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…
Author: kim
THE LEGENDARY TAKE IT! FLEXI
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!
Download TEX AND THE HORSEHEADS – “Got Love If You Want It”
Download MEAT PUPPETS – “Teenager(s)”
Download THE FLESH EATERS – “River Of Fever” (live 1982)
Movie Corner
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
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Last Crumbs From The Trip
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.
RESIDUAL ECHOES / WOODEN SHJIPS / NOTHING PEOPLE, live 3/29/07, Hemlock Tavern, San Francisco
First post of mine in a while that doesn’t contain an mp3, sorry about that folks – always throwing curveballs over here. Last Thursday night I attended a pretty good one @ San Francisco’s Hemlock Tavern, my first chance to see a couple of these bands, and a third date for me in as many months with local psych wizards the WOODEN SHJIPS. I learned a few things, too. Like that all that noise the NOTHING PEOPLE make on their 45 comes out of just three people, two of ‘em married if you can believe it! The band were every bit of hot n heavy as I’d imagined they’d be, a full-on take-me-back-to-’75 blend of heavy pre-punk space-out in the mold of Simply Saucer and Debris, featuring long-ish jams built into compact and punkish song structures. They traded instruments like they were fantasy baseball players a week before the season, lining up 3 different ways for only six songs by my count. Fantastic band, easily one of the best going right now.
WOODEN SHJIPS I’m almost getting used to now. They always play four songs, each usually clocking in around 8-10 minutes, three of which have been the same each time I’ve seen them, along with one “wild cardâ€Â. This time it was “Shrinking Moon For Youâ€Â, the biker-damaged art/psych monster that introduced the band to the world on last year’s 10â€Â. Having played that thing several hundred dozen times, I guess a live version that didn’t hue to the script in my head would be a little disappointing, and it was, which probably says more about me than them. The bass player is the secret weapon of this band – the guy who looks & moves almost exactly like a pokerfaced Bob Weir, holding down an unchanging rhythm for the entire song while total keyboard & guitar chaos swirls around him. It’s that sort of Teutonic krautrock efficiency, among other things, that distinguishes this band from others who pretend to hold a foot in their camp. I’m counting on more nights out in front of crowd making these guys totally unstoppable a year from now.
Bad Idea
Why did Jonathan Lethem put a picture of himself on the cover of You Don’t Love Me Yet? As much as I like this guy, I’m not sure anyone should be writing a rock novel right now. Color me scared. Yes, I’m in a position to say this.
John
Just when you thought every real estate bargain in Berlin was gone, up pops this one!
It’s got a lot going for it. Location, for one: it’s directly across Invalidenstr. from Nordbahnhof, which is twice as busy now that they have the tram line running. On one side of it, there’s the historic Reichsbahn building, with its heroic statues of workers ready to build Germany’s railroads, and on the other side, there’s a nice park the locals use for sunbathing, with a kiddie pool that’s jammed all summer long. So it’s easy to get to and has nice green space.
Of course, the view’s sort of hard to see, given that the windows are so high, but that’s just a clue about the main thing it doesn’t have going for it: if you look at the top photo, you’ll see that there’s a little sign high on the wall. It says WC.
That’s right, folks: this is your opportunity to buy a genuine DDR public toilet.
It’s been standing there, locked up and stinky, for as long as I’ve lived here. Not that that’s stopped anyone; today as I shot this photo, I realized that the best sun was from the other side, and as I was headed in that direction, a gentleman from the building trades appeared, loosened his belt, and, um, proceeded to use the outside in the manner for which the inside was intended, if you catch my meaning here.
Maybe it’s the jet-lag, but my normally rich creative faculties have frozen at the challenge of coming up with a use for this property, a reason to buy it. But I trust my dear readers will be able to think of something.
BARBARA MANNING & SEYMOUR GLASS – “8sâ€Â
One of the first bands I followed with my then-frequent religious fervor when I moved to San Francisco in 1989 were WORLD OF POOH. Their bass & sometime guitar player BARBARA MANNING impressed me from the get-go with her lovely voice, totally off-beat, spiky sense of rhythm & song construction, and general falling-down, about to implode onstage persona (at least in that volatile band). I was an instant fan. I talked to her at one of their shows, probably late ’89, and she told me about this album she’d released called “Lately I Keep Scissorsâ€Â; of course I went out & bought it, and I’m pretty sure that since that time I’ve owned every single piece of vinyl and/or CD with her name on it.
One great place to gain an overview of her oeuvre is the “Under One Roofâ€Â 45s collection, thought I’ll warn you that there are some mid-90s duds present that don’t really stand the test of time. One stunning track that does is one they inexplicably left off that collection. It’s called “8sâ€Â, and it came out on a limited 45 on the Majora label in 1992. Majora was an excellent label run out of Seattle, responsible for the bulk of the SUN CITY GIRLS’ 1990s stuff, along with great weirdo/noise/folk records from DADAMAH, EDDY DETROIT and LESLIE Q. The Manning single they put out was actually a team-up with SEYMOUR GLASS, the publisher of Bananafish magazine and a nominal noise musician in his own right, and also Manning’s longtime college buddy (Chico State, baby!). The song is haunting, distant and perfect – far better than the version that turned up the following year on an SF SEALS album. I’m still pretty bummed that Manning didn’t get her shot to participate in the 1990s female singer/songwriter financial sweepstakes & find a wider audience, but also pleased as punch that one reason she didn’t is she kept recording strange records with people like Seymour Glass, and always kept her songs one quirky step to the left of what was hitting big.
Download BARBARA MANNING & SEYMOUR GLASS – “8sâ€Â (from 1992 Majora 45)
We Don’t Live Here Anymore
“Too sad,” Mark Ruffalo’s character says toward the end of this film from 2004, succinctly summing up the preceding hour and a half of marital warfare. Arguably, director John J. Curran’s greatest accomplishment is managing to end the movie, which is sometimes almost too painful to watch, on a hopeful note without resorting to maudlin platitudes or a song by Sarah McLachlan.
Woody Allen’s Husband and Wives without the laughs, Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage without the subtitles, and Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut without the masks, We Don’t Live Here Anymore boasts terrific performances from Ruffalo (fine in this year’s Zodiac), Laura Dern, Peter Krause, and co-producer Naomi Watts.
Larry Gross’s screenplay, based on Andre Dubus’s novella We Don’t Live Here Anymore and short story “Adultery,” guides — but doesn’t drag — the viewer through a psychic minefield fraught with every imaginable method of harm we humans can inflict upon one another without actually drawing blood.
Big Book Idea. No Market.
The latest chapter in I DON’T GET IT. ÂÂ
I just checked my “Book Proposalsâ€Â folder and yep, I did remember to name an empty file, “The Truth About Outsider Artists.â€Â If I start giving away pump organs to every rambling maniac that panhandles me, will that guarantee a glut of delusional documentaries in the year 2040? When taken as a whole, the music of Jandek (a perfectly sane man with a perfectly fascinating story, yet he makes perfectly pointless music), Wesley Willis, Daniel Johnston (a wonderful visual artist), and especially Wild Man Fischer has produced exactly five interesting songs, and they all come from Johnston.