Etched in Black

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING THE FUTURE OF THIS BLOG

2011-12-04T16:42:00.000-08:00

Although there has not been a lot of activity on this blog for several months, the authors/editors wish to re-affirm their dedication to this project, and to assure their audience of followers and occasional passer-by that this blog will continue with renewed vigor as 2011 draws to a close. But before readers begin to see the flurry of new posts we plan to publish in the near future, a drastic re-evaluation, re-boot and re-format are in order.

Etched in Black is the current manifestation of a website started a decade ago by Tom "Thunderbolt" Pagoda. Tom was the sole author/editor and technician until 2009, when close friend "Whitey" Noyes came on board to help maintain Etched in Black when Pagoda's real-world workload became too great to keep the blog going.

Pagoda's musical tastes have always run towards the esoteric; ambient music, psychedelia, electronica, orchestral music and noise. Whitey is a rocker. He likes hard rock, punk, a lot of vintage 50's / 60's pop, classic country, lounge music and swingin' jazz. While the differences between the two have often made this blog a lot more diverse than it would otherwise have been, they have also made Etched in Black a somewhat schizophrenic proposition. It's been a long time since it has been clear what exact direction the blog is actually going in - is it a record collector's blog dedicated to thrift store records, old pop and funny videos or a more cerebral music blog concerned with artier, edgier fare? The Scorpions or Arvo Part? La Monte Young or Leslie Gore? Both authors have come to feel that their collaboration has, too often, produced a blog that expands and contracts in too many directions to be anything other than confusing and lukewarm. What could be a pretty awesome blog had it a clear direction has become, in our own opinion, a directionless hodge podge.

Our solution? A friendly divorce of sorts. As of December, 2011, Whitey Noyes will be the new sole proprietor of Etched in Black. The blog will, from this point forward, concentrate on record collecting, vintage punk rock, old pop and jazz, interesting thrift store finds and funny videos. New posts on these subjects will be found here later this month, and older material Whitey deems in keeping with his new format will remain here. Noyes assures readers that his tastes, while perhaps less 'high falutin' than those of his friend Pagoda, are eclectic enough to keep things diverse, interesting and fun.

Thunderbolt Pagoda will move on to a new blog, to be called Cosmonaut Cathedral. This blog will concern itself with mind-expanding music of all sorts, from noise to classical music to ambient to psychedelia and beyond. Since all the content on this blog concerning such music is his, look for it to disappear from Etched in Black , to reappear on Cosmonaut Cathedral when that blog goes online. Thunderbolt Pagoda wishes to thank all of his readers and followers of this blog for their encouragement throughout the last decade. While he encourages them to follow Whitey's new Etched in Black, he looks forward to interacting with them via the new Cosmonaut Cathedral blog.

That Sweet Gospel Music

2011-02-11T09:43:00.000-08:00

BONUS TRACK:

The Normal - "T.V.O.D." b/w "Warm Leatherette" (Mute 1978)

2011-02-07T10:40:00.000-08:00

The Normal was a pseudonym of Daniel Miller, and this 7" single was the first record to be released on Miller's influential Mute Records. The B-Side has, of course been covered by a myriad of artists from Grace Jones to Duran Duran to Trent Rezner.

Watch the "T.V.O.D" video HERE.

Record Party List for December 2010

2011-02-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

Two months late, but here you go:

HERE

Nolan Thomas - "Yo' Little Brother" 1984

2011-02-07T09:57:00.000-08:00

In case you were wondering, all of the "celebrity cameos" in this video were actually children dressed up to resemble pop stars of the period. With the exception of Prince, of course.

Who Shot Kennedy?

2011-01-31T06:39:00.001-08:00

This is probably oner of many similar records released after the Kennedy assassination. This one presents excerpts from Mark Lane's seminal 1967 documentary, Rush to Judgement, which is based on one of the first books to question the Warren Commission's account of Kennedy's murder.

HERE

Beck / Record Club - "New Sensation"

2011-01-24T18:02:00.000-08:00

An INXS cover.

Eddy Detroit - "Mephisto Cigars"

2011-01-24T10:06:00.000-08:00

Joe Aufricht - Cassettes 1993-1995

2011-01-24T08:56:00.000-08:00

When Joe Aufricht was 13 years old, he became obsessed with a nine-year-old girl who went to his school. At age 33, Joe was still obsessed with the same girl. Between 1993 and 1995, Joe documented this bizarre devotion on three self-released cassettes of original music and theatre pieces reenacting episodes from this one-sided love affair - a love that took over Joe's life, landed him not only in jail, but in the hospital as well.

"I own two tapes by Joe, both of which are the aural equivalent of beating yourself on the forehead with a 2 X 4 (with a nail in it) for 90 minutes. He also did a third tape of phone pranks (one can only imagine!) that, sadly, I never bought, and he produced a zine, as well, which I heard was just as wild as the tape...I have no idea how many other people have heard this thing but, in my opinion, this is some of the most disturbing material I have ever heard. While any armchair psychologist can have a field day listening to these tapes trying to figure out what is wrong with Joe, I would suggest consulting the works of Anton LaVey in lieu of Sigmund Freud although, from what I've gathered, even the Church of Satan didn't want anything to do with this guy. At any rate, listening to the two tapes I own display some seriously arrested emotional and psychological development and that's putting it mildly." - Matt Grayer, 365 Days Project (2003)

Now, I'll go far enough out on a limb to say that anyone who owned a tape recorder when they were 13 might have recorded the same sort of heartsick stuff Joe has, but certainly most of us would have gotten over it by the time school let out that summer. In any case, very, very, veeerrry few of us would still be going on about it when we were thirty-three-years-old. "If one thing stands out immediately, it’s that Joe just doesn’t know when to quit," writes the author of Glorify the Turd Blog. "And how does he remember all this shit in such vivid detail? The guy is recalling events that happened 20 years ago, as a child, no less, like it was a couple of days ago, complete with dialogue! I think most people are pretty happy to forget those awkward early teen years, but Joe is completely hung up on them and is determined to re-live them, only getting it right the second time around! This is a tale of insanity and desperate young love, told through the lips of a maniac."

As you might have guessed from the demonic graphics, Joe is a practicing Satanist. Satanism, as defined by the late Anton LaVey, generally advances a philosophy of strength, dominance and a strong will, so it's anybody's guess as to how Joe's inability to rise above the lovelorn trauma of his teenage years jibes with Diabolical Doctrine. All of Joe's tapes come festooned with pentagrams, upside-down crosses and sometimes pornographic images of demons and devils, leading the listener to expect kick-ass homemade metal, rather than the nerdy spoken word actually on the cassette. I guess it makes sense, though. that Joe is currently the guitarist with the Black Metal band, Satanicon - as much as any of this makes sense at all.

The Joe Aufricht Discography (all downloads via Glorify the Turd)

Youthful Satanic Ecstacy tape (1993) HERE

Evil Phone Prankster tape (1994) HERE

Mockery and Perversion tape (1995) HERE

Joe was interviewed on WCSB, Cleveland, in 1995. HERE is a cassette release of that interview

Check out Joe's MYSPACE PAGE

Then, check out Joe's OTHER MYSPACE PAGE

Nat Freedland's THE OCCULT EXPLOSION dbl-LP (United Artists 1973)

2011-01-11T09:52:00.000-08:00

An interesting artifact of the Occult "Awakening" of the 1970's, this LP is a companion to Freedland's book of the same name, and features interviews with such notable occultists of the day as Anton LaVey, Alan Watts and Louise Huebner. Also includes two musical tracks by Satanic British band Black Widow

"Flying saucers, witchcraft, Satanism, reincarnation, ESP and psychic phenomena in general, what's it all about? More and more people are asking themselves this question as these things appear more frequently in magazines and newspapers, on TV, and wherever people gather to talk."

This interview with Anton Szandor LaVey has been excerpted from the LP:

Listen to the rest of the album HERE

The Worst Metal Records Ever, Part Two: Thrash Queen

2010-06-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

Metal Enterprises strikes again. Like the Killer Fox LP, this is another instance where the label replaced an actual American metal band band with German sessions musicians to stunning effect:

Old Weird America

2010-06-18T06:48:00.000-07:00

(This article on American Folk Music originally appeared on the "Eye and Ear Control" website in 2007)

THE OLD WEIRD AMERICA

"Old Weird America" is the term writer Greil Marcus coined to describe the great lost world of old time rural music, which existed before post WW2 modernization and the inevitable move towards a more homogenized American culture.

No more accurate a label has ever been assigned to any period or genre of music. From today's standpoint, the ancient shellac records, cylinders and gramophone recordings that constitute the legacy of pre-war Country Music sound like artifacts from another planet. Distant voices sing strange songs of love, disaster, rapture and murder, half-buried in a netherworld of age and hiss. In one song, a dead girl returns from the grave to comfort her grieving lover. In another, a rose grows from the heart of a corpse to entangle itself in the brier that grows from the body of the girl who abandoned him. Primordial badmen live again in these old ballads, as do the heroic lawmen who laid them low, and the poor wives and mothers who buried them. Brave soldiers charge into destiny while moonstruck sailers sing of their beloved girls at home.

Recordings of this music date back no further than the advent of practical electric recording devices in the 1920's. The songs and styles of performance, however, date back much, much farther than that. The Civil War was fought against the backdrop of fiddle tunes such as can be found on these sides .The Hatfields and McCoys drank and whooped to the banjo breakdowns we hear on the dusty grooves of an old 78 RPM record. The ballads of ghostly happenings and daring feats reach all the way back to medieval Europe...

Read the rest of this article (with links) HERE

The Worst Metal Records Ever, Part One: Killer Fox

2010-06-17T05:02:00.000-07:00

Music industry skullduggery at its slimiest. Killer Foxx was an 80's metal quartet that had recorded two LPs when half the band was killed in an automobile accident in 1987. For whatever reason, the group's label, the infamous German outfit Metal Enterprises, decided to sideline the surviving members of the group and hire studio musicians to record an album under the name "Killer Fox." Had any of these sessions players been familiar with heavy metal, this might have worked on some ethically dubious but musically sound level. As it occurred however, Metal Enterprises seems to have found the only four guys in 1980's Germany who had never heard a Scorpions record and enlisted them to create Orgasm of Death, a serious contender for the Worst Metal Record Ever Recorded.

"…Presumably, working at a record label called "Metal Enterprises" would imply that that the musicians who created Orgasm Of Death would have actually heard metal music at some point or another. Yet listening to this album, one cannot be so sure. Indeed, it seems as if whoever was performing on this recording had heard of metal, as they appear to be vaguely familiar with certain aspects of the music which have come to stereotypically define the genre. They seem to understand that metal typically has heavy-handed, mythical themes in the lyrics and artwork. Somewhere along the line, they might have heard that the guitars should play repetitive chord and note patterns known as riffs, and that the vocals should be done in some sort of high-pitched register. Yet when the band puts into practice these elements which have seemingly thus far only been described to them, the results sound inescapably awry, like a deaf person attempting to replicate verbal speech; they make noises sure, but it seems that they are uncertain of the noises which they are making. I simply can't imagine that anybody who regularly listens (or has listened) to metal, especially the type of polished NWBHM/power metal the band seems to vaguely draw on here, would knowingly or intentionally create an album that sounded like this. Everything is just…so off!" - Hunter Brawer, Satan Stole My Teddy Bear

Of course, this just had to be a concept album about a holy war fought in the distant future between a race of "armed monsters" and an army of robots, narrated by what seems to be a throat cancer patient, talking through one of those neck-hole vocoder contraptions. And how about the anonymous singer? His Bruce Dickinson imitation is spot on, aside from the fact that Bruce Dickinson can sing really, really well and this guy really, really can't. Too much doodoo for one hand to hold.

Fully experience the horror HERE

Lord Asmodeus - "Prayers to Satan" cassette (1990)

2010-06-16T11:51:00.000-07:00

From the Hell that is Monroeville, Ohio comes Lord Asmodeus with 13 minutes of bizarre spoken word and eerie organ music. This tape is exactly what the title says it is - some guy reciting prayers to Satan with a voice so heavily manipulated by effects pedals that you can barely understand half of what he's saying between interjections of horror movie organ. Back in the day, this was one of a myriad of cassette demos available through the ads in Metal Maniacs. Five dollars got you the tape, while an additional ten bucks bought you a membership in Asmodeus' "coven." Having been a teenager from a small town in Indiana during the Great Satan Scare of the 1980's, I probably find this a lot more entertaining than a lot of you might, but is is a genuinely atmospheric listen and an intriguing head-scratcher no matter where you're from. I'll bet Paul Ledley of Havohej might be a fan, since this tape is a definite forerunner of his notorious Profantica video, and of his own, heavily distorted anti-Christian live rants.

I originally encountered this through an item at Cosmic Hearse, where you actually hear the cassette in its blackhearted entirety.

Ronnie James Dio July 10, 1942 – May 16, 2010

2010-06-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

I think this is about as admirable a mission statement as I have ever heard:

"Ronnie James Dio (July 10, 1942 – May 16, 2010) was an American heavy metal vocalist and songwriter of Italian descent. He performed with, amongst others, Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Heaven & Hell, and his own band Dio. Other musical projects include the collective fundraiser Hear 'n Aid. He was widely hailed as one of the most powerful singers in heavy metal, renowned for his consistently powerful voice and for popularizing the 'devil horns' hand gesture in metal culture. Prior to his death, he was collaborating on a project with former Black Sabbath bandmates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Vinny Appice, under the moniker Heaven & Hell, whose first studio album, The Devil You Know, was released on April 28, 2009. Dio died of stomach cancer on May 16, 2010. One of the last songs he had a chance to record was titled 'Metal Will Never Die." - Wikipedia -

WFMU takes a surprisingly uncondescending (for them) look at Dio's early recordings, with Mp3 files, HERE.

A more complete overview of Dio's fledgling years as a rock and roller can be found HERE.

Ithica, New York's I100 FM' dedicated an episode of its "Homemade Jam" program to Dio, who originally hailed from central New York State. A podcast of the tribute show can be found HERE.

Albert Ayler Strikes Again

2010-02-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

...and Speaking of UFOs...

2010-02-04T10:04:00.000-08:00

Most rock fans who remember the 70's band, UFO, recall the "classic" line-up of guitarist Michael Schenker , singer Phil Mogg, bassist Pete Way and drummer Andy Parker. It was the original line-up, however, featuring guitarist Mick Bolton, that cut the real dayglow, psychedelic, space rock mustard. While later, better-known, incarnations of the group plied the more commercially viable waters of an incrementally more rote take on sub-Zeppelin stoner boogie (at least after Phenomenon, any way,) the original group was a lot heavier, more stoned and more than passingly aware of the cosmiche Krautrock revolution of their day. While no great success in Europe or the States, the original UFO was huge in Japan, and it's easy to imagine that asian contemporaries such as the Flower Travellin' Band might have been as influenced by early UFO as I believe UFO to have been inspired by the FTB and similar Japanese groups.

Faust Live at WFMU Fest

2010-02-04T08:47:00.000-08:00

Back in October, Krautrock Legends Faust played the WFMU Fest in Brooklyn. WFMU has just posted the entire show in MP3 format:

HERE

Aesthetics and Ufology

2010-01-21T09:45:00.000-08:00

I was going through some "back issues" of Blastitude, the invaluable online zine of underground music and radical occulture, when I came across this article on "Aesthetics and Ufology." In the piece, Mike Kelley writes about the symbolic importance of UFO mythology:

"...there is an almost utopian fixation with the hi-tech image of the flying saucer, but this is paired with an alien being of monstrous form, or other abject elements. One of the most consistent features of ufology is this meeting of hi-tech fetishism and symbolic body loathing. This aspect of it differentiates the concerns of ufology from a more general cultural fascination with robotics. In most modern art histories, the aesthetics of technical perfection and those that relate to images of the deformed body have been set in counter-opposition. However, in ufology these two aesthetics are set side by side in a less clear relationship...The clean, orderly, and machinic nature of the UFO now acts as a foil for the menacing, unformed, beings that it contains."

Read the rest HERE

"Cults and Cosmic Consciousness"

2010-01-20T09:51:00.000-08:00

I was recently reading my Camille Paglia, like a good little boy, when I found a 2003 article from Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics called "Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960's." The article is an expanded version of a lecture Dr. Paglia delivered at Yale in 2002, concerning the spiritual aspects of the sixties' revolution. Paglia contends that, while the counterculture of the 1960's was concerned with politics, reform and social justice, it was perhaps more concerned with a "phantasmagoric religious vision" constructed from scraps of Eastern mysticism, the "pagan pantheism" of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the psychedelic experience. While it is the politics of the time we now emphasize, Paglia writes, it is the more "trippy," even embarrassingly loopy, aspects of the hippie culture that constitute its real cultural legacy, providing the utopian underpinning for such progressive political crusades as the Equal Rights Movement, Environmentalism and the Sexual Revolution.

"Political expression on the Left in the American sixties was split. Radical activists such as Students for a Democratic Society (1960-68) drew their ideology from Marxism, with its explicit atheism. But demonstrations with a large hippie contingent often mixed politics with occultism-magic and witchcraft along with costumes and symbolism drawn from Native American religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. For example, at the mammoth antiwar protest near Washington, DC, in October 1967, Yippies performed a mock-exorcism to levitate the Pentagon and cast out its demons. Not since early nineteenth-century Romanticism had there been such a strange mix of revolutionary politics with ecstatic nature-worship and sex-charged self-transformation."

Fine reading, and of interest here, especially the short but thought-provoking section entitled "Hinduism and 1960's Music."

Read the article HERE

2010-01-20T07:04:00.001-08:00

Video Podcast #2: 60's Garage Madness

2010-01-15T09:24:00.000-08:00

Video Podcast #2 rocks a lot harder than VP #1 did, but hell - even Neil Diamond would be Black Metal alongside some of the candyass shit I compiled last time 'round. This edition, we set the dial on the Waybackmobile to "pageboy" for a celebration of the original 60's garage sound - The Seeds, Red Crayola, The Music Machine, the Monks and other maulers from the golden age of Suburban rock and roll.

Watch Video Podcast #2 HERE

Video Podcast #1: Pure Pop for Then People

2010-01-05T06:38:00.000-08:00

Hello, and Happy New Year!

What better way to celebrate the onset of a new decade than to spend an hour or so reminiscing about how much better pop music was 45 years ago. Here's a compilation of Youtube videos I've compiled, featuring old footage of Twinkle, the Walker Brothers, Harry Belafonte, Kyu Sakamoto, the Shangri La's, Neil Sedaka, Francoise Hardy, Martin Denny, and a host of other vintage favorites you can ask your mom about next time you drop off your laundry. My will to write about music wains as my desire to share it with others intensifies, so look for a lot more streaming media / podcasts/ etc. in the near future.

Watch Video Podcast #1 HERE

I Feel Fantastic

2009-11-24T05:18:00.000-08:00

"What you are about to watch is a mysterious video. It's origin is attributed variously, and almost certainly spuriously, to various abstract artists or surrealists. The truth is that what we are seeing, and what we perceive to be strange and disturbing, is actually beauty to it's creator.
Perhaps what we are viewing is the work of a modern Pygmalion. To him, her toneless voice, the paleness of her skin and the comparative vibrancy of her lips may indeed be the very embodiment of a perfect woman...
Consider the mind-scape of the creator. In whose mind does this appear beautiful? In whose mind is this pure, near worshipful? Are we missing out on his perspective?

"Who are we to be afraid or to judge them? He may well love her fully, perhaps more fully than any of us could ever hope to be loved. In the mind of her creator, she is a near goddess; the perfect representation, not just of femininity, but the peak of human potential. A perfectly satisfactory being.

"How does that kind of unconditional love feel?

"Well, how does she feel?

"Fantastic." -Creepyblog

The Stooges

2009-11-20T11:26:00.000-08:00

MP3 files ripped from Out-of-Print Stooges singles and other sundry outtakes and alternate versions HERE

2009-11-20T08:50:00.001-08:00

2009-11-20T08:41:00.001-08:00

"...and then the end will come..."

2009-11-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

Here's an article from WFMU's Beware the Blog, posted just last night, detailing a surreal and enigmatic record-hunter find. Imagine that you are hiking way out in the desert, miles from nowhere, when you come across an anonymous, self-produced CDR of mysterious psychedelic music, just laying there on the ground:

"Usually when I find CD-rs out in the world, they've been tossed out of car windows or left on the counters of stupid hipster coffeeshops. The last place I ever expected to find an unlabeled CD-r filled with music would be in the middle of the fucking desert. But nearly two years ago I was hiking in Joshua Tree and I came across a completely surreal sight: an old-school 5 1/4" computer floppy disk. It appeared to have been tossed casually near the side of the trail I was on, housed in a simple plastic baggie. I reached into the bag and pulled out the floppy disc. I noticed that the magnetic tape inside the plastic case had been replaced by a recordable compact disc. The disc had a message scrawled on it which read, "A silvery female voice breaking through onto the airband sang in German, 'We are from another world, but you have cut us out.'" I don't believe in ghosts or extraterrestrials or anything, but standing in the middle of nowhere reading that line was enough to send me into a miniature freak out. What's more, a folded-up piece of paper was also buried inside the plastic cover. A treasure map. Browned edges and everything. It featured a pirate ship (?), a series of footsteps through mountains and palm trees (?), one red X, and ten blue X's. One of of the X's appeard to be floating in the middle of a body of water.

"Whoa.

"I listened to the recording on my drive back to LA that night. It was indescribably weird. The dedication to the floppy disk case, chicken scratch message, and treasure map implied that someone with way too much time on his or her hands crafted it. The insanity of the recording -- with one or two kind of pretty moments -- mirrored the obsessively constructed feel of the package. I didn't know if I was listening to the work of a mad genius or a deranged psychopath. The sounds are a combination of heavily processed human voices and schizophrenic space music. The 11 tracks are very short, with only four "tunes" lasting longer than three minutes. Most are in the thirty-second to two-minute range in length. I wouldn't call it "rock," but it's guitar-centric. I also wouldn't say that it is very good, but it made for an interesting listen.

"When I got home I popped the CD into my computer. I thought that maybe in this age of iTunes and CDDB maybe my computer would recognize the content of the disk. All that came up in iTunes was a series of songs names. In place of artist and title was "???". The song titles made no sense to me at all. The final track is a 14-minute long jam in E called "Matthew 24:14". Google tells me that that bible verse says: 'And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come...' "

Read the rest of the article, and hear the CD HERE

The Crucifucks

2009-11-18T09:32:00.000-08:00

Growing up in Southern Indiana, I listened to a lot of punk rock, but the only band I think I really connected with on a certain level were the Crucifucks. There were certainly bands I liked a lot better in those days, but I always felt like, more than Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys or even Minor Threat, the Crucifucks were the guys who were the most similar to my gawky, 15-year-old self. I was a geeky, unfashionable kid from Nowhere, Indiana, and they were a bunch of nerdy guys with bad hair from Nowhere, Michigan. I was a child of the middle class too young to understand half of what the Dead Kennedys were saying and too apathetic to care. The Crucifucks' juvenile, directionless guerilla war on everybody and everything, however - the kind of war I wished I had the balls to wage but didn't - transcended rational politics. Ian Mackaye and the straight edge crowd spoke in rational terms about a level-headed life philosophy that seemed dull and puritanical to me at the time. Doc Dart, the Crucifucks' "singer," threw temper tantrums on record not too far removed those I myself threw when my dad made me get my hair cut. Everybody who I played the record for agreed that, while the band was OK, Doc Dart had a horrible voice, and what the fuck was he so angry about? Jello was mad at Reagan, Mackaye was mad at drugs, and Rollins was mad at himself - but what was this guy's deal? "Democracy Breeds Bad Taste?" "Hinkley Had A Vision?" No one understood the Crucifucks, anymore than anyone understood me. We were all frustrated and inhibited and nobody got it.

"(The Crucifucks')1984 debut album is a pinnacle of outraged and outrageous glee, a record that can be best described as unreasonable. The album’s notoriety belongs to its vocalist. Doc’s voice is so far beyond the pale of normal performance that it defies comparison. He squeals through several words at once, dripping with derision, at times channeling the quavering drama that Jello brought to his songs, at other points sounding like Roger Rabbit. In “You Give Me the Creeps,” Doc bleats, “Give me your money! I don’t have to make it!” In “Hinckley Had a Vision,” he bawls, “I wanna take the president”—here the band drops out and he continues a cappella—“chop off his head, and mail it to them in a garbage baaaaaaaaaag!” This last word is as stretched out as the squall of a child having a meltdown in a toy store (perhaps because this act was expressed as desire, not an intent, Doc never received Secret Service attention). - Sam McPheeters

"I was just so saturated with hate...it was glimmering all over me." -Doc Dart

Doc Dart, now in his fifties, is a diagnosed schizophrenic who lives in a boarded-up house in Lansing, Michigan. Years ago, he changed his name to the number 26 and began intimating that he is the second coming of Christ. He boarded the house up himself when it became a target for vandalism by neighbors. Many of them were enraged over signs he began placing in his front yard the week of the 9-11 attacks; signs which bore such slogans as “PATRIOTISM REFLECTS A SECRET WISH TO BE SODOMIZED," "NO CHOICE, ABORTION NOW, INFANTICIDE NOW,” and “U.S. TROOPS TERRORIZE AS COWARDS FROM THE SKIES. THEY SHOULD BE IN BODY BAGS.” " I was just in seventh heaven watching people get so worked up," 26 told Sam McPheeters in an article posted on Viceland.com. "Because that was my purpose in life.”

Hear the Crucifucks HERE

Read Sam McPheeters' fascinating, heartbreaking look at the life and times of Doc Corbin Dart, The Troublemaker HERE

Wikipedia page for The Crucifucks HERE

Hello! My Name is Albert Ayler.

2009-11-18T05:21:00.000-08:00

Introducing Albert Ayler, the Husky / Greyhound Bus mix who entered our home and hearts on Easter, 2009. He's a lot bigger now than he was when this picture was taken during his first visit to the vet.

Slasher Risk, Live on WFMU

2009-11-09T07:50:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know I'm running this Halloween / Scary music thing into the ground, but so much great music hit the airwaves and the net, it's taking me a long time to work my way through all of it. Whatever - Slasher Risk are a New york duo comprised of Andy and Sara, who create music that falls somewhere between abstract psychedelia and horror soundtrack noise improv. Creepy stuff..

Here's an MP3, and a video of the pair's recent performance, just before Halloween, on WFMU's My Castle of Quiet:

William Berger, who hosts "Castle of Quiet," describes Slasher Risk's music thusly:

"Point is, this relatively young band, a duo, doesn't seem to yet realize how good they are, or how amazing they're going to be in just a short while. That's a fine thing, because it means they're only doing what must be done—what comes naturally. And what comes naturally is dynamic improvised music, with one limb occasionally stuck in something that remembers rock, but just as often or more so, dances in the air above the unimaginable maw of the Lovecraftian abyss. Frightening to some, but not to Andy or Sara, who do it seemingly just because it's their thing."

Letterman in the 80's

2009-11-05T05:31:00.000-08:00

Here's a couple of music-related clips from David Letterman episodes that aired during the 1980's. The Nina Hagen interview, from 1985, is only cool because it's Nina Hagen being interviewed. I can remember watching the Eurythmics clip as a kid when it first aired in 1989, and thinking at the time that it was one of the most touching musical moments I had ever seen on network television. I had long been a casual fan of the Eurythmics, but it was this performance that really made me realize what a tremendous artist Annie Lennox was, and still is.

Salvador Dali: "L' Apotheose Du Dollar"

2009-11-03T09:18:00.000-08:00

A one-sided flexidisc 7”, released in 1971, under the auspices of a French bank. Dali reads his poetry, then some ad guy for the bank gives his PR spiel.

HERE

Halloween Link Dump

2009-11-01T17:48:00.000-08:00

("Big Church," is the scariest song I didn't end up working into my Halloween Show - from the "Monoliths and Dimensions" LP)

Here's some of the best Podcasts / Radio shows and blog posted MP3's I heard this Halloween season. Download 'em and save them for next year:

DJ Bat Guano's 2008 Halloween Special on WIDR FM in Kalamazoo was easily the best Halloween show I acquired this year

The Halloween Edition of "Fool's Paradise" on WFMU was particularly boss this year as well

The Headbangers Ball Podcast, from MTV.com presents an interview with Satan's own tennis player, King Diamond

Here's a link to an entire evening of programing from Halloween night, 1973 on WKBW

Playlist for the Etched in Black Halloween Show, 2009

2009-11-01T09:37:00.000-08:00

Special thanks to Radio Free New Albany for generously parting with over three hours of commercial free airtime to make this program possible, and for DJ Leftbehind and DJ Blastbeast for production assistance.

Click each title for audio files, video, or info.

Moevot - Introduction
A Word of Caution
The Misfits - "Horror Business"
Ed Kemper Interview
Judas Priest - "The Ripper"
Bob Larson and Chad - "Heaven and Earth Give Praise to Satan"
The Ramones - "I Don't Wanna Go in the Basement"
A. A. Allen - "Crying Demons (excerpt")
Eagles of Death Metal - "Flames Go Higher"
Louise Hebner - "Orgies as a Tool of Witchcraft"
The Debris - "Leisurely Waiting
Pink Floyd - "Lucifer Sam"
Jim Burgett - "Jekyll and Hyde"
Vincent Price - "To Make a Witch Pockmarked"
The Sonics - "The Witch"
The Bees - "Voices Green and Purple"
The Who - "Boris the Spider"
The Residents - "Hello Skinny"
Gershon Kingsley - "Night Falls"
The Cramps - "Sheena's in a Goth Gang"
Wolf Eyes - "Lake of Roaches
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - "Red Right Hand"
Wunchell's Donut House - "Hear the Monsters"
Rith White - "Litanies of Satan"
Vic Mizzy - "The Munsters"
The Moonrays - "Mysterioso"
Guiseppi Tartini - "The Devil's Trill"
Aleister Crowley - "The Pentagram"
Anton Zsandor Lavey - "Satan Takes a Holiday"
John Todd - "David Crosby, Agent of Satan"
Windy Weber - "Destroyed (excerpt")
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer - "Dried Up Corpse"
Anonymous Church Lady - "Jesus and I Go to Hell
Tobe Hooper and Wayne Bell - "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Intro)
"What Happens When Music is Evil"
Hexentanz - "Mark of the Witch"
Martha Wentworth - "Devil Octopus"
Coven - "The Black Mass"
Little Marcy - "Devil Go Away"
Burzum - "Channeling the Power of Souls into a New God
Rev. Michael Mills - "Hidden and Satanic Messages in Rock Music
Gnaw Their Tongues - "White Skin"
Pyha - "Hyungga Is A Tangled Story Part 3"

Don Bradshaw-Leather - The Distance Between Us (Distance, 1972)

2009-06-22T07:15:00.000-07:00

This classic is the kind of album this blog was created to showcase! An almost completely unknown, private press, double album with bizarre cover art and avant - strangeoid music that doesn't let up. Looking for intense, rumbling piano compositions, accented with long interludes of quasi-tribal drumming, barely audible vocals and spooky mellotron, recorded in glorious, boom-box quality lo-fi? Here you go, brother - and how!

Don Bradshaw-Leather is either the dubiously adjusted individual on the cover (most likely,) or (allegedly) the collective nom de plume of some sort of occult group. Whatever the case, there is precious little info out there. Although the artist presently has his (their?) own myspace page, it's not really clear that anyone actually involved in the recording of this masterpiece has anything to do with that page, There is a longstanding rumor that Bradshaw was actually a member of British prog rock band Barclay James Harvest, but this is unlikey. Don Bradshaw-Leather seems lost to the ages.

Even if Bradshaw-Leather himself were not such an enigma, this album would still be the stuff of legend, based on its musical merits, alone. Obtuse and demanding from the outset, the album starts off in full-on, Cecil Taylor, mathematical piano destruction mode and maintains that insane level of intensity for four entire LP sides. There are no ballads, there are barely any calm interludes at all - only four sides of tense, difficult music. Imagine a black metal piano bar in Hell and you're beginning to grasp the Don Bradshaw-Leather aesthetic.

I like to think that "The Distance Between Us, Part 1," an instrumental that takes up all of side one, tells the story of Pencil Pete, an avant garde pianist made out of graphite who finds himself beset by angry Zulus. The enraged warriors interrupt Pete's playing to rattle their spears and beat their war drums while their witchdoctor tries to intimidate Pencil Pete with his spooky mellotron playing. The wizard's sinister gambit pays off and Pete flees into the woods with the Zulus at his heels. When all seems lost, Jon Lord from Deep Purple comes to the rescue, using his mighty Hammond organ riffs to deflect native spears the same way Ted Nugent's guitar solo deflected bullets in that one Damn Yankees video. Pete reclaims his piano and together, he and Jon Lord (or is it Vincent Crane from Atomic Rooster?) beat the Zulus back and the day is saved.

Side 2, the equally long,equally jarring "The Distance Between Us Part 2" could be incidental music from the original, 1928 version of "Cannibal Holocaust."

After the first two sides, sides three and four may seem a bit of a let down, as the music becomes a little monochromatic and Bradshaw-Leather's unwillingness to lighten up becomes very wearingly. Still, this is an impressive and accomplished album, with well executed modern compositions that create an unbelievable degree of tension over a very long haul, while providing the listener with something new each time the needle is dropped.

Info, complete album graphics and download at http://direct-waves.blogspot.com/2007/03/don-bradshaw-leather-distance-between.html

Richard and Mimi Farina

2009-05-11T09:47:00.000-07:00

Here are some clips of Richard and Mimi Farina from Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest television program, circa 1965 / 66. I thought it might be fun for the kids to get this rare glimpse of what a real counterculture / protest movement looked and sounded like.

A dashing, bohemian novelist and the pretty, teen-aged sister of Joan Baez, the Farinas cut a particularly romantic figure among the folkies of their day. The three albums they recorded for Vanguard, Celebration for a Gray Day, Reflections in a Crystal Wind and Memories were hardly the biggest sellers during the folk boom, but have emerged as some of the most interesting releases of that era. Whereas most of the folk-singers of the 1960's operated in the Joan Baez / early-Dylan / Kingston Trio mold - stressing the voice over its instrumental accompaniment - The Farinas emphasized their playing as much as their singing. Building nearly raga-like acoustic constructs around the ringing of Richard's Dulcimer, the two, often with outside accompaniment from piano, second guitar or drums, created music that sits quite nicely alongside the similar, if more accomplished, work of John Fahey, Robbie Basho and Davey Graham, as the above instrumental clip shows. They also weren't afraid of a little rock 'n' roll, and their joyous experiments with electric arrangements, such as the studio version of "House Un-American Activity Blues," stand with the best of Simon and Garfunkle, or even Country Joe and the Fish.

Sadly, Richard was killed in a motorcycle accident not too long after this program was aired.

9 Beet Stretch

2009-05-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

"9 Beet Stretch, by Scandinavian sound artist Leif Inge, is a massive soundscape made of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The source recording, a Naxos recording conducted by Béla Drahos with the Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia and Chorus (Naxos 8.553478), was stretched digitally to a duration of 24 hours with no distortion or pitch shifting. The work is presented as a 24-hour-long sound installation/electroacoustic concert."

Available as as 24/7, continuous webcast HERE

Opal

2009-05-07T08:48:00.001-07:00

Of all the neo-psychedelic bands of the 1980's, none were more genuinely transportational than the amazing Opal. Formed by the Rain Parade's David Roback and Kendra Smith of the Dream Syndicate, the group was originally called Clay Allison. They released 2 EPs and one album - 1987's Happy Nightmare, Baby LP on SST - before Smith's sudden, nasty departure put the skids on the group's first major tour.

When I first posted this, there was a wealth of Opal video on Youtube. Most of it has since been pulled due to copyright infringement. Here's an old clip, however, from an 80's video show with Roback introducing the official SST Video for the group's single "Happy Nightmare, Baby." The giggly schoolgirl to Roback's left is his then girlfriend, Hope Sandoval, who had just replaced Kendra Smith as vocalist. Under Roback's direction, Sandoval would increasingly become the focus of Opal's public persona until, by 1989, Opal had coalesced around her into a new group, Mazzy Star.

THX 1138

2009-05-07T08:44:00.001-07:00

This is not the official soundtrack composed by Lalo Schifrin. It is instead an audio distillation of the film's ambient soundworld made available as two CD's by Weil of of Weil's Time Capsule (in an Electric Storm).

"THX 1138 features a powerful demonstration of sound design, produced by 'sound montage' man Walter Murch. What Lucas and Murch created here would become the foundation upon which Star Wars’ soundscape would eventually be built. The script of the film sounds like the kind of voices that must haunt Radiohead’s lead singer Thom Yorke; it’s made up of voices transmitting through this city’s security system, troubling dialogues about manipulation and control." - Jeffrey Overstreet

"I think a strong case can be made for THX's soundbed being among the most innovative in film history." - Alexandra DuPont

"I recorded the sound of this first movie of George Lucas on my tape recorder with a microphone near the tv speaker when it was broadcasted on television, around 1973 I think.I listened to this beautiful futuristic soundscape again and again. Till my tape recorder broke and was replaced by a cassette deck.

"Some years ago THX 1138 came out on dvd, and it had a special feature: the soundtrack without the actors voices. A pity was, that also the voices of the electrogod and robocops were removed, which were essential for the atmosphere to me.
So I made my own mix where I brought the voices of the cops and godmachine back. I divided this mix more or less into the chapters of the movie." - Weil

HERE

Lux Interior 1946-2009

2009-02-12T07:44:00.000-08:00

This one really, really hurts. When one considers the cultural impact of the Cramps as performers and archivists of fifties-sixties trash/rock culture, it becomes clear that Lux was among one of the most influential record collectors of all time. As a performer, Lux was every bit as great as any of the rockabilly/garage icons he idolized. An unfathomable loss.

Here's a link to a great interview with Lux and Ivy, along with 8 volumes of the pair's favorite old records in MP3 format

Morton Subotnick - "Sidewinder" (1971)

2009-01-12T07:00:00.001-08:00

Morton Subotnick was one of the pioneers of electronic music. Along with Walter Carlos, Subotnick was instrumental in taking early electronica out of the academic milieu and into the mass market, largely through the popularity of his 1967 album, Silver Apples of the Moon. That LP, which was released on Nonesuch, was the first electronic composition commissioned by a record company. Nonesuch, which began as a classical label, never flinched at releasing the most cutting-edge experimental sounds, thus becoming one of the earliest labels to release an extensive catalogue of electronic music.

Sidewinder, Subotnick's 1971 LP, has long been a sentimental favorite of mine. It was the first album of totally electronic music I ever purchased. I found it at a Public Library book sale, and it really blew my 13-year-old mind in the direction of such musical gems as the Walter Carlos' Bach albums, some early Isao Tomita (Snowflakes are Dancing remains a favorite,) and any of the wilder sounds I could score on the Nonesuch and Philips labels. The early 80's were a golden time to discover such music, since a lot of the more formless, ambient and even noisy experimental electronic albums seemed to generally find their way into library record collections. Even a small town kid from nowhere Indiana, such as myself, could borrow pristine copies of Charles Wuorinen's Time's Encomium and George Crumb's Earth's Magnetic Fields.

The Monks on Beat Club

2009-01-06T11:08:00.000-08:00

Here are some clips of the Monks performing on German TV program, "Beat Club," sometime during the early 1960's. The Monks were a group of American servicemen stationed in Germany who formed their own garage band. They chose the tonsured monk hair cut when military regulations forbade them to grow their hair below their collars. The group recorded one legendary album and a few singles, none of which were released in the US at the time, then disbanded. All their recordings are currently available on CD, and vinyl.

For further Information, here is an NPR feature on the Monks, from a recent episode of the show, Fresh Air:

Tony Conrad

2008-12-09T11:25:00.001-08:00

Tony Conrad and Faust, Outside the Dream Syndicate, 1973. CLICK HERE

Christmas Records, Part One

2008-12-09T10:31:00.000-08:00

HERE are some Christmas albums, made available in MP3 format by WFMU last year.

Coltrane in Germany, 1961

2008-12-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

John Coltrane, live on TV from Baden-Baden, Germany, 1961:

A John Waters Christmas

2008-12-09T10:13:00.000-08:00

Here's an interview with John Waters, originally broadcast on NPR's Fresh Air on December 14, 2004. Waters, known for making "art from sleaze", had just released a new CD for the season, A John Waters Christmas. It includes such songs as "Here Comes Fatty Claus," "Little Mary Christmas," and "Santa Claus is a Black Man." Waters spins some records and converses with Terry Gross HERE

The Future of Jazz

2008-12-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

Here's an episode of Billy Taylor's 1958 TV show, "The Subject is Jazz." George Russell is interviewed regarding the future of jazz and Bill Evans plays along with a bandstand full of notables, including a young Doc Severinsen.

"Hunting for Old Records" by R. Crumb

2008-11-24T07:18:00.001-08:00

A few people have e-mailed me top ask about the R. Crumb comic I'm using as my site header this month. It's an excerpt from a piece Crumb inked for the Oxford American for one of its "Southern Music" issues. You can view the entire story HERE

Roy Harper - "Stormcock" LP (1971)

2008-11-18T05:35:00.000-08:00

If, like most folks, you only know Roy Harper from the Zeppelin song, "Hats Off to Harper," or from his cameo on Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar," you really owe it to yourself to check out some of his proper solo work. A favorite album of mine has been 1971's Stormcock,one of the all-time great "4-in-the-morning" LP's. Here are some excerpts from Side 2:

"One Man Rock 'N' Roll Band"

Don't let the subdued atmosphere of Stormcock's largely acoustic sonic palette fool you. Harper is one of the great madmen of rock 'n' roll. Feigning insanity as a teenager to win a discharge from the RAF, Harper went so far as to submit to Electroconvulsive therapy, just to get out of the military. He once contracted Anthrax by kissing an infected sheep on stage. In another incident, at the famed Glastenbury Festival, Harper punched Ginger Baker in the stomach on stage for setting his drums up while Harper was performing. Ever at odds with his record company, Harvest, any given note on any of Harper's LPs might be the result of some rangle with the label bosses to keep them out of his way and allow him to record his music the way he wished. I can't imagine, for instance that the record company was entirely comfortable with Stormcock, an LP of complex acoustic music with only four long songs on it by a less-than-hit artist with a strong contrary streak and a lyrical axe to grind against religion, the armed forces and a lot of other things sure to raise the hackles of much of his perspective audience.

"Me and My Woman (Part 1")

Harper achieves that atmospheric 12-string sound by running his acoustic through a wah-wah pedal. The six string guitar on these tracks is played by Harper's pal, S. Flavious Mercurius, aka Jimmy Page.

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T07:22:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween!!! The wonderful "Pet's Playin' Her Old Platters..." record blog has posted a fine collection of 72 Halloween-themed MP3's. The set includes a lot of great old jazz sides, novelty records and rock 'n' roll. Check it out HERE

KISS on the Paul Lynde Halloween Special, 1976

2008-10-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

SHINDIG! Halloween Special (1965)

2008-10-29T12:20:00.000-07:00

The October, 1965 Shindig! Halloween Special, with special guest, Boris Karloff:

Penderecki: "De Natura Sonoris No. 1"

2008-10-29T12:08:00.001-07:00

Those of you who are not familiar with the work of the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, will recognize this 1972 recording as that which Stanley Kubrick used to such chilling effect in his film, The Shining. Those who are familiar will recognize this as the definitive recording of the 1966 masterwork, conducted by the composer himself, at the helm of the Polish Radio Orchestra.

Thanks to Andy for turning me on to both Penderecki, and this particular recording.

The Greatest Horror Movie Themes of All Time

2008-10-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

Youtube user "100Horrorfilms" has posted a collection of videos celebrating 15 of his favorite Horror Film Themes. Included are some old favorites:

Krzysztof Komeda's "Lullabye" from Rosemary's Baby...

...and Jerry goldsmith's "Avi Satani" from The Omen

...along with one of the most out-of-place pieces to ever serve as a horror theme - "The Theme From Cannibal Holocaust"

For the entire list and all the videos, click HERE.

Dry Bones

2008-10-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

Here's the Lennon Sisters with more Halloween fun, from the Lawrence Welk Show:

Special Thanks to Andy, who found this video.

Have a Safe and Happy Black Metal Halloween Part 1

2008-10-29T09:24:00.001-07:00

Endless Dismal Moan - "Talking Mind" (R.I.P. Chaos9!)

Dissection - "Where Dead Angels Lie"

Xasthur - "Prison of Mirrors"

Moëvöt-Zurghtapre - "Chant d'Eternité I"

Okay, Okay

2008-10-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

This is as political as I plan to get. The faces are what make this:

Robbie the Werewolf

2008-10-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

Here's the famous Robbie the Werewolf album, At The Waleback. More a novelty than a record you're going to want to listen to very often, but here you go...

HERE

Halloween Spooktacular Part 3

2008-10-29T08:17:00.000-07:00

Here's a horror music mix assembled by WFMU for their 2001 "Marathon." It was posted to their block in 2005, and was rebroadcast for Halloween 2007. The comp runs for 70 minutes, and includes music by Krzysztof Komeda, Wojciech Kilar, Krzysztof Penderecki, Jaap Blonk, Albanian Men's Choir, John Cale, Dick Jacobs Orchestra, Jerry Goldsmith, Theatre of Tragedy, Barnabas Collins, Endvra, Elend, Coven, Daniel Licht and others.

Click HERE if you dare!!!

Halloween Spooktacular Part 2: "PANIC - The Son of Shock" LP (1959)

2008-10-29T08:06:00.001-07:00

The second in a series of three albums by the Creed Taylor Orchestra, featuring horror-themed music by composer Kenyon Hopkins. tense orchestral music mixed with horror sound effects and actors to create audio short stories of intense creepiness. So far, this is the only one I've been able to score an actual vinyl copy of.

Check out all three LPS - Shock (1958) Panic (1959) and Nightmare (1962) at Scar Stuff

Halloween Spooktacular Part 1

2008-10-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

SCAR STUFF, my personal favorite spot on the web for anything Halloween, is currently offering almost one hundred Halloween records in MP3 format for your listening pleasure. Spooky music! Creepy Sound Effects! The internet's greatest treasure trove of Halloween sounds is but a click away!

Click HERE - and be sure to check out all the other, non-musical Halloween goodies on Scar Stuff.

Pandemonium - Ville Ouverte LP (1975)

2008-10-29T07:35:00.000-07:00

More creepy sounds from the Mutant Sounds blog. This is one of the scariest records I own, heavy with atmosphere and dread. Two long tracks that come across like the soundtrack from some unreleased Italian zombie movie. The opening passage, in particular puts me in mind of music they might play as the camera pans over some ruined metropolis, infested with sleepwalking hordes of the undead.

Here

Ruth White - Flowers of Evil LP (1969)

2008-10-29T07:28:00.000-07:00

Here's some spooky stuff for Halloween.

Here

"YOU WILD, MAN...WILD!!!"

2008-10-28T11:48:00.000-07:00

VENOM LIVE: PART ONE

No, not a bootleg album of Venom's music, but a very funny novelty single that came out several years ago on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label. In 1987, Venom played a show with Black Flag in Trenton New Jersey and the late Joe Cole, then a Black Flag roadie, taped the show. He then edited a copy of the tape to extract all the music and leave only Venom frontman Conrad, "Kronos" Lant's inane between-song banter. “That record is the jewel in my record production crown," says Moore. "It captured something that was completely mind-bending...

More info and and MP3 of the entire record HERE

The Toggery Five

2008-10-09T11:36:00.000-07:00

A great British pop record from 1965. I've long been familiar with the Rolling Stones' version of "I'd Much Rather Be With the Boys" from Metamorphosis, but I'd never heard the Toggery Five version until now.

Punks Not Punk

2008-10-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

Five Great Punk Rock Songs Found on Other Than Stereotypically Punk Rock Albums

1. "Sheer Heart Attack" - QUEEN (News of the World LP)

2. "I Want To Disappear" -Marilyn Manson (Mechanical Animals LP)

3. "He's Turning Blue" - Carpathian Forest ("He's Turning Blue" b/w "The Troll" 7")

4. "Helter Skelter" - The Beatles (The Beatles dbl-LP)

5."Why?" - Yoko Ono (Plastic Ono Band LP)

Richard Wright 1943 - 2008

2008-09-29T09:24:00.000-07:00

La Monte Young - The Black Record

2008-09-29T09:08:00.001-07:00

Click Here

Urban Sax

2008-09-29T07:39:00.001-07:00

Urban sax is a French unit assembled by composer/architect and artist Gilbert Artman. From the group's origins as an aggregate of eight saxophonists assembled for a classical music festival in 1973, Urban Sax has expanded over the years to include upwards of 52 musicians. This line up is routinely augmented, in live performance, by perhaps another 150 dancers and other performers to create a performance art environment that envelopes the audience and incorporates the natural or man-made architecture of the happening. Performers all wear post-industrial, insect-like costumes and their mere presence, descending en masse on a city block or park, dozens of horns oozing out La Monte Young-inspired dream drone music, immediately transform any familiar space into outer space Here is a video of Urban Sax performing in Japan:

Urban Sax appears on the famous Nurse With Wound list of avant garde musicians, and the group has recorded several albums which apparently float in and out of print. Their 1976 debut album on Celluloid Records, is a classic which shouldn't be all that hard to find, or all that expensive. Although the band's official site suggests it's OOP, I scored a copy just yesterday at a record fair in Indiana for $10.

Here's more on Urban Sax (with MP3 Audio) at WFMU's "Beware the Blog"

Jerry Wexler 1917 - 2008

2008-08-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

"Legendary record producer Jerry Wexler, who helped shape R&B music with influential recordings of Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and other greats, and later made key recordings with the likes of Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, has died, says his co-author, David Ritz. He was 91.

Wexler earned his reputation as a music industry giant while a partner at Atlantic Records. Atlantic provided an outlet for the groundbreaking work of African-American performers in the 1950s and '60s. Later, it was a home to rock icons like Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones. He later helped Dylan win his first Grammy by producing his 1979 "Slow Train Coming" album.

Under Ertegun and Wexler, Atlantic provided an outlet for the groundbreaking work of African-American performers in the 1950s and '60s. Later, it provided a home to rock bands such as Led Zeppelin, Foreigner and Yes.

Wexler helped boost the careers of both the "King of Soul," Charles, and the "Queen of Soul," Franklin. Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke and Percy Sledge were among the other R&B greats who benefited from Wexler's deft recording touch. He also produced Dusty Springfield's classic "Dusty in Memphis," considered a masterpiece of "blue-eyed" soul.

Among the standards produced by Wexler: Franklin's "Respect," a dazzling, feminist reworking of an Otis Redding song; Sledge's deep ballad "When A Man Loves A Woman" and Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour," with a horn vamp inspired by Wexler's admittedly rhythmless dancing.

"No one really knew how to make a record when I started," he said in a profile on the rock hall's Web site. "You simply went into the studio, turned on the mike and said, `Play."

Here is an interview with Wexler, concerning his work on Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming

This is part 1 of 3. Watch Parts 2 and 3 HERE.

Isaac Hayes 1942 - 2008

2008-08-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

I don't think I've got the words to cover this one...

Recent Finds

2008-08-15T11:09:00.000-07:00

These were all bought used, in and around Louisville, Ky for $5-$7 each. Only two weeks in and August has proven to be a good month.

http://www.lennybruceofficial.com/

Cucumber Castle was the Bee Gees' Seventh LP, and the only one recorded without Robin Gibb. Robin, upset that his songwriting too often played second fiddle to his brother, Barry's, had left the group for a short-lived solo career. The album is also serves as the soundtrack to a really silly British television special, which can be viewed, in it's entirety, HERE.

American Primitive

2008-08-12T07:48:00.001-07:00

Back in December, WNYC's New Sounds aired an excellent program on John Fahey and the development of the "American Primitive" school of acoustic guitar music:

“American Primitive, the guitar-style associated with the late John Fahey, blends folk, blues, classical and Eastern music. We’ll hear a few examples on this New Sounds from Fahey’s Takoma label-mates, with new reissues from Robbie Basho and Harry Taussig, and music by guitarist and storyteller Leo Kottke as well. Also, we’ll tap into a new generation of pickers, like Shawn David McMillen, Jack Rose, and Kaki King, among others."

Click here to listen to the entire broadcast

Pink Floyd Live

2008-07-28T07:24:00.000-07:00

Friend of the blog, Lonesome Glen, just turned me on to some rare video of the Pink Floyd. Both the clips below, for example, appear to have been culled from a 1970 appearance in San Francisco:

More HERE.

Ike Turner

2008-07-18T11:48:00.000-07:00

Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm,

I'm also remiss for letting the death of another rock 'n' roll icon, Ike Turner, go unmourned on these pages. A lot of people had a lot against him - rightly so, in many cases. Still, he was still one of the greats, a rock 'n' roll originator, and one of the first great rock guitarists - a maverick experimenter whose distorted runs held great sway over the later work of Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix and beyond.

A professional musician before he was 11, Ike Turner was the songwriter, pianist, guitar hero and Svengali behind the legendary Kings of Rhythm. It was the Kings, billed as Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, who recorded "Rocket 88," the record no less an authority than Sun Records’ Sam Phillips has called the first rock record. While this might be stretching the case – "Rocket 88" was recorded in 1951, at least four years behind a number of rockin’ R&B records – its still true that the song was the first hit recorded at Sun Records, and a recording which deeply influenced the course of early rock ‘n’ roll. Sure, rock ‘n’ roll would have still happened without "Rocket 88," but it might have sounded very different.

A better eulogy than mine can be found here

Hey, Bo Diddley!

2008-07-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

Well, Bo Diddley's been gone for over a month, and I haven't publicly said goodbye in the way I suppose this blog requires that I do, so here goes:

It's a sad fact of life for us latterday lovers of classic rock 'n' roll that we will invariably outlive so many of our heroes. So it is with a heavy heart that so many of us bid farewell to Bo Diddley, who died last June. There were performers who cut more records and had more hits, but very few had the immediate impact on the basic, cellular structure of rock 'n' roll that Bo did. It was Bo who gave us that beat - the Bo Diddley beat - that fundamentally changed so much and helped lay out the direction rock would take as the decades wore on:

"His chart successes may have been fewer than those of his contemporaries, but Diddley's innovations are now inextricably woven into the fabric of today's popular music. The powerful amplification and driving rhythms he pioneered evolved into hard rock during the Sixties and continue to influence the heavy-metal bands of today. His clipped, string-scratching technique laid the foundations for funk. Jimi Hendrix picked up on his ideas. And, of course, the Bo Diddley beat itself is now probably the most famous beat in the world." - George R. White, Bo Diddley -- Living Legend.

"To use the word 'influenced' is an understatement to describe the effect of Diddley's first half-dozen singles and careening performances on rock music. In 1956, the Harlem newspaper the Amsterdam News, on first seeing Elvis Presley perform, claimed he had 'copied Bo Diddley's style to the letter;' Buddy Holly borrowed Diddley's music for his biggest hit, 'Not Fade Away' (some say Holly copped his horn-rimmed glasses from Diddley as well;) the Stones, influenced as much by Diddley's guitar tremolo and tuning as his beat, recorded versions of 'Not Fade Away' and Diddley's 'Mona' for their early albums; the Grateful Dead covered Diddley and eventually played with him; De La Soul sampled his Seventies funk recordings; and everything from the Who's "Magic Bus" to U2's "Desire" to Bruce Springsteen's "She's the One" to George Michael's "Faith" is based on the ubiquitous Diddley beat." - Neil Strauss "The Indestructible Beat of Bo Diddley," Rolling Stone, Aug, 2005

So goodbye Bo, and thanks.

MP3s: http://boogiewoogieflu.blogspot.com/2008/06/ellas-mcdaniel-1928-2008.html

The Nurse With Wound List

2008-07-18T06:39:00.001-07:00

In 1979 the industrial music trio, Nurse With Wound, included an insert in their first album, Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella. It bore an enigmatic inscription ("categories strain, crack and sometimes break, under their burden - step out of the space provided,") along with an exhaustive list of obscure European, Japanese and American bands. Some of these groups and artists, such John Cage and Alternative TV, were fairly well-known, at least to the sort of folks who would purchase a Nurse With Wound LP. The rest, however, were so obscure at thetime that not even the most obsessive collectors of the outre could decide how many of them actually existed and how many - Don Bradshaw Leather? Dadzuzu? - were just goofy band names NWW had made up themselves. Much of the list was so obscure that even some members of Nurse With Wound, such as avowed record collector Stephen Stapleton, seemed unsure whether or not every band on the list was real.

Record collectors being record collectors, the enigma of the list was too much to leave unexplored. By the 1980's, a small but dedicated group of record geeks, spread throughout the world, was pouring over the list and sharing information regarding these mysterious bands and their usually out-of-print vinyl. Yes, their really had been a band called Sperm. Sally Smmitt was actually Sally Timms of the Mekons. Plastic People of the Universe had been hippie dissidents from Prague. Slowly, a story began to emerge and records most of these collectors had never even seen with their own eyes became coveted artifacts. Who would be the first to unlock the List's mysteries and, above that, who would be the first to collect every record on it?

The advent of the internet has made it far easier to obsess over the List and share information regarding its strange roster of avant garde musicians. When it was first published, the NWW List was an intriguing puzzle to be poured over with the understanding that it would take years to find out what you could find out, and that you'd never find out everything. Now, with an ever-growing internet community dedicated to the List, it has become the starting point for a journey into experimental music even more revelatory for the ease at which so much information can be amassed on these obscure bands. Between the wealth of MP3s on the net and a currently ballooning market in CD and vinyl reissues inspired by the list, you can actually even hear most of these lost albums and forgotten artists. There is no better time to give in to the Mysteries of the List...

ONLINE GUIDES TO THE NWW LIST

A Chance Meeting With the NWW List

Here's a link to Wikipedia's page on the Nurse With Wound List

The Audion Guide to the NWW List

A Printable NWW List

BLOGS DEDICATED TO THE LIST

http://insectandindividual.blogspot.com/

http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/

WFMU's Adventures in the NWW List (lots of MP3's from otherwise unavailable list items)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Soul Deep

2008-07-18T05:58:00.000-07:00

Here's an astounding BBC documentary on the origins of funk. Part of a larger presentation called Soul Deep: The Story of Black Popular Music, this doc uses some amazing stock footage and deep, informative interviews to examine the work of funk's originators - James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Norman Whitfield et. al. - and place their music within the larger socio-political context of the troubled era in which it was recorded.

Above is Part 1 of 8. Here's a link to access Parts 2-8

Sun Ra at Widney High

2008-07-16T09:41:00.001-07:00

This year, Music for Maniacs celebrated the birthday - or arrival day of the late Sun Ra with some MP3 files of some of his more accessible music. Most interesting to me was the previously unreleased audio of Sun Ra and his Arkestra, live at Widney High School during the early 1970's. That Los Angeles high school would later become famous, via the success of The Kids From Widney High, a singing group composed of some of the school's mentally handicapped students.

"Happy Arrival Day, Sun Ra"

If you're not hip to Sun Ra, or even if you are, you can learn a great deal from the excellent documentary, Brother from Another Planet which is currently available on Youtube. Here's Part 1:

You can find Parts 2 - 4 HERE.

,,,and in case you're not familiar with the Kids From Widney High:

Suburban Lawns

2008-07-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a way-lost punk classic; The Suburban Lawns performing "The Janitor on Peter Ivers' New Wave Theatre, circa 1981.

Suburban Lawns were a California band, fronted by the precocious, 13-year-old Su Tissue (Susan McLane.) The lyrics were inspired by an incident that occured when Tissue first met a boy with whom she become friends. When she asked the young man what he did for a living, he responded, "I'm a janitor." The room being loud, Su thought he said, "oh, my genitals!"

The group released three records: the "Gidget Goes to Hell" 7:" (1979,) the Suburban Lawns LP (1981) and the Baby EP (1983.) Su Tissue released one solo album in 1982, then became an actress, appearing in the 1986 film, Something Wild.

The band's lone LP, released on I.R.S., can be downloaded in MP3 format here:http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/2008/06/suburban-lawns-st-lp-1981-usa.html

SUNN 0)))

2008-07-15T09:15:00.001-07:00

Live in Brooklyn, 2005
"Volume turns sound into physical presence." - Stephen O'Malley

Now That The Thrift Stores Have Dried Up...

2008-07-10T10:53:00.000-07:00

Buying records at Thrift Stores in the Louisville area pretty much sucks these days. I hear there are a couple good flea market booths around town, but I've never made the extra effort to visit either of them, simply because I never hear any other record geeks bring them up - it's always some well-intentioned "civilian." "There's some old man at the XXX Flea Market who's got a bunch of Elvis records. They must be worth a fortune, and he's selling them for 5 bucks each!"

As far as my old haunts, the various Good Will stores and Salvation Army Depots of Kentuckiana, it's been a while since I found much of anything. I guess Ebay has hipped everybody to just how much Grandpa's old Louie Prima LP's might actually worth. With a whole generation of record buyers made aware of the pleasures of the Three Suns and Martin Denny by the Incredibly Strange Music Books, less and less of interest, in any condition worth having, is trickling down the food chain to the Good Will these days. Even those goony old records with the hippy chick strumming a guitar and singing about Jesus, which used to be knee-deep back in the day, are MIA anymore - lost to online collectors of "Xian" rarities.

I'm just glad I scored all my Harmonicats albums back when the getting was good.

Just in case you're in the same boat I'm in, and Jonesing for some 25 cent Mambo records, scratchy 45's of some classic rockabilly, or that Ed Allen exercise record you've been desperate for, here are some links to MP3 blogs that specialize in the kinds of sounds you need:

The 365 Days Project

Otis Fodder's Granddaddy of all Thrift Store MP3 sounds. One MP3 a day, each day of the year. The 2003 edition is less sprawling and more fun than the 2007 edition, but both years are worth checking out

The Black Smokehouse

"We're interested in literally all sounds ever recorded, past, present, and the future. Everything from Edison cylinders to disco to punk to homemade tapes of your little brother gurgling into a handheld tape recorder behind the IGA in 1978. Readers who do not have an omnivorous taste in music will probably therefore find this blog annoying."

Boogie Woogie Flu

"Degenerate Record Collector's Disease"

The Record Robot

MP3 excerpts of various thrift store essentials

Taj Mahal Travellers

2008-07-03T12:03:00.001-07:00

A film by Matsuo Ohno, 1973

R.E.M. - Live and early demos

2008-07-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

Look, kids! Look! See how cool we used to dress!?! Jesus Gawd!!! Here's R.E.M., live on a show called Livewire from 1983.

Somebody calling himself "REMchout" has posted a bunch of interesting, R.E.M.-related videos on Youtube. Chief among these are several "audio only" vids containing some ancient demo recordings, dating all the way back to a 1982 audition tape. There's also a wealth of live audio, live videos and some very early interviews:

Click Here: REMchout's R.E.M. page

Good God, I Am Old...

2008-07-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

I can barely listen to the radio anymore. It's too hard to hear the music over the sound of my own hair greying and falling out.

I was listening to Mike Harvey's Super Gold in the car a few months ago, when Harvey announced that the evening's program would be dedicated to love songs. "All the old love songs you used to cuddle up to back when you were young. Classic rock and roll love songs from way-back-when." And the very first record he played was "Jessie's Girl" by Rick Springfield. When Mike Harvey calls the music of your high school years "classic rock and roll," you're too old.

Then Public Radio here in Louisville ran a series of documentary programs on Louisville Punk Rock. I'm pleased as hell they did so, and enjoyed every minute of each installment, but alas -when public radio starts running documentaries on the rebel culture of your formative years, buddy, you're too old!

My son is fourteen. He thinks about Johnny Rotten the same way I thought about Lawrence Welk when I was his age. "Flowers of Romance? What's this crap? Gimme something genius, like Modest Mouse or the Plain White T's!"

Oh well, his turn's coming...

23 years ago. D Boon (1958-1985) has been gone nearly as long as he was alive.

The original, Hib-Tone single of "Radio Free Europe" was released 27 years ago.

The Rockin' Berries

2008-07-03T06:29:00.000-07:00

The old guy who sold me my first Rockin' Berries record was under the impression that the group was a front for Jan Berry of Jan and Dean. The truth is that the Rockin' Berries were actually a mersey beat group from Birmingham, England - the same town which would produce both Black Sabbath and Judas Priest within four or five years of this video's initial airing!

Marcus Keef

2008-07-01T10:53:00.001-07:00

If you're a collector of late 60's - 70's rock albums, you've doubtlessly come across the work of Marcus Keef, the graphic designer responsible for some of the most arresting sleeve art of that era. Perhaps best known for the eerie cover photography and design for Black Sabbath's first album, Keef was responsible for a run of interesting, sometimes disturbing album covers for the Vertigo label.

Here are links to some Marcus Keef galleries. The first is in many ways the best, but it's in Japanese, so most of you won't be able to read it. The second link has more images, but the reproductions are not as big as those on the Japanese gallery, and thus do less justice to the art:

The Keef Gallery

"Marcus Keef Gallery at Rate Your Music"

Blue Oyster Cult

2008-07-01T09:46:00.001-07:00

Tony Rettman has written a spot-on appreciation of those most unappreciated Grandpapas of Punk, Blue Oyster Cult: Living Like Burt Reynolds on a Mac Davis Income:

"The B.O.C. fried the brains of members of Sonic Youth, The Minutemen, Kray Cherubs, etc. way before any German would hypnotise them with their teutonic beat. And why wouldn't The B.O.C. allure your common freak of nature? Buzzsawed riffs. Surreal/sarcastic wordage from R.Meltzer, Patti Smith, etc. Dope ass record covers. Dudes who looked like volunteer fireman donning mirrored shades and black capes. Excuse me, but what the hell more could you want?"

Read the Rest HERE

Ed Askew

2008-07-01T09:00:00.001-07:00

From www.moteldemoka.com:

"Little is known about the reclusive folksinger Ed Askew. During the late ‘60s he recorded the psychedelic folk masterpiece “Ask the Unicorn” – his only album which has been released commercially until recent reissues – with only his ten stringed tiple accompanying himself. Little happened when it was released in 1968 by ultra-noncommercial ESP-Disk, the label which was best known for its free jazz releases and which is considered to be one of the most legendary independent labels of the ‘60s. Receiving barely any attention at all the record soon descended into obscurity even among the best informed enthusiasts of the in-crowd.
"This in itself is not a unique story. It happens all the time. What makes this story worthwhile telling however is the fact that during all those years after its release its fire was kept alive solely by its unmatched and overwhelming urgency. His music proved so powerful that even time could not take it down. Slowly but surely more and more people started discovering the album. Word got around very gradually. It stole the hearts of listeners one by one. Something within this record made people fall for it like nothing before..."

Read the rest of Bubbachups article here (with MP3 audio)

"John, Please, You're Spoiling the Evening..."

2008-06-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

I really love the music of the Three Suns, but I'm more than a little afraid for the poor girl on this album cover.

Blondie

2008-06-30T12:12:00.000-07:00

To celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Parallel Lines LP, Blondie played the Kentucky Center for the Arts last Tuesday. While I went into it with admittedly low expectations, it was a really awesome show. Debbie Harry is a born performer who has lost little since the salad days of 1978. The band - particularly original drummer Clem Burke - was in top flight form. The stage, all done up in black and white parallel lines that changed color with the lighting and provided an almost psychedelic light show when those lights spun around, was among the coolest sets I have seen in a very long time. The audience was a welcome surprise as well, jumping up and down and dancing in the aisles throughout the show. Art Center crowds can be so reserved and stuffy sometimes, that it was great to see this go down as a real rock concert, rather than just some "art happening." I wish the Palace Theatre audience for the recent Elvis Costello show, who sat in their seats like cultured bumps through the whole thing, had been as enthusiastic.

Terrastock 7

2008-06-30T06:22:00.001-07:00

This year, Terrastock was held at the Mellwood Art Center in my neck of the woods, Louisville Kentucky. Four days of fun and music that simply blew me away. Never have I had so much fun at any live music event. The crowd was outasight friendly, the bands were overwhelmingly killer and the Festival was one of the best managed affairs of its kind I've ever had the pleasure to attend.

The idea of seeing 11 bands a day for four days - even if a majority of those bands are really good - is pretty daunting, but Terrastock 7 at the Mellwood center kept everything moving so efficiently that you really didn't have time to get distracted or bored. You see, the show was conducted on two stages, one outdoors, the other inside. While a band was playing on one of these stages, another one was doing their soundcheck on the other. Thus, there was no long wait between bands, and with both stages separated from each other by only a wall, with several doors going in and out, the entire crowd was able to move from concert to concert almost immediately. An efficient use of a venue that seemed especially suited to this sort of presentation.

It was also very cool that there was so little separation between the bands and the audience. Since there wasn't much of a backstage area for either stage, as far as I could tell, if a band was not onstage, they were either out in the crowd or in the merch room. Whoever it was you came to see, you had ample opportunity to at least meet them, and it was not an uncommon experience to strike up a conversation with a fellow fan, then see that same guy or gal on stage a few minutes later, performing with a band you hadn't seen before.

With the ETCHED IN BLACK Events Fund being as limited as it currently is (it's been more-or-less absorbed into the ETCHED IN BLACK Pay Too Much for Gas and Utilities Fund,) I was only able to attend the four day event - which ran from Thursday, June 19 to Sunday, June 22 - on Friday and Saturday. These were both great days to attend, and the highlights were numerous. These highlights included, but were not limited to:

- Mike from New York supplying the EIB Away Team with free beer within five minutes of our arrival at the Festival Friday afternoon. thanks, Mike!

- Plastic Crimewave's own Plastic Crimewave punctuating an incredible psyche-punk set by smashing his guitar into a zillion pieces (see video above,) cutting his hand up in the process. A piece of this guitar now resides in our collection here at the fabulous Fan Boy Pavilion. Later in the night, your's truly got to kinda-sorta- meet the guy while we both leafed through used records in the venders' hall.

- Rocking hard beneath the weight of consecutive, thunderously heavy rock shows from the Major Stars and The Linus Pauling Quartet.

- Being in the same room with Masaki Batoh.

- Meeting and buying records from Kawabata Makoto. Seeing him perform with Kinski and, especially, Bardo Pond, was a treat as well.

- Going through the records for sale at Byron Coley's booth and having a blast seeing original copies of rare vinyl by the likes of the Tokyo Kid Brothers and Jandek - even though any one of these records was worth half my own collection, and I could barely afford to look at them, much less ever buy any.

- Louisville's own Sapat, mixing avant improv and old time country like the Carter Family of Free Noise.

- Bardo Pond making me feel like I was inside a stoned girl's head for an hour - for me, the most lyseric moments of the entire festival.

- Wooden Shjips, Wooden Shjips, Wooden Shjips!

- The entire crowd singing "Happy Birthday" to organizer Phil McMullin during Bardo Pond's show.

- That guy with the orange mohawk who never stopped dancing the entire length of the festival.

- Discovering Motorpsycho on Saturday, and being so glad find a great band from Norway who didn't wear corpsepaint, or have a singer who sounds like a canary in a vegamatic. Oneida and Grails were also welcome discoveries that day.

- Witnessing Mono in action Saturday Night. Some of the most emotionally deep, instrumental music being made today.

Special thanks to all the bands who played, and to Phil McMullin and everyone else involved for making Terrastock in Louisville a reality.

Click here for the official Terrastock site, which contains a wealth of further information and links to a huge collection of festival photography

There is currently a wealth of Terrastock 7 video on Youtube. A good place to start is with xKrisxVirusx's extensive collection of videos, to be found HERE. If you were at the festival, you'll remember her as the girl in the striped stockings that was always near the front of the stage, where she got some really good footage, including the guitar-smashing clip above.

Albert Ayler

2008-06-20T09:53:00.001-07:00

Here's a link to an eight-hour, internet radio show paying tribute to the late free-jazz icon, Albert Ayler. Lots of music and a wealth of rare interviews with Ayler:

The ESP-Disk Radio Tribute to Albert Ayler, Parts 1-4

"Ayler is generally seen as the most primal of the free jazz musicians of the 1960s; critic John Litweiler wrote that "never before or since has there been such naked aggression in jazz" [1] He possessed a deep blistering tone—achieved by using the stiffest plastic reeds on his tenor saxophone that he could find—and used a broad, pathos-filled vibrato that came right out of church music.
His trio and quartet records of 1964, like Spiritual Unity and The Hilversum Session, show him advancing the improvisational notions of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman into abstract realms where timbre, not harmony and melody, are the music's backbone. His ecstatic music of 1965 and 1966, like "Spirits Rejoice" and "Truth is Marching In" has been compared by critics to the sound of a Salvation Army brass band, and involved simple, march-like themes which alternated with wild group improvisations and took jazz back to its pre-Louis Armstrong roots..." (Wikipedia)

The Incredible String Band

2008-06-09T09:21:00.001-07:00

The Incredible String Band were one of the most influential and artistically successful psychedelic folk groups of the 1960's.

Founded in 1965 as an acoustic trio consisting of Robin Williamson, Mike Heron, and Clive Palmer, the group commanded immediate attention. Bob Dylan himself called one of their tunes, "October Song," one of his favorite songs. By 1967, the duo of Heron and Williamson (Palmer left just after the release of the group's 1966 debut album) had augmented their traditional folk sound with myriad exotic instruments and began recording music that owed as much to experimental jazz, acid rock and middle eastern music as it did to its still obvious brit-folk influences. Their 1968 album, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter is, for many, the quintessential Psych Folk masterpiece -a collection of songs that seem simultaneously immediate and very ancient, drawing upon both the contemporary sounds of 60's psychedelia and primordial music from some deep well of ancestrial memory.

During the group's most vital period (1967's 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion through 1968's Wee Tam and the Big Huge,) the ISB - Williamson and Heron, joined by their respective girlfriends, "Licorice" McKechnie and Rose Simpson, formed a unit that was as important symbolically as it was musically. These two couples, living communally on a farm in Wales, huddled together like a family on their album covers, or gamboling about in the woods in photos - always together and always smiling- seemed the embodiment of a particularly British vision of the hippie dream. As long as the String Band were out there in the woods living together, eating together, exploring the universe together and making music together for the joy of the community it brought, the dream was real and attainable. As long as little Licorice danced around the maypole with flowers in her hair, that other world the counterculture promised us was certainly just a short walk through the trees from here.

As usual, however, reality was a lot less rosy. Williamson and Heron, despite their chummy public demeanor, were never close friends. Longtime producer and manager Joe Boyd has recalled their "robust dislike" for one another - a dislike that manifested itself early in the group's history and was at first tempered by their mutual affection for bandmate Clive Palmer. When Palmer left the group, it was not long before Williamson interjected his girlfriend, Licorice - who couldn't play a note on any instrument at the time - into the band, perhaps so he wouldn't have to work alone with Heron. Heron's immediate introduction of his similarly nonmusical girlfriend, Rose, into the mix seems retaliatory, or at least an effort on Mike's part to avoid being shoved aside by the Williamson contingent.

Although the group did live together, first in Wales, then in their native Scotland, this only lasted for a year or so, and neither romantic relationship within the band survived the experience. Robin Williamson's defense of self-proclaimed LSD God Mel Lyman and the group's involvement with Scientology cast further dark shadows upon their supposedly idyllic communal life. Whatever the private truths of the matter, life down on the farm was hardly as much fun as the band's public persona made it seem.

All of this, however, is merely a nod to sad inevitability, and points to nothing we should not have already known in the first place. The music, at least the early stuff, is still magical, and the dream the ISB became emblematic of is still a good dream, whether they themselves were able to pull it off or not.

In 1970, a documentary on the Incredible String Band was produced for the BBC. It is, without a doubt, one of the most blindingly dull pieces of music-related cinema ever released. Comprised of rambling interviews, concert footage, live-in-the-studio bits from early in the band's decline and a silly, overlong fantasy sequence about a pirate, Be Glad for the Song Has No Endingdrones on and on, colorlessly, for just under an hour.

Then, something remarkable happens. With just moments left to go, the film abruptly mutates into a disorienting, rapid-fire collage of images - pagan revelries, images of Hell, visual references to the LSD experience - all a top a churning bed of echoed chanting and acoustic free-noise music. The suddenness with with the sequence bursts forth from such an otherwise uninteresting film is jarring.

Jarring as well is how alien the sequence seems to ISB's deliberately innocuous, hippie-happy public image. It's like a scene from an old science fiction movie, the extraterrestrial's mask is accidently torn and we can just glimpse the bizarre, martian visage beneath.

Since I'm American, British folk rock has always held, for me, a greater potential for subliminal creep than its American counterpart. It goes back so much farther, and keeps so much ancient stuff alive. Getting "back to nature" in the States typically has always meant eating your granola and listening to John Denver, but in the UK, heading out into the woods carries with it heavier cultural and historical baggage.

Britain is an old culture, and its history stretches back into the pagan antiquity of old gods and the spirits of air, Earth, fire and water. To invoke that history is often an invocation of those old spirits as well. Maypoles, a garland of flowers in a young girl's hair, dancing in rings and a thousand other folkish things are remnants of old religions that European Christianity flatters itself to think it vanquished centuries ago. The modern Christian mind rests secure and smug in the knowledge that, in this electric light world, Christus has chased all the witches away. But are they really gone? Was the war so easily won? It often seems that way, but there are times - such as during the sixties and early seventies in England, when acid culture, folk rock and the burgeoning wicca / witchcraft movement of the day all coalessed to resurrect the fairies and the horned kings of old within the pop culture of that era - that it seems that the old times were not so long ago, and that the spirits still dwell somewhere, out there in the woods.

The Mad Daddy

2008-06-09T08:15:00.000-07:00

Cleveland's Pete Myers was one of the great rock 'n' roll DJs. A veteran of the Army's psychological warfare unit, where he created experimental radio broadcasts, Meyers used his experience with the bizarre side of broadcasting to imbue his trashy, R&B radio show with a weird, drive-in-movie ambience. Patterning his on-air persona on the popular TV horror hosts of the era, The Mad Daddy played an eclectic mix of "race recordings," rock 'n' roll, low-brow jazz and other junkshop exotica in a way few white DJ's outside Memphis had even considered yet. His creepy-cool aesthetic was a huge influence on Cleveland's own Cramps, whose Lux Interior paid homage to Pete Myers with his own, Mad Daddyesque "Purple KNIF" radio broadcast in 1984.

Read more about Pete Myers Here.

Click here for "Reelradio.com," a site containing a complete 1959 show in RealAudio

...and here's a link to Pete Meyer's last Cleveland show from April 25, 1959

A Record Player for Your Car

2008-06-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

...and make sure to take the expressway to the grocery store from now on.

Yahowha 13 on NPR

2008-06-05T11:14:00.001-07:00

National Public Radio recently aired a three-part series on The Source, the hippie commune that, in the early 1970's, gave birth to that most psychedelic of all bands, Yahowha 13. The series was initiated by the publication of a book on The Source, written by two of its former members; Isis and Electricity Aquarian.

Part 1: "The Birth of Organic, Polygamous Spiritualism

Part 2: "From Source Restaurant to 'Cosmic' Commune"

Part 3: "A '70s Spiritual Rock Commune Reunites"

These NPR pages also contain a slideshow, narrated by Isis, and an amazing video of Yahowha 13 in performance.