Month: October 2007

A Book Review

In an effort to justify my failed attempts at pitching a review of this book to every single magazine in which I have a relationship, you now have this post to read. Get the book.

Joe Carducci

Enter Naomi: SST, L.A., and All That…..

Redoubt Press P.O. Box 276 Centennial, WYOM. 82055 (redoubtpress.com)

I will preface this review by stating that Carducci’s sorta-infamous Rock and the Pop Narcotic is the only lengthy piece of rock writing, and only non-fiction book, that I’ve read three times. I don’t agree 100% with RPN, but it still delivers personal inspiration, and has been a big influence on my writing. It was a book that awarded the proper amount of intellectualization (some say too much, but I disagree) and heart to metal and hard rock during a time (1990) when these forms were weathering an especially unfair phase of disinterest. If you haven’t read it, do so. You cannot borrow my copy. The book has gone through three printings. Rollins did a printing for his house in the mid-90’s, and Redoubt released the most recent version. Get it!!

There are Carducci works between Rock and the Pop…. and his brand new Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That (Get your rundown here: www.joecarducci.com). Even so, this one will be endlessly compared to his previous epic. They are different animals. Instead of a highly-enjoyable, dense monster, Enter Naomi is an equally enjoyable, rather straightforward bio of three distinct subjects: Deceased photographer Naomi Peterson (she was essentially SST’s inhouse photog), SST Records, and the underground L.A. music scene from about 1975 up until around ‘86 (when Carducci moved away).

It’s sad book. It will hopefully encourage all of us to be better to our livers. Enter Naomi also proves that the “outsiderâ€Â of, say, 1981, underwent extinction long ago. Regardless of shady business dealings and an intimidating anti-social personality, the cloth Greg Ginn was cut from is nowhere to be found in the “undergroundâ€Â of 2007, if one can even find the underground in 2007.

I finished Enter Naomi in three while trying to read three other books. I spent long stretches staring at the photos.

Carducci deserves exposure and some book sales. In the face of publishing industry indifference and public’s (and publishing industry’s) poor taste in music books, Joe has toiled along.

That’s it. And that was a very loose interpretation of a “book review.â€Â  

 

 

Wig Wam –Naughty Naughty

Wig Wam –Naughty Naughty/ Have A Cuppa Tea –RCA 2243 (1972 UK)

Here’s another one to file under Glam Era Bubblegum Obscurity (GEBO)…It’s strangely under-produced by Phil Wainman and the arrangement by Pip Williams is an exercise in simplicity itself. The rugged chugging guitars really drive the song along and the tune features a mean hook and neat chord changes. The B side, Have a Cuppa Tea, is a cover of the Kinks’ song and is a bit pointless. The band were probably a one-off studio congregation, but the A side deserves its place in the Pantheon of no-hope-in-hell-hit-wonders…

Click on title for a full version of Naughty Naughty

CURSE OF THE BIRTHMARK – “WELCOME TO THE HARD TIMES, YOU’RE LATEâ€Â EP

This 2005, 5-song ear-pillager from San Francisco’s semi-active CURSE OF THE BIRTHMARK was the electro-zap my ass needed to get the foam coming out of the mouth again when I first heard it a little over a year ago. “Welcome To The Hard Times….You’re Lateâ€Â is the sort of dark, aggressive “industrial rockâ€Â I used to envision in the early/mid 80s whenever I’d read about TEST DEPT. or EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN or whatever, whom invariably let me down. C.O.T.B. did not let me down; on the contrary, this EP is full of frothing, electronics-filled no wave guitar, some absolutely thumping drumming, and enough bleeding ear tones to keep you in the isolation chamber for hours afterward. There’s a rabid, mysterious churner at the end of Side 1 called “Too Many Ministersâ€Â that I have not been able to stop playing for a year. They put out one other 45 that’s also quite good, and I think they’ve maybe played one live show in the past 365 days. I couldn’t go – I think I had to wash my hair or something. See if you’re up to the challenge by clicking on the links below.

Play or Download CURSE OF THE BIRTHMARK – “Welcome To The Hard Times, You’re Lateâ€Â
Play or Download CURSE OF THE BIRTHMARK – “Show Yer Fangsâ€Â
Play or Download CURSE OF THE BIRTHMARK – “Too Many Ministersâ€Â
Play or Download CURSE OF THE BIRTHMARK – “Le Phantâ€Â
Play or Download CURSE OF THE BIRTHMARK – “Monster Imitates Carâ€Â

BANGS – “GETTING OUT OF HANDâ€Â DEMO

So it looks like the most popular post in the short history of this blog was the first BANGS single that I put up about a month ago, which warms the cockles of my dark heart. Perhaps we can best that with a related, and even more rare, love offering – an excellent demo version of “Getting Out of Handâ€Â, one recorded before their 1980 single, and a bonus photo of the band in miniskirts, stolen right off of the internet from this site. At some point in the near future I’ll get the 5-song IRS EP up for you as well. Enjoy.

Play or Download THE BANGS – “Getting Out of Hand (demo)â€Â

Zipper –Can Can

Zipper –Can Can/Laugh Laugh –Sirocco SIR 6001 (1976 French issue)

This is one of the other Zipper bands, NOT to be confused with Atkins/Morris or Fred Cole!
For your entertainment, I haven’t compressed the picture, so if you click on the image you can see it in full wide dorkscope…The cover nearly gives Frog a run for its money, as for the track itself…er…Barrel-house Glam anyone?

Click on title for a soundclip of Can Can

Blood Beach is better than the new Wes Anderson movie…

**I’m knocking out a little work, hanging out with the lady, and lazily paying attention to Blood Beach. The comfort food for the week? Late night (cable) or afternoon (local Memphis channels….edited) fare from childhood. Blood Beach kicks off my October run of rented, On-Demanded, or theatrically-attended (unlikely) silliness. Even for this era, even for 9th rate gore (!!!!), it comes as a minor surprise that Burt Young and John Saxon were talked into this one. Oh good, the dog died. Did Burt Young’s character (â€ÂSgt. Roykoâ€Â) get transferred to L.A. from Philly or NY?

“We need a character actor with a thick, Northern, street-corner-rube accent.â€Â

Royko to a tall, Black cop: “You’re the problem with this world.â€Â

Royko to room of cops: “This would have never happened in Chicago.â€Â

Well, he’s right.

“We found it!!! We found it!!! We found the guy’s wiener!!!â€Â

**I’m also here to offer an public challenge to Wes Anderson:

Would it be possible to NOT make a Wes Anderson movie? I couldn’t be less excited about The Darjeeling Limited. Everything one needs to know about the film can be absorbed by looking at promo stills or the movie’s poster. I’d like to note that this image also appears when “The Darjeeling Limitedâ€Â is image-searched through Google. All vital elements of The Wes Anderson Package are in place: Quirkiness, privilege, “exoticâ€Â locale, sibling complexity, romantic misunderstandings, white. Did Slate beat me to this opinion?

 

 

Zipper –Gettin’ It On

Zipper –Gettin’ It On / Good Morning –Telefunken U 56333 (1974 German issue)
Tony Atkins and Gerry Morris strike again with these two left-of-field Glam Stompers. The A side is not as straightforward as first seems with its out there production, similar to Galahad’s Rocket Summer. The production on Good Morning is even more over the top and approaches near Experimental-Trans –Progressive -Glam with layers of backward guitars and snare effects. What a team!
BTW, this is not the Life of Riley mob, nor the band that issued Can Can (which reminds me, I should upload the cracking French Pic Sleeve of that one…). There’s also another Zipper on Youngblood from around the same time, but I can’t confirm any Atkins/Morris involvement there.

Click on title for edits of Getting’ It On and Good Morning

I WAS A NUMBERS FAN

I guess I sort of took a layoff from paying close attention to new bands, lasting roughly four years, from about 1998-2001. When I came roaring back, one of the first bands to catch my attention were a just-springing-out San Francisco band called NUMBERS. Their robotic, off-tempo, patterns; angry, stabbing guitar, and overall metronomic sound was totally intoxicating, and those first few live shows I saw of theirs – usually about 15 minutes each – were totally friggin’ great. As I understand it, they are still a band, but I have not “sceneâ€Â nor heard them in about three years, disappointed as I was by their second CD, “In My Mind All The Timeâ€Â. For a short period, though their first record “NUMBERS LIFEâ€Â was, in fact, my life. It holds up to this day, and then some. See if you agree by downloading the tracks below.

Play or Download NUMBERS – “Intercomâ€Â
Play or Download NUMBERS – “Driving Songâ€Â

I swore that I’d never watch Affliction….

….again, but I am. In light of recent events, it flows like Happy Gilmore. Aaaahhhhhhhh!

Some books that I’ll buy when I learn how to read again: Rorty, Harold Bloom, City That Never Sleeps, The Naked Truth, Laughing Mad: Black Comics, Film Talk, Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke, and that book about gross honesty that I read about in Esquire.

Excuses, Excuses

Thanks to Kean for connecting the dots on this one.

I’ve suspected Potsdamer Platz was in trouble for some time. An early symptom of this was when the strange “music experience” show downstairs closed precipitously. Not long after, a Sony Records person I knew from the States came over here to find out why Sony Records Germany employees didn’t want to move to Berlin and work at the Sony Center. Apparently morale was horrible, but it did, it must be admitted, pick up: Sony, at the start of merger negotiations with Bertelsmann, moved to Munich.

That’s right: besides the fancy branding-store there, there’s no Sony in the Sony Center.

Nor, apparently, is there any Daimler-Chrysler in the Daimler-Chrysler Center these days, since this article hints pretty strongly that both the Sony Center and the Daimler-Chrysler complex are on the market. And that’s mostly what there is to see at Potsdamer Platz these days.

Besides the architecture — which I think is best seen from afar, for the obvious reason that you can’t see a skyscraper when you’re standing next to it — there just isn’t much at PotzPlatz. There are the cinemas, of course, which are essential to the Berlinale, and the don’t-call-it-a-mall-or-we-fire-you Potsdamer Platz Arkaden, and a few luxury hotels, which are also essential to the Berlinale — or at least the egos who attend it. But the place has been a bust when it comes to commercial space. And why not? There’s commercial space everywhere here, most of it cheaper than PotzPlatz.

Let’s face it: the city’s in trouble. At this point, even the city is admitting it. The link to the PotzPlatz article came after Kean sent me an almost unreadable exerpt from a speech due to be delivered in Sydney by Adrienne Goehler, identified as “a former senator for arts and science in Berlin.” I have no idea which party she represents, and she could be a CDU-er sniping at the SDP’s leadership, but if I discern (through what may be a lousy translation) correctly, she’s right in scoring the unemployment (17% overall, but, as she doesn’t mention, well over 33% is some parts of town), debt (€60 billion), and what she calls an “old-boy network” and I call entrenched anti-entrepreneurialism as problems.

So woo-woo, we have a lot of artists. Frau Goehler even admits that there’s a lot of art made here but no way to sell it: for that you have to leave town. I’d actually advise her to take a look at what’s in some of these galleries here. She might not be so optimistic if she’d take a walk around some of the galleries I see every day, too. And yeah, I know, there are a lot of artists who rent cheapo space here so they can build their stuff and ship it out without showing it here.

Ah, well. At least she admits “As impressive as the numbers are which officially document the strengthening of Berlin’s creative industries, it is equally visible to the naked eye that there isn’t and won’t be enough paid work in this city to counter the jobless rate. For some years now, this shortage has forced mainly jobless artists and academics into new forms of working and living that arise from a lack of money and a simultaneous surplus of ideas.” Which sort of doesn’t make me feel too bad that nobody I know can make a living here, myself included.

But unlike Sony, I haven’t made a sale or a merger that allows me to put my apartment back on the rental market. Yet.