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THE LATEST (IF NOT GREATEST) FROM GULCHER RECORDS AND OTHER WEARY OBSERVATIONS!

Well (as Stud Leather would say) hally-hally-oh-hally-looyah, I finally bought yet another miniature boombus box type thingie, this time with a cassette player that will sure help out if I happen to be in the tape mode mood rather than a digitized frenzy and considering how 35+ years of cassettes are piled up here at the house I better make good use of 'em! Hopefully this player will last longer than the previous one since it's a Sony 'n not an Emerson, but given the rate of planned obsolescence built into just about anything these days who knows, I may be on the hunt for another one as soon as the thirty-second warranty expires! Only beef I have with this new player is that although I can record to cassette from Cee-Dee I can't do the opposite, something I had been considering in case some of the rarities I do have decided to rot away for all eternity. And I do have a few things that maybe should be preserved so's future generations can listen to just how messed up people of the late-twentieth century stratum could get. Now I know how those aficionados of old cinema felt in their race to preserve just about every shard of volatile silent film that was bound to snap crackle and pop away to the point where here in 2009 what's lost is now lost for good!

But I ain't here to talk about that...actually I'd like to take time out from my usual blather (hee!) to tell you about some of the brand-spanking-new disques that the infamous Gulcher label has released over the past few weeks or so. Gulcher is a label that really has been on a roll as of late, and surprisingly enough the people behind it have been able to keep up the quality while staying heavy on the quantity which is something many (especially I) would have great difficulty doing. It sure is nice to see a company along the lines of Gulcher up and running this late in the evolutionary timespan, and if you considered yourself a supporter of those great indie labels of the seventies and put them ahead of purchasing the major league products on mere principle etc. and so forth well, there's no excuse stopping with a company like Gulcher up and runnin', eh?


Seems as if Gulcher can do no wrong not only with the amazing Dark Sunny Land CD from a few weeks back but with this new batch from outta left field and catching us all by surprise as they say. Topping off the list is Lou Rone's new one, GUITAR SLINGER, yet another all-instrumental album by the same guy who gave us ALONE not to mention a few great moments of guitar mayhem in acts such as Kongress, Cross and Von Lmo. On PLASTIC PISTOL Lou continues with his electronic music fascination (sounding pretty pre-digitial at it as well!) while adding his particularly pat guitar lines over it all which makes GUITAR SLINGER kinda sound like a 1980 Harmonia reunion album guest starring Jimi Hendrix. This ain't some stuck-on-himself kinda guy thinking he can wang-dang-doodle with the best but a man who is about as much a master of the guitar as Howlin' Wolf was of the mouth organ, and it's sure pleasing to the nervous system to hear someone pull off something that you'd think was instant douse, yet come off so masterful.

While you're waiting for your copy to arrive, howzbout checking out this youtube clip of "Tired Lady Blues" where Rone's metallic vision is set to the motion of a heavenly vision, mainly Blaze Starr!



Quite different from Lou Rone comes the Gynecologists, not the New York no wave band that I've been interested in hearing for years but yet another one of those outta-nowhere punk rock bands that seemed to say everything that could have been said about the eighties, but somehow got buried under the weight of Robert Christgau making goo-goo's at Cyndi Lauper records. If your memories of eighties punk whether of a "hardcore" or slightly slower variety aren't as strong or come off as pure denouement next to rock of a seventies underground variety feel safe and assured that these Gynecologists are more in the Angry Samoans/Rancid Vat vein of hard gunch and total eruption w/o any of the Gnu Left baggage that sank many a group to the bottom of Hippie River. Think '81 politically-incorrect hardcore with the appropriate sense of humor that went along with it (the lyrics are guaranteed to offend...all the right people for once) mixed with '66 PEBBLES budget guitar riffs and recording capabilities and you'll get the drift. The disc's called HOOSIER PSYCHOPATHS...buy an extra one for your dog, who btw will love the back cover!

The death of Tim Carroll this past year was something that really jarred us aging BLOG TO COMM-sters to the core and just proved to us that we're not young chickens anymore ourselves and...oh, wait, that was Jim Carroll, not Tim! No, this Tim guy is someone who was in that second version of Bloomington Indiana's Gizmos, the one that had nothing to do with the original group 'cept the title and perhaps cleaner songs, and Tim is an accomplished "singer/songwriter" in his own right as this release will reveal to even the stodgiest of nonbelievers. And when I mean "singer/songwriter" I mean that Tim could have held his own with a writeup in any early/mid-seventies issue of ZIG ZAG or FAT ANGEL let alone ROLLER READER with his sound that comes off part Midwest outta nowhere pounce and another country-swoosh but not the kind that is represented by pale ale imitators these sorry Gnashville days. Maybe if C&W had somehow mutated into a more urban serious goo rather than into AM pop with a steel guitar. Still that's not quite right. How about a continuation of the Gizmos sound with an Elliot Murphy air to it? Why don't you just buy the thing (or look for a download) and find out for yerselves! Pretty good effort from a guy who left music for Wall Street then decided to get back into it, probably because he went belly up last year!

While I'm still on the Gulcher bandwagon I might as well mention this 'un...remember three years back when this outta-nowhere (Indiana...same thing to many) guy called Mykal Xul put out a disque called GIZMOS MY WAY? Yeah, what the world really needed in 2006 was a Gizmos tribute album (I'm not kidding!) and if anyone was ripe to do one it was this Xul guy who, after a three year hiatus, is back with a new full-length disque entitled JOHNSON COUNTY LINE. And boy is it a wowee zowee release that'll remind you of all the excitement one could find back in 1976 opening up a record mailer and obtaining a copy of some new underground act playing raw ramp rock with utter abandon! If you like the Gizmos you'll love Xul, a man who is one of the few who could take the mid-seventies gutteral gunch sound and excitement of the Gizmos and all they stood for (cheap reruns, heavy metal, suburban squatting, dirty stuff...) and "update" it for the late-oh oh's. Only his resultant splatter is just as low-rent as the original as he rocks his way through such decidedly non-friendly terrain on "Is Your Daughter Home?", "Chicken Choke Blues" and the inimitable "Poontwang". It's sure good to listen to something "modern" that reminds me of everything good that the past sixty years has managed to puke up for our edification.

And finally here's a disque from a group calling itself Handglops who have a sound that should really send all of you who miss the Golden Age of annoying basement recordings being passed off as bold underground trailblazing into throes of unbridled ecstasy! All funnin' aside, this Cee-Dee entitled RONK NG ROOL is a pretty strange bit of home-made music that sounds amped up distorted most of the time or at least it sounds like it was played through a 1962 tube stereo system on its last legs with a few moments of sane, nearly Lou Reed-ish music snuck in. I know I'm supposed to hate this stuff on mere principle, but Handglops kinda grows on me the way some of those outta-nowhere tapes I used to get during my fanzine days would at least until I passed them on in favor of some late-sixties punk exhumation. It wouldn't hurt to give it a spin or two as it wouldn't hurt to snatch up all these new Gulcher disques for your own personal enjoyment. It may hurt your pocketbook, but your pithy existence is none of my concern at this time so go get a job you bum or at least sell the Lexus, buy a clunker and pour your money into some real fun like MORE RECORDS, bub!