Fire, Water, Air Golden Sunrise
Pete Fine On A Day Of Crystalline Thought
Souled American Fe
Souled American Flubber
Suarasama Fajar di Atas Awan



In 1977, a couple years after the passing of Father Yod from his earthly body in 1975, the core of his Yahowha 13 band (Djin on guitar, Sunflower on bass, Octavius on drums) convened as a band called Fire, Water, Air and recorded an 8-track only (!) release called Golden Sunrise. They were joined by the one and only Sky Saxon (aka Arlick) on vocals and Pythias on second guitar. This album was reissued as part of the God and Hair 13-disc box on Captain Trip, and other than the masterful Penetration album, it might be my favorite disc in the whole box. It took a while - at first I thought the music was pretty doofoid, and in fact I kinda still do, but this one hook, "Foo-ood, foo-ood, food for the hungry!," from the song "Food For The Hungry," just kept going through my head and I really started to appreciate the whole session as some sort of crazed R&B garage band playing ragged and spaced-out but tough-as-nails hard rock. The epic ambition and intense cosmic atmosphere of Ash Ra Tempel, but played with the far cruder chops and American greaser grit of Blue Cheer or Grand Funk. Look no further than "Wolf Pack," a feral 8-minute jam that really sprawls out and gets messy, with Sky pushing his vocals out there (pushing hard, maybe even, I don't know, pushing too hard....on me.....too haaaard) and driving the crazed stomping and roaming jam. "Howling at the city/Aaaaaaaooooo!/Wolf pack!/Wolf pack!" In fact, this track is so much like another sprawling and messy rant about cities, "Flowers Must Die" by Ash Ra Tempel, that it's almost uncanny. I doubt the Source Family heard that track and was directly inspired by it, but you never know... I mean, they were hip dudes and ladies, and they hung out with record-collecting world-travelling rock'n'roll people at their restaurant... Father was probably cool with krautrock imports being played on the communal hi-fi during "sharing time," right?



This Pete Fine album is nuts. Recorded in 1973, it's a wispy-voiced long-haired folk troubadour singing upbeat songs with huge, busy, dancing, cathedralic orchestrations. After one listen I found the overall sound fey-for-sure but also pretty amazing and wonderful... recommended to fans of Van Dyke Parks's Song Cycle, but more overtly hippie/mystic than that... I don't remember any one single tune, which is a little worrisome, but I am looking forward to listening to it again...



Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Souled American. Their second album Flubber is starting to sound pretty essential in its own right - at first I thought it was kind of a place-holder between the head-turning debut Fe and the masterful third album Around the Horn. But Fe.... man I love this album, and it's the one I disliked the most at first. It is definitely their most upbeat album, which is a relative term, but this thing really does bounce and percolate and yelp along. You could mosh to it. (Three or four songs anyway.) But either way, the HOOKS on this thing.... I mean, the first song "Fe" starts with "I heard about your looooove..." and such a definitive Joe Adducci ballad bassline, and then goes into this epic pre-chorus with a new hook that digs deeper ("There's a certain kind of feeliiiing..."), with an even more definitive Adducci bassline, and instead of going to a chorus they just keep the pre-chorus going with what is almost a description of their entire music-making aesthetic ("Betweeen the notes... echoooooooes will loom.... back in tempo's time... locked in my room....") and then, finally, the chorus is comical bar-room sing-along stuff ("I knooooo-ow what the band fe's...") and it is indeed fun to sing along. That's just the first song, and then the second one "Field & Stream" starts with more wonderful bass guitar playing by Adducci, playing solo here, joined by vocals only for yet another superb hook that ends "write my name upon it, write my name upon it" and then the band comes in hard for a definite rocker. Seriously, SO MANY HOOKS, especially for the fourth-or-fifth-time listener: it's got "25 cent for the morphiiiiiiine, 15 cent for the beer," it's got "maaake me laugh, won't you make cry" with Chris Grigoroff just singing his guts out and an amazing verse structure ("There's a golden.....man of vision....on the TV..... where he comes from......doesn't matter......to the vote it pays/If you take this......to the highest source about you..... without question...... source says 'no vision, just plain old greed'") and a chorus bassline so slow and epicly head-banging that I can totally see why an 'art metal' label like tUMULt reissued this shit. It's got "maaaagic bullets," it's got the knock-down drag-out instrumental "True Swamp Too" (which almost comes off like some sort of hillbilly industrial metal, I'm serious).... man, what an album. Don't even get me started on Around the Horn, or the four other albums they've put out on top of that.



New from Drag City is the Suarasama CD, also released on double vinyl. Actually, it's a reissue of a 1997 album recorded in Indonesia by some ethnomusicologists. It's not a stunning album all the way through, but it really does sound nice and a few songs are excellent chilled-out and melancholy folk music, heavy on the oud. Reviewing this album for Dusted Magazine, Josie Clowney writes (along with some interesting cultural/historical stuff) "Suarasama didn't sound like a Drag City band when Fajar di Atas Awan was first released, but now they do," and yeah, with the female and male vocals and extended melancholy vibe, they really do remind me of Espers, though of course Suarasama predate them by a few years and there's no way either of them heard each other first. Also, I think Suarasama have just the slightest kosmiche/kraut-type glow to what they do, while Espers really don't (they have more of a British Isles cool, also a sweet sound).

ROD STEWART YOUTUBE ALERT

Okay, we've got some serious shit to look at here, but first, the irreverent prologue. This video is ridiculous but I love the song. This is 1976 and the hard rock and raw folk of The Faces era is fading away and the private jet disco era is clearly creeping in (dig that harp intro and Rod's jacket), but at least the band still has real guitars, drums, and bass.



Now let's get down to business with the real raw soul rock, "Maggie May" itself on Top of the Pops in the year 1971. The band is miming but the vocal mic is live and Rod nails it complete with great casually rocking stage presence. Speaking of which, Ronnies Wood and Lane sure are having a not-quite-so-casual good time with the mime, not to mention noted non-mandolin-playing disc jockey John Peel himself, pretending to play mandolin!



This is from the same year and the whole band is all the way live and heavy as hell:



Here's "I'm Losing You" from the same session. Don't miss the most crucial moment when the song drives into the Kenny Jones drum solo and Ron Wood is still chucking along on guitar and Ronnie Lane takes a hit from a bottle and Rod is slinking around throwing in the occasional giddy-up ad-lib, possibly while holding the mic stand upside down above his head.



And this one is really something, an epic cathedralic version of "Maybe I'm Amazed." The way Ronnie Lane's utterly sweet intro gives way to Rod's blow-out is one for the ages.



Oops, the Ron Wood connection has gotten me into a random non-musical Rolling Stones tangent. First, check out this 1969 backstage bro-down:



This next one is a lot of fun and also kind of a bummer, the radical rock and roll charisma of the ages crammed through that 1980s nadir of idiot-box commercialism, MTV. Keith truly seems like a swell guy here, hell they both do, but this might be the exact point of no return, when the band concept and album concept had officially surrendered to the new media:



And I say goodbye with Mick Jagger saying hello, live on ABC from the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. He carries himself pretty well considering the size of the joint he clearly smoked within 10 minutes before the start of this interview. "It turns your head!!"

PLAYLIST: 66.6 FM WBLSTD (CHICAGO)
9/5/08 - DJ Larry Dolman

Sun City Girls "Krung Thep Cut-Up" (Abduction)*
Curtis Mayfield "Ghetto Child (Demo)" (Rhino)
Fire, Water, Air "New Revolution" (Captain Trip)
Fire, Water, Air "Food For The Hungry" (Captain Trip)
Roxy Music "Beauty Queen" (E'G)*
Vendome "Lightwave Emissions" (Wierd)*
xex "Rome On $5 A Day" (The Smack Shire)*
Studio 1 "Rosa 2" (Studio 1)
Mikey Murka "We Try" (Honest Jon's)
Marcia Aitken & Trinity "I'm Still In Love/Three Piece Suit" (Trojan)*
Milton Nascimento "Clube Da Esquina No. 2" (Hemisphere)
Milton Nascimento "Os Povos" (Hemisphere)
Reparata & the Delrons "I'm Nobody's Baby Now" (Rhino/WEA)*
Jerry Garcia "Late For Supper/Spidergawd/Eep Hour" (Warner Bros.)
Sandra Bell "Nostalgie De La Boue" (VHF)
Kuro "No More No" (Killed By Hardcore)
Gates of Slumber "Ice Worm's Lair" (Profound Lore)*
Gorgoroth "The Rite Of Infernal Invocation" (Century Media)*
Rods of God "Beef Veins" (Bone Tooth Horn)*
Richard Youngs "[Three Headed Star track 7]" (No Fans)*
Blue Sky Boys "On The Banks Of The Ohio" (Smithsonian Folkways)*

NOTES:
1. Man, I knew "Krung Thep Cut-Up" was a good track, but I haven't listened to it in 3-4 years and it really sounds better than ever. Overseas radio collage by Big Al Bishop, which may sound like a familiar idea to you Sublime Frequencies freaks, but this a pre-SF track by Sun City Girls, with a more sustained and extended chant-driven psychedelic edge than usual (the track is over 9 minutes long)... It's on the Carnival Folklore Resurrection Radio album, a double CD presentation of a two-hour radio program that the band assembled at home and then broadcast live and one time only on WFMU, during a stop on their 2002 'comeback tour.'

2. Ah, Roxy Music, "Beauty Queen," from the For Your Pleasure album. I listened to this album a good 200 times when I really discovered it in the year 2002, but this is the first time in a few years and I'm telling you, tears of bittersweet joy are about to start streaming down my face right now. "What you and I share.... is an ideal of beauty...." Speaking of which, I never really knew if I liked Simon Reynolds as a music writer or not, but I've been enjoying this blog of his old magazine pieces, and his writeup on Roxy Music is great, including a cool Phil Manzanera interview. For Your Pleasure is Reynolds's favorite album too...

3, 4. Finally starting to listen to these excellent and massive synth-based coldwave/noise comps on Wierd Records. Makes me think of xex, from the early 1980s, and their great archival release on The Smack Shire label from a few years ago. Don't forget the Smack Shire! Great label... short-lived, but the six releases they managed to get out are all excellent.

5. Marcia Aitken & Trinity "I'm Still In Love/Three Piece Suit" is a beautiful tune, from the Trojan 12" Box Set.

6. Reparata & the Delrons - the band name sounds like science fiction, and this tune is my latest discovery on the Rhino/WEA Girl Group Sounds box set. Incredible post-Spector atmosphere.

7. I don't exactly consider Pitchforkmedia.com a go-to source for information on Black Metal, but I gotta admit that Brandon Stosuy does a pretty voluminous job with his Show No Mercy column. Maybe too voluminous - there's tons of stuff on there I have no interest in at all - but there are plenty of fine nuggets, like the Wolves in the Throne Room interview where the guy talked about how he was building his own barn and how of course he wasn't rejecting technology to do it, simply using technology on a sane and practical human scale. I also liked the interview with that Canadian weirdo band Wold. Also, remember when music journalism made you wanna check out new bands? Well, the Show No Mercy interview with Gates of Slumber got me to check them out, and their latest album Conqueror is some fine epic meat-and-potatoes metal. I was rooting for 'em right away because they were from Indianapolis, which seems like an underrated place for a good metal band to come from... also, they acknowledge the "soul and power" of Saint Vitus, dig "Tony Martin era" Black Sabbath, and, the clincher, are obsessed with Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan. In the interview, the vocalist/guitarist waxes quite eloquently on the man and his philosophy, check it out.

8,9. The Gorgoroth tune is some decent galloping screamo black metal, but broadcast here mainly for the superb power-drone outro, it's over 3 minutes long. Nice lead-in to an excellent noise track by Rods of God, from their split tape on Bone Tooth Horn with Skeleton Warrior (more on them soon). If I have my facts right, Rods of God are 2/3rds of 'noise supergroup' and Landed wannabes Dynasty (more on them soon too).

10. Wow, in a career of various odd moves this recent self-released CDR by Richard Youngs has almost got to be the strangest. It's basically an accordion record - the whole thing is like a tipsy street corner busker jamming on a wheezy squeezebox. His rhythm is a little off and every now and then he sings inscrutably, but the music has it's own angelic pulse and when you start feeling it this album becomes pretty magical.


More on this Yahowa 13 offshoot later...

Grateful Dead Skull & Roses
Grateful Dead History of the Grateful Dead (Bear's Choice)
Grouper/Inca Ore split CS
Om Gebel Barkal 7"

For a while there Skullfuck (more tastefully known as Skull & Roses and, officially, The Grateful Dead) was basically my #2 favorite Dead LP (behind American Beauty, just edging out #3 Europe '72, #4 Workingman's Dead, #5 Live/Dead, #6 Anthem of the Sun, #7 Blues For Allah, #8 (In the land of the dark the ship of the sun is drawn by) The Grateful Dead, #9 Wake of the Flood, #10 Aoxomoxoa and #11 From The Mars Hotel after which the rest can get pretty wack unless it's live which is where all the picks, boots, tapes, burns, downloads and streams come in if they haven't already) but, to my surprise, today it just didn't take. I think it's because we started on Side 2 when the shuffle picked up "The Other One" and we decided to let the whole thing roll. The drum solo just didn't feel right as a starter and the album never really found its feet. "Me & Bobby McGee" and "Wharf Rat" did both sound as great as ever, though. Bear's Choice ended up coming on next, first time I've listened to it. Nice 1970 acoustic-set material on the first side (gotta love "Wake Up Little Susie"), and the second side is mostly a superb "Smokestack Lightning," 18 minutes long. Great gnawing guitars, sprawled-out swagger from the rhythm section, and Pigpen just might actually be the greatest American white blues singer. That may be a controversial opinion, now accepting challenges in the comments section. To supply some context for my claim, I should tell you that my criteria is simply that the singer must have recorded a fair amount of blues covers/standards. My other contenders would be Don Van Vliet and Al Wilson. I really can't think of anyone else right off the top of my head. I'm sure I'm forgetting someone huge/canonical/obvious here... right? Janis Joplin? Greg Allman? John Hammond, Jr.?? I guess Elvis Presley could be in there, although that opens the field to 1950s rock'n'roll and rhythm & blues at which point you might as well include Hank Williams, and so on. I'm a little confused now, but hey, Pigpen rules. This "Smokestack Lightning" is from 2/13/70 at the Fillmore East in NYC, and if that date sounds familiar to you it's because this show was heavily Picked by Dick for his acclaimed #4. No "Smokestack Lightning" on there, Bear got to it first, which makes his Choice an essential pre-Dick Pick. Next the iPod played the Grouper/Inca Ore split cassette. I think 40 or 50 copies were handmade for a tour or something, and if I'm not mistaken this is the same stuff that was just released by these two on a split LP. I just ordered a copy, I'll let you know. Either way, this is good stuff. The Grouper side has about four songs and they're right on a par with her last two full-lengths, Cover The Windows And The Walls and Dragging A Dead Deer Up The Hill. It also stands as a transitional work between the two, as you can hear her beginning to dial down the oceanic psychedelic wash-out of CWW and get into the lower-volume space and silence that works so well on DDD. The song "Poison Tree" is really standing out. As for the Inca Ore side, people seem a little more divided in opinion on her than on Grouper, and she can have a certain prankish cackle to her sound that I could see annoying people who are into the epic/somber Grouper tone, but I think her side here is pretty genuinely eerie and heavy, especially a long track consisting only of her double-tracked girl-ghost vocals and plenty of weird reverb. After that I put on mp3s of the new Om 7" for the Sub Pop Singles Club (already, within mere hours of its release, going for too much money on ebay). After it was over I played it again because even though I was listening, I felt like I didn't hear anything. I mean, sure, I did notice another ominous and quiet bass line that sounds similar to "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" by Floyd, much like a lot of their last full-length, but after that, I'm just not sure. The B side is a dub version with gratuitous melodica. The new drummer does seem like he'll work out fine, there's potential there, I just hope this continuing move from tranced-out power-riffage to low-key and increasingly affectless meandering isn't a permanent one.

RIP Adam Nodelman. Tonight I'm playing the Seven Reasons For Tears album by Borbetomagus. His bass playing with that band was mind-blowing. I didn't even know he was playing with Sunburned Hand of the Man these days. Go to their myspace for more details.

Right now I'm listening to Shooting at the Moon by Kevin Ayers and the Whole World for the first time. I love the overall skiffly grey-sky beach-bum teacup prog sound, with awesome notey bass lines (by Ayers, I think) and guitar solos (by the teenage Mike Oldfield, I think) and sax playing (by the great Lol Coxhill), but the track that really makes it for me is the 8-minute scrape-improv "Pisser Dans Un Violon," right in the middle. I love it so much when a band that plays songs and stuff is willing to just bring things to a dead halt and scrape away obtusely in the rustling silence for much longer than they're supposed to. And then go right back into another lovely song, of course.



Warmer Milks do that too, and in fact earlier today I was listening to this over-the-top double-C90 they just released on the Portland label Every Label Ever. It's called Massive Dreadlock and it's like some sort of huge odds-and-sods career retrospective. There's boombox-quality live material from back on the Radish on Light tour, new wave instrumentals, loner guitar, more full band stuff, cracked country ballads (there's a great one on Side C called "Like A Bird" that sounds like Souled American!), and gluing it all together, much like the entire volumious WM discography, are tons of deep-in-the-zone outer-sound dream-experiments that seem to have no fixed instrumentation or physical location whatsoever. Overall Massive Dreadlock is like a long novel, you have to stop and put a bookmark in several times throughout... during Side A you're not sure if you're into it, during Side B it starts to pick up and make more sense, and with C and D you're hooked and every move the author(s) make(s) seems like the right one.

ORNETTE COLEMAN, LIVE AT CHICAGO JAZZ FEST, 8/31/08. Living in a place like Chicago where there's great stuff to see/hear/do almost every night (at least during the warm months), you get used to the idea of missing most of it. For example, Ornette Coleman himself gets scheduled to close this year's Chicago Jazz Festival, a free show no less, and I was still thinking about skipping it. Then, I heard that the lineup was Denardo on drums and... two basses? One acoustic and one electric? And Ornette and that's it?? Suddenly I didn't think I would skip it anymore. That just sounded bold. The day of the show came, and our friends were having an awesome BBQ at 5PM. Ornette went on at 8:30PM, which meant we would have to leave the BBQ at 7:30, drive to the nearest train stop and park our car, take a 30 minute train ride downtown, and then walk a good five or six downtown blocks to Grant Park and join a few thousand people at the Petrillo Band Shell... sounds complicated but driving our car all the way downtown and trying to park it somewhere was even more impossible. (All this being another big reason great shows are often missed.) And of course, the BBQ wasn't easy to leave - they had a kid's pool set up and at 8:00 PM, 30 minutes after our scheduled departure time, the kids were still swimming. True to form, no one else there was interested in going to the show, even all the jazz fans (there were two other people going but they were on bikes and had no kids), but somehow we finally got out of there at about 8:10 and, after missing a train by seconds, waiting 20 minutes for the next one, and then getting downtown and walking down the wrong street for at least a block, finally got to the bandshell with about 20 or at most 30 minutes left in Ornette's set, aaaannnndddd..........

It was the best 20 or 30 minutes of live music I've seen all year, if not in years. After the hustle and bustle of getting downtown, the idea of time simply dematerialized once we got into earshot of the band. They were playing a ballad, Denardo sitting out and Ornette on trumpet. The two bassists, Tony Falanga on acoustic and Al McDowell on electric, were building up a gorgeous fragile misty dream fabric through which Ornette's horn cried and keened. Worth the "price" of admission already, and after that, Denardo got back on the drum kit and the pace picked up considerably - they played "Dancing In Your Head," among others - but the tone stayed fragile and delicate, elegant and dreamy, even as the chops and ideas got weird as they so often do when the Colemans are in the house. Denardo is simply not a normal drummer, and no one can pierce through the surface of a tune with pure love/cry/want like Ornette can. He is 76 years old and did seem like he was pulling his punches a bit, but the way he used this softness and delicacy to his advantage was stunning, as was his interaction with the rest of the band, feathery lines willowing in and out of bubbling and driving rhythms. That said, the closer was "Song X" and it rocked as hard as almost any rock band I've seen. Falanga played the gutbucket driving bassline, relentlessly pushed by Denardo, while McDowell brilliantly took on the role of pianist or guitarist, splashing flamencoid chord clusters and slippery single-note runs for Ornette to dance around and in. That sound is definitely still dancing in my head today and I'm sure it will for quite awhile....

PLAYLIST: 66.6 FM WBLSTD (CHICAGO)
8/26/08 - DJ Larry Dolman
"JAZZ SPECIAL (sort of)"

Max Roach "Mendacity" (Impulse!)*
Warmer Milks "Colburn II" (Every Label Ever)
John Fahey "Ghosts" (Little Brother)*
Albert Ayler "Ghosts" (Revenant)
Sonny Sharrock "Hit Single" (Cartoon Network)*
Sonny Sharrock "Promises Kept" (Axiom)*
Jimmy Giuffre "Time Will Tell" (Columbia)
Prince & the Revolution "Around the World In A Day" (Paisley Park)
Spectrum "How You Satisfy Me" (Silvertone)*
Evie Sands "I Can't Let Go" (Rhino)*
Amiri Baraka "Bang, Bang Outishly" (Rhino/WEA)*
Thelonious Monk "Misterioso" (Blue Note)*
Miles Davis "Saturday Miles" (Columbia)*
Sunny Murray "Black Art" (DIW)*
Joakim Skogsberg "Offer-Rota" (Tiliqua)*
Warmer Milks "Here At Home" (Paranormal Overtime)*
Grateful Dead "What's Become Of The Baby?" (Warner Bros.)*
Grateful Dead "Mountains of the Moon" (Warner Bros.)*
Led Zeppelin "Stairway to Heaven" (Atlantic)*
Mahavishnu Orchestra "The Dance of Maya"
Black Sabbath "Supernaut" (Warner Bros.)*
Joakim Skogsberg "Fridens Liljor" (Tiliqua)*
Neu! "Lila Engel (Lilac Angel)" (Astralwerks)*

NOTES:
1. I'm not really one for politics, but as I stand by and watch plutocratic pigs both lipstick-wearing and otherwise drag another election into sheer post-American Idol incoherence, it sure feels good to play "Mendacity" by Max Roach. From his Percussion Bitter Sweet album, this is one blistering anti-political tune. Roach's wife-to-be Abbey Lincoln starts the song by stating the theme bluntly: "The campaign trail winds on and on in towns from coast to coast/The winner ain't the one who's straight, but he who lies the most." Then comes the solo by Eric Dolphy on alto sax, and it is supreme artistry, also blunt but still incredibly lyrical, both outside and inside, ranting at the mendacity, mocking its cloying bluster, and at the same time crying in pain at the real lives being thrown away behind all the maddening mendacious diversions. Then the band drops out and Roach plays an unaccompanied drum solo that really sets things straight, a heraldic call for clarity amid this despair and confusion. Extremely serious, disciplined, and clear as a bell, with huge pauses for emphasis, it seems to represent the antidote: straight talk with fists ready. Then the band comes back in with the theme, and Abbey sings one more verse that really ups the ante: "Now voting rights in this fair land we know are not denied/But if I tried in certain states, from tree tops I'd be tied!" For much more on Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach, go to this page. Scroll ALL the way down on that page for some comments and a poem by Amiri Baraka. More Amiri Baraka later in this show.

2. John Fahey's "Ghosts" is from the double 7-inch called The Mill Pond, one of his greatest late-period releases. It's certainly one of the harshest, with four devastating noise/folk tracks, including one terrifying howl called "You Can't Cool Off In The Mill Pond, You Can Only Die" (Side C). That one came up on my iPod shuffle one day at work, and after a couple minutes I walked over to see who was playing the terrifying music. I wasn't surprised to see it was Fahey, but I was impressed. The song title was too long to fit, so I watched it slowly scrolling across the iPod screen, "You Can't Cool Off In The Mill Pond," and here I am, already unsettled by the sound, as the rest of the title comes across: "You Can Only Die." Damn, thanks a lot John. Heavy dude. "Ghosts" is Side A, the quietest and most song-based of the four, not an Ayler cover, but a calm fingerpicked number over which Fahey does some wordless singing. It's eerie as hell but also melodic and surprisingly gentle.

3, 4. "Hit Single" is the cheeky title for the theme Sonny Sharrock came up with for the Cartoon Network TV show Space Ghost Coast to Coast. He recorded it with powerhouse drummer Lance Carter back in 1994, six months before his unexpected death from a heart attack at age 54. (Turns out Carter also passed away young, at age 51, in 2006.) Not sure how Sharrock ended up being asked to do the theme - did Bill Laswell hook it up? Speaking of Laswell, I was never a fan, but I could never quite ignore him either, and my favorite shit he ever did, hands down, is his work with Sharrock. The solo album Guitar is dreamy and gorgeous and the jazz quartet album Ask the Ages is fantastic. Sharrock writes all the tunes, co-produces with Laswell, and plays guitar with the serious lineup of Pharoah Sanders on sax, Charnett Moffett on bass, and Elvin Jones himself on drums. First track "Promises Kept" is 9 minutes long... Sanders takes the first solo and there's a moment about halfway through it, as he is just ramping up the free-blowing steadily higher, when Sharrock suddenly leaps in with explosive electricity... add the thunderous rhythm section and you might have one of the 10 or 20 single most group-explosive moments in fire music history, I'm not kidding.

5, 6. This Evie Sands song, as heard on the Rhino box set One Kiss Can Lead To Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost And Found, sounds incredibly familiar to me... maybe someone covered it, or maybe it's just that the band Spectrum ripped it off for the first song on their awesome 1992 album Soul Kiss (Glide Divine). I swear in some places it's almost note for note (new lyrics though). I could see Sonic Boom being into this tune. I could also see it being a complete coincidence. Whatever. Wait, this just in: The Hollies covered it in 1966. I really don't think I've ever heard that version, but maybe.... oh shit, even more breaking news, our (high on) crack research staff has just turned up this blog post, in which it is revealed that Linda Ronstadt also cut a version in the late 1970s! Hmm, that was when her Living in the USA album (1978) was getting tons of plays at my house, thanks mom and dad... could it be... um, nope. It's actually on her next album, 1980's Mad Love, the one where she went New Wave. Maybe that's where Sonic Boom heard it! I guess I might've heard it then too, but I don't think so. It doesn't matter anymore, I'll just listen to the Evie Sands version. By the way, I think I actually love Linda Ronstadt, especially 1974-1978 era. She could belt out some country soul, for serious, and she picked classic songs. I keep thinking of her version of "Heatwave" by Martha & the Vandellas. Her studio bands were just organic enough that it didn't get drecky, aka "the Wachtel zone." I could be wrong about all of this, it's kind of a fuzzy memory. Hello? Anybody still here?? As for that Rhino box, despite it's hugeness (120 tracks on 4 CDs!) it's just not satisfying my love of 1960s girl group soul. This shit has to be listened on the original 45s, I'm convinced. CD allows for too much of it at once and it kind of just gives you a sugar headache. Especially when the music is mastered so brightly and cleanly. When you hear this stuff on a 45, or through the crackle of AM radio, it sounds murky and mysterious, and the imagination fills in the rest as grandiose and glamorous. On CD it's just another golden oldie where everything is adorable but the lights are on so bright that you can see the scotch tape holding up the decorations.

7-18. Okay, we had a couple warmups earlier in the show, now for the full-on jazz portion (not really). It starts with a recording from another Rhino/WEA box set, In Their Own Voices: A Century Of Recorded Poetry, in which Amiri Baraka reads "Bang Bang, Outishly." For the intro and refrain of the poem he sings the theme from Monk's "Misterioso" and it's just blown-out and mic-clipping enough to make me think of some kind of Black Sabbath riff, which reminds me that the main riff from "Bitches Brew" by Miles Davis has always sounded to me like some sort of funkified Black Sabbath, and is in fact now starting to seem like some kind of actual Monk/Sabbath midpoint. To further investigate I spin Thelonious Monk's sublime 1948 recording of "Misterioso" on Blue Note Records and then follow it with "Saturday Miles," the mega-turbulent 20-minute-plus medley on Side D of the Miles Davis At Fillmore double in which "Bitches Brew" at its most Sabbathian features heavily, recorded live in June 1970. As the track ends results are inconclusive due to slack-jawed soul-drool at the altar of heavy, so instead of doing the obvious and playing Black Sabbath (that doesn't come until a little later) I keep flying headlong into post-jazz turbulence by bringing back Baraka (here calling himself Leroi Jones because it's 1965) reading his incendiary poem "Black Art" backed by drummer Sunny Murray and no less than Ayler, Cherry, Grimes, and Worrell. At first I was gonna play it safe and put on "Black Dada Nihilismus" (in which Jones reads with the New York Art Quartet on their self-titled 1964 LP for ESP-Disk) but the imp of the perverse in me put "Black Art" on instead, simply because it pisses so many people off, or let's just say "starts a dialog." I'll stay away from some of Jones's more infamous bitch-slaps right now, but I will quote this choice nugget: "We want 'poems that kill.' Assassin poems, poems that shoot guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys and take their weapons leaving them dead with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland." Man, why didn't Charlton Heston and His Moral Outrage drum up publicity for this record instead of "Cop Killer"? He missed the boat by 27 years! The record label was even called Jihad! America could have whined "Why does Mr. Jones hate so much?" and maybe, just maybe, a few noble folks would have dug just a little deeper and noticed that he had already given a fairly serious answer to that question just a few lines later: "Clean out the world for virtue and love, let there be no love poems written until love can exist freely and cleanly." Maybe the record would've actually gotten repressed a couple times. Alright, alright, let's cool things down a little, I think we could all use a change of pace, and boy do I have one. It does relate to the previous though, as it is another raw exploration of the human voice... in fact, it is just a guy, all by himself, humming a basic melody over and over for almost 6 minutes... and, even though the guy is from Sweden, I'll be damned if the melody doesn't sound a whole lot like that Sabbathian/Monkian riff from "Bitches Brew." In fact, it's no change of pace - this track is crazy too. The vocalist is Joakim Skogsberg, from his strange and dark 1971 psych/folk album called Jola Rota. He probably did know "Bitches Brew," right? It had come out just a year earlier, on an album that sold very well worldwide.... but then again the style of singing is 'jolor,' which is apparently an ancient Swedish folk style, a lot older than Miles Davis (although the only info a google search for keywords like swedish+jolor+folk+singing et al seems to bring up is this Skogsberg album). This is where we lose the jazz transmission, as the vocal atmosphere of this track is so weird I feel like I can only follow it up with two more deeply strange voice-based cuts, the first one brand new by Warmer Milks from the POT series of numbered CDRs ("POT" stands for the name of the in-house label Paranormal Overtime, in case you were wondering, and this particular track is from the disc called "POT 7"), and then the absurd "What's Become Of The Baby?" by The Grateful Dead. In A Long Strange Trip, Dennis McNally writes: "In 'Baby,' Garcia wanted the sound of the entire band to come out of his voice, which required voltage-controlled amplifiers, filters, and pitch followers, which had not yet been invented. Once again, their ambitions had overshot their skill. And the descent into total lunacy initiated by mixing while inhaling nitrous oxide majestically confused everything." In Living With The Dead, Rock Scully writes "I'm not even counting the muezzin's-call-to-prayer and Gregorian chant on the utterly weird 'What's Become of the Baby' (which I attribute to too many hours spent under tungsten lighting)." In his consumer guide, Robert Christgau's entire review of Aoxomoxoa, the 1969 album this song is from, was this: "One experimental cut which hasn't made it for me yet, otherwise fantastic. (A)" I think I know which cut he was referring to. I don't even like this song myself, but I feel like I have to play it on the radio at least once just to see if anything happens. It might start more dialog than "Black Art." And next, we atone with "Mountains of the Moon," a much lovelier song from the same album, and as long as we're working out 60s/70s power baroque, which one gets you higher, mountains of the moon or a "Stairway to Heaven"? About a week ago I listened to "Stairway to Heaven" for the first time in many years because it came up on the iPod shuffle. I had been avoiding it because I just didn't feel like it could ever sound new again, but there it was last week, taking me by surprise in a brand new context (my very own radio station with a 16,000-song library, thank you Apple Corp!), and my god, get past the guitar student cliche the intro has become and what a riveting long-form ballad it is, especially the instrumental refrain after each sung verse. Bravo to Maestro Page for writing that one, holy shit, those raw electric guitar sounds playing beautiful folk chords, chiming and gnawing into each other, building crazy tension, no drums, etc. I'm hearing more of the subtle and complex bass playing by John Paul Jones than ever too (I'm no audiophile but I know my mp3s of this album are encoded at 320kps and I honestly think that has something to do with this whole epiphany - how about that for a completely different opinion about digital sound than the one gathered from the Rhino/WEA Girl Group Sounds box above). Man, when this show is done I think I'm gonna pull that Erik Davis book off the shelf, put this album on repeat, and hit the couch... but first we've got time for a few more, and it's time to give Sabbath and Skogsberg their due by playing a couple of their more motorheaded numbers, to make up for skipping the former and then playing a not-completely-indicative cut by the latter. And to close the show: one of my favorite pieces of German motorheaded nonsense ever, "Lila Engel" by Neu! Whew! (Doesn't rhyme with Neu.)


Ladies and gentlemen: Evie Sands.

PLAYLIST: 66.6 FM WBLSTD CHICAGO
8/25/08 - DJ Larry Dolman

Träd Gräs och Stenar "Rock For Kropp Och Själ" (Silence)*
Sic Alps "United" (Important)
Kraftwerk "Computer Liebe" (EMI Electrola)
Sparks "My Other Voice" (Virgin)*
Omar-S "Day" (FXHE)*
Burger/Ink "Milk & Honey" (Matador)
Rhythm & Sound "Mango Drive" (Rhythm & Sound)
Scientist "Cry Of The Werewolf" (I Hear A New World)*
Congos "Youth Man" (I Hear A New World)*
Horace Andy "Ain't No Sunshine" (I Hear A New World)*
Sister Ola Mae Terrel "Life Is A Problem" (Mississippi)
Rolling Stones "Parachute Woman" (London)
Studio 1 "Silber 2" (Studio 1)
Omar-S "Night" (FXHE)*
Windy & Carl "Whisper" (Icon)
Flying Canyon "Down To Summer" (Soft Abuse)*
Nirvana "Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam" (DGC)*
Sun City Girls "Ghost Ghat Tresspass" (Abduction)*
The Homosexuals "Hearts in Exile" (ReR Megacorp/Morphius Archives)

NOTES:
1. Good morning, you are listening to Radio Blastitude, WBLSTD 66.6 FM Chicago. My name is Larry 'Fuzz-O' Dolman and I'll be with you until 8AM, thanks for tuning in. This has been Träd Gräs och Stenar from Sweden with "Rock For Kropp Och Själ," the title track from a 1972 LP release on Silence Records that I don't believe has been reissued. That's "Rock For Kropp Och Själ," easing you into the 6 o'clock hour. Time now is 6:23 AM, we should have sunny skies today, topping out around 78, another glorious late summer lakeside day here in Chitown, so now that we're eased in and waking up we're gonna pick up the pace a little, get the day going. We're not gonna pick it up too fast, don't worry about that, we'll give you a chance to rub the rest of that sleep outta your eyes with this number by the Sic Alps, new on Important Records, it's actually a Throbbing Gristle cover, it's called "United".....

2. Sparks tune is from the Giorgio Moroder produced No. 1 In Heaven album (1976). Selection inspired by the voluminous Sparks discography rundown by Ned Raggett in Arthur #29, it was very nicely written, I can't believe I read the whole thing.

3. "Day" by Omar-S is exactly what house music sounds like in my dreams. It's between that and Gas Konigsforst anyway. "Day" is just perfectly pitched between fast and slow, hard and soft, minimal and lush, R&B and whatever. "'Is that all the record do?'. Yeah bitch, that’s all the record do. Yep your lazy ass needs to do some other shit with it."

4-6. Okay, the reggae tunes are in there via the new Magical, Beautiful mix CDR release, Nearer My God In Spring, on his/their own I Hear A New World label, catalog number IHAN07 in a sweet chipboard case-thing, and I'm telling you, this mix is incredible, it's been in my player for like three weeks now. Just good tunes. Like the man says in the liner notes: "Thank you musicians & sound engineers for this wondrous music. This is great inspiration & beauty."

7. Flipside to "Day" is "Night", it's a 12-inch on Omar's FXHE label. Check out his website where you might be able to get one direct.

8. Flying Canyon might be in my Top 10 Albums of the 2000s. Definitely my favorite Glenn Donaldson production ever, with Orchards and Caravans by The Birdtree and Blood of the Sunworm by the Giant Skyflower Band the closest contenders. RIP Cayce Lindner.

9. An original DGC cassette of Nirvana MTV Unplugged In New York (Live) has been floating around the day job for a few years now. No one knows who brought it. It's been suddenly getting a lot of deck time lately, and it truly sounds better than ever, the warehouse crew all agree. RIP Kurdt.

10. "Ghost Ghat Tresspass" is part of the epic 30-minute-plus track "Ghost Ghat Tresspass/Sussmeier" on the 1996 2CD 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda, documenting an improv between Sun City Girls and violinist Eyvind Kang, "live at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco," probably their 11/21/94 gig. "Ghost Ghat" should be heard by everyone who complains about SCG's wild berzerker improv because it is a sinuous, snaky modal jam with everyone at top form. You gotta hear the way Rick Bishop's crunchy e-bowed (or volume pedaled) (or who knows what) electric guitar and Kang's always-genius violin blend and elevate each other, while the AB/CG rhythm section slowly roll out the scroll underneath. For more great SCG/EK jams (from different shows) check out the VHS tapes The Burning Nerve Ending Magic Trick and If It Blows Up...Park It! And for just a little bit more info check this out.

Behind the scenes with Omar-S

PLAYLIST: 66.6 FM WBLSTD CHICAGO
8/23/08 - DJ Larry Dolman

Rolling Stones "Please Please Me" (Kobra Records)*
Buell Kazee "The Wagoner's Lad" (Smithsonian Folkways)
Chubby Parker & His Old Time Banjo "King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O" (Smithsonian Folkways)
Big L "Ebonics" (Rawkus)
Big L & Jay-Z "7-Minute Radio Freestyle" (MP3)*
Spoonie Gee & Treacherous Three "New Rap Language" (Enjoy)*
Sun Ra "My Favorite Things" (Atavistic)
Witch "Black Tears" (Shadoks)
Sebadoh "Violet Execution" (Homestead)*
Box Elders "Hole In My Head" (Grotto)*
RTFO Bandwagon "Any Way You Know How (Redux)" (Dull Knife)
Hearts of Animals "Stars Say No" (Dull Knife)*
Brainticket "Feel The Wind Blow" (Red Fox)
Bathory "One Rode To Asa Bay" (Noise International)
Bathory "The Return Of The Darkness And Evil" (Under One Flag)
Metallica "Creeping Death" (Music For Nations)
No Pigs "Broken Promises" (Killed By Hardcore)
Urban Waste "Public Opinion" (Killed By Hardcore)
Black Flag "Police Story" (SST)*
Steely Dan "My Old School" (Chance Records Inc.)*
Positive K "Step Up Front" (First Priority Music)*
Chubb Rock "Treat 'Em Right" (Select)*
Underground Resistance "Sweat Electric (inst.)" (S.I.D.)*
Tolerance "Pulse Static (Tranqillia)" (Not On Label)
Sun City Girls "Night in Makassar" (Ri Be Xibalba)
Handful of Dust "Squeesing Parson Foster's Sponge" (Corpus Hermeticum)

NOTES:
1. Stones thing is Keith doing the Beatles song solo, from the Acoustic Motherfuckers bootleg. Turns out it's from 1993, an outtake from the Voodoo Lounge sessions! He does sound old and weary and vampiric and all that but still plenty of soul, no Miller Lite Sponsorship vibes.
2. For more Big L, check out this "freestyle with Jay-Z" youtube. This was on the radio sometime in the late 1990s. This thing is amazing, someone transcribed it here. "Niggaz hear me and take more notes than Connie Chung/My clan plans to get Giuliani hung." Jay-Z is great too: "Jigga incredible/Even my thoughts is federal/Like kidnapping, extortion and corruption/So you know, beatin me will never come/Like a nun or tomorrow, I'm too thorough..."
3. "New Rap Language" is just killer, relentless, if you haven't heard it check it out. 8 minutes, A side of 12" single from 1980. With live congas, now that's old school.
4. For an interesting onstage tour version of Sebadoh's "Violet Execution" from 1991, the year the album came out, check out this YouTube (no video, just audio). Slower, no drums, more explicitly melancholy, lyrically incomplete (which can be a good thing, those lyrics are just kinda gross).
5, 6. "Hole In My Head" and "Stars Say No" are tied for my hit single of the year.
7. "Police Story" is the Dez version from Everything Went Black.
8. "My Old School" is from the Memphis Blues Again bootleg. "Recorded live at the Ellis Auditorium Memphis, TN. April 30, 1974."
9. Before he was a Yo! MTV Raps one-hit wonder, Pos K recorded this 12-inch for the same label that put out "Top Billin" by Audio Two.
10. Saw Connect Force crew breakdance to a remix of the Chubb Rock tune today at the Glenwood Avenue Arts Festival, for which Chubb's lyric "No hatred, the summer's almost done" is a sweet summation. I've enjoyed this festival for five years in a row now, it's right outside my window and the streets fill with that distinctive East Rogers Park "the Venice (or is it Hermosa) Beach of the Midwest" thing at its late-summer finest. Always good food and music and the people are amazing. No hatred at all. Another big musical highlight today was approaching the Morse Avenue Stage in the noon sun looking for the Grande Noodles booth while Tomeka Reid was busting out a sweet long unaccompanied modal/out jazz cello solo, playing with a Jimmy Bennington trio. Through the rest of the set she was using the cello to play the role of a standup bassist, doing some sweet walking lines. I realized halfway through that I had seen her play beautiful music a couple times in Nicole Mitchell ensembles.
11. From the unedited transcript of The Wire interview with Mad Mike Banks of Underground Resistance: "The guy who really laid the blueprint for Detroit Techno, you know him many times he's been mentioned - in fact a woman in France, Jacqueline Caux did a movie about this guy. His name was Electrifying Mojo. Mojo was a Vietnam war veteran, he was a radio man in Vietnam, he did DJing for the troops, and that's where he learned all the different types of music from around the world, and when he got back from Vietnam, he brought that to Detroit, that perspective, so we got to hear progressive rock up next to Falco, Euro synth pop. Of course he introduced Kraftwerk, which for Detroit was huge, he introduced Prince, George Clinton, all these great synth artists that used synthesizers for bass lines and stuff. 'Flashlight' was first played, I'm sure, in Detroit, because Mojo would break the records for the artists. He broke Juan [Atkins]'s early records, Juan's early Model 500, Cybotron stuff. We were really blessed with that wide perspective. I thought it was happening all over the country, because Mojo was so huge, but of course it wasn't, it was only happening in Detroit. So I think he really opened up the ears, and the inspiration, and the minds of young Detroit kids, and I think that's where the whole concept for Detroit techno came from, from Mojo."



"Spoonie Gee in the Bronx circa 1980"
(picture and caption from the Last Days of Man on Earth blog)

Oh yeah, another new record I've played more than a couple times lately is the one by Eden Express. It's called Que Amors Que, it's on Holy Mountain, they're a trio that share a member with that band Cloudland Canyon.... I haven't heard CC, but EE has done the unthinkable and released a post-1974 album openly influenced by Tropicalia and/or Lounge that I can actually hang with. Yep, these tunes have got the "oohs" and "aahs" and cute jazzy rhythms, but it doesn't work for me as a song album so much as a sound album, with a fuzzed-out hazy edge that can often be just a little sinister. It's also a pretty chilled-out album - in the words of H.M. C.E.O. J.W. himself, it's "as close to NPR and white wine as I'm going to get" - but there's always something odd like reverbed whispers and cackles or other errant noises coming or going in the shadowy corners of the songs. Or, maybe I'm imagining all that, but that's just as good.

Saw Joe Carducci do a little reading/Q&A thing at Quimby's Bookstore tonight for 20-25 people. It was great. He read four short excerpts from his books - three from Enter Naomi, none from Rock and the Pop Narcotic - but most of the time he just sat and talked about MUSIC, the way he's always talked about it, not just stylistically, but culturally, economically, geographically. He didn't really get into anything that wasn't already in Naomi and Narcotic, but it was nice to hear it straight from the guy and off the top of his head for almost two hours. He's a soft-spoken guy, "a music guy" as he writes in Enter Naomi (describing fellow SST employee Ray Farrell but it fits him too), which is why he moved from Chicago to L.A. to sleep on the floor of the SST office in 1981, and it's why he was at the bookstore tonight, not for some nostalgia showcase or brag session, but because the music is still out there being discovered. Much like his prose, points weren't so much made as they were accrued, often in roundabout fashion. During the Q&A a guy in the audience asked him for his take on the rock culture of today and how 1980s bands are reuniting and this and that, and Carducci sort of answered it by mentioning, among a few other things, that Saccharine Trust has been regularly playing new material in L.A. for the last ten years, in which time they recorded an album in Germany that long-time fan Bill Stevenson said was the best of their entire career. Earlier he had repeated something that was pointed out in Narcotic, that it's very difficult and rare for a band to make vital music for more than five years, and at another point he gave these ideas further nuance with an insider's description of Husker Du (I'm quoting him from memory here): "The thing about Husker Du was that they didn't like each other enough to practice. [Laughter from audience.] So they'd write their songs separately, get together just long enough to figure out how to perform and record them as a band, and then they figured that three weeks in one shot was the most they could tour without breaking up. That's how they made it work." He didn't even mention reunion fever, because the real question is, are they getting together to play vital music or not? And if so, is their personal dynamic such that they can make it work? And, most importantly, how is the rhythm section?

EARLY PREVIEW FROM BLASTITUDE #27:

D: Alright, I guess we can do D&D. I don't know if you can tear me away from this Souled American though...
D: Oh, you're getting into it now?
D: Oh man, yes. It has completely clicked. I've been listening to Fe, their first album, and this one, Around the Horn, which is I think their third... I mean, I listened to Fe twice last night, and once tonight.... Around the Horn both nights...
D: This sounds great.
D: Oh, this is one of their very best songs, it's called "Second of All."
D: It's so sweet and sad.
D: Now listen, you have to listen to these albums a couple times at least before you even begin to maybe like it. They are a completely off-putting band at first. And I have to be honest, it was an essay on them in the new Believer mag, the music issue, that turned me around. It wasn't even the greatest essay, I mean it was littered with Believer speak...
D: Like what?
D: Well, let's just pull it off the shelf here and I'll read you an example... are you recording?
D: Why yes I am.
D: Alright, this is all going in. (Thumbs through magazine.) Actually, this is really a fine essay. I can't knock it. I mean, there is a certain post-Dave Eggers preciousness about it... like this stuff: "Using an approximate calculus that accounts for current mood and desired mood, I pick an album. Whatever I decide, I decide this: to listen to Souled American." But really, I can't knock it, it states its case really well. He recognizes the exact things that were bothering me about the band, and articulates them really well, and then explains why the band is great anyway. It really worked.
D: Well, this is sounding great to me right now. I have heard them, like one other time, and yeah, it didn't click.
D: Like I said, you definitely have to listen at least three times before you'll even begin to like it. It may take longer than that - the writer of this essay says he's STILL not even sure if he likes them. Anyway.... I think we can start shuffling. Listen to this bass player though, he is absolutely sick.
D: Yeah, I had noticed him a little bit. Totally strange.
D: Yeah, he's incredibly good though. He kind of just clumsily dances around these songs and keeps them totally fired up and in the moment. Plus he kind of lays these weird chord suspensions down from time to time, in a more jagged Phil Lesh kind of way. He never lets the songs become just country songs. He never lets it be Uncle Tupelo. I don't think they would be anyway, the way the guys sing. I think that's the real acquired taste. But it's actually stopped bothering me. We can start shuffling, though.
D: Alright, here goes...........

D: Speaking of Phil Lesh.
D: Man, why does it always go to the Grateful Dead when we're doing D&D?
D: Because you love them.
D: Yeah, I guess it might be because I have 24 complete shows on here and like 16 album releases. Almost four days worth of back-to-back no-repeat Grateful Dead....
D: That's insane.
D: I'm not even gonna say one word to defend it. Anyway we've got a "Bird Song" here, one of their greatest songs.... not sure yet if this is a great performance... sound is a little distant. I'm guessing this is from....... that's Keith on piano.... how about a '77 show?
D: Looks like '72.
D: Okay, okay... oh, is this that Veneta, Oregon show?
D: Yes it is.
D: Alright, I've been warming up to this show... there's quite a bit of lore about it... it was an outdoor show at like Ken Kesey's cousin's farm in Oregon, I think it was a benefit for something, and they made this crude film of it, their first attempt to make the Grateful Dead Movie, basically... it's called Sunshine Daydream and there's some clips on YouTube. The movie is like 63 minutes long and it's never been released, and looks pretty damn good... good live footage, hippies running around in a field, and some footage of Neil Cassady driving the Merry Pranksters bus, with "I Know You Rider" in the background. Pretty sweet....
D: These are our real American icons.
D: Oh fuck you. Anyway, it was like 100 degrees that day so it was kind of a rough show, not musically rough, but everything else.... also one of the last shows where all members were on acid while playing.
D: I still don't understand how they were able to do that.
D: I think they were just so familiar with their own music, and also familiar with not just how to play it, but how to actually use it as a safety zone while tripping. But yeah, I think they were pretty much over it by '72. But man, this song is such a momentum-kill to start a D&D session with. I mean, this is like 12 minutes long, and it's lovely, and mellow, and now I just want to lay back and listen to this all night. But shuffle on we must.......

Oh lord, this is "The Needle and the Damage Done," the Harvest version even... I mean, couldn't this at least be a version from some weird stoned bootleg? I've got over 1000 albums on this thing, we're here to check out the obscure stuff!
D: You probably don't actually have any obscure stuff. And this sounds awesome.
D: Well of course it does. I was just kidding about the obscure stuff.... nothing's obscure anymore. The only time something is obscure is if nobody wants it.

Okay, this is gamelan music from Music From The Morning Of The World. [Track: "Gamelan Anklung: Margepati"] Still not digging very deep there, Mr. iPod. But, this is one of my favorite albums that I own. One of my first serious 'world music' finds. I wanted some gamelan music just from reading about it, because like John Cage and then the Sun City Girls were into it, and this was the album I found in the world music section, original vinyl, cheap. Turns out to be a real classic of the genre. This was actually the first release on the Nonesuch Explorer label, in like 1968. Such alien music.
D: Yeah, the sense of time and rhythm, the way it speeds up and slows down...
D: Incredible. And of course the sonorities, the harmonies, the way the melodies move... it's almost like science-fiction theremin music rearranged for.... whatever it is they're playing it on... I mean I hear all the bells of course but there are other higher tones that sort of float in between the bell hits, and they don't sound like they have the bell attack... almost like a flute tone or something... you hear what I mean?
D: Oh yeah, I hear it. I just think it's total mystery music.

D: OH GOD, this is good. Oh yeah, this is Velvet Underground, my god.... is this on Loaded, or is this an outtake? "Oh Sweet Nothin".....
D: I think this was the last song on the Loaded LP. It's like 7 or 8 minutes long.
D: It's so good. It's actually making me think of Souled American a little bit, this kind of slow and streched-out country style, but.... this is so much smoother and prettier.
D: While still being just as sweetly sad.
D: I think so. When Lou sang like that it was just so sweet... or god, is this Doug Yule? I'm never sure. Like, that can't be Moe Tucker on drums... too much cymbal and hi-hat.
D: Can't be. Just a second.... [googling] Oh hey, says here, "Moe Tucker was pregnant, and Yule's brother Billy sat in on drums for most of the sessions."
D: I'm pretty sure I knew that. I've known it a few different times.
D: It also says, "Doug Yule ended up recording many of the vocals in the final mix." Let's see... [more surfing].... yep, Wikipedia says that Yule sang on "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'."
D: Well there you go. Bravo, Mr. Yule......

Okay, now we're in 'treated field recording sound collage' land. Immersion style. I don't think this is Sublime Frequencies though.... that bird sound is mad annoying.... it might not be part of the original field recording.... oh shit, it's over! And right into "Chameleon" [by Herbie Hancock]! The iPod is really playing the hits tonight.... so who was that field recording? "Chameleon" is sounding tight as hell, by the way. Who played drums on this album?
D: Was it Lenny White?
D: I don't think so...
D: [Wiki-ing] I guess it was... Harvey Mason.
D: I don't even know who that is. But he is the drummer on the best-selling jazz album of all time!
D: Anyway, back to the lecture at hand, who was that previous track by....
D: Yeah, the field recording thing....
D: Well, it wasn't quite Sublime Frequencies, but it was Sun City Girls! [track plays again]
D: Oh really? Proto-Sublime Frequencies....
D: Title is "Bamboo Gazebo Arousal," and it's from Sumatran Electric Chair.
D: I was gonna guess that. I really like that album. It's one of Alan Bishop's favorites too. And those bird sounds are real, of course.......

Okay, now we're in bootleg land... or maybe this is the Tower Recordings or something.... oh, never mind, this is Alistair Galbraith. From a very recent live thing he put out, obviously a lo-fi recording, sounds good though, he's cutting through just fine. I've never heard him like this, with no overdubs, no 4-track trickery. Oh wow, it's over... I guess that was a trick. The way he truncates his songs on tape, I guess he does it live too.

And this next thing sounds like FREE FOLK. Hmm. Really not sure who it is. Goofy sounds. Old-timey sounds. It's kinda waltzy. [Singing starts.] Oh man, this is really quirky. This is practically Elephant 6. But not quite, there's something a little more laid back about it. Oh, he's singing "I hear a new world calling me..." Is this a Joe Meek song?
D: I don't know...
D: This is probably Magical, Beautiful, covering a Joe Meek song...
D: It is Magical, Beautiful, you are correct.
D: This is pretty impressive. It's got that woozy Magical, Beautiful feeling. The slide guitar and stuff like that. Okay, we've got this damn iPod, time to put it to use... jump to the artist Joe Meek and see if we can hear the original. I know I have it on here.
D: Coming up right........now.
D: Oh wow. This is super weird.
D: Insane.
D: Literally! I was just reading about Joe Meek, and I didn't know any of that stuff, how he like, I don't know, killed his neighbor or something?
D: Whoah, I didn't know that.
D: He did, he freaked out and killed some innocent stranger and then killed himself I think.
D: Let's see... [Wiki strikes again].... yep, in 1967, at age 37, he used a shotgun to kill his landlady and then killed himself.
D: Sigh. Well, the Magical, Beautiful version was pretty cool.
D: Yeah, it's actually a more fleshed-out version.
D: Yeah, Meek's version is amazing but it's kind of all sound effects. What's this, just the next song on the Meek album?
D: Yeah, it's called "Orbit Around The Moon."
D: I like the surf stuff.
D: Yeah, well his biggest hit was "Telstar" by The Tornadoes... or was it "Tornado" by The Telstars? [wiki wiki wiki wiki] Okay, it's "Telstar" by The Tornadoes.
D: That's gotta be surf.
D: Yeah, there's a link here on the Wikipedia page for you to listen to a snippet of the song, but I can't get it to work. It's an "ogg" file.
D: Yeah, I don't mess around with those. At least not yet. I finally messed around with a FLAC the other day. That was kinda silly. "CD quality!"
D: I thought CDs were supposed to suck, man....
D: Totally! I love it when I see an album ripped at like 120.... it's like some full-length deluxe CD reissue with bonus tracks, and the whole thing is like 39 megs. Alright, this is pretty rad, but let's get back to shuffle here.... adios, crazy Joe Meek....
D: Yeah, I think "Entry of the Globbots" is a good track to go out on...
D: Wow, listen to those chipmunks chattering....
D: Yeah, I mean.... you know, nothing but respect for the victim and her family, but... [points to speaker] didn't they hear the warning signs??

D: Oh great, you shuffled me to some classical music. I love this stuff at work, or at home with the family, but dammit, NOT FOR D&D! It's like, "Alright Blastitude readers, check out this latest obscure break-out underground artist, his name is.... J.S. Bach!!"
D: Actually this is Chopin.
D: I coulda probably guessed that right. Fred Chopin. Hey, guess what, it's beautiful.
D: For the record, this is one of the Nocturnes. Opus 9, Number 3.
D: Listen to you!
D: I care deeply.
D: Next...

D: Oh, you'll like this.
D: Sounds like the Dead doing "Morning Dew."
D: Ha ha, exactly.
D: It is the Dead?
D: No, but that's why you'll like it.
D: This is really nice. Great singer. This isn't from Chile or Argentina or something, is it?
D: Um, it is from the Southern Hemisphere.
D: Oh, is this..... Amanaz?
D: Yes.
D: Oh god, this is a wonderful album. I think it's gonna ruin all the other 70s African psych reissues for me. I already couldn't get into the Witch album after hearing this first. Are they singing "Sunday Morning"?
D: Yep, that's the title.
D: See, I was just thinking how this sounded a little like Doug Yule-era Velvet Underground, specifically that "New Age" song off Loaded, the one that goes "Can I have your autograph?"
D: "He said to the fat blond actress...."
D: Exactly. I think they might've modeled this song on it a little bit.
D: Well they did name the song after a VU song...
D: Oh wait, do you think they were actually influenced by the Velvet Underground? Like they were listening to the banana album over there?
D: Of course it's possible....
D: Yeah, but on like cassettes or something? Was Verve or Polydor or whoever making cassettes in the early 1970s? I mean, I'm thinking of the Group Doueh story, how he only heard Hendrix via cassettes manufactured in and imported from Spain or something like that....
D: The more I think about it, I don't know.... I think the "Sunday Morning" thing is just a coincidence. I mean, hardly anyone in the USA was listening to VU, how could it have made it to Africa?
D: Well you know what they say, only two people in Africa heard the Velvet Underground, and they both started a band!
D: They were both in Amanaz!
D: Wiki THAT, my man.
D: I bet I won't figure anything out. "No page titled Amanaz."
D: Hm. Google "Amanaz + Velvet Underground."
D: Nothing but "CD Now" ads.

D: This is Kurt Vile, another fantastic dusted ballad from the Constant Hitmaker album. "Everyone that I know/Talks to me way too slow/I lose track of what they say/Before they walk away." Skip Spence worthy, right there. Let's just stop recording and listen to this shit.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

OTHER RECENT NOTABLES:
Bathory (first six albums, especially The Return... and Hammerheart)
Sex Vid Nests 7" (and live)
Box Elders 7" (best "sent a letter to my baby"/"got a letter from my baby" hook in years)
Hearts of Animals 7" (I was gonna say "dream pop" but there's no genre to describe this music yet - I mean what about that driving drum machine?)
Muslimgauze Jaahgeed Zarb CD (slammin!)
Zbiegnew Karkowsi & Damion Romero 6 Before 6 CD
Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh s/t CD
Caboladies Body Tides CDR
Warmer Milks Soft Walks CD
The Fun Years Baby It's Cold Inside CD
Vivian Girls LP (great!)
Radio Thailand 2CD
Radio Myanmar CD (all Sublime Frequencies always)
I've got all my Butthole Surfers LPs out again
Fabulous Diamonds LP (one of the very best of all the new Siltbreeze)
These Are Powers Taro Tarot EP (some bold new ground)
the new Grouper LP Dragging a Dead Deer up the Hill is pretty much perfect

Hey, one more thing, I'm heading to an 'undisclosed location' (code name: grandma's house) where there will be no working computer or cell phone. I won't be back for like 9 days, just in case you check this thing more often than that... some good listening tonight: I pulled out this 12" single I forgot I had on the Skam label and it was great proto-dubstep or something from 1998 - still have no idea how to classify post-90s techno, I just like what I like - after the obligatory 10 minutes of internet research I figured out that the artist is Gescom, which is an umbrella name for about 20 revolving people that work together from time to time, including the guys from Autechre. Then I read a little more and realized that the "remixed by Ae" credit that appears on most of these tracks (such as the great "Viral Rival" remix) is actually Autechre themselves, so I was like, "Oh yeah, this is basically an Autechre 12" from 10 years ago, no wonder it's so good, and no wonder I had it filed where 'Autechre' would be." See, I had figured all this out years ago and completely forgotten it.... A friend gave me a copy of the Christina Carter Bastard Wing LP from a few years back and I finally put it on tonight. It's solo piano and voice recordings from 1995, not released until 2003 because it took so long to find someone who could mix & master the rough tapes into something usable. I can see why they made the effort because the music is kinda something else, soaring solo-void free-form soul music, especially the long track and album centerpiece on side two, "Quiet Love." The B&W Siltbreeze-style graphics give me nostalgia for 1995 too. Also listened to a couple Billy Bao things on the iPod, the Fuck Separation LP (10 tracks clocking in at exactly 3 minutes each) (CORRECTION: I'm talking about the Dialectics of Shit LP on the Parts Unknown label - Fuck Separation is the 10" on S-S Records, now sold out at source) and its companion piece the Accumulation 7" (10 tracks clocking in at exactly 1 minute each). The full-length is one of my favorites of the year so far. They absolutely pummel in a way that made us all realize that the AmRep revival had been there all along, right in front of our faces (see also Z Gun #2), and call me crazy but the hardcore academic rigor applied to the whole thing really works, takes it to another level completely, the timing of the tracks, the rigorously applied pseudo surface noise (watch out if you're listening on headphones), the killer graphics, the dubious but provocative back story, the whole package. People who like punk but don't like noise might be a little frustrated by these records, but if you like both, both are very good (that guy Mattin is behind all this and he's already shown that he knows what he's doing on the noise front). Oh hey, guess what, I've gotta go load up the car, so we'll see ya next week...

Hey, Mikey Milks is having a festival at his house next weekend:

Paranormal Over Time Festival July 11-13 Mulberry Farm Garrison, Kentucke

Featuring music by:
Afternoon Penis
Brother Bell
Caboladies
Caves
Child Bride
Eyes and Arms of Smoke
Daniel Higgs
Kraken Fury
Lexie Mountain
Jason Schuler
Shakey
Warmer Milks

+ more or less tba

This festival is RSVP ONLY. Go to Tombstone Gravy for all information.

The new Warmer Milks album Soft Walks has been in the CD player a lot over the last month but I haven't really figured out what to say about it. A few days ago I did write this: "In a career filled with weird turns and exquisitely gross musical decisions, Warmer Milks have gone and taken one of the grossest weird turns possible with their new album Soft Walks: they've made a lush orchestral southern rock magnum opus. This thing is totally serious, filled with weird but well-written songs that are meticulously arranged and orchestrated and recorded. It's also their first of what looks to be a few releases with Animal Disguise, a good home for them. AD calls WM 'a unique blend of southern rock, improv and modern confusion,' and that description, however succinct, describes the nooks and crannies of this album better than anything I've thought of so far. See what you think."



Tonight I've been listening mostly to Dante's Disneyland Inferno, putting up more lyrics for the Sun City Girls lyrics archive. I'm finally almost done with the Dante's portion - it's only taken me four years. (Thanks again to reader 3dsunglasses for starting things back up.) I've had the album for 12 years now, ever since it was released, and it still sounds amazing. To this very day I'm hearing things in it I had never noticed or thought about before.

Usputuspud Disco CS
Crank Sturgeon Onager Sass CS
Bruce Springsteen Nebraska
The Fugees The Score

The Usputuspud tape is on the Caligulan Records label (which I've posted about before, use that handy search function up there), and it's "the solo endeavor of Matt Rogers, guitarist of Crucial Blast and [oops, torn press sheet]rdo's Wildildlife." That doesn't mean much but the terse next line, "It's all harmonica," pretty much guaranteed that I would listen (that and Caligulan's suave packaging). Not that "all harmonica" meant that it would be good, in fact, I listened more to just see how bad it could be. But you know what? It's good. Very good, in fact. The harmonica is slowed down and stretched out and overdubbed and stacked up until it gets louder and thicker and heavier and becomes some cosmic railroad-in-your-bedroom-closet type shit. Seriously, check it out. The Crank Sturgeon tape is on a new-to-me label called Cryptic Carousel. Let me tell you, I haven't listened to Crank Sturgeon in years, and there was something so instantly comforting about putting his tape on and realizing all over again that no one else drags an overamped contact mic through "tape, junk, voice & squawkbox" quite like he does. A sound as recognizable as Hendrix playing guitar.

Hey there - just added a few more posts from (yikes) back in April, with more to come - these will all be appearing below the Bishop Bros. post so be sure to scroll past it if you're looking for updates. Also, over at blastitude.com I've finally updated the EVENTS page and, thanks to reader 3dsunglasses, there have been some updates at The (Unofficial) Sun City Girls Lyrics Archive - check out Box of Chameleons and Dante's Disneyland Inferno for starters...

Alan & Richard Bishop are The Brothers Unconnected, a Tribute to the Music of Sun City Girls and Charles Gocher, and they played the Lakeshore Theater in Chicago, IL on Saturday, June 14. As announced, instead of an opening act the show started with a 40-minute collection of Gocher's film/video stuff called The Handsome Stranger, various vignettes and interiors and uncategorizables, some stuff that I think we've seen before on the VHS series and a lot of new-to-the-public stuff too, the morbidly hilarious head-shot readings, lip-syncings, next-level video experiments, the awesome throwdown version of "Let's Pretend" that was indeed released on the Halcyon Days of Symmetry VHS, and more. It was a fine tribute to the man in and of itself, and then Alan and Rick came out dressed to the nines and sat down with acoustic guitars next to an urn of Charlie's ashes, in front of the great image of Gocher with polaroid that you can see here, and proceeded to play two sets of music. The first was heavy on the songs with words, most from "the book of Gocher," while the second was heavier on instrumental and mostly-instrumental classics, and as intense as the Gocher songs were, the instrumental stuff was perhaps an even greater revelation. It's always been a daring body of work, the combination of non-Occidental melodies and raw American music and a whole lotta guts, but these songs in particular have most often been filtered through a punk/hardcore aesthetic and a loud guitar/bass/drums lineup. Tonight we heard them filtered through an acoustic blues/folk aesthetic by two great guitarists, simple as that, and it was stunning, with Alan more than holding his own with Sir Richard (even though he played the whole first set with just 4 strings... he broke strings during both sets with his serious right-hand technique). I won't tell you everything they played but here's some highlights: "Black Weather Shoes" (even slower than the Grotto of Miracles version, heavy and bleak), "Book of Revelations" (one of the most serious moments of the night - Alan played the music alone with the utmost implacability while Rick did the singing, channeling Charlie right down to the last spittled roar and harsh whisper of his epic vocal, read the lyrics here to get an idea), "Rodent With A View" (a short little gem about harsh food chain reality from Box of Chameleons which got a stunning epic treatment here, one of the best songs of the night), "Eyeball In A Quart Jar Of Snot" (how about that 'walking bass' playing by Alan on the low strings of his guitar, holding the thing in ridiculous poses and making faces while pulling off the most absurd flowing 'changes' underneath Rick's jazz chords and further expert Gocher channelization), "Bitter Cold Countryside" ("this is a song about hangin' a preacher"), "Nyne De Gris Sang" (another revelation in this book of revelations, coming off like some crazy fuzzy manic 60s global pop nugget from some out-of-print a-go-go compilation), regular set closer "Space Prophet Dogon" (totally beautiful with an intense outro/coda that seemed new to me, I'll have to go back and listen to the LP versions for the hundredth time, maybe it's been there all along)... that's maybe one third of what they played. The music was great but I gotta say the venue was a little off... while it wasn't NOT cool to see them in a seating-only theater (because, you know, they are fearless individuals who can work any situation), I think these guys ultimately work best in a setting where people are standing and moving around, the phenomenon that Gocher classically described as "like an ocean-herd, warm waves moving through cold waves of water." When they were playing as a trio in a rowdy club, everything was so multidirectional - there were the three minds of the band, each of which could take things in several different directions, often simultaneously, and all these energies were going from various places on the stage out to various places in the audience, and then from all kinds of varied audience members back to the band, and so on, until so many different currents and eddies and feedback loops were swirling around the room that, trust me, it was a serious drug experience without any drugs necessary. At the Lakeshore Theater the feedback loop was mostly closed (and no, I don't blame it all on the famously cool Chicago audiences because the last two SCG shows here, 2002 and 2004 at the Empty Bottle, were very rowdy multidirectional affairs) but even as a unidirectional musical presentation (you know, like 98% of all shows and concerts) I would highly recommend it, to both long-time fans and curious newcomers. And, there's still a few weeks left of the tour, with a lot of different audiences and venues and directions sure to come...

Here's the remaining dates:

6.19.08 - Cambridge, MA - The Brattle Theater
6.20.08 - Portland, ME - SPACE
6.21.08 - Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda's
6.22.08 - New York , NY - Knitting Factory
6.24.08 - Pittsburgh, PA - Andy Warhol Gallery
6.25.08 - Washington, D.C. - Black Cat
6.26.08 - Asheville, NC - Grey Eagle
6.27.08 - Atlanta, GA - The E.A.R.L.
6.28.08 - Chattanooga, TN - Barking Legs Theater
6.29.08 - Memphis, TN - Odessa
6.30.08 - New Orleans, LA - One Eyed Jack's
7.02.08 - Austin, TX - Emo's
7.03.08 - Dallas, TX - Granada Theater
7.05.08 - Tucson, AZ - Club Congress
7.06.08 - San Diego, CA - Bar Pink Elephant
7.09.08 - Santa Cruz, CA - TBA
7.10.08 - TBA

7.11.08 - TBA
7.12.08 - TBA

New issue #26 is finally up. Tony Rettman interview with bIG fLAME, reviews by R. Queequeg, and the usual questionable stuff from yours truly. Check it out RIGHT HERE. Hopefully in about 6 months we'll have another one... in the meantime keep checking back here at the blogspot for more frequent posts... Today I listened to "Sam Stone" by Swamp Dogg about 7 times. Why didn't anyone ever tell me this was the heaviest song of all time?

In case you were wondering, I am currently 35 posts behind on this blog. I just counted 'em. These posts range from April 7th all the way up to earlier today, and all are currently in various stages of completion, none finished. Stay tuned, I really think they'll all be posted eventually, here and there in flurries. I'll always be behind but I'll (probably) never stop.

In the meantime, believe it or not, the main site at blastitude.com will be updated very soon. We've been working on a new issue (#26) off and on for some time and it's looking like it will finally be up by.... let's see, how about.... this coming Monday, June 2 or whatever. I'm almost sure of it...