Month: August 2007

Deadbeat Poets “Notes from the Underground” CD is LITG’s featured release

Deadbeat Poets' Notes from the Underground is a featured Lost in the Grooves release. To preview and download single or multiple tracks, or to purchase the CD, click here.

Deadbeat Poets press release:
The Deadbeat Poets were formed in Youngstown, Ohio in the summer of 2006. The band consists of veteran Ohio musicians with eclectic credentials: Frank Secich (Blue Ash, Club Wow, Stiv Bators Band), Terry Hartman (Backdoor Men, Napoleon In Rags, Terry & The Tornadoes), Pete Drivere (Infidels, Pretty Demons) and John Koury (Infidels, Slackjaw). Their debut album (which was recorded over the first few months of 2007 at Youngstown's Ampreon Recorder) is now released on Pop Detective Records and is available online through Lost in the Grooves and MMG, and in Japan on Vivid Sound Records. Also, making guest appearances on the album are Bill "Cupid" Bartolin on guitar and Chris Leonardi on piano and organ.

Soon, you'll be able to sit back and relax (pop the top and set the sail) as the Deadbeat Poets take you on a timely journey. To such places…. romantic places like Beaver Falls (via Mahoningtown) you'll go. You'll travel to the exotic northside of Youngstown, Cleveland, the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, Toronto, Geneva-On-The-Lake, New York, LA, London, the far reaches of outer space, Paris, Mt. Pilot, The Bering Sea, St. Paul and of course Buffalo, NY. You'll meet fun lovin', sex-crazed aliens in "The Truth About Flying Saucers". You'll hear the tale of the legendary Ray Robinson who once roamed the dark, back-country roads of Western, PA in "The Green Man". You'll encounter semi-romantic mountain men and their passions in "Ernest T" and ride along with Stiv Bators as he once terrorized the western world in "The Stiv Bators Ghost Tour". You'll find out the connection between Ernest Hemmingway and Gertrude Stein and French bidets in "Where Was I When I Needed Me?" You'll raise glasses and bottles with the lads in "No Island Like The Mind, No Ship Like Beer" and be sadly disappointed by gangsters and thieves as "The Goody Wagon" never arrives. If floating in a psychedelic flutter is your inclination then "What Part Of Cognitive Dissonance Don't You Understand?" will probably be your cup of tea. Then again, you may find that after all of this …..well that "It's Nothing" to you. Then again, you may start getting "A Funny Little Feeling" that you will enjoy the Deadbeat Poets.

13. Bruce Springsteen

“There were a few people who picked up on me very early before my first record, when I was playing solo at Max’s Kansas City,” Bruce Springsteen said about Paul Nelson, “and he’s the one who stands foremost in my mind.”

From 1975 to 1982, Paul wrote a series of infrequent but expansive meditations about Springsteen, his music, and his remarkable relationship to a rapidly burgeoning audience. How accurate were Paul’s perceptions? “Oh, they could come out right now,” Springsteen said, “and they’d be right on the money. That was my job the way that I saw it, and he perceived it. That’s quite a connection to make.”

I spoke with Springsteen Tuesday afternoon, an interview that, by the time all was said and done, took eight months to arrange. In the interim, Springsteen wrapped up his tour with the Sessions band and released a live album documenting it; recorded a new studio album with the E Street Band, Magic, due out October 2nd; and suffered the death of his longtime friend and assistant, Terry Magovern, who passed away in his sleep on the night of July 30th.

As an interviewee, Springsteen was open, funny, and philosophical without being pretentious. And on the subject of Paul Nelson, he spoke eloquently.

Paul entered Springsteen’s life in 1972 when the young singer/songwriter (who was then 22 or 23) would take the bus from New Jersey into New York City to play the opening half of double bills at Max’s Kansas City. Paul was impressed enough to keep coming back, bringing with him other writers and artists (including Elliott Murphy) and turning them on, too, to the New Jersey phenom.

Everything Is an Afterthought examines Paul’s friendship with Springsteen (mostly in Springsteen’s own words) and how the artist’s special brand of rock & roll represented for Paul more than just music. The book will reprint all of Paul’s articles and reviews about Springsteen, presenting for the first time Paul’s preferred texts, based on his original manuscripts. (For instance, Paul’s review of The River is considerably different than what got published in 1980 and which can be found online.) 

Documenting Springsteen’s early career, Paul’s writings reflect not only his fondness for the man but how he had to come to terms with his friend’s music when it took turns down alleyways both unexpected and dark.

Copyright 2007 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

TWO 1981 BONUS TRACKS FROM THE FALL

Certainly it’s not news that there are new live CDs out from THE FALL, even when they’re from the hallowed 1979-1983 period. I certainly can’t keep up with the flood of releases, but I’ve been buying some of the live discs from this era, along with the “repackagedâ€Â versions of old LPs, complete with alternate versions, demos, live tracks and the like. Remember when the only live FALL stuff you could get from the glory years were the “Totale’s Turnsâ€Â, “A Part Of America Thereinâ€Â and “In A Holeâ€Â LPs? Man, I paid a pretty penny for those last two as well, but then again, THE FALL are one of those half-dozen key bands in my musical development. Once I locked in with them, they earned their place in my head as the single greatest & most influential British act of the last thirty years.

So here are two previously-unknown-to-me live tracks that made their way onto the 2xCD reissue of “HEX ENDUCTION HOURâ€Â, which as I’ve stated before, is the finest of all FALL records. Don’t believe me? Just listen to it. “Session Musicianâ€Â and “Jazzed Up Punk Shitâ€Â are certainly not of the caliber of anything on the original LP, but as stand-alone extras – and as songs that never got waxed into studio versions – they’re great, and are “must-havesâ€Â, as they say.

Play or Download THE FALL – “Session Musicianâ€Â
Play or Download THE FALL – “Jazzed Up Punk Shitâ€Â

Some entertainment in lieu of writing an actual post….

The inbox this week had a few YouTube suckerpunches.

Hey look, it’s the check fraud version of GBV/Bob Pollard!!

Make sure to watch this interview. Not allowed: Do not view these and respond with some sort of “this is so inept that it outsider art/savant/experimental!!â€Â No, this is exactly what it looks like.

Now, the mirth disappears. Reason 561 why I stay within 500 yards of most indie films. I can’t bring myself to comment.

And reason 781 that I’m glad to be a writer.

XXX Scumbag Party: Volume II of the Collected Angry Youth Comix by Johnny Ryan (Fantagraphics)

Just when you think the universe of J. Ryan, boy sicko, could not get any more deranged and disgusting (yet endearing!), he comes up with a character like Retarded Hitler, whose wee temper problem is offset by his exception anal love skills. What I like best about AYC is the giddy drawing style and the unbridled imagination that feeds the tales, which whip back upon themselves spewing bodily fluids, solids and unidentifiable filth. This second book-length compendium features a range of Loady McGee and Sinus O’Gynus misadventures, a cameo by Baby Johnson and his, uhm, baby johnson, Boobs Pooter the comic who’s kind of like Neil-Hamburger-as-serial-killer, the erotic thrill of a man in a shit wig, a selection of color cover and back panels, and dozens of spot cartoons your mom won’t be cutting out and putting on the fridge. If you’ve read this far without wincing, you know this is for you.

A public apology for a really stupid mistake.

The new issue of Harp Magazine just hit the stands, and boy was I excited to see myself featured (in a big way) in the masthead. Boy was I looking forward to reading my lengthy spread on Scharpling and Wurster, plus my smaller piece on David Cross. Boy was I horrified to learn that, in the “History of the Comedy Duoâ€Â sidebar, I made a HUGE mistake. As David Greenburger (of Duplex Planet fame) was quick to point out in a letter to the editor, my entry for Coyle and Sharpe contains quite the error.

I listed the wrong one as being deceased.

I can be a frustratingly oblivious person. I forget keys, I forget to buy cat litter, I forget appointments, I forget to write shit down, I forget birthdays, I forget people’s names….

The horrible thing is, I know the work of Coyle and Sharpe. I KNOW WHICH ONE IS DEAD. It was a quasi-dyslexic mistake. I flipped them for a split sec….in my mind.

It’s foul-ups like these that pry my brain apart. I will obsess over it for days.

Therefore, this is an open apology to the alive-and-well Mal Sharpe. Absorb their official website here.

So, follow my saga as every previously cracked or open freelance door slams shut, as e-mails and pitches to editors are not returned, as my ten years of writing leaks any of the remaining water that it held.

Be sure to catch my byline in future issues of American Jail, where I’ll be reviewing indestructible phone receivers and tables that can be thrown around a room.

 

DiCillo’s Dilemma

I don’t think it’s funny no more.
—NICK LOWE,
“Crackin’ Up”

In his latest blog post, director Tom DiCillo reports this disheartening news about his new film, which opened last week: “Delirious has just been pulled from its two original screens in NY and and moved to a different single theater. The same thing has happened in LA.”

Using his shoestring advertising budget as a theme and a launching pad, DiCillo produced a series of amusing YouTube videos that, in retrospect, are probably more sadly prophetic than they are funny. Delirious is a gem of a movie that deserves to be seen.

DiCillo’s dilemma, as is every artist’s, remains just that: finding a way to get his work in front of his intended audience.

Delirious Marketing Meeting


Buscemi DiCillo Fight


Gina Gershon Sex Tape

Casting Michael Pitt

Seek out Delirious. You won’t be sorry.

CLOTHILDE EN FRANCAISE & ESPANOL

I don’t think I’ve come across a single better track from swinging 60’s France than “Fallait pas écraser la queue du chatâ€Â by CLOTHILDE, a beautiful, complex, uplifting baroque pop masterpiece. I heard it being played at a French bakery last year and I actually asked for the manager to compliment him on his excellent choice in customer ambiance-setting. CLOTHILDE released a mere two EPs, but as I’m coming to find out, several of her eight wonderful songs (they’re ALL fantastic) were re-sung in different languages for other European markets. Such is the case for “Fallait pas écraser la queue du chatâ€Â, which I’m posting for you here in its original form and again as “Sopresa!â€Â, a Spanish-language version of the same tune, with a quicker fade-out toward the end. You judge which is the sexier language– I know who I’m voting for. If you’re like me the first time I heard this song, you’ll be playing it five or six times straight, telling everyone you know about Clothilde, carving her name in your arm, stalking her on the Internet, and naming your firstborn son after her. Thanks again to JA for turning me onto her way back then.

Play or Download CLOTHILDE – “Fallait pas écraser la queue du chatâ€Â
Play or Download CLOTHILDE – “Sopresa!â€Â