So, the shopping spree at Ugly Things mentioned the other day included two back issues of Ugly Things, a book of Bomp magazine reprints and Look Out, an excellent compilation of San Diego bands from 1958 -1973. This spree was saturated. Any one of the items arriving in my mail box would have been be a treat. It's going to take a while to digest all of it.
One thing I was looking forward to was an in depth interview with the Weirdos in an Ugly Things back issue. I'd been meaning to pick it up for a while and knowing how thoroughly Ugly Things covers bands I expected it to be good. It was excellent. Eighteen pages with a lot of shit I didn't know. I've followed the band from their first few months of existence and I've read at a half dozen books on the early L.A. punk scene and countless fanzines over the years. Nothing I've read yet comes close to this interview. To the few of you that are Weirdos people, that issue of UT is marked down. Snag it before they're gone, and by the way, if you know the Weirdos, you likely know the Screamers. There's another back issue with a length interview with them (by Jon Savage).
The Weirdos interview whipped me into a Weirdos binge. The OG Weirdos, with both Denny brothers, Cliff Roman and Nicky Beat. The early videos linked below carry that line up. Tonight's long video is more recent, but better quality and one thing that stands out is how well they hold it together with just one guitarist. It's not easy mixing chords with short licks where they need to be, and Dix Denny does a great job.
One thing about the Weirdos. There's no one like them. Particularly the earliest incarnations. They were as much what they were as what they were not. They were out there, always serious on stage despite some of their songs being kind of silly. And they were tight, and intense. I haven't seen them in the last few years, but I've seen them in different line-ups over the course of decades and it has always been a hoot and a half. I'm not sure if you can get that from the videos, but regardless they're a slice of L.A. punk history. There were a lot of good punk bands in L.A. back in the day and the Weirdos were one of the best.
It started innocently enough. I saw a thing on a friend's Facebook feed mentioning a compilation of San Diego bands from 1958 - 1973. A couple selling points: a 1973 cut by a band called Glory who were popular when I was way too young to go see bands. They're still talked about today as being the absolute shit back then. Once I did get older I met a couple of the members through my brother but still had never heard them. So, yee haw, I'll finally know what the fuss was about. The other selling point was the inclusion of the Strangers' "Caterpillar Crawl" (1958) a song that the Rumblers "borrowed" from for their song "Boss". Those two were enough of a reason to bite, the fact that it included 30 other local bands that I've never heard sealed the deal. I headed to the Ugly Things website. Shit was about to get thick.
Ugly Things started as a photocopied and stapled fanzine in the early eighties. The editor, Mike Stax, is a Brit who moved to the U.S. in 1981 to join the Crawdaddys and has been a scene fixture ever since. In 1983 he published the first issue of Ugly Things (he's big on the Pretty Things), and shortly after that was in the Tell-Tale Hearts. Ugly Things started taking off and I think there were a couple other bands in here someplace. Several years later he's now in the Loons, the magazine is now more like a book, and the website is going full bore. He still writes liner notes for compilations and has an Ugly Things record label. Just three of the 45s I' ve scooped up: The reissue of the Sloths' "Makin' Love" (500 pressed), the second Schitzophonics 45 (500 pressed), and the Nashville Ramblers' "The Trains" (1000 pressed).
Okay, so I went on a shopping spree over at Ugly Things. Four items. More on that later. I want to wrap this up before dinner so rather than switching gears and moving on to posting some songs, I thought I'd take an opportunity to post some links to musician owned labels. If you are going to do some holiday shopping anyway, these sites are are a great alternative to behemoths like Amazon. They also have oddities you're not going to find on bigger sites.
Support the true fiends:
Ugly Things
Mike Stax profile at SD Reader
Norton Records
Voodoo Rhythm Records
Swami Records
A few things made me take a breather the last couple of days, not the least of which was taking out Stevie Wonder's Innervisions LP and blasting it. Loud, right smack dab between the speakers, dancing, or at least moving, eyes closed to "Too High". That started it. Man, what a monster to open an LP with. Two things occurred to me. One was that the LP was packed. Besides the opener, it had "Living In the City", "Higher Ground", "Don't You Worry 'bout A Thing" and "Golden Lady", all ingrained in my head. But I hadn't really listened to any of the LP closely for a long time. Then the second thing occurred to me. Despite posting somewhat regularly, I hadn't been spending enough time listening to music intently for my own personal pleasure. Fuggit, had me a two day listening party. It felt good.
My introduction to Martin Denny came through thrift stores. When I started making the rounds in my mid-late teens, Martin Denny LPs were in every fucking one of them. At the time my crowd was the guys from the beach. Guys. We were a bit too geeky, not cool enough, so few of us had regular girlfriends and those that did wouldn't think of bringing them to the beach. This freed us up to be uncivilized. It wasn't like we we were going to get laid any less. Socially, we had nothing to loose, so we got into some oddball shit. Going to the thrift stores and succumbing to Martin Denny's omnipresence was a rite of passage. 
Most of you have probably scrounged around thrift stores and garage sales for records at one time or another. Some of you probably make the rounds regularly. I'd wager a guess that most of you have become attached to some of those records over the years and think of them as part of the playlist of your life. I know I've got it bad for some of my scores. But, you know, the vast majority of the second hand gambles end up in the box in the closet.
One record I got long ago was bought solely because of the title, or one word in the title. I knew of Bob and Earl's smooth "Harlem Shuffle", the song the Stones covered years later (and not well). I was familiar with that, so when I ran into "Harlem Nocturne" by the Viscounts I gambled a dime. Just because it had the word "Harlem" in the title. I'm glad I did because that song has remained a favorite for decades. In fact, when I used to DJ at clubs, it was always the last song I played.
The Viscounts version isn't the original but it's the first and only version I heard for years, then I heard Earl Bostic's. Still I dug the Viscounts more. Then the internet happened and I now know that there's a zillion versions. Still, the Viscounts has a unique feel to me. There's 43 versions of the song at an old post on Beware of the Blog, a lot of them serious contenders.
A year and a half ago I linked to a song by Mythic Sunship (above), posted by the plain Jane but always awesome For the Sake of the Song. My chops wet, I went to look for a physical copy. Zilch. Every copy I ran into, even CDs were out of my price range. And I hadn't lagged, I was on the hunt right away. Eventually, after months of periodically checking a major online retailer, I saw a new copy for sale by an independent seller that didn't cost half a paycheck. The LP, Another Shape of Psychedelic Music, was worth the wait.
Then last July the same blog posted a live version of the same song. Being that the first link I posted was dead, I figured I'd point it out to you again. Then, I forgot all about it. Until today. I ran into a track by another outfit on the same label. When I dug around on the labels site I ran into another outfit, the Ellis/Munk Ensemble, from right here in San Diego. I had no clue. I really need to get out more. He said in the middle of a pandemic. On the very day that restrictions were tightened.
I'm not sure what might be the equivalent these days, but buying a random independently released 45 back in the day whas a crap shoot. Because the number pressed was so low, and so few record stores stocked independent releases (particularly from out of town bands), they weren't that plentiful. So if there was a future all-time great, word would take a while to get out. You had to take chances with unknown bands. You just considered the cover, band name, song titles, and general attitude of the package, and weighed the odds. You couldn't run to the internet and, depending on the record store, you weren't likely to get them to spin every record that caught your eye. The were usually a couple bucks.
The Urinals cuts below brought all that back, and after looking for an image I was reminded how half assed their sleeves were. (The sleeve above is from an earlier 45. The one for the songs below is worse.) So, you're in a record store, you never heard of them. Two bucks? Why the hell not?
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| The Rumblers in action |
Like most people my age, I first heard Dr. John from his one hit, "Right Place, Wrong Time", back about a thousand years ago. I knew vaguely about his whole Night Tripper persona and his roots in New Orleans. That was about it. Piano wasn't my thing. I didn't know then that he had started out as a guitar player. If I remember the story correctly, he switched to piano after having a part of a finger shot off at a rough gig in a rough club in a rough neighborhood. Something like that. That's neither here nor there, other that it proves Dr. John the Night Tripper was good at making lemonade.
I came across a Dr. John song that I hadn't heard before at Melting Pot, "What Goes Around Comes Around". It's a damn good song, good enough to just add some others that have been posted in the past and call it a night. Distractions are everywhere tonight, not the least of which is the election results dribbling in. I can still feel the pit of my stomach after hearing the election results the morning after the last Presidential election. As bad as I felt that day, it was before knowing just how badly the newly elected president would fuck things up, and just how fucking inept he would prove to be. Dude hasn't even looked at home plate, let alone step up to it. He didn't spend time even trying to do the job, any job really. He wakes up, does his little teenage Twitter thing and then calls his friends on the Fox morning show, and then waits for them to spill the latest crackpot conspiracy theories, tell him what Democratic governor to rag about, again all in teenage fashion. Then he golfs. That's not the end of my rant. [Exhale.]
I will now chill to Dr. John. But before I forget, the other distractions tonight are the Red Kelly Index, a rabbit hole I'm going right back to after I'm done here, and Melting Pot, the site that's hosting the cut. Bookmark them, both sites are exhaustive.Another distraction is the burritos that are cooking right now. I'm starving, distracted, anxious and lazy tonight. But, hey, I could wake up tomorrow with the four year nightmare nearly over.
Listen:
Dr. John - What Goes Around Comes Around mp3 at Melting Pot
Mac Rebennack - Storm Warning (streaming) at YouTube Dr. John, age 18. on guitar.
Dr. John - Right Place Wrong Time mp3 at Billy Chic (?)
Dr. John - Big Chief mp3 at Le Mellotron
Dr. John - Gris Gris Gumbo Ya Ya mp3 at Essentially Eclectic
Dr. John - Quatre Parishe mp3 at David Fullmer (?)
To many people there was only one James Bond, Sean Connery. He was the first and he passed away yesterday at the age of ninety. I'm not such a Bond freak that I won't watch a James Bond film with another actor cast as Bond, but they really aren't quite the same. If you haven't seen any of the Bond flicks, I suggest you start at the beginning with Dr. No and if you dig it follow it up with From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, and You Only Live Twice. Those are the first five, all with Connery. They had all the cool gimmicks and effects of the day, that look hokey and antiquated now. But the sets, cars, babes, wardrobe, villains, locations,...shit, so much of those first Bond movies have been mined for cool, still today over fifty years later. Sean Connery was ninety so his passing isn't all that alarming, just hope it was as good a run as it seems to have been.
