Well howdy, you doody you! Spendin' the day wallowin' in the bowels of suburban slob heaven....readin' up old fanzines and classy rock scribin' copped off the internet (with a few comics tossed in) while listenin' to some mighty hot sounds that coagulate along with the vibrations in my cranium the way music was meant to. LICK MY DECALS OFF, Cabaret Voltaire and the Plastic People really go well with Greg Shaw's early epistles and other blasts of 1964-1981 information that seems even more pertinent in an era that could care about as much about rock 'n roll as it does about all of that great art and entertainment from the past that is all but forgotten...'cept for a few manic beings out there somewhere and you know who you are or else you wouldn't be reading this!
In many ways I feel like that same late single-digits kid I once was who was usually marooned inna house on some hot Sunday summer PM, only now I have enough backlog of reading and sounds to keep me up 'n goin' when back then all I had was the same five or so PEANUTS paperbacks to read over and over to stave off the ever threatening curse of boredom! If I only had all this music and reading matter back then maybe I wouldn't have spent so much time trying to relieve my frustration in the bathroom! And they wonder why all of those pages in the medical journal are stuck together! But those days are long gone----in fact I now kinda welcome boredom as a respite from everyday high-stresses living, and frankly I now own a whole lot more'n a handfulla paperbacks to keep my mind goin' on those long lonely nights! Sure beats human companionship I'll tell ya!
Maybe my own opinions regarding how I stand here in The Universe might just be reflected by a dream I had last Sunday night. It ain't a rock-related one where I discover a record shop loaded with the kind of outta print wares I'd love to possess either (haven't had any of those in awhile!) but one where I am in a building on South Irvine Avenue in Sharon (an old storefront located where the Soul Food restaurant and cash for paycheck buildings are) and I suddenly discover that I have this ability to take total control over people's minds! Just for giggles I mentally summon up a random slew of about thirty people who happen to be nearby, and via my psychic command I tell them to march down to Dock Street and jump off the bridge into the Shenango River! I discover that the final two people I mentally connect with are my younger cousins (who look as if they were still in their teens!) and tell 'em that they better not do what I am commanding them---only doing this because they are my cousins and like I don't wanna get in trouble with the fambly!
The hypnotized ones (mostly a selection of pudgy middle-aged ladies and elderly men with a few black people thrown in) are walking single file down the freeway where they take a right hand turn at Dock (which is strange because the bridge is on the left side) where the bridge happens to be, and emotionless-ly they all jump in. I find some standing in the river up to their waists or chests still blank-faced as others continue to do the lemming act. For some reason boy do I feel powerful.
Sheesh, if only real life could be as pro-Chris as this dream!
In many ways I feel like that same late single-digits kid I once was who was usually marooned inna house on some hot Sunday summer PM, only now I have enough backlog of reading and sounds to keep me up 'n goin' when back then all I had was the same five or so PEANUTS paperbacks to read over and over to stave off the ever threatening curse of boredom! If I only had all this music and reading matter back then maybe I wouldn't have spent so much time trying to relieve my frustration in the bathroom! And they wonder why all of those pages in the medical journal are stuck together! But those days are long gone----in fact I now kinda welcome boredom as a respite from everyday high-stresses living, and frankly I now own a whole lot more'n a handfulla paperbacks to keep my mind goin' on those long lonely nights! Sure beats human companionship I'll tell ya!
***Whew---did you survive gay pride month like I barely did? Talk about everyone from Giant Corporations to cutting edge cable television networks taking the air outta just about everything with scenes of lezbo face slobbering as some sorta reflection of a world any human would want to exist in! 'n no, I can't bear to see another rainbow or unicorn again as long as I live given how those once-innocent symbols of things hung in little girls' bedroom has taken on a whole new meaning! All I gotta say is...when the hell're they gonna have FOR CRYIN' OUT LOUD MONTH, hunh??? I'd march in a parade while wearin' a jock strap with a few feathers stuck innit for that!
I always was a guy who could never figure myself out. F'rexample, I can't love my neighbor as myself because frankly, I never could love myself like I could everything from food to the rock fanzines of the seventies to other earthly pleasures I've been in contact with a good portion of my sad 'n sordid life. I couldn't hate myself either....it's like I am me and other people and things are what I reflect off of and I have nil concept of either loving or hating myself no matter how much people tried to ram the concept of "shame" or "guilt" into me. Well, maybe not totally....after all there were many times I coulda killed myself for passing up some now-collectible record at the flea market, but other'n that...eh!***
Maybe my own opinions regarding how I stand here in The Universe might just be reflected by a dream I had last Sunday night. It ain't a rock-related one where I discover a record shop loaded with the kind of outta print wares I'd love to possess either (haven't had any of those in awhile!) but one where I am in a building on South Irvine Avenue in Sharon (an old storefront located where the Soul Food restaurant and cash for paycheck buildings are) and I suddenly discover that I have this ability to take total control over people's minds! Just for giggles I mentally summon up a random slew of about thirty people who happen to be nearby, and via my psychic command I tell them to march down to Dock Street and jump off the bridge into the Shenango River! I discover that the final two people I mentally connect with are my younger cousins (who look as if they were still in their teens!) and tell 'em that they better not do what I am commanding them---only doing this because they are my cousins and like I don't wanna get in trouble with the fambly!
The hypnotized ones (mostly a selection of pudgy middle-aged ladies and elderly men with a few black people thrown in) are walking single file down the freeway where they take a right hand turn at Dock (which is strange because the bridge is on the left side) where the bridge happens to be, and emotionless-ly they all jump in. I find some standing in the river up to their waists or chests still blank-faced as others continue to do the lemming act. For some reason boy do I feel powerful.
Sheesh, if only real life could be as pro-Chris as this dream!
***So what else have I been up to these past few weeks other'n dreaming the same kinda dreams I've been havin' throughout my entire butt pitted life? Well, like I've hinted above I've been re-perusin' my two BOMP! book collections, paying special attention to Greg Shaw's contributions to Jonh Ingham's FRANK'S APA (an item I would sure like to put my grubby paws on!) where Greg Shaw more or less accurately predicts the direction rock 'n roll music would be heading throughout the seventies---not on a mainstream AM/FM rigid categorized musical format but as far as free form true rock ideals go. Funny, but his mentioning about groups taking hard-edged Velvets and Beefheartian modes and mingling Sam the Sham and Red Krayola ideals certainly did flesh out as a good portion of the early Rough Trade roster definitely proved! I must admit that these entries into the APA field from Shaw pretty much influenced my writings not only with this particular post but the SEARCH AND DESTROY effort last Thursday---not forgetting a few upcoming efforts that might just get deleted before they pop up on this blog. You should see some of the bile-spewing and loathsome things I delete en masse because hey, nowadays you can get into deep trouble just for just merely thinking the wrong thing even if you never even thought up the dastardly idea before in your entire life. Not that I'm shudderin' about these terrible times of "censorship" and "persecution" like those communists did during the fifties...in many ways I couldn't care less. Just wanna stay nice 'n free at this point in time because hey, I have a few years left and I'd like to spend it havin' fun fer once in my life!
***Yeah yeah I know---cut the crap 'n get on with the dancin' gals! Or in this case dancin' records, or something like that! Nice selection I've been enjoying here too, and if it weren't for Feeding Tube, Bill Shute and Paul McGarry maybe we wouldn't be talkin' about much 'cept for this dream I had last night where I try to pawn off a review of a Throbbing Gristle album as a high school English assignment!
Roger Miller helms this act, and if you've been following this living treasure ever since Mission of Burma or Destroy All Monsters you'll be more'n adequately pleased over it. Like Burma, some of this sounds rather seventies/eighties cusp...y'know, what this "new wave" was supposed to be all about before the term got co-opted into a glitzy post-glitter monster that ruined a whole lotta things for us, while others tend to slip into what I would call an early-eighties metal grind that really ain't my kind of raw meat but it sure sounds much better'n the real deal that permeated fogged up bedrooms back then. Kinda a roller coaster ride from pleasing to aw cuh-mon!, but I think you will get something outta it because I sure did!
***
The hypesheet was right! Describing this 'un would be akin to describing one of those really free-thought dreams of mine where plot, scenes, characters and disposition change without moment's notice as Chadbourne clomps, plucks and strews away in a manner that makes all those old tymey comparisons hackneyed and even more boring than I used to get comparing group "X" to the Velvet Underground back in the eighties. A nice cornucopia of free sound that somehow comes together and makes sense as a "whole", even to a hole like you and I. Believe me, this early Chadbourne material is Caroline Records worthy!
***
This was about as much of a Velvet Underground reunion as that one the NME was hyping back when Eno joined up with the Cale/Nico ranks a few years later. At least that had people like Nick Kent jumping up and down spurting paens of pure joy...although I'll betcha that Yves Adrien's heart was all a'flutter over the mere idea of mingling with his rock electrique faves whilst coverin' this major event.
Adrien's nowhere to be seen on the brief DVD which accompanies this disque even though I'm positive that he was the interviewer heard in the audio portion of the direct from tee-vee to recorder audio tapes which had been flying around for ages. That didn't make it here, but it would have been fun to watch even if I know about as much French as Syd Barrett.
The reg'lar portion of this package won't disappoint since it gives us way more of that show than those overpriced European bootlegs did. Even a stickler for sonic blare like myself will admit that the acoustic and tres chic aspects delivers on that seventies decadent intensity that fans of the form were searching for not only in happenings such as this but their New York Dolls and Elliot Murphy platters. Total seventies involvement of a sonic stature in other words. Fair enough representations of old faves, and even that Jennifer Warnes track won't make ya puke.
***
Recently there have been a whole lotta black people who have been slam-dunking white types for "appropriating their culture". Well, if more blacks were doin' the blues as good as Atkinson and Corritore so on this outta-the-nowhere effort then maybe they would have a case.
A lotta these white guy blooze acts really don't jib my jab...George Thorogood being one example of the wrong way to do it...but when a band like this one (or the Dicey-Ross Blues Band or even the Sugar Blues Band even tho their leader was a black guy backed by two French expats!) gets onto its natural course things are on "go" from here to the Checkerboard Lounge and back.
Hard and authentic-sounding blues that woulda gotten one of those old practitioners of the form to pen eloquent liner notes kinda like Muddy Waters did with the Seeds! I get the feeling some of you readers with more "universal" tastes might like it. But then again probably not.
***
The way Paul McGarry and Brad Kohler try to "educate" me about the finer points of reggae music you think I'd go totally bonkers what with that ooh-chikka-ooh beat! Gotta say that I find it heard to believe that tank topped wiggers in mock dreadlocks really do like this particular breed of sound, especially the way these downhome tracks from the Trojan vaults are produced. After all, this is rawer'n even your standard garage-recorded early-sixties single, and the selection here sounds a whole lot like something that coulda graced the charts of the day...I mean, if "El Watusi" could hit, why not some of these?
Bargain bin organ and creaky production sure help, as does the wopadago western theme that maybe proves that reggae, like the movies that these songs inspired, is a Sunday afternoon UHF-TV suburban slob sorta thing after all! DON'T listen to those ROLLING STONE-styled myopics who look at this kinda music through rose-colored socio/political glasses...it's the TRASH that matters!
***
I was recently musing that, in this gorgeous summer weather that we're finally experiencing in the tr-county area, that the evenings are just not the same unless there's some wild, hard, medium-to-negative energy rock 'n roll blaring in the air. Especially around dusk, when it seems that the dark blue sky and the deep humidity could withhold the soaring rhythms and sonic modulations that were laid down by brighter minds fifty years or more back. But alas, no teenage combo in the area blaring an EPI cum "Black to Comm" (with hefty sidesteps into the Red Krayola) for me to somehow discover playing but a few houses down...and yeah, I know that here in the dawn of what will evidently be "The Boring Twenties" I could hope to find much less if anything for that matter.
Big kudos go to Bruce Johnston and company for making the ORIGINAL era of rock as a truly teenage backbone of existence a whole lot more important 'n those coffee house simps strummin' 'bout sounds of silence and books and poetry to protect them!
***
Cliff Davis Sextet-DISCOTHEQUE A- GO-GO CD-r burn (originally on Epic Records)
You probably passed this one up a millyun times while pouring through all of John Kennedy memorial albums and WEST SIDE STORY soundtracks at the flea market in search of that obscure gem. And good thing you did, for this platter ain't nothin' but yet another shill the rubes cash-in that would have fooled Aunt Matilda, but if it fooled you it's time to get another hobby. Soul music without the soul's in store on this cash-in covers album that I guess prove that maybe there was a market for cheezy lounge takes on "Blowin' In The Wind"!
***
Did I ever tell ya that when Jim Morrison died my cyster asked dad what he thought of the guy. You can just imagine the answer and come to think of it, you can imagine what he would still think after all these years of this Mike Curb take on the then-hot Doors name. It's great to think that at least around here some things never change! And come to think of it, but I prefer these cheezy takes to the real thing which tended to get a little too artistic/pretensioso (not to mention overtly commercial...ever hear the WAITING FOR THE SUN album?) for my own tastes. When it came to Los Angeles all-out rock 'n roll entertainment with charisma and talent it was the Seeds an' ferget about the rest!
***
Hmmmm, maybe there were more of those "garage band revival" acts who were worth their weight in cheeseburgers than I could remember. Not that Chan and his New Dynasty Six are any match for a spate of 1966-'67-era outta nowhere top forty smashes, but this album does that old sound up just right w/o the pretentious look-at-how-authentic-I-am feeling that made me feel as if I were watching some 1969-era Saturday Morning kiddie show. Great take of "Little Black Egg" via "We All Like Peanut Butter" via "Shian Hei Dan".
***
Another bee-youtiful collection of stuff I don't think has been listened to in ages, including some cool Amerigan instrumental rock, some cool if cornballus German instrumental rock, some Germans doing really hokey instrumental and vocal music and lots more. Radio ads from mid-seventies Indiana gettin' ya primed for Christmas are really Holiday Spirit toasty warming, while the state's own Harry Weber gives us some hotcha old/new country (talkin' Jimmy Dean of pork sausage fame era, not that dyke who was popular in the eighties!) with not only a song about his home state but a guy named Jimmy Bryan! Now that got my attention piqued because the kid who used to live in back of us was named Jimmy Bryan and like he was the Eddie Haskell to my Beaver! The mere mention of his names makes me wanna run for cover...he was that mean! He told me he actually hadda copy of SPIDER-MAN #1 but he never showed it to me...I think he was bluffin'---howzbout you?
***Oh how the mighty have fallen, and I'm not talking about Bette Midler's tits. I'm talking about the BLACK TO COMM empire which at one time was heralded as being at the forefront of the fanzine explosion of the eighties but today is a mere forgotten footnote in the annals of rock 'n roll screeding! And mister/sister, that massive effort I put out wasn't exactly journalistic or memorable for any bright insight into the music at hand but by gosh, was it sure FUN!!! Relive all of the IQ Zero fun and jamz you missed back then and snatch up one (or hopefully more!) of these fanzines by clicking on the link which will take you to a world of more wonder than an entire leather-bound collection of
Sheesh.
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