I gotta admit it's kinda fun watching what passes for "civilization" these days run towards oblivion like yer favorite Warner Brothers characters over a handy precipice. Yeah, although I may eventually be flung over with the rest (thought not due to my active participation) at least it's worthwhile getting an eyefulla the most evil scum of the earth types extant ruin themselves (and the rest of us) in the name of all the feelygood causes you can muster up. And while I do all of this sidelining I gotta say it's sure grand to have the following recordings to listen to if only to add more voomph to the proceedings. Agin thanks to Bill Shute and Whatzizname McGarry for the burns, for if it weren't for them a good hunkerin' slobberin' portion of this blog just wouldn't be there, ya DIG???
While it ain't exactly the Detroit hard rock spasm I was hoping for this particular Rush sure do a good bonehead crunchers early-seventies hard rock blurt that I sure find a welcome change from a good portion of the softee slurp that was goin' on at the time. In other words (and need I ask???)if you were marooned on a desert island who would you rather listen to, these Rush guys or Melanie??? Maybe if some enterprising rock fanatic who's putting together an LP of early-seventies hard gunch rarities reads this he'll get the message and slip this track on, with some sonic mustering up I hope! No need to thank me for this tip Robin or whoever gets to this first, but maybe a free album would be nice!
Mike Rep and the Quotas-HELLBENDER LP (Hozac)
It's 2016 and these fortysome-year-old rarities are only now seeing the light of day! Well, actually a few of these things have been released before but I was never privy to 'em, but my own lack of knowledge aside it's sure great hearing these basement-level rarities of the infamous Mike "Rep" Hummel! From workouts so primitive that even the Shaggs wouldn't have done 'em to particularly Pebbles and Bam Bam-ish takes on Bo Diddley and Roxy Music's "Editions of You", this album's gotta be the primal pouncer of the year. And yeah, there must have been thousands of groups like this playing their paradiddles to their fambly and no one else back then, but how many actually were smart enough to save their sounds for hungry future generations??? Itza nice 'un that I'm sure will stand the test of time, or at least the test that your more Pantsiosesque musical fan'll puke upon the needle hitting the grooves.
Charlie 'ungry-WHO IS MY KILLER 7-inch 33 rpm EP (Hozac)
No matter how disgusted I get with the sorry state of MUSICAL ENJOYMENT here in the mid-teens, at least platters like this 'un pop up to put a smile on my face, a shine on my shoes, a cheap suit and a ten dollar bill to start me on a new life. Lost in the shuffle of late-seventies English punk do-it-yourselfisms, Charlie 'ungry managed to release a platter that would not only alienate the progressive rock dinos of the day but the punques themselves with this commercial yet deadly toetapper! Believe-you-me, this is one spinner that's crammed a whole lotta what I liked about England and the seventies onto two neet sides, and after playing both I kinda wonder where Charlie 'ungry has been (certainly not my record collection!) these past forty years!!!
Shades of the Sweet and Slade pop up and while this particular popunk certainly ain't of the spiky-haired contingent you can hear bits and feces of everyone from Generation X to early Stiff Records to even the Vibrators in 'ungry's patented teenage sway. But still, this woulda been considered too "tame" for the p-rock types and too "punk" for the straights, a dilemma which befell many a platter back in those rather over saturated with good (as well as rancid) sounds days.
Like a whole lotta these outta-nowhere records that time seems to have forgotten, one listen to this'll make you wonder why they got wooshed outta the way they did since they're so good! And then sadly, you'll come to the realization that it was because they were so good that these guys got the critical/musical bum's rush.
The Paisley Zipper Band-LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY CD-r burn (originally on Trident Records)
Hmmmm, these guys sound like a rather similar bunch of mid-six-oh revivalists who've been making records for the past XXX years (or at least until the turn of the sentry!). OK, I'll cut out all the gosharooties and flat out tell ya that this is the Chesterfield Kings under a nom-de-plume or alias or somethin', and on this live platter they roar through a good batch of the oldies that show off just where they're comin' from sixties-wise. By that I mean the sixties experience of the Stones (two covers) as well as even some fifties faves revamped and of course a buncha tracks that I could only describe as being originals even though even an astute toot such as I cannot be sure. In all it's a winner what with the Big Beat being so evident and the energy being exerted by lead singer Greg Prevost, a guy you think woulda been awarded SOME sorta medal in this lifetime but hasn't. For obvious reasons I would surmise (like, he's that good!).
Thee Sixpence-STEP BY STEP CD-r burn (originally on Akarma, Italy)
As y'all know "Incense and Peppermints" never was my idea of whatcha'd call a top notch psychedelic number. Heck, I'd probably even take the collected noodles of the Grateful Dead o'er that one because hey, sometimes those noodles can hit you in the right way when you're in a Lenny Kaye frame of mind. The pre-Strawberry Alarm Clock Thee Sixpence also do "Incense" and it's just as sappy here, but at least the rest of this snuggles up to hotcha cheap garage band levels to the point where you're zooming back to the early eighties of Moxie Records and those garage band EPs where some of these were originally repro'd. From the Seeds swipe of "Heartfull of Rain" to three Love covers (that is if you consider thee Sixpence's version of "Hey Joe" a cover) this collection presents a neato slice of 1966 rock 'n roll at least before the big fall into nada. Too bad they couldn't have made the transformation into the Strawberry Alarm Clock a li'l less ginchy, ifyaknowaddamean...
Ron Asheton's New Order-VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCE CD-r burn (originally on Vivid Sound Records)
Ah yes, do I remember some TROUSER PRESS REVIEW OF RECORDS AND STUFF LIKE THAT book where a contributor ran the New Order down for being subsputum hard rock that had none of that Stooges fun and jamz or something like that. Don't quote me, it was a long time ago. Funny thing, but I still go for these Asheton/Thompson/Recca et. al. Los Angeles cokehead sounds and all and not only because they did the mid-seventies heavy trip as good as some of those great if ignored local groups like the Killer Kane Band. Real Sunset Strip call girl decadent flash that stresses itself out like the best Detroit bands while emitting all the sleeze of the Hollywood acts that BACK DOOR MAN made their moolah with. If I didn't know better I would rate every track on this late-oh-oh's collection up there with the rest of those transplanted Detroit escapades like KILL CITY or even...Jump???? Better than most of you readers would expect.
Various Artists-I AIN'T LOCKING THE WINDOWS---VINTAGE SONG-POEMS AND COMMERCIALS FROM THE VIRTUAL THRIFT STORE CD-r burn (sent in by Bill Shute)
P.T. Barnum said there was a sucker born every minute, but after listening to these set your poems to music "song poem" recordings I gotta admit that there must've been at least three-and-a-half born per every sixty seconds. Well, maybe some of these efforts did have a li'l sit down at the kitchen table and come up with a good 'un sorta swerve to 'em, but otherwise (as I said long ago) ya gotta admire these song poem artists who could take the most lackluster rhymes and make 'em sound good enough that alla the relatives of Mrs. Maud Berwick of Staten Island would ooh and aah when she spun her ode to her late dog Fanabla sung oh so professionally for 'em, and they all thought it coulda even been played onna radio it was that good!
Besides the song poems (varying from soft pop to medium-strength rock 'n roll to da blooze) there are some old classic commercials that really perk up these ears. I know that most if not all of you could care less, but these ads for everything from Bosco to the new 1940 Buick really bring back memories of those days, and I wasn't even alive then which is really saying something! Maybe I'm thinking of the 1970 nostalgia trip when the adults of Ameriga, sick of their hippoid children and their rampant hypocrisy, decided to spend their free hours basking in the long-ignored kultur of the twenties onward which really brought out a lotta long-forgotten cartoons, moom pitchers and radio broadcasts from outta the mothballs and into my adolescent consciousness. Most striking of all is the one where Dick Powell plugs Camel cigarettes, striking considering how his love for the product eventually led to his demise a good twentysome years later via The Big "C".
Stanley Unwin-ROTATEY DISKERS WITH UNWIN CD-r burn (originally on Pye Records, England)
I guess ya hadda grow up with Unwin to enjoy him, because frankly I really don't care for his swichawordy kinda humor that may be clever but wears thin for a guy like me whose idea of classic humor is watching someone you hate's head get smashed on the sidewalk. As you better know by now, I'm actually the kinda fanabla who likes old cornballus gags the kind Unwin tosses about like potrzebie. But really this guy just seems to miss a whole lotta marks with me perhaps because his brand of English hoo-hah doesn't have the same swivel that alla them BBC tee-vee imports of the seventies onward did. Then again maybe there just ain't anything to rip roar about these sad 'n sorry days, that is unless you can get your kicks chortling at the misfortunes of people you absolutely loathe just like I do. For serious Anglojokesters only.
TWO DAUGHTERS CD-r burn (originally on Methane Music, England)
Another lost entry (and the second by this act to be reviewed in these "pages") in the eighties "cassette culture" sweepstakes that might have been mentioned in the pages of OP...I dunno. Pretty hotcha stuff too, what with the interesting neo-electronic sounding drones going up and down the speakers and the amorphous music settling well within your screwed-beyond-belief psyche. Nothing that's gonna make any of us wanna toss the tootsie rolls in pure ecstasy,but a definite maybe should have for those of you who used to send away for these things thinking you were on the cutting edge of technological music. Of course all you got in return was a tape of casiotone cantatas recorded by some bedroom boy who passed 'em off as culturally significant swill, but didn't you feel great about it???
Various Artists-INSENSITIVE CUMQUAT RAG CD-r burn (Bill Shute)
It was the Studebaker onna cover that drove me to this and man, was this one of the better choices I made in my life since I switched from Peach Pomade to Vaseline Intensive Care! Roy Brooks begins things with a bluesy jazz jam called "The Free Slave". After that it's and up and down roller coaster ride going from the exciting (the Rock-A-Bouts as well as the South Amerigan Beatle beat of Los Shakers and Lose Mitos) to the snoozeville sounds of Duncan Lamont and his Holiday Inn Lounge band you can just imagine some washed-up salesman puffin' cigs away to before headin' back to his room for the night. Much of it is top notch though, and if you can't chortle a bit to Charley Weaver singing "It's Cumquat Time in Mount Ivy" (gee do I miss the original HOLLYWOOD SQUARES!) then you must be an uptight prissy just like your average repressed school marm or social justice warrior...same thing! Big surprise here is the saxophone-laden turn of the century recording from the Six Brown Brothers...sheesh, I always thought that the sax was thought of as the instrument of s-xual seduction back then so a number like this really must have been considered scandalous! Oh the shame!!!!
***Before we commence with the festivities let me clue you into this all-umportant fact you might wanna know about, mainly that a little rock cold case of mine has once again been solved. Some background...quite a long time ago I mentioned how none other than seventies fanzine great Hot Scott Fischer told me about a local ca. 1971 St. Louis Missouri group called Rush, obviously not the Canadian metalloid Randsters mind you but a bunch who were heavily into the whole Detroit revolution rock scene to the point where they even joined up with the White Panther Party and had the badges to prove it! Besides telling me about the band's revolutionary credo, Scott mentioned the time they caused a riot when opening for Ike and Tina Turner if only because the black audience set to see the headliners weren't exactly keen on Rush's white-oriented hard rock, or something like that. Well, since those days an anonymous birdie has told me that the following film of them has been uploaded to Youtube, and naturally for the sake of historical analysis I present it for you thusly:
While it ain't exactly the Detroit hard rock spasm I was hoping for this particular Rush sure do a good bonehead crunchers early-seventies hard rock blurt that I sure find a welcome change from a good portion of the softee slurp that was goin' on at the time. In other words (and need I ask???)if you were marooned on a desert island who would you rather listen to, these Rush guys or Melanie??? Maybe if some enterprising rock fanatic who's putting together an LP of early-seventies hard gunch rarities reads this he'll get the message and slip this track on, with some sonic mustering up I hope! No need to thank me for this tip Robin or whoever gets to this first, but maybe a free album would be nice!
***
It's 2016 and these fortysome-year-old rarities are only now seeing the light of day! Well, actually a few of these things have been released before but I was never privy to 'em, but my own lack of knowledge aside it's sure great hearing these basement-level rarities of the infamous Mike "Rep" Hummel! From workouts so primitive that even the Shaggs wouldn't have done 'em to particularly Pebbles and Bam Bam-ish takes on Bo Diddley and Roxy Music's "Editions of You", this album's gotta be the primal pouncer of the year. And yeah, there must have been thousands of groups like this playing their paradiddles to their fambly and no one else back then, but how many actually were smart enough to save their sounds for hungry future generations??? Itza nice 'un that I'm sure will stand the test of time, or at least the test that your more Pantsiosesque musical fan'll puke upon the needle hitting the grooves.
***
No matter how disgusted I get with the sorry state of MUSICAL ENJOYMENT here in the mid-teens, at least platters like this 'un pop up to put a smile on my face, a shine on my shoes, a cheap suit and a ten dollar bill to start me on a new life. Lost in the shuffle of late-seventies English punk do-it-yourselfisms, Charlie 'ungry managed to release a platter that would not only alienate the progressive rock dinos of the day but the punques themselves with this commercial yet deadly toetapper! Believe-you-me, this is one spinner that's crammed a whole lotta what I liked about England and the seventies onto two neet sides, and after playing both I kinda wonder where Charlie 'ungry has been (certainly not my record collection!) these past forty years!!!
Shades of the Sweet and Slade pop up and while this particular popunk certainly ain't of the spiky-haired contingent you can hear bits and feces of everyone from Generation X to early Stiff Records to even the Vibrators in 'ungry's patented teenage sway. But still, this woulda been considered too "tame" for the p-rock types and too "punk" for the straights, a dilemma which befell many a platter back in those rather over saturated with good (as well as rancid) sounds days.
Like a whole lotta these outta-nowhere records that time seems to have forgotten, one listen to this'll make you wonder why they got wooshed outta the way they did since they're so good! And then sadly, you'll come to the realization that it was because they were so good that these guys got the critical/musical bum's rush.
***
The Paisley Zipper Band-LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY CD-r burn (originally on Trident Records)Hmmmm, these guys sound like a rather similar bunch of mid-six-oh revivalists who've been making records for the past XXX years (or at least until the turn of the sentry!). OK, I'll cut out all the gosharooties and flat out tell ya that this is the Chesterfield Kings under a nom-de-plume or alias or somethin', and on this live platter they roar through a good batch of the oldies that show off just where they're comin' from sixties-wise. By that I mean the sixties experience of the Stones (two covers) as well as even some fifties faves revamped and of course a buncha tracks that I could only describe as being originals even though even an astute toot such as I cannot be sure. In all it's a winner what with the Big Beat being so evident and the energy being exerted by lead singer Greg Prevost, a guy you think woulda been awarded SOME sorta medal in this lifetime but hasn't. For obvious reasons I would surmise (like, he's that good!).
***
As y'all know "Incense and Peppermints" never was my idea of whatcha'd call a top notch psychedelic number. Heck, I'd probably even take the collected noodles of the Grateful Dead o'er that one because hey, sometimes those noodles can hit you in the right way when you're in a Lenny Kaye frame of mind. The pre-Strawberry Alarm Clock Thee Sixpence also do "Incense" and it's just as sappy here, but at least the rest of this snuggles up to hotcha cheap garage band levels to the point where you're zooming back to the early eighties of Moxie Records and those garage band EPs where some of these were originally repro'd. From the Seeds swipe of "Heartfull of Rain" to three Love covers (that is if you consider thee Sixpence's version of "Hey Joe" a cover) this collection presents a neato slice of 1966 rock 'n roll at least before the big fall into nada. Too bad they couldn't have made the transformation into the Strawberry Alarm Clock a li'l less ginchy, ifyaknowaddamean...
***
Ah yes, do I remember some TROUSER PRESS REVIEW OF RECORDS AND STUFF LIKE THAT book where a contributor ran the New Order down for being subsputum hard rock that had none of that Stooges fun and jamz or something like that. Don't quote me, it was a long time ago. Funny thing, but I still go for these Asheton/Thompson/Recca et. al. Los Angeles cokehead sounds and all and not only because they did the mid-seventies heavy trip as good as some of those great if ignored local groups like the Killer Kane Band. Real Sunset Strip call girl decadent flash that stresses itself out like the best Detroit bands while emitting all the sleeze of the Hollywood acts that BACK DOOR MAN made their moolah with. If I didn't know better I would rate every track on this late-oh-oh's collection up there with the rest of those transplanted Detroit escapades like KILL CITY or even...Jump???? Better than most of you readers would expect.
***
P.T. Barnum said there was a sucker born every minute, but after listening to these set your poems to music "song poem" recordings I gotta admit that there must've been at least three-and-a-half born per every sixty seconds. Well, maybe some of these efforts did have a li'l sit down at the kitchen table and come up with a good 'un sorta swerve to 'em, but otherwise (as I said long ago) ya gotta admire these song poem artists who could take the most lackluster rhymes and make 'em sound good enough that alla the relatives of Mrs. Maud Berwick of Staten Island would ooh and aah when she spun her ode to her late dog Fanabla sung oh so professionally for 'em, and they all thought it coulda even been played onna radio it was that good!
Besides the song poems (varying from soft pop to medium-strength rock 'n roll to da blooze) there are some old classic commercials that really perk up these ears. I know that most if not all of you could care less, but these ads for everything from Bosco to the new 1940 Buick really bring back memories of those days, and I wasn't even alive then which is really saying something! Maybe I'm thinking of the 1970 nostalgia trip when the adults of Ameriga, sick of their hippoid children and their rampant hypocrisy, decided to spend their free hours basking in the long-ignored kultur of the twenties onward which really brought out a lotta long-forgotten cartoons, moom pitchers and radio broadcasts from outta the mothballs and into my adolescent consciousness. Most striking of all is the one where Dick Powell plugs Camel cigarettes, striking considering how his love for the product eventually led to his demise a good twentysome years later via The Big "C".
***
I guess ya hadda grow up with Unwin to enjoy him, because frankly I really don't care for his swichawordy kinda humor that may be clever but wears thin for a guy like me whose idea of classic humor is watching someone you hate's head get smashed on the sidewalk. As you better know by now, I'm actually the kinda fanabla who likes old cornballus gags the kind Unwin tosses about like potrzebie. But really this guy just seems to miss a whole lotta marks with me perhaps because his brand of English hoo-hah doesn't have the same swivel that alla them BBC tee-vee imports of the seventies onward did. Then again maybe there just ain't anything to rip roar about these sad 'n sorry days, that is unless you can get your kicks chortling at the misfortunes of people you absolutely loathe just like I do. For serious Anglojokesters only.
***
Another lost entry (and the second by this act to be reviewed in these "pages") in the eighties "cassette culture" sweepstakes that might have been mentioned in the pages of OP...I dunno. Pretty hotcha stuff too, what with the interesting neo-electronic sounding drones going up and down the speakers and the amorphous music settling well within your screwed-beyond-belief psyche. Nothing that's gonna make any of us wanna toss the tootsie rolls in pure ecstasy,but a definite maybe should have for those of you who used to send away for these things thinking you were on the cutting edge of technological music. Of course all you got in return was a tape of casiotone cantatas recorded by some bedroom boy who passed 'em off as culturally significant swill, but didn't you feel great about it???
***
Various Artists-INSENSITIVE CUMQUAT RAG CD-r burn (Bill Shute)It was the Studebaker onna cover that drove me to this and man, was this one of the better choices I made in my life since I switched from Peach Pomade to Vaseline Intensive Care! Roy Brooks begins things with a bluesy jazz jam called "The Free Slave". After that it's and up and down roller coaster ride going from the exciting (the Rock-A-Bouts as well as the South Amerigan Beatle beat of Los Shakers and Lose Mitos) to the snoozeville sounds of Duncan Lamont and his Holiday Inn Lounge band you can just imagine some washed-up salesman puffin' cigs away to before headin' back to his room for the night. Much of it is top notch though, and if you can't chortle a bit to Charley Weaver singing "It's Cumquat Time in Mount Ivy" (gee do I miss the original HOLLYWOOD SQUARES!) then you must be an uptight prissy just like your average repressed school marm or social justice warrior...same thing! Big surprise here is the saxophone-laden turn of the century recording from the Six Brown Brothers...sheesh, I always thought that the sax was thought of as the instrument of s-xual seduction back then so a number like this really must have been considered scandalous! Oh the shame!!!!
Yet again, Chris, your week beats my year.
ReplyDeleteI want that Hellbender lp & Ungry 7"! Better save my scheckels and hope for a UK supplier...