BLOG TO COMM

My, aren't these interesting times we're living in! And what could get more interesting that watching a pack of so-called communists who think they are "anarchists" (though I sincerely doubt that any of 'em have ever read or will even consider reading a real anarchist like Lew Rockwell) smash up the Berkeley campus in order to shut down that "far right" (?---guess they never heard of Andrew Anglin) and former "Fag of the Year" here at BTC speaker Milo Yiannopolous! But you say "Chris, why would these people go to such extremes busting up their own campus and surrounding areas just because they disagree with a person's opinions...are these views held by Mr. Yiannopolous that incendiary that they deserve to be kept out of the public discourse???" I know what you mean...after all if the folk at Berkeley find that child molesters and black nationalists are OK to speak their minds then why not a guy who has made his mark in life pointing out the foibles of today's pampered minions like Yiannopolous has been doing for the past few years. But for some reason or another these precocious leaders of tomorrow find Mr. Y's opines, which frankly aren't that different from most Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch types, way beyond the fringe of the usually accepted speech that we should be exposed to here in these oh-so-oppressive teens.

It doesn't seem so strange that a whole passel of deeply-moved sensitive laid back moderne punque types, the kind you see in areas such as San Francisco and environs, would be driven to violence in this sort of fashion just because of Yiannopolous's mere appearance in the belly of the beast (hah!), and it wasn't that surprising when I had the misfortune of just having tuned ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT on last Thursday evening hearing a real beta-faggot like David Muir explain away the rioting by mentioning that Yiannopolous has made many a startling and outside the norm of polite conversation remarks about various touchy-feely subjects such as "hate crimes" oh-so-conveniently leaving out the "fake" part of the equation out. I guess Yiannopolous (as well as the likes of Jim Goad who does what Mr. Y does only on a more basic level!) gives credence to these masked ozobs pepper spraying gals in MAGA hats after all which I guess gives me the right to physically attack peaceful protesters who somehow offend my feelings and ideals! Great bit of journalistic credo you chalked up there, Dave!

Both cartoons reprinted courtesy Ben Garrison...a big hefty thanks to he!

Of course even ABC and presumably the rest of the bigtime news outfits don't match the neo-Marxist shills at the Huffington Post who in their defense of the Berkeley brouhaha just hadda bring up the ol' Twitter controversy where Yiannapolous ripped into last year's GHOSTBUSTERS remake, the one with that black woman who is about as unfunny as that SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE show she's on has been for over thirty-five years. Whoever this woman is actually managed, despite her lack of white privilege, limited Yiannopolous' right to express his views which is one action that I would surmise is (at this very moment) making Nat Hentoff's fresh corpse wanna rot at an even further pace! Sheesh, if I were taken to task for all of the bad reviews of deservedly so music that I wrote these past XXX years I woulda been chopped up and sold for roast pork at Cash Market ages ago and hey, since when was it considered "racist" (even in today's stretched out definition of the term) to knock a bad performance by a black woman who really was nothing but a SNL diversity hire anyway! Knock a duff movie and get called every name under the sun...one of the new tactics of those who don't even try hard because hey, what is the humor industry these days other'n a pack of pampered scions of the upper class railing away at "the system" (that they are part of, don't kid yourself) in a way that woulda made the daddy of it all Lenny Bruce wanna do a bitta wincing himself!

What really puts the frosting on the cuck is that the Berkeley police made no arrests and that (at least as of this post) none of the perps are ever gonna see justice for their behavior which only lends a sick credence to their pithy cause. Of course that's been the rule at least since the days of ACT UP where all of the scum of the earth who have been perpetrating these acts of violence against pure decency are in the good ol' right and that Mr. Foot-The-Bill Joe Blow has been born wrong and deserves to continue supporting the leeches who want him dead! Gee, if only people like myself had our cavalry to save us, or at least a pack of angry hardhats who sure did these goons good a good forty-five years back!

But amid the chaos and property-is-theft-so-what-if-I-smash-in-windows violence of it all, all I wonder is sheesh, whatever happened to the good ol' SHOOT TO KILL order of the past which really woulda told these perpetraitors (no sic) what they could do with their circle "A"'s? I am, for one, all in favor of such a deterrent against CRIME as that and truthfully, if I were asked to join in on the street cleaning in this sort of fashion I would be more than glad to participate in such a necessary task! As I get the feeling many of you would. Don't say that I don't believe in doing my civic duty!!!

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Hope ya dig this week's batch...as usual thanks be to Bill Shute, Paul McGarry and P. D. Fadensonnen for their wondrous wares which certainly have kept this blog afloat for a longer time than anyone could imagine. Blame them, not me!


John Cage/Christian Wolff LP (Jeanne Dielman Records, available via Forced Exposure)

I'm sure some of you remember that ROLLING STONE ad where some hippie in headphones looks like he's having some cozmik orgazm listening to the Mainstream Records reissue of the old Time label's avant garde music line. Of course the ad just hadda bring up a whole load of snappy come-on somehow connecting the works of these various moderne-day classical composers to the various doodlings that were all the rage, and I'm sure even a casual reader of STONE woulda known that the entire concept of the ad was pure phonus-balonus even if everyone knew that Grace Slick dropped 5000 mg of Orange Sunshine while spinning "Fontana Mix" backwards as Paul Kantner impregnated her with none other'n "god" herself while Rex Reed took personal snaps for the latest edition of HOLIDAY magazine.

Good stuff here...a-side has John Cage and David Tudor sticking pipe cleaners into phonograph cartridges and rubbing the cleaners up against various musical instruments and/or piano strings. If you did this in your dad's den boy would you get the bejabbers beat outta ya, but since these guys know what they're doing it's A-OK. Flip has Christian Wolff doing some more standard chamber-like stuff which might not be as all-enveloping as Cage's side, but you might find some joy to behold. A pretty hot sample of what was going on in the serious music world back in the early-sixties, and if hippies copped a whole lotta ideas from this record well...remember they had the good quality drugs to listen to this to and you don't!

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Unfit Structures-VAMPIRE BELT (or is is Vampire Belt-UNFIT STRUCTURES???) CD-r burn

Bill Nace and Chris Corsano make up this electric guitar/drums duo and you know what? These guys can do the electronic overload free play game almost if not just as good as those other guitar/drums acts, Bob Thompson and Doug Snyder included! Maybe it ain't as "rock 'n roll-y" as DAILY DANCE, but it can sure startle your subconscious the way the guitar roars forth while Corsano does a rather neat Sunny Murray impression if I do say so myself. More proof that it ain't all over like I tend to kid myself into thinking once in awhile. By the way, is "Unfit Structures" a play on Cecil Taylor's UNIT STRUCTURES?

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Surplus Stock-HOLLAND IS NOT CD-r burn

Oh boy, yet anudder europeon cassette culture platter just jam-packtus full of casiotone sounds and electronic whirls, with a few little bits of melody and song tossed in to make you feel like...I dunno...normil??? I guess that given the wide availability of cassettes and the plethora of bored kids who somehow thought that their mechanical cantatas were the exact equal of alla that musique concrete their stoned pals turned 'em onto there would have been many tapes of music like this floating about as any regular reader of OP coulda told ya. HOLLAND IS NOT has its share of interesting musical moments that make my ears wanna perk up like a Boxer's, but for the most part I find this the kinda music that drove me to KICKS magazine back when the early-eighties were not shaping up the way I sure hoped they woulda.

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Sonny Bono-NON-LP 45s CD-r burn (originally on Atco)


I don't think this package was officially released as such, but anyhow someone or other (prob'ly Bill) gathered all of Sonny without Cher's rare single sides and slapped 'em on a disque for the sake of, well, having all of Sonny's rare single sides collected in one neat li'l package. It's all what you'd expect, so slip on your caveman vest and groove to the protest self-pity (the best sort!) of "Laugh At Me" and "The Revolution Kind" before being wiped out by Tim Hardin's "Misty Roses" without any audible farts like there were on Hardin's album. Those instrumental b-sides are about as cornballus as the entire Ranwood label's output but still ear-tingling enough that you won't wanna press the skip button. Sometimes I wonder what he saw in that greasy tramp of a wife because he coulda done just as well (if not better) if the two had never met!

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Suicide-CAMDEN PALACE, LONDON 10-30-1986 CD-r burn

As far as I can tell this is the exact same recording that was used on the obscure bootleg WE NEVER SAID WE WERE MUSIC, WE ARE SUICIDE so if you weren't lucky enough to latch onto that one you can probably find this on line with a little dial-digging. And if you missed out on those not up to snuff late-eighties Suicide albums feel warm and toasty in the fact that this recording has very little of the schmooze of those albums and consists of ('cept for that one song that sounds like Barry Manilow's "Can't Smile Without You") pure Suicide repeato riff rock that sounds just as terrifying now as it must have to audiences back in the early-seventies. As far as I'm concerned this is probably one of the last real examples of late-seventies New York energy trying to stay alive in the dismal eighties.

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Hank Ray-MAINSTREAM DEATH COUNTRY CD-r burn (originally on OMD)

I don't go for these new country rock albums that much. However, this Hank Ray guy does a fairly good job of presenting a commercial yet rough enough country rock that doesn't bug me one bit, even in the process creating a downright rock 'n roll classic entitled "Everybody's Into Rock 'N' Roll" which I sure wish I had heard back when I was fourteen 'r so. With Ray's baritone voice and some rather swell melodies to go along with it the guy fails to offend...however sitting through forty-seven minutes of highs and less appealing tracks really became a struggle as it usually is for many of these newer platters which have a number of less-powerful tracks to go along with the good stuff.

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THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM CD-r burn

I can't see what people find funny in those newfangled sitcoms that I occasionally have the misfortune of being exposed to, usually under circumstances I can't escape no matter how hard I try. I mean, I can actually LAUGH at the downright funny gags on BENNY and follow the plot which, come to think of it, had more going for it than these shows which have nothing but yapping heads goin' at each other spewing out things that really don't tickle the funnybone the way a good Jack Benny/Dennis Day rapport sure does. My Sunday evenings are certainly brightened by disques like this which only goes to show you that even in one of the least guffaw-inducing periods in modern history there can be reason to settle back and enjoy a half hour of not having your sense being attacked by today's post-POST-postmodern spew!

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Iggy and the Stooges-WHISKY A GO GO 9/16/73 CD-r burn

I dunno where this one differs with any of the "other" Whisky show tapes but hey, I'll listen to this auto-destruct high energy total eruption rock 'n roll any way I can! Yet another great document of the beyond belief 1973 Stooges tour (which I had no idea was even going on back in suburban slob Ameriga back then---it was like Iggy Pop was totally BANNED from even entering our consciousnesses lest he turn all of Ameriga's kiddies into Burroughsian mind-diseased zombies wreaking havoc on all that was peace and love!) that continues to reverberate even a good fortysome years later. This may have been Iggy's last true stand as an artist we could have all gotten behind, either that or his last attempt at being the new Sky Saxon which would have been totally fine by me!

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The Five Americans-PROGRESSIONS CD-r burn (originally on Abnak Records)

Yep it's them "Western Union" guys a li'l bit after the mid-sixties garage band movement turned into the late-sixties whateveritwas trying to keep up with the times or something like that. No more crazed organ breaks and screams like we got on "I See The Light"...now it's more or less the same more adult contemporary post-bubblegum kinda neo-rock pop that wasn't as good as the Archies or as commercial as Tommy Roe but tells the same tale that other former mid-sixties garage band greats told once the years started rollin' on. The final cut is definitely an interesting take on "Hey Jude" done up just enough to avoid a lawsuit and hey, next to that hippydippy crap that was overtaking youth consciousness at the time this one does sound pretty swell, y'know?

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Various Artists-MAD DIXIELAND HENCHMEN CD-r burn (Bill Shute)

A good one, not only because of five count 'em Animals toonz but for the strange radio ads that are interspersed in between the actual music trackage. I thought these ads might have been created by Nichols and May but given their seventies vintage I guess I am wrong...I think those two were outta the question by that time what with Nichols directing those dirty moom pitchers with Art Garfunkel 'n all. Besides I remember those two not being so funny, kinda cute chirp chirp in a Dave Berg sorta way.

Whoever it was who dood 'em they sure dood some pretty interesting and sexy ads that sorta made me get the idea of what adulthood was gonna be for me when I finally got big enough to enter into one of those funny book stores. Gettin' an earfulla these ads was kinda like a trip back to the deca-seventies which unfortunately evolved into the squeaky eighties by the time I was big enough to enjoy life at its fullest.

The tracks by Chavez & Chaney (kinda like a halfway-decent if weaker Don & Dewey) and the Mohawks were also reet, and frankly I can use some Hamlin's Wizard Oil in my life,! If you can't then may I call you...now what would I call a Wizard Oil hater anyway...it ain't like something you come across everyday now, hunh?