BOOK REVIEW! RAY AND JOE, THE STORY OF A MAN AND HIS DEAD FRIEND by Charles Rodrigues (Fantagraphics, 2013)

I've often said that there's nothing funny being said or done anymore, and for the most part I am right! Oh yeah, I can have a good hearty chuckle over the corpse of some jerkoff who did me wrong in school, or maybe even do a li'l chortlin' when I see some little kid slip on the ice and break his neck (and if you can't laugh at paraplegics who can you laugh at?), but other'n that all I gotta say is that the twenty-first century has turned out to be about as har-de-har-har as a weekend in the county lock up sharing a cell with a guy named Le'Angelo. I blame it all on the likes of Lenny Bruce and Dick Gregory, "comedians" who were just unfunny comics who did nothing but blab and yell about how everything but their own sad and sordid selves was responsible for the so-called woes of the world. If you think the likes of Bill Maher and Sarah Silverman are pathetic non-guffaw-inducing self-important shills for the New Regime just take a whiff of Bruce's corpse for the disgusto root of it all.

This disturbing fact is undoubtedly why when I do come across something funny these days it's either over thirty years old or so socially scathing (some may call it "racist" even if there isn't a race angle to it---words like that usually do have them button-pushing results with your standard bleedheart types who see Klansmen under the bed) that one would wonder if such humor would ever be allowed to be published in these culturally stilted times. Not surprisingly, much of the scathing humor that I do come in contact with can be up to fifty years old, if not older which does say something about just how much humor has devolved to the point where an entire industry can malign the sensibilities of your average ethnic blue collar taxpayer, but if you even dare point out the hypocrisy of the entire gay rights movement...thar HE blows!.

For example, some of the items in a satire mag like HELP! may have passed the muster in the early sixties, though nowadays a photo of a dead First Nations type o' guy with an old cavalry soldier remarking "Well, at least he's a good Indian" comes off so offensive to prickly types I can't help but laugh even harder than I would have way back when. Ditto another HELP! "fumetti" showing a panic stricken scene at a beach with a cartoon bubble reading "A Negro just went in the water"...now that's something that would have gotten both the phony intellectual college students and the black-loathing populace laughing their heads off, each somehow thinking that the folks at HELP! were actually on "their side" given the humorous ambiguity of it all!!!!

In the seventies the NATIONAL LAMPOONs were just flying off the shelves being offensive to patrons of all socio/politico/ethno persuasions, something that would be corroborated by the fact that many of the contributors to the rag weren't as politically pious as we might have been originally led to believe. I really do find it hard to fathom that such a magazine would be allowed to exist these days at least in its seventies form, or at least with them poking fun at the Brahmans of modern leftitude the way comedy figures continually snarl at the more traditional, hard working aspects of our current society while giving their own pathetic selves a pass.

Cartoonist Charles Rodrigues was one of the mainstays at the 'POON throughout the mag's entire run, and the man's penchant for tasteless, gross and at times downright offensive (to the kinda people I like to see squirm) submissions really knew no bounds. Whereas other "new" cartoonists skipped and flirted around their subject matter to the point where people wondered what the point was, Rodrigues attacked almost everything with a total frothing disgust! The "right" things were not sacred to the man, and in today's precious petunia clime Rodrigues' objects of scorn from coma victims, cripples and fartsters to fags and ethnic minorities would certainly earn him a place of particular cartoonist-non-gratis among the current purveyors of taste and get-along.

Needless to say, I'm kinda surprised this book was even allowed to exist in the first place, and RAY AND JOE, THE STORY OF A MAN AND HIS DEAD FRIEND is sure a grand thing to have at least until the government begins burning old copies of the 'POON just because of their abilities to bruise the sensibilities of your average fifteen-year-old mixed-race homosexual amputee victim. I kinda get the idea's on the back burner once the new kulturkampf gets into high gear sometime inna twenties, so until then enjoy, and I do hope that you are offended.

RAY AND JOE ain't a complete Rodrigues collection...you can find two early non-'POON paperbacks featuring work for various titmags and STEREO REVIEW easily enough via ebay,  but it's by far the best. Incomplete true (the scathing "Hire the Handicapped" and "Goddamn Faggots!" are conspicuously missing), but it's got a choice enough selection of Rodrigues' 'POON work gathered making for a fine one-place to sit down and read his tasteless but tasty work without having to scamper through old issues. And of course I love it what with the no-holds-barred humor that actually makes me laugh ("in there"---pointing to throat) rather than wince. Even when I do wince it's a good wince, the kind that makes me kinda glad that I at least lived through the seventies when snide humor was at its offensive height and we didn't have to feel sorry for the man who was beating us senseless while robbing us blind, and that our privilege was something that was earned 'stead of handed out like food in a breadline.

The entire "Ray and Joe" series naturally appears and it's a pretty good 'un, especially since Rodrigues was able to get a whole lotta comics outta the premise of a guy who keeps his dead friend around (this being a friendship that lasts beyond death itself). It might not seem so funny to you, and in fact the entire premise is probably withering away right before your eyes, but Rodrigues knew how to make a seemingly lame gag go a long way, perhaps even longer than other bad-taste mongers like the MONTY PYTHON folk could have done with a similar theme. Everything from embalming to carting dead Joe around the place is brought up, and dang it but Rodrigues really had a knack for taking a disgusting situation and making it his own! And speaking of sick-sick-sick, one of the series' highlights includes the discovery of a tapeworm in Joe which really does make Ray happy, as if somehow, part of Joe was still alive!

Of course "Ray and Joe" ain't the only continuing comics to appear in this collection...there's also the sad tale of Deidre Callahan, the world's ugliest girl who becomes even uglier after a plastic surgery botch up, the Aesop Brothers (conjoined twins in a variety of high-larious adventures), Sam DeGroot ("the free world's BEST private detective in an iron lung machine," later on "one of 36 private detectives in the free world in a coma") and a variety of one-offs and other sundries, "The Man Without a County" being one of my personal favorites. 

Rodrigues' methods of cartooning were a whole lot freer'n anyone else on the legit scene that I've seen, and if the guy didn't quite like where his story was going he would either stop it mid-page and come up with an all-new title, or at one point appear himself in the strip and shoot everybody! Pretty neat hunh?, even though the same tactics would just emit a yawn from me if some current practitioner of the form were to try the same tactics in some "free weekly" outlet or web page jagoff. The cartoon directly above is just one good example of what Rodrigues would come up with when the story ideas just weren't flowing or perhaps he just had a fuggit attitude towards the particular comic, or maybe even a fuggit attitude towards you the reader! 'n all I gotta say is that the resultant spew is what I would call pure comic genius perhaps a few steps in the tasteless direction from one of those old NANCY comics where Ernie Bushmiller would be so lazy he'd present solid black and white panels featuring his characters either in a dark room or a snowstorm.

And as far as shaggy dog sagas go, Rodrigues was the master leading you up to a story-changing conclusion only to find out that the mystery person at the door who was about to change the course of the Aesop Brothers' destiny was in reality some old lady from upstairs returning a borrowed saucepan.

One more important thing I will say about Rodrigues' keen appraisal of post-Cool Life Amerigan living is that he really knew his subject matter well! Or at least he was able to capture a certain segment of mid-Amerigan living that might seem a whole lot closer to the truth than the dystopian mirage of today's socially astute seers. Take the following cartoon which seems to mirror the existence of more'n a few regular BLOG TO COMM readers (although certain wags would have it as me being the pampered pooch of a son!) who probably wouldn't be ashamed of admitting they live this way! (Though the final panel is reminiscent of the time when I was four and THE BARNEY BEAN SHOW was coming on the air and I hadda go number two as well, so mom left the bathroom door open, tilted the tee-vee and cranked up the volume disgusting my sister to no end!)

Believe it or not, but I've actually been watching some prime time tee-vee as of late that wasn't a Laurel and Hardy movie on TCM! It's true, and even your humble blogschpieler must admit that I am surprised given how I've become such a tee-vee loather who has avoided most of what the cathode tube has had to offer for well over thirtysome years! It naturally must be something powerful that would draw me to the television set these days other'n a severe weather warning or a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC special on topless Tahitian maidens tittin' it up in the warm tropical sun, and that something matter of factly just has to be the return of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND to the TV Land schedule! (Undoubtedly spurred on by the recent passing of Russell "Professor" Johnson I would surmise.) And hey, that certainly is a durn surprise given that cable network's penchant for boring first run comedies and exhumations of recent sitcoms that I was watching TV Land to get away from in the first place!

Y'know, after the last big GILLIGAN'S ISLAND syndication putsch in the eighties I thought I would have had enough of that show to last a lifetime, but this latest round of reruns really show just how well crafted and entertaining the series was despite alla that incessant naysaying of highbrows and phony intellectuals world wide. Yeah I know that maybe the show wasn't exactly "highbrow" or something that would have set the Algonquin Round Table all a-flutter, but watching GILLIGAN after eyeballing the "intelligent" sitcoms of the past three decades years is like drinking a nice fresh glass of Koolade after having used toidy water poured down your throat! And dang it if the acting, the look, the stories and the humor just ain't attuned to my suburban slob-styled living patterns that I've fearlessly clung to while everyone else was goin' to their macrame lessons.

Watching this show just doesn't make me bemoan the passing of the industry that would create such a wonderful series in the first place, but the world that made this series such an important part of all of our upbringings either via its original network run or through years of afternoon repeats on our favorite local UHF outlets. Once kids stopped watching programs like this and THE LITTLE RASCALS we were all lost for good, because once that spark of funtime growing up mania got yanked away from children there simply ceased to be children. I haven't seen any lately---what I do see are mini-adults who are vying to be just as narcissistic and neurotic as the grown ups they've been tricked into emulating.

Tuning into GILLIGAN really had the memories come rushing back, and for once they were good 'uns 'stead of all of those depressing childhood travail ones that seem to permeate the inner reaches of my not-so-vacant cranial cavity. Saturday nights being babysat while watching the early episodes. Being scared like anything by those quivering weather balloons. Getting even more mop top rock into my system courtesy the Mosquitoes. And later on---rushing to do my homework no matter how klutzy and shoddy it may be in order to hit the television set once four o'clock rolled around.

I envy people like Don Fellman who gets these new sub-stations in that air much needed and loved programming like THE REAL McCOYS in nightly (don't call him between six and seven especially if the lovely and downright talented Lydia Reed as Hassie is a featured performer 'stead of just another living prop), but it's sure wonderful getting some QUALITY PROGRAMMING into my system after years of craft-less flatulence. Hope the once OK TV Land'll get the message and start cramming their schedules with some old time hotcha sitcoms 'stead of those eighties/nineties/oh-ohs series I do loathe so.

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As you might have sussed, the recent passing of Pete Seeger meant about as much to me as the death of Moe Hare. I mean, what did the old-time folkie environmentalist who was, like every other enlightened soul of the twentieth century, suckered into hardcore Stalinism for fun and profit really have to say for me anyhow? However, I gotta admit that, surprisingly enough, Seeger wasn't as much an offensive folk presence as the likes of, say, Joan Baez...before I knew about his apologetic Stalinist history the guy was to me just some folkie who used to pop up on tee-vee a whole lot from SESAME STREET and CAPTAIN KANGAROO to a slew of PBS folk specials that I get the impression were viewed by the ever sagging remnants of the hootenanny generation and nobody else. Given that Seeger had been a member of the Communist Party USA even when it wasn't a seventies chic thing to be one it's a wonder how he would ever be allowed near a television camera let alone be presented as any sort of youth-identifiable role model, but I guess since he was so average looking and folk songs could hardly rally the lumpen proles the way hard rock could Seeger seemed a rather harmless old coot to the TV execs and everyday television viewers all along. And it is hard imagining your Uncle Ed advocating a violent overthrow of the Amerigan Government which is maybe why, once you got down to it, Pete was such an inefficient touter of revolution and equality and all of those other things the old time lefties used to froth all over about.

Yeah I know I should be dancing around the maypole over the fact that Seeger is no more, but I really can't no matter how hard I try to put a little oomph into it. Sure he was a useful idiot for a movement that made the ever-dreaded Nazism look positively wilted (and perhaps a viable "alternative" to some), and the fact that he was "blacklisted" might have impressed the cocktail crowds in NYC but not me, but I did read (courtesy Ronald Radosh) that Seeger had modified his views over the years and considered himself more of a small "c" communist, one that has a "c" that I hope kept shrinking throughout the years. And like I said, the guy really couldn't provoke anybody to become a communist what with the rather simpy music he was writing and recording, and at times for biggie capitalist label Columbia. After all, the whole idea of the folk movement being a catalyst for social change was just another one of those left wing wet dreams where the party bosses envisioned the working classes as a bunch of dolts who would actually be motivated by the campfire sing-a-longs to rise against the capitalist system. In actuality its the guys who write disposable douche commercials who are way more in touch with the populace at large which makes me wonder why the CPUSA didn't take their tips from Massengill rather than SING OUT!.

Seeger may have espoused some extremely dangerous rhetoric (that maybe didn't sound so bad when discussed in close knit college circles but when put into force...whew!), but with the catalog of recordings that he gave us over the course of seventysome years it was pretty plain obvious that he couldn't even rev up a revolt in a pre-school playground! Really, would you feel like tearing down the walls and sticking it to the man after hearing "Where Have All The Flowers Gone"???? Not me, bub!

I guess we didn't really know it then, but the whole worker's paradise schtick really wasn't as sturdy as all of those intellectuals and starry-eyed types wanted to believe it was. In fact it was the closest thing to hell on earth you could come up against, but look at the bright side...it was the intellectual book writers and starry eyed "Abraham Lincoln Brigades" members who were more'n apt to get shot once they outlived their usefulness! Sometimes I wish that the PBS program POV would deal with a subject like that, but then again why break a fortysome-year-old habit?

So much for revolution and class warfare, and for that matter people who think that living in Stalin's Russia was oh-so superior to living in Franco's Spain!

And in some ways it is heartening to know that the son of Seeger's fellow communist folk singing friend Woody (none other'n who else but Arlo) is now not only a member of the republican party, but an avid Ron Paul supporter. That fact ain't gonna make me rush out and buy any of Guthrie's albums (the fact that he is a Paul supporter, NOT republican), but it sure's got me tickled pink thinkin' of just how Paw's takin' it all in wherever he may be in the afterlife!

So for the guy who gave the Byrds "Turn Turn Turn" and little else in the pantheon of high energy (if any) jamz all I gotta say is...hope we don't see the likes of you for quite a long time!  However next to some of the monsters who turned the twentieth century into a mass grave maybe you weren't as evil as your bosses. Perhaps you saw the stupidity of your ways as well once the news finally dribbled out of Europe and Asia and into your comfy confines. And while I'm at it maybe some of the guys you were so dead-set against weren't as bad as we were led to believe or the evil bogeymen you portrayed them as at all. And thankfully your's and Woody's machines didn't kill any fascists because, given your definition of the term I get the feeling many innocent people (and maybe even not-so-innocent myself) would have been lined up against the wall long ago, at least right before you would eventually have been.

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Nice splatter of reviews this week if I do say so myself. Not that it's gonna rank up with any of my top posts (I mean, how could I ever hope to reach the lofty standards of my Imants Krumins obituary!) but I find the selection splendid, the writing better'n some of the turds I've been pooping, and in all I'm just about as proud of this 'un as I was of the metal ashtray pounded into the shape of the state of Pennsylvania that I made for arts and crafts. And tomorrow we're going to build a log cabin outta popsicle sticks!

Robert Wyatt- '68 CD-r burn (originally on Cunieform)

It must be old communists week here at BTC what with the death of Mr. Seeger and a review of this platter recorded by none other than unrepentant card carrier himself Robert Wyatt! Here's a relatively new issue of a previously unreleased Wyatt solo album recorded in the United States after the rest of the Soft Machine skedaddled home after their tour with Jimi Hendrix. Yeah, I didn't know it existed either and although most of the songs and themes would eventually re-appear on Soft Machine and Matching Mole albums proper it's interesting to hear these toonz before they mutated into the more familiar versions most progressive rock fanablas already know by heart.

Not surprisingly, the whole thing comes off like spirited outtakes from the debut Soft Machine album that was lurking just around the corner, and I can't imagine any serious seventies import bin hopper being without this one. If you're the type of Anglophile jazz-fusion type of rockster who continues to latch onto each and every Wyatt nuance and pattern of behavior, wheel yourself to the nearest hip Cee-Dee shop and demand a copy immediately!

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John Cage-SIXTY-TWO MESOSTICS RE MERCE CUNNINGHAM (Eberhard Blum, voice) 2-CD set (Hat Art)

While sifting through boxes of Cee-Dees in my very own bedroom what should turn up but a sealed copy of this rarity, an early-seventies John Cage composition consisting of ninetysome minutes of silence punctuated by some guy emitting strange epiglottal glugs and syllables vaguely having something to do with the name of Cage's longtime boyfriend Merce Cunningham. Frankly I don't find it as interesting as various fifties/sixties Cage aleatory or not-so compositions that sorta went into spiritual non-direction of "4' 22"", but it sure beats most of the self-conscious and self-indulgent art that came in the wake of Cage's stark vision. To the untrained this might sound like a victim of a botched lobotomy trying to recite Vietnamese beat poetry, and it might just sound that way to you too!

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Plastic Crimewave Sound-THE OBLIVION PROGRAMME cassette (no label whatsoever!)

Hey, look what I found in a box of returned tapes I lent out for a special project that's coming your way within the coming months! A cassette by Sir Plastic Crimewave's group known as Plastic Crimewave Sound, and boy do they do the groan drone thing a whole lot better'n the rest of the current crop of crap. Dark deep sounds recorded on seventies low-fi tape reminding me of the kind of psychedelic rave that used to emanate from the local peace and love commune around the time the peace was being broken and the love was mutating into an agitated loathing of each other. Featuring the (re)appearance of one Michael Yonkers on "The Cruel Beyond".  Actually worth the effort to find if you can believe that!

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Various Artists-FUZZ, FLAYKES AND SHAKES VOL. 6 CD-R burn (originally on Bacchus Archives)

Another not-so-hot collection of sixties pop bottom scrapings that come off as the exact opposite of all those boffo late-seventies garage band exhumations that seemed oh-so-elusive back during my and your own depression-era wage days. Nothing really recalls that hard-edged sound that seemed contemporary to the new crank that was coming outta garages during the day except the Sons of Adam's "Feathered Fish," and we all heard that one back on PEBBLES VOLUME 2 way back when. I guess that the folks at Bacchus Archives stuck that 'un on in order to raise the rest of the property value in the immediate vicinity. It didn't work.

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BOZO AT THE DOG SHOW/Johnny Mercer-MICKEY AND THE BEANSTALK/Paul Wing-ONE STRING FIDDLE CD-r burn (no praise be to Bill Shute!!!!)

Bill's probably teasin' me with this collection of kiddoid 78 rpm story book records knowin' how much I hated that previous Bozo collection he sent. The ol' clown is back (really, I don't know about these guys who always wear make up and walk around in baggy pants and floppy shoes as if John Wayne Gacy wasn't a tipoff) this time at a dog show, and boy does he gab it up with a wide variety of breeds doin' their best to set ethno stereotypes back a good hunnerd years! I was kinda hoping one of the dogs woulda misbehaved on his leg, but legitimate kiddie potty humor was but a good six decades away!

Up next is Johnny Mercer telling the saga of MICKEY AND THE BEANSTALK!!! I mean, can we say putrid or what??? Y'know, Kenneth Anger was right when he told us about just what a vicious, puck-like character Mickey was before he was de-fanged and dressed up like me during an afternoon at the flea market, and I can just see some kid back inna forties being forced to listen to this by his prim 'n proper mother just beggin' to skip out and look at some Tijuana Bibles he found stashed in dad's dresser. At least the Mickey found in them books got into some adventures that put ol' Jack to shame, even if some of 'em did get kinda sicko what with him and Donald getting into some back door tomfoolery that's best not talked about in front of Aunt Flabby.

ONE STRING FIDDLE was a bore. Thought it'd be a nice li'l tale 'bout some country boy with a one-string home made type violin who gets his li'l dog dancin' to the toonz he plays, and it is! Only it's told so boringly that I get the feeling that this was something momzy played for junior in order to get him to take his PM nap while she caught up on her soap operas .No real snap, zip or spark to this 'un at all making me think that being a kid back inna forties and fifties wasn't all DICK TRACY and BUGS BUNNY.

The question does remain whether or not if these records responsible (directly or not) for Abbie Hoffman, Mario Savio and the rest of the fun youth era kids who eventually turned into the rabble rousers and bomb tossers of the sixties??? If so, then all of the magic and spark of pre-relevance mass communication that I've been harboring for years has just gone pftttttt! out the window.

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Various Artists-GET ON THE BIGFOOT TWISTIN' TRAIN CD-r (praise be to Bill Shute!!!!)

Nice 'un. here filled with a bevy 'o hefty beat surf instrumentals, monster cash-ins and other funtime sundries. Some fairly familiar works pop up (such as Eddie and the Showmen's "Squad Car" with Dick Dodd on the drums) but it's mostly obscurity time here which certainly does me boss. Even features a spoken word saga by none other'n my fave and his Roky Erickson talking about a bunch of cannibalistic families goin' at each other which really fits in with the spook show Bill had set up for me. Only real bouef here are the inclusions of a couple of more recent craze cash-ins, one having to do with Bigfoot and the other with ET (this being from '82, not '72 as the cover states). Sheesh, I've been trying to ignore this shuck the first time around and here's Bill remindin' me all over a good thirty years later!

Last week's IT'S ABOUT TIME review had me scouring the Bill Shute stack for this particular platter of boob tube pleasure, a collection of various tee-vee pilots of shows that did, didn't and sorta got made into series that weren't anything you'd care to call "hits". Far from that, as two of the following programs lasted a good one year, one a few months with a different cast, and another didn't even make it to production if my sources are correct. But they all have something that I haven't seen in television for quite a long time, mainly interesting premises done up without any airs of socio-political preachiness or modern-day post-decadence that never came off funny, innovative or entertaining in the slightest. Naw, these shows are pretty much more of that good ol' mindless entertainment that we always tuned into week after week with an eagerness akin to Sam on the scent of a dog in heat. And if these programs were indeed brain-dead then call me Karen Quinlan and put me on life support because I got much more sit down and engross yourself jollies outta these shows that I got outta alla the positive gay role models and action-less talkity-talk "comedies" that I've had the mis-pleasure to come in contact with these past thirtysome years!

I remember program #1 THE UGLIEST GIRL IN TOWN very well. When it originally aired back in 1968 I faithfully tuned into this ABC series under the delusion that it had one of the funniest premises ever, that of a guy disguising himself as a gal romping around in Olde London Towne! This was before I knew about CHARLEY'S AUNT and a whole slew of safe 'n acceptable transvestite humor that made up a good portion of classic moom pitcher comedy, but my DANIEL BOONE-watching uncles (that was what UGIT was up against) wouldn't have any part of it...they all thought I was some sort of weirdo for liking the thing. Sheesh, I didn't even know what a sissy was back then but I sure got branded as one for watching this rather innocuous series that wouldn't even rate a rerun on the homo cable channel, and if we only knew about those sordid stories that were circulating about Fess Parker at the time---hoo boy!

All kidding ass-side, watching the debut episode of this comedy did bring back some faint if fun memories, mostly those of how I used to sit in front of the tee-vee watching just about anything even if it was something that didn't quite mesh with my pre-double-digits idea of what existence was to be for a suburban slob such as I. Peter Kastner is about as annoying as Peter Scolari and Tom Hanks were in ABC's more successful trans comedy BOSOM BUDDIES, but the fastly-fading star still plays it halfway decent enough as the goonoid up-and-comer who falls for an English actress and follows her to London posing as a successful model loosely patterned after Twiggy.

However, the entire production has that typical late-sixties ABC mind-numbing feeling to it that used to make that perennial #3 network the butt of many a Johnny Carson monologue, what with it trying too hard to be up-to-date and hip while retaining that snooty quality that made THAT GIRL such a toughie for me to sit through once I got older and began to understand things more clearly. Of course it's better'n anything I've seen in the past XXX years and a nightly syndication run-through would serve me much more better'n any of those talkie comedies sans slapstick and soul you've seen since CHEERS, but as far as I can tell the only way anybody'd be able to see THE UGLIEST GIRL IN TOWN these days is strictly grey market! And really, I sorta wonder about the other fans of this show---oh sugar!

Highlight: the closing credits which featured a brief appearance by none other'n Marty Feldman acting his typically loonybin self with "Tammy" and his girlfriend! Kinda makes me wanna search out some disques of his MARTY FELDMAN COMEDY MACHINE series complete with the phony MONTY PYTHON-styled opening animation!

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In no way do I remember CAPTAIN FATHOM, and in fact an internet search of this 'un only brought up a mid-sixties offering from the infamous Cambria Productions, best known for the Syncro-Vox technique used on the CLUTCH CARGO and SPACE ANGEL cartoon series (you may also remember 'em for the THREE STOOGES cartoons which had live action wraparound segments!). Dunno if this ever went into actual production (though the presence of "place commercial here" slides points towards the possibility of a 26-week run), but if it did t'was all the better for any goofoid fart-spewer of a kid tuning in for some cheapazoid entertainment. CAP was a tasty bit of standard mid-fifties low-budget undersea entertainment featuring a nuclear submarine, typical manly types (as well as a cute enough pre-feminist type gal all alone with a bunch of guys who haven't seen a woman in months----hmmmmm) and more fish'n SEA HUNT and FLIPPER combined! If you like underwater adventure with loads of Dell Comics-level excitement and plot development you'll go for this! While watching, I imagined myself some eight-year-old turdburger tuned into some small UHF station (the same one that's now all part of an all-shopping network) in 1956 wondering whether to go to the kitchen for a flulffernutter sandwich or stay tuned for SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.

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MR TERRIFIC! Heck, I didn't even know that Wilbur himself Alan Young starred in the pilot episode, but he's in this 'un along with famed character actor Edward Andrews making a rare television appearance (that's an old Don Fellman joke) as the head of some typically mid-sixties top secret spy organization. Maybe if the former MR. ED star had been chosen for the actual series 'stead of Stephen Strimpell (who really was making a rare television appearance in this four-month-long series!) more people would have tuned in because I know I woulda, what with the lovable actor playing the Clark Kent role only turning into a superhero with the aid of a pill gulped down whenever called upon to do his country's doody.

Don't have any copies of the legit series to compare this 'un with, but with that boffo mid-sixties sitcom combination of Young and Andrews I don't see how MR. TERRIFIC coulda failed with the populace. With its adherence to various 40s/50s comedy traits with that mid-sixties oomph that would soon devolve into plop, a Young-led MR. TERRIFIC woulda been a must-see for any self-respecting suburban ranch house slob such as you or I. Young is perfect in the Stanley Beemish role (here a shoe salesman 'stead of gas station attendant) while Andrews retained that overblown pomposity that characterized a whole slew of his previous and future television appearances on everything from THE TWILIGHT ZONE to THE DORIS DAY SHOW!?!?!?!??! I get the feeling that if CBS execs bought the original pilot MR. TERRIFIC woulda been at least a two, perhaps even three season smash that sure woulda looked great on the afternoon tee-vee schedules of the seventies before it all went lezbo talk!

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Y'know, for the life of me I can't remember a doggone thing about CAPTAIN NICE other'n fans like Bill Shute regaling me with fond tee-vee memories of watching this one-season wonder. Of course I do have one good excuse for not tuning in since back then NBC sitcoms didn't quite gel with me---guess they were just too clean-looking and sophisticated for my second grade mentality or something. I mean, I wasn't even a GET SMART fan until its last season on that network right before it did a final capitulation on CBS looking even more out of place as the seventies were revving up, and if a now-classic series like that couldn't make a dent in my turdly existence how could CAPTAIN NICE hope to register a blip on my seven-year-old bean?

All these years later I gotta say that CAPTAIN NICE is a halfway decent, watchable show even if it does have that sterile feeling to it. That guy who used to be on ST. ELSEWHERE plays the squeaky-clean if muddled hero while Alice Ghostly turns up as his mother and none other than Byron Folger stays hidden behind a newspaper as pop. Paula Prentiss' sister shows up in the mix too. An' yeah, I can sit through this but there just ain't any zap or oomph to this one that there was on BATMAN which as ya know started that whole superhero camp craze which even had stuck up English Lit profs reading comic books.  From what I can see, this is one of those series that I'm sure the "old" kids (y'know, the ones who were pushing the double digits) mighta liked, but for us kiddies who were still pondering the intellectual significance of BEWITCHED...too heady!

***

Kudos to Bill for sending these fave raves my way. They sure beat watching ABNORMAL FAMILY, FELCH PATROL and the rest of the prime time schedule we never could escape from that's for sure. More if you can, pliz?

A smaller post'n usual. Blame it on the winter freeze-up since it seems as if everything around here (including my writing abilities) has come to a standstill. Believe-you-me, when the weather gets down to these sub-zero Fahrenheit temperatures I'm more concerned with staying toasty warm in my room than I am trekking down to the cold basement to spin a few, and that's just what I'm gonna do (stay in mine room, not go down to the basement) at least until the spring thaw or global warming whichever comes first. Until then it's gonna be Bill Shute Cee-Dee-Are burns and deep digs into the archives for me, thaz for sure!

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Well, at least there's some good news to blab on about this weekend! Brad Kohler tells me than none other than Miss Reconstructed Nostrils herself Linda Ronstadt now suffers from the debilitating disease Multiple Sclerosis and has to get around with the aid of a walker! Considering how the one-time wannabe Mrs. Jerry Brown made us suffer with her "hot tub hussy" music back in the seventies it's nice to see that she's doin' a li'l sufferin' herself! I wonder if her walker is embedded with turquoise?

***

Hey kids, do you want to get a copy of the soon-to-be-released Simply Saucer "Bulletproof Nothing" single? If so then go here, and if they're sold out by the time you do just don't come crying to me because like---I gave you ample warning!

***

Like I said, not much this time, though I must praise myself for going above the call of doody in presenting you this week's selections which I still get the feeling you couldn't care one whit about. But then again you're just reading this post for the visceral thrill of it all, right? Just like alla those freaks, degenerates, burnouts and confused adolescents used to pester Lester Bangs night and day to the point where you'd think the guy woulda had at least two hundred "closest friends". Well, I'm not gotta let you get away with it, though I must admit that I do feel flattered in my own personal way...


Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band-NAN TRUE'S HOLE, BEEFHEART TAPES VOLUME 3 CD (Dandelion, England), MAGNETICISM, THE BEST OF CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & HIS MAGIC BAND LIVE 72-81 CD (Viper, England)

I was gonna do a Beefheart special writin' up alla the new reissues 'n exhumations that were hittin' the catalogs...really I was! But lack of time, ability and other hoo-hahs just got in the way so I'm gonna do the whole thing like piecemeal ifyaknowaddamean... So for now lemme clue you into some Beefheart platters I got as of late that I didn't even know existed until I saw 'em on the Forced Exposure website, and who knows, I somehow get the feeling that you didn't know about 'em either! And you think you're such hot stuff now, don't you poopkins!

Taken from the collection of ace Beefheart booster John Peel, NAN'S TRUE HOLE rivals some of the crudest early seventies Beatle bootlegs for tough listening. But since it was either that or spinning BEATLES '65 again it wasn't like you had much choice so went for the boots you did. And hey, an anti-audiophile like myself doesn't care that much either since it's good hearing Beefheart in just about any setting even if the songs sometimes sound if they were recorded while Peel was stimulating an underage gal under the stage with the mic used to record these. Some rarities, some faves, and a good sampling of just what the guy was up to outside of the studio throughout the seventies all presented for you via Peel's very own Dandelion label, also home to the likes of Stackwaddy and David Bedford's NURSES SONG WITH ELEPHANTS for all you late seventies used record shop hunters out there!


MAGNETICISM is another collection of Beefheart live tracks recorded between '72 and '81, with one '66 Avalon Ballroom track not on the EP closing things out. If it matters to you the sound is better and the selection does keep that Beefheartian pace up to the point where all of those seventies rock feelings you had for the guy'll come rushing back faster than fanabla. Some interesting inclusions appear such as Beefheart's take on the classic "King Bee" which hearkens back to early Avalon-era efforts as well as a number recorded at the Red Creek Inn in Rochester New York where I believe Greg Prevost approached the man for the interview which eventually appeared in the third ish of FUTURE. That's definitely one interesting historical turdbit related to this platter, and I'm sure there are more in here if only you would look hard enough into the thing and relate to it as a true seventies artifact of just a portion of the energy and madness the music of that decade was infamous for. Or some insufficient hyperbole such as that.

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Archie Shepp and the Full Moon Ensemble-LIVE IN ANTIBES (vol. 1 & 2) two CD set (Fuel)

Ever since the rash of Affinity reissues of the BYG-Actuel series began gushing out at bargain prices back inna mid-eighties I've been lappin' 'em up more'n a dog mascot downs a nice bowl of beer at a university frat house. Unfortunately this particular Archie Shepp outing was not part of the Affinity reissue series so it was like us free jazz frolickers hadda wait a good fifteen or so years before this 'un got the royal treatment, that is without having to pay the exorbitant collectors prices that were getting stuck on long outta-print platters such as these.

Shepp is in fine form whether he be playing his tenor or grunting out what sound like veiled obscenities, while the Ensemble compliment his fire performance well, what with the group's mix of legendary black Amerigan players like Allen Shorter and Clifford Thornton and French BYG regulars like Beb Guerin and Claude Delcloo. Of special note is guitarist Joseph Dejean whose staccato strumming is somewhat reminiscent of Sonny Sharrock's making me wonder why the guy didn't end up recording a BYG album of his own other'n he wasn't really a "name" and more or less was part of the label's backing entourage!

Two disques, each encompassing single works that have the primal roar that made too many kids searching for the roots of the Stooges pick up platters like this up. Definitely the last word in what this "fire music" was supposed to be about and rather important, especially considering some of the comparatively tame and in fact disappointing platters that Shepp ended up making only a few years later.

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John Coltrane-COLTRANE'S SOUND CD-r burn (originally on Atlantic)

For a buncha leftovers these Atlantic tracks sure do fill the bill, or at least filled the bill for hungry jazz fanatics who couldn't wait for the next Impulse-label Coltrane album to come out. Originally released in '64, these '60 sides might not have the same overdrive into free sputum that Coltrane was inflicting on his listeners at the time, but the roots of the toots can be discerned on such tracks as "26-2" (which actually didn't come out until '70's COLTRANE LEGACY). Not the best place to start (I made the mistake as a curious mid-teen with MY FAVORITE THINGS which almost ruined the guy en-toto for me!) but a fine one to digest after you've given the major titles more than a quick run through.

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Metallica-KILL 'EM ALL CD (Elektra)

Last week's review of the Cliff Burton/Agents of Misfortune "album" had me digging back into the history of Metallica proper, if only to re-acquaint myself as to what is was that made this group such a welcome relief from the type of metal that most of the stoner lowrider types were goin' for at the time. Oddly enough these '83 tracks don't have quite the oompah that I remember 'em to've had, but as far as doing a proper update on early-seventies metallic forms from Zep to Sabs to even such outside chances as the Pink Fairies Metallica did it grand, taking the original drill and breaking it down to even more white noise appeal. After listening to this I can see why I had hope in this act being the saviors of the HM idiom, and in some ways I can see why some of their less-appealing influences from Yes to Bob Segar eventually got the best of 'em even when they were doing their darndest to wipe a few braincells from our minds.

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Various Artists-SINGING PLUMBERS AND SMOKING ACTORS CD-r burn (contributed to the cause by Bill Shute)

Must've been a duff week at Bill Shute's pad, what with the cornballus singers who appear on this particular collection! Dave & Suzanne might have some talent goin' for 'em even if their version of "Dock of the Bay" is about as whitebread copycat as the Sandpipers, but Justin Liu comes off like the nightly entertainment at the Cantonese Palace as he makes his way through everything from "Love is Blue" to "More"! Strange, because it wasn't like he was singing in an Eyetalian restaurant so why not something more Chinese?! Of course nobody can top the San Suct's take of "Boogie Fever" nor the Executives' "I Got to be Me," at least until Fat Bob, the Singing Plumber tortures us with a side of his versions of "Sunrise Sunset" and "Danny Boy" among other old fogey faves!

Thankfully, the Avon representative motivational record's good for a hoot considering it was recorded in the late-sixties right before women began losing their seats on the bus because they stood up for their rights,  while the HOW TO STOP SMOKING WITHOUT USING WILLPOWER album came at just the right time for me...y'see, I've been trying to START smoking for quite some time, so what I'm doing is taking the information from this record and working backwards with it, so in no time at all I'm gonna be a three carton a day man and I have Bill to thank for that! Well it's cheaper'n me buying nicotine lozenges and starting with the low dosage and working my way up like I was originally planning on!!!

IT'S ABOUT TIME's one of those shows that just about everybody born between 1953 and 1961 plopped in front of a television set seems to remember, if not with any great detail which makes one wonder if they actually watched the thing in the first place. For years I would come upon many a mid/late baby boomer type who'd be singing the series' theme during one of their many nostalgia trips (which for me was strange because hey, I didn't need any nostalgia trips in my existence because I was happily still LIVIN' those years!), but when pressed for any details all I would get was that Imogene Coca was in it. Maybe some old CAR 54 fan'd remember that "Ooh Ooh!" guy, but otherwise IT'S ABOUT TIME was more or less famous for being around during those pre-hippydippy days, a happy reminder of them transitional years which people really couldn't give a shit about here in these oh-so enlighten times!

That's why revisiting this series via DVD was a special treat for me, especially when my only other option for prime-time entertainment is watching dulloid police/doctor shows which just come off like NAKED CITY and BEN CASEY watered down to meet the emotional level of your average turdpile shoveler. The entire run of this '66-'67 classic just oozes that mid-six-oh sense of sitcom whackoid that started with MR. ED and ran roughshod by the time the middle portion of the decade showed up, and for a guy who got his turdler jollies sitting plunk in front of the set osmosing the best tee-vee could offer until all there was to enjoy were syndicated reruns, you can bet the old feelings and funzies were rushing back to the point where I was in my room afterwards playing twenty car pile up with my dinkys!

Produced by the same Sherwood Schwartz who gave us GILLIGAN'S ISLAND (standard bearer of just how great mid-sixties sitcom tee-vee could get) as well as the early-seventies family freak-out THE BRADY BUNCH,  IT'S ABOUT TIME had everything going for it from the GILLIGAN-esque prehistoric jungle sets to the same GILLIGAN incidental music, and not only that but the writing was on-par for mid-sixties tee-vee-dom. Not as top-notch as THE LUCY SHOW was during the Mr. Mooney period let alone GILLIGAN, but loads better'n some of the gloppier entries of the day like WENDY AND ME to name but one. And as far as being a GILLIGAN clone well, what would you expect not only with the original story line being but a variation on the shipwreck saga (only with astronauts marooned a million years ago) but with main character Hector "Hec" Canfield (played by sitcom vet Jack Mullaney) trying his best and succeeding at being a verifiable Gilligan-type with some Jack Larson-styled Jimmy Olsen thrown in!

Frank Aletter as Captain Glenn McDivitt does a more'n amiable job doing the Abbot to Mullaney's Costello or Skipper to his Gilligan, and the chemistry actually works just as well as it had with those verifiable top notch comedy teamups. I get the idea that many old time YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS fans probably thought that Imogene Coca as Shag/Shad was a humongous comedown from past glories (never saw GRINDL so I can't comment on that) but as far as playing a comedic cave woman I couldn't think of any better choice for the role unless Vivian Vance was up for it. Ritzig/Toody/Joe E. Ross as Grok was also inspiring especially considering what we've heard about him in recent days, though I kinda get the impression that there were many other actors out there more befitting the part. Can't think of anyone specific offhand though I don't think John Fiedler would have been one of them. Cliff Norton as Boss (the chief of the prehistoric tribe) was about as typically tee-vee as I thought such a role would be, though I enjoyed Mike Mazurki as henchman Clon who did add some spark to the series with his combination brawn and duncitude, something which I guess plagued Mazurki throughout his entire acting career.

Oh, and I shouldn't forget Grok and Shag/Shad's kids, the sexy Mlor played by Mary Grace and the adolescent Breer (Pat Cardi). Breer had long hair for a kid who wasn't in a rock group at the time, and I remember my mother's shock when she discovered he wasn't wearing a wig at all, almost as bad as the time she saw Tony and the Tigers on HULLABALOO and was surprised that Soupy Sales didn't march his sons to the barber shop and march them this instant!

As for Mlor, her character was definitely developed (as was her body) during the days before blatant heterosexuality was outlawed when masculinity and femininity still ruled the world. Definitely a draw for the horny baldoid mid-agers tuning in, her presence was positive proof that female pulchritude was a trait that spanned the centuries before harridans turned the entire sex into bland androids with seemingly interchangeable parts. And it's sure grand to know that, even in primitive prehistoric times, women used to shave their underarms!

The sudden change in format with episode #19 "Twentieth Century Here We Come" must have been a big surprise to those expecting the tried and true GILLIGAN format to live on until the very end, but in an attempt to uplift those sagging ratings Schwartz did just that with results I do find rather likable. Now instead of featuring two 20th Century astronauts in prehistoric times the show had a cave family living in the sixties with all of the predictable yet guffaw-inducing situations any long-entrenched sitcom fan woulda expected. Some of the gags are pretty hotcha like the one where Jack Albertson discovers the family singing an old caveman folk song and turns 'em into a mop top act, while others like the time Shag/d and some beautician get to slinging beauty mud at each other come off so obviously ripoff I'm surprised Lucille Ball wasn't suing.

But hey, these twenty-six IT'S ABOUT TIME episodes do have that boffo mid-sixties fantasy sitcom feeling that drew many a suburban slob to his set, and all I really gotta say is that anyone who hates the show and can't see it for the whackoid fantasy that it is must be one of those tightass types we all grew up with...y'know, the kind who used to berate us for not knowing the difference between apes and monkeys or picked out all of the physics problems with your favorite superhero's powers, or worse yet wouldn't go near a show like this because dinosaurs and cavemen were not contemporaneous with each other!!!! Not like the sitcoms they have today where people just act obnoxious at each other in programs which lack discernible plots...hmmmm, considering just how "real" if bland television is these days I'll just betcha that the same kids who wanted their world to be so exact are the same ones in charge of the entire entertainment industry! And considering the decades-long trend in television blandness I'm pretty sure that none other than sixth-grade irritant Poopy Wilson (or maybe even Farts Flanagan) is now in charge of programming at ABC, giving us utter slop like MODERN FAMILY because that's what we should watch just like we were all supposed to eat gritty spinach because it was good for us! If ol' Poopy still uses his plastic pocket protector I wouldn't be surprised one bit.

Got the sump situation under control, so thankfully I've been catching up on my beauty sleep these past few nights. Must say the additional rest really does help out the ol' nervous system which is being worn to a frazzle as of late! And, as a result of getting some comparatively solid snoozing in, maybe this post won't read as convoluted as last week's or most of these weekend roundups have ever since I've been suffering from my writer's block (but trudge on I must, even at the expense of looking like a bigger asshole than I have these past thirtysome years).

Frankly, even with the inability to get the ideas outta my head, through my fingers and onto the keyboard I think I did a fairly good job of detailing just why and what you should be knowing about and listening to, but as usual you the reader will be the judge 'n jury, and naturally you will let me know with your usually stony and cold silence!

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IT'S BEEN A BAD WEEK FOR TEE-VEE DEATHS what with the passing of two giants of the 19-inch screen these past seven days. The 86-ing of Russell Johnson has not-so-strangely enough been hitting me particularly hard, not only because he played the brainy if stodgy Professor Roy Hinkley on the all-time classic GILLIGAN'S ISLAND series but because he was a rather vivid presence on television and in the mooms since the early fifties throughout the final days of the past century. A face we all grew up seeing that typified a certain period in television entertainment that slowly but surely slipped from sight. And how many of you regular readers over the age of 45 have personally known some baby-boober who you'd be watching THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN or IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE with who woud remark "It's the Professor!" whenever his visage would pop up on the screen? Even my mother thought the Professor was a real he-man type of guy when she'd see him (she thought the same of Race Bannon!), even once remarking that she wished my father was a whole lot more like him!

And how about the time Johnson was playing a rapist of all things on IRONSIDE, and when he first appeared on the screen adolescent turdfarm me said in a Professor-like straight voice "Just how are we going to get off this island?" sending my sister into a hilarious uproar!

Yeah a whole lotta people used to make fun of Johnson's acting abilities (which wouldn't be that hard after seeing his appearance on THE BIG VALLEY where he does come off hammier than usual) but I always thought he was "cool" pretty much in the same way a cousin of mine thought Bill Cullen was the greatest and was so happy to have to wear eyeglasses because the famed PRICE IS RIGHT host also sported a pair of horn rims. In many ways Johnson was one of the last of the old-time fifties matinee idol wannabe types who usually played someone whether good guy or heel who exemplified what manhood used to be in the pre-castrati metrosexual era. It coulda been a scientist like the Professor or the one who brought Old West villain Albert Salmi into the then-present on one of two boffo TWILIGHT ZONE appearances, not forgetting the time Johnson played one of the astronauts that unwittingly brought the deadly space spores to earth on the "Specimen Unknown" episode of OUTER LIMITS. (One of the better episodes of that rather hotcha series if I do say so myself.) Remember when boys wanted to be scientists and astronauts like the kind Johnson played when they grew up 'stead of campaign to use whatever grade school lavatory they felt most comfortable in? Boy, were those days really that long ago?

Of course like fellow castaway Alan Hale Jr. Johnson was pretty much born to play the perhaps-too-scientific Professor on GI, a man who could do the most amazing things with coconuts but learned everything he knew about sex from studying gnats. No wonder he couldn't get to first base with Ginger when everyone knows that the famed starlet was putting out with the rest of the male population on the island and even a few visitors themselves! Even Gilligan himself was able to get a little once he was revived after one of Ginger's all-too-potent come ons, but the Professor was just too engrossed in mating rituals of the Mantis Cane to know about actual human carnal oompah to be able to do any actual flesh and blood copulation, and come to think of it maybe television (and us viewers) was all the better for it!

But although Johnson's post-GILLIGAN roles have been a return to the dramas from whence he came, I always did get a kick outta seeing him throughout a variety of seventies/eighties roles from THE JEFFERSONS to THAT GIRL (????????---just kidding about that one) just because...well, he was the Professor who was on one of my all-time favorite tee-vee series and he sure seemed cool in light of what had become of tough and gutzy types who were being scorned by the hippies ever since they began getting into positions of power. His likes will certainly be missed in these quarters.

***

Actor Dave Madden who played the toupee'd manager Reuben Kincaid on THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY has also left this mortal slinky. Funny, but when the infamous BRADY BUNCH/PARTRIDGE FAMILY Friday night block first popped up way back '70 way I was front and center for the Bradys but loathed the Partridges with a passion! (In fact, I remember my very first exposure to the Partridges during that fateful summer, when the local ABC station ran a commercial for the upcoming series during their morning cartoon block and I kinda felt revulsed by the mere fact that it stood against the twenties/thirties/forties/fifties-bred entertainment I most certainly craved at the time!) For me the former series was still part of an early/mid-sixties styled family sitcom romp while the Partridges were...well, kinda hippie-ish with their long hair and typically stilted v. late-sixties/early-seventies AM sounds. Not only that but THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY was downright subversive...remember the episode that showed some gerbil giving birth? I mean, how sick can you get, especially when such an act was presented in a sensitive, life-reaffirming way instead of with shame and revulsion like it should be??? And how about the time Danny Partridge used the world "adultery" instead of "adulthood"??? Boy did I cringe, and nobody was even in the room with me watching this which only goes to show you just how unnerved I was by such an off-color malapropism!

It wasn't until the show's final season that I started to tune in and follow it in a more lighthearted fashion, and when the family hit the syndication circuit I was catching up on all of those episodes I missed the first time 'round. Never could work up that much of an appreciation for David Cassidy's talents even though I remember enjoying his version of the Association classic "Cherish", but I did like Danny Bonaduce as the smartass Danny Partridge, especially when he was being played against group manager and downright kid hater Kincaid. A role I might add that Madden was born to play just as much as Johnson and Hale were born to play theirs. Well, it was better'n his brief LAUGH IN sojourn that's for sure!

True THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY was about a good two/three years outside the loop of classy tee-vee on all fronts, but next to the plethora of turdbombs that have ruined the entire industry beyond redemption as of late even this hippydippy piece of ABC trying so hard (and succeeding for once!) to capture the youth audience comes off rather smooth this far down the line, even with all of the hip women's lib and whatever cause can be crammed into a teen-oriented sitcom you'd care to think of. Well, at least it wasn't ROOM 222 or LUCAS TANNER which really drove ubercauses into the realm of utter stupidity.

And people like Madden as Kincaid made the Partridges all the more watchable, he with his great everyday fuddy duddy nature which made him almost the mental equal of his friendly rival Danny. Really, the two were a great comedy pair that sorta balanced the teenybop appeal of Cassidy, the what are they here for anyway? presence of the two little kids, and Susan Dey's absolute lack of any talent, charm, or boobs for all of us sprouting adolescent wankoffs.

After the Partridges it was back to the sitcom appearances and commercial voice overs, but like Johnson Madden made his mark on the suburban slob mindset with his fine acting and that's good enough for me! And so, a big adios to two of the unheralded tee-vee greats who not only seem to have come from a different world, but a world that was perhaps much better'n the one we live in now even with all of the medical and living standard breakthroughs we've been encountering lo these many years. I mean, what good are vitamins and soap if we don't have any great tee-vee to sit down and watch after a hard day at the sweat mines (or is it salt shop?) anyway???

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HAVEN'T HAD ANY REALLY GOOD ROCK 'N ROLL ORIENTED DREAMS AS OF LATE, so the one I experienced Thursday night really came off as a vivid and welcome surprise. While watching two back-to-back LEAVE IT TO BEAVERs at what seemed to be my now-deceased aunt and uncle's home which had a certain early-sixties "vibe" to it (although the dream was set in the here and now), I actually got to see an episode that I don't recall having ever seen before! In it, Wally and Eddie's surf group the Survivors were appearing on national tee-vee live from Miami, and oh boy what a group it was! It was a nine-piece, with Wally on drums (using brushes for some reason which certainly didn't befit the music being heard in said dream), Eddie on Farfisa organ, two guitarists, a bass guitarist, and four horns...three saxophones (alto, tenor and baritone) and what looked like a pocket trumpet the kind Don Cherry used to play!

The group performed positioned straight in a row with the saxes arranged from small to large on the far right,  the trumpet, the guitars with Wally on drums at the far left. Eddie played the organ positioned at a 90-degree angle right next to Wally for some aesthetic reason and boy was he grinning all the time he was playing those wild riffs! The band was cranking out a hard instrumental sound that came off very much like the pre-Turtles Crossfires thanks to the horn section, which had two or maybe three black guys on the saxes (when the band walked onstage at the beginning of this particular dream segment I thought the baritone saxophonist was white, though later on he most certainly wasn't!) and a short white guy who kinda resembled a young Mousie Garner played the trumpet dressed casually in a windbreaker which is strange since the rest of the group had these sharp early-sixties suits with a crest emblazoned on the blazer breast pockets.

The only other thing I can recall is that the short white guy was doing these weird rollicking dance steps while the tenor saxophonist was getting into an almost Coltrane-ish between-the-notes r&b groove during his brief spot! Definitely one for the dream archives, and not only that but it was conjured outta my mind w/o the aid of any Ny-Quil!

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Well, here's just what you've been waiting for...this week's miscellany of maybe not-so-brief items as John Derbyshire wouldn't say. Must mention that I found this particular batch of pre-recorded booty rather stimulating, especially the pre-Metallica Agents of Misfortune one-sided romper listed immediately below, and I must be in a really good mood because I even give a hearty rah rah to the particularly new waveish Aaron Poehler and Ryan Tully-Doyle disque that closes out this post! Now that's kinda strange because for the life of me I would have torn  this 'un down mercilessly had I heard it a good twenny-five years back given just how frothing rabid for the cause of rock 'n roll I could get when the spirit moved me! And back then it moved me more often than not!!!

I must be getting old though I doubt it since I am a perennial pre-teen to the point where I always make sure to leave the water running and lock the bathroom door if I'm gonna be in there any longer than a half-hour. But then again, maybe I can like, enjoy, or get something outta some record that doesn't fall into my patented rockist tendencies for reasons other than the expected surge I crave in my musical entertainment, and if someone like Wayne McGuire could appreciate the Plutonian depths of the Velvet Underground and the Neptunian depths of the Grateful Dead and Bill Evans why can't I listen to the Ohio Express with the same ears I use to listen to the Stooges, or find some (perhaps snide) worth in eighties drone(on) rock, heavy metal flufferoo or gnu wave goop that wouldn't have passed any tests on my part once 1979 crept into a new and less-enthralling decade?

AGENTS OF MISFORTUNE one-sided LP (no label)

Cliff Burton just hadda've been the heart, mind, soul and maybe even sphincter of Metallica. True that venerable aggregation were startin' to go south even before Burton learned a new meaning of the term "heavy metal" way back when, but during their Megaforce Records days when they were helping to kick-start heavy metal into a new generation of sludge it was Burton who was putting a whole lotta oomph into the Metallica sound.

Unfortunately Metallica (like many of their eighties metallic counterparts) just hadda let their progressive inclinations get the best of 'em, but when the original group was out there cooking on all cylinders Metallica were doing a pretty good job of making people forget about comparative fiz like Van Halen, at least until Bon Jovi popped up onna scene.

The thirteen minutes that appear on this one-sided "album" which could be a bootleg (one that's so good I ain't gonna hold off on writing about it until its time for the next BOOTLEG BRAGGADOCIO!) is a killer, a slab of solid sound recorded around 1981 (never mind the '84 date that pops up at the beginning of the video below) which goes against the grain of everything HM was standing for at the time whether it be tiresome Ted Nugent histrionics, Deep Purple sophisticado (sans that drench of their early seventies offerings) or general Molly Hatchet doofdom. Burton and band pretty much roar into industrial waste sounds here with a style that I'm sure would have shocked the likes of Andy "Punk Rock Has No Roots" Secher and the entire eighties HIT PARADER metal fluffs as various proto-Metallica ideas are scronked out with a steady beat, walls of feedback and a free sound that hadn't been heard in Metal Proper since Blue Cheer's original escapades. The end results are not only rooted in metal legend (bowed guitar) but punk rock in a 1971 CREEM sense coming closer to Von Lmo (or "Amboss" period Ash Ra Tempel) than Autograph. Can't say that I've heard anything as genuinely distorto as this as of late outside of Fadensonnen!

Comes on grey splatter vinyl and in a numbered edition of 300 if you care. If you really care and missed out (Eclipse Records have a few left, I hope!) you can always burn a copy of the "Battle of the Bands" video this was taken from below...it might not stand out so much in your collection but think of all the money you'll be saving!

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Alex Chilton-ELECTRICITY BY CANDLE CD-r burn (originally on Bar/None)

Interesting acoustic set recorded by the infamous Boxtops vocalist during a blackout in New York City on February 13 1997. It sure sounds it what with the audience patter, the off-the-cuff renditions of old-timey favorites and the general get-together have some fun feeling that would occur in a club during a blackout when none would dare venture out into the street.

A lotta on-line wags have been putting this one down for the "amateurish" recording quality and performance, but I find ELECTRICITY BY CANDLE a more'n representative slide of Chilton's talents as well as proof of his ability to take the worst of a situation and make the best even if self-appointed rock critic types can't see beyond their pointy heads. Nothing I'm gonna be spinning as often as LIKE FLIES ON SHERBET, but a fairly representational document of Chilton that even a cursory fan would want to hear at least a few dozen times. (And the bonus track which is unlisted on my cover puts a nice cap on this thing...can anyone relay whatever info there may be regarding its origins?)

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The Gories-THE SHOW TAPES, LIVE IN DETROIT 5/27/88 CD-r burn (originally on Third Man Records)

Since I haven't been listening to my old Gories records in quite a long time this burn (courtesy of P. D. Fadensonnen) does come in handy. Taken from what I assume's a fairly decent nineties-vintage audience tape, the Gories thrash and burn through a whole bunch of garage band screechers, some original and many covers, sounding about as raw as a rear end after evacuating a Mexican dinner and having nothing to use but one-ply (ow!). Hear your favorite NUGGETS and PEBBLES faves reduced to distorted amp frenzy, and speaking of amps don't miss the part where these guys actually blow a fuse at the club and have to go down to the basement to slip a penny into the box!

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The Sixth Station-DEEP NIGHT CD-r burn (originally on Numero Group)

Hippie priest Tony Trosley helps the Tridentine Mass movement single-handedly with this soft rock West Coast folkie album with a vaguely religious bent that I couldn't discern from the typically introspective lyrics. Recorded in 1982, Fr. Trosley should have realized that by this time the Laurel Canyon scene was long dead 'n turquoised outta existence, but trod forth he did with this laid back offering that's probably now worth more'n the collection intake from last week's 11:30 AM mass. Some might find spiritual worth in Trosley's twelve-string playing and more-introspective-than-Harry Chapin lyrics, but if he really wanted to be "hip" and "with it" he would have certainly put his religious convictions to a finer form of music. After all, I'd rather have heard him do Suicide's "Punk Music Mass" over this anyday!

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Various Artists-ST. PETER'S BLOOPERS AT PLAY CD-r (thanks be to Bill Shute)

Another strange selection comin' my way what with the cornballus Smokey and the Rhythm Riders and Don Jones startin' things out, but soon we get into some more of those sometimes funny beyond belief  and often wonderful beyond words "song poems" (courtesy Vincent Poli and R. W. Grantham) and of course the indispensable Terry and the Macs. After about five minutes of the Note-Ables blaspheming their way through "Jesus Christ Superstar" (when I was a kid I was so stupid as to think they were actually singing "Jesus Christ Superstar/Who in the hell do you think you are?") I fast forwarded to the Bloopers platter which I thought had some sorta funzies to it even though these things were usually phonier'n shit! Well, better listen to something like this rather than spend an hour doing something constructive!

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Aaron Poehler & Ryan Tully-Doyle-DIETRICH CD (available via iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp and elsewhere)

The brand of early-eighties synth-laden new wave that Poehler and Tully-Doyle spew forth on this 36-minute Cee-Dee ain't exactly my cup o' cliche, but I won't rip into the thing like my unabashed fanzine-era self would have. Actually I find the neo-Psychedelic Furs drone and clump fairly decent, maybe nothing that'll make any top ten lists o' mine but an occasional diversion for those who miss the eighties brand of what was going under the name punk rock in 1975 before getting tagged new wave in 1977 before being inundated with a variety of terms from "new music" to "post-punk" once the new decade got into gear. If you miss acts like Certain General (who I believe are still up and running!), Crossfire Choir and the Corvairs you'll probably be more'n apt to snatch this one up!

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If you were able to make it through this one without grimacing, be glad to know that I have another one all set for Wednesday and I'd be lying if I said it was a doozy!

BOOK REVIEW! BATMAN ARCHIVES VOLUME 1 by Bob Kane (DC, 1990)

After reading the socially conscious GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW comics that I told you about last week, the very first Batman stories via the pages of DETECTIVE comics come off like a breath of healthy stale air after being kept in a locked room pumped full of Oust.

These early sagas got everything that I like in comics (and general entertainment for that matter) such as a hero who ain't some pussified metrosexual type, villains who aren't portrayed in a way that you actually end up rooting for them (like I usually end up doing even while watching classic moom pitchers of the past...after all the tough and gnarled gangster is sure a more interesting and well-developed character than the squeaky-clean Dudley Doo-Rights they're pitted against!), and best of all unvarnished, hard-nosed stories which certainly lack the twinkle eyed vision (and the sub-shopping insert art) that has typified the comic book biz ever since I quit buying regularly back inna seventies because the whole industry became too...convoluted for any suburban slob to really enjoy.

Somehow I get the impression from the majority of stories that were being produced at the time that the people who run DC and Marvel were under the impression that the average comic book reader was Dilton Doiley, when somehow or other I get the idea that he was Goober Pyle. There really does seem to have been some major shift in the universes when dunce-level Saturday Afternoon Barbershop Kids entertainment could have devolved into something so grotesque that even Stan Lee's craftiest character and plot twists now seems so tame and restrained in comparison.

These early BATMAN tales really do hit home. As you might have remembered, "the Batman"*  was played as a vigilante working against the police** as well as the bad boys which does lend a neat character to these strips and makes the cowled one a whole lot more copasetic with my system than the way the guy eventually turned out! The violence and action is certainly punched up as well, not only with the likes of snapped necks and hideously burned bad guys but with Batman carrying a gun when needed (or not for that matter), and although none of this can match the obvious template DICK TRACY for downright hard-edged to the point of sickening violence (my favorite kind!) it sure comes off a whole lot better'n what most of these comic book characters would become once they got settled in and hadda become good role models for us empty heads who didn't know any better!

Even the addition of Robin doesn't deter any, though you can just hear the jokes and snickers during that one scene where Batman rescues his sidekick from a burning movie picture set and a fireman remarks "it was love for that kid" that drove him to it! Sheesh, with lines like these who needed Wertham anyway??

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*as he was known not only during the late-thirties but throughout the early-seventies revival of "the dark knight," right before he really went bonkers in the '90s.

**in one funny plot twist which appears in one of these early stories, a cop who does capture Batman confesses to the Caped Crusader that he supports what the guy is doing and submits to a voluntary uppercut just so he could let Batman escape while still doing his duty!