It feels great cruising (no, not that!) into that thing we all call OBLIVION with the kinda high-energy, no-holds-barred music that we like playing the SOUNDTRACK TO OUR OTHERWISE MISERABLE EXISTENCES! And hey, I got a whole lotta these sounds as you will see below. Much to your derision I did have a pretty good time of it spinnin' the platters that I will talk about this week, and for that matter I gotta say that life in general has been rather enjoyable what with the bevy of total eruption kultur in the form of music, reading matter and tee-vee visual/aural stimulation that's been fortifying my ever-budding existence. It ain't like the way I used to feel entering into any record shop or department store bin (or flea market or garage sale for that matter) back when I was but a youngster discoverin' the eternal magic of these sounds for the first time, but if I try I can eke out a few orgones of happiness that remind me of those past thrill chills. Now only if I was still in that adolescent pimple pudge of a body that I got stuck with, belt-waist pustules and all---boy will the effect be just perfect!
Gettit's also airing PETTICOAT JUNCTION which never was my idea of tippy top sixties tee-vee sitcom fun, but it's sure better'n anything that's on these days! Besides what can you say about the first Amerigan tee-vee series with IMPLIED female nudity which is why all ya young boys got them "funny feelings" when ya saw them gals pop up from that water tower!!!! Hubba hubba, but that's ALL yer gonna get...this 'un's even more wholesome than the Osmond Family Christmas Special followed up by the best of STAND UP AND CHEER! Still, PETTICOAT JUNCTION is worthy of a good re-visit because hey, maybe those cornball memories we had were kinda misplaced considerin' alla the hot competition that was goin' on in boob toob land back when the cathode ruled the airwaves!
The record (re)-release situation ain't that bad what with all of the recent dig ups to be found with relative ease such as the Les Rallizes Denudes double header reviewed below. Unfortunately, even though there are plenty of fresh releases out there that any healthy rockist type would need in there collections, something (mainly guts) is keeping me from buying many of these tempting platters. Not that I wouldn't want to hear something like, say, the Electric Funeral Cee-Dee that has just been unleashed upon us, but at this point in time paying an exorbitant about of moolah for a platter that might only satisfy one in part instead of en toto ain't anything that I'm looking forward to during these oft money scrunched days. Dollars to doughnuts I'm probably not gonna live long enough to really saturate myself into said release the way I should, especially since I already have thousands of recordings in my collection that I'm still trying to saturate myself into so why clutter up the situation even more!
Here in 2019 it's kinda like it was a good fortysome years back when I would prowl the record bins at flea markets wondering whether I should part with fifty cents for that JUMP album because of the presence of future Stooge Scott Thurston and figuring out that I better keep the dough in case I can find something I KNOW I'm gonna like a few aisles down. And of course I never did, and of course I ended up kicking myself for passing on Jump inna first place. But man, after years of buying recordings which mostly moil away in the collection I have become skittish regarding parting with my hard-begged as of late. And like, how many years does this soul have on the planet to enjoy all of the worthy music to be had and to its fullest? Sheesh, I better get on that health kick and add a few decades to my life lest I end up on one of those life support machines at the local rest home that smells so bad even the cats wouldn't pee there!
Les Rallizes Denudes + Be-THERE'S NO HEAVEN LIKE HELL 2-LP set (Alternative Fox Records)
Given the dearth of Les Rallizes Denudes recordings these past umpteen years a new entry into the canon like this is most welcome. On this 1975 double-set we get Denudes leader Mizutani stretching out on his guitar with "Be", a synthesiser player of some renown, the latter making some mighty sitar-like wails on his machine which Mizutani so effortlessly plays around. It makes for some great, almost-Krauty music that can remind ya of everything from those Neu! rehearsals to some Family Dog tribal gathering circa late-1966. By LP #2 a bass guitarist and drummer pop into the mix playing rather nonchalantly along with the pair adding a beat that coulda been created by yer kid brother and his friend circa age twelve, but the primal nature only adds to the carnage of it all. For having to wait so long, it was sure worth it!
Lydia Lunch-"Frankie Teardrop"/Suicide-"Frankie Teardrop, The Detective, Meets the Space Alien" 10-inch 33 rpm single (Blast First Petite, England)
Tried in vain to get hold of this back when Blast First was celebratin' Alan Vega's big seventy, and frankly I am surprised that this particular entry in the Suicide 10-inch record series was still available at a relatively inexpensive price! Side "a"'s got Lydia Lunch's version of the infamous Suicide showstopper which fits the bill as far as these tribute kinda things go, but the real deal with this efforts's on the flip which contains a 1976 "demo" for an early version of "Frankie" which has Our Hero as a private shamus paid to pull a hit on an alien by the CIA and at a race track at that! The music riffs over and over like the more familiar version while Vega builds up the tension with his abstract tale of impending violence and a space trip I'm sure Frankie'll never forget! As you'd expect this 13-minute epic makes me want moremoreMORE which I hope comes once all those old tapes are polished up and made presentable for people like us who don't CARE what kinda condition this music is in!
Various Artists-SELECTIONS FROM ARLINGTON RECORDS (BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA) CD-r burn
Here's a country-unto-rock 'n roll platter that had me swinging more'n John Holmes during one of his less excited moments. Dunno why this Arlington label ain't remembered a whole lot more fondly, but they sure had a hotcha roster filled with acts that were more'n apt to take the Western Swing and gussy it up for teenage consumption. Some mighty good acts here like David Hiser singin' the Union Blues on "On Strike" while Chuck Wesley sounds kinda like Henry Aldrich in the middle of a Peter Abelard imitation, post operation that is. Best of all is Sue Golden who sounds like she's but a mere six or so singin' it up like she was a grown woman of at least ten! All you budding Roman Polanskis please take notice!
The Velvet Underground-"Heroin"/"Femme Fatale" 45 rpm single (bootleg)
Nice clear, thick vinyl unfortunately does not house any rare 1967 Velvet Underground sides but the same 1972 Bataclan tracks that have been floating around the tape trading and bootleg circuits for many a year. As if yer expectin' something new and exciting to come outta the Velvet Underground trashcan this late in the game despite the loads of music that has been discovered and has been promised to us for eons on end? Yeah, I guess that I am OBVIOUSLY that stoopid!
SPIRAL WAVE NOMADS LP (Feeding Tube Records)
For about a minute into plunking the needle down on the vinyl I had the strange suspicion this was gonna sound like one of those old Jerry Garcia solo albums where every member of the Marin County Mafia got to do their own little part no matter how humble it may be (well, not really...) but hey, this outta nowhere effort is a whole lot better'n that. Not quite the sappy lovey dovey hippoid effort one might take it to be even though the overdubs of guitars and sitar give this a rather lush sound...in fact it's movingly INTENSE and really envelops you into whatever universe this music is destined to go. Think of psychedelia from the second era when Amon Duul II were recording those double albums filled with maddening mantras and you'll get the drift. So good that the sitar sounds don't even recall those episodes of DRAGNET when Friday and Gannon would bust in on some tripping hippies who thought they were hallucinating the whole sordid affair.
Small Faces-RARITIES CD-r burn (originally on Line Records, Germany)
I remember when that Small Faces album on Pride hit the local bins back inna seventies and was wond'rin exactly what these Small Faces hadda do with the Faces who were currently tearin' up the charts with hits like "Stay With Me" etc. Ah memories...but anyway I'm sure that had I plucked down my hard-begged to get hold of that album I woulda been bored by what exactly transpired within the grooves thinking one thing (hard, unbridled rock) and hearing something not exactly up my rather expansive alley.
All these years later I get the same impression that I woulda had back then...good single sides in an English take on Amerigan soul music. But far from going over any hurdles to get to that ultimate high that can be found not only in the original soul sides, but in many other English acts that could take the basics and build on 'em in their own provincial ways. This goes from A to B and back when an act like, say, the Troggs could start with A and head right for Z and then stop at any letter of the alphabet they care to with relative elan. Not bad, but it could have been done a whole lot smarmier.
Various Artists-TEMPORARY BLUE FOREVER ON A STRING CD-r burn (Bill Shute)
A nice selection of Bill booty to keep da blooze away. Besides the obvious tips of the hats to humor (the Muolo-Savliate Showband medley of mid-sixties English-bred hits bein' just one of 'em!) this has got some mighty fine musical mulch to mosey about. Besides a couple of free jazz rarities from Joe McPhee and Cooper-Moore (the former who I have heard of, the latter not) Bill put on a good piece of late-sixties British psych pop worthy of those PICCADILLY SUNSHINE tracks I reviewed last week (Spectrum), some fairly good home-produced teen pop from the Responsible Teenagers and a whole lotta Indian-styled moom pitcher soundtrack guaranteed to help you digest your curry. And the thing ends with a rare pre-hit Romantics track that you'd probably have to pay big bux for these days if you want it in its original form. Thanks to Bill I saved A LOTTA MONEY and if he could only help out with the grocery bills life would be a whole lot more sweet around here than it is!
***If any of ya get those weird off-brand kinda cable tee-vee outlets yer way, you might wanna try to feast your eyes upon the GETTIT one. Not that you're exactly the kinda guy who's in the market for a Shark vacuum cleaner or wanna get rid of that crepey skin, but during their "off hours" 'r whatever they're called Gettit has been airing some old tee-vee shows worthy of yer attention if not adulation. Just recently I got the opportunity to catch (via block airing!) the earliest episodes of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES which does clear up a few things about who's who and what's what (when I was a kid I had the idea that Jed and Granny were married and that Jethro and Ellie May were brother and sister!), plus just this past Sunday morning I tuned in to find a few episode of THE LUCY SHOW which really brought back them old feelings, 'specially the ones where I have that imminent fear of the science test I have to take the next day but why bother studying because I'm gonna fail the thing anyway!
Gettit's also airing PETTICOAT JUNCTION which never was my idea of tippy top sixties tee-vee sitcom fun, but it's sure better'n anything that's on these days! Besides what can you say about the first Amerigan tee-vee series with IMPLIED female nudity which is why all ya young boys got them "funny feelings" when ya saw them gals pop up from that water tower!!!! Hubba hubba, but that's ALL yer gonna get...this 'un's even more wholesome than the Osmond Family Christmas Special followed up by the best of STAND UP AND CHEER! Still, PETTICOAT JUNCTION is worthy of a good re-visit because hey, maybe those cornball memories we had were kinda misplaced considerin' alla the hot competition that was goin' on in boob toob land back when the cathode ruled the airwaves!
***
 |
| Meanwhile, there is no truth to the rumor that Fran Lebowitz will play Shemp Howard in the new THREE STOOGES revival. |
The record (re)-release situation ain't that bad what with all of the recent dig ups to be found with relative ease such as the Les Rallizes Denudes double header reviewed below. Unfortunately, even though there are plenty of fresh releases out there that any healthy rockist type would need in there collections, something (mainly guts) is keeping me from buying many of these tempting platters. Not that I wouldn't want to hear something like, say, the Electric Funeral Cee-Dee that has just been unleashed upon us, but at this point in time paying an exorbitant about of moolah for a platter that might only satisfy one in part instead of en toto ain't anything that I'm looking forward to during these oft money scrunched days. Dollars to doughnuts I'm probably not gonna live long enough to really saturate myself into said release the way I should, especially since I already have thousands of recordings in my collection that I'm still trying to saturate myself into so why clutter up the situation even more!
Here in 2019 it's kinda like it was a good fortysome years back when I would prowl the record bins at flea markets wondering whether I should part with fifty cents for that JUMP album because of the presence of future Stooge Scott Thurston and figuring out that I better keep the dough in case I can find something I KNOW I'm gonna like a few aisles down. And of course I never did, and of course I ended up kicking myself for passing on Jump inna first place. But man, after years of buying recordings which mostly moil away in the collection I have become skittish regarding parting with my hard-begged as of late. And like, how many years does this soul have on the planet to enjoy all of the worthy music to be had and to its fullest? Sheesh, I better get on that health kick and add a few decades to my life lest I end up on one of those life support machines at the local rest home that smells so bad even the cats wouldn't pee there!
***And in a week just brimmin' fulla surprises the biggest one just hadda be the latest Brad Kohler package which, besides coming with a nice li'l letter, contained two Cee-Dee-Are burns ("on loan"---right!) of not only the relatively recent (pre-Sleazy Pete Christopherson croak) live re-do of THE SECOND ANNUAL REPORT but a rather hotcha pre-manipulated original recording of the group's 1981 Los Angeles gig which I recall had at least one NY ROCKER (or was it TAKE IT!?) crit spewing forth reams of WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT unto Red Crayola comparisons until he was blue in the ol' moosh. That's a good enough tip (considerin' this was reviewed in the pre-Velvets/Crayola as chic stepping stones on that eternal road to amerindie nerdo music) as the show holds up plenty well almost four decades after the fact like all the hot, energetic and downright caustic sounds of the Golden Age of Pure Skronk does. The live re-do of SECOND holds up rather snat-ly as I wouldn't have expected such a blatant tribute as this would, though the sound quality is too perfect for me to enjoy next to the total mud of the original. Still, it's enough to form that big lump in the ol' gullet, but that's not do to your emotional situation as it is to the fact that this music is powerful enough to create a tumor in your very throat!
***Feeding Tube, Bill, Paul and my own financial situation are responsible for the following. You might find something worthy of scrutiny within the following words...
Given the dearth of Les Rallizes Denudes recordings these past umpteen years a new entry into the canon like this is most welcome. On this 1975 double-set we get Denudes leader Mizutani stretching out on his guitar with "Be", a synthesiser player of some renown, the latter making some mighty sitar-like wails on his machine which Mizutani so effortlessly plays around. It makes for some great, almost-Krauty music that can remind ya of everything from those Neu! rehearsals to some Family Dog tribal gathering circa late-1966. By LP #2 a bass guitarist and drummer pop into the mix playing rather nonchalantly along with the pair adding a beat that coulda been created by yer kid brother and his friend circa age twelve, but the primal nature only adds to the carnage of it all. For having to wait so long, it was sure worth it!
***
Tried in vain to get hold of this back when Blast First was celebratin' Alan Vega's big seventy, and frankly I am surprised that this particular entry in the Suicide 10-inch record series was still available at a relatively inexpensive price! Side "a"'s got Lydia Lunch's version of the infamous Suicide showstopper which fits the bill as far as these tribute kinda things go, but the real deal with this efforts's on the flip which contains a 1976 "demo" for an early version of "Frankie" which has Our Hero as a private shamus paid to pull a hit on an alien by the CIA and at a race track at that! The music riffs over and over like the more familiar version while Vega builds up the tension with his abstract tale of impending violence and a space trip I'm sure Frankie'll never forget! As you'd expect this 13-minute epic makes me want moremoreMORE which I hope comes once all those old tapes are polished up and made presentable for people like us who don't CARE what kinda condition this music is in!
***
Here's a country-unto-rock 'n roll platter that had me swinging more'n John Holmes during one of his less excited moments. Dunno why this Arlington label ain't remembered a whole lot more fondly, but they sure had a hotcha roster filled with acts that were more'n apt to take the Western Swing and gussy it up for teenage consumption. Some mighty good acts here like David Hiser singin' the Union Blues on "On Strike" while Chuck Wesley sounds kinda like Henry Aldrich in the middle of a Peter Abelard imitation, post operation that is. Best of all is Sue Golden who sounds like she's but a mere six or so singin' it up like she was a grown woman of at least ten! All you budding Roman Polanskis please take notice!
***
Nice clear, thick vinyl unfortunately does not house any rare 1967 Velvet Underground sides but the same 1972 Bataclan tracks that have been floating around the tape trading and bootleg circuits for many a year. As if yer expectin' something new and exciting to come outta the Velvet Underground trashcan this late in the game despite the loads of music that has been discovered and has been promised to us for eons on end? Yeah, I guess that I am OBVIOUSLY that stoopid!
***
For about a minute into plunking the needle down on the vinyl I had the strange suspicion this was gonna sound like one of those old Jerry Garcia solo albums where every member of the Marin County Mafia got to do their own little part no matter how humble it may be (well, not really...) but hey, this outta nowhere effort is a whole lot better'n that. Not quite the sappy lovey dovey hippoid effort one might take it to be even though the overdubs of guitars and sitar give this a rather lush sound...in fact it's movingly INTENSE and really envelops you into whatever universe this music is destined to go. Think of psychedelia from the second era when Amon Duul II were recording those double albums filled with maddening mantras and you'll get the drift. So good that the sitar sounds don't even recall those episodes of DRAGNET when Friday and Gannon would bust in on some tripping hippies who thought they were hallucinating the whole sordid affair.
***
I remember when that Small Faces album on Pride hit the local bins back inna seventies and was wond'rin exactly what these Small Faces hadda do with the Faces who were currently tearin' up the charts with hits like "Stay With Me" etc. Ah memories...but anyway I'm sure that had I plucked down my hard-begged to get hold of that album I woulda been bored by what exactly transpired within the grooves thinking one thing (hard, unbridled rock) and hearing something not exactly up my rather expansive alley.
All these years later I get the same impression that I woulda had back then...good single sides in an English take on Amerigan soul music. But far from going over any hurdles to get to that ultimate high that can be found not only in the original soul sides, but in many other English acts that could take the basics and build on 'em in their own provincial ways. This goes from A to B and back when an act like, say, the Troggs could start with A and head right for Z and then stop at any letter of the alphabet they care to with relative elan. Not bad, but it could have been done a whole lot smarmier.
***
A nice selection of Bill booty to keep da blooze away. Besides the obvious tips of the hats to humor (the Muolo-Savliate Showband medley of mid-sixties English-bred hits bein' just one of 'em!) this has got some mighty fine musical mulch to mosey about. Besides a couple of free jazz rarities from Joe McPhee and Cooper-Moore (the former who I have heard of, the latter not) Bill put on a good piece of late-sixties British psych pop worthy of those PICCADILLY SUNSHINE tracks I reviewed last week (Spectrum), some fairly good home-produced teen pop from the Responsible Teenagers and a whole lotta Indian-styled moom pitcher soundtrack guaranteed to help you digest your curry. And the thing ends with a rare pre-hit Romantics track that you'd probably have to pay big bux for these days if you want it in its original form. Thanks to Bill I saved A LOTTA MONEY and if he could only help out with the grocery bills life would be a whole lot more sweet around here than it is!
***
My eighth-grade teacher told me (in front of the entire class too!) that I would never amount to anything in my oh-so miserable life! So far she's been right, but if you would be the kinda guy willing to (and I do hope so), why dontcha buy some of these BLACK TO COMM back issues not just so's you could prove the ol' biddy wrong, but so's you can make me a richer kinda guy! If she's alive and finds out, boy will she just die!
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