kristina morland cd review on iloveftw.com

a review i penned of kristina morland's cd pidgin music is online now at iloveftw.com.

10.18.2008 burrito benefit lineup

1pm-
2pm-Douglas Woodlane
3pm-Matthew Gray
4pm-Fish Fry Bingo
5pm-The Fellow Americans
6pm-The Great Tyrant
7pm-Kyle Sherman Band
8pm-Eaton Lake Tonics
9pm-Stoogeaphilia

wanna play the 1pm slot? leave me a comment and i'll onpass to amy who's putting this together.

farren on the fugs

...in mojo.

"flippin' wigs @ the fairmount" #1 audio online now!

the first set of PFFFFT's 9.21.2008 show at the fairmount is online now at katboy's stoogeaphilia archive. hooray!

benefit(s)

the li'l stoogeband is playing not one, but two, count 'em, two benefit shows in the month of october.

the first, sunday, october 12th at the fairmount with one fingered fist and the transistor tramps, will be a benefit for cadillac fraf to help defray some of his medical expenses. there's no cover, but folks are encouraged to contribute what they can to help fraf's family. there are jars already in place at lola's, liberty electric, spiral diner, and the chat room, as well as the fairmount. the bands will donate our payout at the end of the night.

the second, saturday, october 18th at 7th haven, will be to help the fort worth burrito project re-stock their pantry. besides stoogeaphilia, bands committed to play include eaton lake tonics, the kyle sherman band, the great tyrant, the fellow americans, and matthew gray, with others still to be added. more on this as it develops.

all this and humility, too

uncle lou wants nyc to name a street after him.

harry has a head like a ping pong ball

math-y prog nerds from denton. playing the fairmount with PFFFFT! october 19th. check 'em out here.

the missus @ lola's, thursday, 9.25.2008

here they are playing the modern lovers' "roadrunner."

truth

josh alan friedman has called him "the most important guitarist in rock history," and i wouldn't argue. then again, my ex-editor has called him "a pompous ass," and i wouldn't disagree with him, either. jeff beck is a complex cat, one who can pull the most amazing sounds from his axe with just what's in his head, hands, and heart -- mofo hasn't even used a _pick_ since 1980 -- with the composure of a zen master; no over-emotive "getting _into_ it" for this muso's muso. that said, even tho i scooped up his back catalog up to blow by blow (the rekkid that caused me and my lawn guyland guitar-slingin' claque ca. '74 to realize that maybe we needed to learn how to "play good") on vinyl from hpb years ago, i haven't bought a new beck rec in years, and there's really only one of 'em that i actually listen to with any regularity: truth, his debut from 1968 (my year of years, music-wise).

in '68, after being shitcanned from the yardbirds for unreliability at the end of 1966 and spending 1967 promoting a couple of laughably lisp-ridden solo singles (as a vocalist!), jeff solidifed the lineup of his best band and cut this taut, tough little gem of an album. the riddim section of ronnie wood (ex-birds, ex-creation, and world's greatest guitarist-demoted-to-bassist until ron asheton was forced to cede his stooges guitar slot to james williamson) and micky waller (world's greatest sloppy drummer who later achieved immortality for his loose-limbed propulsion on rod stewart's "every picture tells a story") laid down a groove of snaky menace while raspy-voiced stewart (a second-tier r&b vocalist who hadn't yet decided he wanted to be sinatra rather than sam cooke) emoted over the top and beck his own self churned out the nastiest sounds ever heard from an electric guitar, less monolithic than hendrix but every bit as expressive -- the full realization of early buddy guy in the form of a pudding-bowl headed brit hotrod fanatic.

"shapes of things" deconstructed the most forward-looking track he'd cut with the yardbirds...



...while the magisterial instrumental "beck's bolero," the result of a covert '66 studio sesh, was the real beginning of led zeppelin:



speaking of which, beck's version of willie dixon's "you shook me" (heard live at the fillmore west, july 1968, below) was concise where zeppelin's was sprawling:



in the fullness of time, due to poor decision making (beck took a pass on the woodstock festival) and bad luck (an auto accident put him out of action for a spell), jeff got to watch his pal page's band eclipse him before perpetrating beck, bogert and appice with ex-vanilla fudge hacks and then going off to play fuzak fluff, ever tinkering with his his technique but never quite achieving the raw brilliance that he did when he was considered a despoiler rather than an eminence. for the proof of the pudding, slap on "i ain't superstitious" and crank up to 11...

buffalo cd review @ i94bar.com

a (very belated) review i penned of the 2005 reish of pioneering aussie metalers buffalo's 1973 alb volcanic rock (whew!) is online now at the i-94 bar.

happy berfday to the killer

is it my imagination, or does jerry lee look like will risinger?

douglas rushkoff on the credit crisis

from arthur.

christgau on funkadelic

from last month's blender, the self-styled "dean of american rock critics" parses the funkadelic canon. my two cents: you can't live without motor city madness, and shouldn't have to without maggot brain (which has a _perfect_ first side and a second side comprising three crucial songs that don't appear on the aforementioned comp).

phil hemsley

...the artist now has a website. yippee!

vote, dammit

you have until october 6th to register.

cadillac fraf

i was working yesterday evening when my sweetie fell by the market to let me know that jesse sierra hernandez had called with some bad news: cadillac fraf had been in an accident thursday and is in a coma. i'd read something on a friend's myspace that gave me an inkling of this and now i knew what she meant.

funny, until last night i didn't even know his real name: chad percy. really, all i knew about fraf was what he invented and what he wanted me to know. i'd a never guessed that he was an arlington heights h.s. grad; i always thought he was from amarillo. he'd spent a couple of yrs there, working on stanley marsh's cadillac ranch, a summer down in wimberley, and a year when, his friend linc sez, "he lived everywhere." fraf rode the rails and hitched all over the country, like a modern-day woody guthrie. jon teague sez that when yeti was touring the west coast, fraf showed up, zelig-like, everywhere they played. when we visited him in hospital, one of his friends said, "maybe we should get a bunch of ppl to bring their gtrs in here to sing union songs and get him stirred up."

first time i met fraf, i was scribing for the fw weekly and he was working door at the wreck room. "you're that guy who writes for the paper," he said. i admitted i was. "you need to be back on [such-and-such a date]. there's this dude playing named cadillac fraf who's really bad-ass." i came back on the appointed date and realized i'd met a self-publicist of some style. in reference to his own music, fraf once told me, "it might not be good, but it's real" -- which might be the most self-aware statement i've ever heard from a muso.

i remember the night (back when fraf held down monday nights at el wreck) when he was displaced by the berry st. "acoustic mafia" crew. he was indignant, but he had the last laugh, playing on the roof of the wreck the night it closed (damn, was that almost a year ago?). alone among the regs, he held no nostalgia for the wreck, comparing it to "that girlfriend that you're always trying to get rid of, but can't." it occurred to me last night after i heard the news of his accident that he was right: places aren't important; it's people that make them so.

keep him and his family in your thoughts today, won't you?

"the price of good rockin' is eternal vigilance..."

"...and we got lazy": the resurgence of prog. hey, bill...

guess who else uses h&k?

no shit...allan holdsworth. hey, bill...

help wanted: other woman

my big sis sent me this story because it reminded her of our dad.

wilfred brimley's diabetes dance mix

the fender jazzmaster @ 50

on the nyt fashion page? (thanks to my sis for the link.)

zack kim

so this blog doesn't start seeming like a catalog of ppl who aren't living anymore, here's vid of a cute little korean kid (currently serving in their army) playing a bach prelude on two gtrs.

r.i.p. paul newman

shit. cool hand luke's gone.

miles

funny that my sweetie 'n' i were talking about him earlier, because sunday will mark the 17th anniversary of a world without miles davis in it -- a strange notion.

miles really went his own way starting from the very beginning, this rich kid from east st. louis, illinois, whose dentist dad sent him to nyc in 1944 to attend juillard, which he bagged within a semester to be charlie parker's trumpet player. he took shit early on for not having dizzy gillespie's chops, but his own voice on trumpet would be more about silence and space than dazzling displays of virtuosity (although his _sound_ was always immaculate). he's all over the parker savoys and dials.

next he formed a nonet with unusual instrumentation (including french horn and tuba), playing arrangements by gil evans, gerry mulligan, and john lewis -- a sort of chamber jazz that his label, capitol, dubbed "the birth of the cool." got strung out on "h" in the early '50s and much mystique surrounds his going home to his father's house to kick, but he struggled with addiction(s) intermittently for the rest of his life. in 1954, he turned around and cut "bags groove," "blue 'n' boogie," and "walkin'" for prestige, which started the ball rolling for the "soul jazz" and hard bop movements that were essentially a reaction against the west coast "cool" school that his earlier recordings had kicked off.

formed his first classic quintet in 1955 with a still-addicted but exploratory john coltrane (ts), dallasite red garland (pno), paul lawrence dunbar chambers (bs), and philly joe jones (ds). signed with columbia for round about midnight, then broke his prestige contract by recording four albums (essentially his band's entahr repertoire) in two days: the classic relaxin', workin', steamin', and cookin'.

miles broke up the quintet in '57 because coltrane, chambers, and jones were strung out, and started a series of recordings with a big band arranged by his "best friend," gil evans: miles ahead, porgy and bess, sketches of spain. the two never worked together again after columbia released quiet nights against their wishes in 1962, but rumors persist of evans' involvement in 1968's filles de kilimanjaro. the recordings with evans also mark the start of miles' association with producer teo macero.



meanwhile, he'd reformed the classic quintet in 1958 and added julian "cannonball" adderley on alto. they cut milestones, the title track to which was miles' first venture into modal (scale-, rather than chord-based) improvisation. the following year, miles replaced garland and jones with bill evans and jimmy cobb. evans was replaced in turn by wynton kelly, but miles called him back to record kind of blue, based on skeletal structures that the musicians saw for the first time in the studio on the day of recording. having just made what would become the best-selling jazz album of all time, miles got the shit beat out of him by a nyc cop for standing outside birdland, where he had a gig, with a white woman.



miles struggled to find new sidemen when first coltrane, then the rhythm section left him. in 1963, he found ron carter (bs), herbie hancock (pno), and a teenage titan from boston, tony williams (ds). memphis tenorman george coleman got shitcanned for practicing his solos in the hotel ("i pay you to practice on the bandstand," miles reputedly said), and williams' fellow boston avant-gardist sam rivers only lasted a single tour of japan. the group was complete when art blakey's musical director, wayne shorter (ts) from newark, agreed to join. besides his voice on tenor, shorter also contributed compositions like "footprints" and "nefertiti" that defined the second classic quartet's sound (although live, as mentioned in another post, they mainly played miles' standard repertoire at breakneck pace).



like everyone else with ears in 1968, miles was affected by the music of james brown, jimi hendrix, and sly stone, and he started adding electric bass, piano, and guitar to the mix, replacing carter and hancock with englishman dave holland and chick corea. for in a silent way, he used hancock, corea, and josef zawinul on electronic keyboards and added another brit, john mclaughlin, on guitar. tony williams quit after that session and formed lifetime with mclaughlin; his replacement in miles' band was jack dejohnette. while the woodstock festival was taking place in upstate new york, miles and an expanded group cut the dark, dense bitches brew, which like in a silent way was pieced together from multiple takes, like a rock record. miles took his new music on the road to the rock dungeons and festivals, where it could be heard by hundreds or thousands (rather than dozens) of people. (his performance from the 1970 isle of wight festival is worth viewing on dvd.)

yet another brit, cellist-arranger paul buckmaster, pulled miles' coat to stockhausen, and miles started using electronic effects on his trumpet. he hired stevie wonder's bassplayer, michael henderson, and cut his most rock-like record yet, a tribute to jack johnson, with mclaughlin, hancock, and drummer billy cobham, and his funkiest one, the much-maligned, highly textured on the corner. his last great band included henderson, percussionist mtume, drummer al foster, guitarists reggie lucas (future producer of madonna) and pete cosey (a chess records sessionman and aacm member from chicago), and first dave liebman, then sonny fortune on reeds. miles was now playing organ as often as trumpet onstage. this lineup is heard to best advantage on get up with it (especially "he loved him madly" and "calypso frelimo") and the live albums agharta and pangaea.

by this time, miles' health was deteriorating: he suffered from osteoarthritis, sickle-cell anemia, depression, bursitis, and heroin addiction. he retired from music from 1975 until 1979, when he resumed recording. during the '80s, he frequently collaborated with bassist marcus miller (whose composition "hannibal" you can see him playing below). his last great recording was aura, a davis tribute composed by danish trumpeter palle mikkelborg and recorded in 1984.



miles left the planet september 28, 1991, from respiratory failure following a stroke and pneumonia. he changed the way music sounded, not once, not twice, but a handful of times. how many musicians can claim that?

tony williams

went on youtube looking for a version of miles' "walkin'" and found thisun from karlsruhe, germany, 11.7.1967. miles' second classic quintet (ron carter, bs; tony williams, ds; wayne shorter, ts; herbie hancock, pno) played tunes from his repertoire like this one at several times their original velocity while cutting innovative new material like miles smiles and nefertiti in the studio. dig tony here -- always the most "alive" presence on any stage he played.



here he is in '72 with a young stanley clarke on bass and what appears to be chick corea on piano; i believe the white dude with the tenor is stan getz.



who woulda thought that tony's heart, with its perfect time, would give out when he was just 51, on 2.23.1997, following routine surgery.

register to vote

...by october 6th. if you don't, you abdicate your constitutionally-mandated right to pitch a bitch. so sayeth me.

josh's breakdown

another one from josh alan at the jefferson freedom cafe last w-e. btw, kevin kunreuther's the dude that shot the vids. thisun just kinda flows, like water over stones.

fairmount: "another wreck room?"

perhaps, sayeth mariani. methinks he has a point there.

the lovely and talented goodwin and the backsliders take the stage there in just hours.

maggot brain and other p-funk junk

just copped a 180-gram vinyl reish of funkadelic's maggot brain on the italian 4 men with beards label. it's my fave album by the p-funk mob and one i wanted on vinyl even tho a lot of the songs appear on the motor city madness comp. was dragged to hear popping noises during the quiet intro part of the title track (which don't appear anywhere else on the rec), but that's just part of the fun of listening to vinyl (like my otherwise-pristine copy of double nickels on the dime that has surface noise during "history lesson - part II" only). i find playing or listening to any versh of the song (including the later p-funk ones where mike hampton and blackbyrd mcknight disrespect eddie hazel by cutting him on his own feature -- not cool) to be the best tonic for sadness 'n' sorrow there is. these days, george carries violinist lily haydn with him to do the duty.



was also happy to find eddie's 1977 solo alb game, dames and guitar thangs (one of the rarest p-funk artifacts before its reissue by rhino handmade a coupla yrs back) for less than an arm 'n' a leg. now if i could just lay my hands on george's you shouldn't nuf bit fish, which i've owned on both vinyl and cd but appears to have become rarer than hen's teeth since the time i sold my last copy. luckily for me, now my sweetie won't let me sell anything. hold onto those old recs, kids! it's not safe to assume that they'll always be around!

online rekkid reviews

for ones that combine reliable consumer guidance, unbridled enthusiasm for what i consider "the right stuff," and ability 2 rite gud, i always go to s.f.-based aquarius records (a jon teague fave, and not just because they say nice things about his bands) and fuz fanzine dude seth wimpfheimer a.k.a. the seth man, who gots his own set of pages under the rubric "the book of seth" on julian cope's estimable head heritage site.

fz on australian tv

yeah, herb, i agree that steve allen's hipness was vastly overrated. this remains my fave zappa tv clip. you can hear him using the method he demonstrates here on weasels ripped my flesh and in the baby snakes film.

mama don't allow no skiffle playing 'round here

from the year of my genesis (1957), here's a clip from the bbc's huw weldon show. guess who the gtr player on audience left is. he was gonna do _biological research_! (hint: his old lead singer -- not from this band -- just agreed to get back together for a tour.)

marc zermati

speaking of things happening far from the 817, if you happen to be in paris in december:

EXHIBITION ROCK IS MY LIFE - A SKYDOG STORY
OPEN MARKET - SKYDOG RECORDS
Marc Zermati Private Collection

SKYDOG RECORDS - http://www.skydog.fr - http://www.myspace.com/skydogrecords
from december 4th 2008 to january 4th 2009
à la Galerie Chappe 4 rue André Barsacq - 75018 Paris - FRANCE
M° Abesses ou Anvers, - galeriechappe@gmail.com

For the first time at Paris of December 4, 2008 to January 4, 2009 Marc Zermati will expose thirty-five years of Rock at gallery Chappe in Paris which have rhythm its life. He will open the boxes of his files and treasures to us to present a whole of rare and new posters to us. The atmosphere of Open Market will be recreated in the additional room of the Gallery with vinyls, stickers, badges, tickets in concerts and backstages, letters of artists, lithographies, drawings original and lithography, press international rock'n'roll and photographs of artists, musicians, friends.

Rock'n'roll is my Life: Iggy Pop & the Stooges, Lou Reed & The Velvet Underground, Motorhead, Damned, Slits, Elvis Costello, Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers, the Clash, Big Audio Dynamite, Eddie & the Hot Rods, Jewel, Little Bob Story, Electric Callas, Asphalt Jungle, Dogs. Works of Olivia Clavel, Kiki and Loulou Picassso of the punk collective Bazooka, graphics package new yorkais Futura 2000. illustrator will be exposed among the rare posters in the concert of Sex Pistols in Chalet du lac in Vincennes, or news of Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan, Ramones, Jim Morrison and Cramps to quote only some.

In December 1972 Marc Zermati opens an underground rock shop in Paris street of Lombards l' Open Market, unavoidable place of counter-culture, rock and Punk. He founds Skydog in 1973, the 1st rock punk label independent and sign the release of “Grease” of “Flamin Groovies”, the visionary Kim Foley “Animal God off the Street” and “Suicide Jockey” of Tyla Gang. In 1976 the live signature of the last Live show of Iggy & The Stooges METALLIC K.O will press on the detonators of the summer 1976 with Mount-of-Marsan when Marc organizes the 1st Punk festival. Damned, Doctor Feelgood, The Gorillas Eddie & will be present; The Hot Rods, Kalfon Hot Rock'n'roll and Passion Force (Black Punk Rock'n'roll). The following year in 1977 it is the dedication with more than 4000 people to the 2nd Punk festival of Mount- Marsan which acceuille Clash, Police, Little Bob Story, Damned, Rings, Maniacs, Lou' S, Shakin' Street, Doctor Feelgood, Asphalt Jungle, Jewel, Tyla Gang, Marie and Boys and Doctor Feelgood.

uncle lou's got an improv gig in l.a.

from his myspace thingy:

Lou Reed and Ulrich Krieger perform at RedCat in Los Angeles on October 2nd & 3rd.

Rock music icon Lou Reed, sonic experimentalist Ulrich Krieger, and electronic alchemist Sarth Calhoun take the stage together for the first time to improvise music and make soundscapes. The pair use guitars, saxophones and an array of electronic treatments to venture into deep acoustic space, drawing on new music, free jazz, avant-rock, noise and ambient in a set of intense conceptual pieces and intuitive improvisations. The Reed and Krieger first met in 2002 for the premiere of Krieger's transcription and arrangement of Metal Machine Music — Reed's seminal guitar feedback epic — for the chamber orchestra Zeitkratzer.

The performances take place at REDCAT in Los Angeles on October 2nd and 3rd. CLICK HERE for more information and to purchase tickets.

"electric resonance" in arlington tonight

kavin allenson writes:

An "electric resonance" performance. Quite​ different from my usual​ song and dance​. A special guest is also expected.

Friday,​ Sept. 26, 8pm
Kavin. @ Mochalux in Arlin​gton

Mochalux Coffe​e & Tea Co.
1101 E. Bardin Rd, Ste 101, Arlington,​ TX 76018​
http://www.mochalux.com

Mochalux is in south Arlington just south of I-20 on Collins, on the corner of Bardin and Collins.

re:views

awaiting new ceedees from kristina morland and stoogeband pals the fellow americans to write up for iloveftw.com, but the disc whose arrival i'm anticipating most anxiously is the great tyrant's full-length, which, as anthony mariani "blotched" last week, is soon forthcoming. (a pre-release copy has already scorched my synapses.) good to have so many things to look forward to.

sunward @ central market, 10.2.2008

impressive space rockers sunward be's at central market next week as part of the fw weekly-sponsored "thursday night live" series. they're also playing at 8.0's downtown on 10.30, the night before their halloween show at club dada in deep ellum, wherein they'll dress up and perform a whole set of flaming lips music. how 'bout them apples?

my 30 years in the fort

a fragment of autobiography i penned is online now at iloveftw.com.

improv show in dallas saturday

yells at eels / akkolyte bassist aaron gonzalez writes:

Saturday the 27th

The Dave Dove/Paul Duo
(Dave Dove:Trombone, Paul Winstanley AKA Paul Guilford: bass guitar, synthesizer, electronics)

featuring special guests:
Mike Maxwell (electronics, samples, shortwave radio, kalimba)
Sarah Alexander (vocals, percussion, electronics)
Aaron Gonzalez (acoustic bass)
Stefan Gonzalez (drums)

One duo set, one ensemble set

9:00 sharp at
AllGood Cafe
2934 Main St.
Dallas
$5 all ages

harlem time

another toon from josh alan at jefferson freedom cafe last weekend. dig those percussive harmonics! reading his when sex was dirty and getting ready to cook a london broil. good way to spend a day off. my middle dtr called; she's working on a paper for her lit theory class, all hermeneutics and roland barthes. i'm starting to feel the way i felt when she moved past long division in math.

more d. purp from 1970

thanks to hickey for the coat-pull. geez, he wasn't a showboat at all, was he?



and here's another one -- in which ritchie b. trumps beck, townshend, and hendrix in one fell swoop as a practitioner of "chance music." interesting they were still using the first two albs' material as the launching pad for this kinda sonic mayhem.

congratulations...

...to the douchebag who spray-painted "soldiers are murderers" on the vehicle of a dallas baptist university student and army reservist who served at a medical treatment facility in iraq. you definitely made a statement there, albeit maybe not the one you wanted.

speed king

thanks to the italian kid for the link...

christmas on mars

it's playing at the inwood in dallas on october 17th-18th, so wayne musta finished it.

i've got a secret

thisun's for you, herb...garry moore introducing john cage.

deep river blues

more josh alan from the jefferson freedom cafe last sat'day. yes!

thinking about the subway

best of 2008

the fw weekly's mammoth "best of 2008" ish will be providing me with bathroom reading until at least the weekend, but i couldn't help noticing two of the awards: the critic's choices for graphic/web designer, pussyhouse propaganda, and mvp musician, matt hembree. congrats to gorak, lokar, and katboy. (my sweetie will also be pleased that ut arlington movin' mavs late coach jim hayes was readers' choice for "example of gumption or grit.")

o.c.

yeah, herb, but there's a mind-boggling amount of ornette vid on the 'tube.

sun ra vs. the batman

from crawdaddy. some call him mr. ra, some call him mystery, just don't call him late for dinner. oh, nevermind.

johnny winter

speaking of which, here's a song i usedta play in college with ric goldstein, steve gray, and robbie thomson. ah, days gone by...



and here's another that seemingly every goddamn band on lawn guyland ca. '73-'75 usedta play. that's the late randy jo hobbs on bass in this '71 clip from detroit tubeworks.



prolly the best thing johnny did in his career (besides second winter) was producing muddy waters' hard again alb in '76, sparking mud's late-'70s/early-'80s resurgence.

born under a bad sign

here's josh alan friedman at the jefferson freedom cafe in the fort last weekend, playing the albert king chestnut popularized by cream. discerning listeners will recognize the snippet of "blood of the sun" from leslie west's mountain alb that he uses to introduce the piece. as a snotnose, josh sez he saw mountain everytime they played the fillmore east in nyc. his approach to blues is informed by that era; dig, f'rinstance, the versions of the johnny winter-identified "highway 61 revisited" and "mean town blues" on his josh alan band ceedee from 2002. i also thought he handled it with good grace when a lady at the show asked if he was related to, um, dean friedman of "ariel" fame.



ADDENDUM: for comparison purposes, this dude, who looks to have as many rings around his trunk as i do, has a bunch of mountain vids on youtube. embedding's disabled, but scroll down a bit to find one for "blood of the sun."

PFFFFT! vid

thanks to kavin allenson, there are video artifacts from the inaugural show of PFFFFT!'s four month, third sunday "flippin' wigs at the fairmount" series on the band's myspace thingy. check 'em out. maybe it wasn't as bad as i might have led you to believe. or maybe it was. i'm the only muso visible in the clips because, as previously mentioned, i fucked up and set up in between clay and matt, to the great detriment of our ability to communicate onstage. never again.

boris @ south street seaport, nyc

ray-boy found these pics online. what he was doing on a vegan website i have no idea.

smokin' moses

ex-sonic's rendezvous band bassist gary rasmussen gots a new band, smokin' moses:

Out of the ashes of Detroit City rock comes a new band for the new milleneum, Smokin' Moses, featuring soul rock singer Brandon Calhoon, legacy drummer Dylan McCarty (son of Detroit guitar legend, Jim McCarty), guitarist extraordinare Elliot Rosado of The Kingsnakes and The Universal Temple of Divine Power, and legendary Detroit rock bassist Gary Rasmussen, some of whose past bands include The Up, Sonic's Rendezvous Band, Scot's Pirates, Michael Katon, Jill Jack, Harmonica Shah, Blue Stone Project, Alvin Youngblood Hart, toured with Iggy Pop and recorded and played shows with Patti Smith.

john coltrane

...woulda been 82 today. imagine that.

buffalo

just penned a (very late) review of aztec music's 2005 reish of '70s orstalian band buffalo's classic heavy psych alb volcanic rock for the i-94 bar. here's a doug sheppard int with original buffalo gtrist john baxter, the man who influenced angus young to play an sg, among other things.

mercury rev

...who are more, so much more, than a poor man's flaming lips, gots a new alb they're releasing september 29th, along with a second, new instrumental alb that they're offering as a free download to anyone that wants it via their website. nice.

truth in advertising

my sweetie forwarded this and i think it's a hoot.

woo. who!

so it looks like the who are gonna release their full performances from kilburn 1977 (keith moon's last gig) and the london coliseum 1969 (source of the "young man blues" in the kids are alright). the dvd be's out on november 18th.

"flippin' wigs @ the fairmount" #1 postmortem

PFFFFT! played the fairmount last night and it felt, as thurston moore would say, like we kinda suqued les beeg deeque. actually, matt's listened to the recording and sez it wasn't all that bad, but there were definitely communication probs happening in the second set -- he 'n' i were just a li'l bit out of synch with clay and tony, which woulda been cool if we'd a planned it that way. i think part of the prob was that matt was set up on the far side of me from clay and tony. tony complained later about not being able to hear matt (altho matt said his bass was "too loud" on the recording), and matt mentioned that he likes to be able to cue visually off clay using his peripheral vision, which he couldn't do with me in the way. lesson learned: a bifurcated ghostcar/stoogeaphilia stage is not a good idea. altho i don't think it's necessary that we change our methodology. other possible contributors to the subpar outcome: fatigue (matt played four gigs and three rehearsals this past birthday week, and sat in with the opening bill pohl trio); clay was coming from a rehearsal in dallas and needing to cut loose; tony was having equipment probs; and i had an annoying light in my eyes the whole evening. it didn't help that all six ppl that came out were there to hear bill, and cut out soon after we started. (saw bill at the market today and he said kind things, as one would to marginally talented children or lunatics.) two out-of-the-ordinary occurrences during the set: clay got on the mic and declaimed some free-form spiel (as he did at the kamandi show once he realized brett wasn't going to back off), and a kid who came in during our second set played tony's synth and got us started in a direction, but after that he didn't seem to be able to listen and respond to what was happening (altho from what matt sez, neither did we). just part of the fun of doin' it the way we do.

gandhi fronts minor threat

this is just bizarre. thanks 'n' a tip o' the lid to steve for the link.

r.i.p. earl palmer

when you think "rock 'n' roll drums," you're really thinking about earl palmer. he left the planet yesterday, aged 83.

josh alan friedman @ jefferson freedom cafe, 9.20.2008

made a rare foray out to the east side to hear josh alan friedman at jefferson freedom cafe. as long as i've been getting their promo schmatter (um, since my daze as a fw weekly scribe), the first time i ever set foot in the j'int was when my middle dtr was married there back in april. shame on me. this time, tho, the confluence of factors (three days off from the j-o-b, coupled with an oppo to see, hear 'n' meet one of my heroes of scrawl _and_ music) made it a perfect storm of sorts. and the evening didn't disappoint, either. a congenial setting, a good-sounding room, good coffee 'n' pastries. 'twas, um, all good, in fact.

the program opened with a screening of blacks and jews, dallas-based actor kevin page's 2004 doco about josh and his "life obsessed with negroes." the flick, which has only been shown a dozen times so far and won't be released to dvd anytime soon (sigh), follows josh's adventures as a chronicler of the seamy side of times square ("the crossroads of the world") for screw magazine; an outlaw cartoonist with his brother drew friedman; a purveyor of "atomic acoustic guitar" thrills in dallas, once he'd "sold his soul to the devil and moved to texas" (_not_ to escape the wrath of the mob, he emphasizes); the son of an acting teacher mom and screenwriter-novelist dad; and the only white kid in a segregated lawn guyland school (he grew up in glen cove and great neck and was surprised to learn that darrin kobetich, who inherited his winedale tavern gig, is a fellow guylander) -- including josh reading his own account of a surrealistic encounter from his yoof.

then the music. while it was a little strange hearing josh performing live songs that we'd just seen in the movie (he alluded to the event being "like the guy who opened for you playing half of your set"), it was awe-inspiring for an idiot clod electric player like yr humble chronicler o' events to hear a cat producing _so much sound_ with just his hands (well, he _did_ use an octave pedal at times, most effectively on a hendrix "stone free" cover, but y'know...). using a flatpick and occasionally a coupla fingers, he has an extremely aggressive attack, hitting the box more percussively than anyone i've seen since corey harris that time at caravan, tapping on the gtr body, using lotsa harmonics and ripping off lightning-fast runs. he interspersed his opening "born under a bad sign" with a snatch of mountain's "blood of the sun" and wowed the crowd with hot doc watson-style picking on "black mountain rag," inserted a few new lyrics (learned from the songwriter) into jerry lieber's "down home girl," played some "piano guitar" on ray charles' "what'd i say," and fulfilled my wishes by playing "jeff's boogie," the song he first knocked my socks off with at the now-defuct borders at i-20 and hulen a decade ago. (dig the clips below for examples of his art.)







a very gracious fella, too. he signed my copy of his latest tome, tell the truth until they bleed -- a must-read for anyone who appreciates fine music writing; i see it as a kind of successor to peter guralnick's essential early anthologies feel like going home and lost highway -- and gifted me a copy of warts and all (a collection of his 'n' his brother's cartoon wonderment). would dig to hang and shoot the shit with him sometime when we're more at leisure.

my sweetie took a bunch of pics and posted some of 'em to her photo blog. also in the house: crazy picture guy scotty mankoff, who has a photo exhibit coming up october 4th at kettle art in deep ellum. yeah!

ADDENDUM: josh's book tales of times square is being made into a movie. so there.

eddie hazel

insomnia/drowned

heather knox review @ iloveftw.com

a review i penned of heather knox's new cd is online now at iloveftw.com.

natalie price

...is an 18-year-old graphic artist, some of whose work was included in the teen artist show at gallery 414 last april. she also does music under the rubric hideous glory. intriguing stuff.

richard wright's last interview

with the times.

more matturday stoogepics online

here.

the o.g.

talking to my big sis about our parents, we're both struck by the facets of a disintegrating personality that prove to be most resilient. in our mom's case, it's her connections with family. in our dad's case, it's concern for money and status. the japanese word for grandfather is ojihchan (altho my middle dtr's japanese prof @ tcu let her know that "chan" is a very rustic idiom -- a polite way of saying, "um, you know you're descended from stupid peasants"). when my big sis wrote to let me know how obsessed our dad remains with his money, i couldn't help writing back, "he's got his mind on his money, got his money on his mind -- he's the oji."

i got a little bit of insight into how he got that way last summer, when my dad was still somewhat lucid and he told me about the time his family got evicted from my grandfather's flower shop, where they also lived. he talked about watching his father holding onto the knob to their front door trying to keep the landlord's people out, and how they ripped it from his hand and pushed their way inside. i imagine that throughout his life, my dad figured that if he was an important person with lots of money, no one would ever be able to rip the knob to his front door out of his hand and throw him and his family out onto the street.

ritchie blackmore

listening to the s-t third deep purple alb -- which might be the best of the three except for the unlistenable pseud-classical closer "april" -- i'm reminded of what a total blues player ritchie b. was; he just didn't emulate the forms. here's a 1973 guitar player int that was crucial to me back when i was just starting to play in bands (and stealing more licks from blackmore than i did from jeff beck, even).

telling detail: they'd already decided to break up by this point, but not before milking the success of machine head with another coupla yrs' worth of touring.



ADDENDUM: and from crawdaddy!, here's a 1970 int w/blackmore on smashing up shit, etc.

the missus @ lola's, thursday, 9.25.2008

my pal darren white has a band called the missus (formerly the righteous fucking missionaries); sounds like rockaroll to me. they're playing lola's next thursday with darrin kobetich. they have an _organ player_, and i've heard that they cover the modern lovers' "roadrunner." "i'm in love with rock and roll with the radio on..."

ADDENDUM: jayzus christ! these guys sound like a sloppy-drunk 1969 velvet underground or something. gotta book a stoogeshow w/them in the new year.

hallelujah

hey, hickey -- ever heard thisun? i usedta have it on a single! the first, kinda uninspahrd, outing by the mark II deep purple, it makes me wonder whether blackmore, lord, et al. weren't pandering to mr. jesus christ superstar or something. nice blues gtr from ritchie, anyway. evans and simper didn't even realize they were already shitcanned when they cut the deep purple alb -- a typical purple methodology, but they still hadda have product to release. the mind kind of boggles when one realizes that by the time of machine head, they'd only been a band for three yrs, yet had released seven albs, most recorded in a matter of days. now baby, that _is_ rock'n'roll.

dinner tonight

soft shell crabs dipped in butter, lemon juice, paprika and white pepper, then dredged in flour and broiled. couldn't decide between sliced cucumbers in rice vinegar 'n' sugar and tomatoes, purple onion 'n' fresh basil drizzled with balsamic vinegar, so had 'em both, along with some melon, followed by the fruit tart that we forgot to eat when calvin and cary were here for dessert. as good a way as any to start three days off from work.

r.i.p. jimi

the barman reminded me this a.m. that today's the day jimi hendrix checked out 38 yrs ago. my mom, who'd taken me to see the woodstock movie (bless her), came and picked me up from school to tell me the news. as i was telling teague the other night, when i first got are you experienced?, i couldn't even comprehend that some of those sounds were _gtr_. jimi changed the sound of _music_ as much as coltrane or stravinsky did. fly on, baby.

atp live on wfmu

this weekend, you can catch sets from the all tomorrow's parties fest up in noo yawk city, by the likes of dinosaur jr., bob mould, mercury rev, lightning bolt, om, and harmonia -- broadcast and streamed live over wfmu. yeah!

jazz by the boulevard @ iloveftw.com

my picks for this weekend's fest are online now at iloveftw.com.

matturday stoogepics on flickr

jose serrato posted some pics of the li'l stoogeband throwin' down at the fairmount on matturday on flickr. some nice shots, highlighting teague's onstage intensity, the increasing amount of missing paint from my son-in-law's tele, the yellowness of the binding on richard's les paul, and ray's resemblance to a kewpie doll.

tiptoe through the tulips

for ceiling cat only knows what reason, this song has been going through my head for the past few days.

r.i.p. norman whitfield

my very favorite temptations stuff was from their "psychedelic soul" period, produced by norman whitfield, who also co-wrote "i heard it through the grapevine" with marvin gaye. he left the planet today, aged 67, from diabetes complications.

PFFFFT! @ the fairmount, 9.21.2008

i gotta get up off my lazy ass and get some posters made to promote PFFFFT!'s upcoming run of four third-sunday shows at the fairmount, which we've dubbed "flippin' wigs at the fairmount." i suck as a rock 'n' roll secretary. this sunday, clay, matt, tony, and yr humble chronicler o' events will be joined once again by the lovely 'n' talented bill pohl citizen patrol. come for the prog, stay for the improv madness.

system of a lego

high-fuckin'-larious stuff. thanks to katboy for the link.

buttons

chef keith hicks, the man who made chicken and waffles one of my fave meals, is no longer at ovation. he's developing a new restaurant, buttons (the name comes from chef keith's childhood nickname), with a similar concept -- his down-home-cooking-with-a-difference, live music, and a chill '70s vibe. a possible location is the old 29 degree tavern, within walking distance of mi casa. hooray!

silver machine

here's hawkwind, 1972, with the greatness that is lemmy.

h&k redux

luckily for me, marlin's amp guy james atkinson was able to repair the hughes & kettner. apparently the hum was due to a preamp tube that'd gone microphonic, which he replaced. resoldered the input jack, too. didn't cost an arm and a leg, either. hooray! i promise to be kinder to it going forward.

hank williams

...woulda been 85 today. when i was going to an air force school in montgomery, alabama, ca. '90, a buddy and i visited his grave site. hank and his wife are buried amid british and french flyers who were killed in training accidents during world war II. this wfmu blog post by dave the spazz includes an audio link to a show hank played in rural pennsylvania, 1952. stirring stuff.

flipside @ the scat lounge wednesday!!!

bassist extraordinaire paul unger writes:

Sorry for the late notice but I just got back into town. My original jazz band, "Flipside", will be performing tomorrow at the Scat Jazz
Lounge, on Wednesday, September 17th from 8:30 - 12:30 PM. Flipside has not performed in Fort Worth for a few years, so don't miss this rare opportunity to hear us.

r.i.p. richard wright

not the author, but rather the founding member of pink floyd. at 65. from cancer.

neil is for real 2

i usedta sing this to my kids when they were little. my future ex-wife found that bizarre.



i gotta give neil credit for making music this commercial sound so good...back when music that sounded like this could be commercial.



i wish i'd been at the dallas show he played in the '90s, where sonic youth opened and sent the csn&y fans bolting for the exits with blasts of shrieking feedback.

here's a good int that originally ran in mojo back in '95 (with sidebar but minus all the pics).

six degrees of twink and lemmy

hurry! this special edition of kosmik radiation radio is only online until wednesday!

letters to debbie

another piece of haltom city (specifically ray-boy's) rockaroll history is now on myspace. check it.

ike who?

a beautiful, clear, relatively cool day in north central texas.

neil is for real

the barman also hooked me up with neil young's obscuro e.p. masterpiece eldorado. gotta love neil, the ex-mynah bird (w/awol-from-the-navy rick james)/buffalo springfield who responded to mainstream success in the wake of harvest by releasing the "ditch trilogy" of dark, harrowing albs time fades away, on the beach, and tonight's the night in the early '70s. a more contrarian sonofabitch it would be hard to imagine. long may he run.

iggy and srb

a little-known bit of rockaroll history -- the 1978 eurotour where iggy pop was backed by 3/4 of sonic's rendezvous band -- is chronicled by san francisco based dee-troit expat ig on the 1-94 bar. a fascinating read.

working seven days

...to get three off.

kotj

...the recording of. from mix magazine. thanks to the barman for the coat-pull.

beefheart 1980

they keep taking these down, and i keep finding them again and re-posting 'em...

help the presbyterian night shelter

my buddy velton forwarded this from the presbyterian night shelter:

Volunteer Opportunities
Volunteers donate thousands of hours of service each year, and are an important part of fulfilling our mission. Without volunteers, our staff simply couldn't provide the services and programs our clients need. Below are the following opportunities that volunteers can participate in:

Serve Dinner
Prepare and serve dinner at the Main Shelter (4-6:30 p.m.), Lowdon-Schutts Building, our women and children's building (5:30-6:30 p.m.) or Safe Haven, our mentally ill homeless shelter (4:30-5:30 p.m.).

Dispensary
Work in our dispensary, where we distribute toiletry items (such as soap and shampoo) to our clients in the Main Shelter. Hours available: Monday through Friday, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Playgroups/Parties
Organize a playgroup or host a holiday-themed party for the children in the Lowdon-Schutts Building. Please note that we do not allow children under 18 years of age to volunteer in the women and children?s building. Monday through Friday 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Bible study
Organize a Bible study or support group. Hours available: Monday through Friday, mornings and evenings.

Breakfast baggies

It's the most important meal of the day and we'd like you to help us keep it that way. Drop off or prepare baggies at the Shelter with breakfast snacks such as doughnuts, coffeecake, bagels, muffins, prepackaged cereal, granola/breakfast bars, etc. Between 250 to 500 individually packaged items are requested per group.

Food preparation/clean-up

Looking for a hands-on kitchen experience? Be a chef for a night and help prepare evening meals! Offered three nights a week, volunteers help with food preparation such as peeling and washing vegetables, cutting/chopping foods, refilling ingredients and washing dishes.

Time: Monday through Friday, 5:30 to 7 p.m.

Dessert Days

Bring dessert such as cookies, cupcakes or slices of cake for the Main Shelter. Although we can?t bake the desserts at the Shelter, your group can host a cookie/cupcake decorating party at the Shelter before your desserts are handed out. Decorating at the Shelter is available Monday through Friday from 1:30 to 3 p.m. Please bring a minimum of 600 desserts.

Sandwiches

Make 200 to 500 sandwiches for the Shelter to distribute daily for breakfast and lunch. You may make them at the Shelter or at your own facility. PNS can provide plastic gloves, bowls, utensils and plastic bags; we ask that you provide all the sandwich materials, such as bread, meat, cheese, etc. (Please do not include mayonnaise because it spoils easily.) Donated sandwiches may be dropped off at the back door Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Groups coming to the Shelter to make sandwiches can call volunteer coordinator Heather White at 817-632-7415 to schedule a time.

Town Hall Meetings

Each month the Shelter hosts a Town Hall Meeting where clients are encouraged to express concerns and staff can communicate about upcoming events and important issues. During this meeting, the Shelter is looking for two to five volunteers provide snacks and drinks. Also, volunteers can attend the meeting and pass out goodies.

The meetings are held in the evening once a month and last about two hours.

Tarrant Area Food Bank

At the Tarrant Area Food Bank, your family/organization can work on behalf of the Shelter and earn credits for our kitchen. Each volunteer who works at the food bank earns $5.15, which goes toward the Shelter?s food account. Volunteers work only three hour increments.

This is an amazing opportunity, especially for large groups (up to 10 volunteers). By participating, your group is helping PNS feed the hundreds of homeless that we serve each and every night.

To participate, your group must have three or more people and volunteers must be 16 or older. Volunteers will be sorting and boxing food, so please wear close-toed shoes. Please call PNS volunteer coordinator Heather White at 817-632-7415 or call the Tarrant Area Food Bank at 817-332-9177 ext.109 to schedule your group to volunteer. Don?t forget to tell them you?re with the Presbyterian Night Shelter!

Times: Monday: 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Tuesday and Thursday: 1 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m.; Friday 9 a.m. to noon

Tarrant Area Food Bank is located at 2600 Cullen Street, Fort Worth, Texas 76107

Adopt-a-client

The Presbyterian Night Shelter is ending homelessness one individual at a time. Our homeless clients are moving out of the Shelter and into supportive housing soon! You can help us by ?adopting? one of our clients and help them move out of the Shelter, making their transition into mainstream society much easier. Through our program, Housing Solutions, our clients are placed into unfurnished apartments. By adopting one of our clients you (and your small group of family or friends) can help set up a client?s apartment with the following:

* Sheets, pillows and pillow cases
* Furniture including chairs, table, couch
* Alarm clock
* Toiletries items such as shampoo, soap and toilet paper
* Towels and washcloths
* Cleaning supplies including brooms, mops and cleaning sprays
* Laundry detergent
* Microwave
* Toaster
* TV
* Kitchen item such as paper towels, rags, hot pads, measuring cups, etc. (PNS provides clients with plates, cups, utensils and a small set of cookware.)

If you are interested in adopting a homeless client, please contact Heather White at 817-632-7415.

Tom Thumb's Good Neighbor Program

Support the Shelter every time you grocery shop. This opportunity allows Tom Thumb shoppers to link their Rewards cards to the Presbyterian Night Shelter's account, and when you make a purchase, that amount is automatically credited to PNS' account. It's free to sign up - all you have to do is shop!

To sign up, go to a Tom Thumb store and fill out a Reward Application form at any courtesy booth and indicate that you would like to link your card to PNS. Presbyterian Night Shelter's account number is 9763.

eBay Giving Works and MissionFish

Helps us fundraise at the click of your mouse! Through eBay's Giving Works program and MissionFish, an online fundraising program, you can help PNS a number of ways: put an item up for auction and donate a portion of the proceeds to the Shelter or donate to the shelter directly. To participate in the program you will need a PayPal account. To find out more about the program please visit www.missionfish.org or call Heather White at 817-632-7415.

Upcoming volunteer opportunities

Coming soon, the Shelter will offer special interest classes for our clients including healthy living, arts & crafts and job etiquette/interview training. Currently, we are looking for volunteers to teach these classes and/or provide materials. The classes will be held Monday through Thursday in the Main Shelter starting April 2008.? ?

We are looking for the following:

* A Bible study group to come on Wednesdays at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. We need a group to accommodate to both men and women. PNS will provide the group with Bibles.
* Volunteers trained in the following areas: job etiquette/ interviewing skills to host classes once a week. Schedule is flexible.
* Volunteers who can teach arts & crafts (knitting, crochet, etc.) to host classes once a week. Schedule is flexible.
* Volunteers trained in the following areas: adult literacy, adult basic education and/or GED to host classes once a week. Schedule is flexible.
* Volunteers trained in the following areas: computer literacy to host classes once a week. Schedule is flexible.
* Arts & Crafts materials such as yarn, knitting needles, crochet needles, scrapbook materials, drawing paper, colored pencils, etc.

montgomery st. cafe @ iloveftw.com

some scrawl i penned about montgomery st. cafe is online now at iloveftw.com.

the pungent sound

while on a recent visit to seattle, pussyhouse propaganda art criminal/me-thinks and stoogeaphilia muso ray liberio got together with his old hasslehorse bandmate john frum to write and record some more toonage under the rubric the pungent sound. the duo had been limiting their output to one song a year, but this year vowed to do enough work in a week to release an e.p. the proximate model is the flaming lips if their drug of choice was alcohol rather than acid.

fairmount follies

coming soon to the fairmount:

this sunday, september 14th, it's carey wolf and the morning after (a name he apparently liked better than our suggestion, "carey wolff and the minstrels of whimsy").

tuesday, september 16th, it's "matturday": that's right, matt hembree is celebrating his 44th (!) berfday by playing a show with stoogeaphilia and our friends great american novel.

next sunday, september 21st, it's "flippin' wigs at the fairmount" with PFFFFT!, with special guests bill pohl citizen patrol.

yeah!

jazz by the boulevard schedule

from fortworthjazz.com:

Friday

COORS LIGHT MAIN STAGE
5:00 pm The Carter/Walker Organ Quartet
6:30 pm Mario Cruz & Natural Selection
8:00 pm The Dave Valentin Quintet
9:45 pm Buddy Guy
11:00 pm Stage Closes

UT ARLINGTON HERITAGE STAGE
5:30 pm Chris McGuire Band
6:30 pm UT Arlington Faculty Jazz Group
8:00 pm Stage Closes

Saturday

COORS LIGHT MAIN STAGE
12:30 pm Tom Reynolds / Paul Unger Project
1:45 pm Dave Zoller & The Daybreak Express
3:00 pm Jacey Falk
4:30 pm Fifth Avenue Jazz Collective
6:00 pm Tatiana Mayfield & The Soul Cleff Band
7:45 pm Adonis Rose & The Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra featuring Randy Brecker
9:30 pm Lee Ritenour
11:00 pm Stage Closes

UT ARLINGTON HERITAGE STAGE
1:30 pm Mondo Drummers
2:30 pm Casa Kids
3:30 pm LaFeet Tap Ensemble
4:30 pm Jitterbug Vipers
6:00 pm Dan Cavanagh and Outburst
7:30 pm Stage Closes

Sunday

COORS LIGHT MAIN STAGE
2:00 pm 2Tone w/ Cindy Horstman & Michael Medina
3:00 pm Quamon Fowler Quartet
4:30 pm Michael Ward
6:30 pm The David Sanborn Group
8:00 pm Stage Closes

UT ARLINGTON HERITAGE STAGE
2:30 pm Push Comes to Shove
4:00 pm UT Arlington All-Star Student Jazz Ensemble
5:30 pm Mack Goldsbury Quartet
6:00 pm Stage Closes

the great tyrant live

ADDENDUM: if you like what you see/hear and are in the 817, they be's at lola's next saturday, september 20th.

d. purp

i found a used copy of a euro box set that has remastered versions of all three deep purple mark 1 albs with a buncha extra stuff for real cheap. these were the first rekkids i spent my own money on. haven't had 'em for yrs (except for a vinyl copy of shades of deep purple that's sufficiently warped to be unplayable). hey, matt, you wanna play "chasing shadows?"

the rock 'n' roll secretary at work

finally connected with levi from the fairmount yesterday, so waiting to hear if all the stoogeaphiles/other bands can make the tentative dates in october and december. also reached out to a coupla possible opening acts for PFFFFT!'s third-sunday "flippin' wigs at the fairmount" series. hooray!

old in-joke

in memory of sir shad (vaya con dios, gato).

flower travellin' band

here, rashomon-like, are two different vids of flower travellin' band playing "satori pt. 2" at their reunion show back in july. enjoy! (do you think it might be possible for ishima-san to find a gtr with a wider neck?)

california uber alles

maybe?

the crooked inheritance

speaking of great writers, here's a poem by marge piercy, courtesy of the smiling folks at arthur.

tobias wolff

another hpb discovery: ppl seem to be holding on to their tobias wolff. guess i'll have to search online to replace my copy of the night in question which was co-opted by my english major dtr. she also has the copy of salinger's nine stories that i got from ben trail -- which is fine; i kinda like the continuity of that.

steve marriott's forbidden past

here's some sho' nuff bizarre vid of 16-year-old steve marriott playing drums (!) behind a brit buddy holly wannabe called heinz (whose look predicts whole battalions of '80s losers), with blow up film star david hemmings on gtr.



and here he is fronting the very early small faces (who never toured america) in the film dateline diamonds, when they still had the guy (jimmy winstone) they fired for being too tall instead of ian mclagen. smart move -- he looks like a douchebag.

saint frinatra @ fred's thursday

saint frinatra -- now an organ trio w/daymond callahan replacing frank hailey on keys -- be's at fonky fred's this thursday.

last night @ hpb

...my sweetie found a whole slew of cassettes formerly belonging to a local priest of (heh heh) very catholic taste. lotsa african and latin american toonage, which she's gonna use to try and connect with some of the kids at her school. she remarked that her aunt carol -- who told her it didn't matter if she never went to church, "once you're confirmed, we've got you for life!" -- would have been pleased. she also got a t. waits alb that she hadn't heard in many yrs.

myself, i scored the cd versh of the '75 alb by armageddon, the last musical stand of ex-yardbirds singer keith relf, who was trying to put together softer-sounding musical outfits after the yardbirds' last incarnation morphed into led zeppelin, but somehow wound up joining forces with the drummer from captain beyond in a proggy and sometimes zeppelinesque hard rock outfit. their one rec is pert damn fine, with keith's voxxx strangely low in the mix (he suffered from asthma and emphysema; maybe the producer didn't dig his pipes). gtrist martin pugh has a proto-metal overdriven sound and interesting ideas (influenced by near eastern sounds as much as blues in a way that's reminiscent of j. page). while listening, i re-read a relf int that formerly appeared in the liner notes to an infamous yardbirds bootleg i usedta own. a shame he died, aged 33, back in '76 from electrocution while playing gtr at home. r.i.p.

some fun facts:

1) someone (st. lester?) wrote about how ozzy sounded like "keith relf whining about the tampons stuck up his nose" in a rolling stone review of master of reality. myself, i always thought the yardbirds' "ever since the world began" (from their s/t '66 album aka roger the engineer, which is what revolver would have sounded like if the beatles only had a week to write and record it in between jaunts up and down the m1) furnished the blueprint for early sab songcraft, minus the fuzztones.

2) armageddon got their record contract with a&m via peter frampton, who was then riding the wave that'd crest with pink hair and the biggest selling album you can't find a single human being who'll admit to having owned in 2008. depending on whose story you believe, frampton either pulled jerry moss's coat or gave armageddon bassplayer louis cennamo somebody's phone number.



and here's keith singing yet another late-period yardbirds song that wound up in led zep's rep.