedians like Ernie Kovacs, Bob and Ray as well as Danny Kaye to either write new material or have their old classics illustrated by "the usual gang of idiots"*, an idea which sorta went by the wayside once 1960 rolled around and most of the comedians skedaddled over to HELP! Of course Griffith's own show was a hoot which perhaps showed to all of those cloistered Northern urban types that Southern people were well...people too. It's like in that rarely seen pilot for the series which ran on THE DANNY THOMAS SHOW where Danny was being held in Mayberry for some traffic violation and insults Griffith by calling him a hayseed and a hick, only to be eventually shamed by Griffith who lets out that maybe Southereners don't like being called those names any more than blacks or Polish or other ethnicities like being ridiculed by people who love to feel superior to others. Somehow I feel as if lessons like this one has been lost on the extremely cloistered upper-crust armchair radicals of today, but hey I might be wrong.

After GRIFFITH more or less ran its eight-year course well, even I had a hard time tuning into THE NEW ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW like I'm sure most of you did though for some strange reason I was perhaps the only one who watched Griffith's stab at youth relevance via HEADMASTER because, unlike on ROOM 222, the kids on this show were all spoiled brat mid-class goofballs (even that poor student who couldn't afford underwear) and the writers were older generation curmudgeons who sure knew what sorta havoc those pampered hippies would spread once they got into power. And as we all know, they were right all along! By the mid-seventies when Griffith was appearing in just about every variety show and TV Movie that would cast him I must admit I shrugged him off, but then again I felt most of the fifties/sixties innovators had pretty much lost it by the time Gerald Ford was rolling into office. I mean, Ford certainly did send this universe off on some weird tangent it never really did recover from.

(By the way, I missed HEARTS OF THE WEST with Griffith as an aging cowboy star on TCM a few weeks back...managed to tune in right at that scene where [I believe] Blythe Danner was doing a topless exotic dance dressed in cowgear complete with sheriff badge pasties for a buncha dirty old men hootin' and hollerin', and since my pop was in the room with me I switched over to something innocuous mighty fast! I recall the boffo writeups it was getting back '76 way, and considering how the early-mid-seventies seemed such a brief renaissance in films I figured this 'un'd be worth a little more of my time. Any recommendations out there?)

Hokay, one funny if self-deprecating ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW saga you might get a chuckle or two outta. And considering how I can now talk about these once-devastating experiences from my childhood which surely warped me with ease, why not this one...it was early June, perhaps the first full day of Summer vacation, and a couple of my female cousins who used to live up the street from me came over to visit my sister and talk girl stuff. Well, while they were there what should happen to pop up on the tee-vee screen but yet another ANDY GRIFFITH rerun, the episode where Opie and his friend discover an abandoned baby on the courthouse steps and try to find it a home...y'know, the one with the high-larious "Miss Crump, do you want to have a baby?" line! Well, right after the second segment (where Andy gives Opie the birds and the bees talk which of course is neatly circumvented and Opie tells his pal he already learned that in school but didn't want to disappoint his father) my own mother says to me, and in front of my sister and cousins..."Chris, I'll bet you were wanting to find out where babies come from, weren't you?" as they all laughed and I cringed at the thought that my mother would even dare make a crack such as that. I mean was I that lowly a specimen to deserve such treatment from my dear own mother??? Recently I reminded her of this incident and she even apologized, which is about as meaningful as modern day politicos doing the mea culpa for eight-hundred-year-old transgressions, but I took it all in stride!

And hey, all who say that the episode about Andy having to eat three spaghetti dinners is the best of the latterday and oft-dismissed color GRIFFITHs (the aforementioned baby one being #2 and the filming of SHERIFF WITHOUT A GUN with Gavin MacLeod as Andy #3) please raise your hands, er, mouse!

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A recent basement excursion had me digging up quite a number of oft-ignored booty, including the following three cassettes which really zoned me back to the dark, dank days of the eighties when nothing seemed to go right and I should know given the hassles and problem I had getting my writings out to a disinterested public. Anyway I'm sure many of you avid followers of this blog remember the humongous hubbub (at least in fanzine circles) that arose regarding Halo of Flies and the entire Amphetamine Reptile cadre of under-the-underground groups which I playfully referred to as being the "new era" of atonal bliss. I must admit that many of the Amphetamine Reptile groups haven't exactly withstood the battering of time and longevity (then again, I must admit that I haven't been spinning the likes of Vertigo, the God Bullies and Pogo the Clown for at least two decades), but flagship group Halo of Flies, led by AR head Tom Hazelmyer, sound just as hotcha as they did back when I was scrambling to snatch up the last copies of the group's rather limited edition singles which I'm sure are prized possessions amongst the more "in-the-know" fans and followers of eighties underground rock extant.

This collection of single sides sure comes in handy in case you want a quick Halo fix and can't gather up all of your originals or if you're too cheap to buy the Cee Dee compilation easily obtainable on ebay. Kinda sorta punk rock in the 1971 CREEM magazine sense on one hand and perhaps heavy metal if you use the same mag's definition from approximately the same time, FOUR FROM THE BOTTOM's got all of that sonic screech that helped save us from the eternal flames of Van Halen singles and enlightened us to a much better way. Personal fave: the inspiring, faithful yet all-out original take on Creation's "How Does It Feel To Feel" which I gotta say flashes back to the pop op haze of that group better'n even the Television Personalities or the Times, and those Englishmen even had a head start on it!

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Another eighties cassette find that popped up on my recent field trip was this wonder, a compilation of the first two Celebate Rifles albums that was released on the tail of the group's massive success down Australia way (though from what the Mad Peck says you only have to sell 100 records in Australia to be a success). After listening to the Rifles' fair post-Radio Birdman approach (Detroit metal with a little local angst thrown in) I was wondering why I haven't been paying more attention to this act's admittedly powerful music for so long. After some thought the answer came to me and boy was it obvious...there's just too much "eighties" in here when it shoulda been seventies all the way! Not that it was exactly easy to transpose seventies intensity into an eighties variation, but sheesh if most of these acts which just shoulda had that hard-nerve drive back then didn't get wooshed over by the giddy 'n cuteness of the times, and no matter how hard some of these acts tried they just didn't succeed in transcending the kultur just like you thought they shoulda!

Still I gotta credit the Celebate Rifles for coming up with about as good a variation on the MC5 form as anyone else could have, without looking like total doofs as more'n a few extant recordings would prove. Of course they were doing it all in Sydney Australsia which was heavily Detroit-oriented at the time (thanks to the influence of a certain Deniz Tek and his local cult). Not only that, but the group had a good repertoire cranked out by vocalist Damien Lovelock (who was more Tyner 'n Ig but that's cool) and guitarist Kent Steedman, both of who might as well have been the Jagger-Richards of the group or at least Pop-Williamson. Can't really complain about it even if the dinge of twentysome-year-old concessions do take away from some of the majestic nature of it all.

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Finally on today's cassette trip's this self-produced strangity, the first ever solo release from former Death of Samantha/Cobra Verde/Mice etc. (and I do mean etc.!) Cleveland-area guitarist Doug Gillard. COVER SONGS WITH BIG HEADS is the name, and the contents are nothing but Gillard playing his favorite old timey sixties/seventies songs all by himself just like Todd Rundgren used to do in sort of a PIN UPS fashion. However, instead of seventies rockers remembering their sixties roots this is an eighties rocker remembering his seventies (with some sixties) roots with the same sorta rose-colored rear view mirror fascination I hope we all like! Quality is feh but the performances are unique enough even if I don't quite appreciate listening to well-established musicians do covers the same way I like to hear 'em do their originals. And the fact that this is mid-eighties Cle does detract if ever so slightly---but for me the entire Cle underground might as well have deep-sixed 1/1/80 given how the local media treated the young and creative groups as mere aberrations while pushing to the hilt the worse "local" sub-bar scuzz as being the most creative and illustrious music to eke outta that once-vital city. At least the fact that Death of Samantha singer John Petkovac worked for THE PLAIN DEALER meant they'd get a little more publicity outta that rag than Jamie Klimek ever did!

But hey, I'll take Gillard performing versions of "Jean Genie" and "Needle in the Camel's Eye" over a good portion of the WMMS-FM (are they still around?) playlist anyday. Y'see,  I like my music with a whole lotta heart 'n vigor w/o the horrid schmalz that Cleveland rock (of a mainstream variety) had infused into it. Y'know, back when rock 'n roll was comin' in for another de-balling that was just about as bad as the one it got back when the likes of Bobby Rydell, then Donovan, then Cat Stevens etc. came onto the scene to show the teenagers of the world a more righteous, squeaky-clean way. COVER SONGS has the same spirit that a good portion of the late-seventies Cle groups oozed from each and every pore, and you know that if this had come out as a vinyl EP '79 way I woulda been flipping over it the same way I would cherish all of those Styrene Money Band singles as if they were precious moon rocks or somethin'!

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That Bill Shute sure is a strange guy. Yeah, we both boycott Chick-Fil-A (but for different reasons---I happen to think their food is gunk!) and we have both been known to "pinch more than an inch", but if you must know (and I know you do) I wonder about this Kendra Steiner Editions label he's been running for quite some time. I wonder, because frankly I thought that if the guy would've ever started up a label it woulda been devoted to something along the lines of an International Artists type of thing with Texas psychedelic groups playing in "the tradition" filling up its roster. If anything, KSE is kinda like a new Obscure label only without the more fruity aspects of a Harold Budd nor the high-flying avant garde ideal of Carla Bley and Robert Wyatt performing 1940's vintage John Cage pieces. Though they do have a much better cover scheme, dontcha think?

The three latest entries into the KSE canon continue on the same fine path of earlier issues, all in those neat modern jazz-kinda sleeves and limited to practically zilch copies. Unmoor is a duo that creates rather kraut-y like spacial sounds that make you feel like you were floating on air, as Greg Prevost once said about Cluster. Matt Krefting is a strangeity as well, also making the same kinda slow, dirge-y yet deep sounds as Unmoor yet at times coming off like Thomas Tallis writing a sequel to "Spem In Alium". Not to mention that weirdoid opening track where he sounds like some six-year-old trying to play his chord organ by numbers while letting the air out of his pop's tires. What really gets me all nutzoid is Massimo Magee's SOPRANINO SOLO, a platter whose title says it all. Not only does he have one of the weirdest inter-ethnic names in jazz since Giuseppe Logan, but this Magee guy plays the sopranino sax'n nothing else other'n electronics and radio on "Confusion", and not only that but he has a weird enough sense of distortion so that the platter's closing track is (get this!) a playback of a VCR-recorded performance! Comparisons to Braxton might be in order (tho actually I was thinkin' Steve Lacy), but once you get down to it Magee is playing his own trip and doing a skewered enough job at it which I get the feeling will turn off more'n a few of your bow-tied "light jazz" friends who couldn't tell a Roscoe Mitchell from a hole in Chick Corea's butt!

What's really weird about this 'un is track #2 entitled "Pickled". Now frankly I thought that maybe Magee had recorded this one totally soused, but in fact he (probably) was straight sober...y'see, what he did was marinate a reed in malt and lemon vinegar for four months and used it on this particular piece which I guess really puckered his puss! Dunno exactly how this affected his playing, but in some ways I was reminded of that LITTLE RASCALS short where perennial bully Leonard Kibrick played "My Wild Irish Rose" on the trumpet while Tommy Bond and some freckle-faced compat sucked away on lemons! Hmmm, maybe this is the newest trend in playing, and considering some of the jazz I've heard recently perhaps a whole cartload of lemons are in order!

Anyway that's all there is, there isn't anymore as the old song said. Will try to crank out another measlie for ya midweek before whipping up a biggie for next weekend's midsummer's night scree!

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*I remember Griffith during his "down" years in the seventies when he was grabbing just about any job he could lay his hands on doing this hoary old routine on that new SMOTHERS BROTHERS show on NBC and bombing almost as badly as the time Stanley Myron Handelman was on the same short-lived revival. Even a less-than-astute teen such as I did at least a little cringing myself, though considering how Griffith was apt to do everything from plugging Ritz Crackers ("things taste good when they sits on a Ritz, but some things taste even better with Ritzes jammed way up them, if you know what I mean") to appearing in about half of the TV movies being made and dressing up like Karl Marx in a Hudson Brothers Marx Brothers spoof, I guess he was there to take the money and run just like all those other comedians. But the thought of him reviving that old and out-of-date skit in the seventies was surely someone's bad idea of television, even at this stage in the game when variety shows were ruling the roost with some of the worst comedy and musical skits imaginable!

And before I forget, do you remember when be was hosting a syndicated broadcast of NATIONAL VELVET around the same time and gave us this downhome talk about women's liberation and how back when this movie was made men thought women couldn't do things as well as they which is why Liz Taylor hadda do what she did??? Considering Griffith's three marriages I'd think he'd be the last guy who'd ever give a speech regarding the libber movement of the day, but I guess if you dangled enough moolah in front of his nose...

Ya wanna know why I'm crazy? Ya wanna know why I'm sad? I'll tell ya, it's because none other than FRANK CADY himself has died. And nobody really seems to care like they did when Farrah Fawcett or Michael Jackson hit the carbon cycle. Not even Lindsay Hutton, who always seems to keep us up to date regarding the movers and shakers in our World Community who have sadly left us. Yeah, the ol' pooperoo, age 96, has left This Mortal Slinky and has passed on to much bigger 'n better things, and although it wasn't like we were next door neighbors 'r anything I miss the guy already! Not only did Cady play the role of General Store owner Sam Drucker on two concurrent series (the much-loved GREEN ACRES and its cornball "sister" series PETTICOAT JUNCTION, not forgetting the rare BEVERLY HILLBILLIES pop up when the storyline got rewritten regarding the Clampetts' origins as being from Hooterville 'stead of Bugtussle) but he was oft-sceen on various other series throughout them golden days. Avid OZZIE AND HARRIET fans'll remember him as Doc Williams for a spell, and of course he even popped up on that ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW "pilot" that ran on THE DANNY THOMAS SHOW as the proto-Otis who happened to be goin' by the name of Hoople (oddly enough, he later appeared as a Mount Pilot drunkard who befriended the corpulent souse in a '64 episode!)  And howzbout his boffo appearance as the father of the boy who got killed over a spelling bee ribbon in THE BAD SEED and hadda put up with his soused wife not to mention a whole slew of other tee-vee and moom pitcher appearances throughout them long gone suburban slob times when all we hadda worry about was how to get through six hours of school before all the fun started!!!

I'm sure a lotta you people out there already thought that Cady was dead, especially since he looked so old back inna fifties and sixties when we thought he was already in his seventies! Only goes to show you that when you are young, you should try to look older than you are so that when you really do get old people will think you look incredibly good for your age. Then again, if you wanna look like a senior citizen for most of your life that's your bizniz!

But hey, those Frank Cady memories just keep rollin' along. Can't forget all of those great GREEN ACRES moments and one-liners that he zinged throughout the show. Most vivid moments that enter my mind include the "Big Ben, Eiffel Tower, Bunker Hill" running gag, the board games Drucker was selling including MONOTONY, and of course the time he bought a cheap toupee which Mr. Kimball dropped in the pickle barrel thus turning the thing green! After Drucker put it on I gotta admit he reminded me of Elton John after his hair weave, and that's with the new green color added to it as well!

So long Frank...never did get to watch THESE ARE THE DAYS which you lent your voice to, but just like the recent passing of Duane Breyers had me looking up and digging old Hilda calendar art I get the feeling that I'll be buying the entire series on DVD soon just to hear your voice! Funny how death can do that to a feller...kinda makes me guilty for not paying more attention while you were alive but hey, I get that way sometimes.

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Not much new picking-wise this week. In fact there's hardly anything new about the following items which I've owned and enjoyed for nigh on a decade or so. Well, maybe now's the time to do a li'l re-evaluatin' and, in response to those of you who have caught on to my usual long-windedness and have commented so, I've tried to keep the resultant spew short and perhaps even sweet. Think I'll leave the mega essays for the next go 'round...y'see, I actually got up the courage (and some $$$) for an order to Forced Exposure just so's I can inject a li'l fresh lifeblood into my usually mundane existence but until that hefty package arrives it's gonna be oldies but moldies from here on in, savvy?

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Tiny Tim-SONGS OF AN IMPOTENT TROUBADOUR CD (World Serpent, England)

Dunno how I got on my latest Tiny Tim jag but I found this particular platter a pretty relaxing way to wind the day down, old fogie style. Listening to Mr. Tim rattle off the tales about femme pulchritude while strumming his original compositions is akin to back in the old days when my father'd tune in Arthur Godfrey and listen to that ol' pooperoo blab about everything from dearly-departed entertainment standbys to Colgate toothpaste. Tim's voice was pretty shot by the time this 1994 recording was made, but the original songs as well as his personal anecdotes about meeting Liz Taylor in 1947 to flipping over Tuesday Weld via DOBIE GILLIS (I never for the life of me would have thought that Tiny Tim watched television!) really make this a nice way to relive a long-forgotten part of your entertainment heritage. Only real beef is the final cut where the Nurse With Wound/Current 93 schlubs take Tim's opinions regarding the Antichrist and add their own electronic whirl to it which seems way more ridicule than homage if you ask me (and why not???)!

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John's Children-THE LEGENDARY ORGASM ALBUM CD (Cherry Red)


It should be obvious to you as to why I don't spin this 'un as much as I do those John's Children platters that feature the talents of Marc Bolan. Mainly because there ain't any Marc on this 'un at all, but that don't mean THE LEGENDARY ORGASM ALBUM ain't total douse. Of course the backwards take of "Strange Affair" is totally needless (is there a reason why Cherry Red allowed this inna first place other'n perhaps some sorta legal screw to a publisher?) but the rest of this pre-Bolan outing, from the single sides to the "live" portion, is about as hot an artyfact of the First Great Punk Rock Era as any other garage band item you might be able to dig up. Enough lewd and lasciviousness on this one to give the bluest haired DAR member in your life more'n a few apoplectic pops and gurgles...try one out on her just for size!

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Paul Revere and the Raiders-LIKE LONG HAIR CD (Flash)

An obv. "grey area" release from the early days of Cee-Dees featuring what I believe is most of the Raiders' Gardenia LP as well as some single side rarities. If the mid/late-sixties version of the group continues to bring back living-room hipster values in your soul this will zone you back even further. From the choice '59/'61-era instrumental sounds (including two Wailers covers!) to the alternate take of "Sharon" to the boffo front cover snap showing the early pre-Drake/Fang/Smitty group in their matching blazers, LIKE LONG HAIR's bound to conjure up all of those long-repressed youthful memories just beggin' to burst outta your dark reaches. If you still hold the boffo '58-'66 season of pre- and teenage gulcher near and dear to your heart this'll play the soundtrack to your life as much as old home movies and b&w reruns!

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Ruins-REFUSAL FOSSIL CD (Skin Graft) 

Yeah, I reviewed this in the (probably) final issue of my own crudzine way back when, but that was sooooo long ago and besides I must admit I haven't played the dang thing since! So in many ways this was a lot like buying an entirely new item which not only sounds fresh to me, but keeps a whole lotta dough in my wallet as well!!! And as far as this "progressive" "heavy metal" group (who consider Gentle Giant as an influence!) goes, all I gotta say after listening to this is that the Japanese are a whole lot harder to figure out than I originally thought!

Being a bass guitar/drums duo you'd think that Runs couldn't get much outta their gear, but surprisingly enough these guys have the power and energy of a Motorhead with the stripped-down aesthetics of just about any art punk radical rock group of the eighties. That is, without the angst and pain brought upon by too much upper-middle class guilt. Mostly total noise hard-grate jackhammer music that really will not cozy up to most of the aficionados of either the metal or the prog camps, even when this set closes with some wild synthesizer solo that sounds like something Keith Emerson would cook up with a couple batteries hitched up to his babymaking machines.

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The Fleshtones-SOLID GOLD SOUND CD (Blood Red Vinyl & Tapes)

Should I feel guilty for pretty much ignoring this long-running true blue underground Amerigan rock 'n roll group, or at least for shoving 'em to the back of the burner while giving many lesser lights the big-time rah-rah instead? Gotta say that I don't particularly feel bad about it, perhaps because of the fact that whatzizname from the group co-hosted that show on MTV back inna effing eighties. Something like that's bound to get more'n my dander up I'll tell you!

But I do feel creepy for not devoting more of my time, heart, head, hands and feet to this perennial mid-Amerigan teenage suburban ranch house UHF-TV rockin' 'n rollin' group, especially since they seemed like thee ultimo rock 'n roll concept even back when I first read about 'em in the pages of THE NEW YORK ROCKER oh so long ago. This turn of the millennium platter's typical of the Fleshtone style and substance that I've been familiar with for quite some time...six-oh rock 'n roll w/a smattering of early-mid-seventies New York influx that does seem about as much akin to the whole gutter vision of the day as it would to the suburbanism that makes this group so appealing. 'n yeah, I could go on and do a track-by-track rundown padding this post a good ten or so paragraphs, but even that would be too hard a task even though I did spin this 'un through twice. Let's just say that, on a hot sunny Sunday afternoon SOLID GOLD SOUND sure made a fine soundtrack for thumbing through a box of Silver Age DC's that happened to get uncovered, and as far as tributes go I couldn't think of anything better!

MOOM PITCHER REVIEW! A DATE WITH DEATH STARRING GERALD MOHR AND LIZ RENAY (1959)


Tried spinnin' the Rin-Tin-Tin serial that Mr. Shute sent me, but all that was coming up on the screen were little cubes of color and sputtering on/off sound/visuals. Guess I'll have to pass on that 'un, but before I stamp my feet in self-righteous indignation I might as well watch this late-in-the-game film noir that has all of the things goin' for it that I like in mooms...late-fifties attitude, tough-guy pose, monochrome starkness, sleepwalking acting and of course a nice, intense streak that doesn't let up even when the acting and plot seems to take those little zig zags away from the climactic ending we're all hoping for!

Gerald Mohr plays this down-on-his-luck tramp trying to make it to El Lay despite getting kicked off trains by uppity goons with sledgehammers. After getting tossed from a moving freight car inna middle of nowhere, Mohr finds an automobile with a dead man in it and, doing just what any self-respecting bum would do, he switches clothes and steals his identity! Naturally this all suits him fine, at least until he's stopped on the outskirts of town by some motorcycle cops and is escorted smack dab into city hall. Turns out that the murdered fellow was some bigshot dragged in from New York City to act as the new Chief of Police as well as to rid the town of an unsavory element that's being spearheaded by Robert Clarke, an actor who often played these kinds of cringe-y white collar lowdown types on everything from I LED THREE LIVES to DRAGNET!

Along the way Mohr bumps into famed felon Liz Renay who had something to do with the murder (her monogrammed sweater being found at the scene) as well as a policeman who's been bucking for the Chief job which would sure help things out considering he's Clarke's favorite man in blue. And thankfully the tension and the plot changes hit you nice and fast, with more monkeywrenches being thrown into the machinery leading to even more highly charged scenes and an ending which, while it coulda been a whole lot stronger, at least suits its purpose. (But then again if I were writing screenplays I'd be including such manic acts of depravity as the good guy and badski fighting it out to the end with ears being ripped off, eyeballs bouncing outta their sockets and blood spilling all over the place like fruit punch at a three-year-old's birthday party. Maybe even have a scene where the good 'un subdues the evildoer and subjects him to some mighty miserable humiliation, the kind he deserves complete with a whole lotta moaning, screaming, and cries for mama permeating the soundtrack. Sorta like DEADBEAT AT DAWN on even more steroids!)

True the acting on the part of some of the minor characters can be rather, shall we say, rote, but then again most people I talk to seen to have the emotional range of a sweatsock so you could say that the thespianship to be found in this film was "real" enough. Well, at least it's a whole lot more real (despite some plot twists which never woulda happened---of course you gotta suspend your reality checker watching a whole lotta these films!) than most of the stuff I used to see on tee-vee until even that became an uncomfortable thing to do. A DATE WITH DEATH is yet another film that satisfies to the utmost, and only goes to remind me as to how cool and tough life used to be (as reflected via films such as this, tee-vee and even the music) until the sensitive male types and superbitches who call themselves "women" (yech!) decided to make everybody as miserable as they've been since day uno. And unfortunately, they've all won hands down!

Something must be going wrong (or right)...I don't have anything special to piss and moan about this week! Therefore, on with the reviews!

Rotomagus-THE SKY TURNS RED; COMPLETE ANTHOLOGY CD (Lion Productions)

At long last comes this collection of single sides and demos from legendary Gallic heavy metal group Rotomagus, an act who singlehandedly disproved the common fallacy that French rock makes for lame jamz. Many people (myself included) have frothily written these guys up o'er the past few years, and you can betcha bottom dullard that this release has been as highly anticipated  'round these parts as the Rocket From The Tombs download from a few months back which only goes to show you that there may be hope for us high energy rockers in the upcoming months, if not years!

This comp shows that Rotomagus were, if anything,  a bunch the more or less flung themselves straight into the hard rock dungheap after performing  a more commercial bent pop music that lives up to the prejudices many have towards French rock. But even at their most oo-la-la Rotomagus had more going for 'em than the competition...take the flip of their Polydor debut "Nevada" which is good enough "Beatle Rock" for everyone from Ritchie Unterberger to Tim Ellison to scrutinize and might have earned at least a paragraph in an issue of JAMZ if it had only gotten around back then. The CBS single roared on like a continental Deep Purple (???) shoulda while "Fighting Cock" continues to amaze with its definite punkian overtones that just mighta given the Imperial Dogs a run for the francs. Still, it ain't hard to discern that Rotomagus were drawing their energies from the more commercial Anglo and Amerigan acts...fortunately they were savant enough to take their cues from everyone from the Mamas and the Papas to Led Zep while still coming out smelling like "punk gryphons" just like the Sweet did, and that ain't anything easy to do! It may seem strange to you, but I find this approach a whole lot better (and fresher) than the various upstarts of the late-seventies/eighties who gobbled the entire Velvets/Detroit/New York saga and proceeded to churn out some of the lamest,  most anti-rock 'n roll music to have made it out of the decades to come.

The nine demos recorded for the group's final label Butterfly are flat out engrossing even if they don't quite pack the nuclear punch of their swan song (eh, but I guess they were just "run throughs") and what I guess was an unreleased single (one side complete with Chipmunk vocals!) deserved to remain in the can all these years. But I ain't arguing with having 'em all on one nice shiny platter even it woulda been grand if the post-Rotomagus Phoenix album with those Led Zep covers was slapped on here as well. Why bitch when the music is some of the best representation of hard-edged rock recorded during a time when most people were jumping on the peace train and listening to Melanie albums. When prodded hard enough Rotomagus were probably one of the better straight-ahead high energy rock groups that came outta the continent at the time, and although I couldn't rank 'em up there with the Stooges or Groovies I might be able to muster up a good argument 'bout their standing in the rock pantheon of fun trash alongside Black Pearl or the Up (they were certainly miles ahead of Stepson), and that ain't small potatoes either!

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Various Artists-MICHIGAN MELTDOWN LP (Coney Dog Records)

No doubt about it, the early/mid-seventies just weren't as conduit to rockist concerns as millions of hardcore rockers wished they were, especially when compared to the over-the-top mid-sixties when the music had made such a big inroad into the collective psyche that even stodgy college professors and aging beatniks were paying attention to it. Well, at least there were more than enough hard-edged, high energy groups around back then to keep all of you true rockers afloat, right? Right, but only a few of 'em pop up on this sampler of rare Michigan rock sides that I sure hope woulda kicked jams righteously but hits and misses all over the place.

Unfortunately I gotta admit that most of the acts on MICHIGAN MELTDOWN echo the socially aware Grand Funk aspects of the era 'stead of the anarchistic radicalization of the MC5. Thankfully that don't mean they're all a bunch of FM rock losers; in fact most of this album is warp drive even if some groups tend to waft over into the hippoid relevance and boogie blahs that were so common at the time. So amidst the Sabbath ripoffs and pseudo-voodoo numbers that appear you get some goodies like a mellotron-laden garage thumper by Apparition (featuring Scott Campbell, later of local punk faves/Max's Kansas City semi-regulars the Sillies) not forgetting two sides of the Flying Wedge single which was way closer to the Detroit rock taproot than the horn laden Tribal Sinfonia even if the drummer sounds like he's banging on a whole passel of bongos 'stead of some fifty-gallon oilcans.

For me, the album highlight is Metropolis with their "Age of Evolution," a track which only goes to show you that if you thought the MC5 could take basic rock 'n roll and reduce it to no-chord avant garde music, these emulators could do 'em one better! This track is to "Starship" what the Greek Fountains' cut on BEYOND THE CALICO WALL is to the medley on GOD BLESS THE RED KRAYOLA AND ALL WHO SAIL WITH IT and that's no lie! Coulda used a whole album of tracks with the same energetic quality, but with the vast amt. of late-sixties Detroit weirdities floating around perhap I can make my own compilation on a personal shiny disque and leave the dross on this platter, where it belongs!

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OMNIVORE LP (Feeding Tube Records)

Omnivore's actually Glenna Van Nostrand, a Mass. performance artist who I guess likes to fiddle around with tape loops and telephones to interesting effect. Unlike a good portion of her fellow artistes Glenna can sure makes some downright entertaining if not enchanting sounds on this platter which features her overdubbed voice doing some of the most out-there femme acapella vocalese I've heard since "Music" on the second Red Krayola album (which, as you can tell, is a disque that has been laying heavily on my mind). Accompanied by nothing more than her telephones being used for keyboards and electronic percussion, Omnivore creates a fine choral music that reminds me of Phillip Glass's NORTH STAR album, or at least that vocal track that had Joan LaBarbara and Dick Landry amongst others doing some jazzy scat which coulda been used to a bank commercial. If you like being mesmerized by repeato-riffage (which has always made up the best rock 'n roll, as if monotony can't be a manifestation of genius) I'm sure you'll like this. If wary, try some youtube vids first.

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Blanche Blanche Blanche-OUR PLACE LP (Feeding Tube)

Housed in a sleeve highly  reminiscent of  those early-seventies neo-nostalgia covers a la Harvey Mandel's BABY BATTER, the Blanche Blanche Blanche duo pop out snat little odes that, while not quite as catchy as Omnivore's rhythmic musings, still please the same way some of those early-eighties art projects did before they became way too self-conscious for my tastes. Short and sweet, these femme vocals backed by cheap organ and guitar have a more Ameriganized feeling than the Rough Trade booty I believe they were emulating, and dagnabbit if a good portion of this don't come off like some of the better AM radio commercial produce of the past, the kind that Erik Lindgren used to make his moolah with in the morn while working on Birdsongs of the Mesozoic in the evening. Smart, intelligent music that certainly comes off a whole lot better'n similar-minded gunk that filled up miles of cassette tape in the eighties (and is bound to be lionized by someone who doesn't know better in a few short years from now!).

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The Phantom Keys-THE REAL SOUND OF THE PHANTOM KEYS CD-E (Screaming Apple)

Heading towards the bottom of the McGarry package, this time its a Spanish buncha guys doin' the Mike Stax r 'n b approach who are gettin' the well-deserved BLOG TO COMM spotlight.    Oddly enough this brings back a whole lotta memories, not of the original mid-sixties beat boom mind you but of the early-mid eighties "garage revival" phenomenon which seemed to have had so much promise, energy and a lotta hard work put into its music and fanzines yet got ignored like just about everything else that was good about that rotten decade. Like most of these latterday groups aping the early-sixties English blooze scene there's a whole lotta Pretty Things refs to be heard and definitely loads more approach and attack'n what has been passing for the "blues" scene lo these many years (mainly aging white ethnic guys trying to find the same thing in Robert Cray that they found in Howlin' Wolf). However, for some strange reason I get the feeling that if I were to spin this one for some typically aging blues aficionado I'd get a bullet neatly placed through my skull...well, did you ever think you could reason with 250 pounds of craggy bent toothed b.o.-laden unemployed steelworker types who could drink enough Canadian Club to drink Canada dry???

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Cheap Time-WALLPAPER MUSIC CD-R burn (In The Red)

Another one from the McGarry pile, this time of a current act (originating from Tennessee) who do a pretty good job recreating various seventies punk concerns for a world that couldn't give a fig anymore. Frankly, I usually couldn't give a fig about any of these new acts anymore myself, but at least Cheap Time are grabbing enough in the way they mush up various aspects of hard pop, Amerigan punk and even some British post-Barrett psych and present it to you and new and innovative. And it is a refreshing change o' pace even if the whole thing reminds me of one of those boffo eighties punk rock acts that sorta got forgotten amidst the gnu wave, lite metal and hippiecore that was so prevalent then. I guess WALLPAPER MUSIC is old stuff done in a new way, or maybe a new rendition of old p-rock concerns whipped up with some new flash in order to make it seem less old-sounding or... Aw shucks, just go 'n download a copy yerself!

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The Pagans-BURIED ALIVE LP (Treehouse)

The latest in a long line of albums to rise to the top of the pile like scum onna pond, this late-eighties wonder "might" have been made obsolete by the vast array of Crypt Cee-Dees that came out in its wake but I ain't cryin'. All of the single sides and more (comps etc.) are here making this a handy-dandy collection for you late-seventies punkophiles who fondly remember browsing through the various Dromes searching out booty such as this while pondering whether to spend your last $2.99 on Teacher's Pet or some Buzzcocks single. And man it's boss hard Amerigan punk of a '77-'79 variety that hasn't and will never let us down unlike a load of the gunk that came in its wake, a hard and driving sound that should prove that, as far as rock 'n roll concerns go, Brian and Mike were the real Hudson Brothers 'stead of that bunch we used to see on television alla time back inna seventies! Guaranteed to make any trueblue BLOG TO COMM fan dribble in pure addled erotic joy as the music slams you up against the wall and slithers through your sphinctor, and its better'n a good portion of the English stuff that was gettin' the high five at the time not to mention a nice hunk of what was passing for "precocious" and "visionary" back inna days when even a brief mention of the Pretenders in some weekly hippie read was considered a step forward! Yeah I know I'm overdoin' it, but this platter was the one thing that got my batteries on "recharge" this afternoon, and I ain't gonna be comin' down in quite a long time!

Bonus liner notes from Tesco Vee, Johnny Dromette and Byron Coley 'mongst others are bound to bring back the pulse and stamina that goes with the sound and vision of these forgotten boys. And hey, if anybody out there has a tape of the pre-Pagans Mad Staggers passing out while opening for Milk at the Willoughby Ohio YMCA please forward it to me asap!

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THE COMPLETE DICK TRACY VOLUME 13 has finally made it out and, as you can already guess, has captivated me for the past few nights to the point where I've been having dreams of being stuffed into hospital sterilizing units and being steamed like a hunk of fish*. If you think thirteen's a bad luck number this volume's the one for you, not only when Tracy and Tess' new million-dollar home (how he could afford it on a cop's salary I'll never know!) burns to a crisp but when noted stinkpen BO Plenty gets shot in the chest and teeters between life and death for weeks on end! And, in a plot twist perhaps foreshadowing the Moon Maid episodes of a good fourteen years after, Tess gives birth to a strange mutant with an enlarged head and marmoset eyeballs that even gives a stoic iron-cast stomached person like myself the creeps!

Oddly enough, when you consider that by the time these early-fifties strips appeared the famed forties era of TRACY with the best-known villains and infamous twists and turns were pretty much behind us, TRACY seemed to be improving not only with better artwork but gnarlier plots and enough grotesque happenstance that might've even gotten the most notorious child molester a li'l sick inna stomach. The scene where Tracy's hair's set ablaze while searching for Junior in the burning inferno is memorable (all that hair tonic he uses must've ignited), as is the part where Crewy Lou's mute accomplice Sphinx gets crushed to death in an elevator shaft! And really, who could forget the time some badski kills himself by jumping out the window while trying to take Junior with him (you never see kids get offed, so that was quite startling!).  However, most striking for me was the brief passage where Tracy prays at the bedside of a dying Plenty asking God for mercy on the ol' pooperoo, a scene milked to cornball peak perfection but somehow perfect amidst all of the violence and brutality that was part and parcel to the strip!

Don't know why this volume hadda end right in the middle of the Crewy Lou saga (they coulda made it a bigger 'un) because these cliffhangers always make me feel sooooo cringe-y and I'm gonna hafta spend the next # of months just wondering what's in store until the fourteenth volume eventually makes it out! (And I thought it was bad as a kid watching BATMAN having to wait a day before discovering if the Dynamic Duo were gonna survive the Joker's nefarious death trap!) Of course I could sneak down into the basement and refresh myself as to what did happen via a slew of long-forgotten DICK TRACY MONTHLIES/WEEKLIES I lapped up well over twenty years ago, but I'd be cheating if I did a nefarious thing such as that!

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BEFORE I GO, a quickie mention regarding the recent suicide of none other than former Fleetwood Mac member and solo star in his own right Bob Welch. Funny, just last night I had yet another wacky dream* where I was watching some ancient rock clips on television and what was supposed to have been the early Mac (and I mean very early, like perhaps 1964 because the band members had short hair and wore suits and ties giving them a more early-sixties BMOC look) were performing, complete with a bassist who did not quite resemble John McVie playing what looked like a huge guitarron-sized bass guitar, hollow bodied yet with distinctive Rickenbacker-styled cutouts (a close-up revealed a bridge that looked closer to an actual string bass, or at least a cello). Not only that but this version of the Mac were doing choreographed moves that were so akin to many of the acts of the day! Anyway, I only bring up Welch's demise because frankly, all I wanna know is am I the only guy who noticed that the riffs from "Ebony Eyes" and the opening of Pere Ubu's "Street Waves" are identical??? I caught the similarities way back when but nobody else ever mentions this, perhaps out of terminal hipstertude if anything.
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*Speaking of dreams, last night, amidst a long wowzer of one that had something vaguely to do with a LEAVE IT TO BEAVER episode where Wally falls for some weird record-a-record scam that included filming a "video" with members of the Association and some fair maidens in a strange ROMEO AND JULIET burlesque, I had envisioned that Eddie Haskell was a member of the Beach Boys who got to sing lead on a number that sounded strangely like "Do It Again"! Not surprisingly, I find that such a song (as rendered in the dream) really fit in with the (perceived) vocal talents of Ken Osmond making me wonder why the longtime teenage star wasn't offered a recording contract like they did with Johnny Crawford and Shelly Fabres! Now you know why I get more of a kick outta things happening in my dreams than I do with real life, and with these kinda whacked out dreams wouldn't you too?

BOOK REVIEW! THE COMPLETE MILT GROSS COMIC BOOKS AND LIFE STORY, SLAPPED TOGETHER BY CRAIG YOE WITH A FOLD-INTRODUCTION BY AL JAFFEE (IDW, 2009)


Y'know, if I never bought that POPEYE comic book a few weeks back I wouldn't've even known that a collection of comic book material by the noted screwball cartoonist Milt Gross had even hit the racks! Can you imagine that there's been a book out for a coupla years already containing nothing but Gross' various contributions to the under-the-radar American Comics Group back inna forties/fifties and I, a person who could really use the finely honed wit 'n wisdom of this oft-ignored artist dished out with regularity, wasn't even aware of its mere existence! Well better late'n never I say, but on the other hand the entrance of this book into my life two years afterwards is kinda like taking two years outta my life and throwing it down the toidy. Y'know, like these people who've been in comas for years or on certain medicines that messed up their comprehension of time and it's still like twenny years ago for 'em...kinda makes me wanna live an additional two earthspins than I'll be allotted if only to make up for this drastic loss of time, if not life!

We all know just how important Milt Gross was to the growth and development of the wackier side o' comic strip creativity, but few (inc. myself for quite some time) didn't know that Gross had more or less gone over to the comic book side of the biz after flooding the twenties and thirties with some of the boffo-est creations to hit the funnies. Along with many other talents it was Gross who exemplified the Golden Age of Newspaper Comics, and although he never received the publicity or notoriety that such compats as Ernie Bushmiller (a good pal) did his influence continues to linger on if only in dribbles and drops. Maybe it ain't as strong as it could've been given just how toned down comic strips became afterwards, but scratch an underground cartoonist of the sixties or some fanzine nutzoid and you just might get a whiff of Gross here and there.

Gotta admit up front that most of these comic book sagas just don't measure up to what Gross was doin' on the funny page. Maybe the guy was workin' in an idiom that wasn't conduit to his talents, or maybe his later work just didn't have the zing of his classic NIZE BABY 'n DAVE'S DELICATESSEN Sunday pages which continue to make me roll on the floor in ecstatic frenzy a good eighty years after the fact. Still Gross at his worst outdoes that guy from THE BOONDOCKS' best, with such old favorites like Count Screwloose 'n "That's My Pop" revisited amongst such newies as "Pete the Pooch," "Moronica" and personal fave "The Kitty-Katty Korner" featuring a classroom that was probably about as blitzoid as the one I was thrust into.

'n even some of the old standbys do themselves well, such as the Count Screwloose 'un 'bout the guy who could eat anything but kumquats and  the "That's My Pop" where "Doc" Pearson devises an "everything on the house" gimmick for a medical clinic's opening day! And hey, considerin' that this 'un'll probably cost you less than a year's sub to MAD at least you'll be guaranteed a whole lot more guffaws'n that once-venerable mag has delivered on since the early-seventies at least! (And speaking of MAD, longtime contributor Al Jaffee contributes a "fold-introduction" that really says all there is to say, to which I can respond in the loudest and clearest tones "BANANA OIL!")

I know, you're all tired of readin' 'bout my financial straits and just how I don't have the right amount of moolah to buy out the record store like I wish I coulda back when I was fifteen 'n all that! I'm even getting tired of writin' 'bout it myself, but facts iz facts and frankly given just how iffy the economy is it ain't like I'm gonna be wallowin' in new booty the way I sure wish I could. Of course I can console myself knowing that there frankly just ain't that much good, hard, high-energy and all-out rockin' material being flung at us these days like there was back when rock 'n roll seemed to be that one unifying drive that separated the geeky kids who wanted to be part of the "inner circle" (like me natch!) and the real "inner circle" that wouldn't have anything to do with us no matter how hard we tried flashing our rock 'n roll credentials all over the place! It don't do any good, but I can still console myself instead of beat my head against the wall like I'm wont to do!

But as luck would have it I've just received a number of new items that might make this blog look a whole lot more tastier'n me just ramblin' on about old finds at flea markets and what I had for supper the day I first got to hear UNCLE MEAT before giving my dog Sam his daily share of noogies. The fine folk at Feeding Tube records have shipped off some of their fine wares (which will take some time for me to make it through 'em all...see next week) plus a few stragglers and ebay wins were lucky enough to find themselves in today's soiree, so let's just admit that this post ain't as much of a total loss as some of you less scrupulous people would like it to be. But sheesh, do I miss the days (which even include the oft-loathed seventies!) when weekly trips to the record shop were akin to some 1900's kid with dime in hand torn between buying the latest issue of some adventurous looking pulp novel and a bag of cheapo candy. Only it was me handlin' the hard-begged $3.50 trying to figure out just how I could swing the latest CREEM and of course the cutout gem of my choice with maybe just enough left over for a jaw breaker. The most comforting thing about those days is that, had all else failed, I could always go home and drown my sorrows in a GREEN ACRES rerun.

So these are just a few of this week's highlights mate, just a few, but still I think I got my share of pounce and wallop outta each and every feedback screech and sour blurt that emanated from my boom box speakers situated next to my comfy chair. Hope you can squeeze just a tad outta it because, frankly at this point in time I'm just coasting!

Les Rallizes Denudes-MARS STUDIO 1980 4-CD set (Phoenix)

Financial constraints (as usual) prohibited me from passing out loot for the original Univive edition of this box set a few years back. Thankfully the fine somethingorothers at Phoenix have made this Les Rallizes Denudes rarity available for myself and the rest of you Johnny-Cum-Latelies out there who wouldn't touch a recording unless you heard about it from one of those enlightened bloggers who I tend to avoid like bars with petunia wallpaper. An exemplary selection of Denudes studio rarities, sometimes fragmented, that presents the group in a setting where you can finally hear something beyond the amp whiz and atonal screeches (not that it ever mattered). MARS STUDIO also features the usage of additional instruments not usually heard in Denudes circles such as hammond organ and what I would assume was a tinkly celeste or a warped music box! New to my ears tracks like the four takes of "White Waking" (which comes off like a mutated "Enter the Mirror") appear, plus the mind-searing 24-minute  Davie Allen-esque instrumental "Guitar Jam" (which some unworthies had previous passed off as the live '68 "Smokin' Cigarette Blues" number which can be heard on 67/69 STUDIO ET LIVE) starts off disque three to most stellar effect. Its one to compliment the rest of your Japanese post-psych platters to the utmost, but when are we gonna get to hear some fresh romps anyway? If there was any time to open the vaults wide open, it would be in the here and now 'stead of thirty years from now when I don't think any of us will have ears left!!!

!!!

Gong-CONTINENTAL CIRCUS CD (Flawed Gem, Sweden)

I guess this is gonna be another one of those albums I'm gonna hafta cozy up to. Not that the idea of noted French psychedelic progsters Gong playing whacked-out "Blues Theme" riffs with Syd Barrett mindsets wasn't a snat one to begin with, but their soundtrack to a dirt bike documentary doesn't quite grab me by mine the way it probably doesn't quite grab you by yours. Even the bonus tracks including a rare single side and some French television appearances don't excite me like they would have in the late-seventies when my tastes were certainly careening from one end of the import bin to the other end of the cutout one.

Of course the big question is...is it the music that's getting old, or is it me????  That certainly is one to ponder, though from what I can tell it looks as if the two of us are having some manic race to see which of us can hit oblivion first! I'll have to see what kinda odds Brad Kohler'll give on this 'un!

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Art Taylor-TAYLOR'S TENORS CD-R burn (New Jazz)


Sheesh, what did I do to deserve yet another package from Paul McGarry anyway??? Anyway there's a good selection in this one (even though I probably wouldn't have boughten any of 'em had I the dinero to do so!) beginning with this '59 side from a guy who turned up doing some mighty rhythm log playing on Archie Shepp's YASMINA album a good decade or so later. Nothing explosive here, just some good bop that almost approaches hard but still's worthy enough if you're the kinda guy who thinks that the early Ornette sides are close but still to tonal for your obviously over-spiced listening parameters! If you're feeling adventurous, go for it!

???

TRIZO 50 CD-R burn (World in Sound)

Another McGarry find, this time of an obscure early/mid-seventies Missouri group who actually released their own album long before the whole DIY "ethos" encouraged kids who had little if anything to say to put their ineffectual mewlings to plastic! Actually this oddly-monikered group's pretty good...again nothing I'd want to spend my ever-dwindling monetary supply on but hotcha enough mid-Amerigan "power pop" that woulda done swell if it had only made it to the attention of Greg Shaw back when Trizo 50 were romping this planet of ours. Sometimes Beatle-esque and at other times typical midwestern Shoes/Scruffs-styled tough guy pounce, I can only wonder why these guys never made it to the pages of BOMP! back when they really coulda used the publicity!

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Sonic Liberation Front-MEETS SUNNY MURRAY CD-R (High Two)

I've written up this avant collective before in these "pages," but little did I know that these "mainstays" from the CBGB Lounge "Freestyle" series were not only still together but have recorded a platter with none other than free jazz pioneer Sunny Murray! Those of you who still mourn the passing of the sixties/seventies bare-wire intensity of the stalwarts will most definitely want to hear this 'un, which surprisingly enough recalls everything that the late-sixties had to offer which we all thought went down the crapper somtime around the end of the loft jazz scene. The performance and playing's pretty angular and has a hefty BYG as opposed to ESP vibe, and whoever's playing sax comes about as close to Roscoe Mitchell in guttural performance and intensity as anybody I've heard in quite some time. The African percussion vibe also brings back fond memories of early Art Ensemble endeavors, and of course having a hand like Murray on board only exemplifies things ifyaknowaddamean...  Paul, I think you did a good deed by shipping this 'un my way!

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Hawkwind-ONWARD CD-R burn (Eastworld)

If it wasn't for this 'un I never woulda even know'd that Hawkwind were still around. But they are, and hey I gotta admit that they sound about as good as they did during the QUARK STRANGENESS AND CHARM days. Electronic space rock with some new wave-y punk moves with the right amount of oscillation to differentiate it from the reams of cum latelies who've been doin' the Hawkwind trip for the last umpteen years. Even features a re-do of "Aerospace Age Inferno" from CAPTAIN LOCKHEED AND THE STARFIGHTERS, a real "classic rock" platter if I ever heard one!

MOOM PITCHER DOUBLE FEATURE REVIEW! YOUNG DYNAMITE AND THE DEVIL DIAMOND STARRING FRANKIE DARRO AND KANE RICHMOND!

Back in the nineties when Bill Shute and I were sending each other humongous boxes of everything from videotapes to books on loan in order to expand our horizons without the aid of hallucinogens and get some freebee entertainment, Bill was more'n apt to slip into the crate a few low budget Frankie Darro films for my viewing pleasure. I gotta admit that I was not familiar with the perennially youthful Darro until I caught him acting with Gene Autrey in THE PHANTOM EMPIRE serial on MATINEE AT THE BIJOU back in '80, but my father was more'n apt to tell me just what a popular guy he was in thirties features and serials both of the zilch grade and the high quality variety. And yes, father and I would frequently watch the various poverty row features that Darro would act in, he in fact telling me about how he wasn't one of those kids who could afford to see every chapter of the BURN 'EM UP BARNES serial so the kids who did see it would have to act it out for him! However, recently my father admitted to me that he really didn't care for Darro because the once-famous star used to do a lotta crying and whining in his films, and if there's anything my father hates is when a man whimpers! He never liked Michael Landon for exactly the same reason, and to this day I wonder why dad never kicked me outta the house flat on my keester like you'd'a though he would given that I've spent a hefty portion of my life doing the whine and moan game myself!

As you'd surmise this DVD-R double billing of Frankie Darro/Kane Richmond really does send me back to the days, not of the thirties when these films were being released, but the nineties when Bill would shoot 'em my way and I'd watch 'em during the ten-to-eleven PM hours while everyone else was feeling superior to me watching NORTHERN EXPOSURE and NYPD BLUE. And hey, you can bet that I was getting more bang for my buck watching stuff like this than the crapezoid programming that's been thrusted at us for nigh on three or so decades awlready! YOUNG DYNAMITE features Darro as the young brother of a state trooper (played by former BOYFRIENDS co-star David Sharpe) whose sister is engaged to a corporal in the troopers played by Richmond. When a load of gold is stolen by thugs working for a "respectable" smelter its the state troopers to the rescue, along with Darro who naturally has to get in on the game being such a youth-identifiable character 'n all. YOUNG DYNAMITE also features this weird old wheelchair-ridden guy, an Eyetalian needle salesman who likes to mooch free meals off of the family, and a strange ending that you'll probably wanna re-play a few times just so's you get everything straight in your brain!

The print of THE DEVIL DIAMOND that follows is of better quality even though it was also shot, for poverty rower Ambassador-Conn Pictures no less, in the same year of 1937, but we're only concerned with trash aesthetic quality and nothing technowhiz now, are we? This un's yet another strangie featuring Darro as a prizefighter wannabe who's being used by a buncha hoods as a front for the heisting of a rare diamond that's gonna be cut and sold separately by some investors. Richmond plays a cop working undercover as an author and hot on the trail, and while we're at it none other than one of my favorite actors, one Byron Folger, pops up as a dumb Swede in those pre-Polish joke days when the Scandies were the ones who were getting all of the hard knocks. It's a good 'un too, with lotsa comedy relief and a good fight scene just when you think you're gonna nod off due to the less dramatic parts. This one woulda looked perfect on your fave UHF station some muggy August night, especially filled with local used car commercials and of course rather sticky armpits that make your pit hair intertwine...ouch!

Bill got his copy from Grapevine video, who I used to buy old OUR GANG silents offa back '91 way. They're linked up on the left in case you're interested in this and other rarities they offer, and I must admit that they do their best even if some of the films they sell look as if they survived not only the bombing of Dresden but at least three days in an Occupy Wall Street enclave. I recommend 'em for anybody who not only misses these on-target low-budget features, but the world and the ideals from whence they sprang and which we will probably never see the likes of again. 

Not much goin' on 'round here this weekend as you will see when you read this particularly even more iffy than me at my iffiest post. Yeah, I did get some new goodies flung my way which I am slowly but surly wading through, but given the incursion of REAL LIFE upon my humble existence not to mention the fact that Don Fellman's been callin' me a whole lot these past few nights during the only time I have to settle down 'n listen to anything well... Not that I mind Don Fellman calling...see, he's the only guy other'n Lou Rone who'll give me a ring anymore (I've alienated just about everyone else!) and the noted phone pal of Edward D. Wood's perhaps the only real entertainment I'm getting these days considerin' what a wealth of knowledge he has regarding everything from En Why tee-vee of the sixties to Bela Lugosi! But let's just say that I sure could use a whole lot more hours in the day between work, household doodies and gabbing on the phone which does take a huge chunk outta not only my ever-dwindling PM Cee-Dee 'n easy chair activities but my own personal self as well!

As you can tell, massive amts. of free time have become a luxury that I have to make the best of, and you can bet that those precious few hours I have to myself each night ain't gonna be wasted with subpar musical sputum or flaccid ROLLING STONE-styled rock "critiquing" that's for sure! But things have been so hectic here that I haven't even had the time to "decompress" as the upwardlies say, which might account for the edgy and snarky tone of this particular entry which might be even gnarlier than the past few months of 'em have been!

Well, at least I did manage to spin a few rather recent acquisitions so all's not lost. But to be honest about it let's just say that this post ain't one for the archives or to refer back to just in case you're having second thoughts about buying a TriPod CD and need something to edge you over to the pro side. In fact, if you really want me to admit it, this 'un's only bein' done for my own personal health, and if you decide to skip over this whilst on the way to the vast asst. of piddling rock blogs that do clutter up this "sphere" of ours I don't blame you a bit, other'n to wince at your obv. lack of good taste.

TSU-FALLEN ON DEAF EARS CD (available via CD Baby)


I wrote this jazz-rock trio from Philadelphia up quite a long time ago and figured hey, why not give 'em the royal BLOG TO COMM treatment once again! TSU sure could use the additional plugaroonie, especially when you consider that this group sure ain't gonna get any publicity because they don't sound like any of those big names in the jazz industry who've been hogging the fusion spotlight for a good fortysome years. TSU come off more like the halfway point between the John Scofield Trio and MX-80 Sound which is cool enough for me even if they ain't as noisy or as angular as you'd probably like it.

There are periods of atonality that do suit me fine, kinda reminding me of what John McLaughlin woulda done had he never went near that Sri Chinmoy fake and kept on doing heroin like any self-respecting jazz musician should. Whaddeva, this is a release that has enough drive and energy along with tasty playing that doesn't sound jagoff, and waddaya know but it just might please not only you but maybe even that irksome annoying bow-tied jazz club patron in your life. (I sincerely doubt it, but it might be worth givin' it a try.)

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TriPod CD (Moonjune) 

Here's one of those outta-nowhere acts that seem to be after my own heart. TriPod are a sax/bass guitar/percussion trio from New York City who were discovered playing CBGB's by none other than Genya Raven back '98 way. From there the group headed for relative fame and fortune not to mention a slew of releases and tours that have kept them at least in the minds of people who detail these under-the-cover acts for a variety of publications and websites. They're just what this Doc Rock's looking for, esp. since I have a one-track mind and really like to base my various reasons for getting interested in certain acts with regards to where said act might have come from (figuratively speaking) and just how they honed their entire approach via music/background/image to appeal to my own "blinkered" set of values.

I mean, why else would I care about some of these nth stringers who used to wallow about on the En Why scene unless I'm as much of a screwed up mentally constipated turd as I've revealed myself to you lo these many years! Well, I have made it a life mission to try anything out there that might just suit my listening parameters, and considering just how dudsville most music has become as of late can you blame me for looking for these outta-nowhere acts in some of the most interesting places possible?

For a group that seems to be doing well as they are without the major label push or overall adulation, TriPod sure know how to do so with an uncompromising music that, as us cornballs would say, defies description. The comparisons to free jazz do fit in here as does the refs. to various "Rock In Opposition" aggregates (Etron Fou Leloublan comes to mind) and Captain Beefheart, though oddly enough I was reminded of the early three-piece TV Toy whose demos recorded at Vanguard Studios back '77 way have the same spirit of jazz rock basics as TriPod. At least on this recording (the only TriPod I've lent ears to) there's a good New York basic sound and approach that ain't all glopped up or no wave artsified, with smart references to various seventies accomplishments all reshaped for an audience that undoubtedly remembers the hot past and never did want to let go of the bared underbelly of underground rock even when that became "unfashionable".

Hokay, I will admit that I thought some moments bored a tad, perhaps reminiscent of late-seventies prog slog as opposed to punk expression, but I get the keen feeling that repeated plays'll get me to cozy up to the group's entire approach just like it did with everybody from Roxy Music to Copernicus. As it stands, this TriPod debut was a pretty mighty opus in musical cross-referencing that didn't end up sounding like pretentious twaddle, and (as usual) its things like this that only makes me wonder what else I've missed coming outta CBGB during their last decade when so many groups were playing and you really hadda wade through the wheat to get to that good ol' chaff!

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The Terrorists-FORCES 1979-1982 CD (ROIR)

Here's another bottom of the stacker that I put off playing because well...it ain't like reggae's one of my favorite forms o' moozikal expression 'r anything! Oh, I do understand its value and worthiness, and if I were one of those guys who used to book hotcha New York underground clubs inna mid/late-seventies reggae acts would have been making it to the stage of said club as often as those groups of the punk variety. But given that I bought this thing it wasn't like I could just let it languish in the collection so... Well, it's pretty tantalizing esp. for a white reggae act , and they were definitely helped on by the special guests such as Lee "Scratch" Perry and Roland Alphonso whose sax playing gives some of the more ska-ish tracks that perfect early-sixties instrumental rock flavor I luv so well. And considering some of the zilch white reggae acts there were floating around in the late-seventies at least these guys went for the down-home authentic sound and approach which didn't make 'em sound like the latest bar band to discover the more hippified side of the Trenchtown beat!

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David Aaron's Short Memory-CYNICAL RAT BASTARD CD (http://www.shortmemory.org/, also available via CD Baby)

 Nice session from one of those groups that used to play the Dee Pop-curated "Freestyle" series at the CBGB Lounge back in the early-to-mid-oh oh's. Nothing that's gonna get your mind all in a jumble, but still a good modern approximation of the late-bop scene bordering on early avant concerns. Toned down, but driving enough to make you wanna put down your old issue of LOLLITOTS to pay attention to Aaron's tenor prowess which, while still "growing", has the right tension that I've admired in the playing of a whole slew of similar-minded jazzers of many a strata. Classic rehashing of the background jazz mumble will be found on "Soy Sauce Chicken on Rice".

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AND NOW, JUST WHAT YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR...A FREE PLUG OF UGLY THINGS #33! (you know where to get a copy awlready...see link up on the left!)-Great issue as always, and it's sure nice seeing that the mag has settled into its own special niche which has been refined over their past thirtysome years of existence. New 'un's got a whole lotta obligatory reading in it (guaranteed to keep you glued to the toilet for hours on end) including some mind-expanding interviews with Johnny Echols of Love, Ed Sanders of the Fugs (hokay, that 'un wasn't quite as probing!), John Morton of the Electric Eels, and Barrance Whitfield of BS and the Savages, not forgetting pieces on Group 1850, the Craig and Wimple Winch along with a whole slew of six-oh-related articles on groups near and dear to editor Mike Stax's heart. Even Greg Prevost writes up and down the page about such seventies glam/glitter faves as Jobriath which is something I never thought I'd live to see even if I made it to 110! And I'm not even tellin' ya about the other surprises like the new Cyril Jordan column where he rattles off about the time the Flamin' Groovies met Brian Wilson (who performed "Johnny B. Goode" in his own special arrangement for 'em!) which is just as strange as the time when Wilson corralled Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop to sing harmony with him on a version of "Short'nin' Bread"!

Sure the $9.95 price tag is a whopper, but given that there ain't that much else goin' in in the flesh 'n pulp print world when it comes to high energy rock 'n roll you certainly couldn't do any better...or worse. Mainly because there isn't anything else out there to compare this to especially in these gulcherally depraved times. You can sniff and moan about the death of the fanzine idiom which kept you afloat for many a year, or you can act like a man and buy this brand spanking new mag---which will it be, pod'ner?

POPEYE #1 COMIC BOOK (IDW, 2012)

Maybe it is ridiculous for me to be writing a review of this first issue of what promises to be a new series of POPEYE comic books done up the way creator E. C. Segar woulda wanted it back inna thirties. After all, I can't admit to being as huge a fan of the old THIMBLE THEATER strip as many strip aficionados are, or at least I should state that I ain't as much of a cheerleader of Popeye 'n crew as I am of such contemporaries as NANCY and DICK TRACY let alone a score of obscure comics many readers could care less about. And yeah, although I am smart enough to recognize that POPEYE creator Segar was one of the countless talents to have emerged during the years when the comic strip "came of age"  it wasn't like I was that agog over Fantagraphics' eighties reprints as I remain over those aforementioned big deals in my otherwise pithy life. Perhaps being over-exposed to POPEYE comic books and animated cartoons as a kid killed it for me. More likely it was my sister, who in order to prove her intelligence over my eight-year-old self, angrily told me that she knew why Popeye was named so, and he wasn't squinting either! Naw, his eye was actually GOUGED OUT and he didn't use a patch or prosthesis either...he just let his eyelid flap inna wind and allowed dust and junk collect in the now-empty socket which really nauseated the bejabbers outta my single-digit self! Kept me away from the guy for years on end until I came to the realization that hey, maybe not covering up an eye-less hole on your face is kinda cool...

Perhaps I'm just being a stubborn ol' turd by not rah-rahing a nice portion of those oft-heralded "classic" strips the "right people" go for the same way I steer clear of the "relevant" underground platters that most fanzines/blogs drool over in their usually smug, self-congratulatory way (as opposed to MY smug, self-congratulatory way 'natch!). After all, as Brad Kohler might have said, I don't have to hate LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE just because Dick Cavett likes it! And yeah, I know that these broken clocks can be right on rare occasion, but man I have my dignity to look out for as well!

If I had been in an even more dour'n usual mood I would have passed this up faster'n leftover sauerkrautade but sheesh, that writeup on Bhob Stewart's POTRZEBIE blog noting this new version of the (as they say) "venerable" strip with artist Bruce Ozella's apt mimicry of the mid-thirties style and swerve looked so tasty. Besides, it's sure nice 'n fuzzy to know that there is an artist who is doing fine-lined old-styled comic strip art in the here and now, a fact which would be just as good as discovering they still make Studebakers! Not that it matters that much long after the fact, but it's sure heartwarming to see the thirties look being utilized eighty years later, and in something that's an above-ground, relatively mainstream publication as well!

Really, I do like this new POPEYE reincarnation which at least looks faithful, or at least comes off easy on the eye and mind the same way that Bela Zaboly's Segar-esque yet oft-ignored take in the forties was. Maybe its even as guffaw-inducing as Bobby London's mid-eighties remodeling which I thought was the hoot's galore! In fact, I even like the ACTION COMICS #1 spoof cover, and you know how much I can't stand this satirical ripoffs/homages of/to everything from EC to Archie which have been milked to death ever since the fanzines of the fifties and sixties came up with that idea which has been re-hashed to the point of nausea!  I mean, if you wanna swipe from past accomplishments at least be like me and mimic the covers of old issues of BACK DOOR MAN which is way more original than grinding a once-brilliant idea into the dirt.

This revised POPEYE tale's at least faintly faithful to what I've read in the few eighties-vintage volumes of Segar-period comic strips. Not as good as what I've read, but us beggers really can't be choosers. This 'un has Popeye, Olive and brother Castor Oyl heading for an island located in the "Ninth Sea" in an attempt to find another Jeep to breed with the only living example (Eugene) they already have. Along the way Wimpy joins the adventure (and is eventually set adrift to hopefully be picked up later) and Bluto and his shipmates tangle with the gouge-eyed one for reasons that seem rather unclear (he's trying to stop Popeye from making it to the mysterious Jeep-infested island but the dialogue is vague as to tell you exactly why). And by the time Popeye does reach the isle who should he meet up with but none other than his old enemy the Sea Hag, who somehow doesn't seem as frightening as she must've been back in the thirties. But hey, soooo much has gone down since then to the point where I'm sure even Lex Luthor comes off like a fine, genial person compared with some of the rot they call human beings romping around these days! I guess that next to the Kardashians or Lady Caga neither the Hag nor the creepy Alice the Goon are as nerve-frazzling as they once were back in the boffo thirties, and that's most certainly the truth!

I have the sneaking suspicion that a lotta the hardcore old-time fans of the original comic, whether they be snobbish about it or not, might not cozy up to this take, but even with my objections I find this POPEYE revision a mildly pleasant diversion from the same old of 2012. And although a $3.99 price tag woulda flipped me out back when I first started buying comics way back inna seventies (and I remember the heck I got when it was discovered that I dished out $1.00 per for those EC reprints back in the mid-seventies!), I can't say that paying that much for a comic in the here and now would be highway robbery unless you're talking a book dedicated to most of the quaff seen in today's papers. And hey, I wouldn't buy a collection of DRABBLE comics even if there was a toilet paper shortage...old issues of TOO FUN TOO HUGE maybe but that's another story.