I know, your second beats my life or something equally as hackneyed as that. True 'nuff, but at least I spent my life (well, a good portion of it!) burrowing into the tastier portions of existence whether it be music, books, visual stimulation or just plain suburban slob fun. And lo these many years later I'm continuing on that (hopefully) eternal quest to HEAR it all, READ it all and SEE it all which is gonna be a pretty Herculean task considering all of the music, books, mags, tee-vee shows and moom pitchers worthy of mine senses out there to enjoy, but I'm gonna give it a good 'nuff try anyway. And I somehow get the same strange feelin' that YOU TOO are in on that life journey to ABSORB IT ALL if only because you had the good enough sense to tune into this very blog. For that I would commend you, only even I gotta admit that something like that does come off a little bit cornballus.
While we're on the subject of purloined internet rarities, I finally got to read Nick Kent's legendary (or so I've been told) piece on Nick Drake, the latter a guy who I still can't really cozy up to perhaps because he's such a downer that I feel like doubling up on the Celexa every time I give the guy a listen! Of course Kent's writing abilities make me wanna go out and buy Drake's entire recorded output for yet another coagulation just like his pieces on everyone from such disparate acts as Ian Dury to even good ol' Joni Mitchell do, which may say more about my own weaknesses as it does his writing abilities but so what! I mean, did you even care about Rod Stewart until you read that book by Lester Bangs now, didja? (Well not me, since I thought even then that Bangs was just tryin' to latch onto some easy money and given his financial straits who could blame 'im?)
Also managed to find the Alain Pacadis interview with William Burroughs. Woosh, talk about when two junkie fags meet---it sure is a humbling experience!
As far as extra-musicular activities go, gotta admit that I actually pulled out the debut Magma set for another appreciation, undoubtedly due to the Adrien article/interview I culled from the internet. When I first heard the thing I dismissed it as a slightly offbeat imitation of Chicago, but now I can fully understand this as being the first step in a Kobian Odyssey that improved with time. Yeah at times it can be duller'n the King Family with a few Lawrence Welk audiences, but when Christian Vander and band get into those European classical modes they sure transcend the usual jazz rock into something a whole lot more...otherworldly to be quaint about it. I gotta find the INEDITS platter in my collection for yet another appreciation one-a-these-days...
id m theft able-2 AUTOHARPS, A SNOWMOBILE, SOME SNOWPLOWS, A PREMATURE SNOWBLOWER CD (Feeding Tube Records)
Here's one of those aleatorical kinda musical efforts that comes off about as well as anyone into those kinda things would expect 'em to. Some guy called id m theft able (!) placed two autoharps on an old card table during all that bad weather we were having last January and recorded the sound of freezing rain plinking and plunking the strings while snowplows would occasionally roar by. This goes on for about an hour and the results make more musical sense outta natural situations than listening to wind chimes I'll tell ya. Kinda comes off like those old Joe Jones Tone Deaf Music Company efforts only without Yoko Ono wailing along. If this id m guy had been around in the late sixties, you can bet that there would have been a good article on him in SOURCE magazine (sorta like the guy who created musical scores by shooting buckshot right into the staff paper) even if the actual music'd never make the ten inch records that they used to slip into 'em.
Jesus Vio-DUTCH SCIENCE CD (Feeding Tube Records)
Might be a bit too melodically saturated with too bright an outlook (see Violent Femmes review below) for my general tastes, but I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with Jesus Vio's general approach to the rock 'n roll idiom. In fact I thought that "Eye to Eye" was a relatively moving track with its references to various mid-seventies neo-folk styles, and if anyone out there's deserving of a future in the music biz it's gotta be Vio. Maybe if you look upon DUTCH SCIENCE as a post-post-Meat Puppets when they got more into a West Coast groove you'll get it as well. Mild, and not offensive like most of those ameralterna types could have gotten o'er the years.
Bijou-REDESCENDS SUR TERRE CD (Last Call Records, France)
For being an album recorded by seventies punk rock survivors rather late in the game (2006) I gotta say this really ain't that bad. Sure it does show the usual wear and tear that these kinda groups could experience once they, along with the music, sorta slipped outside their own particular era, but Bijou still had the same hot rock and pop approach they did back in the days when there sure was a lot more of this breed of high energy sound than the dudes at the local FM station woulda dared to have believed. Pretty good rock 'n roll (in the punk pre "punque" style) that only make me yearn for a collection of Bijou tracks from their earlier days back when words like Open Market and Skydog sent thrill chills through the spines of more'n a few heavy duty rock-starved patrons out there!
Kraftwerk-LIVE AND LOUD RADIO CD-r burn
The last in the P.D. Fadensonnen burns features a Kraftwerk live session featuring the AUTOBAHN band romping through everything from "Ruckzuck" to some RALF UND FLORIAN faves all in FM glory. Nothing here is as caustic as the Kraftwerk of 1970, but you might be able to eke some funtime thrills outta the electric pinball sounds not to mention the Tic-Tacs splattering across the floor as Lester Bangs once put it. The perfect music to listen to in between morning calisthenics and other KdF-approved activities for you pure-race minded types out there.
The Violent Femmes-ADD IT UP (1981-1993) CD-r burn
Rilly, these guys don't sound as "twee" as I remembered, but that's only because many other acts out there in alternative to music land eventually outdid these guys in the tweedom department. Not bad at all if you have a stronger opinion of the late-seventies Modern Lovers than I (sometimes) tend to, but seventy-three minutes of this stuff is guaranteed to prepare you for a stay in the re-education camp of your choice.
WINGLESS ANGELS CD-r burn (originally on Mindless Records)
Primitive down-homey reggae music (most all of it variations of "Kumbaya" an' I mean it!) sung as a chorale with minimal instrumental backing. Lotsa famous people were involved so it can't be as up-from-the-roots as you would like it to be, but the general approach and stripped down island melodies make this rather appealing to the nerve endings even for reggae poo-poo'ers like myself. I'll bet this coulda gotten the phony intellectual kidz all hot and bothered just like they were when the MUSIC OF BULGARIA album made its way through more'n a few college dorms back inna mid-sixties.
Various Artists-PICCADILLY SUNSHINE, PART 19 CD-r burn
There must have been TONS of these foppy English psychedelic pop records comin' out back inna late-sixties, and this nice selection proves that the form wasn't as goopy as those Tintin singles woulda led us to believe. This is a good mix of neo-nostalgia and pseudo-Beatles music with an overall lilt that reminds me of similar efforts by the Troggs, Peter and Gordon, and Andy Ellison, all guaranteed to get those iron-haired gals in Junior High all weepy to the point where they'd wet all over their pressed leaf collections. Look for a pre-SAHB Alex Harvey in the mix as well as an English act that dared call itself the Chocolate Watchband!
Various Artists-GREEN ROADRUNNER ODORS CD-r burn (Bill Shute)***Not being a guy who takes life too lightly I have been doing them usual things in order to stimulate my rockist (sub)consciousness. Por ejemplo, I've been capturing various Yves Adrien writings (including one of his "I Sing the Music Electrique" columns) that have been turned into English via the internet translating system that usually brings forth high-larious results. An' y'know what...these things read just as high energy gonzoid rock writing in automatic French to English form complete with the expected gaffes and unintentional (?) spelling errors as they would had they been written in the English language. Ten pages that sum up everything that was so important and vital in my (dunno about your) rock 'n roll are to be had and boy am I glad about it. I guess rock 'n roll really was that Universal Youth Language so many people told us it was after all even if for the most part most kids I knew loathed it in its purest, most unadulterated form!
While we're on the subject of purloined internet rarities, I finally got to read Nick Kent's legendary (or so I've been told) piece on Nick Drake, the latter a guy who I still can't really cozy up to perhaps because he's such a downer that I feel like doubling up on the Celexa every time I give the guy a listen! Of course Kent's writing abilities make me wanna go out and buy Drake's entire recorded output for yet another coagulation just like his pieces on everyone from such disparate acts as Ian Dury to even good ol' Joni Mitchell do, which may say more about my own weaknesses as it does his writing abilities but so what! I mean, did you even care about Rod Stewart until you read that book by Lester Bangs now, didja? (Well not me, since I thought even then that Bangs was just tryin' to latch onto some easy money and given his financial straits who could blame 'im?)
Also managed to find the Alain Pacadis interview with William Burroughs. Woosh, talk about when two junkie fags meet---it sure is a humbling experience!
As far as extra-musicular activities go, gotta admit that I actually pulled out the debut Magma set for another appreciation, undoubtedly due to the Adrien article/interview I culled from the internet. When I first heard the thing I dismissed it as a slightly offbeat imitation of Chicago, but now I can fully understand this as being the first step in a Kobian Odyssey that improved with time. Yeah at times it can be duller'n the King Family with a few Lawrence Welk audiences, but when Christian Vander and band get into those European classical modes they sure transcend the usual jazz rock into something a whole lot more...otherworldly to be quaint about it. I gotta find the INEDITS platter in my collection for yet another appreciation one-a-these-days...
***Did have a nice go of it reviewin' the following flotsam. Thanks again go to the likes of Bill Shute, Paul McGarry, P.D. Fadensonnen and Feeding Tube Records (who sent me a lovely package tho I only managed to get to the Cee-Dee offerings this week) for the items. After going through the following bevy o' beauts all I gotta say is that you as well as I can piss on about how much we all hate 2019, but as long as you have a good set of ears there's really nothing for us to piss on about, y'know?
Here's one of those aleatorical kinda musical efforts that comes off about as well as anyone into those kinda things would expect 'em to. Some guy called id m theft able (!) placed two autoharps on an old card table during all that bad weather we were having last January and recorded the sound of freezing rain plinking and plunking the strings while snowplows would occasionally roar by. This goes on for about an hour and the results make more musical sense outta natural situations than listening to wind chimes I'll tell ya. Kinda comes off like those old Joe Jones Tone Deaf Music Company efforts only without Yoko Ono wailing along. If this id m guy had been around in the late sixties, you can bet that there would have been a good article on him in SOURCE magazine (sorta like the guy who created musical scores by shooting buckshot right into the staff paper) even if the actual music'd never make the ten inch records that they used to slip into 'em.
***
Might be a bit too melodically saturated with too bright an outlook (see Violent Femmes review below) for my general tastes, but I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with Jesus Vio's general approach to the rock 'n roll idiom. In fact I thought that "Eye to Eye" was a relatively moving track with its references to various mid-seventies neo-folk styles, and if anyone out there's deserving of a future in the music biz it's gotta be Vio. Maybe if you look upon DUTCH SCIENCE as a post-post-Meat Puppets when they got more into a West Coast groove you'll get it as well. Mild, and not offensive like most of those ameralterna types could have gotten o'er the years.
***
For being an album recorded by seventies punk rock survivors rather late in the game (2006) I gotta say this really ain't that bad. Sure it does show the usual wear and tear that these kinda groups could experience once they, along with the music, sorta slipped outside their own particular era, but Bijou still had the same hot rock and pop approach they did back in the days when there sure was a lot more of this breed of high energy sound than the dudes at the local FM station woulda dared to have believed. Pretty good rock 'n roll (in the punk pre "punque" style) that only make me yearn for a collection of Bijou tracks from their earlier days back when words like Open Market and Skydog sent thrill chills through the spines of more'n a few heavy duty rock-starved patrons out there!
***
The last in the P.D. Fadensonnen burns features a Kraftwerk live session featuring the AUTOBAHN band romping through everything from "Ruckzuck" to some RALF UND FLORIAN faves all in FM glory. Nothing here is as caustic as the Kraftwerk of 1970, but you might be able to eke some funtime thrills outta the electric pinball sounds not to mention the Tic-Tacs splattering across the floor as Lester Bangs once put it. The perfect music to listen to in between morning calisthenics and other KdF-approved activities for you pure-race minded types out there.
***
Rilly, these guys don't sound as "twee" as I remembered, but that's only because many other acts out there in alternative to music land eventually outdid these guys in the tweedom department. Not bad at all if you have a stronger opinion of the late-seventies Modern Lovers than I (sometimes) tend to, but seventy-three minutes of this stuff is guaranteed to prepare you for a stay in the re-education camp of your choice.
***
Primitive down-homey reggae music (most all of it variations of "Kumbaya" an' I mean it!) sung as a chorale with minimal instrumental backing. Lotsa famous people were involved so it can't be as up-from-the-roots as you would like it to be, but the general approach and stripped down island melodies make this rather appealing to the nerve endings even for reggae poo-poo'ers like myself. I'll bet this coulda gotten the phony intellectual kidz all hot and bothered just like they were when the MUSIC OF BULGARIA album made its way through more'n a few college dorms back inna mid-sixties.
***
There must have been TONS of these foppy English psychedelic pop records comin' out back inna late-sixties, and this nice selection proves that the form wasn't as goopy as those Tintin singles woulda led us to believe. This is a good mix of neo-nostalgia and pseudo-Beatles music with an overall lilt that reminds me of similar efforts by the Troggs, Peter and Gordon, and Andy Ellison, all guaranteed to get those iron-haired gals in Junior High all weepy to the point where they'd wet all over their pressed leaf collections. Look for a pre-SAHB Alex Harvey in the mix as well as an English act that dared call itself the Chocolate Watchband!
***
Loadsa old radio ads on this 'un which is always a good thing for me. Funny enough, during the big thirties/forties nostalgia boom of the 1970/71 Silent Majority season I woulda hadda pay lotsa dough to hear these commercials and old radio shows and nowadays I can get 'em all for free! The music ain't nothing to up snoot at either what with some act called Odor Baby performing this avant garde electronic sound that reminds me that mosquito season is upon us. The rest of this seems to be filled up with more'n the usual Amerigan garage band vibrations of the past from neat organ-based instrumentals (the Roadrunners) to the Sires' one-note low fidelity grind. The Merseybeats do a good Beatles via Dr. Feelgood and the Interns on "Mr. Moonlight" while Al Green strays far from his deep laidback style on "Hotwire". Hey, if Bill didn't bring these things to my attention would any of you guys know about it at all???
***If you can't get enough BLOG TO COMM (despite a good fifteen years of continuous blogging) then maybe you can help fulfill your wildest fantasies by picking up some BLACK TO COMM back issues which are guaranteed to straighten you out faster than Dr. Joseph Nicolosi. Got more'n enough here to help you in that battle against the terminal jive which seems to be winning more and more as time creeps on.
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