All excited over the royal wedding? Say "YO!" if yer as bored as me*. Otherwise, I've been trying to ignore the nuptuals and other sundries by doing things of a decidedly non-royal nature such as watching a whole lotta FETV (now showing TWO hours of PETER GUNN on Saturday and Sunday nights not to mention ROY ROGERS, THE LONE RANGER and----HAZEL??????? [hokay, that ain't a hot 'un by any stretch of the imagination but I sure wanna see their anti rock 'n roll episode!]), not to mention gabbing a whole lot on the telephone with my Close Personal Friend Don Fellman! Man, you haven't LIVED if you ain't heard Don do his impression of Howdy Doody singing not only John Lennon's "Mother" complete with the primal scream but (now get this!) Lennon's "God" with relevant to Doodyville lyrics ("I don't believe in Buffalo Bob---I don't believe in Clarabell---I don't believe in Chief Thunderthud---I don't believe in Dilly Dally---I don't believe in Princess Summerfall Winterspring---I don't believe in Wonder Bread''...). As Eddie Haskell would have said, that's really hilarious, mister!
Anyhoo I put the Seeds platter on and waddaya know, but the music on it is not from the BAD PART OF TOWN album but "Up In Her Room" from WEB OF SOUND! I am grooving on the repeato riff wonder of that thing when I wonder where everyone is at...some young gals, one with long blond slightly wavy hair wearing a summer type dress is there, are talking but totally ambivalent to the music at hand. Oh well, it did seem like the perfect party song for the occasion.
A TALE OF TWO HITTIES
Now that I got one of those bad puns only I like outta the way I must admit that yes, I made a boo-boo like I never made a boo-boo before. After being entranced and aroused by the review of the Yardbirds' new and totally legitimate (re)issue of the live at the Anderson Theater album that popped up in the latest issue of UGLY THINGS, I finally decided to get off my pitted duff and purchase a copy for myself to hear the stark beauty and total eruption that was to have transpired between those grooves or whatever they're called on Cee-Dees. But sheeeee-ucks, what did appear in my mail box but yet another reissue of the old Epic Records LIVE YARDBIRDS (featuring Jimmy Page) effort, complete with the overdubs and phasing, that caused so much strife within the occult soul of Jimmy Page to the point where each and every reissue of this gig (some done with the blessings of the surviving 'birds as well as Keith Relf's very own widow) were unceremoniously shot down.
To rectify the situation I bought the legit "Jimmy Page Music" edition that was touted in UT and thought hey, why not do a side-by-side or at least up-on-down review of BOTH efforts and compare the things not only because it would justify my buying two editions of essentially the same album but hey, I gotta fill these posts up and with something other'n decidedly touchy subject matter that always gets you "more enlightened" readers all in a jumble.
So yeah, here be my opines regarding both the original (more or less) and the new and improved version, and frankly I couldn't think of a better task of writing these records up. Yeah, I am not quite whatcha'd call a Yardbirds enthusiast the way that Bill Shute is, but danged if I don't think that these guys could have evolved into a total eruption late-sixties punk rock entity if they had only stuck it out and recorded albums that reflected the new tone of bared wire intensity that was beginning to grasp at the nodes of teenage Ameriga (and elsewhere) around this time. The LITTLE GAMES platter didn't quite show it but a listen to a downright classic such as LAST RAVE UP IN LA will prove that the Yardbirds were definitely heading for a total energy-drenched style and vision that would have equaled the total eruption path that was beginning to sprout at the exact same time of the group's cave in. Only Woodstock Nation hadda come about and ruin everything.
The Epic platter (here in its "Lost Diamonds" entity) does have what I would call a rather tinny bootleg sound but it still fills whatever satiation the standard loud rock fan of the day needed in his musical diet. The performance is excellent (even Relf sounds relaxed and sincere with his between song raps) and the entire gig drives on with a passion that might have even frightened the MC5. The post-production funzies don't bug me and although the dubbed in audience cheers may be a tad overbearing they do add a cheap charm. I mean, if the Stooges weren't on Elektra and instead ended up on some more bargain basement label and released a live album in 1971 I sure would have expected additional audience sound "enhancement" much in the manner of THE SEEDS RAW AND ALIVE. And it would have worked just as swell!
Of course I can hear just why the Yardbirds nixed this for release and why Page put an end to its brief 1971 appearance. Well, at least it gave us a good 1976 bargain bin classic to contend with, and it sure did fill the bill for most under-the-counterculture types out there (those more of the DENIM DELINQUENT/FLASH/BACKDOOR MAN style of rock appreciation) who could get a buzz not only on the primitive sound and performance but Lenny Kaye's always welcome liner notes. What else could a penny-pinching depression-era wages kid want in his cut out rack anyway?
Well years later these same kids now have fairly good jobs and don't have to think twice about picking up items such as these, and since good things always come to those who wait what else has popped up but the new Jimmy Page version of this legendary set! Well, not quite thee set but close enough. Heavily edited but it sure sounds great as it approaches a typically late-sixties punk rock apex and comes off almost as AN ENTIRELY NEW ALBUM without the dubbed in roars and Relf's between song patter. But even in its crystalline state this show proceeds to perform miracles...after all it sure turned my cheap bedside boombox into an expensive stereo set! Straight ahead and to the point with the high class sound actually giving a different dimension to the familiar rumblings that are to be heard and if a stridently anti-clarity Luddite such as myself can be charmed by this, who knows what it could do to YOU!
***I like dreams that not only reflect my own rock et roll outlook on life, but ones which sorta churn up old feelygoods of the past that I haven't experienced in ages. Like take this one I had a week or so back where I am invited to what seems like a fambly-type get together at some old Eyetalian lady's place in Farrell PA, just south of here. For some reason I decide to take along some records including the Seeds' BAD PART OF TOWN collection on Eva to liven things up. Anyway, the party is being held in a nice little ranch house in a nice suburban slob section of the city and lo and behold, when I get into the basement the rec room there looks a whole lot like what my own fambly's did way back when, including the EXACT SAME STEREO SYSTEM (looking immaculate!) that we used to play those 99-cent cheapo Mary Poppins knockoffs on when I was a mere tot.
Anyhoo I put the Seeds platter on and waddaya know, but the music on it is not from the BAD PART OF TOWN album but "Up In Her Room" from WEB OF SOUND! I am grooving on the repeato riff wonder of that thing when I wonder where everyone is at...some young gals, one with long blond slightly wavy hair wearing a summer type dress is there, are talking but totally ambivalent to the music at hand. Oh well, it did seem like the perfect party song for the occasion.
***Another fun filled review section ya bet. Thanks to Bill Shute, P. D. Fadensonnen, Mental Experience and Paul McGarry for the freebees which as you know really do keep the costs way down and gives me more moolah in my pockets for those Vietnamese take outs from Mogobo that I sure desire! Hope you learn something from these writeups, but given how you still haven't picked up on Umela Hmota yet A sincerely doubt that you will.
A TALE OF TWO HITTIES
Now that I got one of those bad puns only I like outta the way I must admit that yes, I made a boo-boo like I never made a boo-boo before. After being entranced and aroused by the review of the Yardbirds' new and totally legitimate (re)issue of the live at the Anderson Theater album that popped up in the latest issue of UGLY THINGS, I finally decided to get off my pitted duff and purchase a copy for myself to hear the stark beauty and total eruption that was to have transpired between those grooves or whatever they're called on Cee-Dees. But sheeeee-ucks, what did appear in my mail box but yet another reissue of the old Epic Records LIVE YARDBIRDS (featuring Jimmy Page) effort, complete with the overdubs and phasing, that caused so much strife within the occult soul of Jimmy Page to the point where each and every reissue of this gig (some done with the blessings of the surviving 'birds as well as Keith Relf's very own widow) were unceremoniously shot down.
To rectify the situation I bought the legit "Jimmy Page Music" edition that was touted in UT and thought hey, why not do a side-by-side or at least up-on-down review of BOTH efforts and compare the things not only because it would justify my buying two editions of essentially the same album but hey, I gotta fill these posts up and with something other'n decidedly touchy subject matter that always gets you "more enlightened" readers all in a jumble.
So yeah, here be my opines regarding both the original (more or less) and the new and improved version, and frankly I couldn't think of a better task of writing these records up. Yeah, I am not quite whatcha'd call a Yardbirds enthusiast the way that Bill Shute is, but danged if I don't think that these guys could have evolved into a total eruption late-sixties punk rock entity if they had only stuck it out and recorded albums that reflected the new tone of bared wire intensity that was beginning to grasp at the nodes of teenage Ameriga (and elsewhere) around this time. The LITTLE GAMES platter didn't quite show it but a listen to a downright classic such as LAST RAVE UP IN LA will prove that the Yardbirds were definitely heading for a total energy-drenched style and vision that would have equaled the total eruption path that was beginning to sprout at the exact same time of the group's cave in. Only Woodstock Nation hadda come about and ruin everything.
Of course I can hear just why the Yardbirds nixed this for release and why Page put an end to its brief 1971 appearance. Well, at least it gave us a good 1976 bargain bin classic to contend with, and it sure did fill the bill for most under-the-counterculture types out there (those more of the DENIM DELINQUENT/FLASH/BACKDOOR MAN style of rock appreciation) who could get a buzz not only on the primitive sound and performance but Lenny Kaye's always welcome liner notes. What else could a penny-pinching depression-era wages kid want in his cut out rack anyway?
Well years later these same kids now have fairly good jobs and don't have to think twice about picking up items such as these, and since good things always come to those who wait what else has popped up but the new Jimmy Page version of this legendary set! Well, not quite thee set but close enough. Heavily edited but it sure sounds great as it approaches a typically late-sixties punk rock apex and comes off almost as AN ENTIRELY NEW ALBUM without the dubbed in roars and Relf's between song patter. But even in its crystalline state this show proceeds to perform miracles...after all it sure turned my cheap bedside boombox into an expensive stereo set! Straight ahead and to the point with the high class sound actually giving a different dimension to the familiar rumblings that are to be heard and if a stridently anti-clarity Luddite such as myself can be charmed by this, who knows what it could do to YOU!
True I really like the buzz of the original, but somehow this pristine version strikes me in a just as weird a rock time traipse as WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT or FUNHOUSE did, as a music that was saying goodbye to a well-worn previous sense of existence while charging straight into unexplored terrain. The additional disque featuring "studio sketches" adds to this undeniable mystique, with tracks such as "Avron Knows" and the future "Tangerine" ("Knowing That I'm Losing You") sounding so good that you wish they woulda popped up on that LITTLE GAMES album if only to beef it up a li'l.
For pure cheapness as the ultimate bargain get hold of the original. Those yearning for an added dimension into a common mid-seventies bargain bin stuffer try YARDBIRDS '68. Of course us longtime old fogey fans and sixties rah-rah-ers for the more addled portion of that decade will just have to get BOTH so like, save that lunch money and remember that when you're ready to sell plasma, the plasma's ready for YOU, or something like that.
***
Great package (a riff on the old Punk Vault series) and great music from the still dreaded this late in the rock 'n roll game Pagans. Side one's the band live at the Drome back during the Detroit Avenue days when that shop used to have in-store gigs in order to break up the afternoon monotony. Recorded by Paul Marotta and Jamie Klimek the quality is rough and tumble but fits the over-the-board performance just fine. (Hey Paul, have you found any of those Bernie and the Invisibles and Harlan and the Whips tapes that are supposedly wallowing around in your collection?) Flip it over and ya get THREE count 'em versions of the infamous "Six and Change" session, two outtakes and the one that eventually came out and went fast back '77 way. Sheesh what a top notch deal...kinda makes me wish that this got released around the time when I coulda gotten them joy thrills picking up a copy that I could not clearly afford at the Drome myself...
***
I guess if Elliott Murphy could remake AQUASHOW all them years later the Dead Boys, or at least what's left of 'em, could do YOUNG, LOUD AND SNOTTY a good four decades after the fact. The Stiv replacement sounds Bators-ish enough and the playing is pretty much the same as the original (tho I haven't had the opportunity to do any side-by-side comparisons), but unfortunately it isn't the same real deal. However, as far as conjuring up old memories of a past I sure wish I would have lived instead of the one that I did, this does work swimmingly well.
***
This reissue of an extremely limited (150 copies) Swiss freak jazz platter should please many of you European music fans who like the way various Amerigan ideals in the realm of the new sounds were translated into Continental. At times this comes off like some bizarroid outtake from one of those Frank Zappa fusion effort albums, but at others it pretty much tramples over you in ways that only these spaced o-mind Euro types can do. Contains some pretty scronky violin playing that reminds me of a cross twixt Leroy Jenkins and Sugar Cane Harris...here's one for whatever Mother People types may still be around since them days of Bizarre Records!
***
This thing starts off not unlike one of your typical mid-seventies import bin offerings what with the wash of Moog and Mellotron reminding me of that Omega album on Passport of all things (which would figure considering how this was also recorded at Dieter Dierks' studio), but unlike a good portion of the Euro proggy types the platter gets better as it progresses. By the end it even turns into a pretty ear-groping hard rock effort that recalls such classics as My Solid Ground. Although TEMPLE ain't as punk rock-y as that effort it does make a good enough try and might actually be worth parting with your precious pennies for, that is if you're the kind of guy who wants to listen to an album that starts off in a particularly progressive manner and ends up with some fairly decent Germanic hard rock.
***
Here be a good one to bust me outta my mid-spring ennui. Beautiful short bursts of atonal blunderbuss music with heavy tubbed up drumming accompanying beautiful non-melodic (at times, OK?) screech created not only by "Amphetamericanpsycho Guitar" but synth and stylophone! Andrew Hurst gets mucho BTC no-prizes for playing some of the best heavy thunk since a) Maureen Tucker b) Twink c) you washing machine on spin with an uneven load while P. D. Fadensonnen conjures up more fave under-the-underground moments than your mind can remember (really!). Free your ear canals and your psyche will follow.
***
Never knew that the serious folkdom freaks at Takoma Records issued anything outside of the usual Faheyisms we'd all expect, but lo and behold there was a platter of a definitely non-acoustic nature released by 'em. The group was Laser Pace, the title GRANFALLOON (and if they copped that one directly from the once-well known fanzine 'stead of Vonnegut I'll be stymied!) and the year was 1974, a particularly good time for these electronic fusion-y kinda things to come out inna first place. It's a halfway decent thing too, with these weird female vocals that sorta remind me of Anisette with a clogged up nose to some interesting synth squall neo-jazz that for once doesn't sound like Return to Forever filtered through John McLaughlin's bunghole. Might make a good flea market find for you in five or so years.
***
Gotta admit that I was under the impression that Moloch were some sorta mid-South Stooges types drenched in backwater blooze, or at least that's what I thought after reading a few mentions of these guys here/there. As you'd guess my preconceived notions were off the mark. MOLOCH is mid-South backwater blooze for sure, but the primal surge of the Stooges are nowhere to be found on this effort which I kinda find interesting on one hand, though on the other it doesn't pop any proverbial cherries into realms of high energy screech more attuned to my own listening parameters. Might yours tho.
***
Various Artists-WALNUT COME-ON HANGIN' ON CD-r burn (Bill Shute)And in closing, here's a Bill Shute burn which strangely enough not only features a number of Billy Joe "Down in the Boondocks" Royal tracks but OMITS Jurica Feli's "Walnut Roots" which is strange because the title of this disque clearly mentions this particular track! Come to think of it Royal's "I've Got to be Somebody" ain't here either...guess Bill needed more room to put those old Domino's Pizza commercials on and SOMETHING needed to be axed! Still a good selection of funzies what with one of those cornballus but fine country twangers that went nowhere as well as a soul number from a Bonnie & Sheila entitled "You Keep Me Hangin' On" which surprises of surprises ain't the Supremes hit, and a Jimmy McGriff rendition of the old Al Green hit "Let's Stick Together". Nice cover too, but would you buy a used Rambler from that man???
***Once again, a gentle reminder to you readers that by-now ANCIENT issues of BLACK TO COMM, the fanzine which spawned all of this internet dribble which you are now reading, are still available and at prices which (at times) are way lower'n what you might have to pay whenever these things pop up on ebay. If you like, click on the above link and let your imagination feast upon what thrills will be awaiting you once you lay your hands on these legendary reads. If you like, ignore the whole thing...I mean, what else is new?
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*I don't give it much time tho, especially after she finds out he farts in bed.
ReplyDeleteI'd never heard of that Laser Pace record, but when it comes to perplexing Takoma releases, this Craig Leon LP surely takes the biscuit:
https://www.superiorviaduct.com/products/craig-leon-nommos-lp
I remember taping the original version of the Live Yardbirds from WBCN circa 1978. & playing it until the tape broke. I also got the new version after reading the UT review & I wasn't disappointed w/it in the musical sense. However, it was a bit pricy for a 2 CD set that held 40 minutes of music on one disc & 25 minutes on the other. Maybe Mr. Page should have included the original version even if to show how improved his version is. I also noticed that the Who Fillmore set was also a bit overpriced.
ReplyDelete