I was all set to post about something entirely different but while taking a short break I did a search for Sun Ra, just for the hell of it. Right away, bam!, I ran into an article about a new documentary (at Vogue's site of all places). So it was back into the Sun Ra rabbit hole again. Rather than subject you to my babbling, I'll just throw a bunch of Sun Ra stuff at you. Below you'll find links to the new documentary, another older documentary, a few articles (Vogue's thing, a profile at Downbeat, another at New Yorker) and a few random cuts. The tipping point that prevented me from blowing things off as I've been wont to do the past few months was a new link to Space Is the Place, the feature length film Sun Ra did in 1974. To bump up the WTF factor it is suggested that you tailgate with the bong before that one. A six minute preview is directly below, suitable for the milk and cookies crowd.
I didn't go looking for this because I didn't know it existed. If it doesn't get posted tonight, it could be be gone tomorrow. (It was just posted a day ago.) A two hour documentary on the Sonics. Yeah. If you've been here long enough, you know that this is right up my alley. I hate saying shit like "If you don't know who the Sonics are..." From here on, if there's a band posted that you don't know, go do a web search. I'm just going to assume that most of you are familiar with essential bands, and the Sonics are essential. I tried to round up some mp3s but could only find a couple. That tells me they're good at protecting their shit, which also means that documentary might be gone tomorrow, So, with out further rambling here's a few songs.
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It's been a while since I've posted and I have a half-assed explanation. I've been distracted. I'm not sure how many of you pay attention to the news, but it's hard to miss how fucked up Donald Trump and his administration have made things, not just in the U.S but all over the world. I really want to keep this blog music related, but avoiding mentioning current events is hard when it's a shit show of this magnitude. So, you're going to get hybrid posts until things get closer to normal. It may be a while.
As you've probably guessed, I do not like Donald Trump, I didn't vote for him and I don't respect anything about him. I am the Anti-Trump. He reminds me of the rich pussy in high school that pays the football bruiser to kick the shit out of his perceived enemies. He's tried it on the international stage and was an embarrassment to his country. He's going after his political foes with bogus charges that are more often then not thrown out of court. He's blown Venezuelan boats out of the water under the pretense that they were drug running. The list goes on. And then there's ICE. The thousands of poorly vetted quick hires with fantasies of playing Call Of Duty in real life.known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Killing America citizens that any honest person could see did not pose a reasonable threat. This country is ready to implode. And I just happen to be reading Citizen Tom Paine a biographical novel by Howard Fast (library sale, yesterday, $1). If you are not familiar with Thomas Paine, look him up. Read Common Sense. That shit worked.
Thomas Paine
Now that the jazz portion of our show is over, here's some completely unrelated instrumentals by Steve Cropper, Pops Staples, and Albert King playing together. All three were on Stax Records at the time. The cool thing is hearing them trade off licks in the same song and trying to ID who's who. In "Tupelo" there's name checks before solos so you can cheat if you must. If you're into Stax or obsess about guitarists' signature styles it's a fun test.
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For all of you party planners running around like headless chickens, a reminder is in order. Spread the Good Word's Bloody Christmas mixes are still online. They used to be downloads, but they're now streaming (click on the "download" links below the song lists). Though they are streaming, I'm sure someone you know is savvy enough to run them through your sound system.
It's that time. Here's all of Rev Tom Frost's Bloody Halloween mixes. Every year, a grand Halloween lazy night repost cop out. I'd imagine there are a few of you who haven't heard any of them. If you're unfamiliar with Reverend, there's bits and pieces in these past posts.
The mixes (25 of them!) are only available streaming, but by now most of you have the gizmo arsenal required to blast them at a party.
And don't forget, the Frosty one is a kick ass musician himself. Ask your local Mr. Record Store Man to put the Reverend's goods in their racks. While you wait, buy his shit at Bandcamp.
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I work and I believe in unions and I believe in workers' rights. I also believe that I will keep it short because today is Labor Day, a holiday for American workers. Though Billy Bragg is British, his "There Is Power In a Union" is right on the money.
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Yikes! It's the middle of summer and I still haven't posted "Uptown Top Ranking"! If you've been around here long enough you know. As happens every year, I have a contented moment made possible by nice weather, a warm ocean and chance meetings with locals on my way to and from the beach. Per usual, I gush about it. This jam nails the mood, not lyrically, just in the vibe, It's by Althea and Donna and if you've been listening to reggae a long time you might remember when it appeared in 1978. It went to #1 in the UK, didn't do shit in the states. Me and my friends ate it up.
The riddim comes from Alton Ellis's "I;m Still In Love With You". Althea and Donna's "Uptown Top Ranking" was by no means the only record to use it. Here's a couple others. And if you're already familiar with all of these, dig this exercise. Try syncing Ellis's with Althea and Donna's, opening them in separate windows and pausing one if needed. Then fuck with the volume in each window. When they do sync well you can strut around like some two bit King Tubby,
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Well, that was a long piss break. Guess what happened. Nothing. I just wanted to see what it was like to take my unproductive tendencies to the next level. It got pretty boring. I guess one thing did happen. The traffic here jumped, not a little, but a lot. The past few months have had the most hits in the time I've been doing this, something like seventeen years. If this blog was monetized, it would be the ultimate "passive income", money for sitting on your ass. I ain't got time for that.
So, anyway, the Viagra Boys. I happened on a link to one of their videos. Sometimes a band name will be the only reason I click. Viagra Boys: the stupidest fucking band name I've ever heard of. That's precisely what sucked me in. I was hoping for another Oklahoma Blood. Oklahoma Blood you ask? Another band that also sucked me in via a bad band name, with very different results. Oklahoma Blood is a metal band from, you guessed it, Oklahoma. I'm not sure what their reach is but the gigs in the videos have the look of a band still in their take-any-gig stage. To wit, the first video I saw was an instrumental banger called "Stompin' Nachos" and they're playing in what appears to be someone's back yard, complete with a junior headbanger back by the drummer. I'm no judge of this type of metal, but I can say they seem earnest.. I have to admit, the scene is humorous but you know what? Good for them. They're doing it.
Back to the Viagra Boys. I was pleasantly surprised. After .watching a
few videos and without knowing anything about the band I came away
thinking they sounded like the My War-era Black Flag with a
little early Stooges, with Weirdos singer John Denny and a dash of
Flipper sludge. If you're an old fart like me and liked those bands back
in the day your assessment might be different. Good. Another thing was
that they had a synth player and sax, both played abrasively enough that
it made me think of the No Wave stuff from the No New York
compilation. Add all that up and it's a salad bowl of good shit. [I
should add here that in subsequent listening I'd add a dozen other
bands. Heroes-era Bowie is in there, all sorts of stuff.]
I gave it a couple weeks to see if it was just the mood I was in when I first ran across them. Sampled some recordings, watched a few more videos. Okay, I realized that I dig them, a lot more than any "new" band that's come down the pike the past few years. I'm surprised as hell that I hadn't heard of them. Really. They been around for six years or something. I'm so out of the loop that I don't care about being out of the loop.
It's better this way. Even though I thought they had a stupid name, with no pre-conceived notions about their music I was allowing myself almost total objectivity, I'm' pleased as punch, I dig them, from out of nowhere. Late to the party? Says who? The party starts when I show up.
Then, the lyrics. They kill me. "Ain't No Thief", sung in the first person, is about a guy who gets accused of stealing things, repeatedly. His defense is always..., well the chorus says it all with a snarl. "I ain't no thief!, I ain't no thief!, I ain't no thief!, I just got the same stuff!!" Lyrics Larry, Moe and Curly would envy. In "Sports", singer Sebastian Murphy rattles off things that could only be loosely defined by some as sports or sports related, including "Getting high in the morning, Buying things on the internet, ..." ending multiple verses with "wiener dog" which is really a stretch. It's like one of those drunken jams you have with your buds where you just improvise random lyrics. After that as my initial assessment, I ran across an interview with Murphy alluding to almost that exact scenario. When writing he just fits random words and phrases to the music and fine tunes them later once he thinks of something better. Sometimes he doesn't. Hence, wiener dog.
Here's just a sampling. There's a shitload of videos at YouTube on their "channel"; some live, some live in studio and some official music videos. Whoever does their videos does a bang up job. The live stuff is well mixed and has great camera work with multiple cameras. Not the shaky fan videos done with someone's phone. The "official" music videos are entertaining in a David Lynch "what the fuck is this?" sort of way.
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If you're like me, you've probably wondered why more musicians aren't speaking up about what is going on in the U.S., especially the highly visible ones. Springsteen stepped up. These spoken word moments from a concert a few days ago should be heard. He does a good job of describing what's happening in plain terms, And if you're one of those people that feel celebrities and musicians should keep their traps shut and ignore the shit that's going down, pretend he's a nobody and just listen. Now, er, Boss, about that outfit....
Have you seen the commercials for SUVs that have a "crab walk" feature? That's a kind of steering with all four wheels turning simultaneously, instead of just the two front wheels. Rather then turning in an arc, the car goes diagonally. What could go wrong? It's not just a disaster waiting to happen. Many disasters are waiting to happen. Idiots will be driving them. Watch.
After shaking my head, I thought of Prince Jazzbo's "Crab Walking", the long disco mix.version with Jazzbo toasting over the "Skylarking" riddim, I dig it, classic Studio One. So here's that and three other cool golden age cuts.
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Last night I was sick. Bad congestion, body ache, all that. I slept a good long time and got up this morning still feeling like shit, unsure if I was better or worse. Time to move.
I got and made some coffee and grabbed a book. I'm re-reading the Art Pepper memoir. I learned something. Do not read a book about a junky, particularly the part where he's describing his first fix when you're sick. It made be feel sicker. I shut the book. I gotta say, that dude had a mess of a life for someone with a talent so immense. You'd think more people would know of him just because the juxtaposition is so great. I thought I'd fix that by posting about him. In checking, I saw that I'd posted about him the first time I read the book. So below are the text and links from that (all links are still good.) From 6/9/2021:
I'm halfway through reading Art Pepper's autobiography The Straight Life (co-written with his wife Laurie). If you know anything about Pepper, you know he's a West Coast jazz guy, saxophone. If you know anything else about Pepper you know that he was a junkie, for years. He did time in a number of facilities, the most notorious San Quentin. I'm only halfway through the book (up to the mid-sixties) and I can tell you just from that that he makes Keith Richards look like a dabbler. Nothing is glossed over in the book. Not the crimes he committed, not the extent he went through to get a fix, not the lovers he treated like shit, or the dark thoughts running around in his head. It is heavy.
So I started browsing, A couple links in, I'm already distracted. There's a shitload about Pepper online. These are tonights detours.
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I have a friend that I grew up with that now lives in New York. I touch base with her on Facebook every now and then but haven't seen her face to face in at least twenty years. It's a bummer because we went through a lot together back in the day, were roommates (with about eight others) around 1980. Back then she had a thing for David Bowie and I just ran into some Bowie oddballs and it made me think of her. She, Margaret, inventor of the Bowie Fast.
What is the Bowie Fast, you ask? Something that, at one time seemed silly, worthy of a teasing. Later it made total sense. I think it was somewhere around 1978-79, someone was putting on a record and they were asked not to play Bowie. It seemed Margaret liked Bowie so much that she didn't want to risk getting sick of him. She was on a Bowie Fast. Now I know what you're thinking, that Bowie's catalog is so vast that it would be nearly impossible, particularly for a Bowie fan, to even hear all that he's recorded enough times to go to that length. Not the ease in 1978. Bowie only had about a dozen albums out. There was no internet, no downloads or search engines, no deluxe editions. Outtakes, then only on bootleg LPs or via tape swapping, were hard to come by if they existed at all, There was roughly twelve hours (or less) of Bowie recordings readily available. The Bowie Fast makes total sense.
Here's three covers and a link to a collection of more outtakes, demos and the like. Margaret, hope you like :)
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Yep, another Holiday Slackfest All-Star, the GFOS, once a year whether you need it or not. These reposts are getting to be a season all their own. Really though, were you gonna listen to these in July?
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Joseph Spence, I gotta. Even if I'm not in the mood for writing much, I can't risk forgetting him. He's like Darlene Love was a few years back, a different style but also a go-to holiday favorite. If you haven't heard him, when you do you'll know immediately what makes him so special. If I have to spell it out for you, to put it bluntly, he sounds like he's drunk off his ass.
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Back in the day, a lot of my friends from the music scene were into the Pogues and, looking back, I realized that there was a certain type of person that liked the band. I can't really put my finger on it but it was beyond the binary cool/not cool classification. It was like a secret that this small slice of the scene "got" while others were trying too hard to be the coolest in the room. I started thinking about those friends, some now deceased, and got all warm and fuzzy, remembering the Christmas Eve DJ gigs my friend Julie and I had (at the Pink Panther and later the Casbah) and the reaction that "Fairytale of New York" would get whether we played it or one of our DJ friends did.. All of the faces of drunk friends, cigarette smoke softening the view, a few on the plywood covered pool table that did double duty as a dance floor when things got crowded. Shane MacGowan was one of us on those nights.
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Last Wednesday morning when I saw the election results, in my head I heard the opening eight seconds of the Stooges "TV Eye". If you know the song, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't know the song, get with the program (song link below, play loud). After the initial shock I remembered what helped in 2016 when the fuckhead was elected the first time. The clip from the film Animal House with John Belushi as Bluto (below). The image above was done in 2016 by Jamie Reid, the guy who did all of the Sex Pistol's graphics including the iconic "God Save the Queen" sleeve.
There's a few additional unrelated cuts from the Stooge's Fun House down there too, perfect for pulling your hair out. Play loud. Then turn it up.
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How do you rid your life of a major asshole that's been whining for years? It's simple. Vote. No candidate is perfect. Vote for the one that will do the most good for the most people. It's not all about you.
