GEORGE JONES: Shine
On LP (EPIC) The
Pizzossum in the hizzouse! I don't listen to his records
for ironic reasons, or to celebrate alcoholism. I listen
for one reason only: his voice. One of a kind, instantly
recognizable. I bought this album because Clay Leverett
down in Athens, GA broke my heart one night at a karaoke
bar called Foxz (sic) by singing a rendition of "Tennessee
Whiskey" that had all the older folks squeezing each
other tight out on the dance floor. When I saw this album
a couple years later, selling for three bucks at your basic
lame-ass nouveau antique store (this one in Lincoln, NE,
but they're all exactly the same), I checked for "Tennessee
Whiskey." It was song four on side one, so I bought
the damn thing immediately. I was surprised and slightly
dismayed that the song was on there, because the album had
modern-looking graphics and a copyright date of 1983; my
purist hate for Nashville's radio-swamping nu-country Pop
Muzak had me convinced that for country music to be good
at all, it had to be released before 1980 at the latest.
Of course that's bullshit, though I have to admit this isn't
a great album. Mr. Leverett's version of "Tennessee
Whiskey" was definitely better than the one on here.
It's still a finely written song, and the punchline of the
chorus ("you're as smooth as Tennessee whiskey, and
I stay stoned on your love all the time") is as humorously
crass (dare I say white trash???) of a metaphor to describe
being in love with someone as you're gonna hear in the Pop
spectrum.
Speaking of which, the first
line sung on the album, from the title-track opener, is
pretty damn funny too. After a maudlin but frankly beautiful
wash of pedal steel and strings, The Voice of the Possum
tells us about his girl: "She'll never grace the centerfold
of Playboy Magazine..." (You don't say, George!) "...and
chances are you'll never see her on the silver screen..."
(yeah, yeah, I feel ya) "...but she's by far the biggest
star/the world will never see..." (not a bad bit of
downhome wordplay, one thing country music is always good
for, even at its very worst) "...but she don't shine
for the rest of the world/she's too busy shinin' on me."
Alright! Depicting your lover as a star that's busy shining
on you is kind of a lovely image. I wouldn't describe this
record as a 'lost classic,' but it does have its moments.
What the hell, it's just George Jones's 39th album. (Actually,
I justed checked allmusic.com
and it's his 81st .....a lot of hit packages and
what not in there, but still...)
COMETS
ON FIRE LP (COMETS ON FIRE) The
first song "All I Need" reminds me of Foghat,
and that is NOT an insult. Because it takes good things
about Foghat -- the comic-book groove and the sassy distorted
vocals (cf. "I Just Wanna Make Love To You") --
and turns it up from 11 to at least 22. In fact, if I was
a typical critic, I'd call it Foghat meets High Rise. And
I probably am, so there ya go. And really the whole thing
falls pretty near that intersection -- superfuzz attack,
manic boogie tempos, crazed vocals, and a full-time "echoplex"
player making your speakers sound broken. I like it because
it's unabashedly BOOGIE ROCK. I'm sure typical critics (besides
me) would throw around the term "stoner rock,"
but I'd throw it right back because this is much too manic
for that. It doesn't even slow down until the end of side
one, for "Rimbaud Blues." Side Two is pretty much
all frantic, although I'm not quite sure what they were
thinking by covering "Back in the U.S.S.R." for
the closer. Either way, it's kind of refreshing to hear
actual high energy coming out of the whole silk-screened
hand-pressed limited-edition psych vinyl scene. They live
in Santa Cruz, California, and they pressed up 500 vinyl
copies of this release, with, yes, hand-printed and silkscreened
covers. I bet they're good live. For copies, e-mail hogtiedd@aol.com.
THURSTON MOORE/TOM SURGAL/BECK:
Kill Any/All Spin Personnel CS (FREEDOM FROM) It's
funny that with all the great Freedom From releases out
there, this one is destined to be their best-seller, because
it's just not that great. Thurston Moore and Tom Surgal
can play improvised gtr/drums duets quite well (see the
Klangenfarb-enmelodie CD on Corpus Hermeticum and
the really nice Lydia's Moth b/w Not Me 10-inch/CD
on some British label), but here, with the addition of Beck
prankstering around and playing blues licks (not to mention
Eddie Van Halen fingertapping), things don't reach those
heights. There's a couple roaring/screaming sections that
sound like Hendrix's coda for "Machine Gun" live
at the Fillmore East, but not only are the three musicians
rarely on the same page, they seem to be reading different
books altogether. I remember in a posting to a list-serv,
Freedom From CEO B. Mots begging potential customers "please,
please order something besides just the Thurston Moore tape."
On the Freedom From website, the blurb for the tape said
"power electronics at their worst" and seemed
to mean it. Eventually, he started charging $7 for it while
other cassettes were only $3 or $4. (Funny story: just this
month, I saw an ad from a British label that had also put
out a Moore cassette which actually made it AGAINST THE
RULES for customers to order only that one.) It's probably
still selling anyway, but really, this is the kind of thing
that gives cassette labels, and Sonic Youth side projects,
their oft-undeserved bad reputations.
ASHTRAY
NAVIGATIONS: Live at Wolf Central CS (FREEDOM FROM) This
tape is kinda freaking me out because in the right channel
it sounds fine but in the left channel there's this crazy
warbling/strobing effect going on. I've been having trouble
with my left speaker anyway, so I just got back there and
investigated and tried plugging it in better, etc., and
I seemed to get it working fine on other records and the
radio, but then I put the tape back on and it's still warbling/strobing
like crazy! I really doubt it's intentional because I find
it renders the tape unlistenable. Which is too bad, because
in the right channel it sounds like a real nice langurous
space/cloud thing with vaguely oriental chiming and haze
goin' on, like Ash Nav always serve up. They're one of those
bands that after a certain two or three records (in this
case Four Raga Moods and Triste Tropiques
and the Siltbreeze LP) I never feel like I need to hear
anything else by, but when I do hear something else, I always
like it a lot. Nice color artwork that stands out in a crowd
of tapes.
CHRISTINA
CARTER: L'etoile de Mer CS (FREEDOM FROM) I'm
trying to review this tape but Angelina just went and turned
it completely off because it reminds her of Patty Waters.
I once saw her literally flee from a record store because
they were playing College Tour, and this tape is
bringing back those memories for her. I don't get it, you'd
think she'd be all into the 'sistas doin' it for themselves'
and all that, but for some reason when a woman gets avant
with the wordless, high-pitched 'curved syllable' steelo
it just freaks her out. She actually thinks it's some sort
of internal biological reaction...or no, she just put it
a little more succinctly: "It fucks with my mind."
Well, even though I love
the music myself, I can understand where she's coming from.
This stuff is a little freaky. Freedom
From themselves said about this one: "...frankly
their music scares the shit out of me, and this release
is as spooky as they come!...the spaces, not the sounds,
are what leaves one contemplating What's around the corner,
and is it going to KILL me?"He means that "in
the !most! complimentary manner," and I agree with
everything he says. I guess me and him don't mind getting
our minds fucked with as much. This tape does it well, but
it's also a quite calm and quiet affair, with Ms. Carter's
deep-listening guitar chime and wordless devotional singing
given a perfectly wide-open space in which to sit and do
its thing. Note: the occasional extra-wobbly guitar sound
is NOT your tape deck fucking up. It's actually a pretty
effective performance and/or post-production trick.
The
Pizzossum in the hizzouse! I don't listen to his records
for ironic reasons, or to celebrate alcoholism. I listen
for one reason only: his voice. One of a kind, instantly
recognizable. I bought this album because Clay Leverett
down in Athens, GA broke my heart one night at a karaoke
bar called Foxz (sic) by singing a rendition of "Tennessee
Whiskey" that had all the older folks squeezing each
other tight out on the dance floor. When I saw this album
a couple years later, selling for three bucks at your basic
lame-ass nouveau antique store (this one in Lincoln, NE,
but they're all exactly the same), I checked for "Tennessee
Whiskey." It was song four on side one, so I bought
the damn thing immediately. I was surprised and slightly
dismayed that the song was on there, because the album had
modern-looking graphics and a copyright date of 1983; my
purist hate for Nashville's radio-swamping nu-country Pop
Muzak had me convinced that for country music to be good
at all, it had to be released before 1980 at the latest.
Of course that's bullshit, though I have to admit this isn't
a great album. Mr. Leverett's version of "Tennessee
Whiskey" was definitely better than the one on here.
It's still a finely written song, and the punchline of the
chorus ("you're as smooth as Tennessee whiskey, and
I stay stoned on your love all the time") is as humorously
crass (dare I say white trash???) of a metaphor to describe
being in love with someone as you're gonna hear in the Pop
spectrum. 
The
first song "All I Need" reminds me of Foghat,
and that is NOT an insult. Because it takes good things
about Foghat -- the comic-book groove and the sassy distorted
vocals (cf. "I Just Wanna Make Love To You") --
and turns it up from 11 to at least 22. In fact, if I was
a typical critic, I'd call it Foghat meets High Rise. And
I probably am, so there ya go. And really the whole thing
falls pretty near that intersection -- superfuzz attack,
manic boogie tempos, crazed vocals, and a full-time "echoplex"
player making your speakers sound broken. I like it because
it's unabashedly BOOGIE ROCK. I'm sure typical critics (besides
me) would throw around the term "stoner rock,"
but I'd throw it right back because this is much too manic
for that. It doesn't even slow down until the end of side
one, for "Rimbaud Blues." Side Two is pretty much
all frantic, although I'm not quite sure what they were
thinking by covering "Back in the U.S.S.R." for
the closer. Either way, it's kind of refreshing to hear
actual high energy coming out of the whole silk-screened
hand-pressed limited-edition psych vinyl scene. They live
in Santa Cruz, California, and they pressed up 500 vinyl
copies of this release, with, yes, hand-printed and silkscreened
covers. I bet they're good live. For copies, e-mail 
It's
funny that with all the great Freedom From releases out
there, this one is destined to be their best-seller, because
it's just not that great. Thurston Moore and Tom Surgal
can play improvised gtr/drums duets quite well (see the
Klangenfarb-enmelodie CD on Corpus Hermeticum and
the really nice Lydia's Moth b/w Not Me 10-inch/CD
on some British label), but here, with the addition of Beck
prankstering around and playing blues licks (not to mention
Eddie Van Halen fingertapping), things don't reach those
heights. There's a couple roaring/screaming sections that
sound like Hendrix's coda for "Machine Gun" live
at the Fillmore East, but not only are the three musicians
rarely on the same page, they seem to be reading different
books altogether. I remember in a posting to a list-serv,
Freedom From CEO B. Mots begging potential customers "please,
please order something besides just the Thurston Moore tape."
On the Freedom From website, the blurb for the tape said
"power electronics at their worst" and seemed
to mean it. Eventually, he started charging $7 for it while
other cassettes were only $3 or $4. (Funny story: just this
month, I saw an ad from a British label that had also put
out a Moore cassette which actually made it AGAINST THE
RULES for customers to order only that one.) It's probably
still selling anyway, but really, this is the kind of thing
that gives cassette labels, and Sonic Youth side projects,
their oft-undeserved bad reputations. 
This
tape is kinda freaking me out because in the right channel
it sounds fine but in the left channel there's this crazy
warbling/strobing effect going on. I've been having trouble
with my left speaker anyway, so I just got back there and
investigated and tried plugging it in better, etc., and
I seemed to get it working fine on other records and the
radio, but then I put the tape back on and it's still warbling/strobing
like crazy! I really doubt it's intentional because I find
it renders the tape unlistenable. Which is too bad, because
in the right channel it sounds like a real nice langurous
space/cloud thing with vaguely oriental chiming and haze
goin' on, like Ash Nav always serve up. They're one of those
bands that after a certain two or three records (in this
case Four Raga Moods and Triste Tropiques
and the Siltbreeze LP) I never feel like I need to hear
anything else by, but when I do hear something else, I always
like it a lot. Nice color artwork that stands out in a crowd
of tapes. 
I'm
trying to review this tape but Angelina just went and turned
it completely off because it reminds her of Patty Waters.
I once saw her literally flee from a record store because
they were playing College Tour, and this tape is
bringing back those memories for her. I don't get it, you'd
think she'd be all into the 'sistas doin' it for themselves'
and all that, but for some reason when a woman gets avant
with the wordless, high-pitched 'curved syllable' steelo
it just freaks her out. She actually thinks it's some sort
of internal biological reaction...or no, she just put it
a little more succinctly: "It fucks with my mind."
