Can a brain-damaged neo-autistic make it in the blogosphere without looking like the total idiot he's made himself out to be via the printed page for the past (almost) forty years? Well read on and find out for yourself, Clarabelle!
When I do have that much-needed SPARE TIME on hand I certainly love reverting to my youthful suburban slob self while pouring through the sounds, the reading (talkin' old comic strips/books, none of that "classics" stuff they usedta make ya read in school in order for them to turn you into a nice and docile sissy!) and the general fun and jamz that made those post-homework hours in the evening such a pleasure to wind down to. I never thought those kinda days and feelings would ever come back (especially since tee-vee, which used to be the big hub of pre-beddy bye domestic activity, has pretty much capsized into grim and irrelevant "entertainment") but maybe they have, in their own special and compatible with the BLOG TO COMM way o' livin' sorta way!
The reason I am is because as far as this meat of the matter cancer development goes all I will say at this point is that it's too bad that all that probably fatal agony couldn't happen to someone else like...well, you know how I don't like to name names and call people out but there are a few of you who I sure wouldn't mind watchin' (while smirkin' for that matter) while ya go through alla that chemo and painful surgery and outright misery that I hadda watch people around me, good and decent people for that matter, experience!
Too bad I don't have a mumbo jumbo bad luck evil hoodoo charm like many of you once extremely-caustic yet now totally copasetic with the human condition types think I do because if I did well, NONE OF YOU WOULD BE SPARED!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! (In other words, maybe it should happen to...)
Crazy Doberman-ACID GALLERY BOTTLE BLOWOUT CD-r burn
Once again John "Inzane" Olson (who can't even spell his last name right) dredges up the best of the late-twentieth century freeform freestyle jazz sound with this continuation of the wall-of-mass-improv brohauha which recalls everything from Alan Silva's BYG albums to Rudolph Grey's BLAZING ANGELS or whatever it was called. For a cheap imitation (like, Olson never hung out with the big names and got his street cred the way yer sposta!) this sounds like the read deal newer than new thing you've known and loved for ages. I hope that this review doesn't go to the guy's head or else the next thing you'll know he'll be sporting a dashiki and loads of beads around his neck!
Steve Piccolo-DOMESTIC EXILE CD (Guerssen Records, Spain)
Alla that early-80s Lounge Lizards fake jazz post-no wave that was happenin' at the time really didn't thrill me a-tall, so it is a surprise that I find this solo album from ex-member Steve Piccolo not as bad as I thought it was gonna be. In keeping with them times, Piccolo performs a "minimalist" style of singer-songwriterdom that reminds me of contemporary efforts from the likes of the Red Crayola and Peter Blegvad. Sparse and intimate, keeping much in line with the same sorta art spree that gave us everyone from Glenn Branca to Robert Longo, and if you still search out your old Laurie Anderson and Love of Life Orchestra records for that much-needed solace I'm sure you'll go full throttle for this beauty as well!
Kraftwerk-RADIO BREMEN SESSIONS 1971 CD (Eye of the Storm Records)
Here's yet another Eye of the Storm release featuring some early krautrock that sure sounds as raw and as exciting as any of the punk rock that was being birthed during the early-seventies. Stoopid me bought this not knowing that these were the same Radio Bremen live in front of a small live audience recordings that have been floating around for quite some time, BUT boy does this sound as if it was just taped straight off the radio its that clear! And the packaging with liner notes ain't nothin' to sneeze at either. If you don't have any of the other versions of this then pick this particular spinner up for a treat that really does fit in on these long winter nights as you kick your feet up and sink into the pretty heavy-metallic punky sound that the Stooges-influenced era of Kraftwerk were able to exude.
Rolling Stones-STICKY FINGERS (THE ALTERNATIVE ALBUM) CD-r burn
Another Paul McGarry pawn off which I must say is worth the listen to considering that if I were to grab alla these Stones rarities on their lonesome it would cost me a millyun dollars just like them Time/Life infomercials say! Besides a lotta takes of "Brown Sugar" I've never heard before this has plenty of trackage that's pretty straightforward in the way the we liked the Stones when they weren't being too high falutin'. This even has some "new" numbers that a decidedly non-Stones kinda guy has never heard before so it was like an ALL NEW EXPERIENCE IN STONESIFIED EXPRESSION to be givin' this particular platter a spin. Hey Paul, ya doin' any more house cleanin'?
Beach Slang-THE DEADLIEST BANG OF HEARTBREAK CITY CD-r burn (originally on Bridge 9 Records)
As if these pampered menials didn't think that they could fill up an album with standard alternative rock vocal styles and post-Elton sensitive piano emote and then try to tell all of us that they are hip 'n with it by tossing in a "Sister Ray" riff swipe. This ain't the death of rock, it's finding the carcass a few weeks after it being locked in a tool shed on an extremely hot summer's day. The closing backwards moosh with kids talking was about 1/1000% redeeming.
Cinecyde-I LEFT MY HEART IN DETROIT CITY CD-r burn (originally on Tremor Records)
I know I reviewed my actual flesh and blood copy of this either in my crudzine or on this blog o'er a decade or so back, but McGarrys' recent burn sorta jogged my memory about these late-seventies Detroiters even existing inna first place. I remember the early singles which placed Cinecyde in the same class of post-sixties high energy rockers in the Destroy All Monsters/Mutants vein and they were plenty impacting ifyaknowaddamean, but this early-eighties effort has 'em playin' the same overdone rock moves and chord changes that sounded great at one time but seemed rather too little too late just a few years later. Well, it was the early-eighties after all and if you remember just how much of a DENOUEMENT those years were compared with what was happening in the seventies you woulda been just as down inna dumps as I was!
Hawkwind-ALL ABOARD THE SKYLARK 2 CD-r set
Sheesh, who ever thought that Hawkwind, or at least some form of what it used to be, would have lasted into the year 2019 where they'd be re-doing their old faves in remarkably different arrangements to pawn off on space kiddettes both old 'n new! Dunno who exactly is part of this version of the group (nor do I really care that much---after all, this ain't some high stool BOOK REPORT I'm doin' complete with recipe cards and reference pages!) but this Hawkwind's pretty snazzy and at times reminiscent of their various mid/late-seventies efforts that still see action on my turntable whenever one happens to pop up in the pile. Ya gotta give 'em loads of credit for milking the same stellar pathways for a good fifty years awlready and without coming off too money-minded at that!
Various Artists-LONELY MYSTIC NELLIE CD-r burn (Bill Shute)
After a long day at the concentration camp something like this helps raise the spirits. It features everything from a couple of weird outta-the-way teenage psychedelic sides from Frenchy and the Underground Railroad to the Mystic Five covering the Raiders and Surfaris to even more aural spasms (howzbout a record accompanying an anti-drugs/rock music film strip that makes me think that any kid who saw it woulda immediately headed for his local pusher and record shop!). Rod Rodgers of "song poems" fame contributes a few Air Force-related soul stirrers and whaddaya know but infamous vanity performer Dora Hall once again pops up to sing "Nellie Bly", undoubtedly financed by the Solo Cup Company! If only Bill had left them cheap proto-hippie cool college kid attempts at "cutting" satire via the "Apple Gunkies" ads off! The aural equivalent of cleaning about seventy years of junk outta your late Aunt Mabel's house!
***Anyway, is it me, or has my writing generally gotten even more convoluted and moronic these past few weeks or months (years?) for that matter? Between you, me and the bedpan I gotta admit that it has, and I chalk it up to just reg'lar decay (physically and mentally) and irreg'lar exhaustion due to me plunking these posts out faster than a meatball factory on Al Capone's birthday. Judging from the previous sentence my concept of humor is getting rather convolutedly warped as well (and yes, there's no such word as "convolutedly" but at least my tendency for adapting new words out of old has been a part of my skewered poor writemanship for years!----"writemanship"----there I go agin!), but believe-you-me I sure wish I could pour out the wordage the same way that Bill Shute or Bruce Mowat do! Given the rather traumatic excursions taking place in my already diseased mind I don't think I'll ever be able to reach the stellar heights those professionals can. Don't think I'll even succeed rising to TEENAGE WASTELAND GAZETTE levels either given my state of mental disarray, so mebbee I should be satisfied with the gunk I'm presenting to you which some of you must be rockism-starved enough to lap up with everyday glee! (In other words...) I ain't givin' this up because I'm havin' too much fun anyways and besides next to most of the slop I read these days passing as rock criticism I might as well be the standard for today's high energy, no-holds-barred rock writing 'n you better believe it!
***In case you wanna know yes I HAVE been enjoying myself this past week, spinning an inordinate amount of current faves like the Eddie Flowers and the Wax Lips Swamp Dub album on Feeding Tube (the track that closes out the album is the "John, John, Let's Hope For Peace" of the twenties!) as well as a whole stack of old favorites ranging from the first two Savage Rose albums, PHALLUS DEI, Lou Reed and the Tots live on the radio and various sundries in-between. A pretty good time was had as well, what with me swimming through these musical milestones while pouring through the boxes of fanzines and various rock 'n roll-related publications stacked up in what used to be my bedroom.
When I do have that much-needed SPARE TIME on hand I certainly love reverting to my youthful suburban slob self while pouring through the sounds, the reading (talkin' old comic strips/books, none of that "classics" stuff they usedta make ya read in school in order for them to turn you into a nice and docile sissy!) and the general fun and jamz that made those post-homework hours in the evening such a pleasure to wind down to. I never thought those kinda days and feelings would ever come back (especially since tee-vee, which used to be the big hub of pre-beddy bye domestic activity, has pretty much capsized into grim and irrelevant "entertainment") but maybe they have, in their own special and compatible with the BLOG TO COMM way o' livin' sorta way!
***OLD NEWS BUT I THOUGHT I'D MENTION IT---too bad about Rush Limbaugh and his lung cancer diagnosis which he announced to the world via his radio program two weeks back. And yes it IS too bad he's succumbing to this rather deadly malady especially at this time in Amerigan history because---well, for the last three or so years (during the reincarnation of SPIRO AGNEW via DONALD TRUMP) the guy has been acting way less neoconnish than he had back when he was continually badmouthing the likes of Ron Paul while trying to appease a whole load of rightist factions, flopping around like a fish trying to pick the right side of the right wing political spectrum to cozy up to. Hope he recovers or at least goes out on a strong note but that's not why I'm mentioning him inna first place.
The reason I am is because as far as this meat of the matter cancer development goes all I will say at this point is that it's too bad that all that probably fatal agony couldn't happen to someone else like...well, you know how I don't like to name names and call people out but there are a few of you who I sure wouldn't mind watchin' (while smirkin' for that matter) while ya go through alla that chemo and painful surgery and outright misery that I hadda watch people around me, good and decent people for that matter, experience!
Too bad I don't have a mumbo jumbo bad luck evil hoodoo charm like many of you once extremely-caustic yet now totally copasetic with the human condition types think I do because if I did well, NONE OF YOU WOULD BE SPARED!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! (In other words, maybe it should happen to...)
***SORRY TO SEE YA GO---RIP Orson Bean, a guy who I grew up thinking was the coolest sorta man I'd like to be like when I grew up, along with Alan Young, Bill Cullen and Alan Ludden! Guest writer for MAD (his story about the two Chinese guys who go to an American restaurant is a by now anti-PC laff riot!) and star of a HELP! fumetti to boot! Of course after I saw that PBS production with him swearin' in it and heard about that HUSTLER interview where he talked about undergoing Reichian therapy and urination along with other sundries bound to give you the creeps well...sheesh, even the biggest and bestest of our kiddiehood role models had bigger faults than San Andreas! But anyhoo, there goes another familiar face from my earliest and fuzziest memories outta sight but not mind...goodbye Bevis!
***IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T, why dontcha check out the recent article on Iggy and the Stooges/RAW POWER that's popped up on the COUNTER-CURRENTS website! I haven't seen it ("unsupported protocol"), but from what I've heard it's sure a real doozy!
***And now for the adults only portion of our blog, the reviews!
Once again John "Inzane" Olson (who can't even spell his last name right) dredges up the best of the late-twentieth century freeform freestyle jazz sound with this continuation of the wall-of-mass-improv brohauha which recalls everything from Alan Silva's BYG albums to Rudolph Grey's BLAZING ANGELS or whatever it was called. For a cheap imitation (like, Olson never hung out with the big names and got his street cred the way yer sposta!) this sounds like the read deal newer than new thing you've known and loved for ages. I hope that this review doesn't go to the guy's head or else the next thing you'll know he'll be sporting a dashiki and loads of beads around his neck!
***
Alla that early-80s Lounge Lizards fake jazz post-no wave that was happenin' at the time really didn't thrill me a-tall, so it is a surprise that I find this solo album from ex-member Steve Piccolo not as bad as I thought it was gonna be. In keeping with them times, Piccolo performs a "minimalist" style of singer-songwriterdom that reminds me of contemporary efforts from the likes of the Red Crayola and Peter Blegvad. Sparse and intimate, keeping much in line with the same sorta art spree that gave us everyone from Glenn Branca to Robert Longo, and if you still search out your old Laurie Anderson and Love of Life Orchestra records for that much-needed solace I'm sure you'll go full throttle for this beauty as well!
***
Here's yet another Eye of the Storm release featuring some early krautrock that sure sounds as raw and as exciting as any of the punk rock that was being birthed during the early-seventies. Stoopid me bought this not knowing that these were the same Radio Bremen live in front of a small live audience recordings that have been floating around for quite some time, BUT boy does this sound as if it was just taped straight off the radio its that clear! And the packaging with liner notes ain't nothin' to sneeze at either. If you don't have any of the other versions of this then pick this particular spinner up for a treat that really does fit in on these long winter nights as you kick your feet up and sink into the pretty heavy-metallic punky sound that the Stooges-influenced era of Kraftwerk were able to exude.
***
Another Paul McGarry pawn off which I must say is worth the listen to considering that if I were to grab alla these Stones rarities on their lonesome it would cost me a millyun dollars just like them Time/Life infomercials say! Besides a lotta takes of "Brown Sugar" I've never heard before this has plenty of trackage that's pretty straightforward in the way the we liked the Stones when they weren't being too high falutin'. This even has some "new" numbers that a decidedly non-Stones kinda guy has never heard before so it was like an ALL NEW EXPERIENCE IN STONESIFIED EXPRESSION to be givin' this particular platter a spin. Hey Paul, ya doin' any more house cleanin'?
***
As if these pampered menials didn't think that they could fill up an album with standard alternative rock vocal styles and post-Elton sensitive piano emote and then try to tell all of us that they are hip 'n with it by tossing in a "Sister Ray" riff swipe. This ain't the death of rock, it's finding the carcass a few weeks after it being locked in a tool shed on an extremely hot summer's day. The closing backwards moosh with kids talking was about 1/1000% redeeming.
***
I know I reviewed my actual flesh and blood copy of this either in my crudzine or on this blog o'er a decade or so back, but McGarrys' recent burn sorta jogged my memory about these late-seventies Detroiters even existing inna first place. I remember the early singles which placed Cinecyde in the same class of post-sixties high energy rockers in the Destroy All Monsters/Mutants vein and they were plenty impacting ifyaknowaddamean, but this early-eighties effort has 'em playin' the same overdone rock moves and chord changes that sounded great at one time but seemed rather too little too late just a few years later. Well, it was the early-eighties after all and if you remember just how much of a DENOUEMENT those years were compared with what was happening in the seventies you woulda been just as down inna dumps as I was!
***
Sheesh, who ever thought that Hawkwind, or at least some form of what it used to be, would have lasted into the year 2019 where they'd be re-doing their old faves in remarkably different arrangements to pawn off on space kiddettes both old 'n new! Dunno who exactly is part of this version of the group (nor do I really care that much---after all, this ain't some high stool BOOK REPORT I'm doin' complete with recipe cards and reference pages!) but this Hawkwind's pretty snazzy and at times reminiscent of their various mid/late-seventies efforts that still see action on my turntable whenever one happens to pop up in the pile. Ya gotta give 'em loads of credit for milking the same stellar pathways for a good fifty years awlready and without coming off too money-minded at that!
***
After a long day at the concentration camp something like this helps raise the spirits. It features everything from a couple of weird outta-the-way teenage psychedelic sides from Frenchy and the Underground Railroad to the Mystic Five covering the Raiders and Surfaris to even more aural spasms (howzbout a record accompanying an anti-drugs/rock music film strip that makes me think that any kid who saw it woulda immediately headed for his local pusher and record shop!). Rod Rodgers of "song poems" fame contributes a few Air Force-related soul stirrers and whaddaya know but infamous vanity performer Dora Hall once again pops up to sing "Nellie Bly", undoubtedly financed by the Solo Cup Company! If only Bill had left them cheap proto-hippie cool college kid attempts at "cutting" satire via the "Apple Gunkies" ads off! The aural equivalent of cleaning about seventy years of junk outta your late Aunt Mabel's house!
***Someday these BLACK TO COMM BACK ISSUES are going to be extremely valuable. But then again someday an R. Meltzer Tropicana Orange Juice bottle filled with a stillborn kitten in gelatin will go for gigantic sums at Sotheby's. But my magazines sure smell a lot better, so you know where to invest your money now, eh?
A year from now Rush will be naked on all fours being fucked in the mouth and ass simultaneously by fire and ice demons with 50 foot cocks. A month or so later he'll die and go to Hell.
ReplyDeleteAh, pleasant dreams. Fuck you, Rush, you worthless shitsack, you cartoon angry white fucking idiot.
But MLJ---I thought you didn't believe in that place down there... Oh well, at least you can dream...
ReplyDeleteIn the case of Limbaugh the Brutarian I am sad to say that Hell does not exist. But maybe while he's undergoing chemo the anal warts that kept him out of Vietnam will come back.
ReplyDelete"Can a brain-damaged neo-autistic make it in the blogosphere without looking like the total idiot he's made himself out to be via the printed page for the past (almost) forty years?"
ReplyDeleteOnly if he's a crypto-fascist who masquerades as a anarcho-capitalist.
PS: Is it true what I've read, that The Talking Heads will not reunite because David Byrne is still ticked off at Tina Weymouth because she spilled the beans, so to speak, about his chronic flatulence?
Hey Chris, Loren here, how are you?
ReplyDeleteI read that Stooges Raw Power blog you mentioned and it was horrible, if it had been from anywhere else it would still be bad. It strikes me as a group of people trying to project their beliefs onto something they admire without evidence. I would rate it as factually challenged, I mean the field of current writing on that band is bad enough as it is - why sink lower?