Eh, another slow week around here. If you can sense me own personal desperation from my writing style and general lethargy you'd be right on target. I really should be presenting for you reg'lar (and irregular) readers something quite more sparkling and attuned to your high-energy rockist lifestyle than what follows, but with real life and general hassles (along with a lack of stimulating resensification) getting in the way yer lucky I could come up with something as stirring as this glue pot of a post!
But hey, you might find something worthwhile amid the flot/jetsam, and if I'm lucky enough to scrape together the dough that order to Forced Exposure I've had on hold since last May just might finally get processed meaning...MORE STIMULATING REVIEWS of items you might just be interested in yourself! Of course 90% of the records I want'll probably be sold out, but at least I'll live in an excited state of anticipation between submitting my order and getting the expected confirmation telling me that only one item I had selected is still available!
Until then, here's a selection of new and old to mine ears that I've had the pleasure of listening to these past seven or so dayze...
Dark Sunny Land-EMANATIONS FOR A RETURNING LP (One Hand Records)
Yupyupyup, it's the same thang that I reviewed late last year (click here for the original) but here's a freshly-pressed vinyl version for those of you who wouldn't even dream of buying one of these newfangled tea coasters in a millyun years! Frankly I wouldn't mind spinning and re-spinning this engaging melange of electro-acoustic sounds if they were pressed up on paper plates, but this particular issue sounds surprisingly warm and human like good vinyl always has and many Cee-Dees never will. Not only that but the guy who did this 'un up (Tom Gilmore) ought to be pretty proud releasing a platter like this which not only sounds great but looks fantastic in a silkscreened sleeve that stands as a work of art in itself. One of the highlights of the 12-inch season that should be on your must-have list, and if you must have it better hurry up because only 150 of these smackers were popped out!
But hey, you might find something worthwhile amid the flot/jetsam, and if I'm lucky enough to scrape together the dough that order to Forced Exposure I've had on hold since last May just might finally get processed meaning...MORE STIMULATING REVIEWS of items you might just be interested in yourself! Of course 90% of the records I want'll probably be sold out, but at least I'll live in an excited state of anticipation between submitting my order and getting the expected confirmation telling me that only one item I had selected is still available!
Until then, here's a selection of new and old to mine ears that I've had the pleasure of listening to these past seven or so dayze...
Yupyupyup, it's the same thang that I reviewed late last year (click here for the original) but here's a freshly-pressed vinyl version for those of you who wouldn't even dream of buying one of these newfangled tea coasters in a millyun years! Frankly I wouldn't mind spinning and re-spinning this engaging melange of electro-acoustic sounds if they were pressed up on paper plates, but this particular issue sounds surprisingly warm and human like good vinyl always has and many Cee-Dees never will. Not only that but the guy who did this 'un up (Tom Gilmore) ought to be pretty proud releasing a platter like this which not only sounds great but looks fantastic in a silkscreened sleeve that stands as a work of art in itself. One of the highlights of the 12-inch season that should be on your must-have list, and if you must have it better hurry up because only 150 of these smackers were popped out!
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Various Artists-RECIPES FOR HOMEMADE PIE CD-R (compiled by Bill Shute)
Yet another mid bag o' "virtual thrift shop" favorites starting off with more of that cornballus gospel stuff Bill likes before heading off into some rather strange jazzbo territory via Teo Macero and Bob Prince's "Sounds of May" and "Avakianas Brasiliras," tracks from the pair's '56 WHAT'S NEW album. And if the rest of that el-pee is as Mingus-inspired as the weirdities that appear here I might even dish out $30 via ebay for an original vinyl copy!
The rest moves in and out of BLOG TO COMM boundaries, some of it being high-larious (Telly Savalas' "Rubber Bands and a Piece of String" and "I Love You" [not the Lou Reed song] being among 'em) while others having me scratch my head worse'n the time I had a case of snowflake-sized dandruff back in high school. The Gants help provide us with at least one garage band burner, while Ferlin Husky and Webb Pierce at least remind us of the sorta status Country Music as the white man's blooze held long before Mylie Cyrus began rubbing her butt up against some guy's crotch on live tee-vee. Good selection here Bill...with stuff like this I'll never have to enter a real life thrift shop again and search out interesting platters like these in between copies of Pat Robertson's GOD'S PLAN FOR ME MAKING A BIG HEAPING WAD O' DOUGH!
The rest moves in and out of BLOG TO COMM boundaries, some of it being high-larious (Telly Savalas' "Rubber Bands and a Piece of String" and "I Love You" [not the Lou Reed song] being among 'em) while others having me scratch my head worse'n the time I had a case of snowflake-sized dandruff back in high school. The Gants help provide us with at least one garage band burner, while Ferlin Husky and Webb Pierce at least remind us of the sorta status Country Music as the white man's blooze held long before Mylie Cyrus began rubbing her butt up against some guy's crotch on live tee-vee. Good selection here Bill...with stuff like this I'll never have to enter a real life thrift shop again and search out interesting platters like these in between copies of Pat Robertson's GOD'S PLAN FOR ME MAKING A BIG HEAPING WAD O' DOUGH!
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The Glass Family-ELECTRIC BAND CD-R burn (originally on Kismet, UK)A little too dippy on the hippy side for me. Some sparks of acid psychosis might seep through, but for the most part they come off more Strawberry Alarm Clock than Chocolate Watchband. If you caught me in a worse mood than I am now, I might say it sounds so hokey that you kinda think the guys in this group were police plants trying to entrap those hippie kids you used to see on DRAGNET. Even when your ears do perk up during an interesting pop move or engaging lyric you keep getting reminded of the three doofuses pictured on the cover thinking how could you like a group that looked like that in the first place! For hard up late-sixties psych-pop West Coast aficionados only.
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THE BEATLES VS. THE FOUR SEASONS CD-R burn (VJ)Wanna know who won? Vee-Jay records did, if only for slapping that Beatles album they (temporarily) had the rights into a package along with GOLDEN HITS OF THE FOUR SEASONS (sheesh, why not LITTLE RICHARD IS BACK???) thus creating a two-record set that made for a pretty hefty listening experience that said as much about the spirit of 1964 as GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. Capturing both groups at the height of their teenybop mania, I gotta say that spinning this Cee-Dee-Are really did give me that mid-sixties adolescent feeling akin to slapping together a model car or reading a comic book, which would figure since I'm positive that most suburban slobs who had this set in their possession were enjoying it under the influence of the glue that came with that Fokker tri-plane kit of theirs they never did get around to finishing.
As for the tally I gotta admit that the Seasons beat the Beatles by a good few points...after all they had the sleek wopadago waiter look down pretty snat-like and Frankie Valli could hit those high tones with a nice screech that made up as much a part of my early grade school years as daily beatings. Listening to the Seasons kinda made me wish that I was cleaning out the interior of the family car for a mere quarter which undoubtedly would go towards a fresh new comic book, or a couple of used ones at the flea market that would pass my mother's usually stringent comic book hygiene regulations.
The Beatles were pretty good too this being their 1963 stuff before they became the Charlie Chaplins of rock and could get away with doing anything and people would think it was "art," but I just gotta dock 'em a few points just because they were too big at the time. At least when the Seasons put their pre-THICK AS A BRICK looking concept album out we knew it was a shuck, but the Beatles??? Well, they were such a popular act that they coulda recorded themselves farting for four sides of a double set and people would have considered it a valid statement. And frankly, if they did pass the dirtstar challenge they'd probably have made for a better listening session'n some of the stuff they eventually released later on in the career! And no way in hades would Frankie Valli flap his whizzer on an album cover, that's for sure!
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Just slipping in under the wire is this bizarrity (sent to me by some reader who would like to remain "anonymous" though I know who he is thanks to my Dick Tracy Crimestopper handwriting identification kit), a burn of an actual el-pee recorded by a mid-South supergroup of sorts who have been cranking out these releases faster'n high school girls are cranking out bastard kids these days. Heavy nod to the post-underground melange of varying styles with headcrush morphing into six-oh with all needles on red. Hearkens back to the mid-eighties post-hardcore crackup which gave us so many outta-the-way groups doing their darndest to devolve into an even lower form of life with a feral sound to match (the Sewer Zombies come to mind, though many more similarities are just out on the horizon)! Only wish Imants was around to hear this, though I get the feeling this would be the only thing he'd be talking about for the next umpteen years! Features a twistoid version of Peter Laughner's "Life Stinks".
***THE "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!" AND NEITHER WILL YOU DEPT.: heard via the ceiling speaker in the waiting room at the doctor's office this past Tuesday afternoon...Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters' "Aerospace Age Inferno"! Definitely the kind of tune one would want to listen to while anticipating a rectal probe, that's for sure! Must say there's gotta be some clandestine weirdos working at Sirius Radio if they could pull this stunt off w/o getting fired!!!
***BEFORE I LEAVE YEZ ALL, I thought I'd link up this interesting piece I found via the always indispensable CHRONICLES website, an item I linked not because of the subject matter at hand (that being the recent sentencing of Chelsea formerly Bradley Manning), but the comment thread which brings up a few things regarding the Velvet Underground! As you may know, CHRONICLES editor in chief Thomas Fleming considers himself somewhat of a Velvet Underground aficionado not only having seen them at the Family Dog in San Francisco but having discussed Shakespeare with Lou Reed backstage at the show which does put him in some sort of pantheon if you ask me! Not only that, but Fleming's various quotations from Velvet Underground songs and references throughout the years make me think that if he had chosen to write about rock 'n roll 'stead of politics he could have been the new Wayne McGuire, or at least one who didn't froth all over the legend of Mel Lyman. I must say that I find intelligent, stimulating Velvet Underground discussions this far down the line rather exhilarating, especially in light of all the utter dross that has been dumped into the rock toilet in their "memory" which has transpired throughout these past three decades (and I as usual am just as at fault as all of those windbags who contributed to Alban Zeck's atrocity of a book a good decade and a half back!).
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