(This is another re-post from early 2008, with the Knights Bridge track replacing a previous one I posted from WATERS - I'll work on some original stuff next week)
As I was in the process of putting together my own personal CD-R of “outrageous”, “acid-drenched”, “deadly”, “lethal” 60s psychedelic rock, I decided to share some of my better mp3s with the world at large last April, calling it “Psychedelico Ultima”. Nearly a year later, I’ve found three more mp3s that I think you might wanna hear.
SCORPIO TUBE, whom I know nor can find a thing about, are about as “lysergic” as this music gets – whatever that means, right? A total riff-heavy, fuzzed-out gem that treads on MC5 territory and just screams. Right up there with “On The Road South” by THE STEREO SHOESTRING for sheer wah-wah bigmuff action. "Make Me Some Love" by Texas' KNIGHTS BRIDGE is a deservedly well-loved classic, about as "pop" as super-heavy psych-damaged guitar rock gets. THE LIBERTY BELL were a Corpus Christie, TX psych band from the latter part of the sixties – something about Texas and the sound of wild guitar during this era – it’s a conundrum, but one we’re happy to have.
(Note - this is a re-post from 2007 so you can download these amazing tracks again)
I make all these custom CD-R comps at home for myself, now that I’m commuting again and need new music in the car, and blank CDs are rapidly approaching a price point that enables them to be easily disposed of. In other words, at roughly 10 cents a pop, I can start making a CD, lose interest, botch the whole thing, take the CD out and snap it in two (before recycling it in an eco-friendly landfill, of course), all without too much of an impact to my bottom line. Remember way back in 2000 when a CD-R, which almost always came in its own case, was like $1.50 or more? I sure do. Anyway, one CD I’m working on is a “monstrous compilation of fuzzed-out world-destroying 60s psychedelic nuggets to fry yr brain”, or something like that. I don’t yet have the 20-25 absolute face-melting, mind-expanding, acid-damaged screamers that I need, though. It’s gonna be called Psychedelico Ultima, ‘cause that sounds kind of Spanish and rad. I know what the three lead tracks are going to be, though.
First’ll be THE TWILIGHTERS’ “Nothing Can Bring Me Down” for sure. This Texas howler from 1968 is just an incredible tune, later covered as you may know by PUSSY GALORE on their live album. Right on. Next’ll be “Cuttin Grass” by the CARETAKERS OF DECEPTION. Thank you Grady Runyan! 1968 on this one – read more about it here. Finally, the wah-wah crazy “On The Road South” by THE STEREO SHOESTRING will take you into the howling, sucking void & leave you there for good. Sound fun? It is. These are the three best psychedelic rock and roll songs America ever produced. I hope you agree.
In all of DMZ’s discography, ironically the best record of them all was a way-posthumous 1986 single that was recorded ten years earlier (1976, if you need some help counting). Until very recently I actually thought this was a re-press of a real lost 45 from this proto-punk Boston band, but no, it was just some tracks that hadn’t found their way to vinyl yet, and Telstar Records had the good sense to dig them up.
Whatever, “First Time Is The Best Time / Teenage Head” is one of my favorite singles of all time. This record is one of the premier obnoxo-punk records of any era, with some of the worst/best deflowering come-on lines ever, and a killer fake retch in the first two seconds. Absolute genius. The FLAMING GROOVIES cover on the flip is pretty hot as well.
I figured with a big three-day weekend coming here in the USA, you probably needed something nice & wild to help you through it. So here goes.
On my previous site/blog I wrote about how THE CRAMPS were the one band who wholly changed my musical taste (which for all intents and purposes, is the same as saying they changed my life). After hearing “Garbageman” and “Goo Goo Muck” on college radio in the early 80s, and then seeing their insane stage-wrecking performance of “Tear It Up” in URGH: A MUSIC WAR, well, that did it for me – that was it, The Cramps were it, and I wanted to hear anything else I could that was this unabashedly wild and raw. I believe at one point or another in my life I’ve owned just about every pre-1985 record in their catalog, including over a dozen bootlegs, but there’s one that stands head and shoulders above the rest. Why it has not been given official release with great fanfare, and is not physically in the hands of everyone reading this, is a mystery for the ages. I wish I could say “Of course you know I’m talking about The Cramps’ 1979 Alex Chilton Ohio demos", but there’s a very good chance you’ve not heard of these, am I right? Well, all I can say is this collection of crisp, loud and extremely crazed 1979 demos blow clean away any official Cramps release, and that includes “Songs The Lord Taught Us” and “Psychedelic Jungle”. I’ve gone on record as calling it the greatest bootleg of all time, and now I’ll tell you why.
I own this collection as an LP called “All Tore Up” (pictured), but it has also been unofficially released as an LP called “Ohio Demos” and a 3x7” box set called the same thing, as well as a CD called “All Tore Up” with a different cover than the one that is pictured here. Every song is a total raw-assed blast, full of hot fuzz and ultra-reverbed chords, as well as minimalist drumming recorded so up front & alive you’ll swear that Nick Knox was an understated genius (as I do). The lineup includes what are arguably their best set of tunes not called “Human Fly” or “The Way I Walk”; they are: Teenage Werewolf/Jungle Hop/Mad Daddy/Rockin' Bones/What's Behind The Mask/Sunglasses After Dark/All Tore Up (also known as “I Can’t Hardly Stand It”)/Twist And Shout (essentially what later became “Drug Train”, but with totally different lyrics)/Uranium Rock/Subwire Desire (this was on the “Psychedelic Jungle” LP as “Under The Wires”)/Mystery Plane/T.V. Set. Everything that was great about 1950s rockabilly was vacuumed up and then owned by The Cramps, and they happened to infuse what was already a wild form with a simultaneous punk rock abandon and a sense of detached cool that made for a pretty goddamn compelling package. You’ll never hear them better than on this collection; the set that came out soon thereafter as “Songs the Lord Taught Us” sounds so thin and lifeless by comparison – and I love that record.
When Lux Interior died earlier this year, I have to be honest, it was the first time I’ve ever been seriously and truly bummed to my core about a “rock star death”. Usually these people are such an abstraction to me – paid entertainers that I’ve never known and never will know, and who usually are well past their creative powers when they expire. I try to take a pretty sober & realistic view on death in any case – after all, it afflicts 100% of the population. But Lux was different. He & Ivy were such beacons of unrefined taste, and these amazingly giving cultural pied pipers who led thousands of people to incredible cultural riches that were just out there, waiting to be heard and seen. Knowing what that sort of musical leadership meant to me, and being totally unaware that the man had health issues, I was pretty startled the night he passed away. I got all maudlin on Facebook and Twitter as I drank my sorrows away (OK, I was already drinking at a bar in Boston when I found out).
Here are the complete 1979 Ohio demos, a.k.a. the “All Tore Up” LP, zipped up into one convenient package for you.
(Note: this is a re-post from 2007, when I'd first discovered The Bristols. I'm re-posting the tracks here, because they were taken down. I've subsequently heard their entire back catalog and remain a huge fan. This band should have had a lot more supporters than it apparently did.)
"....I'd like to turn you onto an extant combo from the UK called THE BRISTOLS. Sure, I'd heard of them as well and always figured they were one of many HEADCOATS knockoffs playing marginal if catchy garage rock. (I believed this beause a Headcoat, one Bruce Brand, was also a Bristol). It was only when I was turned onto lead singer Fabienne Delsol's excellent solo spy-girl surfbeat record from this past year, "No Time For Sorrows" that I decided to dig further, and hot dog, this is probably my favorite no-longer-new band of the hour. Here, don't let me tell you about them, let's hear what their label has to say:
Fabienne Delsol & Liam Watson's garage supergroup featuring amongst its ranks Bruce Brand (Milkshakes/Headcoats), Owen Thomas (Graham Coxon Band/Cee Bee Beaumont), Parsley (The Adventures of Parsley / Dutronc / Dee Rangers), and the glorious vocal talents of Miss Fabienne Delsol. They released two full length albums on Damaged Goods and three singles.
They released their first single on Hangman's Daughter in 1994 followed by a split single with Japans Thee Michelle Gun Elephant a year later on Vinyl Japan. Then they released two singles and albums on Damaged Goods before calling it a day in 2003.
After the split Fabienne Delsol has gone solo and released one album so far, 'No Time For Sorrows' (produced by Liam Watson at Toe Rag) and is currently working on her follow up due for release in 2007.
THE BRISTOLS' music is exuberant, simple as hell, fuzzed-out and stripped-down girl pop, the kind that makes a ye ye fan like myself swoon. Check out these two killers from their back catalog, and then order yourself up the new compilation of their stuff that recently came out."
When the inane comedy-noise-schlock duo the ZIP CODE RAPISTS started booking gigs around San Francisco around 1992, I was thankfully already a big fan of Gregg Turkington’s absurd body of work – a body that only amplified & enlarged in the years to follow. He was one of the prime movers behind “Breakfast Without Meat” fanzine in the 80s, along with Derek Bostrom from the Meat Puppets, yet he really became a personal hero of mine with the 1992 “GREAT PHONE CALLS” LP, a prank phone call album that’s still one of the all-time high-water marks for puzzling, incredibly funny misanthropy I’ve ever heard. I listened to that thing to the point where I could recite virtually every gag on it, and when I’d play it for friends, half of them just loved it, and the other half couldn’t understand why I thought it was so funny. Mind you, this was the time of “The Jerky Boys”, who were another solid (and far more popular) prank phone call outfit, but one whose jokes could be understood & appreciated by even the lowest common denominator. Turkington, on the other hand, would get on the phone with someone who barely spoke English at a Chinese restaurant, loudly request a “sausage-pepperoni-Chinese pizza”, and before they could answer, start babbling all sorts of non-sequiters: “I’m on television right now, turn to Channel 2”, followed by, “I’m lonely here, I’m dying – you got to help me here, I’m dying” etc. It was also the place that the “Neil Hamburger” character got his start. The record totally holds up. Look for it on CD.
Turkington was good friends with some folks I sorta knew in the whole WORLD OF POOH/THINKING FELLERS universe, and since I went to all those shows back then, it got out pretty quickly that he & John Singer from their previous band THE EASY GOINGS were putting together a “new thing” called the ZIP CODE RAPISTS. I went to some pretty early shows by them, and they were a total blast. Again, Turkington’s humor is “anti-”, as they say, sort of like the shtick that guys like David Cross and others would do later in the 90s, but far more uncaring & far less seeking of external validation or attention. The music, which was atrocious and pretty much a total afterthought, took a complete backstage to whatever Turkington was ranting about stream-of-consciousness style onstage, or whatever cockamamie lyrics the guy had cooked up on the spot. I saw them at the Covered Wagon early on with maybe 10 other people, and they did this song, an original called “Ranch Style Beans” – the lyrics were pretty normal at first, until they just veered out of control: “I’ve got them in my ears / Ranch style beans! / You’re all a bunch of queers! / Ranch style beans!”, and then the song just sputtered out into feedback and chaos. Then they’d do a stupid Doors cover, or some horrible analog synth thing, then a tender take on “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands”, with improvisational spoken lyrics tacked on like, “He’s got the whole world / In his hands / He’s got the whole world / In his parched, bloody, fucked-up hands – and they’re covered with semen!!!”. Please download and listen to the 1993 live version of this song below – in one song, it gives you the ZCR live experience in the proverbial nutshell.
I always was bummed when the drunken audience (a drunken audience that naturally included me) would hoot so loud at the band that I couldn’t hear what Turkington was saying. If you listen to the live songs on the band’s atrocious first record, “SING AND PLAY THE THREE DOCTORS AND OTHER SONGS OF TODAY”, the crowd is totally whipped into a frenzy by the comedic shitstorm on stage. Hear the woman yelling at the band between every song? I know that voice. That is the woman who became Dame Darcy, a then-San Francisco resident, budding animator, CAROLINER member and scene denizen who added her own soundtrack to many a live show during that time. I bought that first album just because it looked so ridiculous, and outside of a couple of tracks (“Presidents Song”, which I’m posting for you today; maybe one more), I could barely get through the thing. The next two records, a 10-song 7”EP and a 12”EP, were arguably worse. Toward the end of the band’s life, they’d get on stage like the time at the Nightbreak (maybe it was called The Thirsty Swede then?) with mirrored shades on like Alan Vega & Martin Rev and just play synthesizers and moan into the microphones for 20 minutes. At least that’s how I remember it. I do know it was often painful.
Perhaps the best part was the “break up” of the ZIP CODE RAPISTS. One of the most hilarious pieces of avant-theater I’ve ever seen was their carefully-orchestrated feud, where John went and formed the pedestrian “Therapist John's Zip Code Revue” and in retaliation, Gregg formed the awful 70s boogie band “The Three Doctors Band”, and then they’d fight about who was better in the pages of fanzines. Both even recorded LPs to prove the point. (Nobody won, if you ask me). If anyone has the a scan from the issue of SNIPE HUNT magazine where they gave dueling interviews about the circumstances that led to their dissolution, because of course they weren’t on speaking terms, I’d love to see it again.
The other day I received a comprehensive overview of the band’s oeuvre in the mail, a new CD put out by Eabla Records. Loads of extra tracks and a cool booklet with lots of photos – and even a temporary tattoo! You see what happened? It got those memories just floodin’ back. Turkington now is making his mark as NEIL HAMBURGER, the worst standup comedian of all time, and he’s finally found the audience he was denied during the ZCR years. Meanwhile, you can dip into the refracted glory by listening to and/or downloading a few tracks from the CD below – and better yet, ordering the CD here.
Postscript – I’ve been corrected by both the record label and a member of the band: there were never any synthesizers or keyboardson stage during a ZCR show. I maintain that I saw them, and the whole show at the Nightbreak where they at least sort of dressed up like SUICIDE & played droning synth “music” wasn’t a complete hallucination, but I guess these guys would know better than I would. What would make me remember things so differently? Oh wait – I know.
Play The Zip Code Rapists, “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands”
So my favorite release of 2009 so far is easily “Help” by San Francisco’s THEE OH SEES. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed their previous releases, but on a track-to-track basis, this new one on In The Red is their finest collection of slippery, noisy, shape-shifting pop music. Previous stuff by them had me tagging them as a messy, harmonious 2000’s version of CAN or THE FALL, but their songwriting got kicked up a notch, and “Help” is totally playful, joyously tuneful, and yet a real stereo-wrecker on most tracks. Forget The Fall or krautrock - this has more in common with some detuned, bouncy, noisy version of Merseybeat this time. No one in the band can sing particularly well, but the vocal sum is most definitely greater than the individual parts. If you’re not singing along by the end of this LP/CD, then you’re not human, my friend.
Ever since I read an essay in the SF Bay Guardian around 2002 that effectively said that bandleader & guitarist John Dwyer walked on water and was a stone-cold, unrecognized musical genius, I’ve always kept a wary and watchful eye on the guy. I really liked about every fifth COACHWHIPS (one of his many previous bands) song, but thought the live shtick was so, you know, shticky. I wrote about them in 2005 that “…Live, the Coachwhips are all hat and no cattle, with every move choreographed to remind you what a wild fucking party you're witnessing, and how the band just "showed up" all of a sudden to set up on the floor with their broken equipment….”. Likewise, I saw his pre-OH SEES band called YIKES a couple years ago, and the posing, strutting and “guitar face” fake-grimacing was enough to send me packing to the bar for a much-deserved drink.
I hear THEE OH SEES as Dwyer’s “grown up” band. There are very few if any cringe-inducing tricks, other than an over-reliance on weirdo splice-in tape edits. The songs, as I’ve indicated, are just fantastic, and as I listened for the first time I kept waiting for one that I didn’t enjoy – and it never came. Now I haven’t said that about a new release in many a year, so odds are this is going to be the finest thing I’ve heard this annum. Now let’s see what you think.
Calling this material "bootleg" is far too generous, since I know of no format in which these recordings truly exist, outside of a tape that the CHEATER SLICKS’ label head was kind enough to make for me 15 years ago. Forgive me if I may be so bold, but I will go on record as stating that not only are the demos for the 1994 “Don’t Like You” LP the finest set of recordings ever produced by the Cheater Slicks (by a mile – and this is one of the five great rock bands of the 1990s), but it’s potentially the hottest set of uncirculated rock music recordings I’ve ever heard. At least until the “Don’t Like You” double-LP reissue comes out next year – yes, you read that correctly – with the entire set of demo recordings on one disc. I’ve been given express permission to post a couple of teaser tracks here today.
Let me provide a bit of background, at least as I understand it. In 1994, In The Red received these from the band and were targeting a release of them as the follow-up to the previous year’s destroying “Whiskey” LP. At this point the band were bar-none the most raging and hard of the class of early 90s garage punk acts – and they were light years ahead of the pack, incorporating controlled feedback, feral drum bashing, a double-play of raw, throaty, vocalists, and a demented 60s psych approach that has started to creep in and lord over the sound like an unseen, angry hand. When I heard the demos for what would (sort of) later become the “Don’t Like You” album, I was floored, and couldn’t believe they’d topped “Whiskey”, which was a near-masterpiece. This was the track listing for said tape:
1. Feel Free 2. Trouble Man 3. When She Comes 4. Wedding Song 5. Spanish Rose 6. Lost Inside 7. Sadie Mae 8. Walk Up The Street 9. Hook or Crook 10. You Ain't Good 11. Mystery Ship 12. Ghost
I played the magnetic backing off the thing, and was ready for the band’s dominance at the top of the rabid punk/psych/puke food chain, where they belonged. Unfortunately, and I could be telling this wrong so let me know, but the band got it in their head that their best set of songs ever could be improved by bringing non-producer – and then indie rock star – JON SPENCER into the studio to re-work and “produce” the album. The thinking was with the Spencer “brand” on the band, the better the chance to shift a few units and unearth a few new fans. I can’t argue with the logic, but I’ve been arguing with the results for years.
Sure, what eventually emerged as “Don’t Like You” was a great record, but I was so let down by how much they’d jettisoned – and how songs that had soared were now mucked up with tons of aural garbage & atonally weird bits that added zilch to the sound – that I refrained from playing it all that much after the first spin the month it came out. I was seriously bummed, as we say in California. I hated the one with Jon Spencer intoning in that dumb Elvis voice of his about the band over a moronic slow riff – a complete waste of LP space that would have been far better served by including the ear-destroying original version of “Sadie Mae”, for instance.
2 tracks from the sessions that produced the tapes did come out, eventually, as the – the “Walk Up The Street / Wedding Song” single on In The Red. If you’re a Cheater Slicks fan, and I know you are, then you’ll probably agree that this is one of the finest singles in their outstanding discography. I will also say that I saw the band live on this tour twice, and they were nothing short of incredible, but I have long pined for this tape to come out and bring an entire generation to its knees, 15 long years after it should have. Of all of the 20th Century's many crimes (the gulag, the Great Leap Forward, Rwanda and all that), this is the one that personally hurt me the most, and it’s a great credit to the 21st Century that In The Red are going to be rectifying the suffering next year.
THE GORIES claimed this particular song as a big influence, and it's not hard to understand why. Total stripped-down primitivism, but with a simple, well-played melody in the background that adds some romping bounce where The Gories subtracted chords, structure and skill. These Australians continued for many years beyond this 1986 classic, but to the best of my knowledge this was the single example where they really and truly nailed it.
There was this band THE TYRADES who were all the rage on the punk rock bulletin boards and in the all-ages coffee klatches in the first half of the 2000s, remember? Not that I necessarily read the magazine after I turned 21, but this Chicago act were the patron saints of Maximum Rock and Roll magazine and a good percentage of its followers. Putting yourself in their shoes, it’s not hard to imagine why. Rough-and-tumble female singer with a great Penelope Houston sneer? Check. Fast, tight, supercharged riffs? Check. A legion of boutique labels rushing to put out their 45s? Check. The innate ability to rhyme the words “in my veins” and “makin’ me go insane”? Absolutely! They seemed a nice throwback band, sort of late 70s in the songs they wrote, with a lot of the rawness of the early 90s garage punk acts as well.
In my early days prowling around the apparently deceased Soulseek, I noticed that someone had a folder with the complete discography of THE TYRADES, and presently, I commenced to download it. I learned a couple of things – that, no, I was not really a Tyrades fan, but that wow, when they were on, they were as fantastic as everyone was saying they were. There were two tracks that stood out for me – “Detonation”, from a 2001 single on Big Neck records, and “Former Airline”, a just about perfect cover from 2002 of a WIRE song. Let's say these two made up a single 45. That would easily be one of my favorite records of the decade, and in my imaginary world, it still is. I blasted these on the car stereo the other afternoon and remembered that I had a blog from which I share music with the people. So here you go.
I came into contract with FLY ASHTRAY not long after this 1990 7”EP, their second release called “Extended Outlook”, and I was hooked right away. This New York-based group existed (should I say exists) way sub-underground, and have been churning out weird, sometime heavy, psychedelic pop music for two decades & change. The band’s MO in their heyday, which I’d roughly date as the first half of the 90s, was by turns whimsically brilliant and annoyingly infantile. At its best, like on this excellent single, FLY ASHTRAY took an oblong approach to the jagged edge of loony psychedelia manifested in weirdos like Henry Cow, Slapp Happy and, at times, Captain Beefheart. They then married it to a propulsive sort of simple pop music the likes of which were best made popular by dozens of New Zealand bands in the 1980s. Their closest ideological soulmates during this early 90s period were the west coast’s THINKING FELLERS UNION LOCAL 282, at that time one of the best bands on the planet. I never did get to see Fly Ashtray play, and that bums me out.
At its worst, Fly Ashtray’s “art” was a who-cares sort of in-jokery that’s off-putting to just about everyone not in on the joke. Whimsy and silliness for the sake of same wasn’t something I felt like I needed to spend a lot of time with, and I guess I tired of the band when I grew tired of humoring their ridiculous song titles and intentionally strange in-song musical interludes. Same thing happened with me & the Thinking Fellers – I think some people call it “growing up”. As it so happens, I’m still really fond of that early stuff, and so I’d like to present the band’s second record to you today. Not too long from now I’ll re-post the third single “Soap” as well, since it was taken down by my fascistic former hosting provider along with every other pre-mid 2008 file.
Thanks to Damon H for finding this one in the bowels of YouTube – an actual promotional video for THE FLESH EATERS’ song “The Wedding Dice”, taken straight from the “Forever Came Today” album in 1982. It stars Chris D in a lead role, both as actor and singer, and unfolds pretty much like you’d expect a Chris D-scripted video might: vampires, violence, beds of roses and a burning cross. Add some awesome sleeveless vests, sleeveless shirts, a fog machine and eerie shadow effects and you have something so totally “of its age” it’s almost from another world. I’ve made tracking down Flesh Eaters ephemera from this era a personal crusade, but I had no idea they’d actually shot a video. Please enjoy.
(This is another re-post from early 2008, with the Knights Bridge track replacing a previous one I posted from WATERS - I'll work on some original stuff next week)
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