The desire to blog about the cruise has been replaced by the NEED to post my thoughts on this show. Why don’t you watch some YouTube?
Now, I can’t honestly say that Slacker Cats is funny or notably clever, but I watched it. A full hour. Perhaps I was a tad amazed at the crude nature of the show, it being on ABC Family and all (with Wal-Mart spots). It’s Heathcliff (the cartoon), South Park, and Ordinary People (there was a funeral scene) all rolled into one!!
You know, it had moments. I hope it succeeds (it won’t). I’m behind anything cat-related. Most dogs are pests.
Spiv –Oh You Beautiful Child/ Little Girl – Pye 7N 45293 (1973 UK)
Oh You Beautiful Child is a great example of the perfect Glam Cruncher with its slap-back compressed handclaps, cutting lead, catchy hook and exuberant vocals, it’s up there with the best. Little Child starts off like Dear Prudence but then turns into this Radio Birdman/ New Christ styled rocker with the vocalist sounding uncannily like Rob Younger! The single was produced and the A side written by Laurie Marshall – the same guy who was behind Grudge’s When Christine Comes Around/ I’m Gonna Smash Your Face In, Paul St. John (The Flying Saucers Have Landed) and Weeny Bopper (David, Donny And Michael). If anyone knows Laurie I would love to hear from him (email through my profile page). Laurie Marshall also released some Disco stuff, but I’m unsure if it’s the same person.
Oh You Beautiful Child appears on Glitter From The Litter Bin ( Sanctuary CMQCD675)
Click on title for edits of Oh You Beautiful Child and Little Girl
Nearly three years ago the first official PRIMITIVE CALCULATORS CD came out, packed with a crateful of lost extras (live tracks, home recordings) that in many ways outshone their officially-released stuff. I love it when that happens. Here’s a meta-meta-meta post, one that references both a 4/20/05 post I did on the band, and then a 1/23/04 post I did as well:
“…Taking the lazy man’s approach to review-writing this time in order to herald the release of the official PRIMITIVE CALCULATORS CD. A year+ ago I reviewed a CD-R that had their live album + debut 45 on it — this one takes out the 45, but adds an incredible batch of unreleased bonus tracks that are leagues better than their official stuff. In particular, a piercing indutrio-punker called “Glitter Kids” from 1979 rules the roost here, & sounds like everything you wished THE SCREAMERS had been, with a cranked-up metronome keeping time over scattershot guitars and screeching keyboard blips. Moreover, there’s this hot, metallic, shards-of-sound number called “Casualty Ward” (1977!!) that approximates the URINALS’ “U” and SPK’s “Mekano” in barely over a minute. You’ll flip. Here’s what I said last year about the live album:
“….Among the lost artifacts of the late 1970s Australian underground that are now beginning to surface are recordings from Sydney’s PRIMITIVE CALCULATORS, a polyrhythm- and experimentation-heavy synth-attack outfit who probably tilted closer to their outré countrymen SPK and the SLUGFUCKERS than to similar combos in the UK and US. After being wowed by their berserk “Pumping Ugly Muscleâ€Â on the Australian post-punk CD “Can’t Stop Itâ€Â, I then had the fortune to become privy to a CD-R containing their debut 45 from 1979, “I Can’t Stop It / Do That Danceâ€Â, as well as tracks from their 1979 live album (recorded supporting the BOYS NEXT DOOR, aka the nascent BIRTHDAY PARTY). The whole package is decidedly not for the faint of ear; there are not a few moments where the band’s funky, African-influenced slop-rock breaks down into a maelstrom of raw electronic chaos and pure gibbering idiocy. And yet it’s not so messy that you couldn’t stack it next to New York’s leading “no waveâ€Â of the day and have it compare quite favorably. A little bravery, patience, and love of well-crafted, ultra-savage electronics will go a long way here. Aficionados of early industrial racket, the aforementioned no wave, or those still bitter over what PiL should have been should check out the Calculators….”
That sentiment has now been multiplied by the discovery of these lost tracks, with the aforementioned caveat and strong warning of bravery & patience. The live album is still not an easy nor consistently pleasurable listen, but the outstanding bonus crap certainly makes up for it…..â€Â
Or, of course, what you call the dog days. Supposedly ruled by Sirius, the dog star, which is strong in the sky at this time of year. But whatever you call them, they’re days not exactly filled with excitement around here. Nervous tension, yes, but excitement? Nope.
Still, one has to do this and that, and so here are three extremely silly things I noticed in recent peregrenations around hip! edgy! Berlin.
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Like that huge poster on the building they’re renovating on Rosenthaler Platz, which gets sold to one advertiser or another for a while. Current occupant is Coca-Cola, and the part of the ad I see, doubtless having something to do with some download scheme or another (I think they’ve got something going with iTunes, actually), and it screams “Music on the Coke Side of Life!”
You can tell this is an ad aimed at younger folks, of course. The rest of us who lived through the ’70s have had quite enough of music on the coke side of life. Every time I pass that thing I think “What, do you want to chain me to a chair and make me listen to David Crosby albums?”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Rosenthaler Platz, the derelict building across from the Coke billboard, which once housed a Beate Uhse and then part of Sony’s ill-considered street-art cooptation, sprouted some ghostly inhabitants a few weeks back:
But I guess they wanted privacy, because the last time I walked past, the place looked like this:
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One of my weirder international moments came one night in the ’80s in London, as some friends and I were passing through Soho, and they — all British — stopped and pointed. “Wow, look at that!” I saw a very well preserved ’52 Mercury. “Cool car,” I said, and they all gave me a weird look. “It had Texas number plates!” someone said. Well, I’d just come from Texas the night before, so that didn’t even register: most all the cars in Texas have Texas license plates.
Still, it was a valuable lesson in paying attention to where you are, which is why I did a double-take while waiting for the light yesterday at Friedrichstr. and Unter den Linden. A genuine Ford Crown Victoria with New York Police Department markings, a visibar on top, and what looked, in the seconds it took to turn the corner, like two of NYPD’s finest in the front seat.
Turns out it lives here and you can rent it for special occasions. Like, I dunno, arresting your ex or something.
Not that they have a monopoly on this. There’s a more generic, Blues-Brothers-y, black-and-white for rent at Sage Cars, who have a lot on Brunnenstr. I pass often. They’ve also got a yellow Checker cab, which brings back memories of the Checker Metropolitan I once had. But that’s another post.
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Advertising in this country has always made me a little crazy, but then, it’s not aimed at me. That’s been driven home by the creepiest ad campaign I’ve seen in a while, BVG’s “Augenblicke” posters. As you can see from the website, it’s sort of a lonely-hearts thing, where you submit the story and they illustrate it. The artist is so bad that the posters attract attention to themselves, actually, so while whether he/she’s capable of actually rendering a human visage so someone would recognize it is questionable, it might (shudder) accidentally work.
Ah, well, it’s better to look out the window anyway, right?
Tonite from Stumblebunny –While You Were Out LP –Mercury 9198 135 (1979 French issue)
Tony Sherman –Tonight/Slippin’ Into Darkness –BASF 05 15455 0 (1974 NL)
The mystery to be cleared up here is how Tony Sherman had a hit on Holland in 1974 (number 11 in the charts) with Chris Robison’s Tonite which I originally thought first appeared on the Stumblebunny EP released in 1977 (see August 9th 2007 posting). Both version are credited to C. Robison and they are definitely the same song. I’ve uploaded a clip of the later 1979 Stumblebunny LP version produced by Richard Gottehrer. All 3 versions make one thing clear –the song is a total classic whichever version you pick. Chris Robison’s website https://www.chrisrobison.net/index.html mentions the possibility of a CD release of the Stumblebunny stuff and it would be great have this stuff out as the album contains other ace Power Pop tunes including Walk Away and Knock’in Around.
Thanks to Jos for pointing out the Tony Sherman release and for sending me a copy!
Click on title for edits of Stumblebunny’s Tonite and Tony Sherman’s Tonight
One of the great under-the-floorboard artifacts of the late 70s flowering of UK bedroom post-punk is this four-song EP from Camden’s STEPPING TALK. Low-key and aimless to a fault, it illustrates perfectly that special rainy, damp, cold leftist/labour D.I.Y. sound that encapsulates barely-pre-Thatcher Britain in 1979. As I understand it, the band were drinking pals with the early SCRITTI POLITTI, with whom they share that shambling, agitprop-infused approach. The “Alice in Sunderlandâ€Â EP employed the two-concurrent vocals trick popular at the time, where one guy sings and a girl tells a totally unrelated story on top of him. Weird horns float in, out & around a thumping but lackadaisically-played bass. The excellent “Common Problemsâ€Â sounds as if the band, attempting but failing to play in unison for most of the song, had a piece of carpet pulled from under them midway through & scrambled to keep playing in spite of it. The form and construction of these little set pieces owe something to jazz, but more likely there were a very deliberate attempt to pull off something jazz-like by playing particular instruments in sequences exactly backward of what one would expect from the rock music of the day. The instrumental “John’s Turtlesâ€Â is the most experimental of the bunch, and sounds like a strange & frightening tribute to some peculiar British-created white man’s dub. It’s a really cool period piece from an era in which it seemed like 20 of these warped, provincial slices of indie vinyl came out every week in the UK and US.
Yesterday, Tom DiCillo kindly reviewed my review of his terrific new film Delirious. Check out “gracias” in the Comments section.
In doing so, he inadvertently addressed a question I raise again and again in my book: beyond providing a guide for the consumer, does criticism in any way serve the artist?
DiCillo’s response echoes what Jackson Browne told me about Paul Nelson’s writing: “it made me feel that I was being received, that I was being heard, by people who really got it.”
My first cruise post. Many more will follow. Get ready to BUST A GUT!!! We’ve dove some possible bad things. I will entertain you (my readers) with anecdotes that will destroy your minds!!!! Stay tuned!!!
