q&a with ray davies

at the hentai show, big marcus was wearing a "god save the kinks" t-shirt, and his bride told me they'd just seen ray davies with a choir in manhattan. today, t.tex posted this brief q&a with ray from magnet. synchronicity!

david thomas w/the suicide commandos, mpls, 1.17.2009

the electro-magnetics

new band with kenny withrow and cricket taylor, live at trees the other night. liles approved.

van der graaf generator

more cursed hipi music. saw peter hammill solo in dallas ca. '79 and thought it was one of the most intense performances i'd ever witnessed.

echoes & reverberations: the theater gallery

after too long of a hiatus, jeff liles returns to the dallas observer blog...until the kessler theater reopens, anyway. nice pussyhouse poster in there, too.

phoenix project pics @ meezlady.blogspot.com

my sweetie posted some of her pics from last night's show at the phoenix project here. click on 'em to make 'em big and leave her a comment, why doncha?

my scrawl on the i-94 bar

a review i penned of the new archival cd by '90s cleveland hardcore band face value is online now.

phoenix project show postmortem

had dinner with carol and dennis gonzalez at their home in oak cliff before the show. carol had to work, so dennis cooked an amazing feast. dug their house, too, full of music and art detritus (the way ours will be when we've been married for 30+ years). i'd been there 30 years ago with a guitarist friend who was jamming with dennis. re-encountered him when yells at eels played at the wreck room back in 2002. thanks, friends. we'll have to return the favor if we can get you over to fort worth. their son aaron's friend dave aponte (with whom he'd play in mfm later that night) was there, and aaron showed up during dinner to pick him up and transport him to the spot.

the phoenix project is an all-ages, no-alcohol, diy venue -- sort of a dallas version of 1919 hemphill -- run by jessica luther, who used to be my middle daughter's roommate right after high school (when aimee decided that she wanted to have the experience of living out, working and paying for stuff before she went to college). it's a work in progress, still under construction, but already it's a cool spot, a good sounding room with a hip young crowd. only non-snazz aspect is finding it; we were fortunate to be able to follow dennis, but the internet directions we had would have had us driving the wrong way up one-way haskell from i-30, and folks we talked to said they circled the block numerous times, because there isn't a building visible from the street. (need a sign, kids!) would like to play there again, though -- with HIO, stoogeaphilia, or any other project the coming years bring. they don't have heat yet, so they built a big wood fire in a 50-gallon drum, hobo style. dennis remarked that he hadn't smelled smoke in a long time -- we live in a smoke-free world now.

for this occasion, HIO included michael chamy from zanzibar snails along with terry, hickey, marcus, and myself. (hembree was playing with pablo & the hemphill 7 at lola's.) sarah alexander was present and terry said he'd invited her to play, but that apparently wasn't the impression she got. we talked with her afterwards and hopefully that misunderstanding was cleared up for next time. i wound up wearing half of the stage on my pants and amp cover (dusty). hickey performed in a folding chair, holding his bass across his lap, then playing his electric gopichand. (had the synth but didn't break it out.) as the sole melodic element, big marcus played mostly to the floor to keep from overpowering the rest of us. as had been the case at lola's in july, i couldn't hear terry because his amp was in front of me facing out, but i could hear chamy alright through his monitors.

none of my shit worked the way i wanted it to. i'd brought the distressed tele, which really is beat to shit -- when i was manipulating the volume knob, i could feel it receding into the body. discovered why teague couldn't hear me at the last stoogeshow: i'd left the amp on the 1/4 power setting after the HIO recording sesh on 10.17.2009. duh. every time i hit the bluesbreaker, i got uncontrollable feedback, so i just used the wah and lot of reverb. the e-bow was also uncooperative, but that just caused me to play more minimally, and we're finding out that in this context, negative space is good. overall, i think everyone was satisfied with the performance, a good thing after the fucking debacle of debacles at the firehouse gallery (r.i.p.).

yells at eels had the best crowd and played their asses off as always. dennis forgot his sheet music, so they just played a couple of tunes, including "document for toshinori kondo," which i think of as their "hit," with its instantly recognizable fanfare of exclamation points and memorable theme. dennis was louder than usual in the mix. he asked if it was cool, and i told him it was. stefan plays drums so aggressively, but with great finesse, and aaron's a loud bass player. ('twas amusing hearing stories of their younger days from their mom over dinner.) i'm usually so transfixed watching what the boys lay down (finally represented well on disc with ayler records' the great bydgoszcz concert) that i forget what an outstanding trumpeter their dad is. i sometimes make the mistake of thinking of dennis as a minimal, miles-or-don-cherry type of player, but in reality he has some flashy and fiery chops and brilliant control over all of his effects, including the electronic ones he employs. always a pleasure to hear those guys.

jacob wick is a chicago-born trumpeter, currently residing in brooklyn, who's taking a trip across the united states, sponsored by the nonprofit arts group fractured atlas, performing with local improvisers wherever he goes. he said he'd lost his graphic scores for his piece THIS IS IT that we were to perform, but his instructions were as follows: "this piece lasts about 30 minutes and is in two parts, one improvised and one spoken. in the first part, we'll improvise collectively. when you feel that your part of the improvisation is over, stop playing and start saying 'this is it.' once you start saying 'this is it,' continue doing so for the remainder of the piece. do not start playing again once you start saying 'this is it.'"

besides jacob on trumpet, the players included sarah alexander and mike maxwell on vocals and chaos pedals (mike also played kalimba), stephen lucas on synth, terry on cigarbox guitar and laptop, and myself. hearing jacob play reminded me of our dinner conversation, where dennis was describing a trumpet festival he'd played in europe with "all these cats that do everything to the instrument but play a melody." it was nice playing with sarah and mike in an environment where i could hear what they were doing (unlike when she and michael briggs played with HIO at the firehouse). terry videotaped the set (and HIO's); i'll be interested to hear the results.

my sweetie was tired and i was hungry (having surreptitiously swigged some alcohol in the parking lot), so we couldn't go the distance to hear mfm. she shot pics, which in the fullness of time will be posted on her photo blog. overall, a satisfying night. terry and i are plotting more HIO recordings and live actions for 2010.

some bizarre shit

thanks to mike from the dangits for almost making me piss my pants laughing.

alice cooper 1971

before he was a hollywood squares reg'lar, ol' vince furnier usedta front a pretty decent rockaroll band.

want to improvise better?

just turn off your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. fascinating stuff. thanks, tom v.!

one square mile

see the trailer for the new documentary about lake como here. it's playing for free at 7pm thursday at the rose marine theater (1440 n. main).

11.27.2009, ftw/dallas

i reneged on my "no-'puter" goal for today to help a friend fill out an online job app. turkey hash this a.m., soup tom'w. taking the tele for tonight's gig since, in spite of being spoiled by will r.'s spiffy gear, i really do like distressed instruments better. best way to vibe up for an improv performance: listening to leslie west. word.

richard hell on "destiny street repaired"

from the guardian. i disagree here.

interview with godzilla

from arthur. please forgive. this kind of shit just amuses me.

how auggie the kitten got his name

dominick the donkey

ok, now that the festival of gluttony is out of the way...

a reason to buy the ridiculous dylan xmas album

charity.

11.26.2009, ftw

a good day spent cooking, eating, and watching movies with my sweetie, henri, and (briefly) andre. phone convos with my kids were a mixed bag. got the load-in time and plan to eat din-din with dennis and carol before tom'w night's HIO show at phoenix project. it seems the booker there is an old friend of aimee's; uncle walt was right. drinks at showdown with dan, kerrie, and a cast of thousands. now 2pm and still waiting for the turkey stock to cool. gonna celebrate tom'w by getting a run in the a.m. and not turning the 'puter on.

the move live @ the fillmore

a candygram from the gods, via their agent t.tex.

brian eno: "the death of uncool"

from prospect. thanks to t.tex for sharing.

hai sai ojisan

i'm learning to play this on terry's cigarbox gtr. the lyrics sound a lot better in okinawan than they do translated.

Hey, man! Hey, man!
If there's a drop of sake left in last night's little bottle
Won't you give me some?
Hey, boy! Hey, boy!
You think I'm satisfied with a little bottle?
Don't say there's none left!
Ok, man! If the little bottle's not enough, give me a big one

Hi, man! Hi, man!
I wanna marry, I'm not a kid anymore
Can I marry your daughter?
Hey, boy! Hey boy!
Marry? No kidding!
You're still too young to talk about such things
Ok, man! I'll wait till my hair turns white

Hi, man! Hi, man!
What a big bald spot you have!
Hey, boy! Hey, boy!
Bald men are excellent
My forefathers were really excellent
Ok, man! I'm gonna have cosmetic surgery to add bald spots

Hi, man! Hi, man!
Your beard is funny, like the whiskers of an attic mouse
Hey, boy! Hey, boy !
Laugh at my beard, but women love bearded men
Ok, man! I don't wanna be outdone by you,
Starting tomorrow, I'll grow a beard that looks like the whiskers of a mouse

Hi, man! hi, man!
Last night's lady was really pretty, you should go there, too
Hey, boy! Hey, boy !
In Chiji, Nakajima and Watanji, I'm a big shot
Okay, man! Going around here and there, I'm wasting my money
You're wasting your money

11.25.2009, ftw

off for three days. hooray! terry brought over a ricotta cheese pie and one of his cigarbox gtrs, so now i own an acoustic instrument if we ever decide we wanna busk. my drummer from college, who talked me into moving to texas, posted a pic of me and our friend brian (who now lives in austin) on facebook. in the pic, i'm the same age my youngest dtr is now. funny, i can't ever remember being as young as the grinning goofball in this pic, but i suppose i was once.

yells at eels in barcelona

looking fwd to opening for these guys tomorrow night at the phoenix project in dallas.

Barcelona - Dennis Gonzalez Yells At Eels

Dennis Gonzalez | MySpace Music Videos

beatles 3000

white hills

...gots a new facemelter on thrill jockey. from arthur.

how dangerous are dfw streets for pedestrians?

whadda _you_ think? from the dallas observer.

muppet rhapsody

hembree forwarded this to me the same day ray posted it on facebook. synchronicity?

the scrooges

yes, a band that plays stooges songs in santa gear. thanks to the barman for the link.

smog veil peter laughner box: november 2010?

clevo-centric chicago-based label smog veil reports that their long-anticipated peter laughner box set is now due for a november 2010 release. from their facebook page:

The delays are due to the fact that we keep unearthing newly found recordings; plus, each interview we do leads us to 2 more people we have to talk to. As it stands, I think we've exhausted the audio search and am awaiting studio dupes of 5 newly found reels. I'm also awaiting delivery of one last reel. About 125 songs at this point, chosen from about 300.

11.24.2009, ftw

terry came over for dinner and i saw the book that's going in the HIO box set. (well, it's a work in progress -- he hadn't put in the [presumably octupus] porn parts in yet.) it'll be two discs, one of the live action, the other of remixes (hickey's one-minute cutup and another version by terry). got to get a disc to eric ortiz, who said he wants to remix it, too.

nervebreakers - "face up to reality" live @ club dada, 4.11.2009

zz top

what can you do when you wake up with this song in yr head?

why work?

this is brilliant. thanks, tommy!

last small faces album to see light of day?

carlton sandercock, the brit recordman whose labels new millennium and easy action have done so well by the yardbirds, mc5, stooges, and sonic's rendezvous band, has his hands on what would have been the last album by the original small faces, if the wheels hadn't come off that cart on new year's eve 1968. says he:

some of it is work in progress, a lot of it has been released over the years and scattered over a million crap compilations, but reconstructed into the order of what was going to be the last album gives this set of recordings a whole new perspective. i'm gonna try 'n' get a licence and put it together.

sounds like a candygram from the gods to me.

facebook gluttony challenge

for those of you who don't do facebook, here's what i spent all day today doing. (long story -- lost a bet with my sister and had to eat six ice cream sandwiches in one sitting.) thanks to my sweetie for operating the GluttonyCam(R) and putting together the li'l quicktime movie, and thanks to me bro tommy in schenectady for uploading it to his site when facebook wouldn't take it. not the stupidest thing i've ever done, but, well, one of 'em.

The Better Death

What happens when sophisto musos go heavy? One possible answer: The Better Death. These four coalesced in 2006 with a mind toward creating a technically challenging rock music. Bassist Ricky Wolking and drummer Danny Handler play complex, ever-shifting time signatures with steely, virtuosic precision, while guitarist Ed McMahon (Ten Hands, Hochimen) alternately jangles, blazes, and skronks, and over-the-top vocalist Sean Dailey's contributions run the full gamut from gutteral snarls to operatic wails. Their proximate models include Mars Volta, Faith No More, Rage Against the Machine, King Crimson -- or maybe just Yes with balls.

Their self-titled CD bursts out of the gate at a gallop with the "Flight of the Bumble Bee"-like flurry of notes that opens "Message To Your Rival." When these guys namecheck Bach, Chopin, and Paganini, they mean it; this is the smartest take on Nu Metal that you'll ever hear. "Versus" alternates ethereal intervals with passages of pounding passion, over which Dailey howls emotively, before giving way to a loping urban beat that segues smoothly into the celestial-sounding chords of "Willow." After the opening atmospherics, that tune locks into a mutated funk groove worthy of '80s Crimson. "Devoted Like Flies" rages with math-y rigor, with McMahon exploring the same fields of noisy atonality as Dr. Morello. The tour de force here is the six-minute-plus "La Muerto Mejor," which winds its way through several shifts of mood and motif, a proggy concerto of existential angst.

The Better Death's achievement on this short (24 minutes) debut disc is considerable. One can't help but wonder, though, whether they're not being too clever for their intended audience. Film, as they say, at 11.

Jin Men Ju's "Inconsistent Architecture"

Jin Men Ju is one of the performing aliases of sound artist Terry Horn, my drinking bud and collaborator in Hentai Improvising Orchestra. Terry grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, and got inspired to take up music by Slayer, Megadeath, and the Dead Kennedys. While he was in high school, he ran his own business and had a Drivin N Cryin cover band that would make a thousand dollars a night playing parties at his mother's house. He also played gigs with the Maxwellaires (an Air Force jazz band), bluesman Johnny Shines (Johnny fell asleep while the other young white guy on lead guitar was soloing); and Christian singer Stephen Curtis Chapman (Terry fell asleep, at least metaphorically).

Although he just got a full-time job teaching art at a charter school in Oak Cliff, Terry held onto his second job, selling tools at Lowe's, until his wife made him give his notice. My theory is that he was reluctant to quit, even though he was exhausted from working 80-hour weeks, because he's temperamentally well suited to retail (as am I), and not just because he was waiting until he was able to afford the materials to refloor his house, as he claimed. A more easygoing character would be difficult to imagine, although underneath his impassive demeanor, his mind is always working.

You can't find Terry without his sketchbooks and little digital recorder. He's always working on some idea; he says his pieces are never finished, and all of them actually add up to one big piece of art. He likes making "field recordings" of everything from wind noises to some woman's annoying voice in a bar where we're drinking, and combines them into sound collages with recordings of himself playing various instruments: cigar box guitars, turntables, sound samples from his laptop and iPod. He says he doesn't care whether or not people like his music. Maybe it's true.

The two tracks on this CD-R sound like an afternoon spent cleaning the house. In between musical snippets and found sounds are what seem to be the live-recorded sounds of someone running a trash compactor, a vacuum cleaner, and a garden hose. Dogs bark in the background, and there are illegible snatches of conversation, along with intervals of silence. I like to listen to this while I'm sitting at my desk, staring into space, which is an important part of my writing process. It's reassuring to know that somewhere else, someone is being more productive than I am at the moment. If Terry reads this, he'll probably think I'm full of shit.

so long, jack

hey, RON -- ask him how marilyn was.

happy berfday, silvio dante!

also to miami steve and little steven. here he is on rockpalast back in the '80s, with the bassplayer from the plasmatics and the drummer from the young rascals, which kind of tells the whole story. while his music might sound like a lesser version of his main employer's, mrs. van zandt's boy is one smart mofo with exceptional taste -- like his fellow new jerseyite lenny kaye.

jake shimabukuro

after i posted this vid on facebook, my sweetie said that the way this guy acts onstage is how i behave when i play with the li'l stoogeband. i find this partly hilarious, partly mortifying. i also wish that i had a third the chops he has.

gentlemen of bacongo

when it comes to gracious living under difficult circumstances, the mods and rude boys got nothin' on the congo's sapeurs, dandified gentlemen who pursue their quest for style amid an ongoing war which has killed five and a half million people. kind of like the folks in sarajevo back in '94 who, my buddy jay told me, would dodge snipers and mortar attacks to go hear the symphony. there's even a book about 'em.

after dinner tonight, my sweetie shared the jezebel link above with the congolese fella who's sharing studio space with her. he reciprocated by sharing a coupla youtube vids by congolese soukous/rumba king papa wemba with us.

oh. my. gawd.

i see your them crazy vultures and raise you shrinebuilder.

the complete beatles on ukelele

i'm not enough of a fabs fan to read all of this, but the bits i read are pert damn funny.

them crooked vultures

...are making a second album already. jeez, you'd think these guys were the great tyrant or something.

fahey

this one's for darrin...

before/after

12.20.2009, ftw

HIO drinkie-talkie at the bull & bush tonight. unfortunately, work sked makes the austin roadtrip terry 'n' i were discussing an impossibility. on the positive side, i got off work for the jo kelly xmas party and 12.16.2009 stoogeshow at caves, plus five days off after xmas. that trombone player from germany should be in dallas around that time, so maybe we'll set up a jam/recording oppo around that time. and my sweetie's off for the next week. hooray!

residents coming to the granada, 2.4.2010

residents. granada. tixxx $20 and up.

scab

it's interesting (to me, at least) that on this date in 1816, the term "scab" was first used to refer to strike-breaking workers at the albany typographical society. it was at a ups warehouse in albany that my friends steve, brian, and i scabbed during a teamsters strike in november 1975.

last stoogeaphilia show of the year!

It'll be Wednesday, December 1th, at Caves Lounge in Arlington (900 W. Division St., just two blocks west of Cooper), and it's FREE! So c'mon!

Love,

THE STOOGEAPHILES

you've got to face the clown if you're gonna deface the clown

my sweetie's cryptic wisdom o' the day.

goodnight keith moon

a different kind of children's book. thanks to the amsterdam bar for the link.

change to 11.27.2009 phoenix project (dallas) bill

MFM (mouseketeer fear mongrels)
Jacob Wick: THIS IS IT
Dennis Gonzalez Yells At Eels
Hentai Improvising Orchestra

Friday November 27th
8:00 p.m.
The Phoenix Project
406 S. Haskell Ave.
Dallas, TX 75226
$8/$5 with a book donation
All Ages

regrettably, yae's guest trumpeter taylor ho bynum had to bow out, but wick is a nyc composer who's bringing a graphic score for local musos to interpret. last time i spoke with aaron gonzalez, who booked the show, said musos might include (but not be limited to) sarah alexander, mike maxwell, terry horn, and your humble chronicler o' events.

HIO will have cd-r's and stickers available for them what wants 'em.

11.19.2009, ftw

today's gonna be a real mixed bag: a massage in the morning (to help my dodgy knee), lunch with the italian kid (and a couple of writing assignments), and a wake for one of my sweetie's students who passed away.

i can't make it, but my buddy matt in brooklyn pulled my coat to this event:

UT Arlington Jazz Bands Fall Concert
Thursday, 11/19/2009, 7:30PM - 9:30PM

with Guest Artist Jon Irabagon, sax (winner of 2008 Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition!).

Texas Hall, UT Arlington Campus. $5/$3 Students and Seniors

worthwhile. a review i wrote of jon's new cd the observer will appear in the fw weekly just any time now. the album's a corker, and this'll be a good show for anyone into good straightahead blowing.

joe nick patoski on doug saldana

another great t.tex find: arlington heights' finest on san antonio's finest.

because you've been good, here's rumel fuentes singing sir doug's "chicano."

...and from p-funk with bootsy

ditto.

a cosmic good morning from sun ra

thanks to lou in oz for posting.

big electric cat

ibm has apparently built a computer that can simulate a cat's cerebral cortex. "but can it purr?" hembree wonders.

my scrawl in the fw weekly

a review i penned of about us, the new cd by chicago drummer mike reed's people, places & things, is online now.

vexed u.k.

new project of denton musos michael briggs and sarah ruth alexander, playing rubber gloves tonight. their whole album is streamable and downloadable for free from the link. you can even listen to two tracks simultaneously.

more equipment theft in ftw

from the fw weekly blog.

11.18.2009 ftw

hembree sez the recording of the li'l stoogeband's 11.14.2009 lola's stockyards stand sounds "vicious," and the versh of "i got a right" (from the very _end_ of the night) he put online as a sample sounds fairly blazing. (plus, i missed ray saying "we are the toadies...good night!" at the end while it was happening.) matt and i agree that we might have to start burning cd-r's of this a la HIO, although i'm resistant to my sister's advocacy of a stoogeaphilia facebook page because i already spend too much goddamn time on fb.

was sorry i missed drinks with a coupla good friends yesterday due to work, but dan sez he might try getting some people together over thanksgiving weekend (when i have three days off, hahahahaha). we'll see how into that we are after being meat glutted and watching baby snakes on the floor with our cats.

"the ritual has become important"

i say again (and again), vinyl is back. so sayeth variety.

11.17.2009 ftw ADDENDUM

had to get outside and away from this screen for awhile, so i decided to try run/walking for the first time in like a month. the knee handled it pretty well, in fact, my stride felt better than it did before the knee started hurting, although my wind still sucks. gonna see if i can set up a therapeutic massage for later in the week and see if there's anything else i can do besides the exercises andre and my sweetie's physical therapist friends suggested.

running in autumn has a lot of associations for me. when the air's cold, the smell reminds me of korea when i was stationed there (minus the smell of the ondol charcoal heaters). the colors of the leaves remind me of driving up the adirondack northway with tommy vincent on the trip to canada where we almost wound up murdering each other. just the whole feeling of the day reminds me of school days when i was a kid. there was something about having that big block of time you didn't control that made you appreciate all those other hours in a way you didn't in the summer, when your time was your own.

god prefers atheists

click on the comic to make it big. thanks to steve gray (the guy that convinced me to move to texas) for posting this.

the electronic didgeridoo

hey, hickey...

if you thought record labels were taking it in the shorts before...

...just wait until authors and artists start invoking the provisions of the u.s. copyright act of 1976, under which rights can revert to authors, artists, or their heirs after 56 years for copyrights sold before 1978, or 38 years for copyrights sold during or after 1978.

11.17.2009, FTW

This morning while I was going to unlock the back door, Auggie came running in front of my feet and I hit him so hard it spun him around in the air. I was worried I'd hurt him, but he seemed to be OK. Then I remembered he'd done the same thing to Hembree the last time Matt was over here, almost tripping him, and I realized that Auggie is "The Linebacker of Love."

my scrawl on the i-94 bar

a review i penned of the new archival stooges release, you don't want my name, you want my action, is online now.

ADDENDUM: hmmm, apparently easy action is releasing one of the electric circus shows from the aforementioned box set on vinyl the end of this month. look out!

sloan automatic

...is a band that includes cody yates, ex-wizbang (of "haltom city nights" fame), on guitar and vox. they recently did a performance with contemporary dance fort worth, video documentation of which is visible below. they're playing at lola's 6th street at the bottom of a bill with local funkateers rabbit's got the gun and shuttle. this shit here sure looks like some bizarre shit.

dangits and stoogeaphilia pics @ meezlady.com

my sweetie posted some of her pics of the dangits and stoogeaphilia (who might change our name to "lycantrophilia" if ray keeps the beard) doing our respective thangs at lola's stockyards saturday night on her photo blog. click on 'em to make 'em big and leave her a comment, why doncha?

1971 stoogebox arrives

...so i'll be spending some time spinning this before i go to work tomorrow.

spot the unintended light effect in this photo

franco

hanging on

other night at lola's, someone asked if the stoogeband played any radio birdman. i'd vote for this one.

r.l. burnside

after awhile i burned out on the "isn't this weird?" aspect of a lot stuff on the fat possum label, but last night will -- who digs blues, jazz, and songcraft as much as i do -- played me some of r.l.'s first recordings from 1960, which i thought were ace. as is this '84 performance.

kick it till it breaks

apparently the trouser press editor cat has written a novel about the '60s. this might be interesting. thanks to t.tex for the link.

11.15.2009, ftw

recorded a guitar track with will risinger for his contribution to the return of helldamncrap compilation. been meaning to get together with him and dana for ages. they poured lotsa good wine and fed us yummy tomatillo stew as well as snackage. they have four, count 'em, four boston terriers, which dana says are the closest thing to cats in the dog world. she was amazed at how they all responded to my sweetie, to which i replied that she's the all-purpose animal whisperer -- actually, animals, children, even me.

playing through will's amazing 5 watt epiphone valve junior and his blackface fender vibrolux made me realize what a slug i am about equipment and playing in general. he clearly takes a lot of care in selecting and tweaking his amps and they deliver great tones. i generally just plug in, crank up, and go. i was also reminded of how much i like ibanez tube screamers.

the recording situation also caused me to think more about what i was going to play, and i listened to the track several times before i was ready to do a take. in the event, i wound up blowing pretty much the way i always do, without the more precise articulation i was going to attempt, and as he appeared satisfied with the results, i opted not to do a re-take. it did make me think about the benefits of practicing on a more frequent basis, which i haven't really done since i was in austin, getting ready to go make a band in colorado, um, 30 years ago.

while i was playing his les paul through the vibrolux, i told him the story of how stoogeaphilia once accidentally played "mississippi queen" almost all the way through at practice. when i started playing the tune, he got behind the drums and we had a little jam.

i hope i get to do more recording with and jamming with will. i've always liked his songs, and with the stoogeband playing less than in previous years and hentai performing only infrequently, it'd be nice to have another outlet. plus will's a very congenial cat to work with.

cash-strapped funkadelic artist selling his originals

anyone know how to get in touch with pedro bell? especially if you're an art collector...

otis rush

thanks to nicole for the coat-pull. if you don't own otis' cobra recordings, now reished several times, you owe it to yourself.

11.14.2009, ftw

for some reason, i always seem to cut my hands at work on days when i'm going to be playing a show. in this case, i tried to open the door to the dumpster one-handed and when the bolt slid back, it sliced off a little piece of my thumb. i also discovered that the first aid kits at work haven't been restocked in awhile, although one of the managers said she'd get that fixed and i believe her. it didn't really cause me any difficulty during the show, except toward the end, when the band-aid slipped off, but fortunately the neck of my gtr i smooth.

hadn't played lola's stockyards before; in fact, i'd only been there once, for the no idea fest last spring, but it's a good sounding room, with a low ceiling and lots of wood, and dre did his usual ace job of dressing the stage. loading in down the stairs was a minor irritant, but at least we know now that the way to do it is to drive up in the alley from the cross street south of exchange. good to see carl and tina pack, and old wreck room friends graham richardson, tony addison, and lee allen stopped by in the course of the evening, and brian forella (bless him) bought us a round of shots at the end of our set. it's trippy that one of the bartenders is friends with my oldest daughter. my middle daughter and son-in-law (flushed with tcu football fever) and some of their friends also caught part of the show. unfortunately, they were unable to join us for pancakes afterward (working this morning); maybe another time.

the dangits played a killer high-energy set, sounding like every good band out of orstralia in the '80s and scandinavia in the '90s. mike noyes is a frontman in the grand lemmy tradition, standing with his head back, roaring over the din of his and branden smith's blazing guitars and a pummeling riddim section. the phrase that pays is "hard act to follow." nice cats, too. when the li'l stoogeband had our typical equipment churn (to be different, i broke a low E string and teague had non-head-related snare drum issues), they let us use their gear. cat even changed a string on my epi while i was using his strat, after warning me that i'd need to tune up because they tune down to D. looking forward to seeing them with the me-thinks, max cady (now with spyche on bass!), and the hochimen at lola's 6th on december 11th.



when i was dashing off the setlist, i forgot "nonalignment pact," so we were gonna play it in place of "1970," but somebody actually requested that toon, so we dropped "1969" instead. when we finished, mike from the dangits told me, "you guys are like fucking bruce springsteen," referring to the duration of our sets. i know the hour-plus sets are a beating on jon -- the only person on stage who's actually working hard -- but matt and i are greedy. it's the one element of tension in the band, besides the perpetual difficulty in scheduling. we've got nothing else on the books this year, but i hope we'll continue in 2010.

our enjoyment of the evening was muted somewhat by seeing a cat get beat down and knocked out by his buddy in the alley while we were loading out. it's always bugged me, the undercurrent of violence that exists anywhere there's alcohol being consumed. hope the kid's ok and didn't sustain any permanent damage from his night of drunken stupidity.

postscript: teague and i were struggling to remember jerry reed's name when "east bound and down" came on the jukebox last night, and this afternoon, frank cervantez sent me this link. there are no coincidences!

yep, vinyl's back

says so here. thanks, t.tex!

btw, i've noticed that since i vacated my myspace pages except for sending out band spam, pert near the only communications i get there are band spam.

putin wins respect from hip-hoppers

i don't make this shit up; i just copy 'n' paste it.

dock ellis & the lsd no-no

dock was america's first psychedelic major league pitcher. here's an animated version of his story. thanks to t. tex for the link.

replacements - "hey good lookin'"

this one's for hembree.

jethro tull and my cats

during the terminal phase of my tenure as a regular contributor to the fw weekly, i penned a fairly scathing and contemptuous screed in the form of a review of the then-current jethro tull albums. re-reading it now only confirms that i needed to take a break back then, which i shortly did.

the truth is that back in the day, when i was really pissed off at my old man and still used to listen to song lyrics, i spent many (usually late night) hours spinning stand up and benefit, which i've been listening to today with great enjoyment. (my paper-eating cats are apparently tired of hearing lou reed's berlin, because _somebody_ shredded its inner sleeve and i know it wasn't me.)

and wouldn't you know, ian anderson's an ailurophile. there are no coincidences.

11.13.2009, ftw ADDENDUM

spring-like morning air
do brown leaves carpeting ground
know something we don't?

erin starr white

one of my customers at the market is a researcher for the modern and a scribe for art lies. read her scrawl here and here.

anti-swine flu holy water dispenser

what _will_ they think of next?

11.13.2009, ftw

for the past week i've been listening over and over to two records, one because it reminds me of my youngest daughter, the other because it reminds me of my dad. it's like i've been picking at a scab. i even asked my sister to hold onto "dad's important papers" for me -- not all the undated drafts of his paper, which are incomprehensible to me, but the ones that (belatedly) gave me a better understanding of him.

gotta get out of the house today. walk to doc's, or go get lunch with the italian kid. need to see how my leg holds up to it, since i was too enfeebled to hobble to the art show a week ago. pick up some 9Vs for my pedals. enjoy the nice weather.

eduardo saboya's "apocalypse now files"

a "graphic interpretation" of coppolla's classic? sure, whythehell not. maybe i'll watch apocalypse now redux while i'm waiting for the bug man this a.m. -- but i swear, i've gotta get out of the house (and away from this screen) today. thanks to farren for the link.

camille pissarro's "the boulevard montmartre at night"

the good soldier

this new doco looks like it might be worth seeing.

guess _who's_ playing at the super bowl?

excuse me while i projectile vomit.

james williamson on the watt from pedro show

streaming here.

ADDENDUM: it's worthwhile just to hear james computing the tip (they're in a restaurant).

synecdoche, new york

apparently it's pronounced like "schenectady," not "sinneck-douche" like i thought. duh. my english major daughter pulled my coat to this flick, which i'll have to see in the fullness of time.

11.10.2009, ftw ADDENDUM

spent an hour on the phone with two guys i hadn't seen in 30 years. they'd been drinking wine for a couple of hours. at least it was better than the last time somebody i know played "drink and dial."

we agreed about a few things: how we're all lucky to be alive; how much _stuff_ you can cram into short spans of time.

i went to college for three semesters, lived in dallas for three months, in colorado for about four, in memphis for three. but the events of those times have assumed such huge significance in my memory.

after all those years, it's good to talk to people who share those same memories while we're still around and can remember.

The First Veteran I Knew

My father enlisted in the Army as soon as he could during World War II. He had just turned 16 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which you could see from his front porch. By the time he turned 18, the U.S. Congress had decided that it was permissible for Americans of Japanese ancestry to serve in its Army, albeit in segregated units.

Dad served in the Signal Corps, attending Japanese language school -- ironic because he was already fluent -- and breaking low-level naval codes before he was commissioned and sent to Japan with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey after the surrender. It must have made quite an impression on him. I know that he was “sent home sick,” and when I was 18, he intimated to me that he’d had a breakdown and was under psychiatric care when he was “about [my] age," although he subsequently denied it.

My grandfather, who was kind of a big wheel in the Honolulu Japanese community, was interned immediately after Pearl Harbor. My father spent his whole time in the Army writing letters to the War Department protesting this injustice. My uncle told me that after Japan surrendered, my grandfather continued denying that they’d lost the war until my father sent photographs he’d taken of the destruction in Nagasaki and Tokyo.

While I was serving in the Air Force, my father and I had a running argument regarding whether or not the U.S. would have used the atomic bomb on Germany. He was ambivalent about his military service. He always said that America is a racist country, but when he was confronted with anti-Japanese sentiment from ignorant-ass New Yorkers when it started looking like Japan was going to surpass the U.S. economically in the ‘80s, he talked about writing to Washington to get his war medals so he could use them to prove that he was an American.

He had a few funny stories. One of them had to do with the test he had to take at the end of Officer Candidate School. One of the questions was, "How is the M-2 carbine cleaned?" Being a former engineering student, he wrote a very lengthy description of the process to be followed in breaking down, cleaning, and reassembling the weapon. Twenty years later, he still shook his head when he recalled the correct answer: "With care."

my scrawl in the fw weekly

a review i penned of aaron gonzalez's new cd age of disinformation is online now (and maybe in the paper; haven't seen a copy yet).

the stooges' whole brazil show on vid

via myspace.

11.10.2009, ftw

getting to be a busy week, music-wise. last night hembree sent me a link to an edited versh of the PFFFFT! track we're submitting for indian casino's the return of helldamncrap comp. sunday, i'm going out to bedford to track some gtr for former me-thinks "secret weapon" will risinger's contribution to the comp.

what might be the last stoogeshow o' the year (if'n we can't get another caves lounge date) this sat'day night at lola's stockyards (downstairs from star cafe on west exchange) with the dangits.

and my metal drummer pal from work finally listened to the HIO cd-r and said it sounded like "a journey through time," but i guess those folks do tend to talk like that.

interview with lemmy

from vice.

happy berfday, kurt vonnegut

here's a lengthy screed on the man by steve almond, from the rumpus. (move along, mr. frum.)

my scrawl on the i-94 bar

hard to believe it's that time of year again, but it is: my top ten for 2009 is on line now.

the world's first synthesizer

...was built by hammond from 1939 to 1942. behold its unwieldy magnificence (it weighed 500 pounds and was the size of two spinet pianos) and listen to spooky sound samples here.

jethro tull "swing in"

german documentary from 1969 with some good live performances as well as a young ian anderson pontificating about sex and his parents showing off their scrapbook of his press clips. part 1 includes a song bruce wade very laboriously taught me to play in 1975.

kris needs on the first stooges album

from clashmusic.com.

them crooked vultures

go to their youtube channel and preview the whole album. then go here and preorder it. (it drops on 11.17.2009.) such smart, savvy, pragmatic rockstars! sounds good, too.

11.9.2009, ftw

stoogeprac last night. we went over what we needed to go over. sat'day at lola's stockyards should be good. dangits play first, then we could play long, since there are only two bands. i broke a string and wound up using josh anderson's les paul studio, which was surprisingly light but didn't have a lot going on above the 12th fret; apparently josh likes his action light and doesn't do much high-register wankage. must try and switch shifts at work saturday, so i don't have to run directly from there to the gig.

teague kindly gave me a lift home but left his wallet at the prac pad, which sucks as he was already sleep-deprived (seems to be a lot of that going on these days). hope he was able to get it back from ray and get some sleep.

today is my middle daughter's 25th birthday. she's already a better writer than i am, and much more centered at her age than i was. i am very proud of her.

bye-bye berlin wall

procol harum

kxt 9.17 is on the air now!

listen here. playing them's versh of "it's all over now, baby blue." yeah!

snart

...is the word we coined to refer to art that looks as though it's made from snot.

shields/schiele/shiels

iconic american model/actress, michael jackson familiar:


intense austrian expressionist painter:


imbecilic irish rockarolla:

how to write a great novel

struggling with inertia, i stumbled on this. from the wsj via the rumpus.

i got a right

s&d

thanks to the barman for sharing.

shake appeal

decrepitude

woke up this morning, did my stretches before i got out of bed, took a multivitamin, baby aspirin for my heart, allergy pill, glucosamine and condroitin for my knee (tasted ng but not as bad as jagermeister). senility and death are just around the corner.

facebook

...combines all the most addictive aspects of chat, blogging, and myspace. a veritable speedball for yr internet jones.

11.6.2009, ftw

wasn't scheduled to work until 10am today but woke up to the phone at 7am. had been up late hashing over some worrisome news, but when the manager from work asked if i could open, i said, "ok, i'll be there in 20 minutes." once i got my glasses on, i realized that i had nearly an hour to get ready. be thankful for small favors.

went and saw terry's installation at contemporary arts fort worth tonight. a cool space, now well attended, between the art show, the pottery show, and menopause: the musical. not to mention z's cafe. a little oasis of the arts, within walking distance of my house (altho she wound up driving because my knee is hosed).

my sweetie 'n' i were both too tired to make the great tyrant show at lola's 6th. came home and crashed for awhile, then got up and started editing a chapter of the book i'm collaborating on. want to start writing something about my old man but there may be other, more pressing family biz this weekend. more rekkid reviews appear to be coming my way, too. just wish i was playing more. the italian kid and my buddy tommy in schenectady dug the cd-r, but hembree says he sees how it might not be evabody's cuppa tea.

the better death

gtrist extraordinaire ed mcmahon sendeth a link to his new band the better death, who also gots a new album out. film, as they say, at 11. (i once had the idea of making a porno for pyros cover band called "pictures of fire." would a the better death cover band be called "at home in bed?")



ed also sez that the hochimen are working on a new rekkid and playing lola's 6th street with the me-thinks and the dangits on december 11th. yeah!

wwoz from nawlins

cool streaming station. thanks to liles for the coat-pull.

cat tests positive for swine flu

RAIIIHHHRRR!!!

men with no iq's

somebody say "black (as in african-american) metal?" forget death. here's an even heavier (in all senses of the word) crew from down in jackson, mississippi (which boasts some of the most insane-sounding gospel stations in these united states). from wfmu blog.

HIO stuff

got the first positive feedback (first feedback of any description, really) from outside (excluding my sweetie and hickey's wife, who are what you call a "captive audience") on the cd-r, from jordan franz, who usedta sit in at the wreck room jams and is playing this sunday with grimy styles at the boiler room in denton.

thinking about the chemistry of this unit. i think terry's ADHD complements by OCD pretty well. also find it interesting that both of us work in retail, for which i believe we're well suited temperamentally. i've been doing it off and on since i was 15 and find i feel comfortable in it. he must too, as he still hasn't quit his job at lowe's even though he's a full-time art teacher now.

hickey is kind of an enigma to me, and while i like him a lot, i wouldn't say that i know him really well. one of the funniest people i know. i was a fan of both of his old bands, and am curious to hear what he's been up to out in that shed in weatherford.

hembree is one of my favorite musicians on earth because he loves to play more than anyone i know. he can play bass in any band i have from now until i check out.

for some reason, marcus brunt has a really positive opinion of me, and it's nice having him moving that big column of air around. he should be back from his honeymoon in rome by now.

reggie rueffer

one of my favorite musicians on earth: country-bred, classically-trained, with a love of ray price, johnny bush, mahler, and xtc, he led some of the best dallas bands of the '80s-'90s and '00s: mildred, spot, the hochimen. bless him.

10.5.2009, ftw

had HIO drinkie-talkie at the bull & bush with hickey and terry last night. hembree stopped by after work to pick up his copy of the cd-r, but had to head on to a prior engagement. auggie attempted to play lawrence taylor to his joe montana.

at the b & b, there was a woman with the most annoying voice i've heard in ages. terry caught about ten minutes of it on his digital recorder. be looking for her in some future sound-art project. we also had the idea of introducing hickey as michael stipe and playing "stand" at the phoenix project. or maybe not.

my sweetie showed me some exercises one of her physical therapist colleagues recommended for my knee. i think i may have inherited my mom's family's tendency toward arthritis. gonna get some glucosamine and controitin at work today.

the healing and redemptive power of death metal

also from the nyt, via my big sis.

gaijin school for sushi snobbery

from the nyt.

hawking/sagan on VINYL!

on jack white's label? i don't make this stuff up, i just copy and paste it. thanks to calvin for the coat-pull.

my scrawl in the fw weekly

reviews i penned of new cd's by eaton lake tonics and snowbyrd are in this week's paper and online now.

11.4.2009, ftw

was pleased to notice the other day that the "free at last 11.4.2008" graffiti on the newspaper machine by the donut shop up the street from me has survived an entahr year.

been burning a lot of time on facebook the last coupla nights. the first night i was on there, i spent a lot of time yakking with the guy who convinced me to move to texas, whom i haven't seen in ten years, and one of the guys who made the trip with me, whom i haven't seen in 30.

tommy and i had made a trip to montreal a few months before leaving new york. the adirondack northway in october is one of the prettiest drives i've ever been on. the colors of the leaves are so brilliant that the hills look like they're on fire. we spent four days in montreal, being snubbed by the francophones. montreal's a weird place. the french-speakers there looked like very sophisto europeans. the anglophones looked like scummy americans. the fourth day we were there, we were sitting at a bar when i told tommy, "i'm tired of this shit. the next person who speaks english to me, i'm going to start crying and give them all my money."

at that moment, the bartender came up to us and said, "you fellas ready for another?"

luckily, tommy was able to get me out of there before i handed the guy my last fifty bucks.

we'd just had four shots of canadian mist. after that, it got pretty...interesting.

on the road to texas, our friend brian and i treated tommy abysmally. i had a lot of some drug that i wouldn't let tommy have. when we got to dallas, he got really homesick. being young men, we were merciless, and baited him horribly. after a couple of months, he got sick of it and went home.

the other night, he and i apologized to each other for being such pricks to each other 30 years ago.

it's the kind of thing middle aged men do, i guess.

one thing i've noticed since i started giving out copies of the HIO cd-r at work: when i asked them what they thought of it, none of the people i gave it to had listened to it. this means that either they feel the same way about unsolicited listening material as i do, or, as terry posited yesterday, that "perhaps it's not as good as we think it is." i'm hoping the folks i mailed copies to the other day will have some impression.

st. lester on eno

from more dark than shark, via t.tex on facebook.

progressive rock

this is pert damn hilarious, i'm a-thinkin'. from cracked, the poor man's mad magazine.

lester bowie on fela kuti

from arthur. there's a link to a good bio of fela by arthur editor jay babcock.

mildred

illegal downloaders also spend more on new releases, legal downloads.

duh. from the daily mail.

Bonedome’s "Thinktankubator"

Bonedome is the nom de roque of Allan Hayslip, a Dallas muso who’s been at it since ’84 with more bands than you can shake a stick at, including SPAM, Crackbox, Vibrolux, Prince Jellyfish, Rock Star Karaoke, and the Darren Kozelsky Band. I got to know him around the cleavage of the decades, when he was playing bass in a coupla bands with some once-and-future Nervebreakers: punk covers in the Punk Rock Dinosaurs and spaghetti western/surf-rock with the Big Guns. Thinktankubator is his first venture into frontman/sole writer territory, and it’s a stunning surprise.

Moody, quirky, melodic-but-aggressive pop rock is the order of the day here – the kind of thing an XTC fan might have dreamt up. The proximate models I’m hearing are Cincinnati’s beloved Psychodots (albeit less guitar-solo-centric), or closer to home, Goodwin and especially Reggie Rueffer’s brainiac-rawk apotheoses Spot and the Hochimen.

No surprise, then, to learn that HCM guitarist and ex-UNT jazzcat Ed McMahon – who will come to your house and personally award a giant prize of fretwork that alternately rings, grinds, and skronks – is all over this shiny silver disc; there are no coincidences. It’s hard to say which antecedent the vocal blend here -- in a lower register that it’s rare to hear in this kind of music – reminds me of more: Chad Rueffer in Spot, David Bowie on Lodger, or maybe the Psychedelic Furs' Richard Butler. Whatevah, it's a win.

What matters more 'n anything with this sort of thing is the songs, and Bonedome’s got 'em. Clever wordplay is one of Hayslip's strengths, starting with his opening declaration, "I hereby resolve not to do anything I don't want to do / Excepting of course when I have to" (from "Sandman"). "Fade Away" negates Buddy Holly with its opening line ("I'm going to tell you how it cannot be"), while "Slow Jesus Xing" perversely evokes the Hollies ("He ain't heavy, he's fat and American") while sounding for all the world like an outtake from the Spot album.

The vocal similarity to Bowie comes to the fore in "I Can Lose You," Hayslip's take on the "Space Oddity" story, replete with jangling 12-string, while "Easy" sounds exactly like the alt-rock murder ballad it is (unlike, say, Died Pretty's "Sweetheart," which sounded like a love song). Bonedome saves the best for last, with "Steven," which casts a jaundiced eye on rock 'n' roll self-destructives, and the self-explanatory, deeply felt "Custody Lullabye," where he drops the cleverness and just says what he has to say over a lush bed of vocal harmonies. Records like thisun only come along every few years or so, and when they do, they're always welcome.

hubris

last night, while my sweetie was going through the boxes of shit in the shed to find some of her professional papers, she unearthed a box of fw weeklies and other rags with my scrawl in 'em that i thought i'd lost or pitched.

so now i have a copy of the james williamson int from the big takeover and the src piece from shindig (whose publishers have now apparently recycled my rationals piece in a tome called psychotic reaction: a garage rock special).

i also have a bunch (but not all) of my weekly scrawl, including the nathan brown cover and a bunch of pieces that are nice to have as much for the memories they bring back of what was going on while i was working on 'em as they are for anything in the writing or subject matter. by the time i bailed from scribing for the paper essentially full-time in '04, you can definitely tell i was one burnt piece of toast. digging life (and music, and scrawl) much better now.

stoogeaphilia! the dangits! lola's stockyards! november 14th!

why british music journalism sucks

the adjective stonking, as in "a stonking version of...": whatthehell? i know it's supposed to be their language and everything, but jeez...