Shake A Tail Suzy/ Meet Barry Sheene –Sound For Industry SF 144 (1973 UK)
Barry Blue meets Barry Sheene! This is a double sided promotional flexi disc for Suzuki that was issued in 1973 . Barry Blue produced and co-wrote Shake A Tail Suzy under the pseudonym Barry Green. The A side is simply a different edit/mix of Big Wheel’s Shake A Tail (Bell 1310) that can also to be found on Velvet Tinmine, although this version predates it. There are more cycle noises, more suggestive purrs, plus other slight variants…The B side features an interview with Barry Sheene. It is yet to be confirmed if this is the same edit of the interview as the flexi that came with the February ’73 issue of Japanese Bikes Monthly.
I ‘ll post another “flexiâ€Â review in a couple of days.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the greatest modern philosopher, Richard Rorty, passed away a couple of days ago. Slate has collected a few of his colleagues’ eulogies of the man. Please read them and think on how wonderful it is that his friends and admirers could have included not just the noxious Richard Posner and the difficult-but-angelic Stanley Fish, but also the beatific Jurgen Habermas and Brian Eno. Rorty made a better person of me, and hopefully you, too.
In our fEEDTIME post a few weeks ago, some mention was made of three tracks from the incredible late 70s Australian punk band X. I said I’d post ‘em – here they are. Here’s what I wrote about the tracks in 2003:
If you ask me, the best pre-1980 Australian punk rock ever recorded was NOT necessarily by the SAINTS. nor the PSYCHO SURGEONS, nor the LEFTOVERS, nor RADIO BIRDMAN — but by X. The Australian X, of course. The past decade has seen them garner some deserved attention, mostly for the low-profile Amphetamine Reptile reissue of their raw, spastic debut LP “X-Aspirations” (also known by some as simply “Aspirations“). I think they actually topped that monster with their amazing earliest recordings, though: the three tracks “Home Is Where The Floor Is”, “Hate City” and “TV Cabaret Roll” that were posthumously cobbled together on the Aberrant Records‘ “Why March When You Can Riot?” compilation. If these tracks had been put out as a 45, you’d be seeing it on numerous “best punk records of all time” lists, certainly on mine (note: these were put out on a 45 a couple years ago on a US label, now out of print, I’m afraid). We’re talking barreling, steamrolling punk rock, but minus the “snotty” vibe and the over-the-top antics that mark some other richly heralded Aussie punk of the era. Not particularly well recorded, mind, but you never cared about that much, right? About the closest equivalent I can think of would be a kindly US punk band like The CONTROLLERS — not too aggro, not too “punk”, but blazing nonetheless. Skip the recent “X – Live At The Civic” CD — despite looking like it should be an out of control rock and roll juggernaut, it’s — uh — a bit boring. One last thing: if you now desperately need those 3 aforementioned tracks, you’re in luck — there’s a double-CD on Small Axe Records that collects three Aberrant Records comps into one package called “Go And Do It”. You can find it here.
Or you can download them right here and put them on your own CD.
From his message board, more from Harlan Ellison and his interpretation of “Made in America,” Episode 86 — better known as the last episode ever — of The Sopranos:
HARLAN ELLISON
– Wednesday, June 13 2007 20:0:53
THE SOPRANOS’ ONION RING SYMBOLISM
Please understand that I despise all that pseudo-academic horse puckey feeding into “deconstructionist referential analysis and criticism.”
I am a meat’n’potatos guy when it comes to “getting the point” of entertaining story.
Nonetheless…
Ocassionally. I said OCCASIONALLY…
Something CLEARLY MEANT to catch the attention of the careful reader (or viewer, in this case) jumps out so pronouncedly, that I come up short, leave a long braking smear on the asphalt, and am thrust headlong into examining the trope beyond its straightforward narrative value.
Such was the case of Tony, AyJay and Carmella each popping a WHOLE CIRCULAR ONION RING into his,his or her mouth, in the final moments of a scene obviously building toward SOMETHING as ominous people orbit them, each of US watching the clock and seeing the last few grains of sand spill through toward denouement, realing that in five, four, three, two minutes David Chase CANNOT tie off all those character-lines.
So…I ask myself…what the hell does it mean, his stealing ultra-precious moments from his storyteller’s reserve?
And here is what I believe, because I believe with all my heart and soul and more than fifty years as a storyteller, that David Chase–as far as Serious Art is concerned–teevee or any other medium–is a Michelangelo, a Kafka, a Rodin.
And to give you my–and ONLY my–interpretation, because I believe it encapsulates everything Chase wanted us to carry away from this generational epic after years of attention, here are the steps of my epiphany:
1. EVERYONE in Tony’s family is corrupt. Including Carmella.
She knows very well what Tony does for a living, where the money for those SUVs and espresso machines and trips to Paris come from. She knows that for every velveteen bed shrug she buys, a snortful of coke was sold, an honest merchant was shylocked or intimidated or broken into and robbed. Same for Meadow, same for AyJay. They all live off the blood money of people who stood at one time before the pathological brutism of the family breadwinner. All of them.
2. They all bought into the life-style of “Our Thing,” and This Thing of Ours has a circular nature. It is the Worm Orobourus, swallowing its own tail. Once in, never out. Tony knows it, the rest of the family knows it. The attorney says to Tony, “This day we knew we would have to face,” as he pounds the bottom of the ketchup bottle and pronounces more imminent indictments.
3. It is a life-cycle. A simple circle. Like the Catholic wafer they take in the mouth. Circular. Take it in, whole and unbroken, the circle of a life with nothing at its end but (at best) Junior’s foggy emptiness, bitter and lonely, or Phil’s bullet in the brain and the brain squashed, or lying on life support, or looking over your shoulder FOREVER, as it was when the story of the Soprano family(ies) began, and as it ends.
4. There is no ending, save the ENDING. And they will all live within that unbroken circle.
They take in the wafer, the life, the endless iconography, as onion ring, whole and entirely.
That is what I–and only I–make of it.
You may pass this on to the muttonheads who complain that the ending wasn’t fulfilling enough for them. Poor stupid bastards!
They would not perceive the Second Coming if the sky split above them.
If there are other writers’ boards, such as the WGAw thing, and there is a vague chance that David Chase–whom I’ve never met–might see the preceding, please do feel free to bandy this humble analysis anywhere you please. Bearing in mind it is
Copyright 2007 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. All rights reserved.
Yr. Pal, Harlan Ellison
HARLAN ELLISON
– Wednesday, June 13 2007 20:16:4
ADDENDUM
As someone (or others) said, the onion rings are also, obviously, if you go with my little dithyramb, a symbolic way of saying “What goes around, comes around.” There is no beginning–we come to the Sopranos with their lives already in motion in episode one–and there is no end, save the end. So Tony sits there in fear everlasting at that diner Communion with his family, who have also accepted the Symbolism of the Onion Wafer, and THAT is the point of it all.
He will NEVER know. There are only two options for Tony and his family: blind refusal to acknowledge reality, or unending terror with the knowledge that he will NEVER have a safe moment, awake or asleep.
-he
Copyright 2007 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. All rights reserved.
For years the only way to hear the oft-talked-about, under-heard SONIC’S RENDEZVOUS BAND was to buy an expensive original 45 or cheaper bootleg 45 of the one-song single “City Slangâ€Â (with a stereo a-side version and a mono b-side version), trade live tapes or bootleg vinyl (extremely hard to come by), or to buy a semi-legit split LP from France with Ron Asheton’s DESTROY ALL MONSTERS 45s on the a-side and various SRB material on the back, including the stereo “City Slangâ€Â. Me, I’ve heard most of what this 1975-80 Detroit-based act had to offer up, and for the most part, it’s just-above-standard-issue FM power rock, electrified significantly by the wild guitar playing of axe hero Fred “Sonicâ€Â Smith, late of the MC5. I’d position it somewhere between The Stooges and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, except on the longer tracks where Smith gets to go ape, and then it’s “the 5â€Â all the way. You can read a lot more about them here.
In 1990 I was in a band with a fella who saw the band in Detroit many times in their heyday, and we decided to do an instrumental cover of the song “Sweet Nuthin’â€Â from that French LP. It was so easy to play that even I could do it – but the song remains, especially in this instrumental version, to be a singular moment in their catalog: a sprawling, repetitive, understated but nasty rock and roll mauler. The opening guitar riff is just filthy, as they say in baseball. No need for a 6-CD box set – all the magic’s on the “City Slangâ€Â 45 and right here!
It matters little whether or not you follow or care about golf, as we’ve got a hell of a party brewing over here with Memphis’ favorite fat-boy, sand-trap barfer. Our trash comes wrapped up special!!
(from the Commercial Appeal)
Coverup alleged by wife of Daly
Sherrie Daly
John Daly as he appeared Friday at the Stanford St. Jude Championships.
By Lawrence BuserÂÂ June 12, 2007
Golfer John Daly scratched his own face last week to cover up his sexual assault of his wife and then falsely reported that she attacked him with a knife, Sherrie Daly said in court papers filed Monday.
The popular and controversial Daly showed up for his Friday round at the Stanford St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind sporting long red scratches on both cheeks which he blamed on a domestic assault by his wife.
No criminal charges were filed, but Daly, 41, sought a protective order against her to prohibit any contact with him or their 3-year-old son. He also refiled an earlier petition for divorce.
On Monday, Sherrie Daly fired back, seeking a restraining order, exclusive use and possession of the Southwind home, temporary custody of their child and continued financial support. She said Daly gives her a monthly cash allowance ranging from $15,000 to $30,000.
She also gave a different account of how her husband ended up with claw marks on his face.
She said Daly “spun out of controlâ€Â during heavy drinking last Thursday, verbally assaulting a security guard at Southwind and breaking the security gate to get to their home on Windgarden.
She said she went to a neighbor’s house because he was screaming and cursing and that he later called her from the East End Grill at Winchester and Hacks Cross Road.
Sherrie Daly, 31, said she went to the restaurant to bring him home and “became involved in a minor altercation with (Daly) and his ‘groupies,’â€Â who she said she scolded for encouraging him to drink alcohol.
She said that in the early morning hours Friday, she was awakened by a drunken Daly making sexually offensive gestures and remarks.
She said he then sexually assaulted her, causing unspecified injuries. She said she called 911 and then took their son and her 8-year-old son by a previous relationship to a neighbor’s house.
“Mother would show that Father inflicted injury upon himself by scratching his face,â€Â Sherrie Daly said in the Circuit Court petition. “Father accused Mother of attacking him with a knife and stabbing him in an attempt to cover up his sexual assault of Mother.â€Â
Reached Monday, John Daly said, “It’s just not true, Bub. It’s just not true. That’s all I can say.â€Â
Asked if he planned to file criminal charges, he said, “Let’s just go with that. Nah. It’s just not true. She did what she did, and that’s all I can say right now.â€Â
Sherrie Daly’s attorney, Rachael Putnam, would not comment other than to say it’s a personal matter and her client’s greatest concern is her children.
Sherrie Daly said in court papers her husband’s erratic and violent behavior is emotionally damaging to the children and that he could live in their Arkansas residence or in the tour bus in which they travel to golf tournaments.
She also said his paranoid and aggressive behavior stemming from abuse of alcohol and diet pills has resulted in damage to their personal property that “easily exceedsâ€Â $1 million.
In addition to a protective order, Daly also is seeking the Southwind home and temporary custody of their son and his wife’s 8-year-old son from a previous relationship.
He notes in his petition that she is a convicted felon who served five months in prison last year for money laundering in a case unrelated to her husband or golf.
According to a sheriff’s report on last week’s incident, Daly told deputies he went to bed to avoid further conflict with his wife, but that he was awakened by an intoxicated Sherrie Daly, who he said stabbed and cut his face with a silver steak knife.
She shouted, “I will kill you, you piece of (expletive,)â€Â the report said. The report said Daly replied, “Go ahead and kill me.â€Â
Officers said there was blood on Daly’s shirt, but they could not find his wife or the knife used in the attack.
He said his wife is guilty of inappropriate marital conduct and that there are irreconcilable differences.
John and Sherrie Daly were married July 29, 2001, in Las Vegas, seven weeks after they met at a golf tournament. It was her first marriage and Daly’s fourth.
They both filed for divorce last October, but attempted to reconcile, according to her petition, after Daly promised to stop abusing whiskey, gambling and carousing with other women.
In her petition Monday, Sherrie Daly said her husband has continued to abuse alcohol and that he is addicted to gambling and sex.
She said that in January while they were traveling in San Diego, Daly became drunk on vodka and became so enraged at her that he pulled “a large portion of hair from her head while throwing her head against the wall.â€Â She said he also tore her shirt and bra and broke a telephone, all in the presence of her son.
Sherrie Daly said her husband continued to drink when they traveled to Arizona and that he had to be taken by ambulance to an emergency room after blacking out from alcohol.
She said that in May she fled with the children from their Arkansas residence when Daly went on an early morning “drunken rage.â€Â
She said they returned to the Southwind residence where they remained until Daly returned for last week’s tournament.
I’ve intended all week to post rhapsodic about the final episode of The Sopranos, about how creator David Chase’s “non-ending” is in fact the perfect ending, a rare example of an artistic act in the guise of a mere TV show. The only thing that even comes close is the last episode of St. Elsewhere.
As someone whose own fiction has often been criticized for lacking traditional endings (I’ve always abided by screenwriter Paul Schrader’s theory that movies should end “out on the pavement” — or something to that effect — after you leave the theatre), Sunday night’s Dadaist denouement struck just the right chord with me.
In case you haven’t seen it yet — or even if you have — take a look:
Always curious what Harlan Ellison has to say on the matters of such importance, last night I queried him over at his message board. Here’s his reply:
HARLAN ELLISON
– Tuesday, June 12 2007 21:13:29
KEVIN AVERY:
I think the final episode of THE SOPRANOS, and particularly the final scene before the blackout, is stunningly brilliant. It is Art in its purest form. David Chase did the impossible, he gifted the loyal viewer of the series a payoff at once deep, thoughtful, chilling, fraught with summation and insight … and even had the wit to add an iconographic contextual image that is magnificently resonant: the onion ring consumption.
Or did that trope escape everyone else’s perception.
I was simply knocked out by the ending of the series; and now I am given to understand that “a large part of the viewership was angry” at it. That only speaks to the fact that there is a finite amount of genuine talent in the universe, and most of the muttonheads that would complain are simply either too ignorant, or too debased by contemporary media, to know a grand thing when it’s given to them.
David Chase is in the top tier, as far as I’m concerned.
I couldn’t be more satisfied by that ending. I don’t know how he was able to outthink us all, but he knew his story better than anyone else, and he gave us the mot juste.
Yr. Pal, Harlan
Leave it to the man who wrote A Boy and His Dog to zero in on the never-ending onion rings.
Visiting family…tomorrow morning until Sunday morning. Internet access is iffy in Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau. Not that you’d want to read about my boring hikes, fishing failures, used book runs, C.S.I. Miami/Vegas debates, thrifting mistakes, or Wheel of Fortune races with my aunt.
So this morning I found out that one of my favorite authors, Chinua Achebe, had won the Man Booker Prize. It said so on the BBC, so it must be true.
This made me happy, although I was sorry to hear of his paralysis. Achebe drew me into the world of Nigerian authors writing in English, which drew me into a world of my very own language, artfully re-cadenced, where aphorisms said things in a way that deflected anger: “Since men have learned to shoot without missing, said the bird, I have learned to fly without perching.” Chew a kola nut and think about that for a minute.
Anyway, as I often do when I hear news, I headed over to the Well to post this in the Books conference, where I was astonished to see there wasn’t a topic devoted to African literature. Surely I’m not the only one of those folks reading this stuff when I can find it! And I concluded my post by saying that now that Achebe had the Booker, it was time to get a Nobel into Ousman Sembene’s hands before it was too late.
My reaction to this is twofold. First, I urge you to go out and find any of this great man’s books that you can find. Second, I urge you to rent as many of his films as you can find, because he was an amazing filmmaker as well as an amazing novelist. Usually he’d write a novel, then film it, but be warned that his early masterpiece, God’s Little Bits of Wood is, thank heavens, unfilmable. Nor is it an easy read, but in order to understand Western Africa, and Senegal in particular, it’s a mandatory one.
Now, what does this have to do with Berlin? Something. Because after reading that superb obituary, an anecdote came back to me, and I stuck it on the Well, and now I’ll put it here.
There used to be an African restaurant here in Berlin on Pappelallee called the Chop House. It served West African food — Senegalese and Ghanian, for the most part — and, like many restaurants in East Berlin, scammed tax credits by being a “gallery,” in this case for African artists.
Because it was cheap and good and one of the few places where they’d actually put enough chiles in stuff, I went there often, and one night I went there with a couple of friends, only to find out there was some sort of gallery opening going on, and most of the tables were filled. We were seated at one with some Germans and Africans talking animatedly and minded our own business until one skinny, tall African guy said “Hey, are you speaking English? I need to practice my English because I have a scholarship to a university there.”
So we did the conversation thing, and of course, I asked him where he was from. “Senegal. Dakar,” he replied. “I’ve always wanted to go to Dakar, ever since I saw a film by Ousman Sembene called Xala,” I said. The guy’s eyes got real big.
“Ousman, he is my father! He is my mother! He saved my life!” I figured this was metaphorical, but he went on. “I was a little boy, living on the streets. I never knew my parents, like a lot of street kids in Dakar. They just throw us there and if we live, we live. And I lived by begging, because Muslim tradition is to give to beggars.
“One day, I went into a bookshop and begged the man behind the counter for some money. He laughed at me. ‘You’re a strong young man,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you work if you want it.’ And of course, I told him yes. ‘I edit a magazine, a literary journal, and it’s printed across town. I never have time to go pick it up for my shop here, and they’ve just told me the latest issue is out. I can make money if I have copies here to sell, but I have no time to get them. I have a cart in the back. If you can go to the printer, I’ll give you a note you can hand them, and they’ll load the cart with my magazine. Then you bring it here and I’ll pay you.’
“So I did. It wasn’t hard work, and when I got back to the shop, he asked me if I’d like a copy. I had to tell him I couldn’t read. Naturally, he said that a young man like me should be in school, and he knew a church-run school that would take me. He told me that once I could read, he’d give me a job in the bookshop, and that was how it was: I learned to read, and I lived in the back of the shop.
“Now, that man was Ousman Sembene, as you’ve guessed. But what you probably didn’t guess is this: Do you remember the scene in Xala where the businessman is arguing with his daughter, who says he should stop speaking French and talk to her in Wolof?”
I said I did.
“And you remember that there’s another child at the table, doing his homework, his son, who’s younger than the daughter.”
Yes, I remembered that. The kid was obviously having a horrible conflict between the father he idolized and the sister who he knew to be so smart.
“Well, that child, that boy there, that was me! Mamadou! And that was really my homework!”
He’s not listed in the IMDB, and Senegalese can be notorious scamsters and hustlers, and it had been 20 years since I’d seen the film, but I figured it was okay to believe him. Because what if it were true?
Our good friend Scott, proprietor of Moonshine Mountain, has tagged this blog with a meme. Part of the assignment includes the instruction to “get nostalgic” regarding the music from the year I turned 18 (that’s 1990, for the record), so being the great Method actor I am, I must carefully prepare myself for the approximation of nostalgia. Ahem. Ah, the good old days.
So, here’s the list I’m working from. Sweet nostalgia! Sweet days of youth! There, that should get me in the mood. I’m going to pick five, starting at the end of the list.
74. Faith No More – “Epic”. What a weird song for a hit! Considering the miserable sub-genre of rap/metal that it spawned, the world would have been much better without this little ditty, but ok. Anyway, nostalgia. My most keen remembrance associated with this song was my sophomore dorm room (so this would have been Fall 1991), which I shared with a certain Alan Jolly. Our place was the drop-in/drop-out room, always filled with a mysterious haze and reeking of booze. It’s fair to say we were far more interested in screwing around than classes. I had a shitty stereo, one of those all-in-one boxes that wasn’t a jambox but a faux-component stereo, and, even though it made the whole thing (relatively) more expensive, this semi-stereo also had my first CD player. I can’t remember who owned the Faith No More album, but I do remember that it was a frequent choice. Man, those days. So much drama, but so much fun.
61. Tom Petty – “Free Fallin'” This one goes back to high school. I remember learning how to play it on guitar because a girl I had the hots for really liked it. I had a neat-but-crappy old Eko guitar, a 12-string that belonged to my uncle, that I strung up with 6 strings. I don’t remember which girl liked it, but I’m guessing it was Melissa Moore, who was a physician in Dallas the last time I spoke to her, almost a decade ago. Melissa was definitely the most interesting girl in high school, gorgeous and arty and super-smart and self-possessed enough to know that she was my unrequited love, but selfish (I mean, she was younger than 18 when we first started hanging out) enough to keep stringing me along year after year. Nostalgia is better when flavored with regret, right?
29. Concrete Blonde – “Joey” I don’t remember what the deal with Concrete Blonde was, nor that they had a hit before their vampire song “Bloodletting”. I guess I sorta remember this song being in the background during my first semester of college, but I don’t have as many sharp memories of it as I do for “Bloodletting.” So… that’s the comment. Let’s move on.
6. Dee-Lite – “Groove Is In The Heart” No two ways about this one. It was everywhere my first semester. I got along great with most everyone on my dorm floor, especially Matt Martin (now a chef in Huntsville, AL) and Chris Shaw (who is god-knows-where), and we’d have loud funk (or semi-funk, like this song) blaring in the halls most nights. This was in the U of Alabama’s infamous Mallet Assembly, which was self-governing and free of RAs. A couple of girls from Fitts, the girl’s honor dorm, would come over to partake in the revelry, dance, and accompanying mind-expansion devices. I remember having to explain to everyone who Bootsy Collins was one night. I remember one of the girls, whose name was Audrey, I think, who loved to dance to this song with maximum contact, if you know what I mean and I think you do, with many of the guys, but refused to go any further than that, which got her quite the little reputation in our dorm in the Fall of 1990.
I should pull one more song out, but most of the rest of these meant nothing to me at the time. But these were just the most-requested songs. Scrolling down to the No. 1 songs gives me:
April 21 – May 18: Nothing Compares 2 U – Sinead O’Connor So this lost the No. 1 position to Madonna on my 18th birthday, May 19, 1990. This song reminds me of the house parties we used to have at Laura Walker’s place. She lived with her grandparents, who went out of town all the time, bless their souls. We drank and swam (skinny-dipped, even!) and stayed up all night and generally acted like kids with raging hormones and all the time in the world. It was heavenly. My first real girlfriend, Vanessa, was part of this scene. Once when this song was on the stereo, I made out with a girl (name lost to history) who was dating a good friend, which was really my first taste of being an asshole to someone I cared about. I didn’t like it much when I thought on it later, but man, I was young and selfish then. I guess I could blame the music, because my emotions were so easily controlled by external stimula then, and any 18-yr-old in 1990 who could resist making out with an attractive partner when this song played had a heart of lead.
OK, that’s memory lane! I’m not sure how many of my compatriots actually read this blog, but should they happen to catch the nod, I’m going to assign:
Emlyn of The Emlyn Project, who is the same age as I am and was there at some of the aforementioned parties, although he may be too busy for this sort of nonsense right now, so his is more of a pinch-hitter kind of assignment,
