Month: March 2007

BRAIN-ERASING DUB FOR THE UNINITIATED

I used to listen to a lot of reggae and dub at the end of its golden era in the early 1980s, via college radio shows like Spliff Skankin’s on KFJC (great nom de plume, Spliff!) and Doug Wendt’s commercial show “Midnight Dreadâ€Â on a commercial San Francisco station called “The Quakeâ€Â. I always took to the dub stuff the most – the sinewy, echo-laden headcleaners from the likes of the Twinkle Brothers and King Tubby – but I got way deeper into obscure rock music and dropped all reggae & dub when I headed off to Bob Marley University, aka UC-Santa Barbara. It took probably 15 years before I was ready to take up the flag again around 1999, and when I did, it was dub only for the most part – to this day I have an aversion to most (not all) vocal reggae post-1970 or so.

Oddly enough, it was two chapters in an out-of-print book called “The Secret History of Rockâ€Â that got me going again; the chapters were on Tubby and Lee “Scratchâ€Â Perry, and they totally got my interest piqued. A friend then bought me AUGUSTUS PABLO’s “King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptownâ€Â and that was all she wrote. For 8 years I have been a dub collector, I guess you’d say, if collecting means amassing a library of CD-Rs burned from others & from Soulseek, and CDs actually purchased with real cash money at great dub-laden stores like Streetlight Records in Santa Cruz, CA. A lot of my pals think that dub is kinda lame, or reeks of the reggae that they learned to loathe, and I guess I understand. I’ve been there. Yet the form, which to my ears truly existed in its top guise from about 1972 to 1982 (or thereabouts), is as wild, wacked and unpredictable as many of the rock bands we frequently revere. I’m going to post what I could very legitimately argue are 3 of the top dubs of all time. If you’re newly interested in the genre, I hope this is a portal to another dimension for ya. If you’re an old dub hand, well, then you probably have these already, but it can’t hurt to listen to them again right now at top volume, right?

Download AUGUSTUS PABLO – “King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptownâ€Â (buy the CD here)
Download GLEN BROWN & KING TUBBY – “Version 78 Styleâ€Â (buy the CD here)
Download IMPACT ALL-STARS – “Extraordinary Versionâ€Â (buy the CD here)

Paula Frazer & Tarnation – Now It’s Time CD (Birdman)

Small Image

Paula Frazer’s voice has this warm, effortless quality that makes me think of old fashioned things like melted sugar candy being pulled in a hand-cranked roller. Adopting the loosely defined Tarnation name after nearly a decade, with longtime collaborators Patrick Main and Jasmyn Wong plus various Moore Bros and Orangers in tow, Frazer evokes a throatier Sandy Denny as she trips and skitters about a suite of moody country-psych tunes loosely inspired by one heartbroken summer. Frazer’s songs tend to grow on you, and if these come off a bit abstract and under-narrated on early listens, past experience suggests the facets will click into place with time, and be worth the effort.

TEAR-IT-UP-STYLE RELATIONSHIP ROCK FROM THE TOUCH-ME-NOTS

The TOUCH-ME-NOTS are a great husband/wife guitar & drums duo from Oakland, California who are working hard on rejuvenating the long-dormant genre of “Ozark punkâ€Â. You might recognize this form as having formerly being the province of acts like ’68 COMEBACK, WALTER DANIELS and smaller players like Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Feathers. They’ve recently attracted some deserved attention for their stripped-down, bonzai tear-it-up style, which essentially consists of a loud twangy, toothless racket, with the occasional side trip into Lieber/Stoller & girl group territory, made by two of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. They’ve recently released their debut 10â€ÂEP “Sheldon Munnâ€Â on France’s Yakisakana Records, as well as a second 45rpm disc on Nasty Product. I’m solidly in their camp, & hope you will be too. Here are 3 samples for your listening pleasure:

Download TOUCH-ME-NOTS – “Goin’ To Gut Gevorenâ€Â (from “Sheldon Munnâ€Â 10â€ÂEP)
Download TOUCH-ME-NOTS – “Celebrity Roastâ€Â (from their first 45)
Download TOUCH-ME-NOTS – “Bag O’ Moneyâ€Â (from their second 45)

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

If you watched the opening minutes of last night’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, after Jann Wenner’s eulogy of Ahmet Ertegun and before the interminable acceptance speeches began, you saw a lovely In Memoriam presentation dedicated to those significant figures in the music industry who passed away in 2006.

Twelfth among the litany of names both famous (Buck Owens, Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett, James Brown) and not so famous (blues musician Sam Myers, Denis Payton of the Dave Clark Five, publicist Ronnie Lippin), appeared none other than Paul Nelson, the subject of the book I’ve worked on since last July.

As a music journalist, much of Paul’s writing was of the moment and consequently lost to back issues of assorted magazines and newspapers. Last night, however, this great writer received at least some of his due.

Tom Pacheco

Back in 1976, Paul Nelson tried to sign Tom Pacheco to Mercury Records. For reasons that were commercial — as in “not commercial enough“ — he failed. But Paul knew people who knew people and, as a result, Pacheco landed a record deal at RCA. About the first of those albums, 1976’s Swallowed Up in the Great American Heartland, Paul, who by then had left his A&R post at Mercury and returned to criticism, wrote: “Tom Pacheco spent most of his early years listening to wild Texas music in the snowbound towns of Massachussetts, and his songs combine the best from both worlds.”

Last evening, the forty or so people who filled the Uptown Coffeehouse at the Riverdale Society for Ethical Culture discovered that, over thirty years later, Paul’s words still ring true. Pacheco, whose songs have been recorded by the Band, Richie Havens, the great Rick Danko, and Jefferson Starship, performed the first set by himself and the second set with the Bloodlines Band: his amazingly talented guitarist brother Paul Pacheco (who played with Jimi Hendrix and Howlin’ Wolf) and his brother-in-law bassist Vern Miller (whose band Barry and the Remains opened for the Beatles on their final tour).

Pacheco’s quavering voice well serves his songs, which range from the wildly fanciful (“Big Jim’s Honey,” inspired by Sam Love’s novel Electric Honey, wherein the proximity of a beekeeper’s hive to a marijuana patch yields interesting results) to the heartbreakingly real (“Walter,” a worthy successor to John Prine’s “Sam Stone” in the returned-vet-as-damaged-goods genre). Political songs of Guantanamo Bay (“My Name Is Hamir”) and everything that’s wrong with America (“When You’re Back on Your Ranch in Texas”) were balanced by not-so-simple love songs and “The Journal of Graeme Livingstone,” an epic tale of an eighty-nine-year-old Florida hotel-owner who claims he killed Jack the Ripper.

According to Pacheco, Paul Nelson’s early interest and encouragement are the reasons he’s still in music today. A Woodstock residsent, Pacheco now has nineteen albums to his name and tours extensively in Europe. Paul, I think, would be proud.

SCIENTISTS “THERE’S A MONSTER IN MEâ€Â 45

I stumbled across this bootleg SCIENTISTS single many years ago & reckoned it was an official release, all the more so when I took it home and promptly christened it one of the top Scientists records ever, right up there with “Blood Red Riverâ€Â and “This Heart Doesn’t Run On Blood….â€Â. “There’s a Monster in Meâ€Â, the song, is among this early/mid-80s Australian group’s high-water marks – total screeching swampland gutter blues – and why it never made it to an official release is a mystery for the ages & the sages. The B-side is a barely-different version of “You Only Live Twiceâ€Â, but it wasn’t anything special so I’m refraining from posting it here. Friends who saw the Scientists last year in England at the All Tomorrow’s Parties fest reported that it was like a 1983 Perth punk rock picnic come to life, like 20-some-odd years hadn’t passed or nothin’. And what’s this I hear about the BEASTS OF BOURBON touring the US this year?

Anyway – dig this squealing bit of god noise, and let me know what you think.

Download THE SCIENTISTS – “There’s A Monster In Meâ€Â (from bootleg 45)

Dice Undisputed: Report 03/11/07

(Only for viewers of the show)

He didn’t keep his leather jacket?

A radio show guest spot: He goes off, abusing the sidekick for no reason – an obvious publicity stunt. No more humble Dice. I DON’T LIKE IT!! Bad traffic behavior, there seems to be a car upgrade, visit to the divorce lawyer, visit to the loan shark (for a friend), yelling “fuck offâ€Â to random strangers….an all-around bad mood. The plot is build-up to a Showtime appearance; his first TV job in ten years, and then it falls through. Third show…third ending in failure. Will I be around for episode four? Good question. Lots of those lately.

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