CRUD CRUD

Songs By Ruben Tagalog

2012-01-27T14:02:00.000-08:00

Ruben Tagalog Songs By Ruben Tagalog 10" (Villar, 195?)

Here is another record from the Philippines, one that is much earlier and way different musically than "Anak" by Freddie Aguilar. This one is by Ruben Tagalog, a movie star and singer. He started his career as an entertainer in 1934 at the age of twelve when he and his two sisters set down in Manila as the Wanderers Trio. Occupation of the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II broke up the group, but Ruben kept singing, building a fine career making records and movies.

One of Ruben's groups is called the Mabuhay Singers, which might be a name familiar to those of you who scour thrift stores. Mabuhay Singers records surface from time to time and they are always cheap. Most record fiends have bought at least one, only to be disappointed. I've been burned on enough of them (and other Filipino records) that I swore off anything that originated from those islands (something I am reconsidering since scoring the Aguilar and then this).

Aside from the language, there is nothing remotely Filipino about this Ruben Tagalog record. It sounds like a very nice lounge record with a very nice baritone and a hint of exotica. It has a sound that is dated enough to be romantic. Close your eyes and imagine people dancing to this and then realize that they'd be dead by now. It is really music from a different world.

Charito, I Love You
Tunay Na Tunay
Tugtugin Bukid

Anak

2012-01-23T21:19:00.000-08:00

Freddie Aguilar Anak LP (Sunshine, 1978)

A couple posts ago reflecting on not knowing who Lepa Brena, a Serbian singer who has sold more than 40 million albums, was and the world is really much bigger than we think. Well, here's one more example of that. Freddie Aguilar is not only the pop musician of the Philippines but his importance cross culture to politics and into the history books.

Musically, Aguilar's importance centers on two things. First is he wrote and performed a song called "Anak" (which is the title cut of this record and which you can hear/watch). "Anak" sold millions of copies when it was released. It not only lodged itself in the Philippine charts at number one, it topped the charts in Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other countries in Southeast Asia. There are over 100 versions of it recorded, in 23 languages. Number two: Prior to "Anak"'s success, Aguilar was one of many artists associated with Pinoy Rock, the Filipino version of rock & roll, which started in the 1960s but really took off in the Seventies. Pinoy Rock was to serve as part of the cultural roots of opposition to the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

Politically, Aguilar is important because he is one of the artists who headed up opposition to Marcos. His recording of the protest song "Bayan Ko" (with additional lyrics criticizing Marcos) became the anthem of the "People Power" movement, which lead to the peaceful revolution which toppled Marcos. Aguilar was harassed by Marco's henchmen but stood as a cultural icon against the dictatorship, while giving public support to opposition leaders.

Now I didn't know any of that before I found this record, even though I have a goddamn book on Pinoy Rock (Punks, Poets, and Poseurs), a book that I've read a couple times. And though the book focuses mostly on the Pinoy scene from the mid-Eighties to the Nineties, Aguilar is mentioned. Duh.

As I've written before, all of this is a nice history lesson, but that is all it is if the music doesn't deliver. Aguilar does. While "Anak" is a nice song, it is the rest of the album which I dig the most. Aguilar's best stuff is quiet, moody, and mildly psychedelic. It has the feel of Danny Kirwan-era Fleewood Mac mixed with a bit of Leonard Cohen (music not vocals). When Aguilar "rocks," it is a laid back sound, something that is a bit like a bluesy Sir Douglas Quintet. It's really nice stuff.

Pagibig
Kasaysayan
Ikaw Ba'y Pilipino?

El Ritmo Inconfundible de Columbia

2011-12-23T21:10:00.000-08:00

De Nuevo Los Hispanos De Columbia El Ritmo Inconfundible de Columbia LP (Discos Fuentes, 19??)

I love the Discos Fuentes label - it is one of the labels that is on my buy-blind list. If the record is cheap, the cover remotely promising, and it is a Fuentes, the disk goes into a pile and the pile to the front counter and then off to my place. Not all of these Fuentes blind buys are winners. In fact, a good many of them suck. But when they do hit, I am very happy. This album by De Nuevo Los Hispanos De Columbia is one Fuentes that has made me a happy man. The band skips through cumbias, merengues, plenas, paseos, and a whole lot of paseaitos. There is even a jala jala here and a calypso. Translated for you folks who don't know your Latin rhythms: Los Hispanos play a really nice mix of continental Latin and Caribbean styles. They also have an engaging singer in a fellow named Rodolfo. I have no idea when this was recorded but given the sound and the group's look, I'd say late 60s/early 70s.

Asi Empezaron Papa Y Mama
Cumbia Cereteana
Maka Suerte

Voli Me, Voli

2011-12-19T17:47:00.000-08:00

Lepa Brena Voli Me, Voli LP (RTB, 1986)

Listen, I might know a lot about music, but damn if I can tell one Yugoslavian pop mega-star from another. Ignorant though I may be, when someone hands me an album with a cover shot of a pretty woman dressed in white, cuddling a dove and says "Fifty cents and it's yours," I shell out cash just to find out what it is and why the dame is snuggling a bird. Of course, the payoff is always the music (though you gotta admit that this cover pose is very fetching) and the needle drop on this really raised an uni-brow. Over the speakers comes swirling Balkan dance music with a nice pop feel, a cool sounding drum machine, and a little Arabesque and I'm thinking of finding myself a dove or at least a pigeon and a can of white spray paint. So who is this mystery fowl fancier? Type type type and click, I find she is Lepa Brena and since the early 1980s she's sold over 40 million albums. Oh. 40 million? That is quite a lot. Perhaps I should have known of her. Or perhaps not. There are thousands of artists like Ms Brena, huge in their own country and zilch here in America. Forget the internet as some kind of portal to the world. That is one of the biggest lines of horseshit going today. Unless you've got Serbs in your family, who maintain some kind of cultural attachment to the motherland or you have a fetish for chicks with chicks, Lepa Brena isn't going to be in your ear any quicker today than it was pre-internet. Pre-internet you'd be reading this screed in some magazine. Magazines? Remember them? Made of paper, words inside, came out every month or two - really neat things, these magazines. And you don't have to worry about someone kicking the plug out of the wall and all the words disappearing. So, assuming that this is your intro to Lepa Brena, had you not found this here at Crud Crud the blog, you would have read about it in Crud Crud the zine, all one thousand of you. Sooooooo....Lepa not only sold a ton of records, she made a bunch, many with this band Slatki Greh, a couple of them the best selling Yugoslavian pop albums of all time. Voli Me, Voli is the only one I've heard. Half of it is a snooze, a quarter of it is pretty good, and a quarter of it is really good, like the songs below. I have no doubt that right now some Balkan is laughing their ass off, thinking "What a fucking loser to rave about this junk." All I gotta say is LISTEN MISTER, I DON'T MAKE FUN OF YOU WHEN YOU ARE SPOUTING OFF ABOUT WHAT A GENIUS MOVE CHER'S HALF BREED WAS SO SHUT YOUR DAMN TRAP. Believe me, in this case I know that ignorance is bliss. Enjoy.

Voli Me, Voli
Ljibim Te Ja

Radio 12.06.11

2011-12-07T12:13:00.000-08:00

Hey there! Sorry about lack of updates. It is not for lack of great records, but of time! Hopefully, I'll get some stuff up this weekend. Meanwhile, take a listen to the radio"

The Rebel Kind Radio show playlist 12/6/11

Wounded Lion Roman Values [In the Red]
Arnold I Don't Wanna Go Back To School [First American]
Dirk Debonaire I'm Weak [Obvious Moose]
The Kaleidoscope You Don't Love Me [Epic]
Crabby Appleton Go Back [Elektra]
Ron Eliran High in the Desert [Polydor]
Xuxa Danca Da Xuxa [Somlivre]
Bee Gees Jim Braff [Atco]
Harangue Wisteria [Wilder Pryor]
Lewis Furey Poetic Young Man [Aquarius]
Kim Fowley I Hate You [Capitol]
Home & Garden Big Winter [After Hours]
Malcolm Mooney & the Tenth Planet Soul Desert [Milva Son]
A.R. & Machines Station 4 [Polydor]
Mariane Faithful Broken English [Island]

Listen http://www.kdvs.org/show-info/1901

KDVS Record Swap 10/30

2011-10-26T20:03:00.000-07:00

I will be selling records at the KDVS Record Swap, Sunday, October 30th, 9am to ??? @ John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 First Street in Davis. Admission is free. Great used stuff, discounted SS titles & mailorder.

Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered

2011-10-10T20:55:00.000-07:00

Ansell Wyatt & the Cook Recording Orchestra Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered 45 (Cook, 1962)

A very nice song here! Early Calypso from Trinidad on one of the best labels of the time. I've written about Cook before, it was sort of a Caribbean obsessed Folkways (and now owned by the Smithsonian), which released some fantastic records in the 1960s. One of those records is this one by Ansell Wyatt, one of the kings of Calypso guitar. Wyatt had a long career, however much of it was playing tourist hotels, bars, and such - which was pretty much the fate of most Calypso musicians. I'd give you the flipside of this single but it is trashed.

Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered

Harlem Nocturne

2011-10-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

Rusty Geis Harlem Nocturne b/w Danny Boy 45 (Down Home)

If you are a long time follower of this blog, the name Rusty Geis might ring a bell. Back in August 2006, I wrote a short review of this single in a rundown of 45s I'd picked up. At the time I was a bit critical about Geis's playing style - I thought that while he blew his horn hard, he didn't go far enough or he went two far, that he was stuck in a stylistic middle ground. Five years later I think that I was full of shit. His style is fine. It give the songs a bite. I also wrote that "Danny Boy" was the unexpected star in this single and I still think so. Great version. Funny thing is that I almost passed on this because there was a version of "Danny Boy" on it. Because it was a buck, I figured any version of "Harlem Nocturne" is worth picking up for one greenback. Good call.

Harlem Nocturne
Danny Boy

There Ain't No Age For Rock And Roll

2011-10-03T19:40:00.000-07:00

The Veterans There Ain't No Age For Rock And Roll 45 (Best Seller, 1979)

Crap alert! Crap alert! The Veterans protest for rock & roll acceptance of seniors is not only one of the shittiest songs I've heard but it pretty much makes the case against the aged having anything to do with the music. Seriously, if I was in Forever Young I'd track these two Belgians down and gum them to death. Read somewhere that this not only made the charts in Europe but hit #6 in Australia. Good on ya, my Aussie friends. Rumor has it that Gus Roan and Marc Malyster the oldsters behind this thing had an early single commenting on the jogging craze, but I've yet to track it down.

There Ain't No Age For Rock And Roll

Downtown

2011-09-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

The Revels Downtown b/w Dollar Sign 45 (Kapp, 196?)

Not to be confused with the West Coast hot rod/surf band of the same name, these Revels were a Black R&B group who made some fantastic singles in the early 60. This is one of the best. Pet Clark might have made the Bridge & Tunnel Crowd's theme for downtown, but the Revels speak for everyone else. A great song with a slight noir feeling to it. The flip "Dollar Sign" is just as good as the A side and one of my favorite songs about money. Enjoy.

Downtown
Dollar Sign

Radio 9.27.11

2011-09-29T19:27:00.000-07:00

Plum Run Little Miss Inside [Avco Embassy]
Ronnie Self Ain't I'm A Dog [Columbia]
Lynette West If She Doesn't Want You [Josie]
Renfro & Jackson Elephant Game [GSP]
Phil Gordon Good Mornin Judge [Riviera]
Group Therapy Bad News [Canterbury]
Hoyt Axton w/ the Chamber Brothers Greenback Dollar [Horizon]
The Paradons I Want Love [Milestone]
Bobby Straker Leave Marriage Alone [Hunt]
Orchestre African Fiesta Linga Mbala Moko [Vita]
Ralph Sharon The Night Prowler [Duchess]
The Stratfords Never Leave Me [O'Dell]
The Spiders How Could I Fall In Love [Philips]
Tin Tin Toast & Marmalade for Tea [Atco]
John Roberts I'll Forget You [Duke]
Victory Five of Sacramento John [Gospel Corner]
Eddie Curtis The Louisville Lip [Raftis]
Lee Austin Real Woman [People]

I literally grabbed a stack of records and head out the door. Many of these songs I heard for the first time playing it on this show. Flying blind and it turned out well, one of my favorites! Listen http://kdvs.org/show-info/1901
Also available for parties, anniversaries, bris's, and corporate mixers

Radio 9.13.11

2011-09-14T21:05:00.000-07:00

Playlist for show 9.13.11 (aka Listen to me butcher language other than English)

some trippy rock stuff at the end of Mick Mucus's show
talk about Mick's flea bath & uric acid

Villagers of Krustiltsi Planino Pirin [Nonesuch Explorer]
Moondog Themes & Variations/Rim Shot [Honest Jon's]
Hej Nackskott Liten och kissnodig    [Lystring]
Limonada Pies Descolzos [Lion]
Les Baxter Jungle River Boat [Capitol]
Lol Coxhill Two Sleepy People [Habada]
William Matta Waynik Ya Leila [Voice of Beirut]
Joe Farrell Quartet Collage for Polly [CTI]
Koscak Yamada Rokkyuh [Toshiba]
Deftene Belete Mengesh Bagana [Lyrichord]
John Fahey The Waltz that Carried Us Away... [Takoma]
Joe Chambers Jihad [Muse]
C Section 8 Gated Horns [Turned Word]
Kip Setchko Breath (the endless poem)    [Lazy River]

Stream/DL http://kdvs.org/show-info/1776

Somewhere Along the Line

2011-09-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

Carey Foster Somewhere Along the Line LP (1987)

I am sure everyone reading this knows the story of the evolution of Rhythm & Blues from Black gospel music and the secularization of church music by Ray Charles and others. Prior to this break, along with jazz, gospel was the innovating force in American music. However as R&B developed and became Soul (and then Funk), gospel lost its place as the leader. For a while it stuck to its sound and musically became pretty stagnant. While people like Andre Crouch brought gospel much commercial success and a wider audience, musically there's been no one on par with James Brown, Sly Stone, George Clinton, Prince, Quincy Jones, etc. But what there has been are moments, reactions to whatever sound was reverberating in Soul. In the Seventies, gospel funk takes hold. Vernard Johnson pioneered gospel sax, with sounds that, at times, echoed Albert Ayler. Later, gospel rap took hold. Between gospel funk and gospel rap, there was another reaction happening. That was gospel's response to modern soul, i.e. the music of Prince, Cameo, Rick James, Lakeside, Gap Band, Zapp, etc. For the random music fan, this is not a genre I recommend jumping into. Like modern soul, the gospel reaction has a much higher miss ratio to the hits. Though there are great songs in the genre, I have yet to find an album as back-to-back great as Zapp II or Price 1999. Nothing close to Cameo's Knights of the Sound Table or Rick James Street Songs. Could be lurking out there but I haven't come upon it. I have found the mod gospel equivalent of Gap Band 8 and the Mary Jane Girls LP (unfortunately in quality not content!). But I have found a handful of really great songs. Take the title cut from Carey Foster's (only?) album Somewhere Along the Line. Backed by keyboard and drum machine, hanging on a single riff, Foster's "Somewhere..." sounds like it came from the studio of Sly Stone (think Little Sister). And check out the backing vocal aping Sly's guitar before engaging in some killer singing. Foster goes between sing talking and gospel wailing with perfection. Listen to this a couple times in a row and you'll be bouncing up and down, trying to sing along with the background singers. Great song. Unfortunately, nothing else like it on the album.

Radio

2011-09-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

Playlist for 08.30.11

Skeleton Crew The Border [Rift]
If - Then - Else Hey Big Oil [Contagion]
Pink Floyd Main Theme [Harvest]
Wolfgang Reichmann & Streetmark Eileen [Sky]
Manfred Mann Chapter Three Travelling Lady [Polydor]
Graham Matters You're Driving Me Insane [Inter Planetary Pictures]
Billy Syndrome Brooklyn [Slutfish]
The Red Crayola March No. 14 [Bomb]
Le Ton Mite The Year of the Cherry Blossom [Galerie Pache]
Chiemi Eri Kuroda-Bushi [King]
Jose de Molina La Rueda de Historia [JS]
Harvey Mandel Uno Ino [Janus]
The Animals When I Was Young [MGM]
Love My Flash On You [Elektra]

Stream/DL http://kdvs.org/show-info/1776

More Radio

2011-08-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

Another radio show, this one aired on KDVS 8.02.11. You can stream or download it right here! Hopefully, I will get a proper post or two up soon.

G'dou G'dou (Show Boat)
La Logia Sarabanda Todos O Ninguno (Discos Rex)
Yoko Ono Approximately Infinite Universe (Apple)
Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come Conception (Passport)
Tom Fazzini Smokescreen (Locust Music)
Alan Vega Be Bop A Lula (Z)
Colin Newman Lorries (4 AD)
Eddie Callahan Where Will We Be Tomorrow (Ocean)
The Poppy Family Of Cities & Escapes (London)
Karl Blake Babys In Grey (Normal)
Einzelganger Liebes-Arie (Casablanca)
Alex North Belle Reeve (Capitol)
Aristeu Queiroz Pajussara (Sinter)
Neil Young Captain Kennedy (Reprise)
The Moeders Jolene (MDM)
John Carpenter Main Theme from Halloween (Columbia Nippon)

Radio Radio

2011-07-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

In case you don't know, I am back on the radio. KDVS, of course. Click the link or go to 90.3 FM on the radio dial. And I have my old slot back. So every Tuesday from 11 pm til midnight (PST). You can hear me play records on the air. You can listen in real time or download the show. This week's play list looked a little like this:

Playlist for 7.19.11

Sickdoll Krautboy (Hertz-Schrittmacher)
Halim El-Dabh Leiyla & the Poet (Columbia)
ZNR Le Grand Compositeur Vu De Dos - Boston Mexicain No.2 (Recommended)
Aquarium Derevnya (Melodia)
Nina Simone I Put a Spell On You (Philips)
Dogtroep Stoomboot (Dogtroep)
Julio Garcia A Pesar de Todo (Discos Fuentes)
The Pyramids Aomawa (Ikef)
Watts Prophets Pain (ALA)
Bill Evans/George Russell Orchestra Living Time - Event 1 (Columbia)
Odd Clouds Untitled 2    (Not Not Fun)
CAN Outside My Door (UA)
The Dobermans Planet Vator (Carving Knife)
Velvet Underground What Goes On   (MGM)

Stream http://kdvs.org/show-info/1776
Download http://bit.ly/raAYCK

Myrtle

2011-07-13T21:06:00.000-07:00

Harvey Myrtle 45 (Yevrah Moons, 1980)

Harvey were a San Francisco band made up of the three Harvey brothers - Doni, Regi, and Chris. They were responsible for one 45 and one 12" ep. Both are solid records - Blue Oyster Cult/Thin Lizzy-influenced hard rock, with punk energy and compactness. Listen to this song and guess why no major label took a chance on them: Three brothers with a great hard rock sound. Now consider this: The Harvey brothers are Black and being a Black rock & roll band in the 1980s wasn't considered marketable*. Was this an example of racism in the music industry? Perhaps a bit, but remember, Arista took a chance on the Bus Boys and, despite heavy marketing and a lot of media, they never really took off. The industry figured, they tried and people weren't ready. And, to be fair, they were probably right. Black rock & roll bands were so uncommon - in the mainstream - that they weren't a novelty; they were a rarity. And outside of a few major cities, it was rare to see African Americans at rock concert, as fans. And it isn't as if Black folks didn't listen to rock & roll in the '70s and '80s. I've gone through many a record collection that seemed much more color blind than stereotyping would suggest. Santana, Ike & Tina, Classics IV, America, Isaac Hayes, Paul Revere, Miles Davis, Cameo, Boston, and a Saturday Night Fever soundtrack - the owner could be Black, White, Latino, Asian, anyone. Then, as now, most people's music tastes were color blind. But society wasn't.

The first "adult" album I bought for myself was Earth, Wind, & Fire's "That's The Way of The World." Albums by ELO and Steve Miller followed that. A little latter it was Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith. By that time, I was a suburban, teenage dirtbag. I lived in an all-White suburb. We used the word "nigger" a lot, carved "KKK" into park benches, and said stupid things like "There's Blacks and there's niggers and Jimi Hendrix was Black." I write that and get chill over how absurdly moronic that statement is. But that was my neighborhood and that was group think. On the other hand, my next door neighbor had a copy of Parliament's "Flashlight" that I liked so much I lifted it from her (for some reason, it was OK for girls in our 'burb to like "Black music"). I secretly shoplifted Parliament records (was a grand teenage shoplifter and amassed my first couple hundred albums by illegit means) and then hid them in my bedroom so my friends wouldn't find them. That might be an extreme example of fucked-upness, but I am sure it was pretty standard across the nation. The whole anti-disco "movement" was tinged with racism and that pretty much coincided with my early teens. These were the folks who the music industry had to market hard rock to. Trying to get them to buy a Black hard rock trio wasn't going to be as easy as floating some crap like Foreigner out there. Much easier. Anyway, some thoughts.

Harvey probably didn't have many problems in San Francisco. The city has always been more open to people and to music. Harvey wasn't the only SF area hard rock or punk bands with African American members and that they had an audience large enough to warrant them releasing two records (if it was pure vanity, Harvey would have been one and done). While it is a shame that they couldn't have had a larger audience (at least not until Living Color forced the issue of the Black rock band), those two records are total keepers. Here is one of my favorite Harvey tunes (for more on Harvey and Black punk bands check out Rocktober's Black Punk Time, scroll down for info on Harvey).

* Remember the '80s were pretty culturally repressive. Women in rock & roll, jazz, comedy, etc. had similar career blocks, as did Asians and Latinos. It wasn't until the 1990s and the rise of indie labels - who gave a shit about music, not marketing - that things started to change.

It's So Better

2011-07-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

Aeroplane It's So Better 45 (Pink Elephant, 1971)

How can you deny any song that starts off with a Kinks/Young Rascals riff rip? Don't answer that: You can't! Spaniards Aeroplane didn't hit with this song - it is the B-side - but they should have. "It's So Better" is perfect bubble-mod-glam-pop. While the song certainly sounds of its era, it has an energy that is timeless. It reminds me of first hearing The Creation's "Making Time," how that song was also a bunch of great things recycled but infused with so much energy and such a great sound that it didn't matter if present day pop culture cannibalized it or it inspired a handful of rock & roll voguers to form bands. It was still a great song. I feel the same about this Aeroplane dish. Great song - who cares if some Look-at-me's glom on to it.

It Shouldn't Happen To A Dog

2011-07-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

The English Setter It Shouldn't Happen To A Dog 45 (Glad-Hamp, 1966)

Here is the B-side of a tasty little 45 outta the nation's capital. As far as I know this great garage punker was the only release by the English Setters. Too bad. Their Back To The Grave-style strummer (and the poppy A side) show a band with some real snot-atude. Instead they went and became the Cherry People, an inferior sunshine pop act. But what are you gonna do? I am sure these guys just want some hits and to make a life playing music, so they are gonna go where the sound goes. One of the extra points here is the singer's odd accent. I am not sure if it is some strange regional thing or he was a transplant from the Old World or just a kid not sure whether to stick with his Baltimore accent or to go Brit and winding somewhere in between.

Tick Tock

2011-06-30T20:45:00.000-07:00

J. J. Aguilar Tick Tock 45 (J.J. Aguilar, 19??)

A favorite obscure find is this self-released 45 by J.J. Aguilar. Who Aguilar is, when the record was made, where it was made are all mysteries. If I was to guess, I'd say Aguilar was a musician, who'd play restaurants and lounges, and found that his song "Tick Tock" was a crowd pleaser. So he recorded it and put it on a 45 as both a demo and something to sell at his appearances. Success didn't come so he moved on to other things. I'd also guess that Los Angeles or thereabouts was his home base and that this was made in the 1970s.

I've listened to "Tick Tock" dozens of times and I think it is brilliant. In a world where truth and justice really ruled the day, "Tick Tock" would have been a big hit. But a solo performer, singing in Spanish, backed by a canned drum track isn't gonna jet someone into the Top 40. Stupid. This has a great melody, a great sound, and great vocals. And the song is superior. It is quality pop. Enjoy.

Crystal Blue Persuasion

2011-06-08T19:25:00.000-07:00

Gonzalez Crystal Blue Persuasion 45 (EMI, 1977)

Gonzalez were a mid-70s Brit group, who had some minor hits in the UK but didn't find any success in the US. Nowadays they are mostly remembered for being produced by the soul singer Gloria Jones, who had a hand in this single.

Tommy James, the guy who authored the song "Crystal Blue Persuasion" is someone who you should know. He had a ton of hits in the US and made many a great single. He is one of the few people who was able to create songs of lasting value out of total vapidness. His first hit "Mony Mony" was inspired by a flashing neon song. "I Think We're Alone Now" is one of the sappiest songs ever...but it rules. And if "Crystal Blue Persuasion" wasn't an attempt to cash in on flower child, Age of Aquarius, feel good grooviness, I don't know what it. But "Crystal Blue Persuasion" also rules. So much so that I wanna believe that a "new day is rising" and a yappidy yap yap.

Put Gonzalez, Gloria Jones, and Tommy James together and you get great Latinesque popadelic soul.

Mi Sexy Amor

2011-06-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

Various Impactos Juveniles Vol 2 LP (Dicesa, 1975)

I've finally started to catch up on stuff, so time to post something. Figured I'd go for the absurd. Today you get Hierro doing "Mi Sexy Amor," or "You Sexy Thing." Originally, a hit by the band Hot Chocolate, Hierro's version comes off of a compilation of Top 40 hits redone by Spanish language artists on a cheapo sub-label of Gas Records, a LA concern. I think we are well into the internet age where foreign language versions of American hits is yawnsville. There's gotta be a little something more than a singer vocalizing "amor" instead of "love." What makes Hierro's take worthy of a listen is both the extra-mooginess of the music and his vocal performance. While not quite the acrobat as Allen, Hierro's odd, misplaced groans, squeaks, and hiccups are what make the song. Unfortunately, "Mi Sexy Amor" is the only on this album worthy of posting.

SS10

2011-05-14T18:47:00.000-07:00

SS10: S.S. Records 10th Anniversary Fest
May 19-22, 2011, San Francisco

Those of you who've followed Crud Crud for a while have probably figured out that I have a record label. It is called S.S. Records. It was formed in 2001 with Sakura Saunders. Our first release was an A Frames single called "Plastica." Since then, Sakura has moved on and the label has released a little more than 60 records. In celebration of ten years, I put together four days of festivities for the weekend-ish of May 19 in San Francisco. Below are some videos of a few of the bands playing. Great stuff and I encourage you to come check this thing out! More info at SS10 website.

Thursday, May 19, 9 pm: SS10 City Rock Kick Off Party w/ dejays the Gypsy Boys and a special guest appearance by City Rock legend Conan & His City Boys. @ the Knockout

Friday, May 20, 8:30 pm: A Frames, Liquorball, Hank IV, Charles Albright @ Bottom of the Hill
The A Frames will be playing with their original line up. It will be the final A Frames show.

Saturday, May 21, 8:30 pm: feedtime, Lamps, Nothing People, Wounded Lion @ Bottom of the Hill
This is feedtime's only North American appearance.

Sunday, May 22, 6 pm: The Mantles, Nar, 3 Toed Sloth, LENZ @ the Hemlock
This is 3 Toed Sloth's only North American appearance. Prior to the show, at 3pm, there is a record swap.

feedtime "Ride"

A Frames "Experiment"

Lamps "20 Inches of Monkey"

Hank IV "Dirty Poncho"

Liquorball

Wounded Lion "Pony People"

The Mantles "Don't Lie"

Nar "Holiday Routine"

Witch Woman

2011-04-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

Nightmare Great Balls of Fire 7" (PVK, 1979)

Here is one of those records that falls between the cracks. As it was released in 1979, it gets pegged as a punk single, but it really isn't. There is a bit of a glam sound ala Alice Cooper, but a bit cruder. The guitar has an out-of-this-world sound. It is something that you would find on the Pure Pop blog. And it is really good. I'm not talking about the single's A-side. That is a throw-away cover of Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire." Nah, the killer here is the flip, "Witch Woman."

The band Nightmare based its act on horror movies, and they did have an act, complete with props, dancing girls, fake blood and ghouls. This single was originally released in the UK, and reissued across Europe, where they achieved as much success as a band with a minor hit in Italy and Spain does. If you want to read more about Nightmare, the band leader keeps the name alive on this site.

SS10: Feedtime 05.21.11

2011-04-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

feedtime Shovel LP (Aberrant, 1986)

feedtime's reign was through the mid to late 1980s - a period of underground music that is legendary for being pretty dire. In reality, there were good things happening, but like the early 70s (once considered a musical wasteland), much of the good stuff was buried by crap. Punk bands had gotten really into "musicianship" or long-drawn out pot-head jams or the lure of commercial success and a lot of bands concentrated more on style than anything else. So what was on the surface was pretty crummy. However there were a few high points: feedtime was one of them. Their back-to-basics, no frills approach to rock & roll meant meaty chords, tough songs, high energy and no bullshit.

feedtime wasn't just 1-2-3-4 Let It Rip. There was a little more. These Aussies really dug country blues in their songs you heard killer slide guitar and mutated blues progressions. I'm not talking fedora topped, hawaiian shirt wearing white dude blues or soul patch, flaming dice tattoo'd punk blues - but a perfect mating of Robert Johnson, flipper, and the Ramones. And that isn't all: feedtime were not only well versed in rock & roll (listen to their "covers" album Cooper S, a terrific collection of remakes owned by feedtime) but built on the sound of fellow Australian bands X and The Scientists. And for many of us who gobbled up feedtime records as they were coming out, feedtime was as good, as vital, and as important as X, the Scientists, the Saints, and any other Aussie punk legends.

I am bringing feedtime to the States to play just one show as the original recording line-up as part of SS10, a weekend of shows in celebration of my record label's - S.S. Records - 10th anniversary. feedtime will be playing on May 21, Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco. Tickets and other information can be found at the SS10 website. Pass it on!

Meanwhile, enjoy these two songs from Shovel, feedtime's best album.

Bali Hai

2011-04-10T20:59:00.000-07:00

Disconnection Bali Hai b/w Aaaah (Y Records, 1982)

The Rodgers & Hammerstein song "Bali Hai" first appeared in South Pacific in 1949 and foreshadows exotica. It has been covered hundreds of time in dozens of different settings. If you play this game of picking up random records for a buck or two, you've heard it done by high school jazz bands, college marching bands, lounge outfits, exotica artists, jazzbos, and surf bands. Here you get a version by the Y Records "house band" Disconnection. One of two, singles by the band (the second a 12"), Disconnection's treatment of "Bali Hai" is, you guessed it, soaked in disco. It is a good version: streamlined, not loaded with lots of instruments, easy on the ears. It is the flip, "Aaaah," which is the star here: Another sleak song, but this time not disco. This is a combination of exotica and no wave, soaring female vocals over fractured jazz-like rhythm. A tad slick, but addictive. Members of Disconnection later appeared in the post-punk/funk band Pigbag.

Deja Vu

2011-04-04T21:10:00.000-07:00

Spliff Deja Vu 45 (CBS, 1982)

My memory is pretty damn good. I very, very rarely buy records I already have, I know where pretty much all of them are, and I can tell you the origin of nearly every one; however, I have no idea how this came into my possession. And when I dropped needle on it, I figured out why: What the hell would lead me to buy a record with an electric drum lead in. Perhaps this was a blind buy or maybe someone gave it to me. There is a German who I buy records from who uses other records as packing material. Maybe this is one of those. Whatever the case, I am glad I have it.

Spliff were a short lived 80s band made up of former members of Nina Hagen's group. One of the guys produced a great album by the band Extrabreit. Some consider Spliff part of the NDW, others say "Nein." Me? Don't care. I do love the mesh of electric drums, processed guitar, fake Euro-funk, and lazy-sleazy German vocals. I've listened to this slab a dozen times straight and each time have a guilty chuckle. Hope you do, too.

Lifeboat

2011-03-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

The Sutherland Brothers & Quiver Lifeboat LP (Island, 1973)

I picked this one up because it was a 99 cents, not having heard it or of it or even of the band. Apparently this is the second issue of Lifeboat. The first one was under the name of the Sutherland Brothers, an English duo. With the backing of Quiver (featuring alumni from David Bowie's band), the bros has moderate success. One song that was issued as a single with the expectation that it would hit was "Sailing," an odd piece of pop, but one which is fairly typical of the era. Remember this was released about the same time as David Essex's darkly cynical "Rock On," when Bowie was charting with songs like "Starman," and Vigrass & Osbourne released singles like "Ballerina." In that company, "Sailing" eerie sound and dream-like pace really fits. Unfortunately for the band, the single stiffed. It did get a second life as a hit for Rod Stewart a few years later so the song isn't totally obscure.

The Fugitive Kind

2011-03-25T15:14:00.000-07:00

Kenyon Hopkins The Fugitive Kind OST LP (United Artists, 1960)

I've written about how movie soundtracks often have very cool songs buried in them. Usually the stand out songs are anomalies - the "weird" number to set the scene of an acid trip, the tense minimalist backing of a murder, or a fake rock number to help illustrate wild teenage action. On the soundtrack to the Sidney Lumet film of the Tennesse Wiliams' play The Fugitive Kind, Kenyon Hopkins creates one hell of an anomaly in the song "Let Me Out." Creepy, creeping blues, "Let Me Out" is as proto-Cramps as any creepy, creeping song of the late 50s/early 60s. This is the song of today. I've tacked on "Get Crazy" for the hell of it. It's a good rock & roll instro.

Need All The Help I Can Get

2011-03-19T09:48:00.000-07:00

Suzi Jane Hokom Need All The Help I Can Get b/w Home 45 (MGM, 1966)

It is very nice to hear a Lee Hazelwood production that doesn't sound like Lee Hazelwood. Not that I don't like Hazelwood. I love him, which is why it is good to hear him outside of the smokey pop sound he is known for. Suzi Jane Hokom - rumored to be his girlfriend at the time, with what I would guess is a put-on name - fronts one garage rocker and one pop number with the classic Hazelwood sound. The rocker, "Need All The Help I Can Get," has a little bit of Duane Eddy production style and a little bit of "Boots", and a really nice swing. "Home," the flip, clearly shows how lucky Nancy Sinatra was that Lee had another lady singer to work out his ideas with. Suzi Jane is a good singer and "Home" is a fine song, but Nancy handles Hazelwood's songs and production much, much better.

Black Room

2011-03-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

Jun Mayuzumi Black Room 45 (Capitol, 1968)

I would be shocked if a tune as swinging as this hasn't made its way into some blog somewhere. And why not? This is a great song, from the writing to production to execution. I've only heard a smattering of Mayuzumi songs, but from what I have heard, this is her best. Jun's big years were in the last part of the 1960s. She had some success later on but not with songs you wanna hear. Instead of big fab beats, by 1971 she's shipped off into saccharineland.

Blue Snow Night

2011-03-09T20:44:00.000-08:00

The Gurus Blue Snow Night b/w Come Girl 45 (United Artist, 1966)

When stumbled on this gem in a stack of killer 60s garage and northern soul 45, I had no idea what it was. However, something told me that this was the first of the find to drop needle on. Man o man, I am glad I did. Not paying attention to A or B side, I hit "Come Girl" and with a yell and a thunderous Bo Diddley style beat, I was in Heaven. The thrill furthered when the guitar started playing what sounded like Middle Eastern runs and then comes a solo that sounded much more like Hendrix than your average garage band. I flipped the record and was treated to another great tune, with shimmering guitar and more Middle Eastern style runs, plus a Byrds-y kinda chorus. And on top of it all a singer that loved to singer, the best 60s yowler I'd heard since feasting my ears on the Blues Men, quite a few years back. So this sent me off searching: Who are these Gurus and why did I not know about them.

The story goes that the Gurus were the creation of two New York City businessmen who thought that pairing rock & roll with Middle Eastern music would be a good idea. After all, the Beatles were getting good play with use of the sitar and belly dance music was all the rage: A Middle East rock fusion might grab ears bent toward the exotic. So the pair scoured Greenwich Village for musicians and came up with five guys and gave them a set of songs to play. They demo'd some tunes and were able to secure a contract with United Artists for the band. They handed the band some fancy togs and an Oud (one of the "guitar" sounds you hear). They also handed them a huge contract which pretty much relegated the band to hired-gun status, with little creative input and even littler money. The Gurus cut a 45 (this one here) and then another. Both got a some spins, enough to warrant recording a LP. Album in the can, it was presented to UA...who shelved it. (Nearly 40 years later the fine folks at Sundazed finally released it on CD...with the story of the band, cribbed here for your education.) Soon after, the guys in the Gurus said "Fuck it" and rambled on to the rest of their lives. A sad story told far too often, but one that makes me wonder how many great records are sitting in the vaults of record companies, never for the public's ear to hear.

The Unbeatable Dream

2010-11-07T17:52:00.000-08:00

Akeem "The Dream" Olajuwon & Hurt 'em Bad The Unbeatable Dream 45 (Macola, 1987)

I've got a small collection of sports songs and I don't think there is a better tune involving a basketball player than "The Unbeatable Dream." Akeem Olajuwon, one of the NBA's all-time greats, contributes just 22 words and didn't write the song. He is the subject and the novelty voice. The art of the song belongs to an obscure group called Hurt 'em Bad. What makes the song so great is that it stands alone. Take The Dream out of it and you still have very very cool electro rap. Certainly this blows away rap attempts by Shaq, Chris Webber, and Ron Artest. Is it better than the Showtime Lakers and their "Just Say No" rap? Well, depends on how much you enjoy the styling of Kurt Rambis and Pat Riley.

Los 3 Caballeros

2010-08-22T17:11:00.001-07:00

Los 3 Caballeros s/t 10" (Musart, 1956)

Roberto Cantoral and Los Tres Caballeros are very well known in their native Mexico and throughout Latin America, but were pretty much ignored north of the border. That's nothing new: U.S. Americans tend to not be exposed to much music sung in languages other than English, that is, unless it is presented to them as a novelty. We will wallow in "Volare" or "99 Luftbaloons" til our ears wax up in rebellion but only when such songs are brought to us. For all our braggadocio, we are not a very adventurous people, at least when it comes to culture. Of course, as the world shrinks and this thing called the internet provides a way to share more and more stuff, ears open - xenophobes be damned.

That said, even with this "interconnectiveness" information on records such as this one or groups like Los Tres Caballeros is difficult to find. My only the Cabs popularity is coming upon CD "Best of..." best of collections on Spanish language websites and seeing that their records were in print though out Latin America. Maybe someone out there can clue us in on this band.

Initially I was drawn to this record by the guitar and then the production. The sharp plucks accented with warm reverb really grabbed me. Ultimately, though, it was the trio's voices which hooked me. And as I listened more I heard melodies I was already familiar with - not through Mexican music but from American haunted pop of the same time period, specifically that of Roy Orbison and Gene Pitney. I'll let who influenced who be fought over by others. To me it doesn't matter. I love finding these universalities (or at least strong similarities).

Bless Me Jesus

2010-08-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

Prof. Harold Boggs Bless Me Jesus 45 (Nashboro, 1963)

Nothing beats a good Black gospel single. Sure, there are plenty of things as good but when the voices, feeling, and instrumentation all click, this is music that can't be topped. Columbus, Ohio's Professor Harold Boggs and his group The Specials came up with a great slow one in the B-side to "Doing All the Good We Can." A solid, simple piano meets strong backing vocals, with Boggs' soulful voice up front. Had Boggs opted for a secular career his pipes might have carried him to stardom.

Sacramento Amazons

2010-08-02T17:50:00.000-07:00

The Sacramento Amazons Baby (2010)

When I am especially bored, I click on youtube and start searching for videos tagged "Sacramento." I find all kinds of goofy stuff, weird crap, and really really mundane clips. Never have a found a video as charming and unpretentious as this one of the Sacramento Amazons. The clip is of three young women - one on ukulele and two singing. They are sitting on some back steps, it is evening, and they are busting out a version of Justin Beiber's hit "Baby."

The Beiber version is your typical version of teen pop confection. Though I am sure his fans will argue, there is nothing in his "Baby" that distinguishes itself from the corporate pop drivel emitted by the Jonas Brothers or Mylie Cyrus. However, in the Sacramento Amazons hands the song is stripped of all artifice and just is. There is no image, no attempt to sell anything, just three young women sitting on the steps having a good time playing music.

There is a reason the Sacramento Amazons are so cool: They are not a professional singing group. They are a women's rugby team (undefeated Nor Cal champs! They really smash other teams!). One of their members happens to tote around a ukulele. They sing for the joy of it. Looking at other video of them, they like to have fun, dance around, and every once in a while do a song. And they like to play rugby.

When I stumbled on this video, there were only four views of it. I am passing it on to you because I am entranced by it. Hopefully spreading it around won't intrude too much into these young ladies' world and destroy their spontaneity. Go Sacramento Amazons!

Morocco VII

2010-07-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

After a couple days on the coast, we are back in Marrakesh. Marrakesh hasn't changed but they way we approach it has. We walk like we know where we are going. When locals on the street try to grab our attention, we ignore them. We adopt a "don't give a fuck" attitude without being obnoxious assholes. This change is not difficult. All it takes is remembering how we act at home, in the city, and here we are. A day goes by and we slow down a bit. We stop and look at things and shine on those who approach us. "No" becomes the main word in our vocabulary. When the street hustlers react like they've been wronged, we remember that Marrakesh has been around for centuries. The games the hustlers play have been passed on for eons. "No" is part of that game.

Of course, all Marrakeshis are not hustlers. The hustlers are just the loudest, the people who call the most attention to themselves, so they seem omnipresent even when they aren't. It is very easy to think that everyone is suspect, looking to hustle, even the guy with the literal hole-in-the-wall mini-mart who sells you a can coke for twenty-five cents ("Doesn't he owe me a dime?!?!"). It is also very easy fall into Western guilt and try to compensate by treat everyone with openness. But that approach is as wrong headed as cynicism. People are people, individuals are individuals, and we as travelers are strangers. Act as you do when you aren't on your own turf, with politeness but caution. We go 5000 miles only to discover basic common sense.

Marrakesh the second time through is much, much easier. A day trip to Casablanca isn't notable but it breaks things up. We stay in downtown Casa and it is much like any big city in France, though a bit more worn out. While we don't blend in, we don't stick out. We are just another couple of people walking down the street. The train ride back to Marrakesh is a couple hours of looking at desert. Our cab driver finds us at the train station (beautiful) and takes us through the maze to our riad. Our remaining days are a slow wander. Though we've stopped struggling with Marrakesh, we are tired of what we know. We are too familiar with the surface and to go any deeper would require months (if not years), a good handle on Arabic, and someone to lead the way.

We get to Madrid and take stock. We spent too much time in Marrakesh, enough time in Essourira, and not enough time elsewhere. Reading and talking to others, I've found that every Moroccan city is a world onto itself. The country has captured many imaginations and is as rich and complex as any place on Earth. I will go back there for more. I feel like I barely visited.

Rais Md Damsiri Arka Ialla Litch 7" (Koutoubiaphone, 197?)

Morocco VI

2010-04-25T06:22:00.000-07:00

Revived by great food, we return to the riad, only to find ourselves wanting to get out. Our room is fine, but the marathon bus ride and lack of claustrophobia we felt in Marrakesh makes for a want of wandering. So we head out to the street. Unlike Marrakesh, Essaouira's medina is compact, maybe four football fields in total. In fact, you can fit everything in Essaouira's ramparts - the kasbah, medina, and mellah - in the area that makes up Marrakesh's Kasbah (or about 20 American city blocks). Also, Essaouira is unique in that it wasn't fully developed until the 17th Century and when it was, Sultan Muhammed III ordered an imprisoned French engineer - Theodore Cornut - to lay out the city European style, in order to attract foreign trade. As a result, Essaouira is a near grid and very easy to navigate.

The small size and ease of finding your way aren't the only things that make Essaouira a relaxing place. As noted earlier, the street life is pretty mellow. You don't see beggars. People don't demand that you employ them as guides. You are not harassed as you are in Marrakesh. We hesitated to use the word "harassment" when describing Marrakesh - liberal guilt and such - and didn't until several Essaouirans did so. "Oh you've come from Marrakesh. How did you like it?" "It was very intense, very loud, very aggressive." "Yes, you will not be harassed here. Essaouira is not like Marrakesh." Civic pride and Tourism 101 informed the locals' take, but it was also based on truth. Walking the streets of Essaouira, we felt invisible, like we didn't matter. Of course, both these sentiments are nonsense. As Westerners, we did stick out - if not individually as a class - and our tourist dollars did matter.

The merchants, inn keepers and restaurateurs of Essaouira know their geography. They know that most people who come to their town pass through Marrakesh and they use the contrast to their advantage. Every tourist visiting from Marrakesh has the same reaction to Essaouira that we did - relief and relaxation - and only a rank amateur would disturb that by yelling at you from the street in order to get you to buy some carved thing that you don't need. While I am sure Essaouirans feel the town's tranquility, they have also mastered the soft sell. You are allowed to wander in and out of shops with nothing more than a smile and a "Bonjour" from the shop keep. Stroll into an art gallery - there are many in town - and you get a nod, if that. When you inquire about an item, you aren't pressured into buying. A price is given to you - usually 25% or more than the opening bid at a Marrakeshi souk - and you don't barter. Why not barter? Bartering is pretty much the rule of exchange in Morocco, but after Marrakesh, in the mellow of Essaouira, what's ten or twenty dirham? You pay the price to preserve the mellow. Call it an anti-harassment tax, one which the merchants are happy to extend to you and one you are content to pay.

We wander in and out of shops until we stumble on a place called Bob Music. We poke our head into the closet sized shop. Musical instruments hang from the ceiling and crowd the walls. The floor is stacked with drums. There is an order to it but one that only a shop keep would know. The place feels good. Susan asks me how long I'll be. I tell her a half hour or so, she says she'll come back then. As I am taking the place in, a short, bearded, young guy comes in and puts on a CD. He asks if I am looking for anything. I tell him I am not. He says he will be outside if I need him and steps out. The music on the CD is really good. Really, really good. I look at the case and it is a Master Musicians of Jajouka album from the 1990s. I poke my head out the door to see if the shop keep is there. He isn't. I go back in Bob Music and continue to look around. About ten minutes pass and the short man comes back. I ask if the CD is for sale. He tells me 30 dirham, which is about $3.50 US. I ask if he has any records. He points to the CDs. I ask if he has any disques, vinyl, and make a big circle with my hands. He pulls a couple really beat up 45s from behind a drum. The records are too mangled to buy, but I do get the Master Musicians CD. The man gives me his card - his name is Abderrahim - and I tell him I will be back. I go outside and wait for Susan.

We get back to the riad and I start thinking about Bob Music. I know the name but can't figure out why. I crack open a guide book and the store is mentioned. It's described as a quirky music store named after Bob Marley (pics of Marley and Hendrix are on the walls), but that is it. I tell Susan that I need to go back there. Something about the place...

There are a lot of music shops in Essaouira, which is no surprise when you find out that the town is pretty much the center of Gnaoua (Gnawa), the Sufi-based music that permeates Morocco. Every year, pounding trance like sounds take over the town for the annual, three-day, Gnaoua (Gnawa) festival, attracting musicians and fans (over 400,000) from all over the world. The strange thing is that, unlike Marrakesh, Essaouira not only had a total lack of street music, I didn't hear music blaring out of shops. The one public front for music was the music store and even then the experience seemed passive.

We spend our first full day in Essaouira wandering around. We get coffee and the best gelato I've ever had while sitting at El Hassan watching people walk by. We look at the fishing boats and walk along the water. Susan visits a hammam. I go to Bob Music. Again, no one is in the store. I stand there for a while and a stocky fellow pops his head in. I ask if the guy who was there the night before will be in. I am told that he is surfing and will be back in the evening. I have to meet Susan at the hammam so I split.

Evening comes and after some excellent fish at the seafood grills, we start our stroll through the Medina. My goal is Bob Music. I arrive and for the third time I am the only one in the shop. I've already spent enough time alone in the place so I am getting antsy. As I am contemplating leaving, Abderrahim pops his head in. I ask if the surf was good and we start to talk. He asks if there is thing I want to know about the music in the shop. I pull out my notebook and rattle off some names: Nass el Ghiwane, Jil Jilala. Abderrahim's eyes light up. He finds a Nass el Ghiwane CD and puts it on. He starts telling me their story. I had read that one of the members was allegedly killed by the state security forces. He lowers his voice and says yes, and then explains that their music is still very important because it "spoke the truth that could not be told." He puts in a Jil Jilala CD and it is fantastic. With the CD comes Abderrahim's history of that group. And then another and another. My stack of CDs is growing. I ask him about Gnaoua music. He gives me a primer. He puts on a CD and picks up a drum. He tells me to listen to the beat. He skips to another song and plays a new beat. And then he switches back so I can compare. I ask about Jajouka. He tries to explain to me the various Sufi brotherhoods and their musical styles. A change of CDs and Abderrahim breaks out the castanets. He plays them to the CD, stopping to make sure I am following along. He asks me if I like Cat Stevens. It has been three hours since I stepped into Bob Music. At hour two, I dashed to the street in order to tell Susan, "Honey, I think I need another hour." It is now closing time. And while jam sessions at Bob Music are common enough, I am blown away to get a three hour lesson in Moroccan music. The ten CDs I am buying doesn't seem to be a fair exchange, but Abderrahim is not only happy, he throws another CD onto the pile. Tonight is one of the best musical nights of my life.

Fatima Tihihite s/t 7" (Koutoubiaphone, 198?)

Morocco V

2010-04-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

We get off the bus from Marrakesh and are greeted by Ali, our wheelbarrow man. We plop our suitcases into his cart and off we go. Ali pushes the cart, guiding us to our riad, while chatting with Susan in French. I have no idea what they are saying so I just take in the sounds of our walk. The contrast with Marrakesh is striking. The constant din of mopeds, car horns, raitas, and store salesmen is replaced by the sound of waves crashing against the shore, the squawking of seagulls, and hushed conversations. Deep blue boats line the shore, photographed a zillion times and why not? Their color matches the sky and contrasts with the white of the buildings, sprouting from behind the red ramparts in the distance. It is beautiful. We are now at least a hundred yards from where the bus dropped us off and I notice: No cars. No cars, no trucks, no mopeds, no scooters and, thus, no insistent whine of combustion engines or acrid smell of exhaust. I also notice that my back and neck are like jelly, all the tension built up over the last week is gone.

We walk through the Place Moulay el Hassan, Essaoura's main square. Again the contrast with Marrakesh couldn't be greater. Where the Place Jemaa el Fna is a frantic carnival of stimulation, el Hassan is as mellow as a neighborhood park on a weekday afternoon. Chairs from cafes line the square, but in the square is nothing. No performers, no hawkers, no snake charmers, no beggars; just open space. As we enter the Kasbah, I notice the quiet. Again no cars, no mopeds - they are not allowed within the town walls. That is why the riad sent us a wheelbarrow man and not a cab. The sound of transportation is the sound of feet slapping the pavement and wheels crushing sand, not the grinding of gears and firing of fuel. We pass stores and while the doors are open, no one is demanding that you see what they have for sale. Again, Essaouira's volume is set at relax.

During the 1960s, American and European artists, musicians and hippies discovered Essaouira for themselves. For these counterculturists, the yin to Essaouira's yang was Tangiers not Marrakesh. While Tangiers offered a bacchanalia of drugs, sex, crime, and intrigue, Essaouira was mellow, a fishing town, whose residents ignored whatever indulgences the weirdos and beardos engaged in. Essaouria's most famous hippie resident was Jimi Hendrix, who wrote "Spanish Castle Magic" about the place or was it "Castles Made of Sand"? I've read both, but neither is correct. Essaouira's other famous, part-time resident/musician was Bob Marley, whose image is everywhere, including all over a store named after him (which I will get to next time around). Nowadays, Essaouira is a bit more yuppie than hippie, though the town is thoroughly Moroccan and you still get people on the street offering to sell you hashish.

We get to the riad and check in. It is early evening, we are hungry. We ask the woman at the desk if she can recommend a place to eat. She says that the restaurant next door is excellent and she will take us there. We walk outside and she knocks on a big wooden door. A large man opens it and after the woman and he exchange some words in Arabic, he opens the door, and with a big smile invites us in. The restaurant is dark, fabric hangs from the ceiling and there are cushions everywhere. We are led to the back, the only light comes from candles. We sit down and are hugged by our chairs. There is no menu. The owner of the restaurant asks us if there is anything we don't want. Susan tells him I don't eat meat. He heads to the kitchen. After a while he comes back with a bottle of water, a basket of pita bread, olive oil, and a dish of olives. We are famished so we dive in. Twenty minutes later he brings us the main dish. I am not sure what it is other than hot, filling, and exactly what is needed. After the culinary disaster we had in Marrakesh, this place is paradise. We finish and sit back, cradling our warm bellies. Though three-fourths of the day was spent inside a bus rolling through barren land, the last couple hours has made this an excellent day...and there is still more to come.

Nouas Al Harba b/w Kods 7" (Philips, 1974)

Morocco IV

2009-12-15T05:59:00.000-08:00

Fatigued by Marrakesh, we make our way to the bus station for a trip to Essaouira, a town on the Atlantic coast. We get in the bus. It is a "luxury coach," meaning that it is clean, air conditioned, and the seats are soft. There is no bathroom, but that is fine as there is no stink. After about a fifteen minute wait, we pull out of the station and head out of town. The further away we get from the heart of the city, the more run down the buildings. The furthest out and the buildings look like they've been through a war. And then there is dirt.

About two miles out of town, we are driving along a palm grove. Next to the grove is what looks like a resort under siege. A nice building is surrounded by a high red wall. On top of the wall is razor wire. Flood lights are mounted at the corners. The compound disappears and we are back to dirt.

The land is yellow. At times it is coarse. At times it is sandy. Every so often a clutch of sticks poke up from the ground, some times a stump. We pass a couple trees - gray, haunted sculptures, skeletal hands rising out of the earth. But most of what we travel through is dirt.

Parallel to the road runs a fence. It is short and made of wood. The construction is unusual. Thick posts emerge at an angle and at each post's top is a plank. The plank runs to the base of the next post. With the ground as the base, the fence is row after row of obtuse-angled, scalene triangles. Occasionally a string of barbed wire is attached to a post, but never is it strung taught to the next. Often the wire just hangs down, sometimes lazily draped over a plank. What this fence is trying to keep in or out is a mystery. Maybe it is a line of demarcation. Before I have time to really dig at the fence's meaning, it is gone. We are back to dirt.

I've driven this road many, many times before. It is the Highway 50 through Nevada. It cuts through the center of Wyoming. It is the road from Spokane to Yakima, from Amarillo to Oklahoma City, from Barstow to Las Vegas. It is one long black strip through dirt. Mile after mile of the same - dirt, stumps, sticks, and fences that make no sense. As soon as I start to write this land off as "we could be anywhere," I see a man jockeying a donkey cart.

Every ten miles or so we pass a village. Sometimes the village is far off, a white bump rising up from the yellow and framed by blue. Closer up, the village is a half dozen squat buildings, huddled around a dirt court yard. The buildings are utilitarian, square and without windows. What is inside could be a palace or it could be a repair shop. The outside hints at nothing. The buildings are as uneventful as the landscape, as the dirt.

We drive through Chichaoua or Sidi Mokhtar or Taffechi. I don't know where we are. All these towns look the same. Two story buildings line the street. The first floor of each building, behind a roll up door, is a shop. If it is a repair shop, oil stains the ground, mopeds and scooters are scattered about. If it is a butcher shop, blood stains the ground, hunks of meat hang, swaying back and forth. Wedged between the two is a cafe. Tables are grouped on the sidewalk, chairs turned toward the street. We slowly creep by. Men drinking tea watch us pass.

Behind the shops are homes. Because we are moving, I can only get a quick glace at town life. Frame by frame, I get a peak down each street. Frame: Kids playing soccer. Frame: Women hang clothes on the line. Frame: Moped passes donkey cart. Fade into: Dirt.

The road is in disrepair. The bus slows for large potholes. A few time it turns onto to dirt roads to bypass road construction or, more likely, stalled road construction. This two hour has turned into three and a half. The long time sitting, the swaying of the bus, the mile after mile of yellow against the light blue sky has tranced me out. The only thing keeping me awake is the faint sound of Neil Young coming through my earphones. We pull into a road stop. We get out to stretch our legs and get something to drink. Fifteen minutes and filled with sugar and caffeine, we are on the road again. Back to the dirt.

Finally after three and a half hours we pull into Essaouria. A man with a cart is waiting for us. He has a sign with Susan's name on it. We find him and through our bags into his cart and start the walk into town.

Today, you get a couple tracks from a 7" entitled "Awad Souss". I am guessing that Awad means "group" or "folk group." Souss is reference to the Souss Valley region, an area a bit south of the road described above. The sounds on this recording are generally called "Village Music" and, in this case, judging from the flute and drum combo and lack of vocals, made for a ritual of some type. To be honest, this is all educated guesswork, based on very scant resources. Unfortunately, there is very little if any information on-line in English or another European language.

Awad Souss 7" (Koutoubiaphone, 19??)

Morocco III

2009-12-10T16:51:00.000-08:00

The mid-1960s through the early 1970s were a revolutionary time for music worldwide. Americans are acutely aware of the role of the Beatles and various San Francisco hippie bands had on our culture, as the Baby Boomers have made it their life goal to bludgeon younger generations with their self-important hype. They are nearly as bad as the so-called Greatest Generation and their rambling about how they saved the world from Hitler and the Japs. Unfortunately, the Boomers' endless self-centeredness has occluded other music movements which happened at the same time. Fortunately, as the Boomers drop dead, we are learning and hearing more and more of the sound revolution different parts of the world were undergoing.

These movements tend to have three things in common. First, first they took the established music forms of their region and mixed them with other local genres, as well as included sounds, structures and instruments from outside their culture. Second, the lyrics tended to be more social and/or political than prior musical styles. And, third, the change in sound upset traditionalists and established artists, while the lyrics pissed off the establishment.

Latin America was particularly fruitful for revolutionary sounds. In Brasil, the Tropicalia movement lead by Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa and others, took over the country's music scene. A bit earlier, Violetta Para's work in Chile lead to La Nueva Cancion, an avant-garde, Leftist folk music which spread throughout Latin America, inspiring other movements. One such movement was Nueva Trova out of Cuba. Pablo Milanes and Silvio Rodriguez, working in the mind-blowing Grupo de Experimentation Sonora del ICAIC, were central in Nueva Trova, another genre which was to cross borders, inspiring even more offshoots.

Latin sounds in the United States also underwent a revolution. In New York, the salsa scene was shaken up by Willie Colon and a handful of other young musicians. Incorporating avant jazz sounds and soul in their music and playing it without any consideration for crossover success, Colon and cohorts were lambasted by their elders as being too brash, too disrespectful, and too uncompromising (though to be fair some salsa veterans like Tito Puente immediately recognized the younger generation's importance). A few years later, West Coast Latinos merged salsa, funk and rock, while peppering their songs with Chicano pride and politicial lyrics.

In Eastern Europe, various bands were creating unusual rock sounds, with edgy lyrics, and paying dearly for it with imprisonment, repression, and exile. Most famous of these bands is Czechoslovakia's Plastic People of the Underground. The Caribbean heard calypso, already politically charged, morph from ska to reggae. In Central Africa, Highlife was evolving and Afrobeat was coming to life with Fela. Morocco and North Africa underwent a similar revolution.

The popular music of North Africa is called Chaabi (also spelled Shaabi). Pinpointing where and when Chaabi started is difficult, mostly due to the fact that the term encompasses a number of sounds and is the result of different fusions of styles. In this way, the term Chaabi is a lot like Salsa in Latin music, it is a catchall. However what most people seem to agree on is that the first wave of Chaabi came from Egypt - Cairo is the Nashville of the North African music industry - and that the sounds that dominated Chaabi in the 1950s and 1960s are a popular mix of various North African and Arab music. In Morocco, the dominant current in Chaabi was called Al'aita, originating from the Atlantic coast, with songs about love, loss, and other life experiences.

Come the 1970s, Moroccan Chaabi was to undergo a revolution not unlike that experienced by the world's other popular music. This "Second Wave" introduced electric instruments, as well as the sounds of Berber music, Highlife, rock & roll and other Western styles. And, as with other revolutionary genres, the lyrics became more socially aware and political. Heading this revolution were three bands: Nass el Ghiwane, Lemchaheb, and Jil Jilala. Nass el Ghiwane (see last post) was the most politically radical of the three bands. Lembaheb was to become the most well known, touring and working with artists in Europe and having a more "Western" sound. Jil Jilala, though, is the best.

Jil Jalala evolved from a Sufi theater group in Marrakesh. Hanging out in the Jamaa el Fna, they were exposed to plenty of folk sounds, most prominently Gnawa music, which itself is a fusion of different styles. The Gnawa influence results in Jil Jalala's songs bordering on trance-like and thus a bit more psychedelic sounding than their contemporaries (though this is easier to hear in long form than in their short songs). Jil Jilala were also one of the only Moraccan Chaabi band at the time to have a female member. Over the years, the group has lost and changed members, and has broken up and reformed. Since 2006 they have remained active.

Here are a couple songs from a 1974 single by the band. Both of these are great songs, but "Dada Oumie" is especially so.

Jil Jilala Rifia b/w Dada Oumie 7" (Polydor, 1974)

Morocco II

2009-11-11T15:08:00.000-08:00

I was in my late teens when I first read about Marrakech. By chance, I picked up a copy of Elias Canetti’s Voices of Marrakech, a slim volume of writing documenting the author’s late 1950’s stay in the city. The book opens with a chapter on Canetti’s visit to the camel market outside the medina at Bab el Khemis. His description of the scene is seductive and harsh. The reader is brought to a place that is totally exotic, full of interesting sights, sounds, and smells. Canetti’s writing creates a world that is difficult to resist…and then reality sinks in. Many of the camels are being sold for slaughter and will wind up on the dinner plates of Marrakech. Some of the camels - the ones who barely made the trip across the Sahara and the ones who are too sickly to sell - will be killed and burned. The unsold camels will continue their trek north to be sold or slaughtered at Settat, just south of Casablanca. Throughout Canetti’s book, scenes romantic and exotic are leavened by reality.

I reread Voices… a few weeks before our travels and should have paid a bit more attention. If I had, perhaps the whiplash from the excitement of our arrival slamming into the reality of daily life would have been a bit less jarring. Or perhaps not. A certain part of traveling is about losing yourself in the moment, escaping into fantasy, and ignoring the obvious around you. In Marrakech, it is very easy to get sucked into the architecture, the music, the colors. The place is very, very intoxicating, so much so that the obvious is easily obscured.

Our first real life moment was something that was quite trivial. It is late morning and we are our way to the Kasbah. After a brief stop at the post office on the Jemaa el Fna, we head down Rue Ben Marine. Susan tells me that at the post office she was shunted off to a tourist line. Locals had the speedy service, visitors had to wait. We hit a main street and try to cross. The “anything goes” traffic that was so exciting the day before is a drag today. We look for an opening but there is none. After about five minutes, we line up behind some locals and push our way into traffic when they do. Across the street, we wander into a little square of shops and cafés , sit down at a café, and order a couple cokes. Flies arrive before the cokes , flies that will follow up for the rest of our stay. The smell of sewage drifts towards us; someone has opened the bathroom door, 100 feet away.

We make our way to the Kasbah wall near the Palais el Radi, find an opening and start wandering through a maze of cobblestone streets. We are alone and our walk is quiet. The chaos and stench we just encountered is gone. We are back in fantasy land. A school boy, no older than eight, crouches, petting a kitten. Susan bends down and pets the cat. The kid turns to Susan and, in French, says “Do you like the kitten?” “Yes, it is cute.” “You can have it for 10 durham.” Susan tells me what he says and we laugh. There is no innocence in Marrakech.

Our exchange with the school boy was the most charming of our encounters with people on the street. Actually it was the only charming street interaction we had. Without exception, when walking through Marrakech we were either ignored – which is great – or hounded. When not trying to misguide us (“The gate is closed. I can show you the way,” when walking down a dark street…which had no gates), a local would insisting that we need him as a guide. A simple “no” was never enough. In fact, to reply negatively to any offer was tantamount to opening negotiation. And to not reply was often an invitation to insults. Casual interaction on the street was impossible. Step out of your lodging, a café, a shop, a museum, anywhere and within a couple minutes the hounding started. We were told by one local that this is not only unavoidable and common, but better than it was a few years ago.

A couple days into our stay, we go to the Saturday morning flea market outside Bab el Khemis, the same place where the camel market that Canetti describes took place. Instead of camels, there are hundreds of people selling used stuff. It’s a scene we are totally unprepared for. I’ve been to hundreds of flea markets across the United States, in Europe, and in Mexico and I know what you find is stuff one step away from the landfill. Old tools, furniture, clothes, and used electronics are what I usually see. And Marrakech’s flea market is no different. What is different is how close to the landfill this stuff is. The clothes are always in piles and always in poor condition. Rusted pipe sit next to broken chairs. Everywhere, spread out on bed sheets are bits and pieces from cell phones mixed in with what looked like broken computer motherboards and spools of used wires. If the flea market didn’t wake me up to the fact that we are in a very poor country, the strange hand probing for my wallet does. Seeing someone go for my front pocket, Susan yells, sending a pickpocket scurrying. I’m not angry. I’m not shocked. We stand amidst poverty and by local standards we are rich. Normally I am pretty keen to what is around me, so why did it take this scene to wake me up? Consider George Orwell’s answer:

All people who work with their hands are partly invisible, and the more
important the work they do, the less visible they are. Still, a white
skin is always fairly conspicuous. In northern Europe, when you see a
labourer ploughing a field, you probably give him a second glance. In a
hot country, anywhere south of Gibraltar or east of Suez, the chances
are that you don't even see him. I have noticed this again and again. In
a tropical landscape one's eye takes in everything except the human
beings. It takes in the dried-up soil, the prickly pear, the palm-tree
and the distant mountain, but it always misses the peasant hoeing at his
patch. He is the same colour as the earth, and a great deal less
interesting to look at.

It is only because of this that the starved countries of Asia and Africa
are accepted as tourist resorts. No one would think of running cheap
trips to the Distressed Areas. But where the human beings have brown
skins their poverty is simply not noticed. What does Morocco mean to a
Frenchman? An orange-grove or a job in government service. Or to an
Englishman? Camels, castles, palm-trees, Foreign Legionnaires, brass
trays and bandits. One could probably live here for years without
noticing that for nine-tenths of the people the reality of life is an
endless, back-breaking struggle to wring a little food out of an eroded
soil. (From the essay “Marrakech”.)

I try to ease into my natural stoicism, but it is difficult not to feel under attack. Suddenly the stares from locals go from indifferent to unfriendly. The offers from men on the street are hostile. And indeed a couple exchanges we have with would-be guides end in being told to “Fuck off.” But, it is crazy to think that this hostility comes from nowhere, that it is the result of some Neocon con like “They hate our freedom.” The root of the hostility is pretty obvious. Most of the people we encountered are poor or very close to that. We are Euro/Americans, staying in a place with hot, running water, something plenty of Marrakechis go without. We have Obama; we have “hope.” They have King Mohammed VI; they can go to jail for being critical of him.

Though Morocco has an elected parliament, in reality, it is the king who has the power. He controls the military. He controls the police. And, because he appoints the prime minister and can dissolve the legislature, he controls the parliament. As noted, people are routinely jailed for criticizing the monarchy. The few conversations about politics I had with Moroccans were done in hushed tones. As with other countries where dissent has no “legitimate” voice, the desperate turn to desperate measures. In 2003, there was a wave of suicide bombings by Islamic militants, from the shantytowns at the edge of Casablanca. The state met the violence with a wave of repression and mass arrests. The king also put into action a slum removal campaign, a project which got quickly mired in corruption.

This situation is nothing new. In fact, the reign of Mohammed VI is generally considered more liberal than that of his father or grandfather. Human rights groups cite the Seventies and Eighties as a pretty dark time in Moroccan history, at least if you had a political opinion counter to the monarchy. That is not to say that people didn’t speak out. They did and they got jailed. They also sung out. Legendary among the singers is a group called Nass el Ghiwane.

Formed in the late 60s, Nass el Ghiwane was a part of a small scene of musicians who fused traditional Berber music with parts of Arab music, Sufi trances, and Gnaoua ritual music. While some groups incorporated electric guitar and organ, Nass el Ghiwane used traditional acoustic instruments. Many of these groups’ lyrics dealt with social and political issues; Nass el Ghiwane was the most outspoken (member Boujemaa Hagour is thought to have been assassinated by the secret police). This scene – which I have yet to find a name for – is credited with pioneering Rai music.

Today I am going to turn you on to a single I found on my trip. There will be more to come.

Nass el Ghiwane Lahmami b/w Mezzine M'dihek 7" (Polydor, 1974)

Morocco I

2009-10-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

By air or by land, now or a couple hundred years ago, the approach to Marrakech is stirring. After miles of barren hills and small dusty villages, a red city emerges, bold against the yellow of the land. In the 11th Century that red city started with the orange colored ramparts, a 12 mile long wall surrounding the Medina. Nowadays, the old town sits among hundreds of large, red, apartment buildings, the modern part of the city and remnants of French colonial rule.

We land and fight our way through customs. In the airport lobby, a driver is waiting for us, to take us to the place we are staying, a riad in the Medina. We pull out of the airport and onto a main street. I've seen this scene before, it is the movie journalist/traveler/government agent's introduction to the Third World. It is cars swerving in and out of traffic, with little recognition for rules of the road. It is scooters cutting off cars and mopeds transporting families. We pass one, two, a dozen donkey carts on our way into the city. The closer we get towards the center of town, the thicker and more diverse traffic gets. The streets narrow and we now share them with bicycles and pedestrian. We pass three women in burkas, riding on a moped together. A man on a donkey slows traffic until our driver, Sawad, honks and is waved forward.

We stop and wait at an intersection, the Place de la Liberte. I notice that there are no traffic lights. Cars, moped, scooters, and donkey carts build behind us until we reach critical mass and, as a group, force our way into traffic. Sawad maneuvers his small Renault to the edge of the street and after a series of jags, we are running parallel to the ramparts. We pass through the gate Bab Doukkala, past the high, orange walls, and we are in the Medina.

Now in the old city, everything compacts. The streets go from two lanes to one in each direction. Soon the streets shrink to fit the width of a car and a half, then to a single car, barely. Shops crowd the street, many of them spilling onto the byway. Everywhere there are people - on mopeds, on scouters, on bikes and on foot. Sawad keeps a consistent speed of 5 - 10 mph, weaving in and out of people, between vegetable stands and "sidewalk" salesmen. The only times he stops is to let a donkey cart pass and to give passage to a group of women, totally cloaked. The radio is blaring Moroccan music, he waves at people he knows. That he is able to navigate this maze, at this speed, while greeting his friends is amazing.

The sky disappears. Sawad has taken us down a covered street. Above are thatched straw mats, designed to keep the sun at bay. The light flickers above and then comes back, then dark, then light. We pass so many things that it is impossible to keep track, though in the coming days, through our wanderings, I recognize different shops, hammams, workshops and mosques. Or at least I think I do, so much looks the same. So much looks different. We go through an arched gate, past a crude wall painting of school children. It is a landmark that we will use to find out way. I see a huge carpet hanging from a building. Another landmark. We pull into a small opening, what locals refer to as a square. The minaret of the Ben Youssef Mosque looms above.

We take our suitcases out of the cab. Sawad leads us down another street, though in Western terms we would call it a passageway or even a tunnel. The street is no wider than five feet and still we hear the sound of an oncoming moped. We push ourselves to the building wall as the rider passes. Though it seems much longer, for three minutes we twist and turn, in dimness to total darkness, past huge ornate doors and chiseled out entrances. Finally the street ends and we are standing in front of a beautiful wooden door. Sawad slams the iron knocker a couple times and a French woman slowly opens the door. Susan greets her and some words are exchanged. We pay Sawad. He leaves and we are lead into a courtyard garden and shown our room.

After hitting the bathroom, we kick back on a carpet in the courtyard. In Morocco, it is tradition to greet people with mint tea and we are people in need of greeting. Susan and I have spent the last 16 hours or so in cabs and on planes, flying from San Francisco to New York to Madrid and to Marrakech. We are pretty haggard and it is time for a break. However, it isn't time to sleep. It is only 1 p.m. Moroccan time. We've got some exploring to do.

After tea, we leave the riad and find our way through the tunnel to the square. We try to memorize all that is around us. As soon as I look at the map to get oriented, someone offers to guide us. It is the first of over a hundred offers and not the first time we say no. I see that we just need to take one turn and we are at the Ben Yousseff Madrasa and then a few steps from the Musse de Marrakech. What street we are headed for I don't know. The map doesn't say. The map doesn't mark other streets and pathways we come upon. It doesn't take long to find that the map is an outline at best. Getting around Marrakech will be largely backtracking, taking chances, memorizing landmarks, and being willing to get lost. It will not be about asking locals on the street for directions, as that is a costly, no-win game.

We pass the madrasa and the museum and in five minutes we are in the souks. The souks are a covered maze of small shops. Each souk specializes in one type of good. For a couple blocks there are nothing but slipper salesmen, shoes hanging on the walls of their shops, top to bottom. Beautiful tea sets adorn the metalware souk. The spice souk is famous for its mindblowing smell and the pyramids of spices. In the pharmaceutical souk are dried lizards and piles of dried roots and herbs. Every once in a while we stumble on a shop dedicated to some random product or nothing in particular. We pass one with a few records. I look at a half dozen Eurovision 12"s and some chipped 78s. These are the only records I will come across in Marrakech.

The streets that make up the souks are small; few can accommodate more than one car (though none allowed in the souks), some are no more than six feet wide. All the streets are packed with people. Donkey carts loaded with merchandise push their way by. Mopeds and bicycles, many with more than two people on them, stream through the crowd. Linger when you hear a "beep beep" and you stand a chance of getting knocked down.

Though we are in the souks for more than an hour, we don't step into any of the shops. To step into a shop is to start the process of haggling over something that you might or might not want. The shopkeeps are aggressive in their salesmanship, calling out to you as you pass. "Bonjour! Best price!" "Hola! Cheap!" It is curious how the greetings are always in an European language but the pitch is in English. The shopkeeps do not assume we are American - we are told not many of our ilk visit Morocco, but know that the language of commerce is English and that everyone understands "Best price" and "Cheap."

We pause in front of one of the CD shops lining the Place Bab Fteuh. A tall, skinny Moroccan emerges from the store and in French, asks what we are looking for. "Disques" I reply. He waves us in. I say, "No no. Disques," and make a large circle with my hands. He looks puzzled. Susan says "Thirty-three" in French and he understands. He leads us to another shop, but they have no records. He tells Susan that he is positive the next shop will have records and he darts off. We rush to keep up with him. We make it to the next shop. More CDs, no records. He shrugs. Susan gives him 10 durham (about a euro) for his efforts. He thanks us and splits. We have no idea where we are, but, really, we had no idea where where we were when we started this hunt - this is just another opportunity to explore. After about fifteen minutes of wandering we walk past the egg & poultry market and into the Place Jemaa el Fna.

In most cities, the space which makes up the Place Jemaa el Fna is little more than an empty town square. Perhaps on weekends, it turns into a flea market or farmers come and sell their produce. In Marrakech, the Jemaa is the living, beating heart of the city. Starting in the morning, the orange juice carts roll in, followed by healers, snake charmers, dentists, and fortune tellers. As afternoon comes, these people are joined by a few musicians and story tellers. In the evening the food carts start setting up. As night falls, more musicians show up. For most of the day and night the Jemaa is a cacophony of sights, smells and sounds.

We pass a cart piled high with oranges and wind up facing a man with a monkey on a string, wanting us to take a picture with his primate. Ten steps further and we are staring at a card table piled with human teeth. Sitting behind the table is a dentist, pliers in hand, ready to extract a bum tooth. Turn around and, spread out on the ground are neat piles of herbs, live lizards in cages, healer sitting on the ground, smiling at us. We hear music, the sound of a Moroccan shawm accompanied by a drum, wander to it, and look down. There is a pile of snakes, some coiled, some slithering around. We hear someone shouting and turn to look. There is a crowd of men surrounding a lone figure, a storyteller. The saw of strings cut through the air. The sound takes us to a Berber quartet, decked out in kaftans, jamming on a folk tune. A couple kids are boxing for a crowd of men, for money. The smell of roasted meat drifts through the Jemaa, smoke swirls into the sky. This has been the scene at the Place Jemaa el Fna for the last two thousand years.

Though one might think that the Jemaa is just one big mob for the tourists, it is thoroughly Moroccan. The storytellers tell their tales in Arabic. Marrakeshis are the main customers for food stalls. No one but a local is gonna get a tooth yanked in the town square. And though you are constantly hit up for donations from the performers (it is how they make their living), there isn't a hint of commercialism anywhere. We spend a couple hours walking around the Jemaa, get some bad food at one of the cafes that line the square, and head out for another walk through, winding up in front of the Kharbouch Mosque as the call for prayer sounds. This time I record our journey.

After the call to prayer, Susan and I head back into the souks. We pass the olive souk. A row of merchants stand behind pyramids of olives. It is a glorious sight. One the way back, we pass through the antiques souk, the leather souk, then onto slippers. We come to a fork in the road. Straight ahead is a street only 4 feet wide, lined with slipper salesmen and their wares. Though the street is only about 40 feet long, you can't see its end. The other way is wide, something that actually looks like a street. We take the small street. It will be only one of two times that we hit the right path to the square in front of Ben Youssef. The second time we hit it right is our last night in Marrakech. Every other time we opt for the "real" street, a series of "S" turns which takes you to the mosque square but only after you have convinced yourself you are hopelessly lost.

We find the entrance to the passageway that takes us to the riad. Inside, we unlock our room and collapse on the bed. Marrakech is wonderful. The sights, the sounds, the smells...It is so exciting to be somewhere so unlike home.

There are two samples below. The first is a long one. It is of the last stroll through the Place Jemaa el Fna on our first day in Marrakesh. You will hear the sounds of snake charmers, story tellers, Berber bands, water sellers, orange juice hawkers, fortune tellers, mopeds, people in conversation, and competing calls to prayer. Please download the track to listen to as not to eat up my bandspace. The second track is a musical excerpt of the first. Specifically it is a four piece Berber band. During it you will hear someone say "Merci". That is the voice of the one non-instrument playing member, whose roll seems to be shouts of encouragement and collecting money, kinda the Flava Flav of the band.

A stroll through the Jemaa el Fna, September 25, 2009
An anonymous Berber quartet (excerpt from above)

Is Here

2009-10-10T10:46:00.000-07:00

Knowone Is Here 45 (New Age, 1980)

Knowone (AKA Don Barker)'s single seems puzzling. The label and the sleeve notes espouse the New Age. The lyrics are all about changing the way we deal with each other without resorting to revolution, a fairly typical sentiment of hippie gone yuppie new agers. The music is part "Eye of the Tiger" pop, part lounge funk. The "band" is from Shingle Springs, California, which in 1980 was a combination of mountain hicks, outdoorsmen, and ex-Suburban white-flighters, with a few back-to-the-landers thrown in. On the surface none of this makes sense, but if you know the time and place I am refering to, Knowone is perfect.

Testube Vol 4 Final 1979 - 1984

2009-10-05T10:22:00.000-07:00

Reptile House Testube Vol 4 Final 1979-197-84/5th Anniversary Extra flexi disc (Testube, 1984)

Columbus, Ohio's Testube zine was a pretty great thing. Not only did they put out a good zine, but they also issued a bunch of cassette comps and this wonderful flexi. The band Reptile House was a short lived bi-city outfit, hitting both Columbus and Tuscon. In Testtube much is made of Reptile House, mostly because the band's leader, Tim Gassen, was/is also a filmmaker. Garage mooks will know Gassen's name from the Marshmallow Overcoat, one of the 80s garage revival bands (a scene he later made a film about). This, I believe, is Gassen's first effort and it contains two great tunes, especially the anthemic "Room for Hate."

Don't Blame Me

2009-09-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

Reign of Terror Don't Blame Me b/w Big Things 45 (R.O.T., 1983)

Reign of Terror's great self-released single was their one and only. That they were one and done isn't surprising. As good as this single is, when this thing came out, it confused people. In the UK it would have been lumped in with New Wave of British Heavy Metal and might have garnered them a small following. In America, It was too metal to be punk and too punk to be metal. Slower riff oriented tunes like "Big Things" were out of place in both hardcore land and in the burgeoning speed metal scene. However this single was championed by the folks at SST Records, who sent to people as a promo with stuff on their label. I was doing a teen punk zine at the time and got it in a package that - if I remember right - included the Stains great LP and Husker Du's Metal Circus. Reign of Terror fit right in. As time went on, the song "Don't Blame Me" was thought good enough by at least one punk collector/bootlegger to put on the Bloodstains Across California LP. I don't believe "Big Things" has been comped anywhere.

Fuckin' Car

2009-09-25T21:17:00.000-07:00

Russian Roulette J'ai Tout Oublie b/w Fuckin' Car 45 (Ere Force, 1984)

Picked this one up in Brussels a few years back, at some combo book and record store. It was one of those places that had probably been around for years and had no real passion any more for what they were selling. As a result, everything was pretty much semi-organized and priced uniform. So all the 7"s were 1 euro no matter what and at 1 euro a pop, you can create a nice pile of records to bring home. Russian Roulette was in that pile.

I have no idea who Russian Roulette were or if they made any more records. The label is from France so I assume they were French. The A side of this record is forgettable and they stuck the winner on the B, so I doubt they made another good record. The song "Fuckin' Car" is approached like it was a novelty, something worthy only as a flipside. Bah. It is one of the best punk rock "Surfin Bird" rip-offs I've heard. And it is pretty damn addictive.

Johnny Runs for Paregoric

2009-09-20T16:42:00.000-07:00

Exploding Seagulls Johnny Runs for Paregoric 7" (Fried Egg, 1980)

I am not sure if the punkalectuals would let the Exploding Seagulls into their classroom. I don't know if they would even be allowed in the "special" class, along with those DIY nerds. The Exploding Seagulls (like the very very great Avant Gardner [post pending]) might be a little too coy, a little too tongue in cheek, hell, a little too cheeky. But I like them. This was made in 1980 in Bristol and was released on Fried Egg Records, which is not only one of my favorite label names but they have one of my favorite label art. The band is credited as the band, however Tony Orrell played drums. Since his name is mentioned separately, perhaps he is a stand in. Ken Wheeler produced. I tell you all this because that is all I know about the Exploding Seagulls.

I do, however, know a little bit about paregoric. Paregoric is a tincture made with camphor, aromatic oils, and opium. It is not quite as string as morphine, however both the camphor and the oils are said to enhance the effect of the opium. It has been called a "modern day" laudanum. Laudanum was very popular with the Romantic Poets, but is no longer being produced. Neither is paregoric. However, fifty years ago paregoric was a very popular flu remedy. Little Johnny has the sniffles? Give him a slug of paregoric and he'll be dreaming good dreams for the night. He might ask for a taste in the morning but that's all right. And if you run out, send Johnny out to get some more.

------
One of the cool things about writing about and playing obscure music on the radio is every once in a while, one of the people that I write up or play contacts me. Way back in July, I did an entry on the Exploding Seagulls. Today I got an email from Richard Bolton, bassist and vocalist of the Exploding Seagulls. Richard writes:

Scott

Thanks so much for your appreciation of the seagulls record on crud crud - which I came upon by chance when I was trying to pin down when something happened and the only reference point was the release of that single. And you're right - the punkalectuals wouldn't let the Exploding Seagulls into their classroom - we were obscure, idiosyncratic, idiotic and we had quite a good time! I would point to sugarshack records website which describes the seagulls thusly - 'Berserk art-college kids from Southampton, they became Peel favourites before fragmenting in a welter of sexual and musical differences. The guitarist hooked up with a couple of Art Objects and became the Blue Aeroplanes.'

For my sins i was responsible for bringing 'Johnny' into the world, or rather, reviving him, for the first line, 'Johnny runs for Paregoric' was found by my sister in a Victorian book - all i did was mash it up with 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' and, as you point out - stuck tongue firmly in cheek.

The band, initially was me on bass and vocals, Julian Chadwick on keyboards and shopping trolley (doubled as keyboard stand and transport) and Nick Jacobs on guitar and vocals. the 'Tony Orrell' you see credited was indeed a stand in drummer as George Martin wasn't sure that Ringo would be up to it. We sort of ballooned later with girlfriends joining as singers... we went through a couple of drummers until we found one who could drum..

Fried Egg was the home of Bristol weirdscapes and Ken Wheeler the house engineer at Sound Conception studios in Bristol.

We played some memorable gigs, john peel played our record(s) ..... what more can you want. Nick peeled off to join the Blue Aeroplanes, Julian went to live in New Zealand, I got hacked off and divorced and suddenly the Seagulls had exploded...... although not necessarily in that order.

I've kept on playing music in a number of different milieu - from rock to theatre to writing an oratorio and am just kicking off with a new band called 'throne above the stars' which is an attempt to recapture the bright elusive butterfly of psychedelia, chloroform it and pin it to the backside of the grinning donkey of rock.....

Great website - I'm going to try to listen to the show via the magic of the internet.

Regards... and thanks again.

Richard (The Former Republic of Fred) Bolton

(Johnny.... originally posted 7/15/05; Richard's letter posted 8/30/09)

Jim Carroll 1949 - 2009

2009-09-13T22:47:00.000-07:00

Lots of famous people have died this year. To me most of them are just names, pictures in the paper or on the screen, people with whom I have no personal connection and who had no real impact on my life. In the world of celebrity, Jim Carroll wasn't one. He was a poet, a writer, and a singer but his fame was minor. More Americans can identify the "Informercial King" Billy Mays in a couple seconds than know who Carroll was. Bring up his most famous song "People Who Died" or the movie adaptation of The Basketball Diaries and you will have to drop is name before people think "Oh yeah." For me, Jim Carroll was more than a footnote. He actually had a pretty big influence on my life.

I first heard of Jim Carroll via KDVS, the local college radio station. Like many stations playing underground and punk music, they had "People who Died" in heavy rotation. Though the song might be a bit overplayed now, back then it was super cool. I rushed out to the nearest Tower Records and stole me a copy. Though by the time Catholic Boy was released, I was pretty much a cropped top, combat boots & chains wearin', hardcore punk, there was enough toughness and romance to Carroll's voice to make me a fan. And the lyrics were a bit more than lyrics. Of course, they were. They were poetry set to music, not that I knew that then. To me they just seemed a bit deeper than "I've heard it before/I just want to shut you up" (no dismisal of that classic Black Flag line). And the music was good. Edgy enough to excite me, but a bit cooler to put on when trying to put the make on my punk friends' sisters.

Shortly after the release of Catholic Boy, Bantam Book put out a pocket sized paperback edition of Carroll's memoirs The Basketball Diaries, which was previously only available as a small press edition, which even then was fetching collector's prices. I got my cheapie and read it in a week...and then reread it and reread it until the cover fell off. Though I had already made my way through the books that teenagers and those in their early twenties gravitate to (On the Road, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Naked Lunch [didn't understand a fucking thing!], etc.), Carroll's book hit me. I was a confused fucked up kid. Carroll was writing about a confused fucked up kid, but it was more than that. Carroll had a deceptively simple writing style, one that not only turned me on to his work, but made me think, "I can do that." I filled up volumes of notebooks with the adventures of my friends and I, tales of punk shows we went to, lists of the slang we used, things like that. Where those journals are now, I have no idea. They probably got lost in a move or thrown out by a shitty girlfriend. I have no idea. But those things started me writing and they were inspired by The Basketball Diaries.

A few years later, he came to the West Coast to promote The Book of Nods. I went down to San Francisco to see him read, and went back down there every time he passed through. None of his other books, hit me like the Diaries and none of his records are nearly as good as Catholic Boy but those two things made enough of an impact on me that I've followed what he's done since.

I listened to Catholic Boy tonight, after I read that Jim Carroll died. It is just as good of a record as it was when it was released. To pick out a favorite song or the best tune is impossible for me to do. I'll leave you with a couple and encourage you to track down the record, if you don't have it already.

Thanks Jim Carroll for turning me on to some great shit.

Voices of Human Revolution

2009-08-30T19:30:00.000-07:00

Various Voices of Human Revolution 2LP (Min-On, 197?)

A very odd record here. By the looks of it, one would think that this is some kind of Up with People thing or the product of a hippie Christian religoid cult. And on the surface, perhaps it is close to one of those two things or maybe not. The label - Min-On - is not just a label but an organization dedicated to spreading peace through out the world through music. It is also an arm of the Buddhist sect Soka Gakkai, headed by Daisaku Ikeda. Soka is the largest Buddhist sect in Japan and one that has political ambitions. It's New Komeito Party has a presence in the Japanese Diet and has formed alliances with the recently deposed Liberal Democratic Party. Still many in the Japanese establishment consider Ikeda and his party a threat and fear that if it ever gets in power it will make its brand of Buddhism the state religion. Ikeda says such an idea is nonsense, that the party's main goal is the promotion of peace. Western press has mostly taken the "Komeito Party as threat" line, going so far as to compare the 8 million plus member Soka Gakkai to the Aum Shinrikyo "suicide cult". My knowledge of all this is what you just read, so I will save offering an opinion. I will tell you that Min-On released at least one pretty far out record.

The styles on this record are pretty diverse. They range from Japanese traditional music to Up with People pop to American soul to wild jazz blow-downs. Some of it is pretty shitty, some of it is awkwardly funny, some of it is fucking great. Only a couple cuts seem to have anything to do with Soka Gakkai and if they are message songs, they are songs only to the sect's followers. There are also a few cover songs. The groups seem to be from all across the United States and, judging from the concert photos on the inside cover, I am guessing that this record was released in conjunction with some kind of Min-On festival.

I'm going to start you off with one of the album's chucklers, a message song of sorts. Please don't stop there. Check out every track and listen for at least a minute or two. Some of these are shockingly good.

Operation "Lune"

2009-08-20T19:19:00.000-07:00

Daniel J. White Operation "Lune" 45 (Editions Montparnasse 2000, 1969)

Found this odd gem at a public radio record sale for a quarter. Daniel White is a film and television composer with a pretty damn long list of scores. I am not sure if the music on Operation "Lune" was composed for a documentary or just to commemorate the 1969 moon landing. Doesn't really matter if the music is good and that it is. "Deux Hommes Sur La Lune" has that great electronics goes outer space sound with a touch of future sounds. "Mer de la Tranquillite" is a strange one. It has a noir sound to it, while evoking a cinematic post-war Paris street. But that isn't all. The playing of the song is very off-kilter, almost narcotic, so much so that it sounds like it could have been writen by Bob Graettinger. Enjoy.

Six Songs / Manbot

2009-08-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

Standard of Living Six Songs 12" (Vinyl Records, 1982)
Manbot s/t 7" (NuVu, 1981)

One of today's trends in "alternative" music is the reintroduction of synth into punk rock. This has been going on for a few years, long enough for all the cliches that were formed in the 1980s to be recycled many times over. And while there are a few bands that do capture the sound well, who are able to pull off the angry scree of a Nervous Gender and do a close approximation of the Screamers, there are a few things that are missing.

First is the newness of the technology, especially when applied to basic rock and roll. From Suicide on through the early 80s, second-generation and then low-cost synths were new on the scene and/or new to people's hands. Throwing a whirrrrrr or a fzzzzzttttttt into a 1-2-3-4 song was fresh. I remember the first time I got my hands on a synth. It was a Radio Shack knock off of a Minimoog. A friend borrowed it from a friend and we were supposed to buy it for $75 but couldn't come up with the money. Instead, we formed a band around it and two drummers, played with Flipper, and broke up when friend's friend demanded the synth back. At the time, we were the only punk band in town with a synth. The instrument was an anomaly.

The second thing that lacks in today's synth punk is a true dread of the future, expressed with "futuristic" sounds and image. Growing up with the threat (real or imagined) of nuclear war was a very heavy thing. The future did not look bright. A mechanized, industrialized wasteland was what seemed to await. Either that or some sterile, narcotised, brainwashed day-to-day existence ala Brave New World. Science fiction films like Soilent Green, Westworld, Rollerball, and, the punk fave, Clockwork Orange were what we expected to grow up into. And the sounds of bands like the Normal, Chrome, and Throbbing Gristle were prepping us for tomorrow. Today's synth sound does not embrace this distopian vision. In fact, the only contemporary band that I know who comments on such things (and does it well) is the very much non-synthesized A Frames.

The synth bands of yesterday were also part of a much bigger scene. Though I am sure someone has created a subgenre for these groups (uhhh synth punk/dark wave), back then they were punk rock. Perhaps some might be called Industrial Music, but this was at a time before Industrial ditched punk rock for the dance floor. Prior to SPK's Metal Dance and Cabaret Voltaire's proto-techno, the world of Industrial was that of punk rock. Because the punk umbrella was so wide it was possible for bands like Minimal Man to play with thrash bands. You could see an evening of the Screamers and the Weirdos. The genre ghettos weren't yet built (though to be fair, today, people have easy access to a much broader range of music than I did as a youngster. There are many guides and you can download pretty much whatever you want. In my youth, the only place I could go for a radical mix of music was the local college radio station, KDVS, and then raid the import section at Tower).

Nowadays, when I stumble across a forgotten synth punk or unknown early industrial record it is a lot like opening a time capsule. Themes of alienation and technology are spread over drum machines and synth pulses. Tape loops and future apocalypse go hand in hand. Some of it is great, some of it is silly and cliche. But it really does stake out a place in time that today's crop cannot hope to do (really, isn't today's "darkwave" just a cousin of a rockabilly revival band).

All of this is to say that I know little about the four songs here than what I've gleaned from the record covers. There are no web references and my record freak friends who are heavy into this stuff are clueless as well. I do know that Standard of Living is from Oakland, California (or at least their label is) and the two songs here are off a six song 12" released in 1982. The sounds on it are great, especially "Don't Worry", with its mix of guitar freak out and synth pulse. And with band members named "Rad Solar" and "Jon Velcro" how can you go wrong?

From listening to Manbot you would think that they were from the UK, however as much these guys would like you to think Rob Calvert was the man-machine here, the label is from Fremont, California, another East Bay city. The close proximity to San Francisco, where the art punk/synth/early Industrial sound thrived and Hawkwind enjoyed a big following, is no surprise. The geographic origin of this record also reveals itself when you consider that the flip is yet another song about Jonestown, complete with the Rev. Jim Jones's lunatic ranting - the Guyana mass suicide and audio samples from the People Temple's last night both standard features of many a Bay Area punk song. Other than that, I can tell you nothing.

Please enjoy the shitty future!

(Repost from original 8/25/05 entry)

Volume One

2009-08-11T16:26:00.000-07:00

Trane / The Honkies Volume One / Transplant + Organ-grinding EP (Dark Beloved Cloud, 1994)

Here is a short one, one of my favorite seven inches of the 90s and for one mesmerizing track, "Looking for Logic (Lara)". Trane were Jeff Feuerzeig, Paul Bentham, and Liz Coleman. I believe that this is their one and only release. Too bad. Guitarist Feuerzeig is also responsible for the music documentaries Half Japanese: The Band that Would Be King and The Devil & Daniel Johnson. What becaome of Bentham and Coleman I don't know. I'm not going to post the Honkies cut. It is good and I like the group but I want to let this Trane song have today's glory.

Mustafa

2009-08-08T18:44:00.000-07:00

Staiffi et ses Mustafa's Mustafa EP (Disques Vogue, 1960)

Pure kitsch cut with total exploitation. It's 1960 and Middle Eastern music in the form of Belly Dance is all the craze in Europe (and America); but it is not alone in exotic appeal. Latin music is hot. Everything from rhumba to the cha cha cha is being pressed on to records, even if the tunes don't even remotely resemble the music styles. So here you have Staiffi, who might or might not be Middle Eastern, combining "Oriental" music of the Mid East with the Cha Cha Cha of Latin America and Rock & Roll of North America...kinda. His version of the traditional "Mustafa" has a bit of Latin in it...I think. On "Le Ana Sentimental" he incorporates rock & roll in his "Oriental", so so the credits say. Actually, "Le Ana Sentimental" sounds more authentically Middle Eastern than any track on this four song EP. The best thing about this one is the sleeve. A blond Euro woman in an evening dress and heels, holds a veil to her face. Her hands look clenched behind her head and her eyes are penetratingly psychotic. She is sitting in what looks to be a tent. Peeking into the tent is a burro's head, or at least a wood carving of a burro's head. Next to her is a bag full of straw. Yow!

Nippon Victor JL-515 10"

2009-08-03T19:31:00.000-07:00

"Nippon Victor JL-515" 10" (Victor, 1958)

I am afraid that unless a Japanese speaker/reader out there can tell me what this is, I can only identify it by the record label and its matrix number. Other than that the only thing I can tell you is that the date is on the label as well as the words "Koto Music". I can't tell you much about the music other than I like what I hear. I've got some like records and dig traditional Japanese music, especially when it winds its way through a song like this one does, and when the tune taps into the universal music mood that gives up American blues, flamenco, Middle Eastern music and other soulful sounds. I especially like the way the strings bend when backing the vocals. Great stuff.

Slask

2009-07-31T07:52:00.000-07:00

Polish State Folk Ballet Slask LP (Monitor, 196-)

As much as I tout my Italian roots, half of my blood is Polish. The Italian accounts for me being a cocky son-of-a-bitch; the Polish marks me with melancholy. Both run me into romanticism. So I brood and fight and brood some more. Then I get up and do a dance. Ha!

I plopped this record on the turntable not expecting much. Monitor Records is a fine label, they were off documenting international music before anyone else was, but unlike Folkways or Nonesuch, their stuff tends to be a bit more "slick". It tends toward professional music groups and state orchestras. I still pick them up when I find a Monitor record cheap, but it usually winds up in a stack, waiting for weeks, months, even years to hit the turntable. Slask got early platter time, pretty much because I wanted to hear what the Pole part of me had lurking in my musical genes...or something like that.

While most of the record is just okay, there are three songs that make me jump around. All three have a dour joy to them and are dance tunes. State orchestra, sure, but still good stuff.

Manifiesto

2009-07-28T13:05:00.000-07:00

Jose de Molina Manifiesto LP (Nueva Voz Latino Americana, 1983)

A bit more than a month ago, I emailed my friend and Z Gun comrade Ryan Wells and asked if he wanted to go record hunting in Tijuana. I found really cheap flights from San Francisco to San Diego and from SD it is a five dollar trolley ride to the border and back. He gives the OK and I book the flight. A few weeks later, we are on a plane heading south, in a cab taking us to downtown San Diego, and on the trolley to Tijuana.

We got off the trolley at San Ysidro and walk through the maze that is the border crossing. Over the "Big Ditch", we head toward the arch at the base of Revolucion. The wind makes the cables stretched across the arch sing. I regret not having something to capture the sound (but someone else did). Since Ryan had never been, we walked down Revolucion. Revolucion is usually crowded with tourists, US Navy seamen & Marines, and high school/college students from San Diego. The drinking age in Mexico is 18, though unofficially it is "kinda look eighteen." Because beer and margaritas are cheap, Revolucion has a "spring break on the skids" atmosphere. Multi-story buildings that were built and added on with no mind to building codes or safety line the street. These are the discos. Most of them have balconies hoovering over the sidewalks, where young men can yell "Woooooo" as young women flash their tits to the passer-by. On the ground are hundreds of trinket sellers, dudes hawking Lucha Libre masks and cheap sombreros with Tijuana emblazoned on them, and tequila shops. There are at least three farmacias on every block, selling cut-rate (and often phony) viagra, xanex, etc. And let's not forget the poor Tijuana zebras, donkeys spray-painted with stripes and used as a prop for tourists and their cameras (for a price). Everything was there as usual, except the partiers, military men, and the tourists.

When we got off the trolley, I noticed that we were the only Anglos headed toward the border. Walking into town, we were alone in our lack of Latino blood. And on Revolucion, we were the only marks. Thus, every huckster was after us: "Hey guy, tequila shot, one dollar!" "Hey guy, new pair of boots, cheap!" "Hey guy, need a taxi to Zona Roja." "Hey guy, best food, cheap." "Hey guy, pretty girls" ""Hey guy, one dollar Corona!" I am pretty sure we could have countered with 25 cents and settled on a half-buck a beer. We get to the street with the record shop and round the corner. A squat guy follows us "Guy, guy. Pretty girl for you. Massage. Forty dollar. All legal. Very pretty."

The record store is great. It is about the size of a small living room. While there are only two small bins of vinyl, the stock is concentrated. The store specializes in Latin American psych, prog and hard rock - a few originals but mostly semi-legit reissues and bootlegs. We both find some good stuff and head off to Constitution.

Constitution is not like Revolucion. It is geared toward the locals. Unless they work on the street, Tijuanans stay off Revolucion, however they crowd Constitution. No one is on the sidewalk pitching their goods. No offers of cheap beer or whores. Though a couple young girls grab our shirt sleeves as we walk by, "Guy, guy..." Business must be bad.

We hit a store on the short list of "record stores" that I've compiled from tips and past visits. This one is from a tip and it turns out to be a CD store full of Rancheros, which is what 99% of Tijuana record stores are like. I remember a store from my last visit about 5 years ago. It is off a small passageway or so I recall. I tell Ryan about it and that I know I will find it. Ten minutes later we are looking through a pathetic couple of racks of records. On another wall are a bunch of dusty cassettes. Some tattered revolutionary posters are on the wall. The owner (?) is behind a desk teaching another guy how to play a song on the guitar. While the store has crap for records, the last time I was there I found three great disks. This time I score big time (though I don't know it at the time). I pay for my records and the owner tells us that he has another store. "Lots more records," he says. He tells us where it is and we are on our way.

It's about 2:30 pm and the sun is starting to burn. Trees do not exist in downtown Tijuana and the buildings are too squat to provide shade. We trudge down the street, every step brings dehydration. The buildings become shorter, smaller, and more spread out. Though we are still downtown, it has the feel of a semi-deserted suburban retail corridor. We find the record store. It is a middle-aged woman sitting at a table, a few shelves of drinking glasses, and a small rack of 25 records. Ryan half-heartedly picks up a Turtles album and asks how much. The woman walks to a room, pulls back a sheet, and mumbles a few words. A shirtless teen comes out and tells Ryan five dollars. Ryan puts the record back and we leave. As we are walking out the door, I tell Ryan that we've just experienced the world's most pathetic record chain.

We'd been in Tijuana for over three hours and had yet to run into another set of Anglos, It isn't until we stop to get something to eat that we see a family of three Euro/Asian American. On our way back to the border, through an outside mall (half abandoned, lined with farmacias, taco/booze stands and trinket shops), we pass our first Euro-Americans on the street. Two college-aged guys are walking into Tijuana as we are going out. I've been to Tijuana several times and this is the first time I've seen it so devoid of Americans. I know college is out, but there are usually still college aged and high-schoolers crowding Revolucion, not to mention dudes in their US Navy and Marines uniforms, as well as the tick-shaped tourists. This time nothing. Even the weak peso can't squelch American fears of drug violence and swine flu, as if the United States doesn't have its own problem with crime and illness (five people shot dead that weekend in the Bay Area, while none dead in Tijuana).

Now, as much as I know about music, the more I dig for records, the more I realize that there is a hell of a lot out there I am completely ignorant of. Take Jose de Molina. In Mexico, he is well known as an anarchist singer-songwriter and a pain in the government's ass. He came up through the student movement in the 1960s, surviving two student massacres in Mexico City 1968. Releasing records and playing concerts during the Seventies, he was routinely persecuted by authorities, often jailed and beaten. The oppression got so bad that he stopped playing regular concerts in the 1990s, only occasionally appearing at protests and labor actions. In 1997, he was kidnapped and tortured by the police. His injuries were so bad that he required hospitalization and resulted in peritonitis, which was pretty much a death warrant. He was sent back home, where he was soon found dead, the back of his head blown away via a gun in mouth. I am not sure whether this was suicide or assassination. Whatever the case - torture by the police or cops gunning him down - the government killed him for his rebel music.

These songs come from an early 80s LP called Manifiesto. I had no idea what I was getting into when I bought it. There was a drawing of Che Guevara playing a guitar on it and I knew it would be cheap so it had to be mine. Most of it is traditional Mexican music, often preceded by a minute or two of political invective. One song, La Rueda de la Historia, kind of has a punk/new wave sound that reminds me of several things (John Cooper Clarke, The Clash) without really sounding like anything I can peg right now. But it is a great song and worth a listen (there is about a minute and a half spoken intro so be patient). The other two songs are more representative of the album and other stuff I've heard of his. If anyone knows of more Molina like La Rueda... contact me.

More Spins

2009-07-21T08:40:00.000-07:00

Wayne Barnhill & the Rhythm Aces Sing the Blues to Daddy 45 (Illini)
Great rockin' country song that sounds like it was mixed to be heard on a transistor radio or out of a dashboard speaker. Probably made in the late 60s. The flip isn't any good and my copy skips midway through. No matter: the plug side is the winner.

The Velvet Crest Look Homeward Angel b/w Song of the Rain 45 (Harbour)
Sappy sunshine pop. "Look Homeward Angel" sucks. "Song of the Rain" should have been the A side, but is only as good as an average B. Acceptable but not essential.

Tony Bellus Valentine Girl b/w Robbin' the Cradle 45 (NRC)
"Valentine Girl" is a good popabilly song with a great dumb single sting lead guitar. "Robbin' the Cradle" tips more country than rock & roll but it is a great song and not just because of the lyric. Think backwoods Everley Bros.

Billy Budd Sweet Lorraine b/w Boom Diddy Boom 45 (Page One)
The plug is Kinks/BeeGees whimsey filtered through bubblegum. Take away the strong backbeat and B. Budd could take this to the theater. "Boom Diddy Boom" sounds like a Neil Diamond rocker or the Tijuana Brass doing bubblegum. The vocal are more teen idol/actor singer than singer singer.

The Ides of March Vehicle b/w Lead Me Home, Gently 45 (Warner Bros.)
An oldies radio staple BUT if you haven't heard it, imagine the sound of White dudes with afros, hairy chests partially covered by buckskin vests, tight pants, and big dark shades. "Vehicle" is Isaac Hayes-style rock funk, stuff that neither rocks out or is that funky but has the kind of sound that makes you think you've heard the song in a Tarantino film. It is pure cheese, but I listen to this thing about once a month. It could be AM radio childhood memories that makes me do it. The flip is a B side for a reason: A sappy, piano lead howler.

The Perfect Stone Little Girl Purple b/w Lovin You Comes So Easy 45 (Certron)
Oh my. You'd think that "Little Girl Purple" would be a cool psych jam or at least bubble-psych. Instead it is like the Fifth Dimension pretending to be Jefferson Airplane. The flip is the flip.

The Lewis & Clark Expedition The Ballad of Bevo 45 (Bevo)
Damn great obscurity: A banjo tune about the stealing of University of Texas Longhorns mascot Bevo. And that is about it. Future Crud candidate.

Andy Kim So Good Together b/w I Got to Know 45 (Steed)
As far as Andy Kim A sides, "So Good..." is pretty weak. No drive, lame hook. I can understand why "I Got to Know" is the flip - the instrumentation is a bit odd for a potential hit - but it is a great song with a good hook.

The Will-O-Bees It's Not Easy b/w Looking Glass 45 (Date)
Another record in which the B side rules over the flip. "Looking Glass" is psych pop with Jefferson Airplane style vocals and some very nice drum riffs. "It's Not Easy" is boring 60s pop.

Bennie Hess Trucker's Blues b/w Tonight & Every Night 45 (Musicode)
An "Orange Blosom Special" country yodeller with slide guitar, so goes "Trucker's Blues." The flip is a slow one with eerie backing vocals and a haunting slide, but what makes it is the vocals, which sound near demented. To be Crudded.

Here I Am, Send Me

2009-07-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

Bells of Zion Here I Am, Send Me b/w Like a Ship Tossed 45 (Nashboro, 1974)

Here are a couple by the noted Chicago gospel group Bells of Zion and what a great pair of songs they are! One of the great things about Black Gospel is that even though the song styles haven't changed a whole lot over the years, if the group is recorded right, the performances sound fresh and vibrant. The great enemy of Black Gospel isn't the Devil, but state-of-the-art recording studios and commercial aspirations. Slick the music up and it loses its soul. That should be no surprise. Any music that is about energy - funk, rockabilly, garage, punk, flamenco, salsa, etc. - loses something when the recording becomes something more than documenting the sound as is. That is not to say that all music needs to have crap recording. Listen to this record. Aside from the wear of the record itself, the sound is great. No fidelity problems, no technical issues. It sounds like the group would probably sound if they were playing right in front of you and that is the way it should be.

Baby

2009-07-14T21:14:00.000-07:00

Dynamics Baby b/w Aces Up 45 (Guaranteed, 1959)

It was 105 today and at 9 pm it just dipped below 90: Perfect weather for some R&B shufflin'. I can't really tell you anything about the band. Because there were probably a hundred groups using the name "Dynamics" at the time, researching this record is a bit more work than I have time to do right now. The label was from New York City so let's assume that the group was, too, and leave it at that. I wanna talk about that shufflin' sound: It is pretty damn great, isn't it? It sounds more instinctive than charted out, something a band would slide into because it felt right. I've got a nice stack of songs that incorporate this sound and, aside from a half dozen of them, I couldn't tell you who did them or what the song was called, at least not off the top of my head. But those things are trivia; put a shufflin' record on and I am as happy as a dog in the shade.

New Orleans

2009-07-05T15:02:00.000-07:00

Eddie Hodges New Orleans b/w Hard Times for Young Lovers 45 (Aurora, 1965)

From the 1950s on, seems like one of the "natural" trajectories of the child actor is from the movie/TV set to the music stage. From Sean Cassidy to Leif Garrett to Britney Spears to Annette Funicello and so it swirls downward. How many of these kid actor's were successful in their musical transition? And by successful, I do not mean that they sold a lot of records, for if that was the case any of those mentioned above would count and I wouldn't really have anything to rant about. By successful, I mean made some damn good records. Okay, for kitsch factor, Annette, but not as far as memorable and exciting. I can think of only two: Ricky Nelson and if you don't believe me pick up his version of "Milk Cow Blues" - it is nearly as rippin' as the Kinks take on it - and then move on to his other singles on Imperial. It is hit and miss, but the keepers are soooooo good. The other child actor turn rocker that is worth checking out is Eddie Hodges. "Eddie who?" Yeah, I didn't know about him until I started researching this single.

Eddie Hodges had brief film career. In 1959, he made is movie debut in A Hole in the Head, a Frank Capra film starring Frank Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson. He then played the lead role in the 1960 version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a movie I've seen probably a half dozen times but recall nothing of. He appeared in six more films, including C'mon. Let's Live a Little, notable because it also starred the great girl group singer Jackie DeShannon, Bobby Vee, and - drum roll - Kim Carnes! He did some TV work as well, mostly guest spots on I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke, and the Dick Van Dyke Show. In the midst of all this he cut three singles on Cadence (one produced by Phil Everly) and this one on Aurora. Two of the singles charted in the teens, two in the forties. This one peaked at #44.

Initially I was taken by the song "New Orleans," a great R&B style rocker ( you can see him sync it on Hollywood A Go-Go). I spun it about a half dozen times before I flipped it and got knocked out by a really great pop rocker "Hard Times for Young Lovers". That slapback on the snare is genius! Hope these bowl you over, too.

A Pile of Hot (or maybe warm) Wax

2009-06-28T11:20:00.000-07:00

Well, it isn't even noon and it is close to 100. Yesterday, it hit 105. Today it will top that. I spent the last two days digging for records at the annual public radio record sale, so today it is lock myself in doors and go through stacks of records. I figure I might as well do a rundown of them while I am at it.

Jimmie King L-O-V-E b/w Pretty Little Baby 45 (Ark)
Great old-style country tear-jerker with some nice slide guitar and fiddle playing. The A side is the ace here, with some great lyrics.

The Tingles Rain, Rain b/w Tell Me Now 45 (Era)
"Rain, Rain" is decent 60s folk pop. "Tell Me Now" is a folk rocker with some weird reverb effect going on in the background. Both songs marred by sappy group vocals.

Ray Allen & the Upbeats La Bamba b/w Peggy Sue 45 (Blast)
A 1962 tribute single to the rockers who found their end in a corn field. "La Bamba" is pretty true to the Richie Valens original. "Peggy Sue" is slowed down and mournful, creating a nice tension and showing how a great song can be molded any which way when it is truly a great song.

Cyd & Cheri Lonesome for You b/w I'm A-Lookin' for Blue Eyes 45 (Lute)
Girl group. Miserable slow one and an okay peppy number. Sounds like someone tried to mold the Andrews Sisters as a girl group, but wouldn't quite commit. So you lose the charm of both.

Johnny Cymbal Bachelor Man b/w Growing Up with You 45 (Kelden)
I guess Johnny Guitar was taken so we get Johnny Cymbal. A-side is early rock & roll with Pah-Pah-Mau-Mau style backing vox and a fresh faced lead who occasionally hiccups and squeals. Backing track is raw enough to be a keeper. Flip is a ballad typical of the time. Good single but not particularly notable.

Odell Brown & the Organ-zers Mellow Yellow b/w Quiet Village 45 (Cadet)
You wouldn't know it now, but start digging for records and you realize how damn influential Jimmy Smith was. Take him and King Curtis and you have hundreds of R&B instrumental singles by pretenders and better, all with some kinda Hammond organ and sax take on popular tunes of the day, as well as originals in a soul-jazz mode. Here Odell Brown does a same-same version of Donovan's "Mellow Yellow" and a funky version of Martin Denny's "Quiet Village." Of course, it is the Denny tune that stands out. The rendering is much more Latin jazz - think Cal Tjader as he was sliding into slickness - than lounge exotica. Good stuff.

Sound Experience You Don't Know What You're Doing b/w Don't Fight the Feeling 45 (Soulville)
I say yes to: 1. Delfonics-influenced sweet soul, 2. Lyrics of the "Girl, I am gonna tell you how it is" variety, and 3. Awkward talk-overs...and the A side has all three. The flip is Simtec & Wylie-style dance floor funk.

Carl Henderson Please Stop Laughing at Me b/w Sharing You 45 (Omen)
Sam Cooke/Jackie Wilson stamp on this single. "Please Stop Laughing" is uptempo, with a great odd intro and a better (and longer) than average guitar break. Excellent! "Sharing You" is a great R&B ballad with good vocals and more great guitar.

Jimmy Barnes No Regrets b/w Keep Your Love Handy 45 (Gibraltar)
"No Regrets" is an Otis Blackwell song that was a minor hit for Barnes (1959) and a bigger hit for the great Little Willie John (1960), and it is as good as a soul ballad got. "Keep Your Love" is a good early rock & roll tune, made about the time that the powers-that-be re-segregated the music market and once again started calling rock & roll by Black artists "race records."

Albatross Rock 'n Roll Boogie Man b/w Witchy Witchy Lady 45 (Mooncrest)
Great boogie-glam with jaunty piano and a cool fiddle. Just enough hick sound to give it flavor and a nice fuzz guitar. At times it reminds me of early ELO, which is always a good thing. I am pretty sure Robin Wills posted the A side on purepop. The B-side has that semi-Latin/semi-funk/semi-rock sound you get with some Santana, Ides of March, Doobie Brothers, etc. Not bad, not memorable.

Barry Mann Amy b/w Talk to Me Baby 45 (Red Bird)
Yup, Barry Mann of the famous Brill Building Mann/Weil writing team, the one that turned out great songs for the Red Bird label and the Shangra-La's and many many others. And that is the most interesting thing about this single. "Amy" is a pap. "Talk to Me Baby" sounds like the Goff/King classic "I'm into Something Good", also from 1964.

Four of a Kind Prance Around b/w Chippies Playground 45 (Laurie)
Somewhat faceless R&B from 1965. For some reason this single brought to mind Huey Smith's "Sea Cruise." Make of that what you will.

Tutti Frutti Don't You Just Know It b/w Honeysuckle Workout 45 (Reprise)
And by some stroke of magic here is a version of Huey Smith's "Don't You Just Know It" done a bit slick and funky. Surprise surprise, Richard Perry is behind this, which might account for the Tina Turner sounding lead lady in the A side, as he produced Turner in the 70s (and Capt Beefheart in the '60s). The B-side is a very good instrumental.

Bobby Sansom & the Maus Marks Don't Leave b/w Hows About It Baby 45 (Sublime)
Oh shit! This is what makes going through piles of records worth it. Fantastic sweet soul, the kind that you hear for the first time and melt. So many things great about "Don't Leave" you just have to listen to it. "Hows About It Baby" is a great Bo Diddley-style raver. Double A-side Paradise!

Five by Five Hang Up b/w Fire 45 (Paula)
Sixties psych punker of the Seeds/Love variety coupled with a swell organ-driven cover of Hendrix. Future Crud material, without a doubt.

Resolution 717 The Old Man b/w Pretty Girl Why 45 (GM)
Wheezy organ + wheezy lyrics ("Tears trickled down his wrinkled cheek") = wheezy song. Now if dude would have been singing about purple hot dogs or psychedelic ponies and not a dying old man, this would be a outsider classic. The flip is a Stephen Stills song. What saves this single is the wheezy organ. It sounds out of place and the organist throws in weird bits. It is those weird bits that keeps this thing around.

The Don Scarletta Trio York's Sauna Pt 1 & 2 45 (Capitol)
Good jazz jam of the Brubeck school with a very cool drum break on the B-side. Not much more to say about this one.

Shawn Gorden Stop! b/w The Time has Come 45 (Gigantic)
Curiously catchy country pop from the 60s. Musically it reminds me (fast and slow) of Roy Orbison, though a bit out of whack. Gorden's vocals are not anything like Orbison, instead he has a lounge singer goes country style. The more I spin this record, the odder it sounds.

The Victorians Lovin' b/w Move a Little Closer 45 (Arnold J.)
"Lovin" is a total Grassroots pop but without the dramatic builds. It is good but "Move In...." is great Pet Sounds pop via Gary Zekeley. Great 60s pop.

Bobby McDowell I'm Coming Home b/w Keep Her Out of Sight 45 (Amy)
Rick Hall of Muscle Shoals fame produced this but that matters not. What makes this is that it is a Vietnam War talkover. Bibles and bullets, the price we pay for ______ - no one says. This has a vaguely apolitical Support the Troops sentiment to it. Unfortunately, that also means that there is very little verve in McDowell's "statement." The flip is an average country jerker.

Freeport, Grand Bahamas

2009-06-24T19:10:00.000-07:00

Prince Charles & his Royal Cats Freeport, Grand Bahamas: More of... LP (Elite, 196?)

I was late in coming to reggae. My younger brother got to it earlier than I did and with his infatuation with the genre came an evangelical zeal. He was determined that I was to like reggae and relentlessly tried to convert me. Of course, I wasn't going to be converted and instead took on a Meatmen-sort of reaction to the music. "Blow me Jah," I echoed. It didn't help that everyone I knew that dug reggae were potheads, something I wasn't.

Then one day I was thrifting and found a copy of Byron Lee & the Dragonaires 1968 self-titled record on JAD. I had no idea who Byron Lee was and bought it only because it was an "and the..." band and, on the back cover, the band was posing on a hotel pool's diving boards, with their instruments. That looked cool, I bought it. Didn't take to the record, except a great version of William Bell's "Everyday Will Be Like a Holiday." That song slew me. Slowly the rest of the album sunk in. I wasn't quite yet a reggae fan, but I was now on the hunt for "tourist albums" from the Caribbean. You see, because Lee and band were posing on those diving boards, I assumed that JAD was some branch of Jamaican Airlines or some "Come to Jamaica" outfit. And while I was wrong about JAD being a tourism label, I was right in snatching up Caribbean tourist records.

Over the years, I've picked up a few hundred such albums. They range from steel drum to island soul to calypso to ska to pop ballads. Maybe a dozen of them are 100% keepers. A couple dozen more are very good records. And a few dozen have one good song on them. The rest are crap. As far as keep:discard ratio, Caribbean tourist albums offer pathetic returns. Off the top of my head, only White Christian music records and Christmas albums are a worse bet. However, when the tourist album hits, it is worth the all the crappy ones. It is how I got into calypso and lead me to some real gems like this Emile Volel album I posted some time ago. It is also why I picked up this one by Prince Charles and his Royal Cats.

I don't know anything about the Prince or his cats other than what the liner notes tell me: They were one of the first bands to make a scene in Freeport and are "now" an institution. They sing a lot about Freeport. The record is on the Elite label out of Nassau, a label that turned out a lot of tourist albums, a few of them damn good. This one is a damn good one. All the songs are good, a few of them are great or near great. When I first put it on, I didn't think much - good island soul - and then the second vocals on "Freeport" came in and I was sold. The songs posted today range from island soul to novelty ska to ska soul to some funky island jam. None of this fits into one genre, which is why it is safe to call it tourist music. The singing is good, and I love the guitar. Best of all is that the two guitar, conga, maracas, steel drum instrumentation keeps the sound stripped down and a bit rough at the edges. It is also good summer music.

Gringo

2009-06-17T20:37:00.000-07:00

El Clod Gringo b/w Tijuana Watusi? 45 (Vee Jay, 1964)

Who says racism sells? Okay, I am sure it does, but try telling that to one Marty Cooper AKA El Clod, creator of this novelty notoriety, as well as one other of the same ilk ("Tijuana Border"). Cooper had his first hit in 1961, writing "Peanut Butter" with H.B. Barnum, a song which became a classic when done by the Marathons. A year latter, adopting the nom de putz El Clod, he started trading in Latino stereotypes with his parody "Tijuana Border." It stiffed. A couple years later, he tried to ride on Loren Greene's "Ringo". That is what we have here. It also stiffed. A later notible songwriting credit "A Little Bit Country, A Little Bit Rock n' Roll" somehow became a hit for the duo that won't die Donnie & Marie Osmund. What dubious distinction followed that, I don't know.

Goin' Too Far

2009-06-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

The Fifth Order Goin' Too Far b/w Walkin' Away 45 (Diamond, 1966)

Here is a garage punker worth putting up with the surface noise. Kinda a mish-mash of the Outsiders and Paul Revere & the Raiders, the Fifth Order's first single was a big hit in hometown Columbus, Ohio. I'm not gonna tell you their story because someone else already did. I am just gonna shut up and let you listen to this gem.

All I Want is You

2009-06-10T20:04:00.000-07:00

Underground Sunshine All I Want is You 45 (Intrepid, 1969)

The great thing about the rock & roll seven inch record is that there is an endless stream of little known gems out there, whether they be from the Fifties and Sixties or the Eighties and Nineties or in between or now. There's thousands of worthy one-off lurking in record bins, thrift stores, attics, garages, and basements just waiting to be found. Many of them are like this Underground Sunshine single, a great, compact rocker, done by an obscure band who had a minor hit. In this case, Montello, Wisconsin's finest hit with a tepid version of the Beatles' "Birthday" and backed it with the punk snarl presented here. I read that they did an album and three more singles and then faded away. As far as the label goes, I've found a few things on Intrepid and they don't adhere to any formula. There also is no regional focus on any of their artists. Just another small label of the time and worth checking out.

Smoke Dreams

2009-05-31T07:42:00.000-07:00

Ronnie Deauville Smoke Dreams LP (Era, 1957)

Had this album turned out to be a dud, I would have been satisfied with staring at the record cover. What a fantastic sleeve! Then there are the tunes: slow and smokey, boozy and torched, they sound like what the are: music from another time and place. There are pretty good odds that most of the people involved in making this record are dead. And to top it off, Ronnie Deauville has a great back story. He had a short singing career and then was the victim of a car crash and polio, was paralyzed from the neck down and had to relearn how to sing. And then he made this record. As the people at Ill Folks write "A combination of factors...limited breathing ability, the difficulty of attracting female fans to a handicapped male singer, the physical problems of getting around to clubs or TV dates...led Ronnie to move behind the scenes, doing song-dubbing for less talented movie stars. He eventually retired to Florida with his wife and children, and passed away from cancer on Christmas Eve, 1990."

Sisters

2009-05-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

Bernard Herrmann Sisters OST LP (Entracte, 1975)

Like Ennio Morricone, Mikos Theodorakis, or Nino Rota, Bernard Herrmann is one of those names, that if attached to a film soundtrack, you have to pay attention. Though all of these composers have made some crummy soundtracks, their hit/miss ratio is way more than acceptable and when they hit, man, I challenge you to find better music. Herrmann is most famous for his soundtrack to Psycho, something you probably already know. He also scored a ton of other movies. His sound ranges from subdued to frightening and he relies a lot on strings to carry the mood. His work on Brian De Palma's 1973 film, Sisters - a very twisted tale which is mandatory viewing if you like your viewing a bit warped - is a bit more varied than his other scores. Most of the variation has to do with Herrmann increasing his instrumental palette. Rather than just rely on strings and booming percussion, he throws in bells, vibraphone and other sounds not typical of his work. The textures are also many. However, you aren't going to get much of a taste of Herrmann's variety here! The three cuts I chose for you are the film's main title and two others which incorporate the main theme, a fucked up version of a playground chant. While I dig the whole record, I am pretty taken by the theme.

Dark Shadows

2009-05-23T09:06:00.000-07:00

The Robert Cobert Orchestra Dark Shadows OST LP (Philips, 1969)

I dropped my stack of the morning's haul next to my girlfriend's ottoman and sat on the couch. She starts flipping through the records, stops and exclaims "DARK SHADOWS! I used to watch that when I was a kid and it scared the Hell out of me." What was it? "A soap opera about vampires and monsters. It was pretty cool. I had a crush on Barnabas." Hmmm...I should know about this but for some reason I didn't.

Perhaps you don't either. Dark Shadows was exactly what my girlfriend said, a soap opera about vampires, monsters, and the spirit world. It aired on American TV from 1966 to 1971 and was pretty popular. Today, it has a pretty significant cult following. Important to this blog is that it also had a great soundtrack, one which in the day was considered groundbreaking.

Robert Cobert's music for the series is pretty startling once you consider that it was for a TV show. Rather than dumb down the sounds, Cobert seemed to approach Dark Shadows as if it was a film. While some of this would sound right for a late Sixties horror film - from Theramin to obligatory rock & roll instrumental - it is better than most TV soundtracks I've heard. The record was a best seller, so finding a copy should be pretty easy and cheap. I got mine for $3. If I held out for one in better condition, I would have been set back a fiver.

Congo Mombo

2009-05-17T20:23:00.000-07:00

Muvva Hubbard & the Stompers Congo Mombo 45 (ABC-Paramount, 1956)

If you've followed this blog, you know that I am a sucker for this kind of record. First off the musician Muvva Hubbard is pretty damn obscure. Though he released a couple other singles around the same time as "Congo Mombo", there is no information on him that I can find. Second, the music is one of those attempts at trying to capitalize on duel trends. In this case, the Latin music craze of the mid-1950s and the instrumental, rock & roll, guitar twang inspired by Duane Eddy, one of my first rock & roll loves. Third, what the hell is a Congo Mombo? Are the bongo drums supposed to be African (Congo) or Latin (Mombo)? And mombo? Why because mambo doesn't rhyme with congo? So lame, but so good. Four, sure this record is kinda kitschy but it is really fucking killer, too. Ultimately, it is the killer that makes it worthy to throw up here. Hope you enjoy it.

Que Ironia

2009-05-07T18:38:00.000-07:00

Los Muecas Que Ironia LP (Caytronics, 1972)

Of course, when you pick up a record with a cover like this, your secret wish is that it contains some wicked Latin psych or wild garage stomp. Most of the time, that is not the case and this is one of those times. No reason to get down: When brooding organ comes in and the songs have that uber-dramatic vocals that only the Mexicans, Italians, and French can pull off all is fine in the world. I am not sure what this genre of music is called but it is some form of Mexican pop, a sound equally influenced by Euro pop of the 1960s and American rock & roll of the late 1950s through the 1960s. It still has a Latin sound to it, something kind of Tex-Mex, but it is modernized. Whatever it is, I heard a lot of it in the 1970s and 1980s, almost exclusively in Mexican restaurants. Into the 90s, the Mex joints that went yuppie either tried to go authentic with music and went full Mariachi or segged into mall salsa. Mexican restaurants that were truely authentic opted for Norteno or whatever Mexican pop was playing on Spanish language stations. No more stuff like Los Muecas. Too bad. Or maybe not. If the taco shop around the corner was playing stuff like this, I'd dine there everyday and wind up lugging around 300 pounds of man boob and sag ass.

I don't know anything about Los Muecas other than they must have been pretty popular in Mexico and among Mexican Americans. There are multiple "best of..."s and "greatest hits" CD listed on the interweb. Unfortunately that is the extent of the information I could find.

Ronnie Prophet

2009-05-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

Ronnie Prophet s/t LP (Art, 196?)

Ronnie Prophet has been around a long time. After starting his career in his native Canada, he trucked around upstate New York, Florida, and the Bahamas, working up a country music/guitar instrumental/comedy lounge act. He took it to Nashville and played a year at Boots Randolph's club, and then bought the place and held court for 16 years. His exposure to Nashville's music heavies lead to touring gigs backing George Jones, Kenny Rogers, and others. After Nashville he moved back up to Canada where he became a television staple, hosting a series of country music shows, ending with his "Ronnie Prophet Show", a mix of country and comedy. In the late '90s, he moved to Bramson, Missouri, a country music tourist destination - kinda a cross between Nashville, a State Fair, and a sanitized Reno. He opened up a theater with his wife Glory-Anne and has been tremendously successful. Among the country music hardcore he is known, among Canadian country music fans he is legend, but outside those worlds he isn't very well known. Too bad, though his comedy is a bit schmaltzy and his stage show is pretty slick, he is a hell of a guitarist. Influenced by Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, and Joe Maphis, he has a sound which alternates between blistering finger picking and full reverbed ballads. This record is his first, made when Prophet was a young man bopping between Florida and the Bahamas. Recorded at the Jolly Roger Hotel in Ft Lauderdale and the Jack Tar Grand Bahama Hotel, this is Prophet a little rawer than in his later years. The record has all the markings of one sold at his appearences and nowhere else. It is a combo of instrumentals, popular songs and ethnic joke tunes. Here are three songs off the album, two instumentals and a vocal number. Some of the guitar playing is exceptional and in "Malaguena" there are times in which the lickage is near heavy metal. Enjoy.

Micah Kennedy 1970 - 2009

2009-04-27T17:53:00.000-07:00

Micah Kennedy 1970 - 2009

Sacramento musician Micah Kennedy died last week. He had been ill for some time, though only his close friends and family knew. His body gave out while he was surrounded by those closest to him. He was only 39 years old.

I knew Micah from my involvement in Sacramento's underground music scene. My bands played with his. I put on shows by his bands and released a record with one of them on it. My friendship with him was casual - record talk at shows, hanging out a few times, etc. - though I was fond of him. He was a good guy. And he was an ace guitarist.

He played in several bands but the two he is remembered for are the Tiki Men and the Lazy J's. The Tiki Men were the more popular of the two. A great instrumental garage band with a hard edged Link Wray-like sound, they earned praise from garage punks to surf music die-hards. They released one album and a handful of 7"s, all excellent. Their records and live shows - fueled by Micah's raw, aggressive guitar sound - earned them a worldwide following.

The Lazy J's never were as popular as the Tiki Men. Their influences were a bit more rarefied (Dion, Del Shannon, various British bands) and they tended to play only within a hundred mile radius of Sacramento. Still, they were a great band. Unfortunately, their output was pretty slim, one song released on the Sacramento: City of a Beer 7" compilation.

I've chosen four songs in tribute to Micah - Two by the Tiki Men, two by the Lazy J's. "Tiki Torcher" comes from the Tiki Men's debut EP Sneak a Drink with the Tiki Men, released in 1994 on Secret Center Records. The Tiki Men's second single contained Micah's song "Cattle Prod", one of the best garage instrumentals ever. It was released on Hillsdale in 1994. As noted, the Lazy J's released only one song. That song is "She's So Refined", which came out in 1997 on the aforementioned compilation. I am also posting one unreleased Lazy J's song, "Each Day." I believe it was recorded at the same time as "She's So Refined".

Good bye Micah and thanks for some great music.

Rentak Tarian Melayu

2009-04-15T20:11:00.000-07:00

Orkes Gazal Penembang Rentak Tarian Melayu (Malay Dance Beat) EP (Parlophone, 196?)

I wish I could tell you something about this record or the style of music you are going to hear but this disk is pretty obscure and anything I'm gonna rattle off about Malaysian music would be cribbed from wikipedia and me bullshitting. Instead, I am going to write about what I do when I have no historical or cultural context to place a record or music in and that is think about the things that make the music on this record in common with other culture's music - or babble on about how crazy it is that in this Malaysian EP I hear really raw American Southern dance floor blues, hillbilly fiddle music, Irish jigs, Indian raga beats, West African guitar music, odd lo-fi cumbias, goombay... the list goes on. Perhaps the time period in which it was made explains the variety of sounds I hear touched on. I am assuming this was made in the 1960s, but even if I am wrong, I know it was made post World War II. From the Fifties on, music from all over the world was making it into different cultures. The airliner was making global tourism a reality. Western aid workers and businessmen were making their way into the "Third World" and the elite of the "undeveloped" countries were studying in American and European universities. Music, fashion, cuisine, art - all aspects of culture were bound to be affected by this mass meeting of people. So, perhaps, this record is a product of that. Or it could be that many of the things I hear on this record in other music are certain universalities, stuff that comes from some musical collective unconscious. I really don't know. But such things are fun to ponder.

A Message to the World

2009-04-09T07:20:00.000-07:00

Eddy's Group A Message to the World (BT Puppy, 1965)

An unusual obscurity this single. It is an anti-war song from 1965, which is too early for the protest song trend of a few years later. Sixty-five saw American advisers in Vietnam, but the war was still pretty much hidden from the public. Thus Eddy's Group doesn't sing of Vietnam, but the dead end of any war, with more than a hint at fearing nuclear war. This is a sentiment you hear in folk music of the time, but it doesn't turn up much in pop music (not to mention excellent haunted pop). Even more unique is that this single is on B.T. Puppy, whose discography is dominated by the doowop and pop of The Tokens, Del Satins, and The Happenings. This might just be the one protest song in the entire BT singles discography. And, to conclude, this looks to be the only record by Eddy's Group...until you realize that Eddy's Group is really The Tokens! Yes, the same band that did "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." If I had to guess, I'd say that The Tokens wanted to make a statement record, but didn't want to tarnish the Tokens brand by having people think they were a bunch of radicals; hence Eddy's Group.

Herpes Roulette

2009-04-05T19:22:00.000-07:00

Dave & Jesse Herpes Roulette 7" (Bullseye, 1986)

Thank god for herpes! Without it we wouldn't have this terrific little novelty rocker or the excellent picture sleeve that accompanies it. Officially the flipside of Dave & Jesse's "soon to be hit" "Dr. Ruth", the real smash here is "Herpes Roulette", which, I assume, was a toss off. Fine by me, some of the best songs are ones crammed on to the b-side of a supposed hit. I understand why "Dr. Ruth" is the A: Ruth Westheimer was one of the mid-Eighties oddest cultural icons, a short, dumpy, German doctor with a thick accent who talked frankly about sex. From her appearance to her mannerisms to her frankness, she ran counter to what Americans think of when they think of the public face of SEX - typically some softcore cheese celebrity of the Paris Hilton variety, the kind you might get a case of herpes from.

I have no idea who Dave & Jesse were, but if I was to guess I'd say that they were Southern California disc jockeys, as this record has all the markings of a dejay novelty record. If they were radio partners, they split up before the internet era, as I can't find any reference to them.

The Loser

2009-03-24T07:39:00.000-07:00

The Racket Squad The Loser 45 (Jubilee, 1968)

One of Pittsburgh's finest band of the Sixties, The Racket Squad started out as The Fenways. They did a couple albums for Jubilee and a handful of singles. But what they are most known for is being the backing band for a few hits by the Vogues. The music of The Vogues and the Racket Squad is standard 60s garage pop, for the most part. The Vogues tunes are more pop than garage, the Racket Squad more garage than pop. However, the Squad also did some slower, moodier, more produced music, stuff that would be labeled Sunshine Pop today. The heaviest of their Sunshine Pop songs (and one of the heaviest of the genre) is this classic bit of self-loathing, "The Loser". To me, the magic in this song is that it never breaks from the orchestrated pop mode, even while it lumbers on and despite the faux-psych moves. Pretty damn cool stuff.

Detroit City Cats

2009-03-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

Costa & Chyps Detroit City Cats 45 (Stature, 1982)

Ummm...Can some Michiganer fill me in on what a "Detroit City Cat" is? I mean, other than a song based on what seems to be an odd phrase turned into a vocal hook, backed by some faux funk. I kind of doubt that Detroit City Cat is the name of a street gang and that they commissioned this song for themselves. However this could be the theme song for an indie movie of the same name, though I find no mention of such a creation on IMDB or through searches. Was there a minor league baseball or hockey team by that name? Was the WFL in existance then and the City Cats was the Detroit franchise name. Or are Costa & Chyps simply referring to the nastier characters on the streets as "city cats"? Please, someone from Detroit fill me in! This is keeping me up at nights. I really don't need to know anything else about this single. I have a good enough picture of the band, the producer, and the label head in my mind thanks to the music. The image is gold plated and hairy and I'd like to keep it that way.

You Haven't Seen My Love

2009-03-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

The Ones You Haven't Seen My Love b/w Happy Day 45 (Spirit, 1967)

Oh oh oh here is a fucking great soul single. From the brooding organ and plaintive vocals on the A-side to the elastic vocal inflections and spazzed out lead guitar on the flip, wow! The Ones were four Chicano/Euro-American Detroit teens, who played high school dances, doing mostly Motown, R&B and garage covers, as well as a few originals. Two of the originals they put to tape and then pressed as a single on their own label, Spirit. The song immediately got airplay on Detroit radio and became a local hit. Wanting to cash in on a bit of The Ones' good fortune, Motown picked up the single, making band the first non-Black R&B group on the Motown roster. Despite touring with the Miracles and other Motown acts, The Ones' single didn't hit nationally and the label lost interest in the band. Perhaps the band was just a bit to quirky to fit into the rigid Motown mold or maybe they put everything they had into this single. Whatever the case, this is a great one.

Namu

2009-03-12T20:46:00.000-07:00

The Dorsals with the Gatormen Namu b/w Killer Whale 45 (Camelot, 1966)

Listen, I don't care how trashed this record is nothing, I mean nothing, is gonna stop me from posting songs about Namu the Killer Whale, especially if one of them has whale sound effects dropped into the song! And not only are these ultra cool garage tunes but the band features one Rayner Rey, a name associated with the Seattle garage scene and responsible for a couple killer pop singles on Jerden (which I've mentioned but haven't posted on here yet - someday). Because I have no great record hunting story associated with this single, nor can think of a tale regarding whales, killer or otherwise, I will just leave you these sounds.

Music is Love

2009-03-07T19:42:00.000-08:00

Alright Family Band Music is Love LP (AFB, 1980)

Tracking the career of psych legend Sky Saxon is too mammoth of a task for this modest man. Luckily others have done it for me. And from the folks at Lysergia I know that the Saxon nugget I'm laying on you tonight was recorded no less than four times. I'd heard one version of "Starry Ride" prior to this one. It was the first version of it, recorded by the Stars New Seeds. That one is a terrific psych punker, but I don't have it here on vinyl otherwise I'd post it, too. The version by the Alright Family Band has a cool laid back + new wave feel to it. Given the time and place it was made and that Sky was involved, it is easy to imagine why.

The Alright Family Band were from Maui, a Maui that was just becoming a tourist mecca and still had a stoney vibe (which is still there, though muted by the commercialism and development). One source says that the band was made up of ex-culties, former members of the Source Family, the cult that formed around Father Yod and made some astounding records til their leader took a the long walk (actually the long glide. He was killed in a handgliding accident. So much for the god-like power of flight). The Alright Family Band made one album and it is pretty much hippie rock, so-so at best. Sky is listed as a band member but his contribution is limited to "Starry Ride", the one good song on the record. Warning: It isn't the Seeds. Though you can certainly hear the Sky Saxon in it and that hypnotic repetition of a basic riff that marks classic Seeds songs, this years and brain cells removed from "Pushin Too Hard". To me, this version of "Starry Ride" is to the Seeds, what "Wild Honey" is to "classic" Beach Boys. So here ya go, the Alright Family Band version of "Starry Ride". Enjoy.

Frevos

2009-03-02T16:31:00.000-08:00

Zaccarias e sua Orquestra Frevos 10" (RCA, 195?)

Frevos mean fever and it's been the street music of Brazil's Carnival since 1907. I am not going to bullshit my way into you thinking all I learned about frevo came in searching info about this record with a very very very cool cover. The music is great. Sounds to me like a combo of Perez Prado and Raymond Scott, but the style preceeded them. Zaccarias is considered one of the masters and this is one of his records, one which seems to be pretty damn scarce. No need to ramble on. If you want to read a history of frevo, check this out. More sounds of Zaccarias, go here.

Never Leave Me

2009-02-26T15:42:00.000-08:00

The Stratfords Never Leave Me b/w Enaj 45 (O'Dell, 1964)

Ahhhh here is some brilliant haunted pop. Lots of reverb'd darkness, eerie vocals, and a laconic beat, the Stratfords' "Never Leave Me" was a minor hit in their native Baltimore but nowhere else. While the song is as good as any Brian Hyland number of the same sound, I think what it lacks to have gone national is a step up in production. Chances are that "improvement" would have slickened the song and ruined not only its slight edge but flattened the mood. For the band, no national exposure probably sucked, but for the music freak, it makes for a pretty great record. The flip is also a great noir instrumental. Even though this was a local single, it is not too difficult to find.

Work Resumed on the Tower

2009-02-22T14:38:00.000-08:00

News from Babel Work Resumed on the Tower LP (Recommended, 1984)

The first Recommended record I stumbled upon was a pure impulse buy for me. When I was in my mid-teens, Tower Records - which was headquartered in West Sacramento - had a warehouse sale. A bunch of friends piled into my station wagon and off we went to look for records. Inside the warehouse there were hundreds of boxes of records, all with top edge spray painted a different color, each color signifying a certain price. Me, being the skinflint that I am, I went for the dollar box (color green) and, after an hour of digging, had a stack of twenty or so records. Because I can only remember two (which are still in my collection) I assume 18 of the 20 sucked. The two keepers were Skrewdriver's All Skrewed Up, certainly one of the best no-frills punk records ever made, and Chris Cutler & Fred Frith's Live in Prague & Washington. Both records were mysteries to me. "You didn't know Skrewdriver?" No, this was when 77 punk was being overshawed by American hardcore and before Skrewdriver become the face of the National Front. The record cover looked punk so I bought it.

I had no idea what a Chris Cutler was but I'd seen Fred Frith's on inner sleeve Ralph Records' ads in Residents albums. I was a big fan of the Residents, so anything associated with them was game for me. I had no idea what to expect of Live in Prague... and what I got was not only a nice surprise but one of those mind changing disks. Here was really noisy guitar improv, really noisy. There didn't seem to be any form or structure and being a captive of 1-2-3-4 punk rock (though an admirer of anything "weird") and not have heard free jazz, I didn't know where to place it. I had a SPK album (Leichenshrei) which was also really fucking noisy and some Throbbing Gristle. And while those records were close in volume, they also seemed to have a musical center. Cutler/Frith didn't, at least I couldn't hear it at the time. Good thing, as it made me realize that not only were there no emotional limits to music (something punk taught me) but there were also no creative limits. Soon after I formed a band (Satyagraha) composed of two drummers, guitar, bass, moog, and obeo. We played a few punk shows with Subhumans and Flipper, pissing off the hardcores but pleasing the Flipper freaks with a set that pretty much started out with "Okay ready? One two three four" and everyone pretty much playing whatever the fuck they wanted until the drummers needed a rest. I don't know if it was any "good" or not, but it sure was a hell of a lot of fun.

So since scoring the Cutler/Frith record, I kept my eyes open for more. Bought some Frith albums on Ralph and was disappointed. Too slick and no noise. Cutler, I couldn't fine and at the time I hadn't clued in on looking for stuff on certain labels, outside of a few punk imprints. Besides, Recommended titles weren't easy to find, even in a town with a store that had a great import section. However over the years, I picked up Recommended titles here and there. Also learned that Cutler was in Henry Cow and the Art Bears and, the few times I found records by those bands, I'd buy them. Then in the late 90s, in the days when a website took ten minutes to come up through dial up in your netscpe browser, I found the Recommended Records website, which had new copies of dozens of titles at discount prices (because vinyl was dead) postpaid from the UK. Even with the crippling UK/US exchange rate, I was paying no more than seven bucks a record with shipping included! Of course, I splurged. What else could I do? And I got some great stuff. But this News from Babel album I didn't get. This came a bit later.

The first time I listened to News from Babel, I thought: Great shit, sounds familiar. Of course, it does! Three fifths of the band are Henry Cow/Art Bears alum - Lindsay Cooper, Chris Culter, and Dagmar Krause are the familiar names (and Phil Minton as guest). Rather than rattle of the band's history, I'll just go on to the music, a great combo of art, rock, and experimentalism, something which pretty much describes Recommended.

Outstanding Contemporary Composers of Texas

2009-02-17T07:38:00.000-08:00

Outstanding Contemporary Composers of Texas: A Sampler & Comprehensive Study 2LP
(International Contemporary Music Exchange, 1984)

Every now and again, you'll here some grumblie state that all the good records are gone. If they haven't been snatched up by roving collectors, they are priced to unaffordable on the interweb. Poppycock! The key to finding good records is to keep your mind open, your wallet willing, and your eyes askew. In other words: take chances, be willing to spend a few bucks (and by few I mean a few), and look for things beyond what you already know. Here's what I mean:

I walk into a local record store and start digging through vinyl. The place is somewhat legendary because of past finds and clients, but legendary means that it is pretty picked through. Still, good things appear time to time and the staff have their blind spots. So I see this double album in a plain sleeve, Outstanding Contemporary Composers of Texas. It is priced at seven bucks. Seven bucks? Not one dollar, but what they hell. I am sure only a thousand, maybe two were made and most of them are stuck in univeristy music libraries. Could be some good shit on it and, at the very least, I will now know what Texas composers were doing in the 1980s.

That last bit is important. People have come to expect that every record must be a winner that they are unwilling to look at the act of listening to music as one of discovery, of self education. So what if a record sucks, now you know that and why. Or maybe it sucks just a bit. Or maybe it doesn't suck but is a little off-putting because you aren't used to the sounds on it. Or maybe it fucking cracks open you skull and blows your fucking mind. In all cases, you are experiencing something first hand. Your life, your music is not being mediated by a third party (and that includes me).

So there are pretty extensive liner notes that come with these records, but I am not going to rehash them for you. Most of the text is background on the composers and what they were trying to accomplish with what piece. International Contemporary Music Exchange or ICME is a pretty nifty organization. Though the Seventies and Eighties they produces lots of album by composers who no major label would touch, as well as avant garde giants such as John Cage and Charles Ives.

Note that this collection is a sampler, so some of the songs are excerpts. Fine by me, the sounds are still good.

The Birds

2009-02-13T14:50:00.000-08:00

In one of their better decisions, Sacramento's city fathers went crazy with planting elm trees. Throughout Midtown Sacramento, there are plenty of 100+ year old elms, though because they often drop branches on cars and a few have been afflicted by Dutch elm disease, we lose some every year. My street is lined with elms. In the Summer, they provide a tent of leaves, cooling the neighborhood on freakishly hot days. In the Fall, when the leaves drop, their bare branches provide a mood that dovetails nicely with the season's cold and fog. And on Winter evenings, after it rains, the crows gather.

The video above was taken a couple days ago. I was walking home. When I turned the corner onto my street, I was met by a rush of noise: The crows had returned. As I walked closer to my house, the caws grew in intensity and in volume. Thousands of crows dotted the elm's branches and hundreds soared from tree to tree. The cacophony was always present, but the volume rose and fell in waves. If there was a conductor orchestrating the swells, it was nowhere to be seen. I went inside to grab my camera and even behind closed doors the din could be heard clearly. On the street, I filmed the one minute my camera allows and went back in doors. As soon as dark hit, the sound was gone, as were the birds.

A note on the video: The image is a pretty good representation of what the scene looks like, however the sound is not. The volume of the crows is much louder than what I've captured, often drowning out the passing cars. When the video starts up, you might first think that what you are hearing is background noise with caws atop. That is not so. Other than the sound of automobiles - which should be pretty obvious - everything else you hear are the birds.

God Will Take Care of You

2009-02-08T09:10:00.000-08:00

The Harmonizing Four God Will Take Care of You LP (Up Front, 197?)

I've said it before, nothing beats a great gospel record. There are a few things that match it, but top it? No way. Here is a pretty damn fine album by the Harmonizing Four, a gospel quartet out of Richmond, Virginia. I've heard other records by the Four, but this odds & sods collection is my favorite. The recording is nice and raw, and, while the vocals are excellent, the music is a little ragged at times. Chances are that these recordings are outtakes, as Up Front was a pretty sleazy operation, often buying unreleased sessions from studios or producers and releasing the music with out the musician's permission or compensating them. Legally, they didn't issue bootlegs, but this is about as close as you can get without getting hauled into court. Because the label is so sketchy, recording dates, let along the release date of the record, are not known. For more info and sounds by the Harmonizing Four, check this out.

Lux Interior 1948 - 2009

2009-02-04T17:40:00.000-08:00

The Cramps Dance of the Cannibals of Sex 7" (Famous Lux, n/d)

Lux Interior, singer of The Cramps, a true rock & roll legend, and former Sacramento resident, died this morning. I am not going to blab too much, because if you read this blog there is a 99% chance you know who Lux Interior is. Up to the very end, Lux was a great frontman, one of the best of all time. And with the Cramps, he released some wonderful records. For music freaks, perhaps most important is that Lux and his partner Ivy were avid record collectors and through their music and in interviews turned lots of people on to obscure rock & roll, weird lounge acts, and a whole mess of obscure sounds. I don't know how many record tips I picked up either directly or indirectly from paying attention to the Cramps, but it was a lot. I am confident in stating that many a music blog owes something to Lux and Ivy's vinyl archaeology. The thing is that Lux (and Ivy) were more than members of a band. They were/are total music freaks who happened to form a band, which turned out to be great. And as they got popular they never lost that sense of wonder than fans have. And, they seemed to live to turn people onto music. Lux was like the coolest music appreciation teacher who ever lived.

In rememberance, here is something off a bootleg 45. Here the Cramps do a fantastic version of Red Crayola's "Hurricane Fighter Plane." It is one of my favorite pieces of primitive rock & roll. It was recorded at Max's Kansas City in January 1977 with the original Cramps line-up of Lux, Ivy, Bryan, & Miriam.

Seven Deadly Sins

2009-01-31T20:30:00.000-08:00

Bill Russo & His Orchestra Seven Deadly Sins LP (Roulette, 1960)

Some more Third Stream music for you and if this has a bit of the Kenton sound to it, consider that Bill Russo had a four year stint in Stan Kenton's band, playing trombone and writing. Russo also was high school pals with the great Lee Konitz and studied with Lennie Tristano. On the classical side of things, he was taught by John Becker, a student of Charles Ives. Add to that the time in which this record was made, the tail end of the era of noir jazz, and you have a great listen.

I am sure that this record went over big with the Playboy crowd (an editor of the mag penned the liner notes), as it has that swank yet sophistocated sound to it, the kind of tunes you put on the reel-to-reel while you fix a Manhatten for the well stacked miss you dragged into your split level pad. You are hoping that the combination of booze and admiration for your high but not too high brow musical tastes, as well as the copies of the New Yorker, Time, and Sports Illustrated on the coffee table, are gonna get her out of her skirt and you sans turtleneck. Better hurry up before Russo gets too brooding and she wants to talk Kierkegaard. Start blowing philosophy and you'll never get laid.

City of Glass / This Modern World

2009-01-22T20:00:00.000-08:00

Stan Kenton City of Glass / This Modern World LP (Capital, 1952)

After years of ignoring Stan Kenton albums because I was under the impression that they were all Benny Goodman style big band romps, I picked up a copy of Cuban Fire! because I was just getting into Latin music and the cover was so damn cool. It is a pretty hot record, but I figured it was as wild as Kenton got. Not a chance. A couple years later I was given a stack of old records by a guy. "I heard you like records. My dad died, you can have these." The stack contained a Martin Denny album, some best of Monk, a bunch of shitty Melachrino Strings records, and this one by Stan Kenton. I listen to the Monk and spin the Martin Denny. About a week passes and I decide to check out the Kenton album. It has a cool cover, but so did the Melachrino Strings albums. Ah why not? I am alone in my apartment and no one is gonna come over tonight, let it spin. Gahhhhhhhhhh! A couple minutes into the first song and I am so fucking anxiety ridden, I have to leave the room. I come back into the room and listen to the rest of the record standing! Up to that point I had listened to a lot of fucked up shit. I'd had sex to Throbbing Gristle. Slept to Whitehouse. Ate breakfast and read the paper while listening to Current 93's Dogs Blood Rising. None of that creeped me out or sent my nerves into a clench. But Kenton's City of Glass / This Modern World really freaked me out. The sound that came out of the speakers was not painful in a sense that it hurt the ears. Nah, City of Glass is composed like it was written while the composer chewed on a florescent light bulb. And perhaps he did.

You see, Kenton didn't birth the songs; he was just the person delivering them. The parent of these sounds was a buy named Robert Graettinger. Born in Southern California, Graettinger played music for a while, before giving it up to write. He was in his early 20s when he gave Kenton some songs. Kenton didn't know if they were brilliant or bullshit, but he recorded them anyway...and then took Graettinger on as staff. Graettinger rarely spoke to anyone besides Kenton. Even when Kenton took him on the road, he sat by himself. His diet consisted of scrambled eggs, vitamin pils, cigarettes, and booze. He hated to sleep, saying he'd have enough time to do that in the grave. He lived by himself in a filthy apartment above a garage, which he rarely left. He was tall and skinny, had caved in cheeks and was very very very pale. Many described him as "looking like death". He died of cancer at age 34. And he wrote some fascinatingly fucked up music.

Listen to this and you realize how radical Kenton was to not only record this stuff but to take Graetinger on as a writer! Especially when doing so nearly ruined Kenton's carreer. Needless to say, Kenton fans were not too happy with these sounds. A bit later, Kenton went back to standard jazz but for a while he had a good run of really wild records. This is one of them. If you want to read more about Kenton and Graetinger, check out Irwin Chusid's book Songs in the Key of Z.

Jungle Odyssey

2009-01-07T17:11:00.000-08:00

Mike Simpson Jungle Odyssey LP (Evolution, 1966)

Let's start off the new year right, with a record that exemplifies everything that was right about the music industry from the late 1950s to the late 1960s, an era when the record labels had yet to gotten their sales down to a science. Not sure what the hell would take off, their release process was the musical equivalent of throw shit against the wall to see what stuck. This uncertainty lead to many sounds that would not have come about under a strict hits hits hits regime and resulted in a lot of records that probably "should have not" been made, Mike Simpson's Jungle Odyssey being one of them. A fusion of animal sound effects record and exotica, Jungle Odyssey is a very strange record when you think about it. The animal sounds on the record - elephant, hippo, hyena, monkey, etc. - are noises you market to kids. The music - heavy on the easy listening, light on the exotica - is adult territory. Sure, Martin Denny got away with jungle calls, but he also created a music that was a bit more than faux Enoch Light. The album cover isn't quite children's record, nor is it standard exotica. And the record label, Evolution, is one of the strangest that I've come across. Not that they release weird records, it is that none of the records they put out (at least the ones I've stumbled on) really fit snuggly in one genre. There is always something "wrong" about them. By the early 70s, labels like Evolution had either died or figured out a formula to market, and experimentation was left to those putting out private pressings and a handful of indie labels. Of course, the music industry got things wrong with assuming that the public's taste could be reduced to a science and are late to many new sounds. And fine by me, those blind spots enable indie labels to thrive.

We Like Ugly Women

2008-12-31T01:28:00.000-08:00

Bobby Jimmy & the Critters We Like Ugly Women 12" (Rapsur, 1984)

The story goes that Los Angeles radio dejay Russ Parr had an on air character named Bobby Jimmy. One day his pal the Egyptian Lover, a West Coast hip hop and electro pioneer, called him up and said, "Hey man, let's cut a record." Egypt had already had a few 12"s out and had some distro and knew how to produce a song. Russ had a made for novelty record character. And thus "We Like Ugly Women" was born.

Low but funny humor and a hell of a lot of absurdity are the hooks for me, but better is the really weird production the Egyptian Lover gives it. Throughout the song there are odd nods, but the best and strangest passage is right before the preacher comes in, and while he gives his advice. Another plus is the guitar break. And then there is the similarity that it has to this internet classic. This is not only a good novelty song. It is a piece of great early electro. And something you can bring into 2009. Have a happy new year!

Love Life of Crime

2008-12-27T20:05:00.000-08:00

Jack Merlin Love Life of Crime 45 (Hickory, 1965)

Here is a winner of a loser! Jack Merlin's "Love Life of Crime" is faux-Elvis that comes off more like Bobby Pickett with a speech impediment. I have no info on Jack Merlin and haven't found any chart information. The only copy I've seen is this one and it is a promo. That doesn't mean there isn't others floating around but this is one of those records that either never made it out of promo phase or got such a bad reception that they pressing was deliberately kept low. I imagine that it came about with Jack Merlin pitching his song to Hickory and insisting that he perform it. Hickory was probably looking for something that bordered on rock and country so they put Roy Acuff behind it and let it rip...to no applause. Well, I like it. Perhaps not for the "right reasons" but I certainly think it is worth throwing out there. And the song title is one of the best! The only thing missing on this is a talk over.

Greenback Dollar

2008-12-22T19:44:00.000-08:00

Hoyt Axton Greenback Dollar 45 (Horizon, 1963)
Hoyt Axton with the Chamber Brothers Greenback Dollar 45 (Horizon, 1963)

On Saturday I took a trip to the mall downtown. I hadn't intended on mall shopping, as I hate malls, but my girlfriend Susan had killed some time there on Friday and said that every place was having a sale and not just ten or twenty percent off, but sixty and seventy-five. So, what they hell, if she is up for a walk, I'll head downtown and check things out. I can always use a thermal and some pairs of socks. Maybe I'd find a fancy hat.

The mall in Downtown Sacramento is an indoor/outdoor mall. It is two stories and all but the center strip is covered by roof. Aesthetically it is about as unattractive as pretty much every mall, however the way this one was designed it kind of has the look of a post-modern high security prison, a prison with a giant, rotating Hard Rock Cafe guitar in front of it. Downtown Plaza has never been successful. Though it has had plenty of help from the city in the form of tax breaks and grants, it limps along, year after year turning up at council meetings looking for more public subsidies. The city has yet to accept that suburbanites won't go to downtown to a mall when they can go to exactly the same shops in malls in the 'burbs, that are much closer to where they live. The city thinks things like the Hard Rock Cafe are enough to lure the masses.

Walking to the mall, we passed through the other part of K Street, the downtown portion closed to automobile traffic but not part of the mall. Many, many years ago, this part of K was home to the city's movie houses and lots of local businesses. Not any more. Now there are a spattering of small businesses, some mini-marts, and a handful of fast food joints. There are three theaters on K: The Crest, a beautiful, restored, single-screen movie house; a new live theater; and an IMAX, which is usually pretty empty and also receives taxpayer money in the form of rent subsidies. The IMAX, like the Plaza, are supposed to be valuable economic anchors, which is why they get public money. Of course, their favorite status is not based on merit or performance, but rather some consultant's pitch and the city not wanting to admit that it made a bad decision years ago when it started throwing money at these shit projects. Sacramento's downtown policy is much like Rumsfeld and Iraq, though without tens of thousands of deaths. And though K Street lacks suicide bombers, I bet downtown Baghdad has more business going on than our sad strip. On the way to the mall, we passed on nice clothing store. Two people were in it and they were employees.

Downtown Plaza was also pretty empty, especially when you consider that we were there on the Saturday before Christmas and every store had a sale. We bopped in and out of shops. I got a few shirts for ten bucks a pop, a sweater for not too much more, and a few other things. I think I spent a total of fifty bucks on clothes marked down from $200. It was fifty I wouldn't have spent otherwise so I guess the sales worked on me. But it didn't seem to work for the stores. As noted, they were pretty empty. At 2 pm, prime shopping time, I counted six people including Susan and me (sans workers) in Banana Republic. Six. And the scene wasn't much different at other stores (though when we hoofed it back Midtown and dropped by the bookstore, I was very happy to count twenty-one people, which, at one time, is a lot. Could it be that people are finally taking "Buy Local" seriously?).

This is the season of the Greenback Dollar - or at least it was. People are either being scared or they are being sensible and spending only what they can afford to spend. Many of the people I saw shopping were doing what Susan and I were doing, picking up everyday clothes for ourselves because the prices were right. Back Midtown, people are buying books, so maybe they are being sensible!

About a week ago I was asked to give a talk with my friend Dennis Yudt, at a small alternative movie theater, of "I Need that Record!", a documentary on they death of indie record stores. My take on such things is a bit different than your average lefty. I've run small businesses and know that many of them fail thanks to things they do wrong, as well as shit thrust upon them. I also know that things go in cycles. People buy certain things at certain times of the year. Business slows at different times of the month. One cycle that I don't think economists talk about much, if at all, is one that seems to occur over a longer period of time, years, or even decades. That cycle is support for local businesses and valuing your community by spending your money in your community. As I stated in my talk, when I walk home from the train station, I pass about a dozen coffee shops, a few are Starbucks, the rest are locals. Strolling by each place, I do a quick headcount. Over the past year or so, the number of people at Starbucks has shrunk, while the locals get busier and busier. Are people sick of the sterile, corporate feel of Starbucks? The drop in their sales seems to suggest so. I know Starbucks likes to blame McDonalds and their offering espresso drinks as the reason they are taking a hit, and I am sure that McD's is causing them harm. But what about people rejecting their product because they are sick of the same, chain store crap? Sure, it might be a minority of the population, but a minority can be 25%. Hell, even at ten percent, the numbers are not insignificant.

So what is my point? If you have read enough of my babble, you know I am not a glass half full kinda guy. But I am one to look at a situation and see what I can make of it. I look at the shit economy, people's anxiety over it, people wanting to feel safe and a sense of community. I see how many people were willing to either believe that Obama will help change things to a more people-to-people based society, or if not believe he can at least say "Why the fuck not?" and take a chance on the guy. People come into the store and ask for books on the New Deal. I dunno, maybe the era of the Greenback Dollar is over, at least for a while.

And over though it may be, the song "Greenback Dollar" is still one of the best tunes of American popular music (Ha! How about that segue!). Today, you get three versions of "Greenback Dollar." Two of them are done by the guy who wrote them, the great Hoyt Axton. The first version is him and an unnamed band. It is my favorite. It has a great creeping tempo and some killer guitar work. The second version came out the same year as the first and is a bit different. The tempo jumps and the band backing him is a young Chamber Brothers, back when they were struggling in the folk circuit. The last one is a video clip I found while googling the song title. This one is done by Dick Dale, with Dale on vocals and not guitar. It is a bit punk and Dale has a nice snarl going. The kids love it, most of them probably hip to the Kingston Trio's version, the one which made the top ten.

Have a good Christmas!

I'll Forget You

2008-12-13T03:00:00.000-08:00

John Roberts I'll Forget You b/w Be My Baby 45 (Duke, 1968)

Don't know nuthin' 'bout John Roberts except he made a couple great singles produced by one Bob Garner for Duke Records out of Houston, Texas. I know a little about Duke Records though. Duke started in Memphis 1952 and had early success with Johnny Ace. After a year, Peacock Records' Don Robey got Duke's owners to merge labels with him and soon after Robey was in control. Robey's Peacock had had more success than Duke at that point - with Clarance "Gatemouth" Brown, the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Sensational Nightingales, etc. - and was always to be the dominant label, even with hits by Bobby "Blue" Bland and Junior Parker. From the Peacock/Duke operation, Robey created Back Beat, which had hits with OV Wright and Roy Head. In 1973, Robey sold the labels to ABC-Dunhill.

Though Robey produced many of the records he put out and his name is usually somewhere on a release, it isn't on this one. Instead we get mystery producer Bob Garner, who could be Robey under a pseudonym or it could be Bob Garner. Whoever it is, both of John Roberts songs have the sound you hear on Robey's records - well recorded though not slick, punchy without forsaking a groove, and a bit of smokiness to the sound.

"I'll Forget You" is one of my favorite Duke sides. A vocal melody partially copped from "Summertime" and a groove that is deadly, the centerpiece of the song is the wicked guitar playing, sort of a funky chicken with a twitch. Also notable is the minimalist horn arrangement. The flip - "Be My Baby" - is also a good and would be Crud material all by itself, if not for it's funkiness than for the list of dances and songs Roberts cites.

Live Fast Die Young

2008-12-09T10:16:00.000-08:00

Eric Lomax Live Fast Die Young 45 (Columbia, 1969)

Messages in African American music date back to slave hollers and work songs. In early Black gospel and country blues message songs were common. And in early rock & roll, every once in a while a message snuck in. However, if anyone can be said to have brought the message song into modern Black music it is Curtis Mayfield. With the Impressions and on his own, Curtis was such as great songwriter and an fantastic interpreter of his own songs that few people who followed him in the message song could escape his influence, an influence which was, during the Sixties and the Seventies, as strong on soul music as Dylan was on folk and rock. I don't know crap about Eric Lomax, but from the sound of "Live Fast Die Young", he was very much indebted to Mayfield. Though I doubt Lomax was from Chicago (nn reference to him in any of the books on Chicago soul that I have), the sound of the record is very Windy City - a little bit Simtec Simmons, a lot a bit late 60s Impressions. The vocal phrasing has that smooth hesitancy that is Curtis Mayfield. And then there is the message. Give this one a few listens. It will grow on you.

Forget Me Baby

2008-12-05T20:55:00.000-08:00

Lulu & the Luvers Forget Me Baby 45 (Parrot, 1964)

The Gleneagles were one of the handful of bands stomping around Glasgow blasting out raw, loud R&B and when Lulu joined the band the only thing that changed was the band's name. Lulu & the Luvers (or Lulu & the Lovers or Lulu & the Luvvers) made a handful of singles but it was their first, a rippin' version of the Isley Brother's "Shout" which hit the biggest. After that it was diminishing returns. In 1965, Lulu ditched her Luvvers and struck out on a pretty successful solo career ("To Sir With Love").

Here is the B-side of the "Shout" single, a great swinging stomp with Lulu singing strained throated and a great twang guitar solo. "Shout" is fine, but I've heard it a zillion times before. The hit here is "Forget Me Baby."

Mom (Can I Talk to You)

2008-12-01T09:06:00.000-08:00

Jan Rhodes Mom (Can I Talk to You) 45 (Blue, 1968)

Ahhh the ambiguous morality song. Here Jan Rhodes, with a lot of help from Dick Hyman, confabs with Mom about some unnamed trouble. All we know is that bad Jan went to some place for a couple hours and something happened that she needs to talk to mom about. Did she sneak a smoke? Smoke pole? Smoke a lot of pole? I don't know. Its gotta be bad. I mean, cell phones weren't around to snap a shot or take a video clip. Girls Gone Wild had yet to be invented. If Jan was gonna soil her family's name just from word of mouth, well, well.

Obviously the theme was lifted from the Shangra-Las and other early girl groups. The sound, though, is a nice blend of Shadow Morton and Burt Bacharach. And that intro is begging to be sampled.

Iraq, I Roll, Iran

2008-11-26T08:39:00.000-08:00

Crisis Iraq, I Roll, Iran 45 (Criminal, 1979?)

It is Thanksgiving time and I guess I should be thankful that the election of Barack Obama means that the United Stated will not have a stupid foreign policy (maybe still wretched but not ill-thought out), but part of me is a bit sad. Bad foreign policy means good songs. Often these songs are great-good, as in the Circle Jerks' "Paid Vacation" or Bob Dylan's "Masters of War." Other times these songs are good bad, like today's "Iraq, I Roll, Iran" by Crisis, a one-off band probably cobbled together to record this single.

One of plenty of "real people" records commenting on the Iran Hostage Crisis of the late 70s and Iran's Islamic Revolution, Crisis's ballad (of sorts) takes aim at the Ayatollah Khomeini (who else?) with a series of insults and challenges of the battered-brain variety usually associated with guys whose best retort is "Oh yeah?" Classic among the song's lyrics is the play on Ayatollah that comes after the guitar break. I am not gonna spoil it for you but do beg you to at least make it to there, because you are guaranteed a chuckle. Where Iraq figures in here, I don't know other than "Iraq, I Roll, Iran" makes a "good" song title.

Have a good T-day.

Messages for the Cakekitchen

2008-11-19T21:28:00.000-08:00

Graeme Jefferies Messages for the Cakekitchen LP (Flying Nun, 1987)

One of the Big Lies taught in Rock History 101 is that there are Dead Periods when no good music is being made, a situation rectified by some savior band or artist. Thus, after its initial burst, rock & roll petered out and was about to die but then the Beatles came along and all was saved. At least until about 1973, when rock was taken over by bubblegum outfits and dinosaur bands, who would have sunk the genre if not for the rise of British Punk Rock, which saved the day...for a while. Come 1985, rock & roll was once again struggling to survive. Lots of bands but, man o man, they sucked. Rock was just about to be pronounced dead when Nirvana and grunge revived it. At best, this rundown is a surface level understanding of rock & roll. At worst, it is a lie created to market new trends. Either way, the line above is wrong. There are no Dead Periods in rock & roll.

While Elvis goes pop and invites Bill Haley and Pat Boone to further bleach rock & roll, rockabilly bands were still raging and so was a gritty R&B, code name for rock & roll made by Black folks. Instrumental surf bands, taking a hint from Duane Eddy and Link Wray, were multiplying, along with hundreds of teen garage bands. All there for the Beatles to "save." The mid Seventies saw glam, power pop, prog, krautrock, what we now call proto-punk, and dozens of Eastern European bands playing rock music underground, not to mention hundreds of loners and outsiders making private press records that are now gobbled up by collectors. And while the world suffered under the funk-punk and hair metal ballads of the late 80s, there was, at least in New Zealand, some fantastic records being made. One of the people making those records was Graeme Jeffries.

Messages for the Cakekitchen is Jefferies only "solo" record, sort of. It appeared after a couple EPs made under the name Cakekitchen and was followed by a few albums by a band of the same name. Prior to Cakekitchen, Jefferies played in Nocturnal Projections with his brother Peter, who later formed the 3Ds, another great Kiwi band. The brothers also recorded as This Kind of Punishment, making stand out records for Xpressway and Flying Nun. What Jeffries is doing now, I don't know. Searching for info on him doesn't lead very far.

Here are two cuts off of Jefferies Messages for the Cakekitchen LP. It is good, moody sounds for the approaching chill.