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IZZIT TIME FOR ME TO EXPERIENCE ANOTHER ROCK 'N ROLL-RELATED DREAM SO SOON??? Well like maybe "yeah", and although it ain't exactly a rock n' roll dream like the kind I've been having ever since my teenbo days it's a good enough dream for me to mention on this blog so thus be it! I mean hey, in some ways this particular nocturnal expression does mirror my real life feelings regarding life and the way it used to be and the way it is and how I still hold all of those old emotions and tastes and ideals near and dear to my heart, and o'er the years I've discovered that my own personal feelings and wants and desires mean more to me than yours ever did, that's for sure!.

Anyway in this 'un I'm driving around in Cleveland Ohio on a nice sunny spring or autumn day (I'm wearing a windbreaker and it seems to be about fifty degrees outside), and what do I spot but an old store which at one time in the distant past was perhaps my all time favorite record shop, the kind that had every record I wanted including old ones, imports, singles and even rare rock mags which, come to think of it, is probably the reason the place went out of business. I know that it ain't a record shop anymore but, undoubtedly for nostalgic purposes, I decide to pull into the parking lot next to this building (located in a now run down area that urban renewal somehow forgot) just to take a look around---y'know, re-live old timey fun 'n fuzzy memories 'n all that which I tend to do in dreams such as these.

This particular shop now sells electronic devices and parts for said devices, and although it still houses the same old wooden doors that it had when I was buying up loads of vinyl from 'em back inna seventies/eighties those very same doors are now covered with ads for current bargains available from within said portal as well as an invitation for customers to come in and watch ELLEN with them in order to find out who the winner of a certain contest the shop was running was gonna be.

I peek in and notice that, although the place now resembles a low-grade Radio Shack, many of the original fixtures from the checkout counter to even some of the wall racks dating back to the record emporium days were still there. However, instead of displaying the latest releases they now held up cords and wires as well as various computer innards that keep machines like the one I'm pecking this saga out on going.  I also noticed that the people working at the place looked exactly like the kind of clerks one would find in many a record store throughout the seventies...young neo-hipster upstarts and the usual college undergrad suspect types with long hair and casual dress who used to chuckle at you when you'd buy an old Ventures album.

I then head back to my car feeling kinda low, like this was yet another sign that the things that gave me so much fun amid a world o' agony inna past are now pretty much dead 'n buried for all time. Dunno if I headed for the nearest location where a Dog House drive-in restaurant used to stand just to stare at it, but if I did I wouldn't be surprised one iota!

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Meltzer's reaction after reading the paragraph to your right (and you
thought I was gonna make a Dave Lang joke!).

Hey gang! Guess what----tomorrow (May 11th) is none other than famed rock ex-critic and renaissance man for the sixties and seventies Richard Meltzer's SEVENTIETH (gosh ding it!) BIRTHDAY!!!! Can you believe it, the world's only rock 'n' roll fanabla has actually made it to the hoary old age of septuagenarianism which is more than I'm sure any of us woulda thought woulda happ'd inna first place! But hey, since longtime Meltzer adversary Lou Reed made it that far plus a few years why not the ol' "R" himself? Anyway, you've read more'n a few items about the man whether it be on this blog or in my crudzine (which I won't link up anymore because none of you felchites wanna buy any of the myriad assortment of mags available, either that or you outta-country types are too cheap to pay the postage!) so just search those things out yourself via the handy engine that adorns the top of this page if you so desire. As for me I'm gonna party up the right way and that's by spinning a few Smegma platters and tooting a noisemaker whilst eating a piece of Pepperidge Farms party cake. Maybe I can find a goat embryo and stick it in a bowl of half-wiggled gelatin (lime flavor preferred) and let it set up nice and firm. So here's to you Meltzer happy birthday and all, and thank you for making me the man I sure wouldn't have been had I picked up JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL 'stead of GULCHER off the book rack lo those many years back!

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Well here they are---pretty much all of the newies that I've been spinning this past week. Not much this time, but then again I've been doing my darndest not to let the evil specter of real life get inna way and failing mighty miserably at it. Some more goodies here courtesy of Paul McGarry and Bill Shute along with one platter that I actually forked over some nice dough for, and although it might be a comparatively skimpoid entry compared with some of my others I get the feeling that this mere post packs more high energy rockist goodness into each and every letter than the majority of internet blab going on about rock 'n roll as a music that perhaps DEFINED our midclass suburban slob lives more'n UP WITH PEOPLE! ever could! But then again, when was the last time you read anything even remotely positive, transcendent and even gosh-it-all THRILLING relating to your pro-rock lifestyle and stacks fulla fifty-plus years of atonal jamz anyway? And any wizenhimer who dares utter "Christgau" in my presence will be banished to a fate worse than Melbourne, that's for sure!

SHAKE ALL NIGHT WITH THE OUTTA SITES CD-r burn (originally on Spinout...I think CD Baby might have some)

Heyheyhey---here's a batch of beyond "fairly decent" retro-revival stuff that might be too slick for you, but when played next to those early-eighties AM/FM rockers this sure sounds like the Stooges and Seeds crammed together. Nice slabs of British Invasion (early Dave Clark Five) crush up against mid-sixties Amerigan garage (early McCoys) and it all ends up sounding like AM radio car fulla kids in 1965 and you're coming home from school feeling so good because that ordeal is over! Nothing Northwest or strangulated about it, but much preferable to everything else being touted these days and considering that the Sites have been appearing on national tee-vee and the like all I gotta say is more power to 'em!

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The Dolly Rocker Movement-ELECTRIC SUNSHINE CD-r burn (originally on Off the Hip)

Pleasant (kinda, sorta) retro-retro-sixties rock from this Sydney Australia band. I probably won't listen to it again in a million years, but I won't deny ya that their polished taken on various late-sixties rock forms (including West Coast pop psychedelia) done up in a particularly sparkling fashion sure beats the tar outta some of the competition, or at least it would had I the resources to HEAR some of the competition. Somehow I don't think that I would be missing much. Still there's that taint of post-197X production and execution to this one that keeps it from being a downright classic, but then again haven't you come to expect that from many of these sixties worshipers who might have had the right idea, but the wrong methods to put it forth responsibly.

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Various Artists-PUNKS FROM THE UNDERGROUND CD (Skydog France)

I always liked these Skydog samplers if only because that particular label never did forget what the term "punk rock" has meant to many a cloistered suburban slob o'er the past thirtysome years. Y'know, punk as that brash return to mid-sixties excellence that seemed just about as much a part of your life as tee-vee reruns and the latest fast food flash. Nothing sophisticado like the kinda music your classmates enjoyed, but something that made you GLAD you were a living, breathing turd and made no bones about being one either!

This 'un's no diff, and although I'm not sure about its original configuration or whether or not this is fresh produce or a late-seventies creation (or a mix of both which it most likely is) it's pretty good. Three tracks by Giovanni Dadomo's (Sniveling) Shits might frighten some of you off, but I find these numbers to be cheaply straightforward in their presentation of the cheap straightforward rock n' roll clatter that was upsetting more'n a few Chris Welches back in the late-seventies. The Lightning Raiders with ex-Deviant/Pink Fairy Duncan Sanderson do a credible Rolling Stones circa STICKY FINGERS tribute, while the Heartbreakers are actually the Heroes but I guess Skydog thought they'd sell more copies crediting these classic tracks as the real done duji deal. And even the obscurities like the Vegetable Men's version of the Syd Barrett swan song from Floyd rock more'n a whole slew of classic rock caga this kinda music was poised to obliterate. But it didn't and of course we're all the worse off for it.

Biggest surprise---two Nick Kent tracks, one on his lonesome and the other with the Subteranneans who were more or less a mutated version of the Only Ones. Nice bared-wire intensity bit on the solo electric guitar outing while the band number has the kind of punk-intellectual neo-Lou cum Stones approach you would have expected even if you've only known Kent from his various scribblings. So successful on a slew of rockist levels that you know they would fail like anything what with the lack of rock 'n roll finesse and taste that abounded not only then but now. Good thing you didn't give up your day job Nick because hey, somehow I could tell by these offerings you weren't gonna get signed to the Rocket Record Company any time soon.

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Various Artists-LEMON DANTE MIDNIGHTER MOON CD-r burn (Bill Shute)

Hmmmmm-two ? and the Mysterians tracks make this an obvious keeper (not that I throw any of these Shute burns out), while James Brown's "Don't Be a Dropout" is probably gonna rank up there with "Funky President" as one of those numbers his white liberal rock critic fans would prefer not to remember. Lotsa neato soul too for a guy like myself who kinda likes these off-the-charts efforts, and although I was hoping that the Mark IV here was the early incarnation of Creation their "Dante's Inferno" is kinda sorta funny in the way one of those MAD magazine record inserts were.

Come to think of it, the gaggers here are what makes LEMON DANTE MIDNIGHTER MOON such a hoot. I never was one to snuggle up to David Frost, but his spoof of "Deck of Cards" (the story about the soldier who uses a stack of 52 as a bible) is funny even if it is too English for me to understand the whys and wherefores of Cricket (if I were to spoof it I'd have the hapless soldier toting a game of MONOPOLY into the church, something which I might have said while reviewing the original version!), though the NATIONAL LAMPOON classic "Deteriorata" remains a fave if only because I remember how the iron-haired gals used to swoon to the Les Crane original and the parody really makes me feel superior to all of those wretched excuses for human beings with their love, peace and murderous urges!

 Oh yeah, and the Denny Dale tracks that closes this disque out is standard and of course top notch mid-sixties garage band rock and I should know because it came out on Soma who also released the Trashmen (on their Garrett subsidiary) and Castaways. And like with a track record like that I get the feeling that they weren't gonna be releasing much crapazoid music, eh?