BLASTITUDE.COM

RECORDS X
by Larry "Fuzz-O" Dolman

"The heart will either rise, or it won't."
-- George Saunders, The Believer #11

Good ole Eclipse Records sent one of the finest boxes
I've ever received!

SUN CITY GIRLS 2LP
We might as well start with the third installment (of
a projected ten) in the Sun City Girls Cloaven
Cassettes reissue project. Tackled is one of the very
best of the Cloaven Cassettes, a little number called
The Fresh Kill of a Cape Hunting Dog. Vinylized are
two essential early SCG pieces, the vicious rant-jam
called "I Told You So" which sounds like Alvarius B
sitting in with the Pink Fairies, and the more or less
RB solo piece called "Nile Hilton Burning."

MARISSA NADLER LP
Holy cow, that's a great LP cover! Super spooky. Looks
like black metal, or something out of Japanese horror
cinema, but it's a psych-tinged singer-songwriter folk
LP. As we all know, psych-tinged folk is getting
fairly marketable these days, but this is a remarkably
low-key and easy-going LP, with no screechy voices or
gratuitous instrumentation to help sell it. In fact,
the first time I listened I wasn't sure a whole lot
was going on, and it sounded kind of 'straight,' like
it could've sold to James Taylor fans in 1977, but at
the end of side two I found myself promptly flipping
it over and spinning it again and the tunes and vibes
began to insinuate. This is a very nice moody
mid-range LP.

500MG LP

WATERSPORTS CS
This tape came with stickers over the, you know, the tape holes, on both sides, so I had to like punch through the sticker just to get the tape in the tape-deck, and use an exacto knife to dig in there and get the sticker paper out so it doesn't play fucked up. Now it's working, but I can still hear a big CLICK come from the tape deck every 5 seconds or so. The CLICK is louder than the music, which has a very low-key start. Some sort of crowd/audience sample, followed by very low-key feedback and fuzz. This music is by Russ Waterhouse, longtime member of The SB and proprieter of this classic label (White Tapes), and a woman named .

GOMPERS zine (a/k/a NIGHT MOVES); A DANGEROUS GAME zine; GHOST PRESS zine
Out of nowhere after like three years in the making comes this fairly slim and uncleanly laid out zine on crappy newsprint to almost totally revive my faith in words about music printed on paper. This was put out by the Bay Area 'spockmorgue posse', principally by writer/funnyman Mike McGuirk, whose writing memorably graces the pages of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He's kind of Meltzer-esque, I guess you could say, and this zine is pretty Meltzer-esque, filled with absurdity and misinformation and non-sequitirs, but unlike most writers that are post-Meltzer (including a good half of Meltzer himself), it's not to AVOID writing about music because it's 'dead' or some bullshit, but to SNEAK UP BEHIND music and give it a big bear-hug, because this magazine still loves music and it knows that there is and always will be music somewhere and somehow that is truly, truly . . . ALIVE. (Can I get an amen? Two times?) The funny thing is I don't really like ANY of these bands (there I said it) but I probably would love 'em all if I lived in the Bay Area because these people seem great and full of life.

Also from San Fran is a zine called A Dangerous Game, the creation of one Will York, who also shows up here and there in Gompers; in fact, the Nandor Nevai interview appears in both mags pretty much word for word, and you can buy both mags two-for-the-price-of-one from Mr. York for an unbelievably mere $5. And boy, that Nandor Nevai interview is a beaut! The guy's got some information to share, as long as you can break through his personal chemical verbal meaning buffer.

On the same day I got those in the mail, I actually got another zine, a nice little thing called Ghost Press. I'm really sorry to say that I left this thing on the floor overnight without realizing it, and my cat thought it was a mouse or something and tore up the cover a little bit (pictured). Luckily, the text didn't get damaged, but

Then, not a couple weeks later, I got another zine from "merrie olde" England.

And finally, I actually went ahead and paid for a copy of the debut issue of Smallflowers Press. The entire mag is made up three interview subjects, Dredd Foole, Chris Corsano, and Sunburned Hand of the Man, who account for over 50 pages! Now, the verdict is still out as to how much I really dig Sunburned, but one thing is for sure, I dig Smallflowers Press. I mean, this is the way you do it. This is THE antidote to music-press PR puffery. I mean, reading everything this mag lays on the table makes one realize just how incomplete the approach of mags like The Wire is always gonna be. Is it just simply natural law that for wider exposure one must sacrifice honesty and fully fleshed-out portraiture, and vice versa? Does it really come down to the fact that in order to accomodate advertisers one must limit their coverage to mere this-is-hip blips so that all advertisers can be accomodated on whatever schedule they demand? Reading this makes one he whole relative lameness of the Wire "New Weird America" article wasn't Keenan has a lot of truth and soul wrapped up in his pen and mind and etc.

KISSING SPELL: Los Pajaros CD; ALMENDRA CD
I'm not gonna front for even two seconds, I picked up both of these albums simply because they were on John Olson's list for Dusted magazine. And all I can say is . . . thank you John! The word on the album by Kissing Spell is that it takes a while to get into -- I've heard this first-hand from two other people and Olson himself writes, "Takes awhile to find the path in the grooves but when finally lays gently on your mind/heart/nothing else will compare." 0T1he thing is, and I'm not trying to be cool here, it's just the way it happened, the very first time I put it in I was immediately slayed by the opening track, "Los Pajaros." ("The Birds.") It starts with birdsong, and then some simple guitar chords and an echoed, haunted deep and strong male voice comes in with immortal words: "Would you like to say / Something about a dream?" Right there it had me and it held tight throughout this incredible 7-minute song. I am convinced that this one song contains the entire universe.
The Almendra album was the one that was slow in coming. I listened to it once but I was too deep under the spell of Los Pajaros for it to break. Filed it away for months, and then finally put in another day, and there I was, spooning some squash or something into my kid's mouth, when a certain 9-minute track called "Color Humano" started wending its way. About

SUNN O))): White2 CD (SOUTHERN LORD)
Been reading about these guys as much as you have, but until this disc I made it a point not to pay attention to their music. I just figured we've already got about 19 Melvins records and Earth 2 and a couple Thrones records and about 39 low-end drone records from New Zealand or whatever. (Surface of the Earth, anyone??) But this one was lying out at the radio station and it definitely looks good so I threw on a 25-minute closing number so I could take off early and get to work on time and boy, did it sound good in the car going up Lakeshore Drive. Then, a friend in the right place flat-out gave me a free copy, so here it sits in my player, and it's a knockout. First track is the simplest of circular Joe Preston-era Melvins riffs but it's just so HEAVY. Second track is almost too mellow but it stays on the evil side. And the third track, the one I played on the radio, wow -- it's a real evil simmer and when guest vocalist Attila Csihar comes in with some crazy black Tuvan shit it goes down several notches more.

OCS: 2 CD (NARNACK)
As a follow-up to his damn good s/t 2CD on tUMULt, John Dwyer, as OCS, has went and put together another damn good album. The first one was called OCS, and this one is called OCS 2. Dwyer has recorded a lot of music in a lot of different styles, but the OCS persona, that of the noise kid who plays in rock bands wielding the trashed acoustic punk-blues guitar and spaced-out effects pedals, seems to be his least affected one (Coachwhips second-least?). I mean, really, this is just a damn good album. Like the first one, it's mostly instrumentals, some outright noise, but mostly just good punk-blues guitar playin', a thrash version of Fahey, with a few vocal tunes scattered here and there. Small minds will compare it to Beck and slightly less small minds will compare it to Sebadoh and Sentridoh, and then minds slightly larger than that will start comparing it to Beck again, but if you're already a genius who's past all that and you wanna pick up on some of the psych folk that's goin' around these days, you might as well get this album. I mean, I like Devendra and Joanna and all them just fine, but this sounds like psych folk to me too.

TEXT OF LIGHT
So I first heard this from the next room shuffled in with a bunch of other stuff, and I didn't know what it was. It sounded good, sturm-und-klang electric-guitar-based free music running full steam for 15 minutes and counting with no sign of ending anytime soon. Occupied some of the same scorched space as Pelt's Burning Filament Rockets album. (Sorry to those for whom that's an obscure reference, but that's the album I kept thinking of.) Anyway, it was a refreshing listen, because I wasn't paying attention to the personnel and how I would review them, like Alan Licht, who for some reason I always end up dissing, or Lee Ranaldo, for whom I would have to write a lengthy aside about how Sonic Youth has never lost it or even so much as slipped in their entire career, or DJ Olive, which would tempt me to make fun of Illbient® or the Knitting Factory®, or the Starlight Furniture Co. label and how, even though they're connected with far and away the best post-noise magazine of all time (Bananafish), and they always put out interesting records, I don't think their records ever look very good from a graphic design standpoint. I didn't have to worry about any that, and just enjoy some brooding high free drone klang music with other elements flickering -- I heard some saxophone, I think, and really, just other mysterious sounds that I can't even recall -- can't specifically recall hearing the turntables, even though Christian Marclay is on some of the album along with DJ Olive -- and the drums by William Hooker, which I did hear, but much less of a powerhouse presence as Hooker usually is, probably because he's not the leader here.
Not that anyone else is a leader here either, not even Licht or Ranaldo. It's a real non-hierarchical sound, possibly because the real leader of the band is the films of Stan Brakhage, which this band always screens live, which come to think of it is another bit of rather loaded baggage I was able to shed on my first listen, the whole 'bands in the 90's and 00's showing films while they play live' thing. Which is a whole 'nother line of critique that I won't go into with this review. Suffice to say that there is an interesting disclaimer about the Brakhage thing in the liner notes, and that this disc does look pretty good graphics-wise (although, strictly on the 'and just who the fuck are you' tip, I woulda picked a different font).

TAURPIS TULA: Sparrows LP (ECLIPSE)
You might know David Keenan solely as a music journalist for The Wire, but he's been a musician somewhere on the UK scene for longer than that. Years ago a friend turned me on to a double LP by a band of his called the Telstar Ponies, which seemed to come and go to little fanfare, but it was really an impressive piece of work. It was called Voices From The New Music, and I still get a little misty when I think about the opening track(s) "Bells For Albert Ayler" and "Voices From The Music." Now it's much later and Keenan's playing in a new duo with Heather Leigh Murray of the now-geographically-farflung Charalambides. They're called Taurpis Tula, and they're for sure picking up right where the Charalambides have (temporarily) left off, with sparse guitar arpeggios, sparse guitar leads, subtle if not outright imaginary drones, and haunted voices, but the important thing is that it's really just as good and powerful as the Charalambides. While still being markedly different than the Charalambides, when

XEX
It sounds like some sort of state-sponsored co-ed barber shop quartet singing propaganda songs disguised as entertainments in order to seduce and brainwash intellectuals. But no, they're actually just a completely unknown synth-pop new-wave dance band from New Jersey, who self-released one album in 1980. (Allmusic.com has no entry whatsoever.)

Anyone who knows Forced Exposure knows that the catalog editor Jimmy Johnson writes his own words very occasionally. And you know that one of his tricks, when he does write, is to throw one of those lovely little “recorded under the sun by humans” type lines at the close of a description. And you know that he also drops the occasional blip that isn’t even faint praise, it’s NO PRAISE. Examples would be ___. And I was also gettin’ that vibe from

CHRISTINA CARTER CD (KRANKY)
Kranky continues their Charalambides and Ch.-related CDR reissue program with this very stripped-down mostly instrumental solo guitar long-player.

TOM CARTER: Monument CD (KRANKY)

TO LIVE AND SHAVE IN L.A.: God and Country Rally! CD (THE SMACK SHIRE)
This has been in the works for quite some time and was largely recorded in 1996, but hey, this is still the new shit from Shave and as usual it's one-of-a-kind, timeless, and PRE (as all fuck). Nothing like the recent tour with Andrew W.K. and others, this is Shave in its classic (Smith/Bastard/Wolcott) trio incarnation, and very much of a piece with the massive Wigmaker 2CD, but shorter (only like 47 minutes!) and not quite as wall-to-wall nusto-dense -- on this one there's enough cracks of silence that you can actually hear Bill "HP" Orcutt whittling around his strangely calm improv (?) guitar on several tracks. Tom's vocals sound a little more raw and human and less from-the-top-of-a-mountain incendiary, which is a nice touch as well. Not to say that the album isn't heavy and abrasive and chaotic and the very sound of drowning in pools of blood and oil -- like I said, it's classic Shave. Lovely full-cover gatefold cover too, on paper that feels really nice.

BOB DYLAN: The Bootleg Series, Volume 2 (COLUMBIA)
This is my favorite of the three Bootleg volumes, because it documents my favorite part of Dylan -- the transition from troubadour to electricty to accident to full-on beard rocker, all of which happened in less than 10 years. Flip-flops, beach shorts, hawaiian t-shirts generously unbuttoned despite chest-hair and pronounced post-booze torso bloat, sitting in chairs with acoustic guitars singing from the heart. The difference is that where Buffett's songs might make you grin or chuckle while you enjoy a good drink, Dylan's slowly and assuredly apply laser beams of biblical soul directly into your heart and mind, simultaneously, no matter what you're doing. I mean, take the very first song, "Seven Curses," from 1963. Could Buffett pull off stanzas like, "These be seven curses on a judge so cruel: That one doctor will not save him, That two healers will not heal him, That three eyes will not see him. That four ears will not hear him, That five walls will not hide him, That six diggers will not bury him. And that seven deaths shall never kill him."

VARIOUS ARTISTS: No W Now! CD (PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE)
First off, the deadline to be registered to vote is October 2nd. Are you ready? Now, for the album.....
      I know that a very powerful text that attacks U.S. politics for all the right reasons can still be written and performed, but the interesting thing about this anti-Bush compilation album is that I find the strongest political statements to come from the instrumentalists. There's something about the plain-spoken complexity of jazz, or the ocean-size lamentation within Loren Connors' vibrato, that just seems to say more to me than the niggling, polarized, and often meaningless drivel that passes for political discourse these days. Not that the texts that do appear on this album are exactly niggling, polarized, and meaningless -- well, polarized, yes, but when you're talking about W, what else could be possible? What they are is . . . kinda emo. Kinda 'poetry slam'. With all due respect to Andrew Elliott, on first listen I just wasn't into his album-opening performance poem "Post Cold War Guilt Song." Hey, I AGREE COMPLETELY with stuff like his final salvo, which goes "Read enough to learn enough to know enough to care enough to get upset enough so you can be brave enough to answer the question: what is wrong in my world?" -- but I already DO ALL THAT because I don't want roll over and ignore it, and because I do all that, I'm absolutely voting for Kerry (Nader = NOT THIS YEAR), but the music on here is for the most part just heavier than the words on here.
      For example, there are two solo saxophone pieces on here, tracks seven and eleven, that convey to me very clear political messages, without words. One is "Rhrr" by Scott Rosenberg, which is a no-brainer, as he clearly conveys outrage, bottled-up stress, and tongue-lashing with a grinding and bellowing piece of work of Brotzmannian and Borbetomaggian proportions. The other is "There's No Music Like No Music" by Jack Wright, music that sounds naked and broken but still fluttering along, like an individual who feels crushed by his nation's betrayal way that says to me: I futility of the individual in the face of imperialism and a violent agenda even as he sees beauty and peace all around him. abstract beauty as perceived by the flawed individual. Okay? And I like the way these statements feel better than the statements by the poetry-slam guys.
      Then, track 2 is by R. Ruzow's Subterraneans, and it's an instrumental jazz tune, and man, it's a great track! Not only is it great music, it's great protest music. This is one of those new fire music types of bands, but rather than just playing "fire music" that they've read about these guys seem to have a true fire under their asses, and I'm happy to say these guys actually play music and melodies instead of just "i'm on fire" caterwauling.

Well, now that presidents and vice presidents (not to mention their counterparts in the 'Arab World') can not only blatantly misinform their constituency and get away with it, but have these errors in leadership fully documented by the mass media and STILL get away with it, and , having that continued usage fully documented by the mass media as well. This is nonsensical behavior, by both the politicians and the media, and it has made political discourse in America absolutely more meaningless than ever before, just like the Bush campaign made the idea of a democratic election meaningless in 2000. (And yes, if you do more than 10 minutes of serious research, you too will find that all blame-trails for the Florida debacle go STRAIGHT back to the Bush campaign. Sorry!) Now, only the Supreme Court tells the truth, while everyone else who has any accusation or defense is both telling the truth and telling a lie, depending on which 'side' he's talking to. Try solving an argument under those conditions!

      Track 3 goes write back to the singer-songwriter emo folk, on first listen it's just too lite for me, though on second listen I do admire him for the simple line "And I will not die for my country."
      Another vocal track is , it starts with the chant, "Regime change! In the USA! Two thousand and four!" and then it goes into some pop-punk. The singing is rowdy and the lyrics have a lot of cuss-words in 'em, and I'd probably clap along if it was a fun live show, but on record it's actually kinda . . . maudlin. Almost Belushi-esque, and needless to say I mean Jim and not John. Hey, they are from Chicago.
      Just as maudlin, in a completely different and very non-Belushi way, is Pauline Oliveros's track called "Prayer." I mean, tracks called "Prayer" are auto-maudlin, but I'm really digging this one anyway, cuz hey, it's Pauline. The soundworld is great, built on super-soft accordion and etc., with Ms. O softly chanting the word "change," interspersed with some other words like "beautiful," the whole soft bed undermined often by random bursts of ambient noise and other subtly jarring elements. Meanwhile, she asks a series of questions, one every minute or two for the duration of the 12-minute piece. The first one is "Can we give up war?," and I'm like, "yeah, maudlin," but I start thinking of the crazy 1960s antiwar movement, and how I still, even with all the anti-maudlin failed-revolutionary cynicism I can so easily muster, can't understand why mankind cannot seem to give up war, and I wish someone who is an unbiased genius would step up and try to prove if mankind can or even should give up war. After all, maybe it's programmed into our DNA as a population control measure! In which case, giving up war would have to be an evolutionary change. "Can we respect nature?" Perhaps most blunt of all, "Can we stop making it horrible for the children and the older people?" The first time I listened to the track, this was the first question I noticed, because it's almost like a scary movie where Oliveros appears from a dark corner of the room in a frightwig and makeup, lookin' like Bette Davis in Baby Jane, saying "Can we all get along??" (which is her next question).

I don't know, tonight a cute semi-hippie girl with a clipboard knocked on my door and introduced herself as being from a Democratic organization raising money to donate to efforts in swing states like Florida and Ohio. She was asking for $50, but I gave her $10 instead. I bet this CD costs $10, with the money also going to anti-Bush efforts. So give some cute semi-hippie girl who knocks on your door $10, or buy this CD -- either way is good, but with this Bush-bashing option you'll get at least 20 minutes of powerful new American jazz music, along with other tracks of varying quality that are mostly fun and inciteful enough, and that lasts

GUTTERS CDR (YEAY! CASSETTES)
Um, is it okay if I think this band is better than Big Black? I only ask because they're no-doubt similar to Big Black, right down to the drum machine and the disaffected/affected suburbane white guy vocals. But actually, that's not quite right, because where the Big Black guitars were trebly, shredding, and speedy, Gutters mute the tones and play in a somber style, and I bet that 3 out of 5 people you play it for will compare it to Joy Division. The singer's voice is also muted and somber, more like Ian Curtis than screamy Albini. And then the difference becomes that Gutters, although still actually danceable, are much slower and less dancey than Joy Division. But anyway, who the hell are Gutters? Well, they were an unknown Western Mass. band of suburbane nihilists who put out one cassette back in 1992, here given the 'deluxe CDR reissue' treatment, complete with jewel case and booklet with liner notes and lyrics! Forget all the comparisons I made above, because it should be noted that the Gutters guitarist Bill Shafer is excellent, and in a league of his own, as is the great singer Adam Rachie. You've gotta hear the way he opens the first song, "She's A Killer," in an inimitable pissed deadpan: "Fucking kill / Likes to kill all the neighbors / Gonna kill all the neighbors she sees...." (I'm sure you're already in agreement that "Fucking kill" is a wonderful opening line for a song, but wait 'til you hear Rachie sing it, it gets even better.)

BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL: Beautiful Speck Triumph 2CD (LAST VISIBLE DOG)
I listened to Xenakis's "L'egende D'Er" for the first time in awhile this week, and then just a couple days later I put in disc 1 of Birchville Cat Motel's Beautiful Speck Triumph, and the first track, , honestly seemed to pick up right where "L'egende" left off. I'm not saying it's as good as Xenakis, but I am going to say that Birchville Cat Motel, this little one-man home-taper drone/noise rocker elementary school art teacher and father of three, is continuing Xenakis's work as well as anyone else I've heard do it since I.X. Not that he's trying to be a canonized electro-acoustic composer.
Two more long tracks round out the disc

I was honestly just gonna cut the whole thing out. I mean, it was pretty much slander. I like Heather Leigh Murray, I've met her and to be completely honest she seems like an absolute sweetheart. I've never met David Keenan, but by all accounts he's a fine person. But the thing is I liked everything DiMaggio wrote. It was all funny stuff, it was punctuated perfectly, there was really nothing about his entire submission that I felt the need to edit, except that sentence. And it became this thing where I felt like I should stay true to his writing, and not just cut two sentences out to cover my ass. Plus, it was natural that someone in the scene would counter the boosterism of the New Weird America article. I mean, it was an honest boosterism, as Keenan and Murray are now partners -------- Wire hype machine. So when you publish all that and thousands of people read it, you're gonna get some backlash. I'm honestly sorry that I had to be the one to publish it, but I felt

LAZY SMOKE: Corridor of Faces CD (ARF ARF)
A man I truly respect dismissed this LP about 20 seconds in with the comment "Beatles much?" Now, I think that's a pretty funny little retort and a lot of Beatle-posers deserve it, but jeez, my man, not the Lazy Smoke! I mean, I understand why this guy said it, because he's the music director for a really busy up-to-the-minute college radio station and every day he has to listen to about 60 totally shitty CDs, about 40 more CDs that are good but "not his thing," and somewhere in there are about 15 more CDs that he actually really likes or outright loves, so in order to give those great ones the attention they deserve, he's always in "dismiss mode." A lot of music freaks are, because if they can dismiss an album, band, and/or show within 20 seconds of hearing it, a whole lot of time is freed up for them to think about all the undismissable music out there they already have to think about every second. I do it myself all the time, and I'm sure anyone who reads the reviews in here would agree. But man, NOT FOR THE LAZY SMOKE!
I kinda thought the same Beatles thing for the first 20 seconds, I'll admit, the way the opening song "All These Years" was chugging along, but it quickly became undismissable due to several grenades going off. First grenade: the way the lead guitarist responds on the turnaround to each of the singer's first-verse lines, tearing through the Brit-pop veneer with splintery spiky lines, just sloppy enough to poke holes into the tune itself so that (psychedelic) air currents can form and get the tune moving. Second grenade: in the same first verse the smooth lead singer-songwriter Joe Pollano drops a line about "She's been dead for years and years and years...." Frank talk, and, unknown to me at the time, the first of many references to death that appear throughout the album -- in fact, Corridor of Faces is officially a 'death-obsessed' record (a la Berlin, Sister Lovers, Temple of the Dog, etc). And then comes the chorus, a great chorus, the British invasion chug dropping into sky-opening heavy-yearning half-time as the voice kills softly over the top: "Save yourself some misery / And get away from here," and then the line, changing the tone just right: "I'll help you disappear." There's plenty more fine songs, not to mention that this CD reissue comes with like 13 bonus tracks that sound like Joe Pollano solo, laying down a one-night reverb-heaven demo session.

VARIOUS ARTISTS: You Can Never Go Fast Enough CD (PLAIN RECORDINGS)
I wanted to like this, because it has a lot of artists I like doing a hypothetical soundtrack to one of my all time favorite movies, Two Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman, 1972). I've only seen the movie once, drunk off my ass at a midnight screening in a Lincoln, NE theater. The only one in my posse who didn't pass out, I managed to get my inebriated mind blown. Sure it's got Warren Oates, one of the great American actors, but the thespian in it who really turned my head was James Taylor, playing a gearhead known only as The Driver, who is so antisocial he's barely able to speak, let alone smile. Contrary to his real-life career as a mawkish singer/songwriter, as an actor he very convincingly plays a pissed-off long-hair punk. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of the bands on this comp were more inspired by James Taylor the singer/songwriter instead of The Driver. Instead of working off of the movie's intense existential greaseball hell-vibe, they seem to have just stopped at the 'open highway' part and made yet another 'dusty Americana' retro trip. The result is little more than an alt-country compilation.
      Will Oldham & Alan Licht pat themselves on the back with an easy dusty country song. Kinda interesting the way it stretches over 8 minutes long so that Bob Nastanovich (or somebody else who's probably from Lousville) can recite a long soliloquoy that might be from the movie. Kinda interesting, but kinda annoying too -- pretty hipster, and Licht and Oldham aren't even hipsters, right?
      Alvarius B contributes a lovely little finger-picked wooden guitar instrumental. It's no stretch for Alvarius and doesn't escape the 'dusty Americana' trap either, but it still stands out because Alvarius got soul, simple as that. Also in the 'nothing new but damn good because that's what they do' department is the creepy track by the Charalambides.
     Sonic Youth offer more late-period SY relaxedness. Which isn't to say it's a bad track, because they're still one of the best of all time and their relaxed home-studio noodling is a hell of a lot better than most (cf. the SYR series, 1-4). But I can't help thinking how much more "Scooter & Jinx" off of Goo sounds like the movie than this track.
      Roy Montgomery closes the album with one of the very best tracks -- a 14-minute drone-rock jam that actually captures that "Scooter & Jinx" vibe. I mean, at least this is some music that has some octane in it, that actually reminds you of oil and gasoline, which I feel any tribute to Two-Lane Blacktop should. Eeh, there are certainly worse tribute albums and hypothetical soundtracks out there.

NESS: Up Late With People CD (HIGH PILOT)
Chicago is a pretty big city with a pretty big music scene. For example, I hadn't heard of this Chicago-based band, nor of Fig Dish, the major label power pop band that Rick Ness, the singer/guitarist/songwriter here, used to be in. Nonetheless, the press release one-sheet got me somewhat psyched for this, their debut album, with talk of Ray Davies, Scott Walker, "early" Cheap Trick, and The Sweet. Plus the album has a 13-minute song, which I didn't think could lose, because for a power pop song to be 13 minutes long, it would have to be prog, and therefore good, right?
Well, the album starts out alright, with a song powered by the riff from Billy Squier's "Everybody Wants You" and a falsetto hook on the chorus that keeps going and going, but after that, all the songs just seem to fall into this mid-tempo melancholy 35-years-late "Strawberry Fields" plod that I just can't pay attention too. Track 3 gets somewhere with a nice "ah ah ah" hook and some gre brs at Wakeman-esque keyboard flourishes but it's not enough to save the album from monochrome. I would still give 'em one more chance as a live act -- the songwriting may not vary too much, but on here the production and arrangements vary even less, and live volume and energy could bring 'em to life. Here, not even the 13 minute song stands out. Oh well, tell me how the show is . . .

KITCHEN::KNIFE::CONSPIRACY CD
A few things about this press kit made me pay attention. One, it appeared to be a metal band from Warren, Ohio, a town I'd never heard of. They seemed unpretentious and like they had a sense of humor -- one of the selling points of the CD was "We were drunk when we recorded it." Also, it was produced by none other than the Syd Barrett of nü-metal, Steve Austin of Today is the Day.

College in the U.S.A. is basically a four-year seminar in mass consumption. The degree itself is one of the most expensive ticket items a person can purchase in his/her lifetime, right behind home and right after car. purchasing of the college degree is so expensive that the student has no choice but to earn a degree that is all about consumption, that is, one of the great consumptions, but all around the students is conspicuous consumption. Whether it's consuming beer, liquor, and drugs, or consuming co-eds, or getting a ticket to a nationally televised football or basketball game on campus, or going to the Burger King / Subway / Chinese place on campus, or wearing whatever, etc. I mean, to be fair, it's also a time of many friendships and connections and loves and conflicts and everything, but as far as what I learned -- I learned about consumption.

Because of God and Freedom.
Yes.
No, but this appearance in the Onion's always hilarious Justify Your Existence feature just might.
Yes, because of God and Freedom. And the United States of America. We're a good people, a strong people . . . and we're all going to heaven together. (Except for terrorists.)

PTOLEMAIC TERRASCOPE
I've never heard a Ptolemaic Terrascope companion CD that I didn't like, and this one, accompanying the most recent issue #34, might just be the best one ever. Not that it hits you over the head with bombastic psychedelic heavitude -- it doesn't, which is probably why I like it so much. By about the third song I realize that these singers and songsmiths have probably never thrown a fake fist in the air, and no one in their audience probably ever has either.

BREAKING OPEN THE HEAD: A PSYCHEDELIC JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF CONTEMPORARY SHAMANISM by Daniel Pinchbeck (BROADWAY BOOKS)
Hi Daniel, I just finished reading Breaking Open The Head two days ago. It has been a profound experience, and I’d like to say thanks. Naturally it's been swarming with synchroncities. I hadn’t heard of the 2012 prophecy until reading it in your book less than a week ago, but just yesterday I came across this article on the web: [makeashorterlink]. The Pentagon – not Earth First, not PETA, but the United States Pentagon – warns of underwater cities as soon as 2020 – not far off from 2012. I wasn't looking for anything about 2012, I was just checking out No Doctors' website.
     Then, just two hours ago, I picked up a tattered Newsweek laying around the house and just before throwing it in the recycle bin turned to a random page and read about how, in the United States, “The baby boomers will age and these bills will come due starting in 2008, four years from now . . . in fact, it’s a puzzle as to why the bond market has not reacted to this deep and certain crisis.” Hmm, 2008 . . . 2012 . . . 2020 . . . . it’s all making sense. The 2012 prophecy is the kind of thing I’ve been raised to dismiss, or at least take with “a grain of salt,” but almost immediately I start to get specific details from the cosmos about the way it might actually play out. Then, just today I picked up the new Arthur, and there’s another editorial, this time by you, with more discussion of the 2012 prophecy.
      To change the subject from 2012, even before reading your book I believed in something called “plant consciousness.” I think this phrase might have come from Allen Ginsberg, I’m not sure. I’ve used psilocybin once, but I’ve never used any other psychedelic, not even LSD, just that mild psychedelic marijuana, but I think even that has been enough to teach me about plant consciousness. To me, it basically means seeing the world from a perspective of rootedness. Marijuana and especially psychedelics teach you to find deep significance, if you’re looking for it, right in front of you or from inside you, from a position of absolute rootedness. Today’s capitalist culture teaches you to find significance only from outside yourself, or from far away, from something we must uproot ourselves to go out and strive to attain. This is killing rootedness, killing the family, killing religion, everything. Just look at the rain forests – capitalism is literally UPROOTING them.
      Your book also gave me another insight – I'm curious what you think of it. One thesis I get from your book and from the new column in Arthur is that in order to save the planet we must start to become our own kind of shamans. I agree, and I feel that our goal, our calling as shamans must be to defeat and negate the most powerful shaman of the last 100 years: the television. Each television set is a shaman – just as LSD and DPT are lab-synthesized versions of naturally occurring psychedelics, television sets are lab-synthesized robot versions of naturally occurring shamans. Like shamans, they show us visions and tell us things. However, what they show us is not plant consciousness, it is the rootless consciousness of capitalism, of the decadent DPT realm that you describe. Just as, say, a punk rock band is thought of as having ‘sold out’ once they appear on national television, the entire shamanic potential of the television has been bought out and controlled by capitalism. Again, I read something in a random magazine lying around my apartment just a few minutes ago that bolsters this, from an interview with artist Joe Coleman in Juxtapoz magazine: “[Television] is a living being. As you look into it, it’s looking into you, deciding what you need.”
    As for the aforementioned Blastitude webzine, I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not, but I edit it and write most of it. I feel that it might be my shamanistic calling. I go into a trance and write this visionary (?) magazine that enlightens people to things that television, my rival shaman, ignores. Or, am I contributing to rootlessness? Contributing to capitalism’s worship of attainable objects, that happen to be packaged in petroleum byproducts, am I just showing people more decadence from the DPT realm?
     Anyway, as you can see it’s been a heady week. Thanks again for writing the book. Maybe, if you have the time, you can tell me what you think of my ideas and assess Blastitude’s shamanic contribution to the world.

Thanks again,
Matt Silcock
Chicago, IL

Hi Larry, Thanks for your letter. I will check out Blastitude. I guess I would see television as a symptom rather than the cause -- like antidepressants, depleted uranium, Walmart, or so many other things -- however TV is definitely a superpotent weapon of the forces that seem to want to kill
humanity and the planet. I liked your perspective on the rootedness of plant consciousness - however some shamanic plants are more rooted than others. Iboga is a root, and it is interesting that it seems to go into one's psychological background or the roots of addiction and compulsive behaviors. I think that distributing ideas is definitely a form of shamanism - shamans were responsible for myth-making and storytelling. I feel that I am a shaman, and my "medicine" is ideas. I think that the 2012 prophecies are a "lock," but it has to be understood in the right way - one way to see it is as "graduation day" for humanity, which is on its last self-destructive bender and must achieve adulthood now. You might dig Arguelles' wild book, Time and the Technosphere, or his more comprehensible Earth Ascending. Also I published a book, World on Fire, by Michael Brownstein, which does a great job of deconstructing the current paradigm in poetic form.
Some good stuff on the discussio board of my website also,

Good to hear from you - keep in touch,
daniel

Not only is this the best psychedelic self-discovery memoir I've ever read, it's possibly the only such book I've read that's even any good. This potentially interesting and important literary sub-genre has always been polluted by trustafarian empty-headedness and pro-drug propagandism. Daniel Pinchbeck, on the other hand, has done something unprecedented; he's written a sober account of taking psychedelics. Even more impossibly, he gets away with using the word shaman! (I still can't, as you can tell by my letter reprinted above.) In fact, he makes a case that shamanism might possibly discussable without it being made fun of!

GHOST: Hypnotic Underworld 2LP (DRAG CITY)
This album's only been out a month or so and already there's been quite a few random accolades, sort of like how five different people have told me I need to see The Office. Well, I finally saw The Office, and it's pretty amazing, and this album is really good too. Still not quite as good as the first Ghost album, but it's the second-best Ghost album I've heard. The song "Hazy Paradise" is the best -- the creamiest of ballads, has to be heard to be believed.

SIMPLY SAUCER: Cyborgs Revisited CD (SONIC UNYON)
Wow -- even better than I remember! Talk about a band that was destined to be unknown. First of all, they were from Hamilton, Ontario -- a definite strike one! Second, I really think that's a terrible band-name. I mean, it's not terrible like Jackyl or something, but I didn't even think they were really a real band for a couple years because of it. I thought they were like some tribute band or something -- it's hard to explain. And, I had figured they were from the 90s -- Simply Saucer was just too twee and obscure of a name, it had to be some post-GBV lo-fi band or something. Then, they go and name their only LP Cyborgs Revisited, which sounds like a sequel, or a tribute album (see what I mean???), or a soundtrack to a movie sequel. Plus, the frontman is named Edgar Breau! See? I just never thought they were a real band!
Then, I'm driving to WHPK one morning and listening to the DJ before me and on comes some absolutely ripping sci-fi hard psych, clearly not from this decade but from the hallowed 1970s. I burst into the station and immediately asked the man on the decks "whooryaplayin'???" And it was Simply Saucer, from the Cyborgs Revisited LP. And the world changed, somewhat.
Anyway, this CD reissue is a must-have. I won't go into it much more than that, because there was already an article on 'em in Blastitude 15. I will just say that as a hard-psych mind-melting guitarist, Edgar Breau is as good as Ron Asheton and Munehiro Narita. (Which means, yes, that he's better than Kawabata.) Warning, though -- the bonus tracks aren't as blazing as the original LP. They're more poppy and less psych -- the major stumbling block being that their electro genius Ping Romany is no longer in the band. Some of it is cool in a garage-y Television kind of way, but it's also quite TWEE, more like what I originally feared a band named Simply Saucer would sound like. Which isn't to say you should not buy this CD today, because the LP release is quite rare. But if you should come across it at a price you can afford, go ahead and get it instead -- the bonus tracks just aren't quite essential.

BLACK FLAG DVD
Wow -- the only other Flag I've seen is the two or three songs in Decline, with Chavo Pederast on amazing lead vocals. Anyone who's into history knows that Henry Rollins, undeniably iconic, by far the most famous lead singer for Black Flag, is widely considered to be the fourth best singer for Black Flag. Out of four. On this DVD I can see why. His throat is great -- he's as powerful as all the other Flag singers, hell, he's as powerful as Daltrey -- no problem there. On record, he's good, cf. Damaged, My War, and more. But when you can see him, in the middle of the stage, singing all the words, he's too damn iconic, and he knows it, and he overcompensates, thrashing around like an eager-to-impress sophomore cornerback in high school football practice, right down to the wack 'phys ed' stage clothes. As for Greg Ginn, he's perhaps the greatest hard rock guitarist since 1980, and one of the top fifteen of all time. He's as good as John McLaughlin on the first couple Mahavishnu records! And I love to watch him play. Kira's on bass, truly looking like a young boy! In a Green Lantern T-shirt, no less. Bill Stevenson is on drums, an unshaven short-haired Cali dude, 'dressed' in the same getup as Rollins. The band is good, but you can't hear the rhythm section, which is another thing that annoys me about eager-to-please Rollins, because you can hear him so well, and he almost always seems to be singing. Oh well.

COCK ESP DVDR
Back in the late 90s I really got into Cock ESP. Noise purists might not have liked 'em because they weren't 'serious' enough, I don't know, but they were quite influential with their brilliantly short sets and 'pro wrestling' approach to performance. Because of these antics, I consider the series of videos they put out to be their most essential releases -- . Now they've really kind of topped themselves with this DVDR. They've already documented the performance style as well as they can, so they take a strange approach on the DVDRThe personality of Elyse Perez dominates, and if you take out the live footage, this is kind of like watching Ciao Manhattan. Hell, with the live footage this is kind of like watching Ciao Manhattan, especially with the trippy sound design, in which the blaring noise performances are mixed at least four times as loud as all the offstage antics, which constantly require three times as loud as the rest of the sound mix (which is loud enough itself) and with weird strobe editing -- no attempt at all to depict the performance, but ESP have already done that with four or five other VHS releases. And then Perez is just wasted throughout and rants and raves to sheepish noise guys gathered around a keg, falls over, screams at people, scares them, strips . . . seriously, dude, Ciao Manhattan . . .

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE by Joseph Larkin (ALSO RAN / SHORT DIVISION)
It's not too often that I get a book in the mail, so that caught my interest right away. Not a bad looking book, either, seemingly self-published but none the worse for it. The blurbs on the back made me a little nervous: "For such a snotty twerp he sure can have some lasting effects . . . pretty pathetic human being, I'd say," goes the first one, and the others say things like "[He] hasn't gotten any saner with time, has he?" and "He's a nutcase, man," and "He is a weird, weird guy and I wouldn't want to be his friend." Which brings me to the letter that accompanied the book: "Dear friend, Please kindly review the enclosed CD and book. And be gentle, for we are ever so sensitive, much like your whore-mother." Hey, what'd you say 'bout my mamma, man?? "If any of your fine readers would like to purchase the CD and book in question, they can do so by visiting www.also-ran.com on the . . . " blah blah blah sales pitch blah blah. Then, "May God bless you and yours, especially your mother." Whatever.
I started the book and immediately found the structure promising. Three sections, the first and last only a few pages each, with the one in the middle taking up most of the 150-odd pages. After reading part one, "Untitled Play for Crispin Glover," I'm still interested; it's a quick 8-page play in which a neurotic boyfriend and girlfriend talk about everything they're doing while trying to have sex. I found it funny and at least somewhat erotic. By the end they're actually sort of doing it, and the stage notes make it clear that the actors are actually supposed to be having sex. The weird thing is, the title refers to the fact that Crispin Glover himself is supposed to be cast in the play as the male lead, a character named . . . . . . Joseph Larkin. Hmm, I've got nothing against autobiographical plays, but why require Crispin Glover to be playing youyour idol Crispin Glover play you is kinda

28 DAYS LATER
I was actually quite a bit more impressed by this one than I thought I'd be. The opening scene in the chimpanzee lab struck me as true horror, the ape made to watch images of chaos and destruction and then the convulsive rage of multiple primates, not to mention the horror of the inevitability of the eco-terrorist's mission. Then, 28 days later and we awake to the image of a completely abandoned London . . . mind-blowing, really, and I'm not sure how they pulled it off -- even the Godspeed You! Black Emperor music on the soundtrack doesn't sink the scene. Then, our hero, who we still don't know anything about (we later find he's just some bike messenger who happened to be unconscious when the virus hit and survived in the abandoned hospital by sheer dumb luck), finally sees other humans when he enters a church and discovers a mass grave . . . . or is it a nest of the infected living? Either way it's a classic horror movie situation, and one fateful "Hello?" and a priest you REALLY don't wanna fuck with lets him know just how bad . . . . and then we meet Selena and Mark, two other survivors, just when you couldn't take anymore of the horrible loneliness . . . and it goes on from there . . . . Selena demonstrates to Jim just what survival requires when Mark gets infected . . . . and then they find two more survivors camped out in a high rise apartment . . . . and the four of them go on a cross-country quest to find more survivors . . . . which brings the big twist . . . which is, who would have thought that when cast adrift in a dangerous fucked-up society of malevolent individuals, joining the army would be even worse? Anyway, people have compared it to the Romero trilogy, of course, but in fact premises and even specific scenes are harvested from several horror classics. A couple other movies that are referred to outright are I Am Legend, of course, and, for one scene, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Something from each of the Dead films is referenced / appropriated (attack through the window / incongruously joyful looting of a supermarket / isolated military shelter), but the monsters themselves are much more Cronenberg than Romero, coming out of the Canadian's Shivers and it's remake, Rabid. The difference is that in 28 Days Later, as with Cronenberg, the monsters aren't reanimated dead people but people who are still alive, mutated into something barely human by a terrible virus.

INTERVIEW with THE NEW FLESH

How long have you been a band?

Any top 3 influences?

Comments on David Cronenberg?

Describe Ellicott City, Maryland.

Band roster, who/what:

You've played at Tarantula Hill, right?

What makes a good New Flesh show?

My 11-month old son already knows how to thrash. Whenever I put on Black Flag he walks over to the same cabinet, grabs one of its door handles, and starts shaking the whole thing, bobbing his head up and down with a maniacal grin on his face. The other day I said, "Phil, let's listen to some Black Flag!," and he responded by saying IT. "Plat Flay!," he said. The intent was unmistakable.

On side one of Everything Went Black, the Ramones influence is still apparent in the band -- the production is very similar to that of the first Ramones album, and the band is just as goonish but also more wild, feral, and unhinged -- and the ubiquitous 'snotty Brit' influence is apparent in the vocals by Johnny "Bob" Goldstein, who is actually Keith Morris. Despite any easily spottable influences, his vocals are great. He's the missing link between Rotten and Rollins, that's for sure, which is to say he takes the brat-whine of original punk and brings in the bellow/bark growl/shout of hardcore ("I DON'T CARE!!"), while featuring the only ingredient that matters in ANY vocals, which is personality.
First song is "Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie," and it's funny how in the American Hardcore book it says that Ginn insisted that they never played this song right, because when I first heard this version I was like, "Man, it doesn't sound like they practice six nights a week!" It was that sloppy. After listening to it a few times, I think I know which section Ginn was critiquing, the way the tempo is cut in half when the band goes to the verse, like on "Sitting here like a loaded gun / Waiting to go off . . .", and then back to double time for the chorus ("GIMMEE GIMMEE GIMMEE!!!" -- more bark that Rotten could never do). Robo is definitely having some trouble nailing down those transitions, but I think Ginn is way off on the guitar part too, with his pothead's sense of rhythm. He plays the riff right but with a sort of lurching timing, and so much spirit and momentum that it doesn't even matter that the timing is off, which is a strong tension.

Dirty -- absolutely incredible album, easily better than Goo and Daydream Nation.
Experimental, Jet Set, Trash, and No Star -- I've heard more than once that this is their worst album. Hell, maybe it is, but I love this one too. You can lose a few tracks, sure -- "Self-Obsessed and Sexee"

Washing Machine. A very good album, their best since Dirty

ECSTATIC PEACE POETRY JOURNAL #6 (GLASS EYE BOOKS)
After sitting down and reading this installment of the Thurston Moore-edited poetry mag, I had a lot going through my head, but nothing so persistent as the repeated refrain: "I CAN'T BELIEVE I PAID TEN BUCKS FOR THIS!!!" Really, this is the worst I've been taken since I spent $65 on that Sunburned Hand of the Man album on Ebay . . . oh wait, that wasn't me! Thank god! Anyway, the theme of these poems is "punk," and there is certainly some good stuff in it -- four bucks worth, maybe even five. I mean, lots of interesting people contribute, such as Christina Carter, Chris Touchton, Tom Greenwood, Weasel Walter, Karen Lollypop, Pete Nolan, Heather Leigh Murray, Dave Markey, John Morton, Savage Pencil, Gary Panter, Dylan Nyoukis, Tom Smith, Loren Connors, Pat Fear, and many more (I left out some of the more obvious ones) -- but really, with so many people in here, I don't feel like they're using their own voice, I feel like they're using an "I'm writing for the Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal" voice. I feel like the poems I'm reading are one-offs -- that these people don't really write poems every day or even every week, they just wrote a quick one for Thurston and were like "That was fun." I dunno, I liked it better the second time I read it . . . . but still, TEN BUCKS?!? Man, don't charge me e-bay price before it's on e-bay . . . then again, I did pay it, didn't I? .