With the weather gettin' colder and the nights longer no longer do I have an excuse not to stay indoors and indulge myself in the finer things in life like music and eyeball stimulation of a moving or static variety. Yes, there's nothing like keeping holed up in one's house doin' nothin' but reading old comics, watching tee-vee and eating the kinda foods that used to be special treats when you were younger, but now you are an old turd and nobody has to tell you that Cheetos are unhealthy and all that rot unless Don Fellman happens to call. I spent a good portion of Sunday as well as a few evening afterwards just soaking myself into music (see my playlist below) while reading some of the finer fanzines that have graced our earth like CAN'T BUY A THRILL and that special surprise OUT THERE (Paul Morley wasn't as much a creep as people make him out to be even if he was part of that nauseating "Frankie Goes to Hollywood" scam). With the days getting darker and the outdoor work load lighter, I sure hope that I have more'n just a few days where I can just settle back and appreciate the past fiftysome years of musical and published mayhem in my own down pat sorta style that is more or less akin to your long-gone bachelor Unca Ferd with the easy chair reclining away in his stocking feet watching BONANZA back 1963 way. Way to go, Ferd!
The Doors-APOCALYPSE NOW CD-r burn
As time crept on the Doors meant less and less to me, not that they ever were a top-echelon act in my rather "blinkered" mind. Chalk it up to their image as some hotcha revolutionary youth revolt force that made music which was over-produced as well as overwrought and somehow appealed to Young Ameriga's worst values and instincts. The fact that the creepy kids with pinwheel eyes loved 'em didn't help. The other fact is that the Doors didn't deliver on the total eruption jamz like some of their outer reaches compatriots also figures in mightily. After all, when compared to another vocals/guitar/keyboards/drums aggregation such as the Seeds who by all reports produced the best live show in the El Lay area during the '66/'67 season what were the Doors but a poorly executed hip poetry aggregation whose only real claim to fame was that they had the hip Elektra machine crankin' behind 'em thus guaranteeing mucho teenage buckskins a'headed their way!
This live in Stockholm gig just seems to reiterate all my bigotries surrounding not only the Doors but the hip teen cult that surrounded them. Next to the NUGGETS bands the Doors are total pretension, while even next to the late-sixties hard edged punk rockers who copped some of the Doors' musical and vocal ideas they seem rather restrained. A cooker like IT'S ALL MEAT not to mention efforts from the Stooges to Black Pearl definitely do put all of those preachy Jim Morrison poses and the band's too self-conscious ("oooh, let's throw in a Coltrane motif here and some neo-Shankar modal whooziz there") in the shade. Why listen to something that goes part of the way like this when you can hear it all in full tilt Neanderthal mode elsewhere? Jim Morrison does not satisfy the way Sky Saxon did even during the latter's mind-clogged latter days
The freakout segment entitled "Wake Up" did show some signs of rock as twisted expression. And I never really was one that thought "Light My Fire" was that bad of a frequent radio spin even if it was such a professionally bland tune that Jose Feliciano could turn it into bossa nova. (And believe you me, many Doors songs were already bossa nova enough that nobody hadda turn 'em into that!) But as "decent" as these particular tracks may be they're not quite passionate enough to really get me plugged into the entire Doors "aura".
The above ramble's enough to get anyone tossed outta the rough and tumble book of rock criticism proper, but since I never was a "rock critic" or "proper" for that matter its like I could care one whit. I do kinda care that late-sixties rock 'n roll with all its promise and potential got waylaid by sounds like this. If you wonder where my general disdain for hippiedom and its fruits came from you really don't have to look that hard.
Various Artists-STARRY EYED - THE RECORDS TRIBUTE CD-r burn (originally on Zero Hour Records)
Listening to over an hour of relatively recent (well, at least ca. 2013) groups paying tribute to these late-seventies power pop legends just might be too twee for me to live through. That's why I stopped midway thinkin' that I just HAD ENOUGH of it to at least crank out a decent review. However, considering how advanced this relatively commercial music was in the face of all that horrid (and it just got WORSE) dribble like Yacht Rock and Disco that was passing for rock ('n roll) and teenage International Music during the same period in time, this might as well be the Stooges. When I think about 1979 musical jamz it's usually the likes of Pere Ubu that tickle my fancy, but this 'un does revive some of those hidden feelings of what this kind of music might have led to. And it was that HARD STUFF if you can believe it!
Various Artists-RICH SOUNDS OF THE SIXTIES VOLUME ONE CD-r burn (originally on Forum Records)
Yet another collection of rarer than braincells in a modern-day MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL reader's head (are those washed up ex-hippies still around?) sixties garage band rama lama fa-fa-fa. But unfortunately this 'un ain't as overdrive as I would have liked---although all of these tracks found here are from the Northwest there's little here to differentiate these guys from thousands others who were trying to cash in on the Big Time back when the cashin' in seemed good. Not that these guys were so L7 that even Ernie Douglas seemed cool in comparison, but if yer expectin' the overall drive of the hard rock acts that made Seattle etc. so powerful in the sixties you might be disappointed. The highlight, at least for me, just hadda be Atilla and the Huns' "Mojo Cools" which was nothing but a strange re-write of the Sonics' "Witch" and an ever stranger one than that high-larious version that ended up on one of those recent BACK FROM THE GRAVE exhumations.
'LECTRIC WOODS CD-r burn (originally on Apt Records)
E-Z sludge created especially for the wannabe Silent Majority hipster ca. 1969 who wants to dab his wee-wee-wee piggy into the cesspool of hipster jamz. The hits of the day are reduced to even sappier levels if that is imaginable. Kinda like the aural equivalent of having warm tapioca pudding poured all over your head.
***Hey, are any of you readers participating in "No Nut", or "No Fap" November, that Coomer pledge to abstain from any really naughty action that takes place in that region below the belly and above the knees for the entire month? Well, in my case it's been "No Nut Life", but then again I feel that many of you regular tuner-inners of this blog might have less of control and are pretty lonely guys and well, there are times in one's existence when even those honeydew melons at the supermarket can look pretty excitng. If you are up front and center in this internet-wide campaign to stamp out self abuse I do commend you, but somehow I have the feeling that all of your water bills are gonna be goin' sky high once December 1st rolls around...
***What may come as a surprise to you as of late is the amount of PSYCHIC MAYHEM that has been occurring during my hours both waking and not. Mostly not, like right before I finally drop off into the deep arms of Morpheus who I hope isn't queer...dunno why, but images both weird and just plain peculiar seem to pop into my mind for no special, or explainable reason for that matter. For example it may be the face of an old man or a quaint young lady of 1930's vintage drawn in a classic magazine style, or perhaps a cartoon-esque character like a little girl I never even heard of who might have had her own comic strip back in the fifties. Clear images of people I've never seen before and hopefully never will again just appear and ya know I'm gonna lose my brain if by some chance I would happen to SEE said person at the store the following day! What's even weirder is when words suddenly start spelling out in my mind, nice and clear as if something from another world is trying to somehow communicate with me. The only real problem is NONE of these words make any sense...like "IBLUM" or "mentrublcat". I still don't know what the various numerals that also appear during those less consciously on-guard hours mean, probably the number of goof offs I'm gonna make the following day. Could I have some strange Uri Geller-type powers I don't even know about? Once I can control these strange powers all I gotta say is...watch out vermin!
***HERE'S WHAT ELSE (BESIDES THE OFFAL MENTIONED BELOW) THAT I WAS LISTENING TO WHILE PUTTING THIS PARTICULAR ENTRY TOGETHER: BLACK PEARL CD (Wounded Bird Records)-A way better representation of just what the late-sixties really hadda offer us than that item reviewed elsewhere in which Black Pearl is mentioned; David Crosby-IF I COULD ONLY REMEMBER MY NAME CD (Atlantic Records)-For Eddie Flowers. Not as wasted as I originally felt, but ooooh those harmonies!; Michael Nyman-DECAY MUSIC CD (EMI Records England)-Avgarde music always seems to go down the smoothest on Sunday afternoons---well it beats football!; The Magic Tramps-KICKING UP MOONLIGHT DUST CD (Moonlight Dust Records)-Wouldn't mind hearing what an actual album circa. 1971 woulda sounded like---wasn't Emerson at one time signed to Paramount Records???; Mahogany Brain-SMOOTH SICK LIGHTS CD (Fractal Records)-Because I always listen to it; Fripp & Eno-(NO PUSSYFOOTING) CD (Editions EG Records)-Self-indulgent? If it is, this kinda self indulgence sure sounded better back inna mid-seventies!; The Gizmos-RAW FIRST TAKES 1977 CD-r (Slippytown Records)-For those of you who remember 1976 as being a whole lot more than Peter Frampton and disco; The Beatles-BACK-TRACK CD (bootleg)-Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time; SURPRIEZE CD-r burn-Not the WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT explosion that I would have liked, but weirded out "freak" "loner" "music" "done" "up" "by" "someone" "even" "more" "whacked" "out" "than" "you!"; I think I filled up at least two inches (depending on your browser) trying to beef this post up to a more respectable size so I'll just stop everything right here and NOW!
***Not that hotcha a week for new and really inspirational musics to overtake me and my rather susceptible aural/cranial complex. But new stuff I did hear and as usual I will relate to you my own personal opinions on the stuff in my own hopefully snark and pithy ways why I don't give a hoot about any of it. Awww cuh-monh, you might be able to decipher something positive outta the following mess...
As time crept on the Doors meant less and less to me, not that they ever were a top-echelon act in my rather "blinkered" mind. Chalk it up to their image as some hotcha revolutionary youth revolt force that made music which was over-produced as well as overwrought and somehow appealed to Young Ameriga's worst values and instincts. The fact that the creepy kids with pinwheel eyes loved 'em didn't help. The other fact is that the Doors didn't deliver on the total eruption jamz like some of their outer reaches compatriots also figures in mightily. After all, when compared to another vocals/guitar/keyboards/drums aggregation such as the Seeds who by all reports produced the best live show in the El Lay area during the '66/'67 season what were the Doors but a poorly executed hip poetry aggregation whose only real claim to fame was that they had the hip Elektra machine crankin' behind 'em thus guaranteeing mucho teenage buckskins a'headed their way!
This live in Stockholm gig just seems to reiterate all my bigotries surrounding not only the Doors but the hip teen cult that surrounded them. Next to the NUGGETS bands the Doors are total pretension, while even next to the late-sixties hard edged punk rockers who copped some of the Doors' musical and vocal ideas they seem rather restrained. A cooker like IT'S ALL MEAT not to mention efforts from the Stooges to Black Pearl definitely do put all of those preachy Jim Morrison poses and the band's too self-conscious ("oooh, let's throw in a Coltrane motif here and some neo-Shankar modal whooziz there") in the shade. Why listen to something that goes part of the way like this when you can hear it all in full tilt Neanderthal mode elsewhere? Jim Morrison does not satisfy the way Sky Saxon did even during the latter's mind-clogged latter days
The freakout segment entitled "Wake Up" did show some signs of rock as twisted expression. And I never really was one that thought "Light My Fire" was that bad of a frequent radio spin even if it was such a professionally bland tune that Jose Feliciano could turn it into bossa nova. (And believe you me, many Doors songs were already bossa nova enough that nobody hadda turn 'em into that!) But as "decent" as these particular tracks may be they're not quite passionate enough to really get me plugged into the entire Doors "aura".
The above ramble's enough to get anyone tossed outta the rough and tumble book of rock criticism proper, but since I never was a "rock critic" or "proper" for that matter its like I could care one whit. I do kinda care that late-sixties rock 'n roll with all its promise and potential got waylaid by sounds like this. If you wonder where my general disdain for hippiedom and its fruits came from you really don't have to look that hard.
***
Listening to over an hour of relatively recent (well, at least ca. 2013) groups paying tribute to these late-seventies power pop legends just might be too twee for me to live through. That's why I stopped midway thinkin' that I just HAD ENOUGH of it to at least crank out a decent review. However, considering how advanced this relatively commercial music was in the face of all that horrid (and it just got WORSE) dribble like Yacht Rock and Disco that was passing for rock ('n roll) and teenage International Music during the same period in time, this might as well be the Stooges. When I think about 1979 musical jamz it's usually the likes of Pere Ubu that tickle my fancy, but this 'un does revive some of those hidden feelings of what this kind of music might have led to. And it was that HARD STUFF if you can believe it!
***
Yet another collection of rarer than braincells in a modern-day MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL reader's head (are those washed up ex-hippies still around?) sixties garage band rama lama fa-fa-fa. But unfortunately this 'un ain't as overdrive as I would have liked---although all of these tracks found here are from the Northwest there's little here to differentiate these guys from thousands others who were trying to cash in on the Big Time back when the cashin' in seemed good. Not that these guys were so L7 that even Ernie Douglas seemed cool in comparison, but if yer expectin' the overall drive of the hard rock acts that made Seattle etc. so powerful in the sixties you might be disappointed. The highlight, at least for me, just hadda be Atilla and the Huns' "Mojo Cools" which was nothing but a strange re-write of the Sonics' "Witch" and an ever stranger one than that high-larious version that ended up on one of those recent BACK FROM THE GRAVE exhumations.
***
E-Z sludge created especially for the wannabe Silent Majority hipster ca. 1969 who wants to dab his wee-wee-wee piggy into the cesspool of hipster jamz. The hits of the day are reduced to even sappier levels if that is imaginable. Kinda like the aural equivalent of having warm tapioca pudding poured all over your head.
***
Another one of those Warner Brothers samplers that I don't recall ever seeing in used bins unlike those "loss leaders" that were scattered about all over the place. And for a collection of '68-era Warners artists I gotta say that this platter didn't bore me at all even if many of the artists present aren't exactly what anyone would call BLOG TO COMM-worthy. Most of it is folkie dribble but it ain't gnawin' at me like it might have at one time (probably because I had my nerve endings removed by a Nurse With Would album a good twentysome years back), and for once I could actually enjoy listening to ferret face Joni Mitchell head straight into Eric Andersen while Tiny Tim, Arlo Guthrie and David Blue play on in their own special way. Even the Grateful Dead's "Born Cross Eyed" fit in snug 'n tight and whoever it was that decided to pair the Fugs' "Crystal Liason" and the (new) Electric Prunes' "Kyrie Eleison" back to back shoulda been given a raise. Jimi fans'll explode in joy over "If Six Was Nine" even if Don Fellman would rather shove sharp pencils in his ears. Even if ya ain't one of those down on the farm front porch hippie types you might get some pleasure out of it. Not much, but some.
***
Some of these label-specific samplers really don't cut it thematically or aesthetically for that matter, and this one is amongst 'em. However, these single sides taken from Arc Records in Canada do have a teenage fun streak to 'em that makes the thing hold together a whole lot more than some of these other similarly minded efforts. From early sixties vocal group to mid-sixties teen pop, these platters were primed for the transistor radio set, only for some sad reason they never really went anywhere other'n someone's basement. A good bunch if I do say so. Even has a really cheezy mid-sixties comedy horror since from Brian and Gary and the Chain Rattlers that's so cheap that I don't even think Fellman knows about it.
***
Various Artists-MUSTANG SAVAGE STREET SHADOW CD-r burn (Bill Shute)Haw---just got this 'un inna mail today so I don't have to dig through my Bill Shute box in my bedroom to find one of these samplers of his to write up this week! Fairly good 'un what with the Snakefinger stuff from his Ralph Record days coming off way better'n that one live cassette he put out around 1989 or so---ewwww!---while the Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet instrumental sides were rather digestible even if they had that oh-so-MODERNE production that comes off way too clean for me. The South Asian tracks from the Mustangs and Arun Amin and Amin's Aspirations (same crew?) will put you in the mood for some tandoori chicken the next time you hit your favorite Indian restaurant. Coulda done without Lainie Kazan or those ever-popular piano wimps Ferrante & Teicher even if these blokes weren't totally "offensive" to my rather skewered musical tastes (and they had the smarts to cop the prepared piano gimmick from John Cage!), but given that every second in my life is precious I like to utilize them in the best way possible!
***Time for the ol' pitch...back issues of BLACK TO COMM are still available for those of you stupid enough to have missed out on 'em the first time. Betcha that got your guilt and shame glands all riled up to the point where you'll just have to buy 'em all now, right? Sheesh, don't any of you people out there have a conscience other'n for protecting slutty teenage gals from those embryos that somehow seem to magically attach themselves to the inner linings of uteri?
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