ANOTHER RIGHT-WINGER FOR THE PUNK BRIGADES!

For years, liberals have been pleasantly pleased, no, make that downright snotty, over how they're not only systematically smarter but have better (read: "hipper," "avant garde") tastes than those ol' stick in the mud right wingers they always seem to know about but never seem to come across in their tight little circles. I mean, it is kinda pathetic in some ways that these anointed types do tend to look down upon those of the "right" (whatever that may be these days) for being such cubes, yet in other ways their airs of superiority are, I hate to admit, totally understandable. After all, just how many reviews/mentions of rock music of any stripe do you see in most right-wing periodicals these days? You're lucky if you see something on a phenomenon (whether pro or con) that's been around for the past fifteen years, and usually written about in the dryest, most urbane way! And when such subjects as rock or experimental film or whatnot are presented to the likes of people who have problems with anything post-baroque, what is one to expect...you may remember, when William F. Buckley in his glory days was writing about the Beatles and "Back in the USSR," he got a lotta heat for promoting what was thought of as the Beatles' obviously communist leanings!!! Yet still, I'm seeing more and more right wingers (usually those of the more libertarian right line, not of the sissy Republican mainstream that seems all the rage) coming out and downright admitting their punkism past and (perhaps even) present. Wayne McGuire was the first (albeit he has been in on the game for quite awhile...since 1968 in fact), then came Russell Desmond of CAN'T BUY A THRILL fame, and now I find out that Thomas Fleming, the head of the right-wing libertarian Rockford Institute and editor of CHRONICLES magazine, can also be counted as part of the freedom punk pack! Make no doubt about it, Dr. Fleming is about as right wing as they come (BTW, I don't consider racist/National Socialist groups "right wing" given they share more common ground with their supposed leftist adversaries than anyone on either side would dare admit), finding fault with the likes of the new NATIONAL REVIEW direction under the tutelage of Jonah Goldberg amongst a bevy of other "conservative" movements abounding, but in the course of a rather negative obituary of Johnny Carson and some quips about current music (mainly, a thumbs-down comment re. Elvis Costello), I came across the following gem from the good Doctor:

"While living in San Francisco I attended several concerts of the Velvet Underground and spent some minutes backstage chatting with Lou Reed about modern verse. I still think several of their songs from that period--Sweet Jane, Rock and Roll--are quite good and hold up well. As the pop Baudelaire, Reed was interesting, though as the conventional liberal he has become he is as insufferable as Bob Dylan."

Dr. Fleming goes on to mention a few other things about rock as in "garage," re. how he thought that the only good thing about Steven Stills was that he wrote the Mojo Men's "Sit Down I Think I Love You" (!-though he sheepishly admits that he liked some CSN stuff but I'll give him a pass because I think I might too! Aaaarrrrrgh! [Well, at least CSN&Y!]). And, to put the frosting on the cake (and make yet another interesting connection), none other than Russell Desmond himself had contributed some articles to Fleming's magazine a decade back...maybe if these two rockism minds had gotten their act together we could have had a truly libertarian/hard right rock music section in Fleming's rag that could have easily counteracted all of the bad (and nowadays downright flaccid) rock scribing seen in a bevy of left-leaning weekly papers (amongst other places) these days. So the next time some pointy-headed, regime-loving left winger picks on YOU for being an L-7 void-of-taste neanderthal, just direct him to the likes of McGuire, Desmond and Fleming, whose tastes do seem a lot more on target than the usual patented rebel rabble revolutionary amerindie rooter who, despite his flaring nostrils and flashy rhetoric still seems to have a great affinity for...the Democratic Party???

And if you're interested in the kinda right-wing classic liberal-leaning politics that I've had a liking for over the past decade or so, give CHRONICLES a try. Not only do they have some of my favorite writers like Paul Craig Roberts and Sam Francis amongst their ranks (though Francis does seem to get to me at times with his praise, and perhaps deification of the WASP male which [in my humble opinion, me being decidedly non-WASP] can be bogus...I mean, isn't Dave Lang a WASP male [I hear he ain't a kraut like I originally thought]??? Case closed!), but they have some of the best, most cutting political scribings one can find on or off the web these days. Fleming's terse obituary/putdown of Christopher Reeve (I tried linking it without luck, so just click on the mag title, then go to the "Hard Right" section, then click on "BRAIN-SUCKING FREAKS") had even brave me shuddering in my boots even though I totally disagree with his assessment/putdown of the real Superman, George Reeves (I guess there's no accounting for taste, at least as far as moom pitchers are concerned). Anyway, if you'd like to see at least another facet of my, er, sociopolitical makeup, CHRONICLES is da place ta BE!

Tim Buckley-THE STARSAILOR IS COMING HOME DVD (VTN [Video Tape Network])

Dunno where you can get hold of this one (Jon Behar duped his copy for some dupe, mainly me), but it's (to say the least) an enlightening little bit of obscuro rockism that would have wowed me had I given this an eyeballing back in '77 but I got to see it in the here and now which is better'n had I waited an additional 28 years so I gotta be THANKFUL for such small favors.

At first, I didn't care about Tim Buckley one way or another. It was only until I found out that he was at one time involved in the Frank Zappa gristmill of tax writeoff productions that I deemed him important enough of my attention (remember, this was at the time I thought that Zappa and whatever he did was of such a wowwee how can anyone TOP THIS sense of juvenile mid-finger salutation that I was searching out just about ANYTHING that had the Frank Zappa Seal o' Freak Approval even if it was Tim Dawe). I eventually got hold of the oft-desired $1.00 "loss leader" sampler ZAPPED w/a selection of just about everything that came out of Zappa's Bizarre/Straight entourage at the time (sans the early Verve-period Sandy Hurvitz/Jeff Simmons wares by now totally forgotten even by Zappa, not to mention that 2-LP set where Lenny Bruce bores us to death only we're supposed to act as if we were learning something about ourselves and our society so I guess that "redeems" everything) and finally got to hear Buckley off his BLUE AFTERNOON disque and merely yawned. It was a pleasant yawn, but still tiresome hipster jazz/mode laidbackisms to THIS blubbered-out teenage pimple farm getting his jollies not only with Patti Smith albums but Amon Duul's DISASTER helping him lose status at the high school!

And, as if the godz of rockism were smiling upon me, about a half-year later DOWN BEAT printed a huge, no, humongous piece on Buckley written by then-editor and former Buckley guitarist Lee Underwood, and although the piece was marred by that very irritating and once-common seventies over-emote (y'know, "...if the public had only accepted Tim and just how down-to-earth honest he was and how he performed miracles and walked on water, maybe he wouldn't have died and we'd all be marching happily down the yellow brick road to true awareness...") it still gave at least me a reason to get obsessive/compulsive all over some musical act that was so "old" that he was beyond the cut out stage but that didn't matter one iota to me! Avant garde jazz was starting to make inroads into my listening parameters and everything from the AACM to Derek Bailey seemed like a whole new, exciting, throbbing world for me to discover, and reading about how Buckley was at one period starting to sing in mythical languages and scream while playing in odd time signatures as gongs banged and bells tinkled to the "new thing" captured my ever-mutating bounds of musical attention the same way people like the Velvet Underground, John Cage, Ornette Coleman and the Shadows of Knight were doing the exact same thing at the exact same nanosecond.

I did give it the ol' college try, but it took around a year for me to finally latch onto Buckley's two avant garde platters, namely LORCA and STARSAILOR. You can read reviews of both of 'em elsewhere on this blog (I'm too lazy to link 'em up), but to make a not-so-long story perhaps not-that-shorter, I merely listened to both, thought "hey, tis good," and filed 'em into my collection somewhere between NI KANTU EN ESPERANTO and GEORGE "GOOBER" LINDSAY SINGS I LIKE UGLY GIRLS...nice try, but there was a new era of music more attuned to my suburban doofus Amerigan living coming up while my excursions into past product seemed to be relegated to the groups that (at that time) seemed to be pointing the way towards the modern-day pounce that was beginning to be my new obsession! It wasn't until that excitement died down that I was again able to look at the past and see just what there was outside the punk realm worthy of my time and temperature. And it wasn't for YEARS that I would even think of giving Tim Buckley another spin, but thanks to some blog action (and my desire to TOP whatever was transpiring on said blogs, at least when it came to music/film that doesn't bore me to pieces) my attention was once again piqued, if only for a few more minutes.

Anyway here's this Tim Buckley DVD of stuff that I believe was taken mostly off long-circulating videotapes, and it's a very enveloping experience for the Buckley maniac while a mere passerby like myself can learn a thing or two about it as well. The early Elektra-era footage is pretty much what I expected...a more "adult" folk/rock toss that wasn't quite gonna settle well with the sweathog types, but then again I'm sure that the pseudo-intellectual folkies at the local high school weren't going to snuggle up to it as well. Kinda mature, perhaps "grown up" as in only someone over twenty-five would want to listen to this, but it's still fine seeing Buckley (on THE MONKEES) sing his mournful "Song To The Siren," later to show up not only on STARSAILOR but Pat Boone's almost-legendary attempt to cash in on the new youth music a few years before he grew his hair long, dragged his entire family outta mothballs and made a partially-successful comeback on television shows like NIGHT GALLERY. Still, I can't really enjoy this part of Buckley's career, since to me he comes of more or less as a less-addled, with-it Southern Californian folk/rock hybrid, perhaps a male Joni Mitchell (yeah, she's Canadian, but California folkiedom was bred in her soul despite Fairport Convention doing excellent versions of her songs) fortunately without any neuroses that I can discern!

The part of this DVD that's bound to capture the interest of your normal BLOG TO COMM reader is that of Buckley's appearance on (get this!) BOBOQUIVAKI! This was some show filmed at the studios of KCET-TV in Los Angeles and perhaps broadcast throughout the nation courtesy of PBS (which may still have been NET at this time), but whatever, BOBOQUIVAKI has that same weird PBS air that permeated all of their music shows throughout the seventies, giving people the feeling that they're hanging out at some hippoid den of peacenlove when they'd rather be hanging out at Max's Kansas City . Buckley and band are spread out across some typical abstract in-the-round stage as the audience sits cross-legged on the floor (!), but despite the airs of early-seventies mellow-downness there is a purpose to this broadcast, mainly in that it's perhaps the only surviving piece of STARSAILOR-era Buckley that's out there and fans of that particular piece of commercial suicide should be glad this footage wasn't destroyed after broadcast for the sake of "good karma"!

No pipe organ, tympani or even Bunk Gardner on saxes here, but we do get brother Buzz on horns, gong and tinkling bells while Buckley and the rest of the group do a pretty good subdued, sublime performance that, although not the screamer that I was expecting, is still good enough with the power and tension controlled yet downright overbearing. Camera closeups of Buckley's grimacing, and totally into-"it" face seem to take up a majority of the shots (though we do get some nice views of Gardner on trumpet), and while this ain't exactly the knock-out-drag-down I woulda expected had I seen this in 1978 (when the idea of Buckley singing "Starsailor" as the rest of the group howled along in an attempt to imitate the recorded version would have sent me into fits of eternal avant bliss), it's still a fine encapsulation of SoCal folkiedom meets sixties new thing jazz a la Pharoah Sanders that anyone out there woulda known wasn't gonna sell nearly the same numbers Joe South would, but thankfully Buckley and a whole slew of others (Hampton Grease Band, Stooges...) didn't mind. No wonder even ROLLING STONE was confused.

The rest of the DVD is taken up with early-seventies Buckley appearances (I believe the one where he does "Sally Goes Round The Roses" was filmed at Max's Kansas City...anyone know if this is so?), all from a period which Underwood said was one of pressure on Buckley to "conform" and make accessible music, and the choice of material and general staidness of these performances perhaps prove Underwood's point. Buckley's later records not only had none of the avant-garde wildness that at least perked my lobes, but they're equally nowhere when compared with Buckley's early folk musings which, although not my cup o' tea, at least have some motion and sway to their introspective demeanor. Maybe someday someone will uncover a cache of Buckley's under-the-table group with John Balkin on electric stick, but I'm not holding your breath until it happens or anything.

Oh, for some reason there's a whole batch of DONOVAN tee-vee appearance on this DVD as well. You know something bad's coming when David McCallum announces that Mr. Leech is "the voice of our conscious" when in reality he's the voice of our UNconsciousness (like in a BAD DREAM), and frankly I can't think of anything as boring as sitting through clips of Donovan singing socially-profound folkie musings while the audience gapes in awe as they look inside their souls and get into a whole lotta proto-John Bradshaw introspective goo before heading towards the nearest old cemetery to make gravestone rubbings. After awhile you kinda wish either some bikers (or better yet, whatever punk rock group was appearing on the same episode of HULLABALLOO Donovan was appearing on) would approach the stage and beat Donovan to smithereens with bike chains, but alas this does not occur.

THERE'S NOT A THING, NOT EVEN A MENTION, OF JAY HINMAN OR DAVID LANG ON THIS POSTING! NO FOOLIN'! SCOUT'S HONOR!!!!

Birdbrain-I FLY CD-R (Persian Cardinal, try www.theworldofbirdbrain.com for more information)

As any astute reader of BLOG TO COMM knows, the main brain motivator for me these days ain't rock & roll as much as it is FREE JAZZ (read: avant garde jazz/new thing/fire music...). Oh yeah, I like rock & roll, but hardly any of the new stuff coming out moves me like a hefty helping of sonic Ex-Lax mighta some quarter-century ago, and frankly, all of these new groups that are being touted as the RAW AND ALIVE thing if you're a young and grooving guy just ain't cuttin' anything whether it be mustard or cheese as far as THIS "well-respected" (HAH!) scribe (NOT "rock critic") is concerned. Like, Mike Snider has been hyping some new group called The Fiery Furnaces at me, tellin' me all these things about how they recall past rock achievements of various respected stripes and all that, which sounds fine and dandy to me, only I've been around the block more than a few times and tend to be a little more wary about picking up some of these new items by groups who seem to have their "hearts" in the right place, but does that really mean anything in the light of all those bands of the past who took their guiding light from sources both stellar and dismal but made well with what they had solely on garage-addled primitivism alone?

So maybe that's why when I'm checking out the action at CBGB I'm not always paying close attention to what's happenin' at their main club nor their next-door art gallery/quieter-rock/folk music space. For me, the main action happenin' at this world-reknown club is goin' on at the CBGB Lounge on Sunday night's "Freestyle avant" showcase where the best of the old and the new freedom players are gathered in what has proven to be the best running gig in New York City since the Central Park wilding. I know that more than a few of you out there could care less about "jazz," feeling that it's the music of hi-fi nuts wearing suits going to see lounge-y pianists playing soft schmooze while martoonies clink, but this is the AVANT GARDE I'm gabbin' at you about! This is the music of high energy, atonal screech, nerves fraying and mental breakdown, and if you can't go for any combination of the above not only in your musical listening but your living patterns, what kind of BLOG TO COMM reader are you?!?!?!

Anyway, I assumed that Birdbrain, who play the series on occasion, were just another one of those great unknown avant jazz groups that have flocked to the Lounge for some rare gig in a world of apathy. Well, I am right, but there's a lot more to Birdbrain than juat being another free jazz group on the chopping block. This aggregate is more or less a weird juxtapoz of white avant-jazz chamber moves and alternative music (with just about everyone in the group coming out of a new wave/alternative background inc. two ex-members of the well-known in new wave circles Bloomington Indiana group The Dancing Cigarettes who I never were able to enjoy to the fullest...sorry guys!) consisting of vocalist Yvette Perez (who looks the 1981 new wave chanteuse role to the max) and three horn players (Don Trubey on alto sax, Tim Noe on tenor and Peter Zummo on trombone) and nada more! (A drummer has since joined the ranks which should change their sound dramatically...there is a gig coming up at the Lounge which I'm going to do my durndest to try and catch via cybercast!)

If you think I was somewhat bored silly by such a concept in music (being played out as avant garde jazz), you're mistaken as usual. I'll admit that I was at first puzzled after watching an archived 'cast of theirs available through CB's website, but this CD is not only "listenable" but downright enjoyable. Perez can purr and coo like you wish Cathy Berberian woulda w/o coming off too brash, while the horn structures, while not free in the classic sense, are abstract enough to add tension to Perez's warblings. If you get into Jimmy Giuffre's more experimental sides you might like this if only for the starkness. Plus, for a change, the final cut ("I Hear It on the Vine") has Perez singing to an organ accompaniment for a switch that I'm sure will bring a smile to even the cube-est of modern rock followers as well as practitioners of the sorry form.

George Cartwright's Glorious Ponycat-BLACK ANTS CRAWLING CD (Innova, available through Wayside)

Maybe it ain't so funny that I haven't touched my Albert Ayler box set since its arrival (other'n to spin a disc or two and do a little burnin') yet I'm buying up and playing this post- (some may say "sub-", but I don't) Ayler spurt in the interim. Pretty nice mid-energy romp from some guys who I think might not be that big on the "jazz scene" but given how lively the freedom quotient is these days does it matter??? Funny, the liner notes bring up none other than the Stooges masterpiece FUNHOUSE which I think is crazy since Glorious Ponycat are pretty much legit, "real" avant garde jazz while FUNHOUSE (and a variety of other rock/jazz crossovers a la Tim Buckley's STARSAILOR) were "fake" avant garde jazz...not that it means a hill of beans mind you. It just seems strange seeing it brought up in the liners of a "serious" jazz offering, but nowadays you can expect everything done anyway anywhere so why should I be surprised! Still, I'll take Glorious Ponycat over any of the "new" and "improved" supposedly hot "garage" groups of the day who more or less come off like warmed over Dream Syndicate retreads, not to mention most any group over the last decade who have been compared to the Stooges' sophomore sides.

Wire-PINK FLAG CD (EMI-Harvest UK)

Guess what! Ol' Chris has actually gone out and purchased a disque that just about everyone else in the world has bought, chomped, digested and pooped out ages back! I never really was that sold on the Wire legacy, perhaps because too many people were pointing to them as some all-encompassing musical act without whom our musical vocabulary would be severely limited. I never bought into such bunk, which is why I waited until the late-eighties to buy a Wire disc (actually, the one LP/one 12-inch EP Rough Trade issue) and didn't quite osmose to that as I'm sure more than a few spectators out there in BTC-land wish I had. However, I liked the the way Wire played with their audience...these relatively old-fogies romping around in the punk idiom (and in the extremely ageist Britpunk one too!) who were going around telling everyone just how much they hated rock music rather appealed to me...pure genius as in PLAY THE FANS FOR THE ZILCH-DIMENSIONAL SUCKERS THEY ARE!!! Advice I can live by. Besides, (as so eloquently pointed out in the last issue of BOMP!), Wire were a group that was using their standard rock instrumentation more or less as an experimental/electronic blare wall-of-sound along with the Slits, Subway Sect and Pop Group (OK, that ain't the exact meaning of the quote or anything near it...save your time writing in!) which sounded rather neat back when I first read it back in '80.

Anyhow, PINK FLAG is great, not as "Syd" as CHAIRS MISSING which I've had for a coupla years already but not as "duh" as much of the quickie punque flybynightisms of the time. Sorta like art rock Ramones (yeah, I know that the Ramones ARE art rock already...art like in the Sunday Funnies!) with major white-sound blare that "does" have its artsy quotient, but that doesn't matter when the punkisms offer a solid counterpoint. It's nothing to make me wanna go out and kill people (like the best music does!) but an interesting piece in that British punk puzzle I thought I didn't care about anymore, but maybe I do (a tad).

Sunny Murray-HOMAGE TO AFRICA CD (BYG/Sunspots)

It was a thrill seeing Sunny Murray on the CBGB Lounge cybercast last year and knowing that the man is still active long after becoming one of the first (along w/Milford Graves) truly free drummers, and this previously unheard-by-me BYG release, like Murray's other offerings both on and off BYG, reminds me of just how important avant garde jazz is to a person's (mainly mine) rockism sense and how it perhaps even surpasses it, at least nowadays when so little rock flashes on me like it usedta. Featuring the cream of the BYG in-house players (Shepp, Silva, Thornton, most of the Art Ensemble...) along with Jeanne Lee singing and playing bells, HOMAGE TO AFRICA is yet another free tour-de-force perhaps improved on given BYG's hands-off production. I only hope that Murray etc. get paid for this reissue!

A BIG HEAPING HUNKING THANKS TO BLOG TO COMM FAN PAUL McGARRY for sending me the rest of the first season of COMBAT on DVD-R! Just got 'em today and'll start spinnin' 'em as soon as the spirit moves me. Hope you're enjoying the Ayler CD-Rs I burned for you (don't wear yourself out listening to 'em!)...whadja want for this batch pal?

BLOG TO COMM DREAM INTERPRETATION!

Do you ever have weird dreams? I sure do, especially while I'm under the influence of not only some powerful medicine (Ny-Quil comes to mind), but rock & roll (or any other relevant gulcheral obsession) can also bring on some mighty midsummer's night's screams. I mean, whadja expect given my gotta hear it and hear it NOW sense of purpose??? F'rexample, I still remember a dream I had way back in the spring of 1977, where I happened to be at a flea market or used record shop or something like that and I found a cassette tape of a Hampton Grease Band album I never knew about in some cheapo bin. I had the obscure object of desire in my increasingly-clammy claws (the cover, btw, was taken from that group photo that appears in the gatefold sleeve of MUSIC TO EAT so mebbee it was a bootleg) only to wake up with a humongous feeling of "AAAARRRGHH!!!" overcoming my sensitive highschool being as I slowly realized that it was nothing but a mere dream and this recording I wanted to hear so bad didn't even exist! In the eighties I had a dream where I had gotten hold of a cassette tape with Rocket From The Tombs doing "Sonic Reducer" (complete with the opening vacuum-cleaner drone chant) and let me tell you that the legit release that has been going around for the past few years definitely pales next to the wall of screaming distortion and feedback that I encountered coming from my still-standing (two feet away from me as I type this) boom box! Believe me, I've had many weird/strange/cool dreams o'er my lifetime, some as faint as a distant UHF signal while others so vivid I coulda sworn they actually happened, but whatever the case whether they be dreamers or screamers, what can you do about your nighttime brain activity anyway???

Other'n analyze the entire disgusting mess, that is! Yeah I've seen all the dream books out there (though never did come across Peter Reich's) and know that what I'm about to deal in is a mere parlor game time passer, but as I was told in highschool psycho class you can learn a lot from your dreams, so learn on I will. The following are some dreams I've had in the very and not-so-recent past, and in order to shed some light on my own psychological makeup (so's you'll feel sorry for me) I will tell you what these dreams mean, and how they fit into my overall tip-top mental health. For the sake of taste, I am going to forego telling you about some long-running repeato dream themes (having to urinate/defecate and then finding out that the toilet being used is in the middle of some open-air public area and people are staring at me [maybe not], my grades being so bad that I get sent back to either high school, grade school or kindergarten and have to go through all twelve grades all over again, or that thrilling one where I'm in public and I'm either in my pajamas, underwear, or nude [again, with nobody noticing me!]!) because I haven't had any of those dreams recently (other'n the nude one, where to add insult to injury I'm back in grade school so I guess I had a two for one shot there). Given my luck I probably will have one of these recurring whackmares tonight due to subliminal suggestion, but that's the price I must pay in order to write this VITAL, IMPORTANT post dealing with a subject very relevant to my life today, mainly SANITY!

PART ONE: TEE-VEE DREAMS!-I've had a lotta these over the years. In the distant past (seventies/eighties) I've had a dream that I was in this film noir-esque situation, wearily entering into a small motel room decorated in a 1940s motif, switching on the television where some fifties program, say THE RED SKELTON SHOW was ending watching the station ID (a channel 2) all done in the old. pre-computer fifties/sixties look/style, kinda feeling like Humphrey Bogart after a hard day on a case the whole while. I've also had dreams about a variety of independent stations in the local area airing those old shows I used to want to watch with a PASSION that had been broadcasting for years AND I DIDN'T KNOW THEY WERE ON! leading to a lotta frustration and anger over missing years of MY LITTLE MARGIE reruns. (There's a road I continually drive past where one of these stations was supposed to be, and guess which dream I think of when I go past that place!) However, there are some rather recent (and not-so)dreams I want to run through the old pseudopsychological grist mill today, and I'll betcha my bottom dollar my tee-vee dreams have yours beat all hollow!

First tee-vee dream...this is one I had a while back but it's still cool enough. I'm watching SGT. BILKO, only I'm not watching it as much as standing in the scene observing things as they happen (as in many of my tee-vee dreams). Anyway, Bilko and gang are in the barracks putting plaster all over Doberman's head in order to make a bust of him, Doberman going "Geeee Sahge" like he always does and Bilko responding "Now now Doberman..." while slopping this grey glop all over his noggin, forgetting to leave tubes to stick up the Private's nostrils in order for him to breathe not to mention a divider in order to remove the hardened mold. Then from in back of me I hear a whining voice which I thought to be Jane Dulo's only I wake up finding out that some horny neighborhood cat's outside my hot and humid August night bedroom window serenading me at three in the morning.

Second tee-vee dream...it's LEAVE IT TO BEAVER, only it's taking place in my old gradeschool hallway which looks different than in real life. But only slightly. There's a costume party going on or at least people are dressed up, and Beaver (circa. 1962-1963) is walking down the hall looking like Robin Hood. Then suddenly Eddie Haskell, dressed as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (similar to Chaney only w/o the curly wig or cataract eye though with facial makeup and an obviously phony hump that makes him look like a camel when he stands straight up) leaps out from a classroom door, grabs Beaver and viciously starts biting him on the neck! Beaver looks like he's in agony as Haskell bites and growls away! Then, after about ten seconds of this, Eddie releases Beaver and starts laughing, telling everyone how "funny" his little prank was as Wally (I forget who/what he was dressed as) says in his typical Wally way "Yeah, sure Eddie" as the dream more or less dissolves into something I can't remember so it must not have been important.

Third tee-vee dream...Another oldie...I'm over at my now-deceased uncle's house (he was alive at the time) watching tee-vee and the show that happens to be on is an episode of GET SMART only star Don Adams is wearing a moustache and has fashionably-long early-seventies hair hanging over the ears in it. I think to myself that this must be from the last season or something like that which I probably missed out on for whatever stupid reason. I also found it strange that Adams would stoop so low as to actually have his toupee fly off his head for a cheap joke in this episode! After the show, there're some weird announcements having to do with (I believe) a storm warning, then THE TWILIGHT ZONE comes on, only the opening is rather different...strange images (including a slightly shaggy dog with a wolfhound body and a human skull for a head) appear and the voice-over is not that of Rod Serling, but Ernie Kovacs doing Percy Dovetonsils! I start feeling weird, then look at my uncle who gives me this sinister grin and starts showing fangs! Then I wake up.

PART TWO: TEE-VEE/ROCK & ROLL DREAM...a mixie! This one happened only two nights ago so it's fresh in my mind. I'm actually watching a tee-vee in this one, an old film from SHINDIG of the Turtles performing one of their best, "Let Me Be." Only this film is in color, and Mark Volman (wearing a white suit jacket similar to the one he had in the Crossfires) is playing drums and singing background instead of just twirling his tambourine! Howard Kaylan sings, but he's starting to look like he did in the Mothers here plus he's playing guitar (!) while singing his lungs out as the seven-piece (!!!) group (including a guy on a vox organ---the entire group consists of, besides drums and organ, FOUR guitarusts and one bassist and they're all dressed in hip gear and striped shirts and vests and a floppy cap or two!) join in on the chorus and swing and sway to the music like it was going out of style! And the sound...loud and high-energy, close to something a band the caliber of the Sons of Adam, Love or one of the better West Coast wonders might have cooked up. The ending of the song was wild, as Kaylan runs from the performing area onto this open field (still singing and playing guitar) as the rest of the group follows and the camera shot rises to directly above the fray where you can see the group (and others) joking around playing tag (and the song doesn't even fade out but ends solid---whew!).

PART THREE: I DON'T KNOW HOW TO CATEGORIZE THIS ONE...it's supposed to be a thirties (late thirties I guess judging from the greying tint gloss look, even though I'm once again watching the film as if I were on the set) film starring a young Arlo Guthrie as some sorta comedic boxer. He looks about fifteen, is really skinny as well as tall and has longish hair which I think is strange for the late-thirties, but since Moe and Larry could get away with long hair then I guess Arlo could too. Also starring in the film is a young Cary Grant as something like Guthrie's older brother or manager, and in one scene both Guthrie and Grant throw a tantrum burying their heads in chairs and kicking their feet while some thirties-type actress explains to us something of moral significance going on but I can't remember what, if anything. Then the place turns into some area reminiscent not only of my uncle's aforementioned house/yard but the farm where my sister lives where some strange gathering is going on (the cats who live on the farm are there, as does a pachyderm which lifts one of the cats with its trunk). The strangest part of this dream is where I happen to look into a mirror and who do I see but young Arlo Guthrie smirking back at me!

PART FOUR: HIGH TENSION, JUVENILE DELINQUENCY DREAM...I'm a kid. About twelve, and I'm with a buncha kids that I went to school with (no names, since they might be reading this), and we're hanging out around Stambaugh Avenue here in Sharon. Suddenly, a buncha black kids (with seventies afros and black power sneers) corral us and take us hostage, forcing us into a garage located where Tony's Pizza Kitchen should be. (It should be known that a black kid who I went to school with is part of the entourage I'm with so I dunno if this attack is 100% racially motivated...in fact, he's vocally arguing with the perpetrators.) Me and the guys are threatened with our lives for reasons I can't remember and, after some harrassment on their part, the younger kids in our group (none of whom I recognize though another one is black) are set free even though they're STILL going to kill the rest of us. (I guess they figured that the freed kids would be too chicken to call the cops!) I find a hollow steel tube in the garage and try to hide it until I can use it to bop some heads and make an escape, only I'm caught. However, I do struggle with one of the captors and then we're all free. No attempt to bring the evildoers to justice is made, but I eagerly head on home.

BLOG TO COMM INTERPRETS THESE DREAMS!!!-First off, the dream about Bilko signifies my love for not only the fifties, but subjugating women, minorities and gays. However, the act of Bilko smearing plaster upon Doberman's face signifies how I (as Doberman, a low on the ladder rung of life soldier?) am being constantly humiliated by those higher up (mainly Sgt. Bilko who perhaps represents others, like more, established, famed bloggers perhaps?), smearing something that's NOT plaster on my face while telling me that my suffering is for "my own good." The presence of Jane Dulo/the cat is I believe something of an occult nature I cannot interpret at this time.

Regarding the LEAVE IT TO BEAVER dream, once again I'm the victim as Beaver, who I guess I am "identifying" with (the Robin Hood outfit signifying a noble heart perhaps) is persecuted for his virtue while Eddie plays the Bilko/higher-up role with his "joke" signifying typical rank-pulling abuses that many in authority are wont to execute for their own nefarious purposes. The fact that Eddie is dressed as a famous film "monster" adds to the tenacity of the attack, while Wally's nonchalant response to seeing the living daylights being scared out of his kid brother once again represents "Big Brother" watching you, but not really caring what happens one way or the other.

As for the Don Adams/TWILIGHT ZONE dream, it's merely nostalgia. When I was younger I used to watch a lotta television with my relatives including my uncle, who lived in an area where he could pick up a few of the low-budget UHF stations that I used to love the dickens outta (mainly channels 17 and 23 before they went religious) and copped a whole buncha hours of class tee-vee viewing while at his abode. The Don Adams reference perhaps relates to the era when I was spending time at my uncle's, the mid-seventies (when moustaches and longish hair were widely seen amongst even the staider of souls amongst us) while the "storm warning" is a reference to my uncle's extremely strong fear of storms, he seemingly being an over-cautious person when it came to such warnings usually heading for the cellar long before the rest of us would. (Though when a tornado DID hit our area back in '85 he thought I was pulling a bad joke on him after I heard about it on the news!) I'm still trying to figure out the TWILIGHT ZONE bit...perhaps Percy Dovetonsils (a flaming sissy) being the total opposite of Serling's cool fifties/sixties aloofness was an example of my brain was pulling perhaps a little ol' satire on yours truly?

And for the Turtles...hey, I like rock & roll and I like the Turtles (esp. during their folk rock period) and hearing "Let Me Be" (a song whose sentiments I definitely adhere to!) while the group romps about in classic mid/late-sixties anarchic style shows a freedom that I certainly would like to enjoy but can only watch vicariously through the antics of the Turtles, Monkees and other groups whose attire and attitude signified a thawing in rigid cultural conditions, if only for a short time.

The Arlo Guthrie/Cary Grant dream, now I'm tempted to think there's something "gay" going on here given what we know about Grant now (and can say out loud unlike when he was still around, as Chevy Chase can attest to) and Guthrie (who ain't gay, but then again I wonder how "popular" he would've been in a communal prison shower during the days of ALICE'S RESTAURANT) but I don't think so. The part where I look into a mirror and think I see Arlo grinning back at me is pure hetero...y'know how all the gals in school liked the "cute" boys and wanted to cuddle up with them? Manly boys were big too while ugly buglies like me just stayed home and popped the pimples, but cute boys with long hair really made it big with the girlies, and perhaps I was fantasizing that I was just that kinda kid (after all, I hear Arlo did a lotta bed hoppin' in that film of his!). The part about the activities going on at my uncle's place was perhaps more nostalgia, egged on by the aforementioned Ny-Quil I had taken for my cold. Either that, or I miss those family parties we used to have at the drop of a hat. Readers, for wild, crazy and non-nightmareish fun dreams, you can't beat Ny-Quil, plus you'll get a good night's sleep as well!

I KNOW that some of my enemies out there are going to jump to conclusions about my final dream and say it's living proof of some sorta postmodern racism on my part, but I wouldn't buy into any of that tripe. Remember, there were some kids in the group I was in who were black and were being intimidated as well, so maybe that washes away all of that immature dream interpretation away in one fell swoop (after all, this is a mature dream interpretation article!). What this dream signifies is my penchant for heroics...true, at first I am intimidated and cower in fear when the badskis threaten to murder us, but then again I'm the one who sneaks the metal rod down my sleeve in anticipation of crushing a few heads wide open. The fact that the dream ends peacefully may be because of my show of force which makes the evildoers do a little shuddering themselves. Good thing I wasn't watching STRAW DOGS or this could've been one of the bloodiest dreams I've ever had!

So, what's the final outcome of all this highschool psychology class ruminating about dreams and what they mean and how we can learn from them...what else but that I watch too much tee-vee! I listen to too much music, and I don't have a "life" (as in what every goshdarnit parent wants for his kid...lotsa music lessons and homework and extra activities and wholesomeness, and oh, have fun while you're at it or we'll clobber you!). So, as you can see, my mental health is top notch and I'm probably gonna stay saner a lot longer than YOU so get offa your high horse for once, willya?

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Whew, wasn't that a load! Anyway, in order to keep some of you readers from totally terminating your relationship with my blog lemme just run down some of the new items I'm listening to so's you too can feel BIG by actually reading my opinions on a whole slew of items I'll betcha wish ya had in your robotic clams, right? So, lez go...FAIRPORT CONVENTION CD (Polydor) is an old fave even though I've been known to pull this album out for a spin only once every three/four years. I still like this debut the best, which sounds like a better British take on early Jefferson Airplane than one could imagine, and I'll take Judy Dyble and band (including the teenaged Richard Thompson) over Grace Sick and company anyday! THE NECKS-MUSIC FROM THE FEATURE FILM THE BOYS CD (ReR)-Although I should be boycotting Australian product for obvious reasons, I figure out the entire country can't be like just one person over there. The Necks ain't quite jazz yet they ain't rock, but they do something akin to both with a hefty helping of alternative rock smarm thrown in. Still pretty good ambient kaka for when you're pouring through your back issues of THE WIRE. PHILIP GLASS-NORTH STAR CD (Virgin) is another old fave, at least before Philip Glass went big time and began hanging out with Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama and became too gnu agey for my tastes. Thus, Glass' first, easily-found major label offering might have been his last good one, still showing his repeato-riff music to sound like an old Toyota commercial at one minute and Suicide the next. Smart yet trashy enough, the halfway point between Glass's hanging out at Max's days and bigtime chi-chi. As for the JAMES CHANCE AND THE CONTORTIONS-PARIS 1980 CD (Ze), you may remember this one when it came out as LIVE AUX BAINS DOUCHES way back when. I do and didn't get it for whatever reason (mainly monetary concerns!) but I have it now and think it pales next to the ROIR live tape (later CD). It still has not only a bitta creepiness, but ex-Mahogany Brain bassist/guitarist Patrick Geoffris is on hand which is nice at least for people categorizing these things. And finally, THE SLITS-THE PEEL SESSIONS CD (Strange Fruit UK) is a great sampling of Slits (including their oft-ignored straight-ahead punk days) which you could only find through these radio tapes at the time, and though I should be boycotting the BBC for their unwavering adherence to a New World Order/tyranny of the snootiest newsrooms extant I gotta admit that this CD is a pretty exciting excapsulation of a lotta the energy one could find coming outta the punk idiom which seemed to say just about everything good in any way possible, and people just plain out ignored the entire mess! Heck, even the drawn out experimental tracks held my attention even though I think it to be the silliest stuff in this collection! Anyway, all of these CDs can be purchased via Wayside Music, except for the Contortions which I got through Forced Exposure.

THE TOP TEN FILMS OF ALL TIME THAT MADE A MAN OUTTA ME!

Can you imagine the audacity of some of these bloggers out there! Here they are, world-reknown with friends aplenty, promo records by the bushel and more marijuana than a Mexican peon can grow, and you can just betcha bottom dollar that these all-knowing blogomites just hafta go 'round making up top ten lists of their favorite films just so's all of us lowly bunsnitches can read about these cinematic excursions and live vicariously through the tastes and actions of said bloggers! Nothing really wrong there, 'cept when said blogger's tastes are about as exciting as your standard big city filmscribe's boho obscurer-than-thou pretensions...just snap here for an example of just how dullsville some flicker pickers' tastes can be (you may have to scroll down)...sheesh, the whole sordid episode just begs to ask the question "Are there enough arthouses and berets in Australia to sustain the uppercrust snootiness of at least ONE moom pitcher maven struggling for love and acceptance in the Antipodes?"

In order to clear the flatulence-laden dinge of the aforementioned top ten list, I thought I'd just drop a post your way as to my faverave films of all time. Frankly, I find this list a lot more real, down-to-earth and ultimately more satisfying than dribbling on about urban cowpokes and the Amerigan Experience at the dawn of the eighties and all that above-it-all hokum, and besides these films are a lot more fun too!

1) MANIAC (1934)

MANIAC was director Dwayne Esper and Hildegarde Stadie's brave attempt to cash in on the horror craze of the day with this totally off-the-wall look at mental illness wrapped in pseudo-Edgar Allen Poe. If Parker Tyler were really as on-the-spot as he thinks he was, this one would have been mentioned in his bright-yet-brainy book on underground cinema, only I think he was too intellecto to do such a thing and besides he died before film camp of this nature was lifted to an art level anyway.

2) BOWERY TO BAGHDAD (1955)

Leo Gorcey and the boys discover a genie in a lamp and grapple with a buncha gangsters who want to use the guy for their own nefarious purposes. Considering the locale where Gorcey and co. end up, the film may have a lot more meaning in today's political clime than it did back then. I'll bet Lillian Hellman shuddered seeing the fruits of her dark, socially-consiousness-riddled play evolve rather quickly into a series of quickie crank-out b-films displaying none of her Stalinist intent. Serves her right!

3) PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1957)

I coulda sworn I saw this one on tee-vee at age four on the afternoon horror movie show and shuddered in fear over the doom-laden music, spooky cemetery scenes and walking dead. Too bad I didn't get to see it age nine when I would have appreciated its science-fiction turned sideways tale of interstellar invasion. For me it has WAR OF THE WORLDS (Martians land, blow up things, die of disease and everything is all happy) beat all hollow.

4) STOP, LOOK AND LAUGH (1961)

Clips from Three Stooges shorts are shown between ventriloquist Paul Winchell mixing it up with his dummies (plus the Marquis Chimps a year before hitting the small screen in THE HATHAWAYS). Memorable film, not only because I like dummies and chimp humor, but because for years this was the only Three Stooges (w/Curly or anyone other'n the sixties features) that was shown on local TV. I remember Christmas Break '74 when channel 33 was hyping this film by running the trailer incessantly. Only trouble was that the film was being broadcast on the morning everybody went back to school...believe me, I was planning to play sick just to stay home and watch the thing, only my conscience got the best of me. Stupid conscience! Stupid programmers!!!!

5) THE SADIST (1963)

I've heard a bonehead compare this film to the works of Orson Welles, which kinda makes me wonder...when are all of these highly-praised and critically acclaimed films (mainstream or not) going to be compared to fun low-budget "trash" like THE SADIST??? Ace punk Arch Hall Jr. plays the Starkweather role in this straightforward crime film a lot better than Martin Sheen did in the oft-lauded BADLANDS, and I don't even think that Hall thought he looked like James Dean one bit unlike Sheen, who probably practiced his sneer in the mirror!

6) SATAN'S BED (1965)

It's hard to tell if this is aspiring to be one of those art house films that the laxative devil mentioned above creams his corn over or just two unfinished films crammed together. Vocalist Yoko Ono stars at least in one half of the film as a mail order bride who ends up getting beaten up by some guy who happens NOT to be a Beatles fan, while the other half stars these three hoods (including a lezbo) who go around raping women before the axe falls harder than if Ed Ames threw it. Maybe if Yoko didn't end up marrying the world's biggest gasbag she coulda continued starring in movies like SATAN'S BED, which would have been a lot more pleasing than sitting through a spin of SEASONS OF GLASS anyday!

7) THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

Yeah, some of this tends to snooze and coulda been edited, but the action-packed scenes spill more blood and shard more skin than a dozen illegal cockfights. Besides, it's kinda neat watching respected actors from the forties and fifties like William Holden, Robert Ryan and Ernest Borgnine cussing and fighting in the amoralest of ways which must've had their old-timey fans scratchin' their heads in disbelief...

8) MACON COUNTY LINE (1974)

In the age of AMERICAN GRAFFITI and HAPPY DAYS, a more realistic approach to fifties "nostalgia" was taken in this great, non-pretentious drive in flick that was actually shown uncut on channel 21 back in the early-eighties...until somebody caught on and the remaining time was filled with LITTLE RASCALS shorts. Two brothers cheat and fornicate their way through the mid-fifties South, pick up some gal dressed like an extra from a Ma and Pa Kettle film, then end up in one of the Biblest parts of Georgia where they meet up with none other than Jethro Bodine as the local redneck sheriff. Then a bunch of guys who look like they were just kicked outta Ian Dury and the Blockheads show up in a 1950 Studebaker and kill the sheriff's wife, which is where the fun really starts...

9) THE NIGHT PORTER (1974)

Dirk Bogarde's this former concentration camp commandant hiding from the good guys in postwar Vienna working as a night porter in a hotel, surely a comedown from slaughtering millions only a short decade earlier. Meanwhile there are a whole buncha other nazi pervos and murderers also in Vienna, and all of 'em are keeping an eye on each other for obvious reasons. Then suddenly Charlotte Rampling (who must've starved herself for this role considering the flesh and bones look she has in the surreal Marlene Dietrich scene) re-enters Bogarde's life...y'see, she was a prisoner and Bogarde fell for her in a big way, and well, as the Everly Brothers once sang, "love hurts." At that time there were a whole slew of movies coming out that dealt with the subjects of love, lust and death, but THE NIGHT PORTER won't make you puke like some of the others will. It'll make you wanna run wild and kill people, but you won't get sick to your stomach!


10) HENRY, PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1987)

This one had my sister gasping and saying "Chris, how can you watch this?" Actually, a good straightahead crime film that perhaps is marred not by the violent content, but by the boring, non-violent scenes (like where the dimwitted sister of Otis tells Henry about how her father sexually abused her...yawn, like we really needed that in this film!). Actually pretty neat despite a load of boring beret-heads flocking to this one as if it were some poetry reading or new intellectual Susan Sonntag (rest in pieces!) screed!

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WAIT---THERE'S MORE!!!, mainly a review of the COMBAT! Season One, Campaign One box-set available through Image Entertainment.

You know, I should be insulted! Total angry and frothing at the mouth MAD over the way I've been misrepresented and pre-judged by a number of you people out there in computerland! And if you wanna know just how I've been run through the mill by a few of these people, just look at the way they've judged not only me, but the movies and tee-vee programs that I've championed in previous pages of my BLACK TO COMM fanzine! Take Jay Hinman f'rinstance...now, I don't wanna go picking any fights with him, but there was one thing he said in a posting on his blogsite that I think was more'n a bit misleading, and perhaps ON PURPOSE misleading rather'n "oops" misleading as well. Y'see, in a post dealing with something I don't want to get into here, Hinman mentioned what he considers my love of "Eisenhower-era television" or something like that which, although perhaps a totally innocent comment and all prima-facie like, may have been a heavily-packed slam of sorts. I mean, yeah, I do go for tee-vee shows of the Ike days (though my main love more or less lies in late-period Eisenhower through Kennedy through mid-Johnson administration television as any astute reader could tell ya!), but I have the sneaking suspicion that Hinman decided to use Eisenhower and Eisenhower only in his remark to portray to his readership that li'l ol' me is stuck in the oft-loathed "fifties" with all dem bad things that wuz happening in Li'l Rock and to commies and all that which ruined those days until young and shiny JFK appeared on the scene to set things straight! Like I said, maybe not, but I wouldn't put that past him. Even though Ike wasn't quite as staid as his image lent (after all, he was the one who sent the troops in to desegregate the aforementioned L. Rock, and beside ol' Ike was a reader/follower of Wilhelm Reich so he couldn't have been as Mister Rogers as everyone makes him out to be!), those images that moderne kiddies have pounded into their skulls re. the "fifties" (booo! hissss!) and what it stood for re. repeated viewings of ATOMIC CAFE sure don't do any good fer my image. It's like that reader who told me he thought I liked the fifties and its movies and tee-vee and automobiles and general gulcher because that was a time when women, minorities and gays were kept in their place by overbearing white males like me! Uh, I guess this reader never heard of things like great fifties trash culture and general Amerigan teenage FUN that hasn't been duplicated since (not to mention the good stuff like low crime rates and less polarization), but what can you expect from a generation that rejected everything that was good and wholesome (in a degenerate BTC way) and took the laziest, stupidest, most boring aspects of "youth" to heart in its stead?!?!?

Anyway, what I want to talk about right now is the burnt DVD set (sent courtesy Paul McGarry, who was front and center when it originally aired) of COMBAT! (the first half of the first season...you gotta pay more for the full thang!), a program that not only aired during the greatest years of not only television but of general low-fi living (1962-1967) but featured some of the best, high-energy intensity to be shown on television during those already-intense times. And intense COMBAT! is, intense as THE TWILIGHT ZONE or THE OUTER LIMITS not to mention THE FUGITIVE and NAKED CITY, and even more powerful than a long-forgotten fave like ONE STEP BEYOND. Believe me, this show was a powerhouse of energy and emotion, perhaps thanks in part to main director Robert Altman, who was certainly put to better use directing shows like this and M-SQUAD rather'n later yawnsville features like M*A*S*H which seem to wash away any sorta respect I might have for the man, which I don't even if he was a vital part of this series.

So, what was COMBAT! anyway? I'll tell ya what is wuz...nothing but the first and the best of the World War II-themed series that seemed to permeate television during the early-to-mid-sixties. Ya gotta remember that when COMBAT! debuted on ABC in the fall of '62, WW II had ended a only mere seventeen years earlier, yet enough time had elapsed that a television program dealing with them days was now a fresh enough idea (sorta like the rash of Vietnam War series that popped up in the eighties)...nothing "nostalgic" mind you, but let's just say it was now safe to milk those times with a hard-hitting, power-drenched show about the war. And after COMBAT!'s success more and more WW II series came, from THE RAT PATROL to GARRISON'S GORILLAS, and who could forget the infamous HOGAN'S HEROES with all those "lovable Nazis" that caused such an outrage. (Heck, I remember some kid I grew up with who thought the Nazis were cool with their uniforms and tanks and goosestepping after watching HOGAN'S HEROES, and I still recall the lecture I got from dad when all these shows were on about how bad them krauts were and how they killed Jews like my neighbors and all that [they didn't kill my neighbors but people like them over in Europe!]...it was kinda confusing because I wasn't even a fan of these shows at the time being more a sitcom and cartoon kid myself and don't recall saying anything pro-Nazi to anyone! Maybe he was just being pre-emptive!!!) Anyway, COMBAT! was yet another cool coup for ABC, which at that time was the "small" network with a buncha UHF stations that were little more than low-budget indie channels that happened to run network programming, but they sure made up for it with their fantastic schedules that mixed lowbrow, teenybop and innovation.

I think it 's cool how they had two stars of this show who more or less alternated as featured players every other week. Rick Jason (who later committed suicide after years of obscurity) stars as Lieutenant Hanley, a mature, perhaps reserved yet still wiry enough guy when the situation calls, while the great Vic Morrow (aka Artie West and a buncha tee-vee wiseguys before fighting in the Big One...only to lose his life and head making a comeback in a lousy attempt at them Baby Boomer dollars viz a viz the TWILIGHT ZONE revival) stars (or co-stars if it's Jason's turn) as Sergeant Saunders, a guy so cold-steel surly that you'd think the world would crumble if he merely smiled. The supporting cast is fine as well, from the cool Cajun called what else but "Caje" as well as Kirby, the strung out guy who always seems to be on the verge of losing his head, Littlejohn who for some reason flashes images of Steve Hesske into my brain probably because I think that's what Hesske looks like, not forgetting comic Shecky Greene as Braddock, the shifty conniving private who reminds me of Lou Costello to no end!

Yeah, some of this may show signs of early-sixties "consciousness" (like the episode with the "nice" Nazi, which brings back memories of that old MAD story about how Germans were portrayed in monsters in movies during the war yet twenty years later they were more or less made out to be confused and misunderstood, who was captured by Saunders and crew who can't come to the conclusion whether to let him go or kill him as they make their escape!), but thankfully any sorta deep introspection and intellectual blabbery is washed away by the energy, the intensity and the explosions and deaths galore (and even the familiar faces get snuffed on this show making things seem even more personal). All mixed with a strange sort of cameraderie and a depth that seems totally alien especially in these cyborg times.

Episodes that stick out in my mind...Albert Salmi as a tough sergeant who's giving the already-tough Saunders more'n a little grief (look for Ted Knight, better known as Ted Baxter on THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW, as a Nazi!) only to make the ultimate sacrifice (the ending will leave you a bit stunned, perhaps even more stunned than Saunders himself!), plus the one where a soldier meets up with his doctor father in a small French village and discovers dad's playing footsies with the Germans also keeps you a bit on edge. Another COMBAT! that sticks out in my noggin's the one where Saunder's company get three new and inexperienced soldiers, one a pudge of a cook, the other a ballet dancer and the third a wise-cracking deejay whom I'm surprised Saunders didn't beat to smithereens the way this guy irritated not only Saunders but I'm sure most of the viewing audience to no end. I think I like this episode because these three "losers" eventually prove themselves to be true fighters (with the chubby ex-cook ultimately giving his life)...perhaps I tend to like these shows and films where the loser underdog types succeed, perhaps getting slaughtered in the process because I somehow see myself as the fast-failing nincompoops portrayed on screen and feel great when they vindicate themselves, but I don't want to play psychoanalyst like too many self-conscious pundits out there. I also got the same feeling in the episode where this middle-aged guy who had a comfy assignment in England joins up with Saunders and gang in order to make a dent in his lackluster existence, only to lose it all by the end of the program. Believe me, there's a lotta sweat, blood, sinew and pain on this program that I haven't seen anywhere in a long time!

If you're man enough to be reading this you MAY have a hankerin' for what I would consider classic tee-vee, and it ain't "Eisenhower-era" or what snob big city critics consider "The Golden Age" (to them 1949-1959 I guess)...the BLOG TO COMM GA is roughly 1957-1967, with the strongest years being 1959-1963 and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's fitting that COMBAT! debuted during the 1962-1963 season, one of the ten best ever (with THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES and McHALE'S NAVY debuting, plus it was the last year for not only LEAVE IT TO BEAVER but NAKED CITY, DOBIE GILLIS and HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL) and left us in '67, perhaps the final year of lingering early-sixties prime-time television coolness before it all slipped into a late-sixties dump that didn't crawl up and out until the early-seventies. Either way, I found these COMBAT!s a fine alternative to most of the rot available nowadays, and if you like a little power sans political piousness and Amerigan self-hatred you might love it as well.

Hey, that wasn't Byard Lancaster playing at the CBGB Lounge last night, but a substitute. A pretty good one at that...y'see, Lancaster couldn't make the trek to New York from Philadelphia because of the all the snow that got pounced upon the East Coast this weekend, so 'stead of Lancaster and co. in the anticipated (at least by me!) 9:00 slot the quartet of Ursel Schlict on piano, Adam Simmons on Lancasteresque tenor sax, Reuben Radding on bass and Klaus Kugel on drums got a chance to strut their stuff and they did a really good job strutting it too, even if something was taken away from the proceedings because of the frequent stop/starting due to "buffering" not to mention the at-times La Jettee-ish freeze frames. Dunno if the fault's with my computer or with the engineers at the club, but I find it more than worth my while tuning into these cybercasts if only to hear a truly underground, exciting side to jazz I don't think Ken Burns will ever really own up to. Really good avant-style, in the "tradition" if I dare say it.

As far as other pertinent news go, I guess I should make a comment or ten re. the recent passing of Johnny Carson. Actually I dunno what I can say other'n what's already been said by anybody IMPORTANT out there, but since I guess I am "famous" at least on a mini-blog/small-run press level (with an audience of maybe ten, fifteen people max) why shouldn't I make my feelings known given this is the age of emote, where everyone from Billy Joel giving his heartfelt sniffblubber over hearing about Prez Kennedy getting shot to the lowliest peon lecturing the highest in command is deemed not only appropriate but part of democracy today!

So here goes...I still remember when THE TONIGHT SHOW was big stuff. Well, at least the local NBC affiliate here would constantly run this whacked out, pop arty TONIGHT SHOW commercial during the morning cartoons (WW II-vintage Warner Brothers!) which in retrospect seems kinda strange, since when are seven-year-old kids gonna be allowed to stay up late to watch Carson anyway? (Maybe you remember this commercial, where the word "tonight" would appear in strange places, like on the Declaration of Independence as a signature etc.!) I also remember how THE TONIGHT SHOW used to tie in with the anxiety of growing...during the school year, I was always worried about taking tests and just being in classes with a whole buncha tormenters (including teachers) whose only reasons for existence were to bother me to no end! Often I would be so keyed up about school and life that I'd lie wide awake in bed just dreading the humiliations and degradation I would be forced to go through the next day whether it be having to dissect a frog or taking a pop quiz re. some subject I knew nada about or perhaps having to face up to the bully and irritant of the week and wouldn't you know it, in the other room the tee-vee was blaring with either the news (I recall that channel 33 filmed the kids who were on THE BARNEY BEAN SHOW that afternoon waving in a pan shot for their parents who weren't home for the live broadcast to see at 11:15 PM...hearing the familiar BARNEY BEAN theme as the film ran was one clue as to what time it was!), or my dad would be howling in laughter at THE TONIGHT SHOW and here I was sweatin' and frettin' about the next day, where a tired and worn out me would have to face another six hours of drudgery and failing grades. Oh well, at least somebody was having fun throughout my torment!

Later on when I was older and I could stay up late on weekends and days off, I'd get an idea of what was going on there...and sheesh, the show was racier'n Dean Martin's which killed me because what they were talkin' about on THE TONIGHT SHOW was stuff that woulda gotten my mouth washed out with soap! Still, the older I got the more I would watch Carson at least if there wasn't some classic old film playing opposite (remember, this was long before the late movie, a fixture on television since around 1953 or so, was pretty much axed from local programming nationwide), and though I got the idea THE TONIGHT SHOW was pretty much "old people's" programming (and for fifteen-year-old me, "old people" were anybody 40 or over), I didn't mind watching Johnny Carson cracking off-color jokes while Ed McMahon guffawed...in fact watching THE TONIGHT SHOW made pimply, tubby 'n insecure ME feel like a big guy, at least until I switched stations to see what was happening on the aforementioned late show anyway.

And as I got even older and could stay up late on a daily basis I got to see more and more of Carson and THE TONIGHT SHOW. Gotta admit that I didn't always stick around for the guests, but I just hadda see the opening monologue as well as "The Mighty Carson Art Players" skit, perhaps featuring such characters as Art Fern from "The Tea Time Movie" with those wild products he pitched ("Preparation H-Bomb") and those films with the outrageous titles ("Frankie Darrow, Mia Farrow, Sonny Bono, Yoko Ono and Splash the Wonder Carp in THE WRIGHT BROTHERS FAIL TO GET IT UP") or perhaps Carson's cutting spoof of Mister Rogers, not to mention the all time great Floyd R. Turbo editorial replies which still crack me up years later ("...and I don't even know why they have women newscasters! Last night I was in bed watching the news with my wife and I told her I'd never turn on a woman in bed...and my wife agreed!").

What was best about Carson was (as many have noted before), he was the last of the great old-time radio/television personalities, or at least a guy who continued using time-tested, hoary old routines from the days of old well into the modern, hipster times which seemed to eschew the old, funny stuff in favor of flaccid hippie humor. As Bill Shute once told me, Carson took a lotta his style from Jack Benny...he being Benny, Ed McMahon being Don Wilson and Phil Harris (well, the drunk jokes part anyway!), Tommy Newsome being Dennis Day and Doc Severinson...hmmmmm, maybe he had a bit of Harris in him as well. Still, Carson kinda updated the Benny oeuvre for a newer audience which is kinda cool considering how a lotta the entertainment over the past thirty years seemed to take the best the old times had to offer and splattered it all over the pavement. Another link to the past..."The Mighty Carson Art Players" name itself, lifted almost directly from "The Mighty Allen Art Players" via Fred Allen's thirties/forties radio show. And I'll bet Carson took a lot more from Jackie Gleason (Carson's remarks to the oft-glitzed out Severinson bear more than a passing resemblance to Gleason's jokes regarding bandleader Sammy Spear) than anyone would dare admit, not to mention a few hundred more old-time personalities who seemed to be heading out to pasture around the time I started growing from a wee sprout to an unsightly weed. And of course for an "out-of-step" kinda kid like me who was constantly digging into old-timey radio/TV comedians and twenties comic strips while everyone else in school was acting "hip" to George Carlin (a frequent TONIGHT SHOW guest...don't remind me!), Carson's old time style revamped as modern establishment cool swung pretty well with me!

And of course who can forget the mythmaking, both real (Ed Ames' axe throwing, Tiny Tim's marriage to Miss Vickie which I wanted to see so bad only it was on a school night!) and imagined (Arnold Palmer's wife kissing his balls for good luck and Carson's "I'll bet that flutters his putter" reply, not to mention Zsa Zsa Gabor and the cat [though when that story was going around my High School it was Raquel Welch who had the misfortune of bringing her feline along!])...

LUTHER THOMAS, CBGB LOUNGE 1/16/05

Well, I tuned in, and as you'd expect "technical difficulties" hampered any attempts to enjoy anything I tuned in to see, including the opening drummer-less avant trio featuring two females. Thomas played with a drummer only (name missed because of aforementioned td's) and dressed in baggy hip hop clothing (to hide new girth?) complete with dreadlocks and beard. From what I could make out, playing was smooth and evocative with tasty applications of Chancian scronk. Maybe next time cyberconditions will be more in my favor since other gigs of worth seem to be popping up not only at the Lounge but the gallery and main club.

Chinaboise-THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD CD (Gulcher)

Those of you pongos smart enough to have latched onto a copy of BLACK TO COMM #25 back when it first came out 12/03 will probably remember my jumping-the-gun-on-EVERYONE review of the "pre-MX-80" Chinaboise CD. In case you don't remember (but do care), Chinaboise was a musical project/brainchild of future MX-80 vocalist/saxist/guitarist Rich Stim and Dave Mahoney (also a future MX-er, this time on drums) along with asst. helpers including local college radio personality Rich Fish, MX-80 guitarist extraordinaire Bruce Anderson, and a bevy of bountiful broads joining in as a chorus of sorts. A proto-punk delight for sure, best represented by their signature tune "The Greatest Story Ever Told" which just happened to end up on 1975's BLOOMINGTON ONE sampler alongside MX-80 (back when they were still MX-80 Sound), the Screaming Gypsy Bandits and a buncha other local talent that it seems hardly anybody cares about these days given how mainstreamish and aspiring to boring heights they were.

I believe this CD is a reissue of the cassette-only release that got mentioned in the MX-80 discog that FORCED EXPOSURE printed along with their MX-80 interview long ago, but the underrated and oft-ignored Eddie Flowers' liner-note interview with Stim doesn't seem to mention that so maybe it ain't. Whatever it is, THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD is a more-than-"representative" document of what else (besides MX-80 and the Bandits) was happenin' on in the fertile Bloomington scene in the early/mid-seventies which also gave us two vital fanzines (BEYOND OUR CONTROL and INITIAL SHOCK) and a label like Gulcher which in retrospect was about as important to the growth of Amerigan underground fun-and-games as any of the more popular companies out there in new wave land you can think of. Of course, if you wish, you can read more about the whole sordid saga here.

What is so remarkable about THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD is that on one hand, the thing just reeks mid-seventies miasma (with not only the energy crisis and JAWS getting their oh-so-'75 dues, but a well-placed Groucho Marx "aside" sends this thing straight back to the days of bad seventies impressions of not only Groucho but W. C. Fields and Clark Gable---who sez the seventies were that hip anyway!!!), yet on the other this sounds so late-period new wave (talking early-eighties original scene crash) that it almost seems contepo of some of those other MX-80 side projects of them dark ages, most notably PLAYETTE which maybe not-so-coincidentally is also slated for a Gulcher reissue. In fact, both Chinaboise and PLAYETTE share a track in "Dear Tears," which was originally done by Chinaboise as a sublime, jazzy tune and later on turned into a tortured, beautiful dirge. Future MX-80 staples pop up as well, like "Myonga Von Bontee," "SCP" (here w/lyrics as "Self Conscious Pisser") and "Partners in a Crime" (the song not only with the aforementioned Groucho impression but a nasty ref to Stim's ethnic background). Like I said in my original write-up, people studying the growth and development of MX-80 will enjoy just seeing how these songs developed from stripped-down comedy rock numbers into full-blown heavy metal ephiphanies.



The Flowers-conducted interview is somewhat informative (though I naturally want to know about three times more, or at least what Flowers edited out of the thing!), but the biggest surprise about the entire enchilada is the revelation that Chinaboise was a studio-only project (!), something which really stymies me to no end because I just THUNK that they were an actual, live-functioning and gigging aggregate though how they could have pulled off a live show with this material woulda been interesting. Anyway, for a fantastic look into the mid-seventies Bloomington underground complete w/"found sound" ("Time-Temp," "Walker Dallas"), Zappafied (or is it Firesignied?) funnies ("Breakfast at the Gables," "In The Sahara") and of course Bruce Anderson's better'n McLaughlin even guitar playing, you better get hold of it, and don't even wait until the price goes down like I tend to do!

Luther Thomas Quartet-BAGIN' IT CD; Luther Thomas Trio-SAXCROBATIC FANATIC CD (both CDs are on the CIMP label)

In anticipation of the Luther Thomas Quartet's rarer than hen's teeth (Thomas having skeedaddled to Denmark o'er the past few years) upcoming Sunday evening appearance at the CBGB Lounge (and also in anticipation that someone will actually turn on the camera/mic so I can see/hear the cybercast for once!), I thought nothing could be finer than to prepare myself with a play of these two platters that the St. Louis born/bred alto saxist had recorded for Cadence's Creative Improvised Music Project back in the mid/late-nineties. You may remember this man for his post-Ayleresque free playing in Charles "Bobo" Shaw's Human Arts Ensemble via the Black Arts Group out of St. Louis back in the seventies, or maybe you're more familiar with his early-eighties escapades on the New York Punk Scene where not only did he decide to give James Chance a run for the saxhonk money but did arrangements and session work for the supposed "racist" (yeah James, I know how it feels!), but whatever your sainted visions of the man may be, it's no secret that Luther Thomas is one of the few remaining free jazz purveyors from the once-fertile seventies scene more than worthy of not only your time but your precious monetary funds, and maybe if you blogscum readers in search of the ultimate musical listening experience decided to devote your attention to the likes of Thomas (and about a hundred other similar, currently functioning avant garde jazz aggregates out there) and ditched all this phony ersatz jive being hyped at you regularly by subspecie alternative rectalspew then maybe Thomas and cohorts'll be the ones riding around in shiny limos while all of those gnu muzak sissies have to fight over who gets to sell their well-traveled butts for cabfare home! But then again maybe not, but we can dream can't we?

The quartet on BAGGIN' IT features Thomas along with bassist Wilbur Morris, trumpeter/Kahai horn/flugel horn/hunting horn player Ted Daniels (who you may remember from Sonny Sharrock's brill BLACK WOMAN album and about a hundred other similar-minded outings) and drummer Denis Charles, and although I dunno if this quartet is the same one that will be playing Sunday PM I'll betcha dollars to doughnuts that the music emitted on this stellar yet strangely sublime CD will match what Thomas and band lay down this upcoming weekend. Nice chamber-setting avant-jazz fueled by Thomas' at-times mournful, at-times total-flash playing that reminds me plenty of the hot mid-seventies crash and burn that oozed forth from the lofts of Sam Rivers and others during the unheralded New York renaissance that yeilded the WILDFLOWERS series of highly-desirable freespew ages back.

However, I tend to prefer SAXCROBATIC FANATIC, mainly because it seems to veer more into a funk/rock/jazz scree that I believe probably typified the post-no wave scene that was revealing itself in En Why See during the seventies/eighties cusp. Here Thomas performs with guitarist Kelvyn Bell (whom I believe was the leader of the eighties NYC black rock coalition-related aggregate Kelvynator, though I may be wrong) and drummer Ronnie Burrage, a reunion of sorts since the three played together as an early seventies garage band doing avant garde renditions of Motown and other then-contemp radio faves. None of that here, but we do get more of that great horn/gtr/drums flange that's been done by everyone from not only the Blue Humans but Storm (scroll down for a review) and even one of the trio settings on that Circle release of the Human Arts Ensemble with Shaw and trombonist Joseph Bowie being joined by a guitarist whose name will come to me more later than sooner! Thomas seems to swing more in this less-restrained grouping, and although Bell's guitar-playing is not-so-free and sadly buried in the back he still makes his at-times gnarly presence known (well, more or less). Like I said...sublime. Maybe an all-out free player of the capabilities of Sharrock or whoever that guitarist in Storm is would have been more apocalyptic in this grouping, especially on Thomas's take of "The Star Spangled Banner" (here titled "Baseball") which woulda even made the one called Jimi stand up and salute! But still, the interplay between Thomas' fireplay, Bell's jazz chording and Burrage's post-Murray pounce works more than wonders here.

Y'know, I could get all technical and dry when describing this music just like every other jazz critic out there in "serious" land, but I've always hated that sterile scribing used to relay to the supposedly unaware hoi polloi the power and high energy of this sway which thankfully never really did prostitute itself like many other forms of jazz did. It remains nerve-grating, power-laden total eruption music (even forty-plus years after the fact) and let's just say that Thomas and bands deliver on more of the high-energy jamz than all of those prissy and preening trust fund kids pretendin' to be the Velvet Underground you see today COMBINED ever could. And while rock & roll these days remains more of a touch and go situation (with more "go" than "touch" in store), the avant garde of jazz remains powerful and perhaps more connected to the backbone/nerve-endings of rock than rock itself. At least in my book, guys like Thomas and all those other great free players appearing at the Vision Quest Festival and at the CBGB Lounge are more important to the development of a new, continuing, growing music for the new millenium than all of these pre-packaged. retread rock groups that even the "underground" (hah!) continues to toss out as us this late in the game.

Hope to see you at the cybercast Sunday. If you can't make it, these disques will make a soothing substitute. If you do make it, they'll make a fine memento of what's bound to be one of the better moments of this sure to be dudsville year.

HOWDY, DOODY

In the latest PSYCHOTRONIC (or so I'm told), someone or other wrote (in a letter criticizing Michael Weldon's newfound [?] leftward editorial shift) that his magazine is starting to resemble my very own BLACK TO COMM and its "articles and quips about 'fags' and 'Afro-Americans'." (Well, the letter writer obviously meant it in an opposite sorta way, but you know where his heart is!) Funny, I dunno if I ever wrote any huge, page-spanning articles about either group though I will admit "fags" get mentioned on an occasion or two, and I believe the only time I ever used the term "Afro-American" in the pages of BTC was in a review of some BYG-Actuel re-releases that appeared in issue #24. In case you're interested, the context in which the term was used goes like this:

"In BACK DOOR MAN #14 (March/April 1978), Phast Phreddie Patterson referred to free jazz as being 'mostly a bunch of crazy spades honkin' on saxophones with little regard for melody.' Leave it to BDM to make a questionable 'out there' statement such as that, but despite the lack of taste Phreddie does have a point. That is, if you compare the term 'spade' with that of 'dignified negro' (Charles Mingus, Sidney Poitier) or 'African American' (Jesse Jackson, Spike Lee), or 'Afro-American' (note: my emphasis) (Huey Newton) or 'Mau Mau' (Khalid Muhammad) for that matter. I don't think that the guys who started out playing this breed of ultrasqueal back in the fifties considered themselves in the same class as the upwardly-mobile blacks who were the pillars of their society...in fact, these very selfsame jazzbos mighta even been the kind who'd beat to smithereens any member of the upper black class that would just happen to wander into their dark alley..." (If you want to read the entire review you'll have to get hold of issue #24 yourself...just click here for more information. I'm not in the position to be giving out freebies, y'know?)

OK, that's about it as far as any "articles" or mention regarding the term "Afro-American" goes. And in case you didn't know, Khalid Muhammad was the former Nation of Islam leader (or actually second-in-command if I'm not mistaken) who made such lovely comments as the one found here whose demise has surely left a gap in the outrageous remarks made by people who get a pass everytime they open their mouths these days. And frankly, I thought he didn't suffer enough either, but that's neither here nor there. What is is that the cretins keep coming out of the woodwork to make their little derogatory "comments" (yawn) about me and my writings, and frankly I'm not the kind of guy who believes in a mere eye for an eye...I believe in chopping the whole head off given the unnecessary grief I've had to endure as of late! (And if I have any apologies to make, let them be to Phast Phreddie Patterson in case some zilch-dimensional nimnul starts flying off the handle calling him racist! Sheesh, don't you Social Anthropology dropouts have anything better to do???)

Just wanting to put things in their proper perspective.

Anyhow, here are three recordings I've gotten hold of since the last post. I guess there are some "fans" out there who want to read more of my writings despite all of the negative "publicity" I have received over the past year, and to all three of you may I say "thanks" for the support. And, on a lighter note, may I also say that although the year 2005 marks the twentieth anniversary of my humbler than you'll ever admit fanzine it also marks the sixtieth birthdays of a number of people we here at BTC hold near and dear to our hearts, not only the irrepressible Sky Saxon but the irresponsible Richard Meltzer and non-irrythmic Maureen Tucker. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU'INS!, as we say here in Western Pee-Yay!

Rocket From the Tombs-ROCKET REDUX CD (Smog Veil)

This was about as high-energy and engaging as I thought it would be. TRANSLATION: You can't go home again no matter how hard you try to recapture past glories. Like the Velvet Underground reunion of '93, the reborn Rocket slightly pleases but fails to scale past heights of (as Charlotte Pressler so eloquently said) "demonically intense" power. MORE ARCHIVAL MATERIAL, PLEASE!

Pentwater-OUT OF THE ABYSS CD (Syn-Phonic)

Here's a CD I bought more or less out of curiosity, especially after having mentioned Pentwater twice in last issue's New York Rock history totally forgetting that I'd already wrote about them in passing once. The reason for the remarks: Pentwater were one of those local American rock groups that performed not only at CBGB but Max's Kansas City during the first rush of non-local talent to the New York club scene '75/'76, but unlike a lot of the bands looking for a Big City date at these then-hyped Manhattan musicspots Pentwater weren't your garden-variety garage/heavy metal/pop-hybrid or any variation thereof but a straight-ahead, no-bout-a-doubt-it progressive rock group! An' I don't mean prog as in some garage act who might have copped some progressive influences (like the Shirts or Musica Orbis, f'rexample) but downright progressive rock as in a quintet featuring long-haired rockstar lookalikes in starship trooper gear utilizing not only a dozen keyboards that must've cost 'em fifteen thou PER, but a drum set w/huge ka-banging GONGS just like all those import bin groups over in Europe! For years I wondered about what some of those unfamiliar names playing on early En Why See billings sounded like, imagining them to be some sorta wild and too-primitive for even the standard FAN'S tastes bedroom level Velvets wannabes. Well, now I know at least what ONE of 'em sounds like, and I can't say that I'm exactly pleased about it either! Anyway, for VARIETY band booster Fred Kirby's own opinion on Pentwater, click here and skip down a review or two.

As for me, I gotta say that given I don't care for this music one whit, I can't critique Pentwater for you without using such ageworn terms as "pretentious" and "delusional fantasist" or sans reducing my writings to some hatescreed gibberish. However, I can point out that even when compared with their influences like Gentle Giant, ELP and Yes, Pentwater sound surprisingly dull. I mean, even though a band like, say, Yes were about as boring and as stuck-on-themselves as many of these progressive acts came, I knew that Steve Howe was a dynamic guitarist who was deluding himself if he thought that was he was doing in 1972 was better than what he was playing on "Crawdaddy Simone" years earlier...ditto Chris Squire and his "Syn" days. (And come to think of it, I kinda get the feeling that the Schulman brothers of Gentle Giant would cower in fear had anyone even mentioned Simon Dupree to their faces!) As for Pentwater, they just sound tiring enough not only to me but I'm positive to the usual progressive fan into the whole art-rock mummery and flash that those groups delivered to generations of toking boxboys worldwide. Face it, progressive rock for the most part is flat and lifeless music despite the technowhiz and classically-trained performers, but this stuff is downright unmemorable! And it's about as instant-tossout as Pentwater's fellow Midwestern brothers in prog slop like Kansas and Nebraska...all this music proves is that take away the dragons and castles and being close to edges and things like that, and your typical prog fans's gonna need even MORE marijuana to get into this!

The bonus live track entitled "Kill The Bunny," recorded live at CBGB 11/76 (the same month both the Cramps and Richard Hell and the Voidoids debuted there, keeping things within a relative time-frame mind you) seemed a bit jazzier than the rest of the disque, perhaps coming off like the the missing link between Genesis and Weather Report. I'm surprised that the song elicited the polite applause it did, but then again given how all-over-the-place people are with their tastes not only then but NOW (even from rock writers whom I admire!), should I really be surprised?

Henry Flynt and the Insurrectionists-I DON'T WANNA CD (Locust)

Aaaah, thaz more like it. You, me and the bedpost've all read about Flynt, first via the back cover of Brian Eno's DISCREET MUSIC (which must've done for Flynt's "career" what the Lamonte Young namedrop on the cover of METAL MACHINE MUSIC did for his!) and later on knew about him subbing for John Cale in the Velvet Underground almost getting fired on-stage for being too country'n all that (not to mention the tapes of YOU ARE MY EVER LOVIN' flying around during the eighties), but nobody seems to've known about Flynt's 1966 "basement band" at least until this compilation came out last year! And bwah, is it a doozy! Having Lou Reed himself as a guitar teacher sure helped Flynt hone his avantgardities into something cohesive enough to be played in a rock/roll context, and with a band not only consisting of drummer Walter DeMaria (ex-Primitives and later-on bigname sculptor) not to mention keyboardist Art Murphy (whom I'm 1000% positive was a member of the early Philip Glass Ensemble) and acoustic bassist Paul Breslin (no credentials as of yet that I know of) how could Flynt go wrong especially when creating a total rockism sound that comes off like the perfect mixture of trashy swamp/BACK FROM THE GRAVE teenage Southern-Fried warble and En Why See/Velvet Underground urban headsmack! Yes, long before the likes of the Cramps and Scientists and all those latterday practitioners were getting hefty fanzine space for doing the same thing, Henry and his Insurrectionists were creating a totally deep-south meets lower Manhattan country-boogie/trash garage Velvets spree, though given how ordinary he looks onna cover ya just wonder how far he coulda gone with it all!

Still, I DON'T WANNA is a messterpiece of great magnitude even if it's only a little longer'n a half-hour. Every cut's a gem, from the crash-protest numbers like "Uncle Sam Do" (napalm you!) and "Missionary Stew" to the fantastic guitar/violin (probably the acoustic bass!) duo "Jumping," this is totally enjoyable (even for a jaded old turd like me!) bedroom noise rock that actually (along with those 1965 Velvet Underground demos) sorta points the way for even bigger things to come which we all saw come and go by now but that doesn't diminish its beauty one iota.

I may have some more to post this weekend, but then again I may not. Anyway, keep on listening, reading, eating, sweating and please do keep in touch!