Sunday, November 30, 2008

next weekend @ lola's

the incandescent stumptone returneth to lola's next friday, december 5th. then on sunday, december 7th, there'll be a big benefit for cadillac fraf (suggested donation: $5) with the following lineup:

10:00 Rivercrest Yacht Club
9:00 Addnerim
8:00 The Great Tyrant
7:00 Carey Wolff
6:00 Clint Niosi
5:00 Stoogeaphilia
(The Magic of Ash Adams will perform during Stoogeaphilia's setup)
4:00 Eaton Lake Tonics
3:00 Merkin
2:00 Blackland River Devils

Dre will screen performance footage of Fraf during set changes.

last exit - "destination out," 1986

Saturday, November 29, 2008

ronald shannon jackson w/vernon reid and melvin gibbs

wadada leo smith golden quartet w/ronald shannon jackson



ADDENDUM: apparently this is from a documentary directed by jacques goldstein, whom i believe shot another one of the last poets with shannon jackson when they toured europe earlier this year.

jose serrato

...has a bunch of his photos posted on flickr. check out the shots from his 'hood he posted on november 21st...cat's got a great eye. a funky town photog to watch!

history lesson from a dog

Friday, November 28, 2008

bastardos de sancho/great tyrant/me-thinks pics @ meezlady.blogspot.com

they're here. click on 'em to make 'em big.

a bunch of new dennis gonzalez/yells at eels rekkids

pretty much what i said. if you wanna cop some, email dennis at the address on the link. btw, yells at eels will be at the fairmount with stoogeaphilia on december 12th.

thanksgiving night @ lola's

stripped-down, art-project duo bastardos de sancho (that's lucha-masked hose aaaaaaayy!! on gtr/voxxx and hose b on the wildest percussion rig this side of restaurant) covered all their rockaroll bases, from ac/dc to zz top; while reminiscent of lotsa dirty-blooze duos, this is truly the kind of thing that could only happen in texas, and the me-thinks cover was an inspahrd choice, altho i preferred their jim croce-getting-his-ass-kicked-in-an-alley deconstruction of "don't mess around with jim." the great tyrant played with real vengeance and their new song was killer (jon teague: "it's nice to play with people that can do all this complex stuff, but then turn around and say, 'let's do something real simple in 5/4'"). they are my favorite band o' the moment. the mighty me-thinks played the tightest set we've heard from them in awhile, with sir marlin von bungy's gtr up front in the mix where it belongs and new toonage of their own ("was wulf," dedicated to asian media crew member and soul of the h.c.-riverside crew, ratsamy). lola's impresario brian forella was in the house, waxing ecstatic about his new spot in the stockyards, which i have yet to see. my sweetie shot lots of pics, which in the fullness of time will be viewable on her photo blog. yeah!

Thursday, November 27, 2008

willie b.'s thanksgiving prayer redux

who needs arlo guthrie when you've got that beloved seasonal favorite, william s. burroughs' "thanksgiving prayer"?

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

give thanks

overheard a customer at work the other day saying that she didn't "get" what this holiday is supposedly about. myself, i'm a great believer in maintaining an attitude of gratitude under any circumstances, but if you wake up in this country tom'w and roll out of the rack under your own steam, i'd say you have things to be thankful for. just my opinion.

bertha coolidge redux

bassist extraordinaire aden bubeck sez bertha coolidge will be playing some shows and possibly recording between mid-january and mid-february. drummer rich stitzel will be back in town and aden himself will be unencumbered with any miranda lambert obligations, so the decks are cleared for a repeat of the show the fw weekly rated as last year's best.

'70s rockstars @ home with their parents

from a life magazine pictorial. is it just me, or is elton john's mom showing a lot of leg above that snakeskin boot?

wrestling _is_ rock 'n' roll

in the mid-'70s, when rock started to suck, i quit going to shows and went to monday night wrestling at madison square garden instead. cap'n lou albano, classy freddie blassie, and george "the animal" steel still beat journey, styx, and foreigner anytime.

cuttin' up in the studio w/AwkQuarius

tahiti had been to tejas de brazil and it was KPHLX's berfday (he produced the track and was kind enough to spend half an hour showing me the chord changes).

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

nels cline and devin sarno

mark growden's back

clean and sober, back on the boards, and with a new website.

AwkQuarius recording sesh pics @ meezlady.blogspot.com

my sweetie posted some of her pics from last night's AwkQuarius recording session at alpha omega studios on her photo blog. (click on 'em to make 'em big.)

funambulist

ohio poetry-rock guy dan mcguire (unknown instructors, jamnation, phosphene river) gots a new "collaborative compilation" cd out. this one's called funambulist and it features dan's spiel in the studio with a revolving crap game of ohio improv folk. dig it.

r.i.p. guy peellaert

damn. guy peellaert, the belgian illustrator who collaborated with nik cohn on the 1974 book rock dreams, left the planet monday, aged 74.

cosmic slop

once

dre gifted us the dvd of this sweet irish movie. imagine what the gtrist from the commitments (glen hansard played both characters) would be doing 20 yrs on.



i played on a rekkid

went to alpha omega studios at 2515 east lancaster after work last night to play on a track called "let's hit the town" by pikahsso and tahiti (ex-p.p.t.)'s new project AwkQuarius. my sweetie took some pics which in the fullness of time will be posted to her photo blog, and those cats shot some video which will undoubtedly materialize at some point in the future. definitely my most enjoyable studio experience and can't wait to hear the alb, which is skedded for a january 2009 release.

Monday, November 24, 2008

yardbirds comp review @ i94bar.com

a review i penned of the ace aussie yardbirds complation happenings ten years time ago 1964-1968 is online now at i94bar.com.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

cadillac records

gotta see this flick. adrien brody is leonard chess. jeffrey wright is muddy waters. columbus short is little walter.

Cadillac Records Exclusive Clip

last poets on kcrw, 2.14.2001

listen here. read about their 2008 tour here.

hendrix @ the newport pop festival, 6.22.1969

thanks to big mike for the coat-pull. here's the story.



Saturday, November 22, 2008

dig japanese group sounds

courtesy of wfmu.

last poets and pharaoh sanders

"it's official, but not authorized"

my dutch punk-rock pal tony slug (in texas next weekend for gigs in austin and houston with shit city high) unloads with both barrels on the indie record biz:

What's worse than being a talented and awesome rock guy who sits in a van 10 hrs a day year after year to get ripped off by clubs and promotors all over the Western world? That's right, straight up. Being a talented and awesome rock guy who sits in a van 10 hrs a day year after year all over the world for THREE DECADES, comes home stonebroke, doesn't have daddy's trust fund waiting on him, and gets ripped off by the twisted freaks who run record labels!

Ever heard of a little thing called sharing, Mr. independent label owner? I guess not since an elite 5% of your lame asses own 97% of the wealth.

Now I'm not a lawyer, I'm a musician, and labels know that. How do these teflon-coated turds ever find the time to keep their books and send their bands a symbolic token of appreciation, inbetween all these projects and attending POPCOMM and all those other dicksucking conventions when we're out there doing the field work in the most adverse possible conditions ? These high-profile criminals are too busy marketing Punk rock to a generation of idiots with no clue or taste I suppose.

If you run a record label you should be executed in the ass, erm, gas chamber. That's right, go fuck yourself, honcho. Fuck yourself in the ass with a haram GLAZED HAM. You suck!

Sluggy is about to spend the next ten minutes in a full fledged attempt to make you look like thieving bastards, which most of you are!

Now y'all know Sluggy tells it like it is. So here's JUST A SMALL cut section, cream of the creeps who ripped us off.

GLITTERHOUSE RECORDS - released 4 records, never heard of since. So, just wondering: WHO IS THIS PUBLISHING COMPANY that apparently owns my titles that I never signed with? Adding insult to injury, German fart-throbs DIE ARZTE stole my kick-ass title "Rocknroll Ubermensch" and used it as their own for an album, selling half a million copies of it. Goddamn if that doesn't hurt like a bitch.

R RADICAL RECORDS - MDC's label, yeah I know, we should have known. Saint of the "we do it for the kids, maaan" squatters Dave MDC is a millionaire, did you know that? No shit freaks. He owns 4 houses. Irony at its very best.

GET HIP RECORDS - at least we got an advance from these guys which covered about a 5th of the studio time and related expenses. As soon as they had the masters all communication with us stopped. they did hower licence one track to TIPI records, who in turn put my song on the Interwebs to download at 80 cents a download. Sluggy mourns a thousand bitter tears for any pathetic soul which downloads this festering boil on my asshole of an MP3. I woulda given it to you for free. That's right, (If you just shit your pants, you ought to consult your proctologist. We also didn't even get a copy of this comp thanks to that fat fuck from ELECTRIC FRANKENSTEIN, talk about a band who get way too much airtime.

FREAKSHOW RECORDS - another the uber-skank shitlord enterpreneur from Italy. Same M.O. Took the money and went AWOL, no royalties, no mechanicals. In true "Indie" fashion, this poopstain didn't pay anything, did however went out of his way to license the vinyl release to CARGO GERMANY, who didn't even inform us about it. Much less did we get half of the license fee as stipulated in the "contract".

CARGO GERMANY - It's official, but it's unauthorized...

Yeah, just like your latex Hulk Hogan "king of the ring" dildo.

Same deal (pun intended): No mechanicals, no credits on the sleeve, no royalties, no nothing. We could BUY our own record to have some shit to sell on tour though! YAY! How very generous.

I could mention 10 more from the top of my hydrocephalic head.

Ahhh yes... Sure, you remember the good old days when Grandpa Slug would open up a bag of Werther's Original Candies, release a record, sell it at shows for cost price and not feel guilty about it. That was classic old school shit! But after 40 bootlegs, some of which find better distribution worldwide than legit releases, and countless rip-off scenarios, such as the abovementioned, there will be no more of that. Uh-uh.

It's like my good friend Happy-Tom said, "the time of punk rock gentleman handshake deals is over."

So bon't blame us musicians. And you know, accusing someone of being a "sell out!" is SO 1985. Especially if it's me, who has been fucked without a kiss more often than a boatload of Thai hookers on Chinese New Year. Who played a THOUSAND benefits for any "noble cause" imaginable, from "Save the Welsh miners" to "pay the squathouse electricity bill because we spent all our money on dope". Don't get me talking.

YOU are the ones selling out. Independent labels operate just like major labels except they don't pay the bands. Don't blame me bitch. Blame your independent record peddling colleagues.

Somebody should give po Sluggy a 500 page major label contract, and I'll be glad to sell out. Only this time there WILL be a lawyer present. First, I'm off to Tex-ASS this monday. And making an album with Tony Visconti (Bowie, T Rex etc) in New York in December

Oh Japan calls! Kick ass.

Sluggy will ROCK FOR RAMEN SOUP.

Sayonara.

PS - When I get back to Olympia, - tis part of my transformation to boner fide REDNECK, I will grow a beard, and go Ted Nugent (Yes you can call me "the Ted Nugent of punk") prancing through the woods not in a loincloth, but in my denim Turbojugend jacket. Armed with a high powered ruger boomstick. I pity the wildlife that comes in my sight. Click-clack BOOM! Wish you were a label owner, Mr. Grizzly bear. Then again, a man's gotta eat, and I'm WELL PREPARED to kill what I eat.

FTW & peace through superior firepower.

-Tony

Friday, November 21, 2008

days with my father

my sister-in-law in seattle sent us a link to this website. very sweet and sad. (you've gotta click on the bottom of the pic to navigate the site.)

the doc told my big sis this week that he thinks dad should be moved to hospice. our father is now down to 88 pounds, losing fine motor skills and appetite. the good news is he seems to be in a pretty good mindspace -- told the lady that brought him his hearing aids (which were ordered a seeming eternity ago) to tell my sis that he needed his black suit because he's going to the white house (to meet barack? -- probably not; he and my sis are the _conservative wing_ of my fam). looks like i might be headed back to jersey again before too long.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

friday night opera @ tcu

tcu school of music presents tcu opera studio scenes, friday night at 5pm and 7:30pm in the tcu opera studio, 3050 rogers, at the south end of the tcu campus near the berry street boston market. admission is free, but get there half an hour before showtime to ensure you get a ticket.

the rueffer brothers

...chad and reggie, who are both a little bit country and a little bit rock 'n' roll, gots a gig at the all good cafe in dallas (2934 main st.) this friday, november 28th, at 8pm. they'll be playing some of chad's original country ditties, reggie's proggy pop-rock hochimen toons, and selected covers from the likes of squeeze, echo & the bunnymen, the smiths, an' like that. as reggie sez, "it's a work in progress."

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

stumptone/nervous curtains/jack with one eye pics @ meezladyblogspot.com

my sweetie finally got around to posting some of her pics from last friday's extravaganza at lola's on her photo blog. (click on 'em to make 'em big.)

ronald shannon jackson

...the fort worth-based harmolodic trailblazer and master drummer has been busy this year, backing late '60s versifying revolutionaries and hip-hop precursors the last poets on tour in europe, along with his former bandmate from ornette coleman's prime time, bassist jamaladeen tacuma, and miles davis' nephew robert irving III on keys. shannon's also been performing with jamaladeen in a trio that includes jef lee johnson, the gtrist in some of the fieriest incarnations of his band the decoding society. yeah!



Tuesday, November 18, 2008

amy clampitt

lately my middle dtr, who's thinking of changing her minor from japanese to women's studies so she can graduate earlier and get a job, is digging amy clampitt, who didn't start pubbing her poetry until she was in her sixties. quite a way with language she had, too.

mo' ubu

from urgh! a music war (1981).

you & me on a jamboree

here's a cool reggae download site -- in spanish!

Monday, November 17, 2008

PFF(F)(F)FFT! post mortem

it wound up being a pretty good show, altho not well attended (i changed the slogan on our myspace thingy to "ars longa, spectatores fugaces," which means "art is forever, audiences come and go" -- stolen from pere ubu).

putative second-bill ghostcar was a non-starter -- something to do with trumpeter karl poetschke's ride breaking down in new mexico and him having to catch the bus back to arizona -- so we played right after the missus finished. stefan the sound dude even mic'ed our amps -- a good precedent for future stoogeshows at the fairmount.

first set felt a lot more assured than we have in some time. clean-shaven guest bassist jeremy hull did a good job of listening and avoiding the area of the frequency spectrum where the freshly-shorn hembree was operating; throughout the set, mr. hull switched back and forth between standup and electric basses, arco and pizzicato, sometimes in the course of a single piece. guest keyb dude matt hickey sat on the floor behind me and wove atmospheric washes around the rest of the cacophony. clay-boy said he was deliberately holding back, which gave the music more ebb 'n' flow than it sometimes has, altho there was that "wall of sound" thang operating at times.

the combination of endorphins from the first set and more alcohol made the second set a little less coherent, especially after a guy from the bar got up and wanted to sing some blues, which we obliged for awhile until things finally ground to a halt. we at least managed to salvage the december date, after which levi said we'd see about further shows in the new year, which is all we can reasonably ask. he, stefan, and ryan the bartender have always treated us well, even when we weren't drawing flies. bless them.

next (maybe last?) time will be december 21st. i'm hoping trombonist marcus brunt (currently attending school in california and coming back to visit on weekends) will make it out to play then, and hickey and jeremy have already been invited back, so the possibility exists that we'll be PFF(F)(F)(F)FFT! in december. for the third time, the opener will be bill pohl, who promises "something different" -- maybe a duo with nathan brown? film, as they say, at 11.

mario cruz quartet @ the scat lounge tuesday night!

tuff tenorman mario cruz brings his new quartet, playing a program of originals and standards, to the scat jazz lounge tomorrow night at 8pm.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

PFF(F)(F)FFT! @ the fairmount tonight!

that's right, we're playing with special guests jeremy hull and matt hickey, on a bill with ghostcar and the missus. sit thisun out and you might not get another chance.

pop's safari room @ iloveftw.com

a review i penned of pop's safari room is online now at iloveftw.com.

christmas on mars

"coming christmas 2003"...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

a website devoted to the english breakfast?

tin huey

the akron band which the pere ubu site says, in the early '70s, was "far out ahead of the rest of us and was the standard by which we all measured ourselves." their bassplayer mark price died of cancer november 6th.



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augustus pablo

listening to a cd-r of mainly rock steady stuff i got from frank cervantez, including some tracks by dub maestro augustus pablo, whose name (it occurred to my sweetie) is a combination of our last two kitties' names. there are no coincidences! makes me wanna go out and buy a melodica.



pere ubu on tv in 1989

...with debbie harry, show host david sanborn, and house bandleader hiram bullock sitting in on the second tune. watch it fast before david thomas makes 'em take it down.



Saturday, November 15, 2008

lime spiders

jello biafra said, "i never thought i'd hear a psychedelic slime band more hardcore than the green fuzz, but here they are."



"3000 guitars, they seem to cry/my heart will melt, and then my eye"

well, how about 2000? ok, 100...well, maybe 70. aaron gonzalez just got back from playing glenn branca's symphony no. 13, "hallucination city," with the st. louis symphony orchestra.



hillbilly housewife

just in time for the new depression (and the new fdr), my sweetie found this website that's focused on "low-cost, home-cooking from scratch." makes me wish my oldest 'n' youngest dtrs had more reliable internet access. feh.

ex-heartbreaker walter lure has a new live album

the barman just forwarded this:

Hey y'all,

FYI, Walter's newest CD is available at Nicotine Records:

* 1 One Track Mind
* 2 Sorry
* 3 Never Get Away
* 4 Cry Baby
* 5 Get Off The Phone
* 6 Busted
* 7 Let Go
* 8 London Boys
* 9 Take a Chance
* 10 I Wanna Be Loved
* 11 Born To Lose
* 12 Chinese Rocks
* 13 Too Much Junkie Business
* 14 Do You Love Me?

Walter Lure hasn't performed in Europe in 20 years before this tour in April, 2007! Walter Lure is a legendary musician who had in bigger role in The Heartbreakers than many seems to realize. Together with Walter (vocals and guitar) were playing in this tour Dee Jaywalker (guitar and vocals), Paolo Serlino (drums), Regine (bass and back vocals) and Annette (guitar and back vocals). Last show of the Walter Lure's tour was at Wild At Heart in Berlin, Germany on April 14, 2007.

People were so happy to discover that Walter Lure's guitar playing skills were still in top level, he really is a living legend and one of the finest punk guitarist ever.

Scroll down a bit and you'll see it. The website isn't the most user friendly...but bear with it for Waldo's sake! 10 Euro!! So don't download it illegally anywhere...support Waldo and make it worthwhile for these small record companies to release more stuff like this!!

It is also available on vinyl on Tornado Ride Records.


i'm definitely gonna wanna, um, cop one of these the next time i've got 10 euros in pocket. waldo owned a big part of the hbs' live at max's alb, which remains my fave document of their uniquely rowdy/sloppy rockaroll thang.



why do i find it encouraging...

...that our new president (first one younger than me) is a comic book collector?

it's 1973 again!

the faces are touring! todd rundgren is producing the new york dolls! if only i could start smoking pot again, join a soul band as a gtrist even though i don't know any chords besides E-G-A, get a job in a record store and listen to my old man giving a play-by-play of the watergate hearings at the dinner table every night, it'd be perfect!

last night @ lola's

no time for a full debrief now 'cos i gotta go to work, but if you weren't there to see stumptone (plenty of new toonage and if you don't have gravity suddenly released yet, you owe it to yourself; just wish they'd played "i pledge allegiance"), nervous curtains (twisted piano pop; especially dug the minutemen and merle haggard covers), and jack with one eye (shoegaze meets krautrock with a li'l psycho surfabilly thrown in and ex-brutal juice drummer), you missed a goodun. lucky for you, you get another chance when stumptone returns to lola's december 5th.

'70s swedish dance bands

for sartorial elegance and creative nomenclature, you just can't beat these guys.

Friday, November 14, 2008

obama on youtube

apparently i'm gonna be posting more political shit on this blog. a friend and i were talking after the election and concluded, "we're not fringe weirdos anymore; we're _in the majority_. what are we gonna do now?"

black flag

enough hipi shit. here's a li'l something for the folks born after 1970.



mitch mitchell trib

...from mojo. here's the jhe from the royal albert hall 1969, which was actually the first hendrix recording i ever owned. looka all them marshalls!



a weird phenom

inspahrd by the rolling stone "best singers" thang, i put on a beatle record yesterday...someone gifted my sweetie 1 awhile back and i figured it'd be like that yardbirds comp i've been listening to so much lately. what's weird is that i couldn't _hear_ the music most of the time...it was like background noise or static (or tv audio). prolly the result of massive overexposure for 40 yrs. now i know what larry harrison means when he says he doesn't feel anything when he hears beatle music. it's like looking at elvis' face in those vids...it's like he's not real because his mug is so iconic. the only songs that really registered were "paperback writer," "penny lane" (which my big sis usedta have on the single with "strawberry fields," i think, on the flip, which might account for the better memories i have of those two songs), and "long and winding road," which i absolutely detested when it was new but which i got to appreciate later, when 1967-1970 was one of the four or five tapes i had in my '71 torino on countless trips upstate after i'd dropped out of college and was working in my first rekkid store. funny stuff, memory.

keith moon int from '72

well now. speaking of madman english drummers, here's a rolling stone int with the 'oo drummer from right before quadrophenia, when they were still interesting. reading this made quite an impression on me when i was 15. AHA-HAHAHA-HAHAHAHA!



Thursday, November 13, 2008

mo' jimi vid, with and without mitch

first, an early (february '67) jhe performance in exceptional quality for youtube shite:



how about thisun, which purports to be the earliest existing footage of jimi, backing a couple of nashville douchebags called buddy & stacy in 1965, doing the kind of jive dance steps he goofs on in the vid of his complete woodstock performance (i forget the song, but it's one where his old 101st airborne bud larry lee solos on gtr). watch it quick before experience hendrix makes 'em take it down.



and finally, the action painting sequence from the old vhs version of live at monterey (for which this was filmed because d.a. pennebakker dropped his camera during this song at monterey).

slacker radio

cool internet radio station...kinda similar in concept to pandora. will be good the next time i'm too lazy to stop what i'm doing to change rekkids/cds amd don't feel like listening to the streaming music at johncoltrane.com. non-snazz: the second song that played on the "stooges station" was "november rain" by guns 'n' roses. ahem!

ADDENDUM: i gave it another try, and the second song was "bad time" by grand funk. maybe not so cool after all.

FURTHER ADDENDUM: i tried again, and got a wal-mart ad when i clicked to hear "black sabbath" by black sabbath. wtf? could it be they're trying to steal a page from the "world's most annoying song ever?" maybe i'll just listen to the kitchen faucet dripping/clothes going around/cats chasing each other instead.

tomorrow night

...we're going to see stumptone at lola's.

the great tyrant gots a new song

..."the trouble with being born," recorded live, on their myspace thingy.

cool obama photo essay

...by callie shell. thanks to calvin for sharing the link.

are you experienced? @ music nerds

bernstein @ harvard

...in 1986. still on the mark, i think, on the concept of "the enemy."

sangers

rolling stone just pubbed one of those lists that's just bound to piss people off -- and reading the comments, i almost started to question that whole post-election "maybe we aren't a nation of idiots" thing -- on a topic on which i usually have no opinion (altho i'd have a hard time quibbling with their top 10, which had me searching youtube for vids from elvis' 1968 tv special and digging through my rekkid collection while re-reading the appropriate chaps in nik cohn's rock from the beginning). dig iggy's trib to j.b., and el from the last time he performed like he gave a shit.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

sly stone still crazy

...but not in a good way. poor bastard.

r.i.p. mitch mitchell

mitch mitchell, jimi hendrix's best drummer, left the planet today, age 61. for my money, he was the greatest of the '60s english madman drummers. say hello to jimi...



cadillac records

wow! a dramatic film about chess records. thanks to fort worth music man in exile (in austin) jim yanaway for the coat-pull.

outlaw chef @ central market

bulletin from fonky fred's:

Gather 'round the chuckwagon for a treat, as the Outlaw Chef & the Ought Zero hands introduce you to campfire building and cookout techniques with a gourmet menu of: Pan de Campo, Buffalo Burger Hash with Green Chile, Cowboy Red Beans, Simmered Fresh Greens, & Sourdough Biscuits. End your evening under the stars with Terry's Sand Dune Cobbler.

$65 - The Class will be held outdoors in the Central Market parking lot so dress for the weather.

Reservations are LIMITED! Call Central Market at (817) 377-9005 for more info.

the yes-men

but wait, there's more...here's the late sean greenaway fronting the yes-men, his turn-of-the-century band with gtrist stewart "leadfinger" cunningham (brother brick, challenger 7, asteroid b612, proton energy pills).









my i94bar.com top ten

...is online now (somewhat expanded and slightly modified from the one i posted here a coupla weeks ago).

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

ozark punk rock

who knew there was a scene? and a blog?

the eastern dark

and finally, here's the only known footage of the eastern dark, fronted by ex-celibate rifle james darroch. he died in a road accident in 1986, a few months after this was shot.

powder monkeys

...from ca. '94. another orstralian band that made what the rest of the world had to offer in the '90s look pretty tame.



bored!

speaking of antipodean punk, here's bored! from geelong. these orstralian boys sure like their detroit, no?





god on tv

the aussie band, that is. in 1988, playing their single "my pal." frontman sean greenaway went on the freeloaders and the yes men, while bassist tim hemensley was in bored! and the powder monkeys. both now sadly deceased.

an insane (and, i think, great) idea

my friend dan, who's run record stores for 30 yrs (with breaks to get a fine arts degree from unt, travel in europe, and work at billy bob's), wants to open one in the fort.

thereminkat

aaron gonzalez

...the bassist extraordinaire for akkolyte and yells at eels is on his way (along with wanz dover, ineka guerra, and daniel dacus) to st. louis to play glenn branca's symphony no. 13, "hallucination city," with the st. louis symphony orchestra.



he's also promoting a show by avant-gardist eugene chadbourne at the lounge on elm street in deep ellum on december 11th.

what the asian?!

cryptic stuff indeed from the barman.

Monday, November 10, 2008

tonight

...i saw my middle dtr on the occasion of her 24th birthday. i am very proud of her.

tomorrow i'm having lunch with the man that brought me here, 30 years ago. how do you tell somebody that the part of your life that makes you happy started the day you met them?

henry rollins on iggy

who knew that hank was such a funny guy?

Sunday, November 09, 2008

PFFFFT! update

So here's the deal:

PFFFFT! is playing what just might be our final show at THE FAIRMOUNT next Sunday. No, we're not breaking up, but the smiling Fairmount folks, while eminently muso-friendly, are not a bunch of chumps. If nobody comes out, they want to go home. And nobody's been coming out the last couple of times we played. Wa-a-ah.

This time out, our lineup will be expanded to include the lovely and talented JEREMY HULL on standup bass and MATT HICKEY of THE FELLOW AMERICANS and JOE AND THE SONIC DIRT FROM MADAGASCAR on Korg, making it PFF(F)(F)FFT! (applying Hembree's Law of the F's).

If that's not enough to get you off the couch on a Sunday night, next week's extravaganza will also feature the slight return of GHOSTCAR, Clay and Tony's old band. (Ask your big brother/sister.) Trumpeter/spiritual adviser KARL POETSCHKE may even sit in with us, making it PFF(F)(F)(F)FFT! Which would be unprecedented, F-wise.

And to sweeten the deal even further, THE MISSUS, four nice boys who like to rock and roll, have agreed to open the festivities.

Oh, yeah: It's FREE (although it'd be nice if you could feed the FRAF jar).

Hope to see you there.

something i learned today

i need a new copy of zen arcade.

sandinista! track-by-track

the who at kilburn 1977 @ the rave in ridgmar

on november 17th...a week from tomorrow. thanks to katboy for the coat-pull.

listening obsessively

...to a yardbirds compilation that i stumbled on at hpb, a review of which will appear in the fullness of time at i94bar.com. (i pitched it to the barman because it's a current release on an orstralian label.)

in progress

1) promo schmatter for a friend in ohio's cd.

2) the concept for another musical project which i hope will reach fruition in 2009.

3) a piece for the fw weekly. (never say never again, james bond.)

the issues facing obama

from the iht.

james lassen in the star-t

artist-great american novel drummer james lassen got a writeup in the sunday star-telegram. his gallery 414 show with devon nowlin runs through november 23rd.

Saturday, November 08, 2008

the history of jazz in three paragraphs

Friday, November 07, 2008

a gen-x'er responds to barack

if i didn't know better...

...i'd think that this was a pic of augie and midnight. but whose house are they in?!?!?

last night

in spite of "men cook dinner day," my sweetie made pizzas with fresh tomatoes 'n' herbs from our garden, plus spinach and mushrooms, cheese and garlic (of course). yum! now our kitchen smells like a pizzeria.

r.i.p. t.f.a.

sad to hear the fellow americans have folded the tent. they're playing with the stoogeband at the moon on december 19th.

the future's here right now, if you're willing to pay the cost

that's actually a lyric to an mc5 song that the li'l stoogeband just started playing, but i also think it's a worthy lead-in to mick farren's barack piece from the new l.a. citybeat.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

yeah, it really, really, _really_ happened

carey wolff in the fw weekly

caroline collier wrote a nice piece on carey wolff in this week's fw weekly.

national men make dinner day

...is today. i didn't make this up.

jack bruce disses led zep

the guy that wrote the first song that everybody usedta learn to play on gtr went on the record slagging led zep and jimmy page, comparing them unfavorably with his old band and lead gtrist. _you_ be the judge!



Wednesday, November 05, 2008

yeah, it really, really happened

dig the iht's take. and sam cooke's.



and stumptone's (first song on their player).

da kobe on cd baby

darrin kobetich's 2006 release off the beaten path is now available via cd baby. yeah!

roy harper



yeah, it really happened

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

wtf

not "what the fuck," but "_who_ the fuck." matt hickey from the fellow americans suggested that the li'l stoogeband add some who toons to the mix, which ain't exactly in accordance with our _concept_, but plants a seed in my brain which may develop into something later. while i'm cogitating, here are some youtube clips of stuff from a live at the fillmore east 1968 bootleg i usedta have on vinyl back in prehistory. nothing much to look at, but enjoy "fortune teller," "tattoo," and "relax" all the same.





it really happened

president obama. now, to work.

captain beefheart documentary

from the bbc, 1997.











Monday, November 03, 2008

most annoying song ever?

_you_ decide! (thanks to ant'ny for the link.) WARNING: it's l-o-n-g!

Sunday, November 02, 2008

cat chaise

i dunno where my big sis finds stuff like this.

tony slug to texas cometh

my dutch punk-rock pal tony slug will be playing _two_ shows in texas with shit city high: november 28th in austin and november 29th in houston. jeez, wonder if i can get off work the friday after the festival of gluttony?

sunday, november 16th @ the fairmount

it's on:

what could be PFFFFT!'s last stand (with special guest jeremy hull on second bass making this PFFFF(F)T!)

the reunion of ghostcar (clay and tony's old band with trumpeter karl poetschke and bassist chris perdue)

the missus (nice boys who like to rock and roll)

the fairmount is at 600 w. magnolia ave. lots of free parking in the city vending lot across grainger. come out and soak a sud and hear some toons, why doncha?

fz tv commercial



i seem to remember another (for i forget what product) that used the music from "toads of the short forest."

last night @ the moon

...was off the chain.

the transistor tramps and fellow americans both kicked much ass. the bar was decked out with spooky shit from the night before, and the h.c.-riverside crew arrived in skeleton drag from cary and calvin's dia de los muertos party. ray-boy wore full skeleton regalia, including black face paint and a top hat. matt was a roman emperor with gilded converse (and glasses, which he lost at one point during the set). jon thought about going home to get his goat head from the previous night before deciding it wouldn't work because "with this band, i need to make eye contact." i was a cowboy in robin sylar's shirt, with carob powder instead of shit on my shoes, and richard was a rockstar (he and elle had half of their faces painted, plus he wore a mask for the t. tramps' set).

richard said it was "the most punk-rock set we've played yet" and the crowd seemed to dig the energy. jon was dissatisfied with his performance and felt that "neat neat neat" wasn't ready. i couldn't hear a fucking thing i played all night and i'm beginning to realize that without an andre edmonson mix, the h&k might actually be too small for the stoogeband. i had it dimed and pointed at teague so he could hear me, as a result of which i was completely inaudible out front. feh. next time, i think i'm going to ask the soundguy to mic our amps so richard and i can fire towards the center and still be heard out front. when i asked levi at the fairmount to do that, he said, "but then you'd just be louder." i need to hip him that the way to make that work is for us to turn down, as dre always has us do. oh well, next time. big mike recommends getting an extension cab, but that kinda negates the "easy load principle" i've been trying to observe. we'll see. steve said we can get another moon date in december and i think that'd be a great way to end the year before matt heads to tennessee for the holidays.

clay-boy was there and we talked PFFFFT! biz. poetschke is saying he's going to be in town and wants to play a ghostcar set, rather than sit in with us. apparently he's contacted chris perdue and everything. if clay's agreeable to that, i might have to call shuttle and tell them "thanks but sorry."

going out west

nina simone vid

courtesy of mojo.

r.i.p. studs terkel

also passed this week: a great journalist, a populist and dare i say, a great american. wfmu ran a compendium of clips.

cooking today

pancakes for breakfast, almond crusted trout and green beans for dinner. tomorrow: london broil with mashed sweet potatoes.

r.i.p. j.c.b.

jimmy carl black, "the indian of the group," is with the great spirit now. you can help his family by buying stuff from here. maybe this year, instead of watching baby snakes with the cats for the festival of gluttony, we'll watch 200 motels instead.







i once interviewed jcb for a webzine not long after he'd been through fort worth with a blues band and played at the pig and whistle downtown (the current embargo location), where he got stiffed for money. coincidentally, i'd recently played the same dump, also with a blues band, and had the same experience, so it felt like we had a bond of some sort. jcb was, first and foremost, a texas shuffle drummer, and when zappa wanted the mothers of invention to get more musically complex, he started hiring other drummers (billy mundi, ex-cleveland symphony percussionist art tripp), but the _aura_ of fz's early work (up until he started employing jazz musicians ca. '72) had a lot to do with the personalities of cats like jcb, roy estrada, and motorhead sherwood. the zappa family trust is getting ready to do the deluxe reish treatment on we're only in it for the money, fz's masterpiece that contains jcb's immortal line. it'd be nice if gail could see her way to kicking some dough the black family's way.

don't let up

a noteworthy comment on our election, sent to me by a dutchman.

Saturday, November 01, 2008

november

how'd it get to be this late in the year already? the festivals of gluttony, greed, and drunkenness (followed by the one for lust and chocolate) will be here before you know it. oh, and btw...don't forget to vote next tuesday (if you haven't already), yes?

dave douglas