Okay, Black to Comm, the zine, not the song. Issue #22, not the newest, but the one I got hold of. Been hearing about this mag for years, and it looks beautiful, all B&W, xeroxed, typed, pasted-up, super thick, absolutely screaming "underground," which is something I like to hear being screamed. I've read about a quarter of the mag so far, which hasn't been an easy task, as it's a LOT of small print, a LOT of information, and a lot of hasty writing. Can't necessarily dis the hasty writing part, as that would be the black calling the kettle pot, and a lot of good info and inspiring enthusiasm does come through anyway, along with some rather curious politics here and there, BUT I'm not trying to review the mag, I just wanna do a bit on the accompanying CD. I'm gonna listen to it and write about it 'blindfolded', as it were, without seeing who's doing each particular track until I've formed some sort of opinion about it...since no one from The Wire is ever gonna call me up and ask me to do a Blindfold Test, I guess I've just gotta administer it to myself...

      Okay, CD starts impressively with some free jazz no wave bursts, on saxophone. For the first coupla seconds I wasn't even sure it was a saxophone...coulda been a weirdly treated guitar. Now I'm sure it's a sax, and I've got a strong feeling it's a white person playing...but who is it? As I said, I read almost an entire one quarter of this zine last night, and it wasn't easy, and I still don't know who this might be -- oh wait hold the phone OF COURSE it's a track by Steve Mackay, the guy who played tenor sax on Funhouse by The Stooges, as he is the subject of a 10-(or so)page small-print feature in here (a little TOO exhaustive, a critic might say), which makes my dating sensors for this piece back up a whole 10 or 15 years...I thought it was some late 70s-early 80s No Wave at first, but now I realize this is probably 1972 or something. It's Mackay playing with a full band, and it's much more complex than "L.A. Blues," the way it falls into punk-blues riffing and then later some sort of jerky delayed freak-mode pulse duetting with a flute!
       The drummer plays refreshingly restrained free pick-up patter throughout. In retrospect, think of the way Scott "Rock Action" Asheton keeps "L.A. Blues" stuck in the 'harsh noise' monochrome with his thudding-but-loud approach. If Asheton would've been more of a Sunny Murray, that non-stop wail/howl/dredge might've sounded more like this a little lighter and airier. But hey, it's fourteen minutes long, they've got time to stretch out. It's jazz. "L.A. Blues" was under five minutes long and really didn't need to, or couldn't, be any longer. "L.A. Blues" wasn't jazz, it was the first No Wave track.
       Okay, let's look it up on the back page of the mag...yes, it is Steve Mackay, playing with his band Carnal Kitchen, recorded in 1969! Wow, pre-Funhouse and 3-4 years before I had it pegged. Really high- quality free music, heavily patterned off of Pharoah Sanders's Tauhid blueprint. It's no wonder that (as the accompanying article reveals) ESP-Disk offered them a record. (They turned it down when they learned they were expected to pay half of the recording costs.)

        Track two is a retarded skiffle number with vocals sung through what sounds like a cheap megaphone or P.A. The vocals give it a very underground feel, though the retarded playing doesn't hurt either. Sounds a little like a proto-Fall kind of thing. Probably from the Sixties, though it's so lo-fi it could be retarded music from any era. Okay, let's look it up: okay, it's Milk, a band from the 70s Cleveland underground, even lesser-known than peers like the Styrenes and Mirrors. This track is "Tiny Tim Medley," and he is singing through a cheap megaphone, and it was recorded "live at the Willoughby, Ohio YMCA way back in 1974." Dont'cha just love even the thought of that?

         Track three is also kind of retarded skiffly loungey No Wave. The singer does not sound like he's singing English as a native language, or if he's even quite singing English at all. I think I recognize the word "alcohol"...let's look it up...yep, it's Umela Hmota, a "Czech underground rock band who were contemporaries of the infamous Plastic People of the Universe," and the song is called "Vodovodu Alkohol."

         Track four is a trash-rock surfabilly cover version of a song that we all know from oldies radio...but I can't quite place it..."and you walk...and I walk...and you talk...and I talk..." something like that. Pretty glorious lo fidelity on this one, as on all these tracks. And it is...The Rockin' Blewz doing "California Sun" (originally by Jan & Dean or something?), recorded in 1969, and The Rockin' Blewz feature Metal Mike Saunders, later of The Angry Samoans.

          Track five is another bit of foreign underground rock. Lazy detuned guitar chords, a soft backbeat, and some amazing vocals that almost remind me of Bobby "Monster Mash" Pickett! Who dis??? Why, it's Dom, another Czech band, fronted by Joseph Vondruska after he parted ways with Umela Hmota. What the mag writes about it is quite accurate: "Imagine Bryan Ferry (an admitted Vondruska influence) singing in the Cramps and you'll sorta get the idea." It might also sound like the Chamber Brother who sang "Time (Has Come Today)" crossed with Stacey Sutherland but singing in a very foreign language. In other words, alien mush-mouth rock'n'soul-grit vocals. And yes, I definitely used the phrase "rock'n'soul" in the last sentence.

         Track six: garage rock with some sloppy guitar and maybe sub-Mysterian keyboards giving it the underground cachet. Not quite as whelming as the other stuff on here, but its' good...if I walked into a record store and it was playing, I would think it was a good record store. I might ask the clerk who was playing and he'd be all disdainful and say "Umm, it's some compilation...like a Black to Comm compilation?" And I'd say "The magazine?" And he'd say, without too much confidence, "Yeah.." and I'd say "Well what band is this?" and he'd get all annoyed because he'd have to get out the magazine and flip to the back page and find that it was....Brian McMahon! And I'd go "No way, from the Electric Fucking Eels??" And the store worker wouldn't have ever heard of either McMahon or the Eels because the last couple Radiohead albums have made him think he can retire from being interested about any other kinds of music (except IDM, of course), so he'd get even more disdainful while I danced around the record store to something he didn't know much about.

         Track seven: Shuffling lazy melancholy garage rock...I'm starting to sense a pattern here...all of this stuff is shuffling and lazy, sloppy, out of tune, with sleepy vocals and very low recording quality. Isn't it great?! Sounds quite a bit like Jonathan Richman...ah, but it's Simply Saucer, a band I've always heard of but never really known anything about. This was recorded in 1975 and they do seem worth further investigation.

         Track eight: A pretty raw mean sound, just as garage and lo-fi but not near as lazy as some of the previous stuff, with out-of-tune keyboard blasts, sharp cutting guitar riffage, snarling vocals, etc. Is he saying "Talk Talk!....Talk Talk!....Talk Talk!" on the chorus? Yes, he is, and it's a cover of "Talk Talk" by the Music Machine, a song I've heard of but not actually heard, and what's more, it's by the Moving Parts, some or most of whom, according to the annotation, went on to form Mission of Burma!

          Track nine: Really retarded heavy blues stomp, complete with terrible harmonica playing and laughably growling vocals. Definitely so bad that it's very good. Who?? Oh, it's that Vondruska guy again, with his band Umela Htoma 3. Their last track was "Vodovodu Alkohol" and this one is "Demon Alkohol."

          Track ten: Probably the highest-fi track yet, which isn't saying much. Druggy slurry and maybe British vocals over updated-Funhouse riffery. Almost sounds something like one of those retro-Brit bands like Thee Hypnotics. Hmm...it's a band called Backsnider from L.A. Hey, this track isn't 'super great,' but they're already as worthy as X, already as worthy as The Dream Syndicate, and the moaning guitar on the last 2 of the sprawled out 6 minutes is CHOICE....

          Track eleven is a fine no-wave blues stomp, could also be fairly contempo, at least post-80s, and OH SHIT it's another track that clocks in over 10 minutes. 11 minutes in fact, a very good length for no-wave blues trance-riff songs, I've found. So who is it...it's Dom, again, yet more Czech rock! Wow, Chris Stigliano, your magazine looks amazing, but I have to admit it didn't read quite as amazing, a little too rushed perhaps and ultimately monochromatic in its sentiments, but thanks a million anyway, even just for finally redeeming Czechrock for me. I still haven't heard prime Plastic People of the Universe, just their dodgy comeback-era stuff, and when I was in Prague for three or four days last May, I heard more music by Abba than I've ever heard anywhere else. The tracks on here remind me that there's always an underground, but sometimes it's hard to find, especially in my situation as a three-day tourist without a single acquaintance in the entire city. (The closest I got to the underground was the John Lennon mural.)

         Track twelve is another from Milk and and track thirteen is yet another from Umela Hmota 3 (with some great prog-noise violin). Really a fine, fine comp, folks! Really is...

Blastitude contributing partier Jeremy Ripley suggested the other day that Sebadoh III was better than Double Nickels on the Dime. I admired his statement, merely for the willful blasphemy of saying any album is better than Double Nickels on the Dime. (After all, it might not be true!) And indeed, if anyone offers you a choice between Sebadoh III and all the other Sebadoh albums put together, you should take III in a second. Absolutely. I will admit that the first two albums, The Freed Man and Weed Forestin', are also pretty worthwhile; the band was better with Eric Gaffney, simple as that, more tension and freakiness. (Although I think Gaffney is on Bubble and Scrape, an album that has always bored me to tears.) Why am I talking about Sebadoh this much anyway? Possibly because they're always used as an example by underground bad-asses to show how useless they think indie-rock is, and however appropriate that may be, I'm not afraid to say "Even if Sebadoh has only put out at most three great albums, and listening to their last five albums doesn't feel much different than listening to The Eagles, III is an incredible album and I'd gladly forfeit my underground bad-assitude in order to say so."

Three bumper stickers, one car (Lincoln, Nebraska):

"VIETNAM VET"
"War is not healthy"
"SAY KNOW TO DRUGS"

My cat sure is looking cute, laying here beside me on the window sill. His name is Fozzy. Fozzy Ozzy Sonder in full.

I was driving around town listening to WNUR today and a duet between Loren Mazzacane Connors and Keiji Haino came on. I'd never heard it before, and they didn't announce it, but I was able to identify it because they were doing an all-Japan show and who couldn't identify the playing of Loren Mazzacane Connors, and he's not Japanese so the other guy must've been, and the only Japanese guy I knew who has done a duet release with Connors is Haino. See the kind of shit record geeks dwell on?
      I liked Moonyean quite a bit, but it didn't make me rush out and buy more either. I liked an album called The Bridge that you may or may not have heard, and I liked The Enchanted Forest, but that was more of a Suzanne Langille album anyway. As for LMC in duet with other guitarists: is it just me or does it always seem to become just another Grateful Dead-on-16 RPM 'you play rhythm I play lead' jam? I have a Licht/Connors album on New World of Sound - it has a great cover photo of sculptures by Alberto Giacometti but it is probably the dullest record I have ever bought in the name of 'underground free music'. The O'Rourke/Connors duet that Derek Bailey talked over on the Playbacks album sounded almost exactly the same. It ain't sayin' much, but the duet with Haino is definitely more interesting. Hoffman Estates I liked quite a bit, but mainly because O'Rourke dubbed an inspired Chicago jazz orchestra over the top of the duo's rote 'melancholy' chordings.
        Anyway, I won't say that it's all Mazzacane's fault. It's just that I've never heard anyone improvise with him who didn't defer to him. Surely he's played with Moore and Bailey -- what's the music sound like? I can't see those two 'fellow elders' just falling into blues licks like the younger guys do. Lee Ranaldo would probably make a great duet with LMC -- although he does play blues licks every now and then. I'm sure all these have happened -- didn't LMC play a duet a night for an entire month at the Tonic? Any recordings?

A few months/a year ago someone on the Drone-On e-mail list mentioned Steely Dan in a fairly positive light, and Byron Coley responded with a post to the effect of "anyone on this list who likes Steely Dan should unsubscribe immediately." Like a lot of other pretentious obscurists, I've taken my fair share of cues from Byron Coley, but I'll never stop appreciating prime 70s Steely Dan.        
       I was born in 1970. I was seven or eight years old when Steely Dan was really reigning the rock world. I was reading a lot of comic books at the same time -- Spiderman, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, shit like that. I was young enough that they all just seemed like comic book heroes. There was very little difference between Spiderman's city travel by web and Michael McDonald's falsetto, Mr. Fantastic's hot invisible wife and Don Henley's white-man afro, the Incredible Hulk's superstrength and Gene Simmon's knee-high battle boots, Batman's bat hook and Elton John's baby grand, Benjamin Grimm's rock-like body and Walter Becker's ass-length straight hair. These were all just examples of celebrity strength, superpower, and weaponry to me. I was 7 or 8 years old -- if I'd been 20 or 22 when Don Henley was reigning, I would've been able to tell that afro or no, Don Henley was full of shit, because by then I'd be familiar with music like The Stooges that wasn't full of shit and the difference would be clear. (Same way it's hard to read the Fantastic Four after you've absorbed R. Crumb.)
       When I was 22, in 1992, I had heard Fugazi musically make it clear that Warrant and White Lion and Dave Matthews were full of shit, and I'll never be able to take bands like that seriously again. Steely Dan, on the other hand, were superheroes to me, so their tunes sank under my skin. I can still play the Aja album or listen to "Doctor Wu" and lay back, listen to the lushness, and feel like I'm reading a comic book.

I happen to know that Bogdan Raczynksi, that exotic Euro continental IDM artist who records for Rephlex and collaborates with Bjork, is really just a guy from Ralston, Nebraska. That is his real name, though.

The B.S. "hook-of-the-month" club

1. "This Could Be The Night" by Half Japanese
Of course more than enough ink has been spilled (and film spooled) in order to sing the praises of Jad Fair, but in his case he actually deserves just about all of it, and I've gonna mention this lovely song anyway. The hook in question is peppered throughout the song, and it's the way Jad sings one word: "angel", the love and praise he feels clearly audible in his straining, ecstatic voice. He doesn't worship Christ, he worships Woman. Now THAT is religious music.

2. The hooks of Stankonia
There's been a lot of talk about this, the latest from Hotlanta hip-hoppers Outkast. Or, I should say, a lot of hype, and usually that makes me ignore an album full stop, at least for a couple years, so all the hype can blow over and I can get it for free or in a cheap bin or something. Well, in this case I got it anyway because a record store buddy gave it to me for free, and hype or no, I've been listening to it quite a bit. And while it has certainly been over-hyped, I'd have to say it's pretty good anyway, and (not that it's a way of judging quality) it is certainly PACKED with hooks. Here they are, in chronological order:

1. The creepy nerdy white-guy voice saying "We're bouncing....we're bouncing..." in the opening skit.
2. The astounding double hook that opens the first track proper (over a live gtr/bs/drums rock trio jam): "I write/awl right/I write/awl right/I write/awl right/I write/alright/I write/I write/I write/I write/I write/I write...Does anybody like the smell of gasoline? Well burn mother fucker burn American dreams..." A great hook and a great theatrical opening.
3. The "bitch! stay off that blow!" skit is hilarious every time.
4. Jeez, "So Fresh and So Clean" -- the falsetto mel-soul chorus! "So fresh and so clean clean"! The call & response breakdown halfway through: Falsetto chorus: "Cause we are..." Andre 3000: "The coolest motherfunkers on the planet..." "Ma ma...." "The sky is fallin' ain't no need for panic." "Oh oh..." "I got a stick and want our automatic." "Ooooh, ooooh..." "Compatible created in the attic." It is definitely Surrealist Poetry.
5. Each of the following is a hook: "I'm sorry Miss Jackson" and "Hoo!" and "I am for reeealll." and "Never meant to make your momma cry/I apologize a trillion times." And of course "Forever? Forever ever??? Forever ever????" is one of the hooks of 2000. And the Prince-style backwards/phased beats throughout is a good instrumental hook.
6. I'm just a wussy when it comes to gangsta shit, so "Snappin' & Trappin'" isn't one of my immediate favorites.The chorus is super-hooky, almost too hooky, too easy...so I prefer the sudden hooks that come naturally within the rhymes, like Big Mike closing his opening turn with "One mothafuckin verse an' already it's a classic...one mothafuckin verse an' already it's a classic..." Big Mike's description of getting some oral sex is creepy enough to cause Big Boi to interject "Killer Mike gonna calm down, things gonna get a little crazy". Another lyrical hook is the way Big Boi ends one of his verses by sort of fading himself out while chanting "You late...cause you hate...you late..." The Bernie Worrell keyboard squiggles are an instrumental hook in themselves, and the tinny rat-a-tat drum machine beat isn't quite like anything I've ever heard. (Except for in vintage Prince music...sure Andre 3000 is another post-Hendrix superfreak dude, but I really hear the Princefluence in the drum machine stylings...which after all was one of the greatest things about Prince...those bizarre detuned machine-gun drum patterns he'd come up with.)
7. "Spaghetti Junction" has a nice chorus but it's one of the less earthshaking cuts.
8. In the "Kim & Cookie" interlude, when the girl says "You feel me?" and an angelic chorus answers back from out of nowhere "I feel ya!"
9. "I'll call before I come/I won't just pop over, out the blue, ooh-ooh-WOO!/I hope that you will too..." is a lovely funky bouncy happy hook, and what a great sentiment to hear from 'gangsta' rap.
10. All of "Bombs Over Baghdad" is one big fat hook, a definite hip-hop radio bomb. Andre's triumphant "Inslumnational underground!" introduction is a two-word manifesto, fully supported by the high-speed rapping/Miami bass combination. The amazing chorus sounds like it's about gangsta shit -- "Don't pull the thang out unless you plan to bang / Don't even bang unless you plan to hit some thang" -- but to me it sounds anti-violence and, considering the song title, anti-war as well. Another great lyrical hook is Big Boi's introduction: "Uno, dos, tres, it's on/Did you ever see a pimp rock a microphone?" The outro "vamp" is yet another hook, and another one-liner manifesto: "Power music, electric revival."

Okay, as usual my energy for this piece is waning just as the deadline for it is waning in my rear view mirror. What the hell, I feel like I've made my point, so I'll close with just a couple more hooks from the second half of the album that come to mind:

11. The "Slum Beautiful" chorus is a great use of the 'spooky' Parliament style, as exemplified on the song "All Your Goodies Are Gone." Great echo effect. They dubbed on their own Hendrixian backwards guitar (by Donny Mathis). And Andre 3000's improvised-sounding a cappella ending is pretty sexy: "I'd like to say that I'd love to/make love to every molecule of you..."
12. "Stank luuuv............Stank luuuv.............."

There's a lot more hooks on here than 12, believe me. In fact, in 'researching' this piece, I remembered that I forgot that Outkast actually call their choruses "hooks" throughout the Stankonia lyric sheet.

next: oh yeah, one more way to listen to music