No, not these guys – these guys are THE SONICS, still the standard-bearers for the form, but two low-circulation screamers from 1966, both of which are absolute monsters. Listen and marvel as the singer for the REASONS WHY goes absolutely apoplectic over a girl – quite possibly the most over-the-top, “savage” vocal performance of the day. Thrill to the stunning, wall-of-guitar intro to THE SPLIT ENDS’ “Rich With Nothing”, and then quietly add this to your mental list of the rawest & best 60s punk songs.
I know both numbers because of a bootleg LP called “I WAS A TEENAGE CAVEMENâ€Â , yet both are also available on various semi-legit LPs and CDs as well. They’re also available right here, at no charge to the customer.
Read it here (with funny graphics), or read it below.
Where has Skag Winesack been?
“Well, I’ve been working on my cookbook, Jazz Casserole. I got a publisher (McSweeneys), so I haven’t had much time to blog. I plan on changing that. I’ll never get that book deal from Cracked unless some diligence is shown.
I can’t afford a lawyer, nor would I invite one onto my boat if the financial situation was otherwise.
The publisher has shown opposition to some of my chapter and dish titles. Scrapped completely is the chapter titled, ‘Recipes That Will Tear Up Your Asshole.’ True, I like spicy food, and I drink, and the combination thereof does indeed have a tendency to, uh, make my bathroom experiences akin to a scrapping match with Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb. Let’s just say that I’m glad they put those bars in the handicap stalls.
They also had a problem with the cover art. My initial concept was an artist’s rendition of me cooking in the kitchen, apron on and all, while my ‘wife’ is locked out of the house, forced to make a burrito in the pouring rain.
Speaking of burritos, it was another ‘no-go’ for my tasty ‘Dysentarito.’
I thought I was dealing with a progressive publishing house here. I could be wrong. I’m a little, as they say, ‘out of the loop.’ As you know, I’m a semi-retired Private Eye that lives on a goddamn boat, and living on a boat in a South Memphis harbor can do alienating things to a man. I have to run a dial-up cable from my parlor all the way to the marina office/restaurant, and they keep unplugging it to run credit cards.
Oh yeah, I guess another problem area is my choice of certain ingredients. I thought most people liked seafood. There’s nothing wrong with gar, drum, carp, or bowfin. And fowl? I’ve made a fantastic stew from the various winged vermin that swarm the marina. Getting shotgun pellets out of sparrow meat is NOT EASY.
Anyone out there up for some free legal advice? Jazz Casserole will not see the light of day as a neutered dog, and I mean it.â€Â
Let me draw your attention to two of my favorite links over there on the right.
Over at Clown Central Station, Leonard Pierce (aka The Kong of Clowns) makes right-wing punditry look like the clown car that it is by (and get this, because it’s brilliant) taking the blowhards at their word. He treats them like the words they write actually mean what they say, and instantly – poof! – they are revealed as petty half-wits. The man is in the same league as Colbert or the Daily Show, which I don’t say lightly.
Meanwhile, over at Boy On A Stick And Slither, Steven L. Cloud has created the most thoughtful and funny comic strip since Calvin & Hobbes. OK, since I’m out on a limb, I think it’s actually better than Calvin & Hobbes in some ways. Take some time and flip through the archives.
In other news, I emailed my editor at Continuum today to ask for yet another extension to my deadline for my 33 1/3 book. I’ve been rewriting it since February and really, really like my current direction. I described it for him and hope that he sees it as a valid way to go.
There’ve been some rumbings in the off-stage cockeyed caravan that is my life and I’ve nearly regained the will to blog. While I actually figure out how to turn my brain back on, enjoy this video. It’s an employee training film commissioned by Universal Studios from the South Park guys. For some reason, they never actually ended up using it…
Other than my copies of FORCED EXPOSURE, the one 1980s fanzine I intend to take to the grave with me is the 1982 issue of TAKE IT! magazine, with CHRIS D. and the FLESH EATERS on the cover & nothing but quality on the inside. The magazine perfectly captured the rock n roll zeitgeist of the post-punk, mid-hardcore era, with heavy attention to outstanding bands like The Flesh Eaters, Half Japanese, The Fall etc. & great reviews & columns by the likes of Byron Coley and Don Howland, along with publisher Michael Koenig. It emanated from Florida (!), and this is the only copy I’ve ever seen or owned.
This is a magazine that on at least two occassions arrived with a “flexidisc” inside, as was fairly popular at the time. This particular flexi is a marvel. It features one of the most crazed tracks ever recorded by TEX & THE HORSEHEADS, with Jeffrey Lee Pierce on guitar. It contains an incredible MEAT PUPPETS track, “Teenager(s)”, which features the greatest opening two seconds in the history of music, and which perfectly positions the band between their berzerk-core debut album and their conutry-fried masterpiece “Meat Puppets II”. Finally, a live FLESH EATERS track from the height of their powers, apparently when they shared the stage with DIE KREUZEN on their quote-unquote “Toolin’ for Beaver” tour. All copyright 1982. I’ve taken the Tex & the Flesh Eaters tracks directly from the flexi, but you get the Meat Puppets one from the CD reissue of “Meat Puppets II” (with loads of extra tracks), because – believe it or not – it sounds better. Enjoy!
Good to see that the I (Heart) Huckabees video has become a viral bulldozer. Just punishment for making that official P.O.S.
Two movies that recently left an ill-defined impact on me (meaning, they pop up as I’m drifting off to sleep): Altman’s Long Goodbye and Zodiac.
Three stupid movies that I’m really looking forward to: Disturbia, Slow Burn, and The Reaping. Sunday afternoon triple feature in the works!! I’ll drive around to different theaters!
Have digital cable?ÂÂ You should. Check out the RetroplexÂÂ Channel. I laughed out loudÂÂ during The End. ÂÂ
The highlight of my SXSW this year was getting to interview Joe Boyd, the legendary record producer, on-stage as part of the panels program. I do wish he’d read less from his book (hey, it was on sale right there in the Convention Center; whet the audience’s appetite so they’ll buy!) and given me more time to ask him about stuff that wasn’t in the book (and about his next one, which’ll cover his years as a world music pioneer), but it was an enjoyable time, and he mentioned that he’d be in San Francisco at the same time I was in Marin, so we agreed to hook up at Village Music, the great and soon-to-be-defunct record store.
Which we did, on Tuesday morning. Showing remarkable self-control, Joe only bought a small stack of records and arranged to have them shipped to his house in London. Then, in one of those remarkable coincidences that happen all the time at Village Music, in walked an old friend of his, the woman who’d given him the biggest hit of his career, Maria Muldaur! She scampered back to her house to get him an advance copy of her new record, and Joe and I went for some coffee at a nearby shop. She met us there, and I got to snap a pic:
After we went our separate ways, I sped over to Berkeley to meet my friend Jaan for lunch at the remarkable Vik’s Chaat Corner, a place I’d heard about but never gone to. It’s basically a South Indian snack bar, and I was numbed into indecision by the choice. I finally settled on Bel Puri for myself, a dish I’d read about in countless Indian novels.
Described in the takeaway menu I picked up as “Crisp puffed rice mixed with onions, cilantro and potatoes with tamarind, mint, and garlic chutnies,” it wasn’t as exciting as it sounds, as perhaps the photo hints. Jaan, though, went for the Dahi Batata Puri, which rocked:
The description on the menu is “crisp puffed puris stuffed with potatoes and garbanzos covered with spices, yoghurt, and tamarind chutney,” and it was one of those great South Indian things that balances a whole lot of different disparate elements perfectly. Afterwards, we hit the grocery store next door, and I marvelled at how much fresher the spices in there were than the ones at the Indian markets here. I also picked up a couple of those tiny Indian regional cookbooks (I’m a sucker for them, always have been) and once I decode them (ingredients often have Hindi names, but I’m getting better at them) I see some great meals in my future.
* * *
Probably the best discovery at SXSW was that Bobby Patterson, a legendary Dallas soul singer, is alive and performing. He was on the Ponderosa Stomp showcase, but went on at 1:30, which is too late for me, but the Stomp also had a day party on 6th St., so I made it over for that. The man is in top form, he had a great little band, and his between-song comments, delivered in rapid-fire surrealistic jive, made me want to hear his radio show. I managed to get a few performance shots, one of which even came out!
My old pal John T. Davis took two pix of me and Bobby afterwards, but I forgot to show him where the zoom button was, so I’ll spare you those. It doesn’t look, from the current Ponderosa listing, as if Patterson’s playing this year’s show, which is a shame, but I have to say, the lineup is, with the exception of the previously-unknown-to-me Jay Chevalier (a man with no discernable talent except for irritating the audience), absolutely incredible. If I were going to be in New Orleans on May 2 (and I’m not), I’d be there!
Another great singer and songwriter who won’t be Stomping closed out SXSW for me: a rare performance by the enigmatic Swamp Dogg, who, I’m glad to say, is still in rare form. He’s got a new album out, Resurrection, which I haven’t listened to yet, but at least one of the songs, “They Crowned An Idiot King,” is as angry as the Swamp Dogg of old. “It’s 1970 and he’s mad again,” enthused Art Fein, who’s been pushing the Swamp Dogg cause for years. I’ll be doing a Fresh Air piece on him shortly. Swamp, I mean, not Art.
* * *
There were other highlights, musical, culinary, and social, and as always SXSW was overwhelming enough that I was glad for the week after so I could come down and do something else, even if that something else was an almost equally frantic trip to California. Everywhere I went, people asked me the same questions, so I felt like passing out a FAQ card:
* I thought you were moving to France. So did I; I’d anticipated selling my book proposal, but the woman who helped me develop it misrepresented herself as an agent. She wasn’t, so I fired her. I’m now on my fifth agent, and he told me just before I left that he doesn’t get it, either.
* So what’s keeping you from moving? At the moment, €12,441.57, which, at today’s Euro-Dollar exchange rate, is $16,569.65. That figure includes paying back debts, paying all my back rent, getting a new apartment in France, moving, and buying a new washing machine and couch.
* That doesn’t seem like a whole lot. I hear you on Fresh Air. Don’t you have any other work? Actually, no. Most editors no longer even answer queries. There’s almost no work out there that I can see. That’s why I’m trying to sell the book.
* Yeah, I know what you mean. I lost a lot of work this year, too. Thank heavens my wife has a job. Thank heavens you have a wife. With a job. Wouldn’t mind having one of those myself.
Okay, it’s Monday, New York’s almost awake. Time to start moving that book forward again. One thing the past few days of being back here brought to my attention is that I don’t want to be here any more. Thus, better start dealing with the cure.
No, not these guys – these guys are THE SONICS, still the standard-bearers for the form, but two low-circulation screamers from 1966, both of which are absolute monsters. Listen and marvel as the singer for the REASONS WHY goes absolutely apoplectic over a girl – quite possibly the most over-the-top, “savage” vocal performance of the day. Thrill to the stunning, wall-of-guitar intro to THE SPLIT ENDS’ “Rich With Nothing”, and then quietly add this to your mental list of the rawest & best 60s punk songs.
