MOOM PITCHER REVIEW! CAMILLE (1921) starring Alla Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino

Of course I never read the original, and I never saw any of the film adaptations until now, but I've known about the sad story of Camille and the case of consumption that did her in for what by now seems like ages. It's just one of those things I heard about long ago that I just figured was part of the literary scene of which I want little if any part of. But this 1921 version starring the switch-hitting swingers Nazimova and Rudy Valentino did seem tasty if anything, so why not spend a lost Sunday afternoon watching the thing 'stead of enjoying the weather like most suburban slobs would do..

The film does come off as pleasing-enough in an eye-catching way what with all of those art deco sets and the expressive acting through sickly layers of makeup. It's a definite must-see for the hip-de-la silent moom pitcher crowd too, what with this early Valentino performance right before he broke the heart of every bell boy in San Francisco with his ultry sultry looks. It ain't the best thing that the silent era hadda offer, but with the stylish look and heavy melodrama it really is a can't miss. Woulda looked great on the old PBS SILENT YEARS series tinted and with a fitting William Perry soundtrack (though the one tagged onto this is way more befitting than the modern jazzbo junk often heard on TCM productions---sure wish these moderne-day film restorers wouldn't go out of their way to "update" these by-now ancient classics!).

But when all is said and done there's one and only one thing that I can say to you after watching this film, and that is---COVER COUGHS AND SNEEZES---FIGHT TB TODAY!!!!

HEY MA, LOOK WHAT I GOT INNA MAIL TODAY!

Remember when you were a kid and ya'd send away for some toy with your hard-begged box tops and fifteen cents for postage and handling? You'd sweat out the weeks waiting for the piece of  "cheap plastic junk" to arrive, and  when it finally did boy were you happier than Joseph Mengele at a midgets convention! Well y'see, I feel the same way about a package I just received, and the best part about it is that I didn't hafta save up any box tops or moolah to obtain the parcel at all! In fact, I didn't even know the blasted thing was a'comin' until it finally did!!!

Here's what happened...it seems as if none other than Stephen Painter, no foe of the blog he, decided outta the goodness of his heart to send me a whole load of music-related magazines that he discovered while cleaning his room out! Really, the man actually thought that I would actually enjoy thumbing through these reads, and since he didn't particularly want them himself he actually felt it right and proper to send 'em all my way! A strange thing for him to do considering the lack of sympathy or empathy that has been given to either myself or this blog, but send 'em out he did and boy am I glad!

Funny, whenever I clean my room all I find are dead spiders and bits of peanuts and breakfast cereal, but I don't think Stephen would want me to send these things his way in a million years! Sorry guy.

But dietary concerns notwithstanding, it was sure great that I got a whole slew of hotcha reading outta this packet, and one tumble through these mags only goes to prove that the seventies (from whence these publications were bred) not only had some of the best rock scribing to have been found in the printed realm, but some of the worst style, prose and opinions directed toward that wild and woolly world of music as well. More on all that in a sec.

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The two issues of CREEM that  Stephen scooted my way are a splendid example of just how good rock mags could be, and just how tiresome they became once the music and the attitude changed from gonzoid to journalistic. The February '76 ish with a whitefaced Dylan rolling the thunder is a proud example of the former, a mag that was tuned into the same wavelength as their suburban slob readers. I have hearty memories of readin' this ish in my teenage boudoir during Christmas Vacation '75 whilst slung over my bed in typical teenage fashion, and naturally the old timey memories came rushin' back so fast that I was looking for that NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC hidden under my mattress just outta reflex!

It's got memories 'n more in fact...Lester Bangs making peacepipe with Lou Reed after the debut of METAL MACHINE MUSIC*, Bangs opening more'n a few doors of curiosity in my addled teenbo brain with his review of Patti Smith's HORSES** and the usual bunch of faves (R. Meltzer and Robot Hull among 'em) on the cusp between mid-seventies snarl and that late-seventies miasma we never really got over. Yeah, everything that I find exciting in a rock read can be found here and more, and all I gotta say is (and not even with a good four decades of armchair hindsight) is that it is too bad that the majority of Amerigan kids went more for ROLLING STONE's hippie West Coast schmooze rather'n the Detroit hammer of classic CREEM. Maybe if they didn't we wouldn't have had to see rock 'n roll treated as such utter trash over these past XXX years to the point where I could care less if the entire genre had died out (as a true teenage International Music Language) somewhere around the time when Max's Kansas City closed up shop and Bangs took his final gasp in that fart-encrusted room he called an apartment.

If the above ish of CREEM stands as a testament to everything that was hot about rock 'n roll as a wild and energetic stab at atonal expression, this March '82 copy just goes to show you how far down the slippery slope of complacency and tastefulness a magazine could go. Not only have all of the classic CREEM-era writers (excepting for a few including original CREEM-ster Richard Allen Pinkston IV reviewing Ringo!) packed up for browner pastures with the writing taking a huge nose-dive in the process, but the magazine had taken on an air of  "professionalism" that really didn't suit the wild and exciting state of rock 'n roll as it stood in the early-eighties . OOPS! I forgot, this was 1982 when everything from fluffy metal to new wave-y pose was the hot stuff, and as any good whore knows you gotta roll with the punches and go with the flow even if it means looking like a total asshole in the process! But hey, what's rock 'n roll fun 'n jamz in the face of looking hip 'n with it, man???

Not that this one is the total turdster I seem to be making it out to be (after all, Chuck Eddy had yet to contribute to the pack), but there seems to be a total lack of energy, joy, excitement or anything that made me wanna tune into the mag even a few years earlier to be found within these pages. But I guess with a packload of writers who actually could get excited over Van Halen this is what you'd expect. Even the SCTV article drags a whole load, and compared with...say...Bangs' own Firesign Theater piece from a good seven years earlier you could just see where youth gulcher was heading to the point where even college paper kiddies would soon be taking their cues from Erma Bombeck a whole lot more'n Mike Saunders.

Don't know whether to blame the music or the kids or the paper, but if anything this particular CREEM comes off like a tombstone to that bright era in music that gave us the Velvet Underground*** and Stooges, not forgetting some of the lesser lights in the game such as Dylan and the Stones. There was no way acts like these and many more would be compatible with the squeaky-clean and smooth utterances that the eighties would be known for, and it's a shame the guys running the mag couldn't have kept it nice and grubby with loads of coverage of the new underground mixed with the old one and maybe a few mainstream things here and there to keep the advertisers happy.

But let's face it, the eighties were a pretty drekky era for rock 'n roll and just as bad as the nineties, otz and the teens we are now schmoozing around it and in no way could an energetic, energy-crazed sorta rock mag dare to exist in the same climate that was pumping out acts like Loverboy and Pat Benetar galore. You were great once CREEM, but how could you even think of walking in the same stratum of post-stoner hipness as Andy Secher (blech)'s HIT PARADER???

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I get the idea that a lotta people who had grown tired of CREEM's arena rock pandering eventually skeedaddled over to TROUSER PRESS to get their rock 'n roll information, and judging from this June '79 issue I wouldn't doubt it one bit. Whereas those involved with CREEM had become so cocksure of themselves as they tossed two-dimensional throwaways at their readers, TROUSER PRESS was presenting articles, reviews and a general atmosphere that mirrored those of the kid on the go for something new and exciting to listen to. No more did we have to search through an entire mainstream mag just to get one brief mention of some underground rock mystery we sure wanted to know more about...with TROUSER PRESS that underground mystery more or less had an entire article to itself that helped fill in all of the gaps that most certainly weren't being filled by any of the major newsstand competition..

Of course it wasn't like digging into a hot fanzine where said underground act was probably interviewed and had their mug splattered all over the place, but TROUSER PRESS was sure enough easier to find and besides it probably held together a whole lot better'n a whole number of those staple jobs where the pages kept fallin' off after a few reads.

Good writers and good subject matters too (meaning we're not gonna be inundated with Van Halen's pusses being splattered all over the place, that's for sure). A bit new wave-y true, but this was before that whole underground scene toppled into a gooey abyss of Talking Heads pose and B-52s kitsch and a good portion of what was happening in NYC and elsewhere was mighty listenable, at least on different levels. And it's obviously nice to know that the people who wrote for the mag still seemed to care about music as a high energy form of expression ('stead of background for carnal oompah or a stroking of your own ego regarding your superior position on this planet of ours), and at a time when the rest of the mainstream competition was either willfully ignoring the new underground styles or berating them without any real evidence to back their pallid claims up. TROUSER PRESS were keeping themselves at the forefront of what heavy duty rockscreeding was supposed to be about and doing a good enough job at least until the early eighties clime changed and in no way could a mag like this exist in a world where Madonna was actually considered an important artistic achievement.

Special note---the inclusion of a review of Frank Zappa's SHIEK YERBOUTI written by a chap calling himself Cole Springer, a name that somehow rings a bell to be cornball about it.

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In contrast of TROUSER PRESS's willingness to expose the youth of this nation to the rare, the unheard and the exciting sounds that truly mirrored their existence, CRAWDADDY seemed to go out of their way to cater to the remnants (and there were many to cater to as there are today!) of the early-seventies fringe leather 'n turquoise crowd that looked silly and worthy of ridicule even during their day in the sun. Far from being the same rock mag that published Meltzer and allowed Wayne McGuire to pontificate about WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT, CRAWDADDY had become even more of a ROLLING STONE-styled hippie tossout during the seventies complete with the usual New Left hoohah with all of the right buttons being pushed to assuage the scions of the shaggy hair generation as to how intelligent and superior they are (and will remain) to everybody else that walked the face of this earth.

Taking your cues from ROLLING STONE 'stead of CREEM might have been a good way to rake in the cash, but who would agree that it was the right way to go if you wanted to dish out the high energy jamz! But then again, were the mass of people in that mythical ages 18-34 bracket really interested in rock 'n roll what with all of the mind-numbing downers and brain-napping religious movements that were abounding at the time? Yes, the folks at CRAWDADDY really had their fingers way up the sphincters of Amerigan youth, and you can tell it not only with the standard political propaganda (that doesn't read as cutting as STONE's nor as in-depth as FUSION's) but with their musical tastes which were so obviously stuck at the turn of the 60s-unto-70s what with all of the rattle-on about the remnants of those fatal years who certainly deserved to be remnants. Some interesting bits do pop up such as Michael Cuscuna's review of John Coltrane's INTERSTELLAR SPACE craftily combined with one of the Rashied Ali/Frank Lowe DUO EXCHANGE on Survival, but in order to get to that you have to trod through a ton of the usual West Coast cokesnort canticles to get to 'em. And what a trod it is, especially when you read a review of Tim Buckley's LOOK AT THE FOOL and the guy writing about it mentions that the "SAILOR" album was "a disaster, but at least it ended Buckley's flirtation with jazz"!!!

If you want a good example of what I, as an over-rambunctious teenager, used to pour through in order to find maybe one measly reference to the Shadows of Knight or Dictators back in those sorry on one level (and heaven on another) days look no further than these stinking examples of journalistic rock critic-mentality turdbombs. Somehow I get the feeling that most people who wrote about rock music from the eighties onward used to read CRAWDADDY religiously, holding it with one hand if you know what I mean.

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Time for something more...copasetic? And one thing that really brings back the memories of just what goodness the seventies had in store for us all was none other than THE NEW YORK ROCKER. Don't laugh, for at one time the ROCKER was a pretty brave publication that concentrated not only on the up-and-coming New York underground groups who were cluttering up the stages of the local clubs, but also pop/rock acts of all kinds whose knowledge were usually confined to Greg Shaw columns and small-press fanzines that really never did make their way into the bedrooms of kids who most certainly needed to read 'em. Editor Alan Betrock and staff most certainly felt it worthy to expose these relative unknown to a bunch of kids who were more'n anxious to eat this music up no matter how much their parents and dee-jays feared and true, later on when the mode of the music changed thanks to unforeseen trends so did the mag, but when it was still running on an underground seventies pulse the ROCKER was one of the better rags covering the musical upheaval you KNOW that everybody in your vicinity wanted absolutely nothing to do with!

Well these two issues really do bring back da memories of mooching copies off of like-minded associates who knew enough to ditch you (and the music they once loved) once they got the sheepskins and headed off for real life. The March '81 ish was good if rather lacking in something (like the "New York" groups that the paper originally made their moolah with) though after thumbing through the thing I dunno if I wanna dig out my old Pylon single that eagerly. Simon Frith's John Lennon obit doesn't quite hit the target like Mick Farren's did, and given this is a rock 'n roll publication why the interview with the recently rooted out Abbie Hoffman??? I guess that the ROCKER really wanted to get a jump on the eighties even Newer than the New Left bandwagon with this 'un which is their biz of course, though I would have preferred that the space be devoted to some up and coming local act that might have sizzled my nodes 'stead of some warmed-over hippie who seemed rather creepy in some respects.


The April '82 ish with the Human Switchboard proudly featured on the front shows just how much the "underground" had twisted in a mere year. With the mode of the music changing the way it was (and the walls of the city shaking naught) it was more'n obvious that the sixties/seventies under-the-counterculture was dead, and although what eventually replaced it was more or less a pallid version of the original thrust you can see the sometimes abysmal morphing right before your very eyes in these pages. The last days of the post-Velvets underground era meets the onslaught of the trendies and hardcores right before your very eyes, making for a strange storm front that seemed promising enough though by the late-eighties all I could find within the remnants were lame musical acts coming out on every front.

Again I sure wish that these bozos woulda been reviewing many more local acts other'n the Fleshtones (I mean, they coulda just gone to CBGB and found the most derivative yet refreshing act nobody's heard of and done a nice feature on 'em!), because for the life of me I don't think those Adam and the Ants and Police articles really hold up here in the post-worth living world of the teens no matter how hard I try to squint my eyes!

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'n finally for today's trek into rockist reading matter, this comic book done up in a neat spiral binding just like some handbook for operating that dishwasher you ditched in 1986. It ain't just ANY cosmic book either, but a French language offering called BLACK OUT that just happ'd to have been written by none other'n that French miscreant everybody seemed to like Serge Gainsbourg! It's all in French but you can still look at the hotcha pix drawn by a Jacques Armand, and considering how a good portion of it is practically word-free it ain't like you're gonna be missing much anyway. Great art, nice "feel" too, and it has a great fashionable look to it because it was created (1982) right before the female gender were told by their elders that they hadda look ugly for the sake of the sex 'n men hadda like it no matter what lest they be forever sent to the land of the geldings. Sorta comes off like an old Roxy Music album cover fleshed out into a nice mid/late-seventies story of steamy decadence, at least before that word started to refer to incestuous relationships with one's five-year-old detailed in glowing, progressive-sounding terms.

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Nice bitta housecleaning you've been doing there Steve...if you find any more old mags you swept under the rug well, you know where you can dump your trash now, don't you???

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* in fact, this very article is the first ever place I encountered the very existence of the Stooges' "LA Blues" if you can believe that!

**in fact, this very review is the first ever place I encountered the very existence of Savage Rose if you can believe that!

***although the Velvets retrospective by Robot Hull which appeared in an '81 issue was passable, their 1987 cover story was one of the most puke-inducing "homages" that I had ever encountered in a bigtime mag. The worst part about it being you know whatever was left of the folks at CREEM shoulda known better, but in order to placate the squeaky clean crowd they just hadda stoop to dishing out zilch-dimensional drivel like that special issue which, if anything, attempted to sully the VU mystique by transplanting it into late-eighties thought processes!!! And people wonder why I grew to loathe the rock press like I eventually did!

MOOM PITCHER REVIEW...FREE, WHITE AND 21, directed by Larry Buchanan (1963)

Looking back, who can deny just how tame and downright quaint alla them early-sixties "controversial" movies were. Whether they were dealing with race relations or some moral issue, the hard-edged crux of the matter just keeps getting skirted around or maybe even ignored totally. I mean, nowadays tee-vee can crank out program after program dealing with a man's love for his bovine or how the age of consent should be extended to embryos, but at least this purported entertainment delivers the controversy to the point where any normal person would wanna take a bath in concentrated Lestoil after sitting through a prime time of programming filled with such once-verboten subject matter as these.

Maybe we've just become so used to and even immune to the same subject matter that woulda made Aunt Gladys blanch in those turbulent times, but back in the early-sixties when socially provocative moom pitchers and tee-vee shows started popping up boy did they make for an uncomfortable time for those gathered around the cathode tube.

Nowadays these surviving shards of a lost civilization sure seem about as tame as all of those old "Adults Only" mooms dealing with the lustful desires of pot smokers and cocaine fiends, tame if sensational entertainment that didn't take long to end up as campy fodder for snooty college students who love to be so "above" the people who originally flocked to these grindhouse classix. But whether it was a thrill-seeking suburbanite or a pseudo-intellectual college major who couldn't find a job in a million years with his philosophy degree, there were many sharp operators out there who knew how to shill the rubes with entertainment that could work on so many levels it was like, how could they lose?

And when it came to knowing the proper way to separate the fool from his filthy lucre Larry Buchanan certainly knew what to do, and he sure did it swell with this courtroom drama that is packed to the gills with tension, drama, social significance, and the best thing about it is that you don't wanna puke your guts out after (or while) watching it!

Greta Mae Hansen, a Scandie lass in the USA for who knows what reason, gets involved with the Civil Rights movement that was brewing up at the time. Finding herself in Texas, she stays at the Ebony Hotel and, after going to a black nightspot, finds herself back in her room with Ernie Jones, a local black businessman who solicits Greta Mae for some modeling work. And you can bet that he means business since he even carrier a handy measuring tape around with him! But is what happens next rape or consensual sex??? Greta Mae sez that Ernie forcibly took advantage of her while Ernie, after some prodding, admits that he did have sex but she was all for it from the get go.

And that's where you the viewer come in...you were given ballots to vote and you have but three minutes to make your decision. No motel rooms or free dinners for you bub, and if your verdict matches the outcome of this film (like mine did!) consider yourself even smarter than I gave you credit for. But after all is said 'n done maybe the DA did have a point about the jury...maybe they just don't know who to hate more, furriners or Negros!

Who would have thought that In The Year Of Our Lord the Common Era 2014 I would, in the privacy of my own living room at that, be enjoying GILLIGAN'S ISLAND reruns during the prime time hours and while dressed in naught but my jammies! Yes, if anything has given me a reason to survive in a day and age which has hardly anything goin' for it, these classic episodes of what just has to be one of the top tee-vee series of the mid-sixties that keeps me going. I'm sure glad about it because frankly, it's getting really hard to get all hot and bothered over the umpteeth showing of CASABLANCA on TCM and that's no lie!

Sure I hate the way these programs have been butchered in order to cram more ad space, and I've yet to see the infamous Jap sailor who doesn't know the war is over ones (or that one where the Skipper is mistakenly hypnotized into thinking the rest of the castaways are Imperial Army bucktooths), but otherwise the airing of these boffo programs does a whole lot to resensify my spirits in a time when they certainly are sagging lower'n a non-trussed weightlifter's babymakers. I can't think of a thing wrong with these, from the chemistry between the actors to the ingenious and imaginative plot twists that the writers had to come up with in order to keep things moving, and I gotta say that it's really difficult for me to understand how all of the snobs and sophisticates coulda poo-poo'd this 'un while praising to the rafters pure drek from PAUL SANDS IN FRIENDS AND LOVERS to the rather unfunny Charlie Chaplin, who once you get down to it was nothing but haughty intellectual fodder at least when he wasn't out screwing ten-year-old girls.

Whaddeva, I still find it extremely  heart cockle-warming (in that goofy suburban slob sorta way) knowing that I spent my budding kiddoid tootsietoys and enema years watching GILLIGAN first run while fifty years later I'm watching the same episodes here in my declining years---and without a tootsietoy or enema in sight! While settling down to view these after a long day in a world I really want nothing to do with, its easy for me to start thinking back about just how boffo those days were at least until the social planners (all of those crud teachers I had included!) and crybaby minority types started blaming everybody but themselves for their woes, and how topsy turvy things have become to the point where its more'n obvious the insane are running the asylum and the good guys are on the run. And also what a bunch of turds the kids of the baby boom and "Generation X" years were, they being inundated with the best tee-vee, radio, music and comics money could buy yet denying the same enjoyment to their kids, preferring to cram politically/socially prim and proper entertainment down the their throats as if it were castor oil. And the stupid shits lap it all up instead of rightfully revolting like they ought to!

Oh well, at least I have GILLIGAN'S ISLAND to enjoy at least until someone comes over to the abode and performs a premature euthanasia move on my not-so-comatose bod. Like I know you all would LOVE to.

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Got quite a few gooey newies to blab about this go 'round, and as usual thanks goes to Bill Shute, Paul McGarry, Bob Forward and the rest of the gang for all of these moolah-saving burns. And (to your surprise I would assume), some of these items were even purchased via my own hard-begged money which is really saying something in these cash-strapped times when I have to count the pennies a lot closer than I had to when times were fair. Given that I expect the next few weeks to be particularly dry with regards to any particular purchases on my part (tax time y'know), these gifts really do help get the blog up and moving more'n a nice tasty bowl of high fiber cereal, and the best part about it is that I'm not gonna be up 'n farting around like Sam would after I'd give him a plate fulla leftover baked beans 'n prunes to down!

Vom-LIVE AT SURF CITY seven-inch 33 rpm EP (Rerun Records)

Biggo surprise of the week's this recent reissue (second time!) of the infamous El Lay punk rock release from the infamous Vom! Oft longed for and oft beyond the reach of your standard National Record Mart hanger-outer, one can only feel thoughts of joy that this classic slice of 1977 hard-edged rock 'n roll is once again available for a generation who really couldn't give a whit. The sounds remain the same, sorta cranked up and melodic metal grooves that could easily enough qualify as punk in a 1971 CREEM magazine sorta way, while warbler Mr. Vom shows us that he was one of the most overlooked frontmen to grace a stage (Darby Crash was a sissy!) of any Los Angeles (Henry Rollins still wears diapers!!!) club back in those days of the wild rock frontier (Chris D listens to Ambrosia!). And that's no lie.

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Tuli Kupferberg-NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN LP (ESP-disk)

If Tuli's your favorite Fug'n this once-and-forever obscurity (rating a quickie reissue via Shimmy Disc in the late-eighties) is the one for you. Without the confines of the other Fugs or the music that goes along with them, Tule recites some of his favorite personal ads and other back-page antics to Gary Elton's clever found sound and collages making for a funny record that you can listen to over and over again. Tuli's New York voice fits in swell whether he's reading a come on for some probably long-outlawed "sap glove" or a penis enlarger, and the accompanying grunts, groans, 78s and patriotic music add to the hilarity making for a pretty nice "sit yourself down" that doesn't grow thin with the passing of time.

If you (like me) first read about this 'un via the back cover of FUGS FOUR ROUNDERS SCORE and felt frustrated because despite the alleged availability none of the local stores could track down a copy for you---well, maybe you shouldn't let little things like this get to you like they do to me!

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Supersister-TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER, PUDDING EN GISTEREN, ISKANDER CDs (Esoteric, England)

I bought these on the good authority of Edgar Breau's own personal recommendation (not "personal" as in face to face but after reading an interview of his), and I gotta say that a mention in an ages-old issue of EUROCK didn't hurt much either. So then, why exactly do these Dutch fusion/jazzers sound flatter 'n your first grade teacher's chest? Not what I was expecting in the slightest, though I will say that when these guys lay off the hokum fifties parodies that even sounded warbled when Zappa was doin' 'em (and lay off the Zappa schtick which also sounded warbled when Zappa was doin' 'em as well!) they do come off as a passable continental take on the Soft Machine/Canterbury school of Miles ripoff. There's even a smattering of solo Kevin Ayers to be found on PUDDING that adds a touch of needed whimsy. But if I were to choose between Supersister and Simply Saucer I'd definitely take the latter. At least I'd be getting my USDA (or would that be CDA?) daily requirement of hot drone, and Breau's sense of humor never was as lame as Zappa's or a good portion of the mainland longhairs who followed his every breath and move as if it were some secret message from the freakazoid beyond.

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A Touch of the Sun-MILK TEETH CD-r burn (originally on Bead Records)

Clarinetist Simon Mayo and guitarist Peter Cusack (he of Fred Frith/GUITAR SOLOS fame) were A Touch of the Sun, and if you want me to go for the obvious joke I could say that it sure sounds like these two were out inna sun a li'l too long before recording an album like this! Har-har-har-dee-har-har!!!! Considering Cusack's credentials and the fact that Mayo comes off a wee bit like ol' Lol Coxhill did it sure is a mystery why this 'un didn't end up on Caroline Records like you all thought it should. Not exactly a head-spinner by any stretch of the imagination, but it does rev up my curiosity regarding some of those other "difficult" mid-seventies English excursions into free jazz and avant garde improv. Might make me even wanna cough up the big bucks in order to obtain a copy of  FLEAS IN CUSTARD, a platter that was getting loads of underground huzzuhs to the point where the cubes at MELODY MAKER were picking up on the vibes!

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Glenn Branca-THE ASCENSION - THE SEQUEL CD-r burn (originally on Systems Neutralizer)

Dint know that Glenn Branca was back inna music game but I guess he obviously is as this platter would no doubt suggest. And as these recent recordings lend me to believe, Branca hasn't changed or adapted much since those days when he was such a bad boy of lower Manhattan hijinx that he could actually get away with presenting a swastika-shaped musical score whilst getting the prissies out there in sensitive artist land all twisted up! Heavy duty guitar clang chords presented by the standard four-guitar lineup a la the original ASCENSION band, and its actually "conducted" by Glenn Branca which kinda makes me laugh since the vision of the man up on a podium directing what would look like a typical rock 'n roll band reminds me of something that woulda popped up in a by-now ancient issue of MAD magazine!

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Michael Mantler with Jack Bruce, Carla Bley, Don Cherry-NO ANSWER CD-r  burn (originally on Watt)

I sure did harbor an interest in these Watt/JCOA albums back when they were being churned out in the seventies, but I never did pick any up for my own personal pleasure. Depression-era wages, y'know. And when I finally did latch onto a copy of ESCALATOR OVER THE HILL via some long-forgotten flea market I only managed to make it through side one before total nausea managed to overcome me. But still I trudge on hoping to some day finally hear the Leroy Jenkins FOR PLAYERS ONLY big band blowout as well as maybe even the Clifford Thornton entry. But as far as these Watt efforts go, somehow I get the impression that they're just more avant garde for the progressive rock fan of the late-seventies. Not that such an endeavor would be without some redeeming merit, but why listen to one of these albums when the same 45 minutes could be put to better use listening to the same Stooges album you've been incessantly spinning for the past three or four decades???

NO ANSWER ain't that far off from what I was imagining that alla these Wattsterpieces were gonna sound like. Moody, brooding, intellectual and slow paced, not too far off from the same swamp Robert Wyatt was treading (oops!) on ROCK BOTTOM. (Come to think of it, Wyatt was a frequent Carly Bley pal with a few platters to prove it, and who could forget their handling of John Cage classics via the Obscure Records label?)  Jack Bruce has a strange enough voice, so it does fit the Samuel Beckett modern prose 'n pout rather well, while the piano of Bley is fitting enough even if it is about as caucasian as most of the material I've heard by her has been. And without a guide, I'm sad to say that I can't tell my Mike Mantler from my Don Cherry, but since both have been up there top notch movers and shakers in this new thing that's still getting the notice it's not like I'm rooting for one against the other.

Not bad for the closet cases among us, but not exactly one of the better adrenalin pumpers that one could have purchased via the old NMDS catalog. As for me, I'm gonna do some searchin' and see if I can find a nice used copy of FOR PLAYERS ONLY...bet that one'll sizzle more than what's left of my ever-bald pate!

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Christmas-HERITAGE CD-r burn (originally on Daffodil Records)

I hope Bruce Mowat doesn't read this. He told me that this Canadian act was about as exciting as a turd sandwich without the bread, and here I am twennysome years after his exclamation listening this very same group! And you know what, Mowat was right! Far from being the psychedelic garage band thumper I thought they would be, Christmas were more of a demi-progressive neo-pop act that lacked the kind of spark, imagination, whit and energy that made a good late-sixties romper. If you're looking for some really hot late-sixties Canadian thrills try the Churls or better yet It's All Meat and leave Christmas to the indiscriminate collector types. Ho Ho Hum.

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ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK-ORGY OF THE DEAD CD-r burn (originally on Strangelove Records)

It's been so long since the day that frizzy-haired Molly Ringwold lookalike at the video shop was actually trying to talk me out of renting this feature saying "It's not what you think it is!" that I've actually forgotten all of the subtle nuances of this neato feature. Reminiscent of not only those old Beatles bootlegs where A HARD DAY'S NIGHT and HELP! were spread over two platters of audience hiss (not to mention none other than PLAN 9 getting the same soundtrack treatment), you get the entire sound sans visuals from this classic Edward D. Wood-scribed dive into the cinematic mung. Great if you want to enjoy the superb music to be found herein (courtesy Jaime Mendoza-Nova) without having to look at any of those sinful suckems.

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Sun Ra-HORIZON CD-r burn (originally on Saturn)

Spiffy enough for me (and maybe for you) live Sun Ra outing that's as engrossing as well as the same, as well as different than all of the other live Sun Ra albums you have heard over the years. Recorded live in Egypt in 1981, even at this later'n usual date Ra proves that he was the king of free jazz loonybinisms as he steers his Arkestra through a variety of familiar terrain as well as interplanetary electronic flash that even makes Hawkwind look like rejects from TOM CORBETT'S SPACE PATROL. Believe-you-me, they're never gonna catch up to Sun Ra no matter how many eons this planet has left to spin!

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Kluster-VULCANO, ADMIRA CDs (Important Records, PO Box 1281, Newburyport, MA 01950 USA)

I originally pushed these platters to the back of the box thinking I got gypped by some post Kluster Conrad Schnitzler project, but Bill clued me in that indeed these were actual recordings by an actual Kluster, without Rodelius and Mobeius who had gone off with their own act Cluster.

If you like your klustersounds with either a "k" or a "c" you'll like these slabs of 1971-vintage krautscapades that, like whatever variant of the group you happen to enjoy, has that heady mix of Stockhausen-derived avant garde music mixed in with krautrock proper (meaning, you can hear actual rock 'n roll instruments in here if you listen closely enough). Might tend to make you wanna snooze in spots, but can get rather invigorating once the action begins to cook up. And better yet, unlike a Grateful Dead noodle-on which might take hours to reach true karmik fruition, the sparks to tend to fly a whole lot sooner and you don't even have to take a swig outta that strange bottle the guy next to you passed your way to help speed up the proceedings!

Of course if you wanna try for a cheap substitute you could try spinning a Stockhausen album like MICROPHONIE with a Stooges album simultaneously (I recommend FUN HOUSE) to get a good idea of where Kluster were coming from. Did I ever tell you about the time when I was fifteen and I was playing MICROPHONIE in the rec room and my dad came in yellin' at me even louder'n the time I was playing Xenakis???

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Various Artists-TOODY'S TOO POOPED TO POPEYE CD-r burn (courtesy Bill Shute)

Must be old tee-vee star record tie-in week over at Bill's place, and he couldn't've picked two sicker specimens! Joe E. Ross starts things off with his tender recitation of "Are You Lonesome Tonight" and we all know what a sexo-pervo he was! Adding fuel to the flaming fire's Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle singing some snappy novelty songs that might have hit the C&W charts with a little push, at least capturing the Jimmy Dean crowd with such heart-string tuggers as "Old Blue". However knowing what we all know by now about him it's kinda hard for me to enjoy these the same way I woulda back when I was but a mere lad...I mean, do you know where that mouth he's singing these songs through has been????

Other hot efforts include Kenny Ball singing the Beatles' "Your Mother Should Know" as a straight-ahead campy cash-in, Art Blakey, the Mar-Keys and Jazz Crusaders proving some moving sixties jazz and r/b instrumental drive, Fisher and Marks doing a double whammy horror/Beatles novelty trick, and a quartet named Paul, George, John and Ringo not fooling anyone one bit with their own attempt to get some Beatle toss off cash (they actually remind me of the Three Stooges!). Of course Bill also snuck on a country side as well as a Scott Joplin piano roll and early Negro vocal quartet amid the standard fare, and of course it all fits in as Bill knew it would all along!

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Like John Holmes I'll be keepin' 'em comin', and on a regular basis too! So long!

MOOM PITCHERS DOUBLE FEATURE REVIEW! SINGLE ROOM FURNISHED (1966) and CINDY AND DONNA (1970)

It was a real turdburger weekend here at BLOG TO COMM central sitting through these two snoozers, the first being Jayne Mansfield in her final and (if you really wanna believe Walter Winchell) finest performance as a grizzled old prostitute who is deeply admired by the typically loudmouth teenage wopadago gal who lives next door. Some snippets of spark and blood vessels do appear in this slow and agonizing film, but it ain't worth sitting through the spiritually soporific flashbacks and first-time performances to get to whatever fiber of meat there may be in this downright yawner.

Nineteen-seventy's CINDY AND DONNA at least has some snazz to it perhaps because every female inna moom 'cept the boozoid mother shows off her stuff and with ample camera time to boot. Despite that tasty come-on this drive-in romper more or less reminds me of what an episode of THE BRADY BUNCH would come off like if it were to be exposed to red kryptonite. Surprisingly risque for the times (even earning an "X" rating and some legal notoriety in Tennessee even though no actual carnal oompah or even genitalia/surrounding vicinities is shown), this tale of tawdry sex in the suburbs and a young girl's "cumming of age" is for the most part an early-seventies period piece with loads of boobs and butts for the raincoat crowd out there. Not only that, but it's also jam-packed with funny early-seventies-styled plots, dialogue and acting that coulda appeared in an episode of INSIDE/OUT or any of those educational PBS programs they used to show on afternoon tee-vee for many a year!

For what there is of it, this is yet one of those suburban decadence films with a theme straight out of an Elliot Murphy song. Set in El Lay, the (step) father's a horny mid-aged contractor hot on this underage stripper/prostitute with big dairies who dances it up at the local bar, while mom's a ditz who has this weird accent that sounds like Australian mutating into brain damage. Meanwhile the oldest daughter is getting more experience than Jimi ever did while young sis is wondering about it all, watching her half-sibling get banged by everyone from the boyfriend to stepfather himself! Of course she'll find out soon enough, even if Rodney's English Disco was a few years away from opening.

If teenage whackoffs are your thing you'd be up front with the plastic bag for this! Otherwise maybe you can find a more respectable way to relieve your frustrations, like an art book filled with classic oil paintings or better yet a craftily reconditioned Land O' Lakes box of butter. I mean gee...would you really wanna be caught dead watching a film like this let alone abusing yourself while it's playing whether in some rundown theatre or your own abode?

But if you do, just click here and, as they say, wankers aweigh!

THE BLOG TO COMM INTERVIEW...P. D. FADENSONNEN!

The following was to have appeared in a new Eddie Flowers-helmed magazine entitled MOUSE TRAP, but since that project (unfortunately) fell by the wayside due to circumstances beyond Mr. Flowers' control (mainly $$$$$) I felt it proper to print this interesting email gab with the extremely creative, talented, and hard-edged musical entity known as P. D. Fadensonnen here on my own turf.

As you may already know, Fadensonnen's a guy who has not only released a slew of self-produced disques but has created a style and sound which thankfully borrows the best from the past sixty years of addled noise and reshapes it for the same audience who once believed that Pere Ubu and Chrome were pointing the way towards the kind of future we all could get into! His various endeavors have thrilled the BLOG TO COMM offices for quite some time, and if you contact the guy via his blog (see link on left) he might just like you get in on some of the action as well!

So, without further fanfare...

BLOG TO COMM-Like most folk I know hardly a thing about ye. Can you give us some hearty background information regarding your musical background and any early music-related endeavors?

P. D. FADENSONNEN-I come from the southwest Chicago suburbs. My parents didn't play any instruments nor did they really listen to music in any manner outside of PBS specials on TV (think Yanni, Kitaro, and their ilk) or the rock oldies station on the car radio. So music wasn't a big priority in our household. I'm an oldest child, so without anyone to look up to, I kind of stayed in the dark about all the sounds around me.

By the time middle school rolled around, I was convinced to enter the school band and was given a trombone to learn. I never really took to the instrument although I must have spent 3 years trying to learn the infernal thing - for a kid coming into trying to learn to read music and buzz in the mouthpiece correctly, trying to understand that I was the bass for a band and played different notes than all the melodies I heard being played around me was just too much - a conceptual leap I didn't make yet. My rented trombone was sent back by the end of eighth grade. By high school I had set my sights on a guitar, and after a beleaguered family trip to see my uncle in Nashville, my cheap-o acoustic was acquired from a local guitar shop there. That particular acoustic was an abysmal beast, with action up high enough to be a flamenco guitar - just painful to play in any way - but it did give me callouses that I probably still have to this day. It broke after falling once on the floor, which opened the door to get my Peavy Raptor strat copy and set about some electric damage.

I had become infatuated with Nirvana after seeing Kurt on the news for blowing his head off, so I took about to learning their basic songwriting methods after buying their albums. I had also taken a part-time job at a grocery store and had some $$ finally to start investigating bands from interviews I had read. 

So as my listening palette expanded from that dud of a band, I finally started to find some marrow in the bones so to speak - Nirvana's terrible cover of Here She Comes Now lead me to purchasing WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT when I was 16 - and then my head split open. The first conceptual leaps of "music as sound" and actual "high-energy" were in place, although all my detours into Pavement, Weezer, Guided By Voices, Sleater-Kinney and other dreck were still clouding my perceptions - all of this being pre-internet/very beginning of it.

By the end of high school,  I wrote a bunch of grunge-y songs that I handed around to friends to try and get a band going of some sort, but it didn't really materialize to anything - probably because the songs were terrible.

As I left the suburbs of Chicago for the cornfields of Champaign-Urbana for college, I listened more to music than really played it - getting into crap-o-la like Radiohead, Sonic Youth, and Mogwai - but still thankfully listening to all the Velvets I could find (1969 Live being a big one) and finding other truths like Blue Cheer and the Modern Lovers. 

Around my junior year in college I tried to get a band going about for a year, but things fell apart after many membership debacles, fights,  and lackluster practices. The music was mediocre instrumental post rock (er, boring early 2000's crescendo rock) at best -  I can't honestly remember a tune from that debacle.  I had at least finally been exposed via band members to the MC5 and the Stooges between all the crap and was seeking out stuff like Can and Amon Duul II.

After college, I moved back to the suburbs and worked in downtown Chicago, saving up every cent that wasn't being used to explore all kinds of weird records at Reckless Records. I had been on a trip to NYC as a senior in college and knew immediately that is where I needed to be - I needed that energy.

A year later in 2005, I had moved to NYC with my girlfriend and had acquired her american Fender Strat - and armed with a real instrument for the first time - quickly developed over the next two years into being a guitar player with enough confidence to go about doing something sonically real. Being able to explore all the connections I had made the previous couple of years in my head (MC5 -> Archie Shepp -> Coltrane -> Ayler->Sun Ra->Pharoah-> Sharrock -> Mars - etc.) through the record stores and concerts that I was able to go to, I finally had a sonic PURPOSE to go along with the confidence.

In 2007, I met RD while working at a woodshop, and after mutual exposures of sonic information during the day at the shop cd player (Captain Beefheart, Dolphy, Arthur Doyle, High Rise, Mouthus, Haino) I finally worked up the confidence to ask to jam with his band King Crab at their rehearsal space and then just with him as two guitarists. Everything sonically speaking between us from then to now has been chronicled under Fadensonnen. 

Last year when I turned 30, I got a tenor sax which I am still learning, but will be put to use on future recordings - I like it much better than the trombone.

BTC-Now let's see...refresh our memories and tell us about your first CD release.

PDF-From 2008 - 2010, RD and I recorded many times in just a duo guitar formation, improvising and working on motifs that would re-appear. The process proceeded in what I would call creative-collaborative-antagonism, something we found essential to make things interesting.

By the summer of 2010, I started to finally listen through the sessions to lay a foundation for an album (eventually WHITE NIGHT). A number of tracks which didnt meet the criteria for the conceptual framework of the album were constructed into easier to digest EP length works - EPs being a less daunting enterprise. RD had moved to England temporarily, so I decided to also take on the overdubbing responsibilities as well as percussion duties.

Our first release, the GREY EP, materialized six long months later - its tracks having a ghostly intensity not present in some of the other sessions.

EAST RIVER BLUES is a free for all to set a tone for the EP and clear the sonic air, RD's wah guitar howling at the moon. 

FUNERAL FOR MURDERED ORANGES was a kind of sonic ghost repeat-o riff that drifts in and out of sleep. Its titled in homage to John Cale.

CAMBRIDGE-UPON-MORNING is a big drone number from one of our more hazy sessions - RD adding some soulful leads as one drifts through the ostrich guitar atmosphere. 

BROOKLYN GAMELAN is a drone percussion guitar chant ending in a rolling wave of electricity.

GLACIER NIGHT is a cosmic blues, RD's guitar drift-picking its way through until the song implodes in percussive density.

BTC-How did this one do as far as sales go? Do you do much in the way of "promoting" your releases?

PDF-The GREY EP has sold about as much as our album WHITE NIGHT out of the back catalog, although everything is only measured in the dozens at Fadensonnen Records. We have somehow been able to reach people around the world just through our website, some radio play and generous reviews.

With the availability of production for everyone to self-release and the saturation of bands being incredibly dense, I dont think its possible to realistically expect a successful release to be past around a hundred copies in the sonic field that we happen to operate in.

I am still learning to promote the releases better with each passing one, picking up contacts that help out our label. I believe in that pre-internet idea of a trustworthy curated context providing the best tool to seek out new records - so fanzines and webzines that fit my own aesthetic criteria (i.e. things I would actually buy) are what we generally send our promotional records to.

I would hope that when we make opportunities for ourselves to play live in the future, our performances would be the best promotion for our releases.

Q-You mentioned radio play. Are you talking actual broadcast radio (perhaps some college outlet) or internet radio?

A-The kind folks at WFMU has been generous enough to play our tunes from time to time. 

We've sent out our releases to some other college outlets as well.

I don't think we'd be able to ever breach the land of Billy Joel.

BTC-Could you tell us more about some of those interesting amphetamine and feral wah lead guitars you play. Are they home creations you worked out in your basement electronic shop?

PDF-The amphetamine lead and feral wah lead guitars are more descriptive sounds than actual modified instruments - I remember buying Eno's HERE COME THE WARM JETS and being impressed with the descriptions he used in the credits (i.e. snake guitar, electric larynx, etc. ) so I've always thought that it was a more interesting way to list the sonic contributions - a way to color the music as sound.

An amphetamine lead is usually a form of out of control manic lead guitar playing I try to employ on solos, whereas RD usually uses a aggressively distorted wah sound when taking the lead.

Anvil rhythm guitars are usually lower bridge pickup frequencies, octave shaking guitars employ octave effects (either higher of lower), snake phase shifter guitars use panning phase shifters and ostrich guitars employ the famous Lou Reed tuning. 

A lot the weirder guitar sounds also have to do with obsessive filtering and echo effects used in production.

BTC-OK---I must say that I am impressed with the production on your releases which show a strong WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT influence.Can you fill us in on any non-trade secret information regarding the recording of your various releases?

PDF-WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT, MC5's original single version of LOOKING AT YOU, LES RALLIZES DENUDES recordings, PINK FAIRIES live recordings, BORBETOMAGUS records, Milford Graves' BABI MUSIC - these are the kind of sonic ideals in my book that should inform high energy music - the overpowering sound of ecstatic electricity. 

So its definitely an aesthetic choice to have that sound of an unbalanced overloaded recording. The kind of super-spacious high-fidelity with unlimited tracks that one could opt to use these days has zero appeal to me - I need that kind of earthy sonic mud quality to keep it from sounding like plastic.

I'm not an expert at engineering, so with a lot of the earlier recordings taking place on a cheap video camera, its a natural kind of overload we've employed of two guitars into one amp turned up all the way and then injected during the editing process to all the drums, voice and tape splicing overdubs we can fit. 

I tend to filter out some of the uglier frequencies when the tapes are being edited and with the basic guitar tracks being so blasted, I usually try to offer some contrast by recording the drums and vocals cleaner. In the end, hopefully it's that sonic ideal of an energetic unbalanced recording that will always come through.

We've blown up two separate amps due to this process - RD's amp blowing out at the end of recording GLACIER NIGHT on the GREY EP and my amp blowing out during the recording of ONU BA on WHITE NIGHT - ONU BA ending at the moment the amp cut out. 

BTC-What can you tell us about your collaborator "RD?"

PDF-RD is the real musician in our duo - a natural and trained talent on both guitar and drums - the rhythmic contrast to my arrhythmic nature.

He's been involved in the music scene for a much longer time than me - he's had actual bands growing up and had the musical duo King Crab with outsider filmmaker Zachery Lister-Katz for 6-7 years, in which he played drums and guitar. They had releases out on Abandon Ship Records and Little Fury Things Records.

His influences into our process come from a different thing - he brings a wider palette to the table - equally influenced by classical music, folk, jazz, blues, thrash and black metal. He's also the advocate for pushing things into weirder sonic territories.

He's from the east coast originally which thankfully squashes my midwestern-isms down when they become too much.

He finally moved back to the USA this year, so hopefully more will be revealed when we put together some live dates.

BTC-I've always liked your Les Rallizes Denudes blog where you review their myriad assortment of releases. You also seem to have more items in your collection than are generally available to us lowly peons. Tell us a little bit more about your devotion to this epochal Japanese group.

PDF-I wouldn't say that I have that big a collection of Rallizes recordings - there was a period when I was making a bit of money building cabinetry and had some disposable income to grab up certain items as they came out. There are roughly 20 multi-disc sets I happen to have - which is a lot of music - but for the amorphous unending world of the Rallizes canon thats not that many. In this day and age anyone can download even more stuff than I happen to have if they have the patience.

The blog started as a way for me to mentally wrap my head around the essence of what Mizutani laid down for 30 years. I have to be in the right head space to let his musings sink in - but inside that hermetic world of deep electricity he built is a kind of wonderful, screeching hall of mirrors of sound. No contemporary of the Velvets ever looked at their whole thing ( blasting noise and feedback, ballads, tight rockers, psychic energy ) and saw that whole template and image and took it to SUCH AN EXTREME.  And within that kind of understanding, Mizutani laid down his extreme statement of atonal yet beautiful energy guitar rock. 

He's a wonderful guitarist, songwriter (theres actually dozens of Rallizes songs) and spiritual leader, in the sense that electric guitars and feedback can be a religion.
The kind of secret world that he created and maintains by hiding up in the mountains of Japan is really such a fascinating story of the 20th century - there's no real other comparison in my book to a genius like Mizutani having such an odd trajectory of relaying his communication - yet when those of us somehow get to hear that communication, its such a life-affirming statement of truth  - no schuck or jive.

BTC-So, what does the future hold in store for PD Fadensonnen?

PDF-In January 2014 the first Razorlegs recording should come out, a duo I play in with Andrew Hurst that explores different live-to-tape duo exchange configurations with a different palate of instruments. 

In Spring 2014, the second Fadensonnen album entitled Badlands will come out on Tom Gilmore's One Hand Records for the vinyl and on Fadensonnen Records for the cd/digital. Badlands is a scorching three track mostly instrumental album recorded this past fall and should satiate those seeking a high-energy fix in the coming months. 

After performing in NYC earlier this year, we are hoping to do a live date or two in 2014 in addition to recording more and releasing more recordings, hopefully with a few collaborations in the future with similarly un-balanced individuals.