Month: February 2007

Anton Barbeau – In The Village of the Apple Sun CD (Four-Way)

Medium Image

I'm predisposed to laud Anton Barbeau for his yeoman's work luring Scott Miller back to the recording studio (see last year's swell Loud Family CD, of which we still have a few free copies for Scram subscribers), but his lush, Bowiesque art-pop stands on its own freaky merits. Kicking off with the glam starburst of "This Is Why They Call Me Guru 7," the disc seduces with effortlessly catchy tunes, hyperactive arrangements and a neatly meshed tapestry of electronic and real instruments. The ideas fly furiously, tape runs backwards, cohorts shriek deep in the mix.. and yes, you could say much the same about a Scott Miller record. It's no coincidence these two have formed a collaboration, and fans of the Loud Family and Game Theory will certainly want to explore Barbeau's deep catalog of smart, weird pop, with this a timely starting point.

Corwood 0787

JANDEK

THE RUINS OF ADVENTURE
______________________________________________

1. THE PARK (10:08)

2. BLUFF BRINK (8:10)

3. COMPLETELY YOURS (7:10)

4. MYSTERIES OF EXISTENCE (6:42)

5. THE RUINS OF ADVENTURE (14:28)

_____________________________________________
©(P) 2006 CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
P.O. BOX 15375
HOUSTON, TEXAS 77220
U.S.A.

Keeping Order

Slowly I take off my shoes and roll up my pants before dipping my toe — the right big one — back into the vast pond that is the blogosphere. More than three months have passed since I last posted here. Why? I’ve been busy as hell, for one thing: researching and writing my book, working with my agent to get it in front of publishers; and expanding my publicity services. More to follow about both.

About these last few months, with its challenges and achievements and occasional disappointments, I’m reminded of a passage from Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest (based on the Georges Bernanos novel). With a face like a pinched and pious James Dean, Claude Laydu as the country priest writes in his diary: 

Keep order all day long,
knowing full well disorder
will win out tomorrow,
because in this sorry world,
the night undoes the work of the day.

I’ll be back soon.

The Crumbiest Month

Just a couple of random things for those who aren’t at the Berlinale…

***

A friend who works with a company here in Berlin that produces trade magazines, several of them for the food industry, was over the other day. “That bread you get in the bakeries here,” he was saying, “you know they don’t bake that on the premises, right?” Well, that hardly takes a genius; most bakeries don’t have the room to mix, form, proof, and bake bread. No, of course it’s brought in from somewhere else in what readers of a certain age might recognize as Brown N Serve condition and finished in the tiny ovens in the bakery. “Yeah, right,” he contined, “but here’s the really weird part. Do you know where that bread starts out?” In some factory somewhere, I suppose. “You’re right — but the factory is in China. They fly the bread in, frozen, and it gets distributed to an intermediate point, and then it gets thawed and delivered to the bakeries.”

I’m not passing this along as gospel, although I suspect it might be true for some of the chains. I’ve often known I was approaching Berlin on the train, for instance, because of a huge Thobens Bakeries facility just outside of Potsdam, but I don’t know what they actually do there. Anyone else have info on this? It’d help explain why the bread here is so bad — the independent bakery in Berlin is virtually extinct — but it would also open up a new market for German bakers: it would be just as easy to re-heat this stuff in ovens in America or Japan as it is to do it here. And you could market it as “authentic German bread.”

***

Speaking of magazines, a friend passed this article along. Ho-hum, another magazine startup. But…Vanity Fair isn’t just any magazine. It’s hard to say if the Spiegel article is tongue-in-cheek — although, like the country it’s published in, it’s not known for a sense of humor — but there are some rather astounding things in it. Like this quote: “And rumors abound that Gruner + Jahr is already working on a magazine in case Vanity Fair is successful. The working title sounds like something Poschardt would come up with: Neues Deutschland or New Germany.” Ummm, I know Germans are expert at forgetting their history, but did no one notice that this was the name of the house organ of the East German government? I mean, I can go to the DDR Museum and buy a replica copy of the first issue for €1.50.

Not to mention the folly of doing this as a weekly, doing it as a weekly with a tiny staff, and running a picture of Till Schweiger with a goat on the cover of the first issue. Till Schweiger with his shirt off, sure, but…a goat??

Read it and weep.

***

Which is pretty much what I did this afternoon while trying to figure out if I have enough in the bank for a round-trip train ticket to Paris. I probably do, but when you go to the Deutsche Bahn travel information page and try to book the ticket, you’re met with a link that says “Unknown Tariff Abroad.” Click it, and you get this message:

“For the most important foreign cities (e.g. Vienna, Amsterdam, Zurich) fares are available.

“For your requested connection fares are unfortunately not available.”

So Deutsche Bahn is still fighting the Franco-Prussian War and we, the customers, get the benefit.

THE NIGHTS AND DAYS: “These Days/Lookin’â€Â 45

For me, the great fourth wave of punk rock washed upon the world’s shores in the very late 1980s and continued on well until the 90s. This of course was the era of the CHEATER SLICKS, THE GORIES, THE OBLIVIANS, SUPERCHARGER and all the sick young kids more inspired by the first wave (1965-67) than by the second (1976-79). With the possible exception of the Cheater Slicks, the bands most near & dear to my ears during this time were Rob Vasquez’s two incredibly unsung & lost-to-time bands THE NIGHTS AND DAYS and THE NIGHT KINGS. The latter got a little bit of attention for a few months when their album “Increasing Our Highâ€Â came out on Steve Turner (Mudhoney)’s Super Electro label, a label that was itself an imprint of the larger Sub Pop records. But finding fellow NIGHTS & DAYS fans in the late 80s/early 90s was a fool’s game, particularly if one lived outside of the band’s hometown of Seattle, as I did. Only record-collecting lunatics knew about the band, and given that their two 45s on the Regal Select label were in editions of 500, until they get reissued, that’s likely to remain the case.

I’d like to do my part in helping move the NIGHTS AND DAYS revival along by providing you with an opportunity to hear (and download) their second 45, “These Days/Lookin’â€Â. This came out in 1989 on Regal Select records from Issaquah, Washington. It is a full-blast wall of sound, with mammoth hooks and enough melodic tuneage (particularly in the case of “These Daysâ€Â) to generate instant-anthem status. At one point in my life I published an entire magazine devoted to my favorite forty-five 45s; this barely missed the cut then, but would not now, with the benefit of ten more years of hindsight and critical filtering. I know that at some point that some label will rescue the compleat works of Vasquez from ignominy and issue a 2xCD that will knock your socks off your ass. Until then, please enjoy what I believe to be his many bands’ absolute peak.

Download THE NIGHTS AND DAYS – “These Daysâ€Â (side A of 45)
Download THE NIGHTS AND DAYS – “Lookin’â€Â (side B of 45)

Popeye Vol. 1: “I Yam What I Yamâ€Â by E.C. Segar

Popeye Vol. 1: “I Yam What I Yamâ€Â by E.C. Segar
Art Out Of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969, edited by Dan Nadel
Review by Robert Dayton

Two thousand and six was a profoundly great year in comics for initiates and novices alike and let’s hope, as our eyes gaze heavenward, that this is a signifier of what is to come in 2007 and beyond. One needn’t be bound and shackled by the mires of comic geekdom to appreciate these fine objets d’art. Proof of this pudding can be found in Popeye Vol. 1: “I Yam What I Yamâ€Â by E.C. Segar.

What many of us know of Popeye is a mere bastardization faded through Xerox visions. Possibly the closest anyone got to the original template was Robert Altman’s Popeye movie (a box office bomb and near career destroyer) with its’ sprawling seaside ruddiness and great songs by Nilsson and Van Dyke Parks! Natch that this book’s intro is by Jules Feiffer, cartooning legend and screenplay writer of that movie. The original Popeye was crusty and, at first, only incidental. This volume starts at the beginning of Popeye but the real beginning was years before. When E.C. Segar began his Thimble Theatre newspaper strip in 1919 it was little more than a comic take on adventure serials, damsel in distress kinda stuff. Eventually genre parody gave way to propelled flights of whimsy, stereotypes dissolved as Segar developed true characters and archetypes to propel these continuing misadventures, such as Olive Oyl and her brother Castor Oyl One day in early 1929 Popeye just plunked down into frame unforgettably. Then after a few months Popeye disappeared back into the ether. He wasn’t gone for long. Readers wrote in, they needed Popeye, a spark was struck, something had stuck, a comic anti-hero that caught permanent fancy in the publics’ twinkling craw.

The strip was brilliant and Popeye just fit. Segar already honed the slang and jargon of the day but with Popeye it was even further skewed mutterings of verbiage. Thimble Theatre was like ergot laced barnacles, comedic character interaction with a beating bandaged heart, rough and tumble gags laced with depth, and elements of the fantastique with such wild characters as the wish granting Whiffle Hen and the eerily menacing Sea Hag. Most importantly, Thimble Theatre was funny.

By the time of Segar’s death in 1938, the Fleischer studios had already been producing a few very impressive Popeye cartoons in their own right, where fleeting moments from the strip (spinach, Brutus nee Bluto) became permanent mainstays. Outside of the creator’s vision these tropes landed on the screen and into other merchandising friendly elements of popular culture.
With this new volume from Fantagraphics, gregariously steel yourself for the real Popeye, the original ancient scrolls that stem right from just before his first appearance and continuing onwards chronologically. This Popeye defied the conventions that were later to be thrust upon him by the non-Segars, the lesser lights. This big bound collection is a pure antidote for depression, especially if one veers towards surliness or cynicism though wide-eyed naivetes can easily enjoy it as well. And this is just Volume One of a proposed six volume set (Volume Two, due next year, introduces Wimpy!)!

Designed by Jacob Covey, the hardcover package features a cut out word balloon title-it is literally cut out of the hard bound cover. It’s just stunningly put together. Fantagraphics have utilized computer technology to render these strips in crisp glory; the full page colour newspaper strips are lush, soft washes. As such an integral part of comics history, these strips should always be in print. Before this, one had to desperately seek out Fantagraphics’ previous reprintings from the early 90’s, those unassuming volumes –even in soft cover- were less economical and not as advanced in design and lay out. This book is a steal at approximately thirty dollars, an investment of joy.
A few years back when I was seeking those earlier inferior volumes, my travels led me to Olympia, Wa- known also by its’ other name as Indie Rock Hell- where there exists a great comic shop called The Danger Room. The two proprietors would often argue about which was the greatest newspaper strip of all time: Thimble Theatre or George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, both are on their Top Two lists anyways so it is a microscopic yet enjoyable argument. If you want to add fuel to that hierarchical debating fire there are some wonderful reprints of Krazy Kat also available. I still pledge allegiance to Thimble Theatre. This volume does not reprint too many of the strips before Popeye’s arrival on the scene but if one is curious issue 271 of the Comics Journal reprints a terrific fifty page Thimble Theatre adventure.

Before I take leave of you I should mention another must have book that had me giddy as a schoolgirl’s first ride on a pony. Entitled Art Out Of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969 and edited by Dan Nadel, this book pleases the palates of both comic know-it-alls and future junior initiates as well with overlooked works by those who slipped through the cracks whilst expanding the form. And absolutely no super heroes to speak of. Just sweet delirium tremors. Seek it out. It will cause you to float in space.

Yellow Balloon

I have read the lengthy booklet that comes with Sundazed’s reissue of The Yellow Balloon’s self-titled album two times now, and I’m still not really sure I understand the band’s story. But here’s what I think it is:

Gary Zekley, – a songwriter, producer and sometimes band member on the West Coast pop circuit of the 1960s – wrote a song, called “The Yellow Balloon,” and handed it off to Jan and Dean. Knowing the song was going to be a hit, Zekley threw together a band and recorded a version of his own, hoping to beat Jan and Dean to the studio finish line. One member of the band Zekley assembled was Don Grady, who played Robbie Douglas on the hit TV show “My Three Sons,” and who had already been moonlighting as a rock ‘n’ rooler, most recently in a folk-rock band called The Palace Guard. Zekley’s motley band wound up naming itself after the song they were assembled to record, scored a minor hit with their version of “Balloon,” and went on to make a full-length album.

I may or may not have all of that right, and I may have missed some important points of the band’s brief story. But here’s the real gist of what I want to say in this space: the album, The Yellow Balloon, is a minor treasure of sun-soaked California psychedelic pop. Part Byrds, part Beach Boys, part Turtles, part Left Banke . . . but the 60s band the Balloon most sounds like is the good-timey Lovin’ Spoonful. The songs are happy and bouncy, they boast excellent melodies and just enough acid flavor to let you know what era they were recorded in. That studio pros like Jim Gordon and Carole Kaye played many of the instruments on the record is something we’ll overlook for the moment – the band The Yellow Balloon (with Grady wearing a wig and shades so as not to be recognized) did tour to support the record, and played some of the instruments on the album, and their lead singer, Alex Valdez, sang most of the songs (Grady sings others).

The bonus tracks Sundazed added to the set include some songs Grady recorded as a solo artist and as leader of an outfit called The Windupwatchband. There is also an interview with Zekley, who died in the late 90s. Some of Grady’s solo stuff is as good as, maybe better than, the material on the main album.

The Yellow Balloon were not a great band. But they managed to make one record which nicely captures the time and place of California in the mid-to-late 1960s. The Gary Zekley mystique and the Don “Robbie Douglas” connection only add to their allure.

The Rockin’ Vickers – The Complete: It’s Alright! CD (RPM)

Active from 1964-1967, this North English combo deserve more than its ” Lemmy Kilmeister’s first band” footnote. With their taut 40-minute sets and clerical airs, they were favorites of the Northern dance club scene, though the lack of original material limited their options. A late move to London to record for Shel Talmy didn’t change the world, though theirs’ surely turned more moddish and they found hipper writers to cover. The band’s appealing confidence shows in the title track, a startling rearrangement of the Who’s then-unreleased “The Kids Are Alright” replete with tinkling keys and falsetto call-and-response vocals, and on the irresistibly twitchy “Say Mama.” Stay tuned till the closer, “Little Rosy,” an unreleased Ray Davies tune performed with properly Kinksy abandon.

“SHAKEDOWN: ORIGINAL BRISBANE PUNK 1979-83”

I’ll admit, I thought the Australian 70s/80s punk goldmine had long been tapped. Ever since I bought the “Bloodstains Across Australia” comp LP & then sold it back (because I thought at the time that it had nothing in the league of The Victims, Razar, Rocks, Psycho Surgeons et al), I counted myself fortunate to have ingested & mentally tagged every great Aussie punk 45 of the golden era. But that’s before I heard this great new compilation from Dropkick Records – and specifically, the band the YOUNG IDENTITIES. Their “Positive Thinking” 45 from 1979 is one of the most raw, crazed & wacked-out punk rock singles of any era, totally in league with the MENTALLY ILL and sharing many of the same fine traits (like an unglued singer with a whiney. nasally voice + a bass player who seems content to hit the same chord over & over as fast as possible). You get all three tracks from that and their other single too, plus some great stuff from JUST URBAIN (“Burning” is fantastic), the BODYSNATCHERS and SECTION URBAIN. Ironically, several tracks were on the “Bloodstains” comp I didn’t like, which proves again the wisdom of age. For some reason there’s the nearly-hideous Bauhuas ripoff band called KICKS on here too, 8 of the 26 tracks in fact, but you know how to use the skip button, dont ya? Here’s what Dropkick has to say about this compilation, just so you know:

Shake Records and Savage Music (essentially the same thing) was the label run in Brisbane during the late ’70s by David Holiday and Peter Miller from Just Urbain, and Rod McLeod from the Young Identities. The first release orchestrated by this brains trust was the Cigarettes and Alcohol” 7″ from local heroes The Leftovers. With no-one within earshot waving chequebooks at them, and having caught the DIY bug, they had nine releases in all, eight 7″s and a live cassette. Roll call: Just Urbain, Young Identities, Bodysnatchers and Kicks.

The bands here are among the most primitive, inept and snotty DIY noise to be found in Australia at the time. The singles sold out their tiny hand made pressings (usually 100 to 200) within months and quickly became highly sought-after. These days they are next to impossible to find. Almost the entire label’s output is compiled here (save a few songs from the Kicks cassette), complete with plenty of band photos, flyers, artwork and lengthy recollections from Messrs Holiday and Miller.

I say it’s a great one, and seriously, if you don’t hear that Young Identities stuff you’re going to the grave with only a life half lived.

Victor Bravo – Shut Out The Sky CD-EP

Victor Bravo is a stripped-down garage rock juggernaut of Collin Frendz on fuzzy guitar and echoey howl-at-the-moon vocals and Dan Collins on twitchy drums. Tracks 1-3 are terrific, swaggering snot-nosed anthems in the tradition of rural pissed-off teens from 1966 on. “Binge” is an irresistibly Dionysian release, though “Sarbanes-Oxley” (named for the 2002 corporate accounting reform act) is hardly a typical lowbrow theme. Closes with the throwaway sneer of “Toxic Tornado,” weakening the effect of the rest of the EP. The band is now based in NYC, but has roots in Maine that I hope they keep watered.

More info
www.victorbravo.com