Well, I see that you have survived the past week or else you obviously wouldn't be reading this! I'm doin' fine myself, keeping busy with the things I love to keep busy with and of course what you read below is pretty much the end result of it all. As you can tell I've had a pretty good time of it, and frankly what lies beneath is but the tip of the musical/tee-vee/reading iceberg---let's just say that I have more'n a few irons in the fire and who knows when I'm gonna sneak up on ya with a particularly potent BRAND. Thank goodness for pandemic-promulgated free time.
***I'm doin' a li'l afternoon readin' now, kickin' my feet up on the bed and listenin' to music which will probably be mentioned in these pages either below or rather shortly. In udder words I'm engaging in one of my favorite pastimes which can really zone me into a special realm once the music gets tantric and the wordage gets heavy. And in the course of all this all I must say that, it has been revealed and even in a Biblical sense, that there is an addition to my list of great rock screeding which tends to grow ever-so-slightly as the years go on. The new addition...Mark Jenkins' review of the Jefferson Airplane's LONG JOHN SILVER which appears in HYPERION vol. four number two (Winter 1973). Sheesh, someone should get that article out into the general public to show alla these weak-kneed upstarts what rock writing is supposed to be all about! IN OTHER WORDS, if I hadda compile my own PENGUIN BOOKS COLLECTION OF THE BEST ROCK WRITING EVER sorta like that one which came out back inna eighties this review, along with many forgotten bits of fanzine/gonzoid efforts, would appear while the vile likes of Ellen Willis and Robert Christgau would most certainly NOT! Better yet, a collection of THE ENTIRE RUN OF HYPERION/HYPE would be most welcome...hey Hozac, are you listening in hmmmmmmmmmmmmm?
***I'll bet that more'n a few of you are just champin' at the bit to read my reactions to the recent passing of one Richard Penniman aka Little Richard, the famous rock 'n roll originator whose musical career veered off into a whole slew of strange tangents that I'm sure few casual observers would find hard to believe EVEN THO EVERY BIT OF IT WAS TRUE. Well, if you're one of those people who are expecting the expression of my well-advanced opinions all I gotta say is YOU GOT ANOTHER THINK COMIN'!
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| Little Richard...left and right??? |
All kiddin' aside well, here's what I gotta (no doubt about it) hafta say. My overall opinion of Richard has been mixed and even controversial. His mid-eighties comeback was something that quite irritated me after I saw his mooshing it up with Phil Donahue on the latter's long-lasting progressively political weepathon to the point where I did write some nasty stuff that I'm still having a very hard time living down. Not that I especially care, but witnessing the return of a wild fifties rock 'n roller in the staid and complacent eighties did not settle well in my stomach and it is perhaps because of that I never really cozied up to the guy that much musically or otherwise. Oh I do have some of Richard's recordings snuggled in the collection and enjoy them but he, like Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry (and in another rock 'n roll generation Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton), had a sort of aura around 'em that kept me from total appreciation...nothing generational mind ya, but societal and personal perhaps.
Still I BETTER say somethin' good since the guy has kicked the bucket and is nada and nyet when he was once up and smearin' makeup all over his face. And what can one add to the litany of a guy who was so faggy yet didn't die of AIDS when his compatriots were droppin' like flies ('n yeah, he once claimed he never actually did the sodomite deal with those of his assigned gender but I still find that extremely hard to get down, if you will pardon the expression, my throat), influenced tons of local late-fifties garage bands and was even signed to Emerson Lake and Palmer's Manticore label? Yeah, what can I say other' this guy's entire reason for existence might have been eve more skewered than Sammy Davis Jr's which is really sayin' somethin'! But it is good to know that the guy died a reg'lar kind of death like your relatives and neighbors seemed to, living his days out like most normal people who never had the chance to grasp at the glorious universe and all that psychobabble just holed up in their ancient digs goin' out perhaps on the same socio (tho not economical---I hope!) plain they entered into this world in. I find that pretty cool, something I can only hope to aspire to when I get on up in years and settle back at the old fanablas home. But don't bet on it.
***
I used to think (still do!) that those LOVE IS noodie children with no genitals were not only OBSCENE but pretty disturbing, the most disturbing thing bein' that you used to see these creatures in the newspapers and just about anywhere back in the seventies and couldn't escape 'em even with the graphicness of the things starin' ya right inna face! Boy did that grate on my nerves not only because the things were ultra-cutesy-wootsey but downright sick what with them nipples 'n all! Not that you could get your rocks off lookin' at 'em, but I do think that if you did look at 'em hard enough your rocks would be headin' straight back to your rib cage!
Still don't know how whoever that gal was who made millyuns with these images got such a big audience inna first place (she really musta known which adolescent teengal outlets to plug into!) but LOVE IS sure caught on like syphilis and I consider these, along with hippies and genital liberation, one of the things that really led to the downfall of civilization as it used to stand before people who kept trying to improve things that maybe didn't need improving in the first place only made it worse. Oooh, I can still remember the nerve-grating feeling I used to get just lookin' at these things' belly buttons...an' while I'm at it I wonder just how many of the people I loathe in this life grew up thinkin' that LOVE IS was the peachy keeniest thing ever to enter into their usually horse-blindered awareness capacities. I dunno about you, but when I was a kiddo I used to like my teenage-era heroes CLOTHED!!! You never saw the Lone Ranger flappin' his pud all over the place!
And whaddaya know, but a li'l internet searchin' has me unfortunately discoverin' that the whole bloomin' franchise continues on! I woulda hoped LOVE IS crashed into the ocean when the husband the male nude was patterned on was dying of cancer thus putting a kibosh on the whole sordid mess but no... Who knows, this thing might still be running in YOUR local paper which kinda makes me glad that the whole printed news format is facing a long-wished demise. If you're out of Ipecac this site really will come in handy. Will irritability ever cease?
***On to something a whole lot more palatable. mainly some writeups of various platters old and
Wurm's "Time Has Come Today" EP and FEAST album were such welcome surprises back inna eighties, which as you might remember was a time when we were seeing rock 'n roll as it once stood decaying right before our very eyes (and the KIDS were cheerin' it on!). That's just one reason why this new double set of Wurm recordings really does bring a tear to this ol' fanabla's face.
At least groups like Wurm, along with a few thou others you can read about in a good thirtysome year's worth of my writings,stood against the raging forces of slick processed sounds that pretended to speak for a generation which wasn't my
The first of this double platter blue vinyl set (a nice gimmick...reminds me of buying Stiff Records singles!) features Wurm's FEAST album in its entirety. You probably already have that 'un in your collection but another one should be welcome considering how the grooves are probably all worn on yours, and its no wonder because FEAST has got that true blue HEAVY METAL SOUND WE ALL NEED IN IT, an' I don't mean that phony faggot Van Halen polished until it glistens inna dark sorta spew but the hard-edged 1971 CREEM magazine churns your guts type of sound that put off a whole lotta people then, and continues to do so a good 35 years after you thought the coast was clear. After tons of fake HM being thrown at us by people who I guess "know better" it sure feels GREAT hearin' the sordid strains of Ed Danky's beneath primitive guitar lines as new vocalist Simon Smallwood of Dead Hippie howls as if his manhood got caught in a bear trap! If this had only gotten out inna early seventies when it shoulda, boy would it had made a great flea market find ten years later.
Side three's got all of the non-LP previously-released material (I think---weren't Wurm on the infamous COPULATION sampler?) which makes this a good enough place to hear it all collected into one neat pile. The TIME HAS COME TODAY EP is such a high mark in the annals of what GOOD there was about the eighties that more people should hear it any way they can, and that mere EP even stands to remind me that despite the generally stale air of rock music at the time which everyone from Anastasia Pantsios to Andy Secher believed was right and wholesome there was a gritty underbelly to it all that polite people just don't want to talk about! But who ever said this music was "polite"???? Or myself being polite for that matter?
The final side'll surprise the whole lot of ya, consisting of nothing but tracks recorded in the "Wurm Hole" back '77 way. And boy does the band tear into your inner mind with these wowzers that are only IMPROVED ON by the low fidelity presented. Total woooosh and whirrrrs an' alla those clever onomatopoeias that Lester Bangs used to describe Dust are up front on these total abandon hard-edged numbers that sound as if they were recorded after a marathon listening session of SPACE RITUAL and FUNHOUSE!!! And to imagine just around the same times these scars were being scraped across town the elite would be felching each other to the strains of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER while immersing themselves into every pseudo-philosophical scam that passed by their ever-twinkling eyes! Talk about a clash of (anti) civilizations!
Need I say more about this double duty reminder of just why many of you save up lunch money to buy records back when there was this certain feral inspiration about 'em? Yeah rock 'n roll as if had stood for quite some time is long gone 'n decayed, but at least efforts like EXHUMED can summon up a few spirits in your now over-throbbed mind.
***
Ya could describe Fadensonnen's music as the missing link between "Sister Ray" and METAL MACHINE MUSIC, and ya might be right! However there's a whole lot more to it what with the shreds of no wave disturbance (Jack Ruby) and various eighties on influences from industrial to pure anti-rock/sound/LIFE that sorta appeals to an aged crank like myself.
These two cassettes feature a number of Fadensonnen outtakes that just might jar you into that reality you've been avoiding for years, what with the high adrenaline rush a la Controlled Bleeding-meets Ash Ra Tempel 1st LP meshing with a robotic pounding that sounds like a million automated Maureen Tuckers clamping down on your skull. And between these two tapes you get over eighty minute of supreme pressure!
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Remember "cassette culture"? Remember all of those English cassette tapes that were comin' out featuring rare beyond belief tracks by some of the more obscure anarcho-punks of the day? Remember how poor quality they were, not only due to the cheap tape that was used but the portable tape machine quality? Well if you miss that particular era in DIY flopdom (and I kinda do!) you might go for this "audio magazine" which features, besides two Cabaret Voltaire live tracks I kinda get the feeling were used without their permission, spoken word cuts so poor in quality I can't make out what was being said as well as some pleasant enough acoustic guitar done up in that English folk trad that actually sound antique due to the lack of fidelity. Someone should do a tapeography of all these underhanded releases that gave us plenty of rarities during the eighties under-the-underground movement that did seem fresh enough, at least for a short while.
***
These seventies soul junk numbers might not quite fit into a BLOG TO COMM accepted frame of what belongs here, but knowing me I'm not gonna shirk from my doody and avoid mentioning LOST TREASURES if only to look above-it-all and better than you are, even it I am.
Good thing too...these fairly recently-released (2011) tracks by a seventies soul act I never heard of before really do come off better than a lot of swill I've had the misfortune to be exposed to o'er the years. Or is that just because the stench of pop has gotten so strong that even these seventies tracks merely smell like sharp cheese? But like it I do (kinda), what with the cliches that sound good because really, what are wrong with cliches inna first place if they're good enough with interesting hooks?
Anyway, this pre-disco black music had more goin' for it than most wags would wanna agree. If you're man enough to appreciate early-seventies Motown or Philly at its best this also might strike some chord in you but I doubt it. An interesting piece of rare bubbling under funky soundz that you won't get, so like why should I waste my breath on you anyway (believe me, I've tried for years)?
***
Never got to hear the "new" Dolls (billed without the "New York" part) so this gig was quite a revelation. With the addition of keyboards the sound really ain't the Dolls of old but it's still Dolls-y enough to past muster in my book (THE AESTHETICS OF ROCK an' yeah I know that Meltzer HATED the Dolls!).
The music heard herein not only pays homage to the Dolls past, but points the way towards David Johansen's solo days long before the specter of Buster Poindexter reared its Vitalis head (an' yeah, Johansen introduces himself as Poindexter leading to a lotta wonder on my part!). Thankfully these toonz don't sound as stale or as camp as those various incarnations of the Johansen "mystique" could tend to get.
The appearance of special guest Ronson kinda goes right by ya, so if you were one who did not spin PLAY, DON'T WORRY incessantly when it first came out this will not bother you in the least. Overall I gotta say that this particular night was a way better celebration of the big 200 than what I hadda endure.
***
A shorty (less that a half hour) but still packed burn with some interesting tho not mandatory sixties garage band efforts from the likes of Silence, the Noise and the Candidates (Vat 66 were fine as well tho I am not sure if they really did hail from the last greatest decade to grace kiddiedom). Ernie Freeman's piano jazz doesn't do too much for me but it sure beats that soft stuff which permeates the jazz world these days. And for you old tyme 78 lovers John Fischer's Band's "Circus Clown's Gallop" will have you really nostalgic for 1904 and dodging horse plop when you run around the streets barefoot!
There's also some good stuff from Joy McCoy doin' it Wanda-like and another "Louie Louie" you might wanna hear even if is more Kingsmen than Sonics, and it all ends with a cover of the Pretty Things' "Get the Picture" which might just get me digging out a few old albums of theirs more sooner than later! Much better than watching Don Lemon trying to prove just how much morally superior he is to the rest of us because he's only had a measly twenty anonymous lovers this month.
***Just the usual reminder about BLACK TO COMM back issues still being available in case you missed out on 'em back when they were freshly popped outta the printer. I'll forgive you for once, if only you'll take a few of these CRUCIAL, HEAVILY NEEDED magazines off my hands. Good stuff in 'em and I should know, because I wrote a good portion of 'em!
Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, McJagger, "Keef," The MC5, etc were/are degenerates, filth, vermin, lice-ridden rodents, maggots.
ReplyDeleteTheir deaths should be celebrated in knowing that they will burn for eternity.
We were much better off with The Pied Pipers, The Four Freshmen, The Dukes of Dixieland, Sauter-Finegan, etc.
BTW, I have it on very good account that Davy Jo is skin bald and has a collection of wigs: long hair, pompadour, whatever. Not that being a chrome dome is a sin or a crime.
ReplyDeleteWho let the idiots from Stormfront start posting here?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe same ones who let them post from DEMOCRACY NOW?
ReplyDeleteNever heard of Democracy Now. Somehow I don't think they actually compare to Nazis in the being-a-worthless-shitbag department, though.
ReplyDeleteKeep 'em comin', Chris! I'll see if I can locate a few of these items. Gotta say, The NY Dolls were never my cuppa. I do enjoy musicianship, something they seemed to lack. But, of course, Mick Ronson is top drawer. I'm curious! Cheers! Alvin Bishop
ReplyDelete(((Amy Goodman))) a hottie she is!
ReplyDeleteIsn't that where you came from??? Anyway, they compare to COMMUNISTS which as we all SHOULD know remain a bigger threat than Nszis ever were!
ReplyDeleteA hotbed of AltRight hate speech this blog is! Worse, even, it is than other AltRight hate sites such as Daily Wire, Quillette and Federalist! Oy vey! To this Stigliano sudge a noogie I will give!
ReplyDeletelol in your header everyone is a male lol are you gay? lol not that that's a bad thing lol
ReplyDeleteYou should see if you could interview (((Danny Fields))). If you did, then you could ask if'n it was true what Pete Townshend said, about (((Danny Fields))) pulling a "Cosby" on him back in the day. Just don't accept any drinks from (((Danny Fields))) or you might wake up with a sore rear end.
ReplyDeleteI guess that's how you get a name like Upchurch in the first place.
ReplyDelete