The Friday Get Yr Retro-New Wave Ya-Yas Out

Jay from Agony Shorthand reviews the new A-Frames album "Black Forest" and gives it a big thumbs up. That reminded me of this whimsical song from their 2000 Self-Titled LP (the 1st Self-Titled LP) and so it becomes our Friday turn-it-up-so-loud-the-little-old-lady-from-below-knocks-on-your-
ceiling-with-a-broom song:

"Nobot" - A-Frames

photo shamelessly stolen from here

(disclaimer: alle MP3s sind, also, warum die Hölle jedermann wirklich sich interessieren würde - aber, wenn Sie der copyrighthalter sind, fallenlassen mich eine Linie recht unverständlich und ich schicke Ihnen einen Kasten des Bieres und wenn Sie mich wirklich ihn herunternehmen wünschen, werde ich. Da er ist, entferne ich ihn vermutlich in zwei Wochen.)

Last Exit: The Noise of Trouble

Subtitled: Live in Tokyo
Enemy Records, 1986

Around 1988 or '89, I was wild about what some of the Italian, Japanese and even British thrash bands were doing. With extremely fast rhythm, non-stop guitar noise, repetitive bass and incomprehensible screamed vocals, they were, to me, turning the quickly congealing music form into something totally new, noise and sound driven rather than song driven. However, the thrash bands never metastasized into something great instead turning into Death Metal or Grindcore outfits and playing to increasingly insular audiences. I began to search around for what the next direction and music where "loud and fast rules." I consulted the wise men and they kept pointing me towards guitarist Sonny Sharrock and ex-Blood Ulmer drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society, both of whom I had found had in 1986 united into a live music project with Peter Brotzmann and Bill Laswell known as Last Exit. I had liked Laswell in some of his work with his own band Material and also knew him as Motorhead's producer of their classic song "Eat the Rich" (not to mention Public Image's "Rise")...so when I found Last Exit records in the used bins (often at bargain prices), I quickly snatched them up.

Although Last Exit's origin is murky, I tend to believe that it was an idea by impresario Bill Laswell, then the "It" producer in NYC. He was, after all, the link between all the players having produced Sharrock and played with Brotzmann and Jackson. The genre of Last Exit was "free jazz", which is generally thought to originate in the '60s with Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and, later, Miles Davis. Free Jazz is free and has a tendency to wander about, incorporating many and all influences from other musical genres. Miles went there in the early 70s incorporating rock and especially funk into the genre. Last Exit looked around and saw punk and metal as a style worth subsuming. At the time, Laswell was also on a mission to revitalize Sonny Sharrock's career - who had pioneered the use of the electric guitar in free jazz in the early '70s. Another side-benefit was to introduce German reedman Peter Brotzman, whom Laswell had played with while in Europe to a new American audience. Jackson, with his Decoding Society, was already pretty hot at the time but no doubt jumped at the chance to play with Laswell and Sharrock. Other renditions claim it was Sonny's idea.

At any rate, they got together originally with the thought that they would do something more formal but after the first all-improve gig, they decided that they "clicked" together and would just go ahead with basic free jazz, no rules - anyone could play anything at anytime - this sounds easy but many have failed at it. Last Exit, for the most part, never even broke a sweat. They didn't limit themselves to just the "loud and fast" music of the time - you can hear world music, country and traditional jazz bubble up to the surface at times. However, they were known for playing very loud - which, at the time and even today, is kind of frowned upon at jazz clubs. At one club, it was reported that a patron complained to which Shannon Jackson said that if he didn't like it, to take a hike (at least that's the family newspaper version).

They recorded six albums together - this being the second and now out of print (although cuts from this appeared in a retrospective). Only one of the albums was "studio" and the rest were recorded in front of audiences. This album was recorded in Tokyo in October of 1986 and was also the only record in which guests appeared. Akira Sakata was Japanese free jazzer who blew Alto Sax and Clarinet. When he wasn't playing, he worked as a part-time biologist who specialized in the water flea. Sakata plays in three cuts including Sharrock's "Blind Willie" but it is in "Needless Balls" that he finds his soul mates in both Brotzmann (no stranger to the saxophone duel) and Sharrock, who described himself as a saxophone player with "really weird intonation". Sharrock kicks off the song with an almost delicate Asian-ish riff which is then picked up by Jackson and turned into an almost Irish dirge. As Sharrock recedes into the background to lay down in a bed of noise, Laswell turns the song again on a dime by playing a goofy country-rock vamp. This sets things up for an incredible Brotzmann-Sakata dueling saxophone conversation until things degenerate into a bit of a drum-bass break and then climaxes until a free-for-all ending as it began with Sharrock's free association. A great song for even those who can't stand free jazz.

The other more surprising guest (although how can you top a Japanese Marine biologist), at least considering the type of music Last Exit made, was Herbie Hancock then only three years out from his great commercial success with the MTV video hit "Rock-It" (a song he co-wrote with Bill Laswell). In the last cut of the album, "Help Me Mo, I'm Blind," Hancock takes the group in a whole other direction - more trad. jazz than anything they had done in the previous two records. But soon the Exit boys reassert themselves with Brotzmann providing a feedback-drenched squall, Sharrock providing frenzied counterpoint to Hancock's keyboard runs, Laswell creating an almost Zen-like drone and Jackson doing some of his best playing on the album.

These are my favorite cuts at least. I found the blues medley with Shannon Jackson that opened up the album a bit of a miscalculation and more indulgence than any great piece of music. Some of the other stuff while perhaps exciting to those who prefer experimentation also had me checking the needle as to when it was going to the next cut. No, its the second side and the two guests that really spark this album. It was not, however, as I had hoped the next non-linear step for punk but it was good sonic juice for cortical stem. Play 'em loud and tell the neighbors to "take a hike" if they don't like it.

Songs from The Noise of Trouble by Last Exit:
"Needless Balls"
"Help Me Mo, I'm Blind"

Bonus songs:
Sonny Sharrock wrote the theme song to Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and I believe his wife Linda Sharrock provides the vocals. It's probably one of the strangest choices for an original TV Theme songs but then we're talking about Space Ghost. When Sharrock died in 1994, Space Ghost had a very special tribute show (Episode 24) with Thurston Moore as the musical guest. This is in disc 2 of the Season Two DVD collection in case you are a Netflix subscriber.

Courtesy of Adult Swim Songs website:
"Space Ghost Coast to Coast Theme Song" - by Sonny Sharrock.

Epitonic.com offers a biography of Peter Brotzmann (although they don't mention Last Exit!) and three MP3s for "free and legal" download. Here's his classic track:
"Nipples" - presages Brotzmann's duel with Sakata in "Needless Balls"

In 1994 (the year of Sharrock's death), Bill Laswell released an album with his group Painkiller called Execution Ground - his collaborators were John Zorn and Mick Harris, who was the drummer for the UK Grindcore group Napalm Death. All were more immersed in the metal-punk ethos (unlike oldsters Jackson, Brotzmann and Sharrock). The group came the closest to creating a free jazz-thrash fusion masterpiece:
"Execution Ground" - hosted by Musicom.net ("free and legal")


Links and Other Notes:

Akira Sakata is one interesting dude. Read his profile on his webpage. Sakata guested on Jap hip-hopper DJ Krush's Jaku album last year.

Ronald Shannon Jackson is jamming with his The Decoding Society. For better or worse, it's been a schooling ground for such musicians as Vernon Reid (Living Colour) and Melvin Gibbs (Rollins Band)

Bill Laswell has one of the most detailed fan sites you'll run across. Pity anyone who would try to assemble a discography on the man (including both his musician and producing gigs). But they do a good job of it. You might be surprised to find some of the people he has worked with. Here's a recent interview with Laswell from Slug magazine.

Sonny Sharrock's Trouser Press bio. Unfortunately, it looks like a tribute project to Sharrock did not get off the ground in time for the 10-year anniversary of his death.

Speaking of Trouser Press, their Last Exit page provided some useful information. Also, this Wire interview with Last Exit was useful.

The photo of Sharrock is scanned from the album and is credited to either Tatsuhiko Tanaka, Toshi Yamaguchi or Takeshi Masuda.

Disclaimer: All music is provided for only a short time to facilitate discussion about Last Exit and the artists. It is (p) 1986 by Tokuma Japan Enemy Records and (c) 187-07 Henderson Avenue, Hollis, New York

Pere Ubu: 390 Degrees of Simulated Stereo

UBU Live (1976-1979), Volume 1
Rough Trade, 1981

In the early '80s, Pere Ubu (or as they called the collective: Ubu Communex) decided to put out three albums of curated live material. They gathered tapes from fans, soundboards, radio and their own personal tapes. Volume 1 covers the early years (including the 1st incarnation with Peter Laughner) and work from the first singles, the Datapanik EP and The Modern Dance (reviewed here several days ago). By the nature of the title (Mercator projections are generally displayed as 390 degrees), the band is also displaying pride of its quickly earned world-wide fame and this includes recordings from England and Belgium, the latter even includes a radio recording ("Street Waves") that was "reportedly broadcast on Belgian radio", quite a feat for an underground American band at the time (1978).

The LP packs as much possible - I estimated around 50 minutes which was pushing the limits on a 12" vinyl. But the record was criticized for including some tracks of very low quality. These include the very early tracks which were recorded on a portable cassette machine and a few others. These tracks while unlistenable to all but the most devoted fan provide some historical context. The surreal "30 Seconds Over Tokyo," arguably one of Pere Ubu's most important songs (although its technically a cover of the Rocket From the Tombs songs) and a milestone in underground rock is unfortunately marred by a bad recording here. You can hear how brilliant the song is and that it must have been even more incredible live but your better bet lies with the 2000 release, The Shape of Things, an recording with the 1st line-up which while not perfect documents the song live much better. I believe they are also using a gong in this recording or maybe my ears are playing tricks on me. Fortunately, "My Dark Ages" (the b-side to the "Street Waves" single) has a similar forboding atmospheric feel to "30 Seconds" and that will have to serve as a substitute for that style of Ubu, at least for this collection. There is also an early recording of "Humor Me" which sounds like it was very different than what eventually got recorded in The Modern Dance. The Laughner stuff is all pretty poor in sound quality but you can hear some of his brilliant guitar work and even his backup singing.

That said, more than half of this album is salvageable and also provides some interesting insights not to mention listenable songs. For instance, the use of synthesizer and overlaid guitar feedback in the beginning of "Non-Alignment Pact" is pretty monumental for its place and time and in fact the prominence of the EML synthesizer throughout where it is used not as a cheap mimic of an instrument but as an instrument unto itself. "Street Waves" here sounds very much like the Velvet Underground's "Foggy Notion", which was certainly circulating around that time as a bootleg (later to appear in the late 80s on VU). The influence of Hawkwind and Can are heard throughout in the instrumental breaks (where Thomas reportedly would go into theatrics) and you can even surmise that Aoxomoxoa-era Grateful Dead was played in The Plaza (the apartment house where many of the Ubu musicians lived in the '70s).

This record is out of print but as noted above, some early live Ubu is available on The Shape of Things (also available on iTunes). Some of the 390 Degrees cuts are on this album and appear to have been cleaned up as much as possible.

Songs:

"Non-Alignment Pact" - recorded Dec 5, 1978 in London (4.6 Mb, 166 kbps VBR)
"My Dark Ages" - recorded Feb 18, 1978 at Disasto 2, Cleveland (4.7 Mb, 118 kbps VBR)

Links:

- Pere Ubu's FAQ from their first website addresses the issue of poor sound quality in 390 Degrees. It was an artistic decision!:

If you look at the back of 390 DEGREES OF SIMULATED STEREO you'll see the recording device for each song is listed: "portable cassette machine," "one channel of a Braun reel-to-reel," etc. We listened to all the tapes we had: cassettes, 24-track mobile recordings, professional and amateur. The "lo fi" recordings almost always sounded better to us that the "hi fi" recordings. The ambiance and distortion and accidental nature of lo fi more accurately portrayed the material as played live and the band as experienced live.

A band on stage is an entirely different experience for the musician as well as the listener. Recording a band live is not simply a matter of transforming the concert venue into a studio. It doesn't work. At least it doesn't work for us. On stage, for example, I usually can't hear the synthesizer. I know what it's supposed to be doing. I trust that it is. I can't hear it. The bass is too loud and everything I sing is drifting in and out of an incredible soup of overtone and noise. You as a listener are getting a mix of what we think we're playing as interpreted by our sound man who is usually located in the worst acoustical location in the venue compensating for what he thinks the overhang of the balcony might be doing to the lower mids and how the lousy cross-over in the left bank of speakers might be affecting the upper end on the other side of the room. And there you are standing in the part of the venue that pushes the high end and your girlfriend is tired and wants to go home and people are talking and you're thinking about... And it goes on and on.

We decided that live albums should sound like 390 DEGREES because that's what the live experience is. It's my favorite musical experience and it's my favorite sound. And, of all the tapes, we liked those the best.

- Also from their old site, the UBU story includes some of the early history
- The EML synthesizer was used by several of the Ubu synth-ists (?) - most prominently Allen Ravenstine - and had its own unique sound. The company that made it discontinued the line and went into military satellite parts production. Here's a history and a picture of the EML from the Synthesizer Museum
- Last year's Rocket Redux features a re-recording of "30 Seconds" with surviving Rocket from the Tombs members Ubu's David Thomas, Craig Bell and Cheetah Chrome that while not a very gonzo version, brings the song back to the Tombs' more Stoogey roots.

Sing along to the live version of "Dark Ages" (from the UBU Projex webpage):

My dark ages (I don't get around).

In the dark I get so confused
I fall in love like I fall from grace
I wander round,
wonder where I went
I wander round,
wonder where I went through the,
the blank spaces,
and the,
the empty places,
and
I don't get around & I don't fall in love

I need a car that can get me around
at night in the city where the air can shine
We'll drive around,
and oh!,
we'll fall in love
We'll drive around,
and oh!,
we'll fall in love
and
things will be alright
things'll be alright
things will be alright
things'll be alright
and
I don't get around & I don't fall in love much

Writers:
Herman-Krauss-Maimone-Ravenstine-Thomas
©1978 EMI Music (ROW),
Bug Music (US/Can)
Lyrics by David Thomas

I'm leaving in a couple of minutes to go see the Kings of Convenience free soundcheck at Iota. Their site has a Flash streamer of their new easy-listening album with little animations that look like what I imagine an Ikea catalog might look like.

It's music my Mom might like. Her one act of musical rebellion against my Manitovi/Mancini-loving Dad was to collect Kingston Trio albums - with the exception of some of their broadway stuff, its about the only things from their record collection I would listen to. Anyway, when you get to be our ages, its not bad to have something in common with your Mother.

However, KoC does start to sound the same after awhile. Seeing a one hour freebie show just might be the ticket (assuming I can get in).

Not much in way of portable music on the site however ...

On the other hand, it appears they tolerate a fan site that has put up an extensive set of well-recorded live shows in MP3 format.

Here's a nice live version from December 1, 2004 - "Misread" which they are releasing as their first single off their new album, "Riot on an Empty Street"...

Don't fret if you are coming here for the old stuff - this weekend I'm working on my vinyl project - it looks like improv/jazzy weekend - some out of print (OOP)live Pere Ubu, some OOP Last Exit with Herbie Hancock and maybe some Univers Zero.

UPDATE:

We went to the KoC pre-concert concert as promised and was happily impressed with their minimalist funk. KoC are two guys from Norway, two guitars and an electric piano. They specifically asked the club to allow an under-21 show although there weren't that many under-21s there. They played "I'd Rather Dance With You" and a new cover of "When You Wish Upon a Star" that they said was inspired by their visit to Disney World (Orlando being the first stop on their tour). They couldn't remember the third verse, though. They even jokingly tried another Disney number that was I think the Italian love song from The Lady and the Tramp.

Afterwards, we got some pizza across the street, went to the Galaxy Hut and caught a set by Lemonface for free - they are a trio of 14-year-olds with a very talented young guitarist, Richard Wynne. They need to work on their songs a bit and listen to something other than Green Day but I wouldn't be surprised to see some great things from them in a few years. They were fun,earnest, have some good materiel to work with and judging by the packed audience, there were more than just their friends and relatives there. By this time, the line for the 9:30 PM Kings of Convenience show was too long and so we did some more barhopping (the swinging 30-something bar, the jock 20 something bar), saw a crappy band for $5 at Whitlows at Wilson. We ended up at the Iota where the KoC had already packed up but the bar was playing some Bob Marley so we had a final beer and packed it in for the night.

And as usual, even though I put the two aspirin and the pitcher of water next to my bed, I woke up staring at it this morning, the water undrinken and aspirin untaken. This is my pre-hangover cure that I always promise I'm going to take if I plan on drinking. Anyway, the KOC music is pretty good for a hangover morning.

Yeah, it's almost a year old but "The Rat" by the Walkmen is a great Friday rock-out song. Not entirely in love with the rest of the album (Bows & Arrows) but this single gets turned up to 11 when I'm in my car.

(Note: The link goes to an outside source and was found via a search engine)

An Mp3 Compendium for LOW

The Family of Shiva, The Great Destroyer by Sajnu

Low is coming into town early next week with Pedro the Lion. Although I have a vague idea about them (the kids like to sit and sleep at their shows), I don't think I've consciously ever really heard their early music and I certainly don't own their albums.

But after hearing "Monkey" from their new album, The Great Destroyer, I got interested, bought the new CD and am going to the show on Monday. There was a very dismissive review of this album in Pitchfork ("And maybe this is a death, and The Great Destroyer is Low themselves, orphaning their fans and their history for the sake of the group's creative edification.") Wow, God forbid. Others have blamed their noise-pop producer, Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev) or their new label (Sub Pop) but given that the songs were written before they got to the producer and inked a deal with Poneman, that's probably not true. You can't deny that some of them are pretty poppy songs at heart, the Pitchfork reviewer is probably right that this is all their own doing. But so what? Does a band have to have a body of work that totally conforms to one aesthetic? I like the lush "Broadway", the folky "Death of a Salesman" and "Silver Rider". I even dig "California" (see below) which is described as their most pop song. I suppose just about every band who sticks around long enough gets to the point where they disappoint their fans by doing something different. You grow or die. And sometimes you grow AND die.

If anyone knows of any other "free and legals", please throw the link in the comments and I'll augment it. I'll withhold my final comment until after the show on Monday.

Links:

Low Website

Sub Pop Band Page

The Great Destroyer
2005
Label: Sub Pop
From Low's hometown newspaper, the Duluth Superior:
The album title comes from a story Sparhawk wrote about two characters, The Great Destroyer and the Silver Rider. "The Destroyer wrecks everything no matter how hard he tries. In the story, he ends up killing the Silver Rider without knowing it was his twin brother," Sparhawk said of the story that's partially published in the liner notes.

Although about half the songs reference the struggle between the two characters, Sparhawk said he wasn't trying to write a concept album. The main thread through these songs is urgent tension, as opposed to earlier records that tended to tell stories after the fact."These songs feel more immediate, confused, like what's going on? I thought I understood this, but I don't," Sparhawk said. "It's about not having answers. It's about having a moment when you realize you're the problem."Tracks include the first single, "Monkey," on which the trio sings a harmonious, bile-filled threat to the monkeys on their backs: "Tonight you will be mine/tonight the monkey dies."With its juxtaposition of sunny melody and miserable lyrics, the pop-filled "California" is probably the closest thing to a radio hit that Low's ever done

Songs (hosted by Sub Pop)

California

Monkey

Other full MP3s hosted by Epitonic

From Things We Lost in the Fire

• Sunflower
• In Metal

From In The Fishtank with Dirty Three

• I Hear... Good Night

(I had to update this and remove the "sample" MP3s that were up at Kranky + I'm having html "compose" mode problems again with Blogger)

Typicals Girls Return in 2005

The Return of the Slits

Nearly three decades after its release, Cut, the 1979 record from pioneering female punk band the Slits, is finally available on CD in the States. The reissue just may usher in a revival, as new material by a re-formed Slits, a series of "lost" recordings and the solo debut from singer Ari Up are all set for spring.

[...]

But this fall brought a return to England, to record new Slits material with former bassist Pollitt, with back-up from a chorus of second-generation punk women: daughters of Pollitt, the Clash's Mick Jones and the Pistols' Paul Cook. The record, due this summer, also includes a version of the never-released Seventies live song "Number One Enemy," with Cook on drums and Adam and the Ants' Mark Gaumont on guitar. The re-formed Slits will support the album with a tour, with Princess Superstar on guitar and London DJ (and former Boy George collaborator) MC Kinky on drums.

"It's the real-shit Slits!" Up gushes. "There's always been a lot of humor, a lot of lightness, to us. We sound insane. The girls now, you know, they take themselves too seriously."

Read the whole thing: Rolling Stone

Vinyl Mine wrote about a Slits bootleg a while ago - here are two cuts from that LP:

"Typical Girls (live)" - The Slits - from Typical Girls Won't Pay $8.00 for this...
"New Town (live - edit)" - The Slits - from Typical Girls Won't Pay $8.00 for this...

Mass Tango

Ohio Records, 1988

It's a sad story and there are probably a million of them. The songwriter guy from some small town gets told by all his friends that he's really great and should go to L.A. or Nashville or NYC and make it big... and so maybe he saves up or gets a settlement or a rich Uncle leaves him some money and he actually takes a splurge and goes and rents some tiny little apartment on the Lower East Side, puts together a band of other folks looking to make it big. Of course, the ending of the story is for the most part pretty mundane. The band doesn't take off; the money runs out; the accountant runs off with the remaining money and the kid packs up a U-haul with his guitar, amp and unsold records and heads back to small town, USA, another willing victim of the American music machine.

Take Mass Tango, for instance. They were doing everything right according to the typical way to be successful in the late '80s - getting on the CMJ compilation (along with The Feelies and Bootsy Collins and American Music Club), playing CBGBs, getting on the New Music Seminar Official '87 N.M.S. tape. They were sending out their promos to the fanzines and radio stations (that's how I got it).

But sometime after the release of this record and before the World Wide Web, they disappeared and there's virtually no trace of them anymore. What happened to Ken Cushman, our earnest songwriter? Where's his cute-as-a-button keyboardist? (see below) Were they an item at one point? What's with the bass player - he sure doesn't seem interested in taking this picture. Did they like, love or hate Ken? Is Ken selling insurance now? Does he run the local music open mike night at the local club?

It's not that Mass Tango is awful. We've seen plenty of those. The songs are well constructed even if the sound terribly dated (it is 16 years later, after all). But that said, these songs are so predictable - you know when they are going to change chords, its verse-chorus-verse, repeat, wash, rinse. They lack any sort of brillance, even a promise of brillance. You listen to the lyrics and you find yourself completing the next line because the rhymes are just so obvious. Just, well... medicore - which isn't bad but it ain't good and it ain't nothing in a competitive town like NYC. Someone like 'em for a while if their press release is to be believed (playing "to packed houses at CBGBs... Limelight...") or at least booked 'em as their opening band.

Here's about the only song I could salvage from this record and I'm pretty sure it will be on the list when the day comes to start culling the iPod to make room for new stuff. It's one of those "long distance love songs" to some girl named Jane - and that pretty much explains Ken to me. So, here's to the singer-songwriter, maybe he's back with Jane, selling insurance and raising kids. Maybe he stops for a short time when no one is looking and sighs at his guitar amp gathering dust out in the garage - he long ago took all those unsold records to the dump to make way for his kids toys. Maybe he sighs at how much the world has changed - college radio is no longer a selector, small labels are thriving thanks to the Internet and young people don't have to go to the big cities to get listened to.

"Dreaming of Jane" - Mass Tango, 1988

Note: I know nothing about Ken Cushman, I'm making nearly everything up... for all I know he may be an NYC native but I'm pretty sure this story repeated itself many times over the years since that Victrola was invented. There is another band called Mass Tango. They play latin dance music (and are probably more aptly named).

And today's guest disclaimer is from Tofuhut:

A BRIEF DISCLAIMER

All MP3's are up for a limited time and are for sampling purposes only. Music posted here is posted out of love, not with the intention for profit or to violate copyright. If you are the creator (or copyright owner) of a song, excerpt, essay, graphic or photo posted on this blog, please contact me if you want to comment on the selection or wish to have it removed. Please don't download all tracks at once; don't direct link to a track and don't listen to the track until you have fully downloaded to your computer. I save bandwidth, you get music - everyone's happy.

Delete all tracks after 24 hours.
Don't get them wet.
Don't feed them after midnight.
If you can't download it, it's gone.
Come early, come often, come correct.


Saved Rounds:

Monster Road


Bright Eye Pictures

I may be wrong but the only musician from Mass Tango that I could find still active was the keyboardist, Ms. Sara(h) Bell, whom I believe is playing with Chapel Hill's Shark Quest, an eclectic instrumental group that recently scored the acclaimed 2003 documentary Monster Road (winner of the Slamdance 2004 documentary prize) which is about the claymation artist Bruce Bickford and his father.

The music from Shark Quest is nice wallpaper music and shows a number of influences - eastern, classical, jamband, guitar-pop..- they released an album on Merge Records with music "inspired" by the film as well. You can check out cuts from the actual score here.

The movie, though, looks pretty damn incredible. Check out the trailer here - it will totally draw you in. It's playing in Annapolis later this month and I might just make the trip to go see it.

Coffee and Cigarettes, MP3 Mix #10

Music to drink coffee by, smoke cigarettes to and talk about the weather & your plans for the weekend.

• Tropical Ice-Land - Eleanor Friedberger (comes off the Startime Supercuts compilation)
• Frankenstein - Antony and the Johnsons (new album coming out - Lou Reed's favorite tranvestite)
• Mother The Sun Makes Me Cry - Skygreen Leopards - (this is off their new album released today)
• I Manface - Man Man -(newish Phillie band has an upcoming date with Arcade Fire)
• Good Friday - Cocorosie - (currently opening for Bright Eyes to rave reviews)

Photograph by Krystle Fleming
...hosted by Flickr

All cuts "legal" - please download with guiltfree and delightful abandon - WAHOO!

Eugene Chadbourne: Country Protest (1986)

Fundamental Music, Covington GA

In my mind, the iPod shuffle (the feature, not the new device) and the digital editor are perfect for an artist like Eugene Chadbourne. First, I can only take him in low doses. His cartoon voice and often irreverent-when-he doesn't-have-to-be 'tude make it hard to take in extended doeses. So when he pops up in the shuffle its welcome because I still kind of like Eugene and his demented approach to music. He's also like a novel writer in serious need of an editor. His exuberance over some found sound can be likened to the happiness one can get from drinking a bottle of wine only to discover the next morning that the hangover isn't worth it. Being able to go in with Goldwave or Sound Editor and remove those parts of his tracks that annoy is a godsend.

Most known for his eclectic ability, throwing in a classical influence there, a modern jazz riff over there and then some country music and his stark leftist politics, Chadbourne has an impressive body of work and has a loyal following throughout the globe. Although, as someone from the Red Clay Ramblers said, "I'm not sure I understand all he does but he is really talented and certainly entertaining." From his early solo work, and then onto his gonzo rockabilly band, Shockabilly, to his mid-80's revival among the underground (including collaborations with Camper Van Beethoven) and on through the many years where he's been called to lecture at colleges, been invited to prestigious jazz festivals and still proudly maintains his "red diaper doper baby" outlook. His work, though, requires a curator - someone to pluck and choose the best - alas, that used to be college radio but these days, Chadbourne perhaps deserves his very own music blogger to specialize in his work. The number of tapes that he released alone probably numbers in the hundreds and his "formal" work (CDs, LPs) is probably up in the dozens if you count his collaborations. He is information overload writ large.

1986's Country Protest LP brought together The Red Clay Ramblers (a very famous group in bluegrass circles), Lenny Kaye (from the Patti Smith Band! playing pedal steel guitar!), Rik Rue (an Australian noise collage-ist) and Chadbourne's Fart Ensemble (yuck) who all no doubt crowded into Chadbourne's home studio and ate his wife's cooking. It's heavily weighted towards traditional country music but with a seriously bent perspective and LOTS of tape manipulations, found sound and noise, noise, noise. Much of this now sounds kind of dated but at the time it was a welcome relief from the hard rock of the day (if it didn't have feedback, it didn't get booked) and of course the pap that was being played on radio and in the mainstream. Chadbourne put out a few albums in this vein - the followe-up was Corpses of a Foreign War and featured a Phil Ochs medley and guests from the Violent Femmes and, as usual, lots of noisey mayhem. In the underground of that time, Chadbourne was one of the few "folkies" (although that's really not an accurate description) who didn't get either ignored or booed off the stage - probably because he never went with a common formula (and he had street-cred from Shockabilly).

On Country Protest, the opening piece is reportedly done entirely in one take with the Red Clay Ramblers (and Lenny Kaye) and is a tour de force through a number of songs including: "Always on My Mind", "Whiter Shade of Pale", Black Flag's "TV Party", "To Sir With Love"(!) and finally the signature song of a band I'm sure Chadbourne and Shockabilly felt a certain kinship with, The Butthole Surfers, which I have excerpted here. The Rambler's playing is quite good considering they have never heard of the band or song before (although Rick Good was reportedly a rock fan and helped the rest over the whole conceptual hump).

"The Wild Angels" is also excerpted and is my favorite cut from the album - a sort of tribute to bad biker movies and loud rebels. For the most part, its a great collaboration with Rik Rue but suffers from too much poorly recorded Peter Fonda biker movie dialogue in the beginning and end, so in the proud new tradition of digital deconstruction, I've done my own snipping - let's hope the original artist doesn't object too much.

I couldn't really bring myself to rip anything else even though I gave it a few spins. Songs such as "Perverts on Northridge" and "Choppin' Down the Weeds" as well as Buffy St. Marie's "Universal Soldier" suffer mostly from Chadbourne's voice and trite hippy-punk song topics (suburbs aren't cool, weed is cool, war sucks). Although Merle Haggard isn't the most politically correct person in the world, I found it a bit insulting the way Chadbourne looks down his nose at the man in his interpretation of the "Fightin' Side of Me." Maybe he doesn't mean it but that's the way it comes across. If you remember back then, there wasn't alot of reverence among the left for much of the country music although Haggard and his ilk always stood a bit apart from the rest of the flag-waving, god-fearing Country Music milieu. So, I'd have to admit that given the choice between seeing Haggard live over Chadbourne, I'd have to go with the former.


Chadbourne taken mostly likely in the '80s

That said, I did see Chadbourne play live once around 1988 (Hung Jury Pub, Washington DC) and it was entertaining as the Red Clay Ramblers state although I was a bit lost as to why he put the birdcage on his head (no he doesn't drink) - I guess it was a gimmick. I also found his guitar playing a bit over-rated - and you can hear that when he goes up against the Ramblers in some of the other songs in the Medley. That night, I got to sit down and do an interview with him that I hope to find someday. We talked about politics and his music but it wasn't one of those interviews where you connect. Maybe it was the age difference. He seemed distracted and I suppose I was a bit of a pest as I hadn't arranged it long in advance. Still, he was a nice and gracious when I gave him a tape of my own music (I'm sure it ended up in the recycle bin the next day).

Sample Country Protest:
"The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave" Clipped from "Medley in C" with the Red Clay Ramblers
"The Wild Angels" (excerpt) with (I believe) Rik Rue

A Bonus Protest MP3 from Protest Records:
"New New New War War War"

Visit:

• Eugene Chadbourne's Semi-Official Site is maintained by a hardcore fan who could use some html skillzz -- but... you gotta love his dedication and the cheesy pictures he has taken with his idol give it a sort of manic scrapbook feel. If you want to get an overview of Chadbourne, Scaruffi's Eugene Chadbourne page has a great perspective on the artist and includes a very readable discography of Chadbourne's major releases up to 2002.
• A few years ago, Chadbourne revisited this LP by releasing Country Protest Anew and that's still available from Killdeer Records.
• The Red Clay Ramblers are probably just as prolific as Chadbourne.
• IMDB's The Wild Angels page, the best bad biker film ever starring Nancy Sinatra and Peter Fonda. A staple of late night UHF TV. Follow the link to the trailer.
  

Sigur Ros have about two dozen MP3s for their fans and people like me who aren't that familiar with their work - I find this more than little rare for a somewhat well-known band especially when they have a well-established beachhead on iTunes. Even newer bands aren't this generous.

There are cuts from various albums including () and and a number of live released and unreleased tracks (which I have yet to sample). They are generally encoded at good levels of VBR or 128 kbps.

You can check them out here.

Here's some of my picks for those who use the "Play This Page" feature. At any rate, these are dedicated to Spoilt Victorian Child who recently moved into a Domain of Their Own but are still good for a few songs on the jukebox down at the pub even if they are in a more exclusive neighborhood:

untitled #8 (a.k.a. popplagið / the pop song) from the album () - like Galaxie 500 but if they were more focused, spoke in foreign tongues and liked to induce trances in their fans. I love the drumming sound on this around minutes 6-7:30. My favorite cut of their downloads. Almost flashback inducing.

Olsen Olsen from Ágætis byrjun - more Icelandic or at least how I imagine Iceland must sound if they had angels playing with reverb boxes. I'm guessing this is great for late night chilling with the window open and a cool breeze.

Streamside - a mellow acoustic guitar duet between Sigur Ros and Album Leaf (appeared on an Album Leaf, um, album) a bit like that Frusciante work on the Vincent Gallo film. Here's what their website says about it:

streamside mp3- 7th september 2004
we've been given permission to post a song from the album "in a safe place" by the album leaf (jimmy lavalle). as you may know, this album was recorded in sigur rós' studio and features contributions from jónsi, kjartan and orri. the song posted here, called streamside, features jimmy and jónsi on guitar, kjartan on accordion and gyða (formerly of múm) on cello. the song can be downloaded here.

Sigur Ros - main site
- news

Pere Ubu: The Modern Dance

Rough Trade, 1981
Originally pressed on Blank, 1978

A surreal blanket of noise masquerading as a progression of rock songs, The Modern Dance is one of those near perfect debut albums marred only by a slightly shoddy engineering job (drums and bass sound muffled at times) and a frontman who can sometimes wear "tin on da nervesss" (as an old dearly departed co-worker used to say about my music). It's the NOISE that does it for me more than the catchy songs (the almost-reggae "Humor Me") or even the punk (Peter Laughner's one contribution to the album "Life Stinks").

Peru Ubu's early work is a precursor just as much to The Pixies & Mission of Burma as to Einsturzende Neubauten and Cop Shoot Cop, about the only thing not to like is David Thomas's sometimes too frantic vocal "stylings" such as in "Real World". Much rests on Allen Silverstine's innovative use of the synthesizer and saxophone, doing things that really hadn't been done before or were being done nearly simultaneously by Marty Rev (Suicide) although I don't think they (Suicide) went as much for the atmospherics or had a guitar player like Tom Herman to play off. And where Suicide (and later The Fall) relied much on repetition to hammer a song home, Ubu has no problem turning a song on a dime and then again until they've completely wrung it out. I even like "Sentimental Journey," a modern jazz ambient piece that showcases Silverstine's skronky saxophone and Scott Krauss's improv jazz drumming, but I like it only up to a point (that point where David Thomas starts making fart noises). I do find myself grinning when "Non-Alignment Pact" comes up in the mix . While I did like "Humor Me" the best years ago (Tom Herman's mid-song guitar solo still stands as one of my favorites), it's pieces like "Over My Head" and "Chinese Radiation" that I find the most interesting. The only off note is how much David Thomas sounds like David Byrne. Given that the latter has so much more visibility in the mainstream, one can't help but think of The Talking Heads even though (I would argue) the bands are quite different especially in this album.

My pretentious twaddle trying to unravel the mystery behind this album: Like a theater piece or novel, the album is best listened to in the original order, where it seems to trace the inner dialogue of an un-named protaganist journeying through a surreal industrial landscape. He goes through his fears, alienation, and nearly strikes a hopeful note ("Street Waves") before the politics of the day ("Chinese Radiation") put a damper on it. The second side is a complete mental breakdown starting with the Peter Laughner punk-Dada rocker "Life Stinks" and then degenerates from paranoid (the new waver "Real World") into sinister - drunken? drugged? - disorientation ("Over My Head") and finally full-on, heavy-breathing crockery smashing mental collapse ("Sentimental Journey"). The final cut of the album cynically challenges the listener as the protaganist is seemingly being fitted for a strait-jacket that it's not "just a joke, mon", that if that's what you think:

It's a joke
Oh
It's a JOKE
That's a joke?
Hunh-unh
Well
humor me

That final lyrics are plaintive not snarling; they are the cry of the mad man who has tried the modern dance and found it fatal.

"Chinese Radiation"
"Over My Head"

Buy Ubu Online:

• The Modern Dance remains in print. Buy the album
• A box set of early releases including this album was put out on Geffen Records in 1996. Its hard to find online but DVD Empire has it here.
• iTunes has Terminal Tower available - if you're like me and only had the singles on tape, here's one way to augment your collection. Here's the link to that album.

Band website:

Find out more about Pere Ubu via:
Their Official Website - Ubuprojex
Their older now defunct website: The Avant Garage Online
From Ubuprojex, read about Their Early Work including The Modern Dance

Free MP3s on the Web:
In their now-discontinued website, Pere Ubu answer a FAQ regarding MP3s and why they don't offer them on their website:


We won't degrade our work. We won't compress the sound or downsample it. We don't spend all those tedious hours making it sound the way we want just to turn around and reduce it to a dog's dinner. If you want to know what we sound like call up your local college radio station. That's what they're for, to serve your needs. Adventures In Good Listening. That sort of thing. Or go down to your mom & pop record store, we know there are some left and they need your support. Ask them to play a copy. Soon enough we'll all be living in a world where art is nothing but software and no objects have value and no ideas have value. What's the rush? This was written about 2000, I think. And unfortunately, live college radio and a good "mom and pop" record store are not an option for many in 2004. And if you've ever tried to go and ask alot of store clerks, they'll look at you funny since a lot of them think they are DJs. Additionally, many college radio shows use MP3s extensively and FM radio (not to mention AM) by its nature changes the original sound, so what's the point?



There are some MP3s of the recent variety (rarities, side projects) up at a site that seems sanctioned by the band. Here's the link. The Tripod Jimmy (Tom Herman's band) and Home and Garden (drummer Strauss's band) cuts are worth exploring as is their music in general.

Scatrecords has MP3s of the Electric Eels, supposedly an influential band (although that's been debated) on Rocket from the Tombs and Pere Ubu.

Further Reading:

There are many parallel between this album and T. S. Eliot's 1922 The Wasteland. Eliot's protaganist walks at times through an "unreal city" in a journey of madness and references "fear in a handful of dust" that echoes the underlying fear of nuclear destruction prevalent in 1978. Michael Baker, in a multi-part essayabout three Cleveland Bands (The Strawbs, Pere Ubu and Human Switchboard) points this out convincingly - this appeared Perfect Sound Forever. He summarizes Pere Ubu:


The second band, carved out of the incendiary, smoldering white light/white heat of the mercurial Rocket From the Tombs, was formed in 1975, and soon recorded a batch of rough songs that single-handedly created the American underground, a hell where radio play and album sales went to die, but a purgatory that spawned the Do It Yourself ethic, the avant-garde leanings of noise bands like DNA and Sonic Youth, various subsections of Industrial music; with a pre-punk vitality, a love of the fearless and sublime and the grotesque, or the meatier aspect of the grunge movement, Pere Ubu, on their first three albums, rejected Romanticism in favor of Modernism, a earthquake-y and haughty aesthetic built on the premise that reason and faith and the recent past are finite and limited and untrustworthy. Pere Ubu used gushing scales and mountain peaks of dissonance to convulse the listener; the organizational structure of these early songs suggests that ambiguity and uncertainty are the content of life. Maybe, but one thing is certain: on their initial trilogy of LPs recorded between 1978 and 1979, Pere Ubu transformed rock and roll.

Read the entire article here.

I envy Scaruffi's review of this album (translated by Norman Riding) from his essential History of Rock and Roll - he has nailed it much better than I ever could:


The guiding theme of Modern Dance (Blank, 1978) is that of alienation and anxiety in the industrial society. Mutatis mutandis, Pere Ubu take the fear of the nuclear holocaust and transplant it into a different scenario, in which death is not physical but spiritual, not due to bombardment but to economic and social mechanisms.

Their sound starts out from the spirit of old-style garage-rock,but distorts it with harmonic and rhythmic grotesquery. The surreal lyrics and the student humour attenuate the dramatic force of the performance, but at the same time increase the feeling of collective madness, of resigned fatalism, of ineluctable slavery. It is, mutatis mutandis, the same rational fear that seized the young of the post-war era, when the atomic threat held everybody in suspense: now, however, the situation is more real, because industrialisation has already reaped its holocaust, and more grotesquely, because it has been able to do it with the complicity of its own victims.



Tiny Mix Tapes does a review as if the album came out this year.

Although it was apparently never finished, Charlotte Pressler, wife of Peter Laughner and accomplished journalist in her own right, writes about the early '70s in Cleveland and the origin of the rage that so often characterized the music:



I would like to know too the source of the deep rage that runs through this story like a razor-edged wire. It wasn't, precisely, class-hatred; it certainly wasn't political; it went too deep to be accepting of the possibility of change. The Eels, perhaps, came closest to embodying it fully; but it was there in everyone else. It was a desperate, stubborn refusal of the world, a total rejection; the kind of thing that once drove men into the desert, but our desert was the Flats. It should be remembered that we had all grown up with Civil Defense drills and air-raid shelters and dreams of the Bomb at night; we had been promised the end of the world as children, and we weren't getting it. But there must have been more to it than that.



Finally, here are some humorous Pere Ubu stories from Cle Punk.




Today's disclaimer courtesy An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming:

This is not for you. If anything offends, intimidates, causes you injury (including spinal damage), maks you sneeze, spazzes you out, causes bleeding (gums, knees etc..), turns you on, turns you off or in any other way causes you to fill legal coffers then I apologise wholeheartedly and will immediately remove any posting, link or file on receipt of a polite e-mail. Those able to conjugate will be given priority. Note for cargo Cultists: I am NOT a God and never have been ....

sorry - you may have noticed that I'm having some trouble with blogger's html here... rather than try to rewrite the whole post, I'll just have to live with this until now - maybe when I'm less bleary I'll try to track down the problem.

In yesterday's post I asked if anyone had a cut from the Kim Gordon-Lydia Lunch-Sadie Mae band, Harry Crews and someone sent along this:

The Gospel Singer - Harry Crews (via yousendit.com)

(Sorry its too large for me to host and I think its worthwhile to include the after-song patter between Lydia, Kim and the audience - note how Kim says that people should read books because they don't censor violence in books...)

Thanks to ZB for sending it on.

I don't know much about this band and I had heard some cuts from this (including this one) but never spent alot of time with it - so rather than bloviate - here's what Harry Crews website thinks of Harry Crews, the band:

"Naked in Garden Hills."

Harry Crews.
Lydia Lunch, et al.
Widowspeak Productions, 1990.
Sound Recording: LP/Cassette/CD.

"Harry Crews, the band, toured Europe from Sep. 1 till Sep. 24, 1988. The album was recorded live at the Mean Fiddler, London and in Vienna, Austria by Vienna Radio." [from liner notes]

Includes 9 songs: Man Hates a Man, Distopia, Gospel Singer, Knockout Artist, (She's in a) Bad Mood, The Way Out, Bringing Me Down, Car, S.O.S.

Band members include Kim Gordon (of the band Sonic Youth), Lydia Lunch, Sadie Mae.

The liner notes feature a collage of band members and several photos of Crews from his dust jackets. Also, a short text written by Byron Coley characterizes the band members as "brightly colored chickadees" flying around Crews, "a 200 pound sparrow hawk going in for the kill."

The songs, marginally related to the novels, are at best, passable thrash, of the loud, abrasive, dissonant kind. At worst, the music is a poor attempt to cajole the audience into reading Crews's books. Among the various appeals to the audience, "We're trying to get people to read," and "Say no to the sky channel, say yes to the book."

Lydia Lunch says: "Harry Crews, a man by the same name as the band. I know it's confusing cause you never heard of him. You might have heard of her [Kim Gordon]—you might have heard of the wrestler on the drums—but you never heard of the man because in this country, what the fuck have you heard of? But that's what I'm here for—educational reasons . . ."

"Harry Crews. A man that looks like one of those kind of dogs that ain't got no fur on their body that are full of wrinkles. He wrote about 10 of my favorite books . . . You'll never get any cause they aren't published here, that's why we caused the band to be created to inform you about the songs taken from the books that we stole and ripped off from the man that couldn't be here tonight because what the fuck would he want to come here for?"

On the other hand, the enthusiasm of the Harry Crews band reflects the renewed interest of Crews's work in the late 1980s.

Harry Crews Portraits

As I maintained yesterday, Harry Crews first novel The Gospel Singer is a major influence on both EVOL and the first song, "Tom Violence"... the main point of my Meltzer-Bangs-Thompson inspired lunacy yesterday was that EVOL was Sonic Youth's first major rock album, the point at which I believe they decided that this whole Sonic Youth thing wasn't an art school joke. The album's main theme is violence - the purveyors of violence, the victims of violence and the audience for violence be it intentional ("Tom Violence", "Marilyn Moore"), accidental ("In The Kingdom #19") or self-inflicted ("Secret Girl"). They trace threads of violence in Western Culture via its literature -- James Joyce ("Secret Girl"), F. Scott Fitzgerald ("Green Light"), William S. Burroughs (as well as Crews), cinema - Hitchcock ("Shadow of Doubt"), horror movies and music --- Manson Family, rock and roll celebrity ("Starpower", "Xpressway") and the Bonnie Hind, a traditional song about the outlaw who takes the "milkmaid's maidenhead". Even "Death to Our Friends," an instrumental, is a way of expressing a level of projected self-hate that kind of comes with the terroritory of fetishizing violence. With "Expressway To Your Skull", they create their first REAL rock opus, simple in its structure but massive in undertaking. The lock groove that closes out the album suggests that both Sonic Youth and violence in culture and the rock and roll milieu that they have chosen to stake their claim in are here to stay and its up to you to wake up and take the needle off the track. Anyway, that's the short version.

EVOL

Sonic Youth
SST, 1986

riotous/rightous mayhemmmm/hemmed in/LOCKGROOVELOCKGROOVE... "beating up underneath my flesh" there was the tousled-haired GEEK preacher (Gatsby/Burroughs/DADAlus/Crews) on the perch on the street in the dream - he says: 'our nature is to bring together good and evil in a single element' (Slingblade goes UMM-HMMM) and "tom violence is a dream coming out of a girl"... and this song nay almost this entier album - Feast of Snakes/Gospel Singer - let Hary Crews say it:

“I fear my world view is a terribly black, awful one,” Crews admitted in the 1972 interview. “I have only one thing to say to people. As soon as something pleasant and cheerful and confectionery occurs to me, I’ll write about it; but I can only write about whatever comes. And what has come so far has been a kind of blackness” (Getting Naked 31).

And so Tom Violence may be another name for Didymus (The doubting LARGE-A Apostole, A-hole Thomas who didn't wrote "suk for honesty" on his chest BUT WAS HONEST - and the others made him SUK for it through E-Ternity - worstapostleeveryeee...) and in the book the the the small-a-hole apostle kills the girl The Gospel Singer and he who writes in his "dream book" ... and tom violence is a dream coming out of a girl... and everything here is a messy dream, dry as a bone, plingingplucking...

...dreams of rock stars, dreams of sean, madonna and me, joan jett (WHO?) boon, and the green light, "the orgiastic future" that Burroughs warns/fortells standing on the pier looking at EAST EGG... he who is believing in that

"magical universe of unpredictable spontaneous alive -- a universe where anything is possible. A universe of many gods, often in conflict so the paradox of an all-knowing, all-powerful god, who nonetheless permits suffering, evil and death does not arise...."

Burroughs, friend of Lee, talked to him about Tangiers and all the fucked up things WSB did and Lee didn't do but can only make sounds about - car crashes... VAN crashes... ahead...

Suffering, we got suffering. Poor little Marilyn Moore, when she's not get pounded on the head by some shadowy Presidential thug or christ even St. Bobbby... then she's getting stalked by the Yorkshire Ripper - picked up on Leopold Street for heavens sake ... and yet, she survives - eight brutal blows to her head -- a fucking HOLE in her head, stuttering about, on the stroll still after it all, in Leeds weeks later - : - she-she-"she's talking of trances of truncheons in battle" Lydia, says it, yeah):

He asked her if she was "doing business" and they set a price before she got into the car with him. As he drove her to a vacant lot in Scott Hall Street, about a mile and a half away, he told her that his name was Dave and that the person he had been waving to was his girlfriend. When they arrived at their destination, "Dave" suggested that they have sex in the back seat, but when Marilyn got out of the car she found that the back door was locked. As "Dave" came behind her to open the door, Marilyn felt a searing, sickening blow on the top of her head. She screamed loudly and attempted to protect her head with her hands. As she fell to the ground, frantically grabbing her attacker’s trousers as she fell, she felt further blows before losing consciousness.

A dog barked at the sound of Marilyn’s screams and "Dave" left before he could finish "the job." Marilyn remembered hearing him walk back to his car and slam the door, and then she heard the back wheels skid as he hurriedly drove away. Slowly, Marilyn managed to get herself to her feet and stumbled towards a telephone. Before she could, a man and woman, noticing the blood running from her head, stopped to help and called an ambulance. (source)

YEAH... "Dave" D? ... HEY --- We got suffering by the vanload - a vanload of scrunched up D. Boon - the heavy light in the night, dying along the road, maybe seen walking into the woods to the hereafter with a dead animal by the survivors, speaking through the firecracker grave through some art school reject. Blew me away. Blew me the FUCK away. Staggering through Christmas and I only met the guy once [compassionate... communal... commie] but light in his eyes wasn't going to burn no LONGER Blew away WATT/wattage/WHAT light no orgiastic future? - and he plays here WATT... for the first time and the whole uneasy uneasy uneasy it's there you can hear it rattling teeth, burning on the side of the road, lift his head into the light/watt.... and WaTT and Kira bring them Ciconne like pilgrims coming across the US (in their van) and like the Canterbury Tales, they travel to Ciconne Abbey in the lower eastside

We got so much damn suffering/ANGST/PUREWHITELIGHT/WHITEHEAD/whitechapel... suffering BUt but but but but..., we wanna kill all our friends, ? we wanna kill the California girls, ? kill yr Idols/Teen Idles/Idylls/Idull... ... no me wanna KILL SONIC YOUTH - well now... NOT PERFECT NOT CLEAN NOT PERFECT..., moving to western Mass for theeee chiiiiiildreeeen Bill/Monica Thurston/Kim, Brad/Jen, Madonna/Sean, Albini/and his fucking German Whore... Burroughs/Wife Dead Apple On Head couldn'tgetitup mad at her says it was an accident officer... and THEN there's the Neil Young greasy biker roadies hiring strippers - and THAT gets to Kim...

Young's roadies, holdovers from classic rock's dark ages, were less predisposed to what they perceived as to be Sonic Youth's art-freak eclecticism. 'The Neil Young tour was actually the first time I encountered so-called sexism,' Kim Gordon said. 'Every time it was somebody's birthday, there'd be strippers hanging around.' source

Kim/Thurston... Charlie/Charley Manson, KOOL THING, those HIPPIES ARE killing CALIFORNIA GIRLS with the "milkmaid maidenhead" ... the bonny hind ... but.. no strippers so-so-called... yeahyeahyeah downdown down ... "death valley 69" its ALL OVER this album (dead actress/dead directors - Madonna / Sean both not either but want to be), violence-worship, Um.
... GAP ads - oh yee-hah the gap ad, neverlivethatonedown, Joan/Kim/Charlie, so KOOL THING... the Starpower/Starbucks everythingturnsblacktoblue, big brother to all KOOL KIDS, SY or don't, REPEAT MADONNA MEME w/Karen Karpenter, Britney, Mariah, REPEAT AND SPIN WASHINGMACHINE like watching a washingmachine... trances for the hip.....clothing, SONIC FUCKING life clothing line?????, clothesline bought out by some company in CHINA, so they say, ... i say, Chinese Fucking Sonic Youth making clothing in some sweatshop-prison, you know, wizened impishly like Burroughs/Yoda and scarier with each year etching into their faces, DO WE HAVE TO WATCH THEM GRoW OLD??? Kill Sonic Youth yr iDolls (Lee's the worst, you know, scary monster)... their ALL. KNOWING. StUPIdmmmFACES but not really like a kid with crayons - turn the light right and it looks like CRAYONS but not in their eyes (eyes on hands, Thuston, right, you see what you do) and that drummer iz he fat this year? Uberproducers on the Lowah East Siiiiddeeee... stupid screams/wrecking the Kingdom with this meterman rap

WE KNEW YE THURSTON
/THIRSTY/
THIRWELL
sill-leee young 4ever skinny tousled hair GEEK
WE KNEW YE and killyrbillyfuckingidols...andandadndadnandadnand and and NEIL FUCKING YOUNG thought they for a couple weeks that they wrote the best rock and roll guitar song ever and XGAU is YR friend alreadyreadyever... (ex-CRUCIFUCK I Killed Bob Bert With My Big Fucking Dick - "looks all of 12 years old" or something she said) and well, Frankenstein Shelley / Byron, our good friend, goatee Byron.... Buy runn... So, yeah, Kill All Your Friends... and andandand speaking of all yr sins and the all knowing all fucking Godfan that watches you, why did you release this on CD with that fucking BUBBLEGUM song tacked onto the end... TORTURE, AB-SO_Loot fucking worst Sonick Yoot song every... SONIC POOP...Death to your Friends? Death to U! Worst Apostle Ever! Evereververevol...

Suffering, REAL no FICTION no REALer than Sonic Life - the cane (CAIN) crashing against the whore's light fixture, DADELUS...railing at Mommy, dead Mommy/////

"Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat. Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!"

- write prose like that ThUrston/LYDIA/CREWS,even...) and you know it, you quoted it... invisible boy=secret girl=Ulysses. Crawling throught the walls (of the closet)Joyce, Bloom, Stephen "burn inside between two walls" two walls...two yep dual duel do all it tee shirt... swear it wasn't me... Charlie/Charley - kiss her in the shadow of the doubt - Guy/Gay.. Bruno/Brute..Daisy/Tom (buchannan/violence) ...HUME/JESSICA (AlFRED/THORTON) errr......and all alone by himself, driving Miss Daisy over Myrtle... there's Gatsby, the believer on that "orgiastic future" that won't happen even at the height of orgasm pounding poundingpoundingpounding "to your skuuuuullllll" release, release, but then it just goes on for ever... plear/queer(Burroughs)/jeer/near/peer/pear - hips like a pear and back to Madonna and those so-called heaven hips blue lips (crayon eyes) she sings of sexviolence and the kids used to line up and buy it the crap (Vogue=Goo), you're all incredulous when Watt brings her to you on bended knee but LISTEN UP - The Big She wrote this:

Oh, do you wanna see me down on my knees
Or bending over backwards now, would you be pleased
Unlike the others, I'd do anything
I'm not the same, I have no shame
I'm on fire

Yes, you know you know ... that ... YOU couldn't, yod couldn't WRITE that line... Lydia couldn't even sing this and yu no, yo nonononono that ...Kern couldn't even film it and unounouno ... Lung Leg couldn't act as fierce (couldn't act EVEN) and Lisa Carver might get it (or not) :"it's about altered states of conciousness" or "getting so close to someone that yer inside someone's skull" (DUH, Suckdog, ...but I just put Madonna in the same virtual class with JOYCE HEEE HEEE - walked right over you, fanboy seducer w/yr tits and kitty litter) ...ooohhh... reeling... bitch set me up, he said our night owl running rampant on the streets you'd see him drunk in the clubs, marion barry, while you Sonic Youth / Kim / Thurston / Steve / Lee and Rayful Edmonds were the hip thing you gotta see this it's 1986 at 930 club/THE COMPLEX remembembmermbmer--- Henry GARRRfield in the back with the blonde bimbo, IAN it's MAc-Kay not MackIE MacKaye somewheres Cynthia, Gordongordongordon -- even a SPIN writer/A&R reps so hot, Lydia waddled into town the following week......Dee-cee - dickhead city (tim w.)... GI's tore the cores of my ear off off at that fucking complex show... that fucking JOHN H. STABB what happened to him selling cars? pimping? You with drumsticks, odds tunings - JH STABB IS making ESTATIC peace withhimselfd.boon........ you opened for him - you opened for the FUCKING G.I.???? WOw... YR crowning achievement... ...oh, and Rev. Brett and Jim in the audience yelling about Kim's panties - I made them come, they hated me forever because of that... ....I think the leather-clad bouncers escorted them out or they just went out to do crank

... I'm kidding I LOVE YOU(KILLYOU) SONIC IDOLS sendmorepromos, fanboyfanboylick - lick the handcream off your author doilee handzzz... so-called... Kim... pick the needle off the turntable WAKEUP WAKEUP LOCK GROOVE LOCK GROOVE - think about BUK, wanting people to do something, throw shit at him, walk off in disgust, make HIM walk off in disgust, just do something or go drink... and you throw us out, sorry Hennnnnrrrreee.... sorry Iaaaan... Lydia... WAKEUP WAKEUP or just pick the needle off the turntable cuz its in a LOCK GROOVE. Lock/Shock/Mock/Madonna/SEAN...hmmmm...

Shawn, sean seen Scene...(remember) seen dangling the photographer (Paparazzzzzy) from the window, smashed the camera in his fucking eye (Irish temper like Joyce another connection!) leaving Macau on that expressway to the 3-way jet plane...LATER... he does or doesn't push Ciconne's head into the oven (Hansel/Gretel - Sean/Madonna - Brad/Jen...OJ/Nichole)HE BEATS HER (Crucify Him! Death to Our Friends) and she (nichole, nicole, nick-hole, Madonna) tells the police (that racist crewcut shouldabeenaprison bitch cop was probably there sucking it all in... thinking that crazy fucking Irish kid with his fucked up Daddy) Imagine Madonna, eyes still red, eyeshadow dripping dream... "forget it don't file the report... i'm okay, he's just stressed hasn't had a good movie since "fast times" and he hates fucking spicoli so when you said "I know that dude" it was a surpreme act of self-control that he didn't pull your head off, piss down your neck and then go cry to Harry Crews ringside with Madonna and Jack and Sean and Buk. Irony Sean knew CREWS LOVED CREWS but Madonna couldn't care less about this Southern jackass retard PROfessor, I screw dancers, actors, fuck you you're no Arthur Miller, walking naked through Miami, domdomdom... "Buk probably had a good laugh about, Sean, didn't he? probably wanted to fuck her silly but thought she was pretty silly, I bet (know?)...ah my god, all the "so-called sexism" Chinese Fucking Sonic Youth workers sewing your clothes... ah, forget the Gap ad honey. Come home. I love you. I love your voice. Keeps me sane. Kim, kimkimkimkim...chee...

Burroughs ghost interrupts:

"We've got a famine here, Osiris -- what happened?" "Well, you can't win them all, I'm hustling myself." "Can you give us immortality?" "I can give you an extension, maybe, take you as far as the first checkpoint -- you'll have to make it from there on your own. Most of them don't, figure about one in a million, and biologically speaking, that's very good odds."

On a plane.... on a train... would you love me anywhere? do you care? reading Greil/Grail Marcus/MARK-US - Mystery Train - Elvis/Marilyn - Brad/Jen...Ike/Tina ... yeah yeah ... but what about The Holy Trinity (multiplicity/duality)- 3-way Plane - Elvis in Church singing with those Gospel Singers, Memphis church burning down - Mark-Us later writes "Lipstick Traces" (soon to be a stage play!) trying to 'splain PUNK to the befuddled Rolling Stone G-G-G-Generation... failed... bigtime... DADA? DADA? Johnny Lydon laughs at this in that film, it wasn't forkin' Dada - maybe "da da da" but not DADA... Anyway, MARCUS is OBSESSED OBSESSED with the PISTOLS and LYDON's single line"Kill All Passerbys" just a phrase, the other Pistols (Glenn fucking Glenn asswipe) HATED that line - wanted to KILL Lydon for fucking up their chances to MAKE IT BIG Steve Jones on the radio... Glenn where? who? -- Killed themselves Sid/Nancy - Thurston/Kim - Charlie/Charley - but wait, who was watching SYD???? Manson/Gatsby alone watching the Tate front door/Green light Killing because the Beatles told him too... yeah, Ringo.. told him to kill... (George Harrison later flew to Macau to pick up Sean before the Police arrested him - paid off the Portu-gee)

And Sonic Youth...no one kills for them... but well someone wrote a virus: SONIK.854 and it wrote THIS over everyone's DISK/DICK quoting from Joyce speaking as Stephen:

"My mother used to say You're the boy that can enjoy invisibility / the pleasure is everlasting / Sonik Youth originally released 29 April '92" (source)

NASTy, too, killed all the California drives... so some geek could say that Sonic Youth is A VIRUS...so at least they GOT That sub (Eastern Massachusetts So They Could Breathe)version going for 'em... ...

violence is a number ... and its 854.

LOCK GROOVE LOCK GROOVE LOCK GROOVE LOCK GROOVE LOCK GROOVEVOLOCK GROOVELEVOLEVOLEVOLVE GROOVE... WAKE UP SWEAR IT S JUST A DREAM...

SMELL/TASTE/SEE/BUT don't hear:

"Tom Violence"
"Green Light"

Disclaimer: I fucked David Geffen with Thurston's BIG FUCKING DICK. Do not download these poorly record vinyl rips for just two weeks.

((EAT SONIC YOUTH)) ((CONSUME SONIC YOUTH))((NEW IMPROVED EVOL ON iTUNES))

and....HTMLMART:

Worship The Gospel Singer

Eat Harry
Puree Confusion is Next

Munch The Great Gatsby

Devour Joyce
Turn on, Tune Off The Greatest Madonna/Sean Movie Ever
Titilliate Yr-Self w/ Richard Kern
Buy The Lydia Lunch Combo Meal
Thrill to Thornton Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt

Ride Along With Strangers on A Train
Shock and Awe with the Official Greil Marcus Homepage
Smell Elvis
Reflect with Sean Penn
Don't Leave Without Some Madonna
And... finally... some words of advice from Burroughs

D. H. Fucking

Boon Christ

R.I.P.

In The Kingdom #19

Coffee & Cigarettes, Mp3 Mix Number 9

which track (by cymagen)

"We Are The Wreckage" - Castanets
"Knock Three Times" - black tape for a blue girl (alas, 64 kbps)
"The Boy With The Thorn" - kinesis
"In Action" - We Are Scientists
"IMpossible" - Figurine

All tracks believed to be "free and legal"