WHAT THE HELL WOULD THIS SMELL LIKE?

I just ran into Sun Ra branded perfume at Norton Records. Ostensibly a promotional tool for a Sun Ra book, I can think of several uses regardless of what it smells like. You could put on your knick knack shelf and just wait until someone notices how cool you are. Or you could put it in the medicine cabinet so everybody thinks you have a girlfriend that has excellent taste in wacked out interplanetary jazz. Or you could use it as a litmus test. Just leave it laying around when you're just starting to date someone. If they see it and ask who Sun Ra is, BAHHHHHH! [game show wrong answer buzzer], save yourself the agony of grooming their musical tastes.  If, on the other hand, they get excited when they see it, jackpot! Get down on one knee, take their hand, look them in the eye and ask them, with all the sincerity that the occasion demands, "Do you have a mint copy of 'Rocket Number Nine'?"

Programing note: I have a friend visiting from out of town, so I may not be updating for a couple days. But, heck, there's 2,970 posts here. Dig around. You may find something you haven't heard before.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Sun Ra - Seen III Took 4 mp3 at Rising Storm 1970 Sun Ra discovers the synthesizer
Sun Ra - Music From the World Tomorrow mp3 at Rock Town Hall 1956
Sun Ra - Angels and Devils at Play mp3 at Rock Town Hall 1956
Sun Ra - There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of) mp3 at Melting Pot
Sun Ra - Rocket Number Nine (streaming) at YouTube Six minute version

REEDER, S.Q.REEDER.

If you aren't familiar with the guy above, with the piled high hair, you'd be tempted to think he was ripping off Little Richard. You'd be wrong. Esquerita was a contemporary of Richard's and they first met before either had made it big. One of them would, make it big, the other was just a little too wild. Per The Hound (Jim Marshall), a guy who knows more about these things than you or I put together, "S.Q. [Esquerita] taught him his thundering piano style, this would be the key element in Little Richard's development of the style that would take him to the top of the charts." That tells you which one made it big. Esquerita was too out there to make a dent.  

Today, a nice surprise, an email from Norton Records that contained a link to a free download, a biography and discography of Esquirita, 48 pages. Haven't read it yet, but it's likely the most thorough Esquerita guide there is. I never thought I'd see anything lengthier then The Hound's awesome post. Between that, and the Esquerita re-issues and unreleased records put out by Norton, I considered myself set. This is some awesome icing. Put together by Big Beat magazine (per Norton "alias the French Esquerita Fan Club"). Dig it.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Esquerita - Good Golly Annie Mae mp3 at Rockabilly Hall
Esquerita - The Rock Around mp3 at Rockabilly Hall
Esquerita - Hole In My Heart mp3 at Rocky 52
Esquerita - Rockin' the Joint mp3 at Rocky 52
Esquerita - Crazy Crazy Feeling mp3 at Rocky 52
The book:
Esquerita! The True, the False and Some Mysteries! at Big Beat
Visit:
Esquerita - Bio at The Hound Blog

Buy:
Esquerita LPs at Norton Records

SHIT WEEK CONTINUES

I just ran into a post saying that Billy Miller died yesterday. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. This one hurts. Miller wasn't a person so far removed from people like us. Having a beer with him seemed like a genuine possibility, if ever in the same bar. He was co-editor, with Miriam Linna, of one the earliest of the ultra-fiend type zines, Kicks, and co-founder, with Linna, of Norton Records, specializing in the crazy, wild, rare, underappreciated and overlooked.

He had a way with words in those Kicks magazines, and I still have some of his lingo in my lexicon, decades after the first read ("Whoa Dad!", "jiggle club", etc). Never mind the music I was turned onto. Holy shit. Hasil Adkins, Esquerita, Ronnie Dawson, Chan Romero, Mighty Hannibal...where do you start? I learned of dozens and dozens of bands from the pages of Kicks, and later the Norton label. Just thinking of all the music that would have just rotted away in some dusty old box of tape if not for him and Linna. The records that you'd never hear because there were only 1500 pressed on some podunk label 50 years ago in some shithole town, reissued with only us nut cases in mind. He did a good thing getting all that music out there and keeping the fires lit.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Esquerita - Crazy, Crazy Feeling mp3 at Rocky 52
Hasil Adkins - She Said mp3 at Beware of the Blog
Chan Romero - Hippy Hippy Shake mp3 at Mp3 Rockabilly
Ronnie Dawson - Rockin' Bones mp3 at Mp3 Rockabilly
Visit:
Billy Miller, Curator and Historian of Fringe Music, Dies at 62 at NY Times
Miriam Linna and Billy Miller - Norton Records - Interview at Dust and Grooves
Lengthy interview with Billy Miller at Turn It Down This is excellent: Kicks, Norton Records, Esquerita and Hasil Adkins
Norton Records

A TIP OF THE HAT TO YOUR SPOUSE

I don't remember how I ended up there, but today I found myself on the blog of Miriam Linna, Kicksville 66. If you don't know the name, she's one half of Norton Records, one half of Kicks Magazine, which can only mean one thing, she's one half of Billy Miller and Miriam Linna, two of the most passionate rock n' roll fiends to have ever entered my sphere of cognition. If you've never read the now-defunct Kicks magazine (their first joint effort), any description that I can offer wouldn't be sufficient. (But, like most things I'm not sufficiently good at, I'll try anyways.)

It was a rather haphazardly laid out magazine, that was all about regular good ol' fashioned rock n' roll. By that I mean, they made no effort to present anything current, unless it was part of a lineage of rockers, you know, as in fifties real-thing rockers. It had word balloons here and there, all sorts of oddball in joke references in hand written captions that you wouldn't get unless you delved a little bit more into their world, a world in which Chan Romero was a household name, and Hasil Adkins was as authentic as Link Wray, Jerry Lee Lewis, or the Sonics. It was packed, every primitive square inch of it, and the writing, casual as it was, made it seem like you were shooting the shit with them over a beer. It was, and still is, my favorite music magazine ever, and I'm loath to admit that I only have one of my issues left. (It you want to see what the fuss is about, they have remaining copies of the last issue for sale here.)


Billy Miller and Miriam Linna's band, the A-Bones

So, that's why I'm a little giddy. One of my favorite rock n' roll writers has a blog that I didn't even know about until today. It's not a normal must-update-today type blog, it is, in her terms, "what life was like in NYC in the seventies, at least for one awkward kid from the boondocks" (the boondocks being Kent, Ohio). What makes it an interesting read, besides her writing, is that Linna was dialed in. Before moving to New York, she was pals with Peter Laughner (Rocket From the Tombs), and various pre-Pere Ubu members and pre-Dead Boys members. And, right after moving to New York, she was the drummer for the Cramps, for their first year of existence. She was the president of the Flaming Groovies fan club, saw the Stooges in '73, received two original still sealed Sonics LPs for her birthday from Lux Interior, and basically ran with a crowd that knew shit from shinola. It's like a scrapbook, with a lot of words and a lot of memories; a memoir in blog format. A five star time suck.



I haven't even touched on the record label, Norton Records (which is excellent), or the current band she's in (with Miller), the A-Bones. Another post perhaps. Here's some semi-related stuff: songs the A-Bones covered, Cramps influenced mixes, and a bunch of Miriam Linna/Billy Miller links at the bottom. Note: I couldn't find any mp3s of the A-Bones.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Songs the A-Bones cover:
The MC5 - One of the Guys mp3 at Beware of the Blog
Screamin' Jay Hawkins - All Night mp3 at Beware of the Blog
Sentinals - The Bee mp3 at Beware of the Blog
16 more songs the A-Bones cover at Beware of the Blog
Norton Records artists:
Hasil Adkins - She Said mp3 at Beware of the Blog
The Hentchmen - All About Girls at Ghetto Recorders
Post Linna Cramps (she never recorded with them):
The Cramps - I Was A Teenage Werewolf mp3 at Zdanz
The Cramps - Tear It Up mp3 at Lost Turntable
The Cramps - Fever mp3 at Zdanz
The Cramps - I Can't Hardly Stand It mp3 at Zdanz
Lux & Ivy's Favorites - 11 full length mixes (in zips) at Beware of the Blog Cramps influences, many of them covered.
Read:
Kicksville 66 - the blog of Miriam Linna
Miriam Linna at Wikipedia
Norton Records
Nortonville - Norton Records blog
Interview with Billy Miller and Miriam Linna about their involvement with Hasil Adkins
Added 2/1/11:
Lengthy interview with Billy Miller at Turn It Down This is excellent: Kicks, Norton Records, Esquerita and Hasil Adkins.

NO MORE HOT DOGS

I recently came across a post on Living in Stereo, in which the author wrote about a day when he mentioned to his class of college composition students that it was Chuck Berry's 80th birthday (the post was from 2006). He was dismayed that not one of them knew who he was. It was a great post, and it got me thinking; not of Chuck Berry, but for some reason, my brother Tim and Hasil Adkins. A weird correlation, I know, but follow me here.

My brother loved to do things just to tweak a person's everyday experience. An example: one time I was in Tower Records with him, and he was an aisle over. He walked up to a total stranger, with an album picked at random, and said "You should really get this one. It's an excellent record. I think you'll like it." Of course, the person had a totally puzzled look on his face, and may have thought my brother was a kook. This didn't matter a bit to Tim. All he cared about was that the guy undoubtedly walked away wondering what the fuck that was all about.

It was when my brother's prankster switch turned on. Opportunities to change a person's preconceived notions of what's normal. Wouldn't it have been great, I thought, if Tim had the opportunity that this college teacher had? After finding out the students had no clue who Chuck Berry was, he probably would have done something like convince the impressionable students, with no knowledge of early rock n' roll, that Hasil Adkins was, in all actuality, a significant rock n' roll figure. Their ignorance essentially left them as blank canvases, and, knowing Tim, he would have taken full advantage of that. Not just to fuck with them, but to send them out into the world thinking that Hasil Adkins was the shit. Which, of course, he was. Tim convinced me of that long ago. Hasil Adkins was a significant figure, not Chuck Berry significant, but significant nonetheless.

He and I first heard about "the Haze" in the pages of Kicks magazine, which had a decent run of about thirteen years (79-92). It was crudely laid out, with the feel of a scrapbook, but with incredibly informative and often hilarious text. There were only seven issues, but they were packed. The folks that put it out, Billy Miller and Miriam Linna started a record label, Norton Records, and reissued oddball records, including Hasil Adkin's early stuff. They really had the goods (and still do). Tim bought the "Out to Hunch" LP, and was off to the races. He loved turning people onto it.

I have a picture of Hasil Adkins on my bulletin board, that was put there, conservatively, about 19 years ago, right about the time Hazemania hit Chatsworth Blvd. It was from an old Kicks magazine. Back then, I wrote "Cut yo head off" on it, because that was a line in "No More Hot Dogs," which was one of Tim's favorites, and that was a line he often repeated. Often. Oh yeah, another endearing quirk of Tim's was repeating the odd lyric, or even a line from a friend's dialog or prank phone call, out of context, and often. "Mr. Egyptian, you're a goddamn liar." "You look like a clown." "It would be an honor sir." "No Nazis in the ice cream!" "Let's go somewhere else to mix the drinks." "Pertainin' to..." "No go diggy di." He had a lot of them. And more than a few came from Hasil Adkins.

Hasil Adkins - She Said, and The Hunch mp3s at Kogar's Jungle Juice
Hasil Adkins - No More Hot Dogs mp3 (+ video) at Fuck Yeah Go Team
Hasil Adkins - The Great Lost Album at Beware of the Blog
Hasil Adkins' Official Site Hasil Adkin at Wikipedia
The Hasil Adkins Hazequarters: Interviews with Billy Miller and Miriam Linna, and Hasil Adkins
Norton Records
Norton Records at Wikipedia