Direct from the quite-legendarily Unsound Home CD Series, in the above-grand tradition of the magnificent Mungo Jerry, with all the semi-fi glory of the more Scoop-sublime Pete Townshend, and harkening straight back to those distant daze when People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair comes my old media and genre-hopping pal Lord Litter alongside his lifelong right-hand guitarzan Lefty Leech.
Now together these two raving folkabillies, armed with a mere twelve strings strung up two acoustics between them (plus the odd dash of keys ‘n’ beat here and then there), slap-happily produce a rhythmic revue as wholly unhinged as it is simply unplugged. And not surprising at all, is it, with just one look at their choice of source material – Marriott/Lane, the Young Springfield, Edmunds and Cash and even John and Paul – decisively proving L & L are more than extremely out on the right channel throughout this bold new socio-musical mission of theirs.
So if you have ever for one moment wondered exactly what those silvery Beatles might sound like if they were still today playing Sunday matinees at the Kaiserkeller or Star Club, Introducing Litter and Leech is the closest any of us may ever truly get to revisiting then recreating, as these two surely have, the rockin’ way the roll used to be …before it became content to wear stars on its brow, that is.
If he wishes to make it louder, he will bring up the volume. If he wishes to make it softer, he will tune it to a whisper.
He will control the horizontal. He will control the vertical. He can roll the image; make it flutter. He can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity.
For close to an hour, sit quietly and Latin Lewis will control all that you see and hear.
I repeat: There is nothing wrong with your computer screen. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to …..the Latin Quarter Films.
So, yeah… I have been absent for a very long time and I want to apologize. Not that folks have been wearing out the "refresh" buttons waiting for a new "A Beautiful, Ugly Noise" entry to show up, but none-the-less, I feel like the kid who hasn’t been coming to practice and can’t figure out why he is always sitting on the bench during all the games. I promise to do better, coach.
Where have I been? Well here, there, ultimately nowhere. I will shamelessly plug Waxflight, an albums-worth of songs I have recorded with lots of help from musician friends who are much more talented than myself and who I love dearly. I hope to have it all cleaned up and shiny by the time the Mayan Calendar cycles us out of existence, so I have a good 6 years left, right? Anyways, stop by the take a listen and be my friend.
Last Sunday I went to La Fonda on Wilshire Blvd for the first time since I moved to LA in 1997. Good Lord that was some slammin’ Mariachi. I want to go back when the Mariachi Divas are playing. How in the world could you possibly go wrong with an all female Mariachi Band?
Well, I am back, this is a promise. It’s been so long this is almost like another introduction. I have lots of records that I want to write about and those will be coming up soon, soon, soon.
To all intents and counter-purposes as those Sixties suddenly became Seventies, the hitherto diabolical music of Frank Zappa somehow entered the denimed underground mainstream via that bitchy little largely instrumental brew known, to this day, as Hot Rats.
Now, maybe it was its utterly polarizing – not to mention polarized – cover art, its hotcha buncha proto-fusion guitar solos, or maybe even (as I’d like to think) the fact that none other than Captain Beefheart scored a Billboard album chart placing courtesy of his magnificent Rats showcase “Willie The Pimp.” Yet whatever the cases may be, this album’s opening three and a half minutes, “Peaches En Regalia,” quickly became a hep FM staple throughout those glorious Nixon years (before becoming totally co-opted as late night chat show breaks thanks to Paul Shaffer and his ilk), and before he could say “hmmmm,” FZ found himself on the road to eventual artistic Stadium Rock ruin and, as a direct result, the disintegration of his first, classic, and BEST-ever batch of manic musical Mothers. Pity…
Still, despite its current digital sheen (wherein such essential elements as Ian Underwood’s mightily majestic “organus maximus,” not to mention “Peaches’” concluding Hare Krishna finger-cymbals, seem to have been all but obliterated during remix by FRANK’S LEAD GUITAR), Hot Rats still recalls to what’s left of my mind glad-happy High School daze spent with partner-in-teen-mischief Richard, crashing the local stoners’ TV parties and serving them up mayo-on-catfood sandwiches …all to the hot-rockin’ accompaniment of “The Gumbo Variations,” y’know.
cult of the week makes a tentative return this week…watch these spaces!
artist: S.Y.P.H.
title: Am Rhein
year: 1987
label: Atatak Records
personnel: Uwe Jahnke (guitars), Harry Rag (vocals), Jojo Wolter (bass), Ralf Bauerfeind (druns)
tracklisting: 11. frau im harem, die matchbox-generation, mein esel ist kaputt, oliver, but the girls, schwesterlein, platz da, julischka, pop horror, geteert un gefedert, sturm auf dich, taris
While what’s left of those Brothers Gibb may, whenever asked, still like to refer to themselves as the Enigma (Cucumber Castle) with the Stigma (Saturday Night Fever) (for starters), may I posit the REAL, TRUE, ORIGINAL Great Big Rockin’ Rolling Enigma is none other than the one, the still and only, Big Boy Pete Miller.
Why, armed with little more than his twin-tone green ’61 Gretsch guitar – name of Henry, btw – and a clutch of equally vintage recording equipment (including a Goobly Box and genuine Humbert Humbert by way of very special effects, I kid you not) Pete has, since 1959 and counting, been in dozens of bands (the so-aptly-named Offbeats, Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers, The Fuzz, even Buzz), toured everywhere with everyone (Beatles, Stones, Kinks et al all round Swinging Sixties England, not to mention the wilds of the Orient – with his trademark electric wah-wah sitar — during no less than the Vietnam quagmire), composed beyond-numerous neat numbers for Freddie and the Dreamers, Damned, and the (original) Knack, and most notably of all as it turns out churned out literally thousands of recordings in studios worldwide these past four-plus decades with, for and/or alongside the likes of Marty Wilde, Peter Frampton’s Herd, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Murray the K, Arlo Guthrie, Elvin Bishop, The Avengers, Tuxedomoon, Roy Loney, Marshall Crenshaw, Johnny and the Potato Chips, and even our good buds The Squires Of The Subterrain, very roughly chronologically speaking indeed.
And now! The good folk over there at Angel Air Records (“Where the Artist Has a Voice”) have gone and collected a dozen of some of Pete’s prime early-Seventies San Francisco productions neatly together right here upon one perfectly titled The Perennial Enigma CD.
Thrill, as I repeatedly have already, to The Great Joe Meek / Marc Bolan Tape that Got Away (“The Demo”), the absolute biggest hit Dave Edmunds somehow never had (“All Down The Road”), and a mere two-minutes-twenty- five called “Get Up And Dance” which finally fills that socio-musical gap between The Swinging Medallions and your very first Elvis Costello long-player.
Elsewhere, Harry Belafonte makes an extremely wrong turn …straight down into Lee “Scratch” Perry’s sub-basement (“Havana Juana”), “Who Stole My Garden?” asks the kind of musical question even those Bonzo Dogs seemed incapable of, and “Rudy’s In Love” – not to mention “The Prayer” – makes one wonder why in holy heck that Plastic Ono Lennon’s Rock ‘n’ Roll album didn’t, or should I say COULDN’T, sound half this coooool ??
Not to fret though: For while the inimitable Johnny Rhythm may no longer be with us, Big Boy Pete is still sitting tight there in Frisco, safe and stereophonically sound within his esteemed Audio Institute of America, demo-ing up his next several hundred severely-high-fidelity musical marvels. So until they too begin trickling out upon us Lost Groovers, I’d suggest you grab your own Perennial Enigma toot sweet, awreet?