Ten From the '90s Part Three (1992): The Dead C- HARSH 70S REALITY (Siltbreeze)

Some adjectives that apply to the aura that surrounded The Dead C’s subterranean existence at the dawn of the ‘90s: mysterious, dark, foreboding, shambolic. At this current time the band are justifiably legendary (if still underappreciated) in u-ground music circles, but in their earlier days as a very left field New Zealand low-fi noise-rock trio they flew under the radar of all but the most discerning listeners. Previous to The Dead C’s tenure on U.S. label Siltbreeze, if you came across a review of one of their releases in the fanzine press it was almost certain to be a glowing notice of admiration, not due to any sort of consensus from the field but instead because the only scribes actually writing about them were the few people who simply couldn’t resist searching for the band’s output, of which many were cassette releases that frankly felt quite indifferent toward the idea of self promotion (in contrast to the deliberate purposefulness of documentation): releases dribbled into the States and could be procured with a little luck through mail order channels or from the racks of clued in shops, and along with a distinct and raw visual aesthetic that often drew upon guitarist Michael Morley’s woodcut artwork came the lingering aura of a reversal in the modern consumerist norm. The Dead C didn’t come to you hoping for acceptance; instead, if you were intrigued by their existence, finding them required some searching, a little effort. And joining up with Siltbreeze increased the band’s visibility only somewhat. HARSH 70’S REALITY was issued as a double-LP in ’92, and didn’t get a truncated CD release until around five years later. While it is tempting to say that hard line adherence to the varied qualities of format limited their popularity, with some consideration I feel that line of thinking is folly. The marriage of Siltbreeze founder Tom Lax’s defiantly and pleasantly screwed vibe and The Dead C’s uncompromisingly abstract free-rock was a shrewd intertwining of sensibilities. It would’ve done nobody any favors to have used CD bins clogged with the fallout of the overzealous promotion of their music to an always unpredictable indie marketplace. And the stature of this record slowly rose to masterpiece levels in the annals of noise-rock anyway, indeed becoming a cornerstone of the sort of organic, flowing formlessness that’s been a major component in much of the new millennium’s noisy goings-on. There is probably no better bathe-in-it-or-reject-it statement of purpose than the opening side long excursion of “Driver UFO”. Sounds drift in like storm clouds, threatening and unpredictable, with both feedback and distortion asserting and retreating, rising and falling, fading away or abruptly stopping, creating a loose and fascinating tapestry where the rain ultimately never bursts forth but a strange fog rises instead and envelops the surroundings, becoming incredibly dense before eventually dissipating into the ether. What a grandly twisted twenty-two and one-half minutes. Not everything included here is that shapeless and huge, though. Side two begins with “Sky”, and ragged bit of rocking that could be mistaken for some lost demo track from ‘80s subterranean Cleveland. “Love” basically lands between the two extremes, with string damage and brittle drumming slowly cohering into an almost groove, and it’s here that the occasionally cited comparisons to early Fall border on the explicit. The 2nd LP begins with “Sea Is Violet”, where the levels of guitar overload reach mind-melting highs and the drums attain a stunted, staggering momentum, and based on the primal thrust of this track if the agreement with Siltbreeze hadn’t happened, The Dead C could’ve just as easily fit on the Massachusetts label Twisted Village (who also released an LP by Gate, another of Michael Morley’s bands, so maybe I’m just stating the obvious). “Baseheart”, the middle of Side D’s three tracks, opens with a guitar riff so ominous it begins to feel like the soundtrack to the climax of an ultra low-budget action movie flickering on the backside of my eyelids: slow motion like Peckinpah, but tight, direct, energetic and sleazy ala early Ferrara, you know? Along the way it adds some wickedly broken Jandek-ian vocals, spectacular bursts of knotted and frayed guitar splatter, and a splendid slow build from the drums. This leads into “Hope”, where the music continues in a Corwood-like vein, combining the bent vision of outer-Texas with a hazy slumbering gait that, to me at least, approaches the far-left end of the early ‘80s UK DIY spectrum in its strung-out bedroomy density. The attention to texture is severe, though thoroughly appropriate, and is a well-considered conclusion to a lasting, uncompromising work. This is probably my favorite release by The Dead C, though the various editions of DR503 and TRAPDOOR FUCKING EXIT aren’t far behind, and those unfamiliar with the expanse of their maw that are attracted to the untiring candle flame of Sonic Youth’s experimental side should step right up to the plate and swing. Free-rock doesn’t get any more major than HARSH 70S REALITY, and as time hurtles forward and more bands shake off a slavish reverence to structure, the status of this masterwork has nowhere to go but up.

The Dead C live at Johnny Brenda's Philadelphia, PA October 12 2008

Fighting a war we can't win: Black Flag's DAMAGED (SST 007)

If I had a buck for every time Black Flag's DAMAGED was used as the soundtrack for some sort of hedonistic gathering or unhealthy activity, I'd never need to work again. And if I could gain a dollar for each time this same record was played by a single individual, angry and confused and plagued by solitude, staring at the walls or down at a blank sheet of paper that's purpose is to document thoughts expressed through words that somehow can't get through the haze or distortion of emotional desperation, I'd double my money. Easily. I'm sure there are people who own this record that have never punched a brick wall out of sheer frustration or looked at themselves in a mirror in disgust or stood amongst a group of individuals and felt light years away in temperament. Those people may even "like" this record. But they don't really know its power, what it's expressing so succinctly about the failure to fit into a world that shuns and shames those who can't or won't internalize or deny the sheer causticity of which daily life is capable. A whole lot of ballyhoo has been made about the legal bullshit that this record inspired, but the aspect of the whole situation that sticks out to me is what started it all, specifically MCA's refusal to release it, using the jargon "anti-parent". It's a nice tidy term that holds the messier reality that DAMAGED is like the aural essence of the quintessential "problem child". It's a seething rant to every mom and dad who'd half-assed reared offspring that didn't ask to be brought onto this planet, and also a balm to those same kids, informing each one that they were part of a multitude of fucked-up and scrawny and fat and acne-riddled teens who were teetering on the brink of implosion. It's easy to picture some well tanned asshole record executive hearing this music and being assaulted by exactly what it was/is, and immediately fearing that it could spread like a virus from pressing plant to record store to bedroom through speakers and headphones and into ear canals and oh, shit: the gig is up. Molly no longer hates the fact that she's overweight or feels inferior to the cheerleading squad. Nah, she's bought a leather jacket, cut her hair short, and doesn't hide that she's attracted to girls. Of course I'm romanticizing somewhat, but after taking in the bitter yet lovely pill that is this album, all that romantic jive slowly transforms into well earned tribute. The fact that the band plays with such feral atonal fury while always keeping a loose grip on the song's focus is still startling. The phrase "an untamed sense of control" was coined by Bob Dylan to describe the early country/pre-bluegrass Kentucky mountain music of Roscoe Holcomb. I'd like to momentarily hi-jack the compliment and apply it to this LP, because it fits like a pair of long johns. Only after a few decades of bands’ copping its moves does DAMAGED really reveal itself as the goddamned structural behemoth that it is. The rhythm hits with a deliciously pummeling elasticity, and Greg Ginn's guitar grinds, burns, and squalls all over the proceedings, reaching for twisted sounds that ring out with a "wrongness" that's just gripping. If you haven't heard the record, my description may lead you to think that its greatness is tied to a certain inspired monochromatic sensibility, ala certain first generation hardcore bands. If so, let me correct that impression. It's certainly not all over the map stylistically, but as the grooves lead to the label it displays a commendable variety, particularly on the second side: "Padded Cell" is just one example of the spastic perfection that this specific version of the band could cook up.

Black Flag live at Wilson Center, Washington DC with Chicago's Effigies and some of harDCore's finest

(almost too much of a good thing)

The record ends with a ranting Rollins presiding over a tweaked sub-bluesy lurch that points Black Flag to one of their subsequent directions. For many, the majority of songs contained herein were almost golden oldies, and it wasn't hard to see the appeal to the band of truly throwing them down one more time before moving on. Rollins-era Flag was a rapidly evolving beast, at times not even including the vocalist that for a large group of listeners is the first thing they think of when this group's name comes up. Unlike The Minutemen or even underappreciated yet championed SST groups like Saccharine Trust or Slovenly, opinions about Black Flag differ wildly. Each vocalist has their partisans, some love the pre-Rollins period and disdain the DC transplant's contribution ("Rollins ruined Black Flag"), others dig this record but think that the focus was lost with the later stuff, for a few the two live albums of the Rollins-era are where it's at, with the studio stuff falling short. The instrumental work is hated and loved by many for roughly the same reasons. This is only a few of the opinions held about Flag's discography (if I had a buck for every debate/argument this group inspired at parties or bars…..ah, you know the rest). In some ways this is unavoidable and part of the band's lasting appeal: I know I listen to MY WAR more than LOOSE NUT, and when I want a charge of primal punk rock the early stuff satisfies the need, not THE PROCESS OF WEEDING OUT. But DAMAGED stands apart (not entirely though; I've met a few stodgy Flag fans who say they don't like it) as the one document of the band that comes close to summing up what they were all "about". It has definite links to the early sound, the gunky two guitar mania (which Spot apparently hated), and includes enough off-kilter tics and weird flashes to show that they were so much more than just some ordinary punk band who happened to have a really great day in the studio. This is the sound of ‘80s style urban desperation boiled down to a science and fired like a shot from a bazooka to send the façade of normalcy falling down like the house of cards it most certainly is. It's a stone classic and one of the finest and most extreme examples of the sonic depth charge of which rock music is capable. I can only hope you're young and fucked enough to know just how special it is.

The Auteur Files #6: Gerd Oswald's SCREAMING MIMI (1958)

A few years ago, before cancelling my cable, I caught this 1958 film on Turner Classic Movies channel. Its director Gerd Oswald is a not particularly renowned figure who holds a special place for fans of classic TV (he directed a bunch of OUTER LIMITS episodes) and a certain small pocket of directorially focused and historically inclined film-nuts, most of them probably guided by the great Andrew Sarris, who wrote a wonderful tribute to him in his book THE AMERICAN CINEMA: DIRECTORS AND DIRECTIONS 1929-1968. That resource, which was pretty much ground-zero for English language auteurist film writing as well as a guide-source for movie-buff directors like Scorsese and Tarantino, was broken down into themed sections where Oswald fell under the group labeled as "Expressive Esoterica", and it was this corral to which I was attracted like a moth to an uncovered light bulb. Roughly half of this bunch toiled in the thankless landscape of the B-movie, a constant thread in the history of American film that wasn't really killed off until episodic television thoroughly entrenched itself as the way most people entertained themselves (the Grindhouse-era is the sometimes berserk and often sordid icing on this decades long cake), only to be resurrected in an inferior fashion with the largely undistinguished shelf-filling straight-to-video crap that appeared in the '80s "home-theatre"-period. Oswald was certainly a B director (the two exceptions to this were a film that featured Bob fucking Hope and a later '60s cash-in on the Bond craze called AGENT FOR H.A.R.M., two movies that Sarris calls "pre-doomed"), having to consistently deal with five to seven day shooting schedules and not particularly inspiring materials.

One of the great works of film scholarship

One of the first detectable qualities of MIMI is that its script is no great shakes. It's not "bad" (at least not in a groan or guffaw inspiring sense), but it is rather undistinguished in how it services the story. Oh yeah, the story. It's about a hubba-hubba blonde dancer named Virginia and as the film opens she gets attacked by a knife wielding psycho while taking an outdoor shower. The killer gets subdued by her shotgun toting relative (importantly, a sculptor) but Virginia is understadably traumatized and ends up in a sanitarium. While there, her doctor develops an attraction to her and his feelings take a left turn on the way to love and land smack dab in the territory of unhealthy and controlling obsession. Next thing we know, she's out of the hospital and working in a night club under the name Yolanda. A newspaper reporter falls into the story, and he's curious about this dancer's aloof personality and her possessive manager (yes, the doctor mentioned above). Then Yolanda finds herself attacked by another unknown manic with a knife, gets out of the hospital, engages in a brief tryst with the reporter, and starts acting more and more strange. Add in to the story these small sculptures of a stressed-out woman with flailing arms (I'll stop here for the spoiler averse), and you've got the basics for a no-reputation '50s-era suspense flick with some serious potential. The opening scene shows that at least some of that potential is going to be cashed in. It has a suitably rugged sensibility that's appropriate for a movie where the female lead gets attacked in the first few minutes by a man with a knife covered with the fresh blood of her dog (killed off-screen, natch). Additionally, this set up is also conceived with the dual intention of hooking the audience and withholding the fact that the pivotal character is played by a woman who wasn't cast for her acting abilities. Anita Ekberg was a European looker who is probably best remembered for appearing in Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA, but to be frank, she wasn't cast in that art-house staple for her thespian qualities, either.

It's in this movie's next scenes, which are full of crisp visuals and tight cutting, that Ekberg's deficiencies are gradually exposed. To expand and be fair, most of the acting is pretty bland, though Philip Carey as the reporter is solid and Harry Towne does achieve a mild level of Peter Lorre-ish strangeness. The movie's economy seems designed to create enough momentum to fend off viewers dwelling upon a flatly delivered line or a bland dialogue exchange. BAM, she sure is traumatized. BAM, that doctor sure likes her. BAM, she's getting better. BAM, Dr. Green is kind of a strange cat, and he's breaking at least one professional oath by messing around with his patient. BAM, she's out of the hospital, and dancing in a burlesque house under a different name. What's up with that? I didn't have my stopwatch handy, but all of this felt like it went down in under ten minutes. Along the way we get some nice camera movement and one notable little moment of Ekberg swaying around barefoot to some music that serves to establish that she's approaching some semblance of surface normalcy while simply upping the sexy quotient (sexy barefoot chicks being a staple of movies made under the production code. I find this to be one of the quirkier little elements of hommage in the cinema of obvious foot-man Quentin Tarantino). Next up was one of the more fractured scenes in the film, the extended establishment of the night-club where Virginia/Yolanda has landed a job. There are some seriously conflicting things going on: the club's band is played by Red Norvo's trio, and they lay down some nice '50s-era mainstream (not a putdown) jazz. It sounds cool, yet it feels a little off the mark to have a jazz group led by a double-mallet vibe player as the house band at an exotic dance club. Not exactly bump and grind material. But this really seems to feed into the atmosphere of this mythical joint. It's like a battle between shots that play up the "risqué" attributes of the place, and others that possess a blunt corniness (goofy dancing waiters, joke’s stale as a decade old bag of croutons).

It appears the intended effect is to land squarely between hipness and hokum. In the process, it becomes sort of an "unreal" location, not concerned with any kind of accuracy (at least to my perceived experience of what a dive like this, where scantily clad women dance "artfully" for the almost exclusive enjoyment of men [men who nearly all wear hats], circa 1950s America, should "really" "be"), instead existing as a motley mixture of elements that don't seem very compatible (the production code certainly played a part in this, and it could’ve also been designed by Oswald himself as a way to not offend some of the potentially fragile mindsets that could hypothetically inhabit theatre seats). I'm no stickler for realism, so I haven't the slightest beef with what's detailed above. Others might resort to mocking laughter or derision. Our personal mileage may vary, as they say.

As the scene unspools, the character of club owner and MC played by Gypsy Rose Lee is introduced. She delivers a not at all funny routine for the customers, and is obviously intended to add spice to the story, existing as a hard-as-nails, tough talking bird who just so happens to share her apartment with a young brunette with overt qualities of bohemianism, a pure hominahominahomina hottie who never utters a line but is almost always at Gypsy's side (even sitting beside her during a card game with the boys). I can't help but think that this girl exists to clue in the "knowing" to Gypsy's sexual preferences. There is one "red-herring" moment with this boho missy where she gives a meaningful head-turn as if she knows something to be revealed later, but all that adds up to is a hill of beans.

Dressed in black and digs records: My kind of gal

Shortly after Gypsy's introduction, we learn that Ekberg can't dance any better than she can act, which doesn't really seem so odd for an exotic dancer, but does create some dissonance when characters deliver subsequent lines about how great she is. Through this whole scene, the camerawork is rather nice, reinforcing the efficient assurance of the film up to this juncture. From a visual/thematic standpoint, things just get better in the next scene, which takes place in Yolanda's dressing room. In a word: mirrors. Characters have the opportunity to really see themselves, but nobody uses it. This theme is amplified by subsequent developments in the movie. We also get introduced to Devil, Yolanda's annoying as shit Great Dane. There is this wonderfully oddball reverse shot of a barking Devil that seems like it’s coming from another room entirely; it doesn't "fit" in the smooth manner that is the nearly all-encompassing standard for film's last few decades or so. Most will think this a positive development, but I for one love these brief flashes of shoe-string eccentrics. They’re like utilitarian hiccups, the tangible flare-ups that are sparked by the use of a more meager pallet.

But the true test of strong direction with little or no money is how complicated scenes are executed. The crowd scene here, the moment in the story where Yolanda gets stabbed by a mysterious, unseen serial killer, is certainly complex. It's set up to withhold essential information; we never see her get stabbed, the scene opens after the fact. When this is done, the complexities move away from showing the act convincingly, and head in a thornier direction, an area that's the opposite of the natural "less-is-more" tendencies of low-budget filmmakers. For a crowd scene that essentially functions to inform the viewer of what they've missed, you need to add characters, in this case bystanders and emergency personnel, who shape the scene. This means more shots, more continuity and more difficulties. Oswald does a fantastic job with this scene, and includes a bit of what I think is the movie's big underlying theme, for good measure. The ostensible good guy in the scheme of things is the reporter Bill Sweeney. He's at the scene, flanked by a cop with a pistol, and he's attempting to get the wounded Yolanda from the bottom of a basement stairwell. The only problem is Devil, who's in full protect mode, barking wildly. At one point, Oswald cuts to a close-up of Sweeney's face telling the cop to "shoot him, he's mad!" The look on his mug is an unflattering mix of coldness and menace. They do manage to get her out of the stairwell without offing Devil (he's needed for further story developments), and as the movie proceeds, Dr. Green gets more and more possessive, Yolanda becomes more and more disturbed, and she and Sweeney get down to some lovey-dovey business. The aforementioned underlying theme, delivered with a tasty ambiguity that's aided by the detached camera and cutting, is the suffering of Virginia/Yolanda under a group of male characters that inflict her with violence, selfishness, non-physical abusiveness, and a general inability to understand or care that the best thing for this particular woman at this specific time would be to get as far away from this fucked-up and foul group of heels as possible (in a nutshell: MALE OBSESSION. Where would the movies be without it?). Her brief affair with Sweeney is the icing on the cake. After a magnificently shot apartment scene that utilizes darkness and bursts of blinking light from outside the window, it becomes clear that Sweeney wants her to run off with him, even though her life is a borderline shambles that she can't remember large portions of. Oh, she was easy to convince. This is, until Dr. Green did some convincing of his own. From here the film heads with due speed to a tidy but in no way happy ending (nobody gets the girl). The story takes some far-fetched turns, but the unlikelihood is preferable to triteness.

My overall impression was that Oswald took the uninspiring materials he was handed and really made something worthwhile from it. The theme outlined above is penciled in (or "smuggled in", as Scorsese likes to say) so that some foggy nogoodnik in a wrinkled raincoat taking in a ten cent double bill in '58 could simply watch in obliviousness (a.k.a. what the studio wanted). Meanwhile, the no-flash mise-en-scene breathes life into the proceedings in much the same fashion.

The blunt delivery of movies like this, short sweet and self-effacing little "entertainments", at least from a surface glance, is a big part of their value. They are almost never included in the sporadic round-ups of "greatest films" or "best ever" lists, but are just as valuable as many canonical masterpieces. The perspective of the masterpiece is pretty much inappropriate for films like SCREAMING MIMI, anyway. Masterpieces are basically all-encompassing works that so often scream out that they are important and demand attention, that make clear that their existence has had a profound impact on the course of whatever form of art they inhabit (which is not exactly what the word masterpiece means [a piece that shows mastery, basically], but culture has taken this particular term and ran with it in the exact opposite direction from the word genius, which these days gets applied to chefs and football coaches). I'm cool with that: having my ass handed to me by Duchamp in a gallery to the point where I'm unconscious of strangers standing beside me is one hell of a feeling. But I'm just as clued in to a smaller scale scene, where I'm looking at (or hearing, or reading) a succession of less weighty productivity, all the while getting a little bit of impact from each example until at some point I'm just clobbered with the reality that a whole lot of so-called modest work has added up to a sum of something quietly unique and powerful. This is the domain of the pulp novelist, the minor poet, the garage band, and certainly the lowly "action-film" director circa 1958. That's where Gerd Oswald is at, plugging away in anonymity in a genre of his art form that got no respect while it was happening, only to find himself retroactively assessed as a small but significant part of a real golden age.

Gerd Oswald

Credit where it's due: most of the above screenshots were taken from the nifty beatniky-inspired blog Like...Dreamsville. Check it out: http://likedreamsville.blogspot.com/

3 quick ones

The wealth of post-war electric blues can at times be a bit much to fathom. That’s why some folks elect to stay with the established classics, such as the stuff on the Chess, Trumpet and Aladdin labels, for just three instances. And that’s not an unwise attitude to take if yr tastes are diverse and yr time is valuable. But it doesn’t paint the whole picture. The compilation COOL PLAYING BLUES CHACAGO STYLE does indeed shed light upon and deepen the pool that casts the refection of ‘50s amplified blues, consisting of sides cut for the Parrot label in the middle portion of that decade. Most of this disc was unissued at the time of recording, but I suspect that had more to with the economics involved and not the quality of the sounds. However, if you’re rigid in yr disdain of horn sections as an unnecessary intrusion into the wild transference of energy that was the electrification of the blues, you might want to skip this one. That’s not my bag, but I do tend to prefer my blues raw and unfettered from the tendencies of streamlining, so this disc wasn’t a personal mindblower. It does go down well enough though, the best of the bunch belonging to Curtis Jones, whose use of horns feels natural (possibly the result of a working band) and not grafted on in an attempt to increase commercial appeal. Jody Williams has a nice uptown B.B. King-ish feel, L.C. McKinley’s tracks seem to hearken back to the booming echo-laden sound of the Chess Brothers’ Aristocrat releases (where guitars, pianos and horns often blended in a nicely rudimentary fashion), and on one tune tenor sax player Nature Boy Brown’s Muddy Water’s-like vocals create an appealing clash with his band’s favored blend of jazzy-R & B (his other two tracks are instrumentals). But yes, this is still a very hornified affair. And as such it lacks the impact of being slapped on the pate by the primal scorch of say, early Elmore James. But that’s alright. And the Jo Jo Adams’ cuts apparently feature arrangements by Sonny Blount, aka Sun Ra. WHOA!!!

Because I am what some consider a stick in the mud, I prefer early Cure to almost any other type of Cure. SEVENTEEN SECONDS isn’t the band’s oldest stuff, but it is the beginning of what I (and others) consider the group’s most fertile period. Never as doomy and depressing as some folks made them out to be (particularly in contrast with any ‘80s Swans, for just one example), they were staking out territory that combined pop, post-punk, and studied atmospherics in a stridently non-smiling way that was markedly different from the more late-night horror-movie infused aesthetic of fellow U.K.-ers Bauhaus. Oh well, the press still tagged The Cure as gothic. But that’s because they were fucking lazy. I’ll confess that I never started really listening to this band in earnest until my late 20s (though they were in semi-constant rotation in my high school years at parties and during car rides); before that, they always seemed too refined for me, especially in contrast to the brilliance of Joy Division, who nailed me to the wall the first time I heard them. I can intuit a lot of Joy Div in this record (particularly in the placement of the bass guitar in the schema of the band’s sound), more so than on any post-MOVEMENT New Order release in fact, but I can also hear a band attempting to bring its own collective identity to the table. And yes, refinement. The Cure were surely post-punk, but they weren’t raw or antagonistic. Accessibility was part of the band’s M.O. from the start (I mean seriously, give me an example of a more catchy woe-is-me mope-fest than “Boys Don’t Cry”), and this album commences a trio of records that combine that approachable sensibility with a seriousness of intent that refutes their reputation as just college radio hit-makers. This is a fine LP that at its best finds them proffering a catchy, multi-layered and deceptively edgy plod. Play this between Siouxsie and the Banshees’ ONCE UPON A TIME: THE SINGLES and Bauhaus’ IN A FLAT FIELD (a couple of classics, in retrospect) and you’ll have the soundtrack to at least a half dozen nights of my late teenage life. Nice to know I can appreciate it more now than I did then.

SUN ARK, Sun Araw’s newish 7’’ on the Not Not Fun label is a fine spectacle. “Bump Up (High Step)” is an extended tour of a blissed-out zone that feels equally indebted to low-fi bubblegum dub and tinny, street corner psychedelia. It’s a sweet blend of expansiveness and repetition, fuzzy and druggy, but with an irresistible (some might say nagging) pulse that never deviates from start to finish. Layers of gonky organ junk proliferate as the track motivates into the eternal consciousness, insuring that the sonic whole builds in intensity, but the track never really shakes its feel as hypothetical soundtrack music for a video game that’s object is to save the world while simultaneously getting thoroughly and unapologetically stoned. Sound(s) like fun(?) If this reads to you like some sort of retro trip - on one hand kinda, but on the other most emphatically NO. Grace Slick will hate it, but Phil Lesh will likely understand. Side two, “Live Mind”, is much more heavily drenched in dub syrup, but there is just as much wheedling and woozy organ, substantial levels of blunted boom-chacka guitar progressions and a slick fabric of cyclical rhythmic bursts. Vocal textures arrive, though they wisely avoid the limitations of language. It’s no surprise that a flute momentarily emerges from the mix. Like much of the current underground, Sun Araw is fairly prolific, and it’s clear that the man behind the title (Magic Lantern member Cameron Stallones) is quite welcoming of what many perceive as archaic technology in both the overall aural whoosh of his project and also in the manner of documentation, since a sizable portion of that output has been released on cassette. Mighty keen, I say. This baby is a vinyl single however, a limited edition of 500, and most likely already sold out. MP3s do exist, and if you are well stroked by the sounds of Panda Bear, High Places or label-mates Ducktails, you should seek Sun Araw out, bask in the rewards, and then tip yr cap in the vicinity of Augustus Pablo and Albert Hoffman for helping to set this delicious mess into motion.

Ten from the '90s Part Two (1991): Love Child- OKAY? CD (Homestead)

It’s interesting to consider the bands/artists that get anointed with immortality and those that suffer the fate of being forgotten (if they were indeed ever known). To wit, 1991. Of all the bands in my personal heavy rotation that year, it was Pavement that has most impacted history. And that’s cool. PERFECT SOUND FOREVER was/is a flat out beauty of a 10 inch EP. The “Summer Babe” 7" was a stone gas as well. But two groups that were beating out Stockton's finest in my personal sweepstakes of the constant spin were Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, a bent and comely post-avant-garage group from San Fran that will no doubt eventually get their own post in this space, and Love Child, a complex New York indie-trio that I felt at the time were poised to rise to the top of a bursting bullpen of bands (though I probably played SEBADOH III more than any other record that year, but everybody loves that one, right? Right?). Thinking Fellers have a deep discography and are pretty entrenched in the lore of post ’77 US art-damage, but Love Child has been sorta kicked to the curb of history, or more to the point they are a footnote in the twisted geography of Alan Licht’s snaky list of recordings. In this regard, they suffer next to Run On, a Matador act that were kinda looked upon (by me, anyway) as an indie-supergroup (for the record, Rick Brown ex-Fish & Roses and Les Batteries, Sue Garner of the Shams and Licht of, well, Love Child, and also very fine solo releases and his shit-hot participation in Ed Wood-biographer Rudolph Grey’s mammoth no wave/free jazz project Blue Humans). One reason I thought Love Child were all set to conquer the scene (so to speak) was due to the way they were such a swell collusion of seemingly irreconcilable influences, convulsed in a specifically Noo Yawk way. Let’s run down the list: an approach to stripped-down sonics that was similar to the at-that-point very much in vogue K records’ sound, which was justly amplified by the bands’ multi-instrumental attitude (Never mind that Licht titled a solo release CALVIN JOHNSON HAS RUINED ROCK FOR AN ENTIRE GENERATION). Male sung lyrics that at times come off like a passive aggressive Jonathan Richman and at other moments lash out from the hypothetical psyche of a love-wounded schmeedle. Much of the proceedings are related to post-power pop happenings to varying degrees. Female vocals courtesy of the much missed Rebecca Odes generally detail lovey-dovey goings on in a grandly smart and detached manner (Oh so sweet). Licht’s guitar playing (soloing) depicts an alternate universe where Eddie Van Halen is actually Thurston Moore. I even hear echoes of post-Ubu Cleveland and a Frankensteinian sewing job of early Television and early Feelies. How east coast. In a sense Love Child was a perfect band for 1991, a period where the indie scene had reached a boiling point, Nirvana and to a lesser extent Pavement tearing the roof off the sucker. But Love Child was in no way a schizophrenic band. Nah, they seemed totally simpatico, with the necessary frictions and individualistic tendencies. They were riding a blazed trail into wide open territory, just one piece of a nationwide under-the-radar grid. Another reason I thought Love Child would succeed in contrast to (for example) the great but quite obscure Royal Trux (who inexplicably [to me] ended up on a major label and lasted into the 21st century) related to the trio’s pop sensibility, which at this point was more explicit then that of Unrest or for that matter Pavement. Ultimately, you never know how things are going to shake out. OKAY? really shook the peaches from my proverbial tree for a few years and has been in semi-frequent rotation over the last twelve months or so since I copped a download to replace my beat-to-shit vinyl. I never located the follow up LP WITCHCRAFT, though I’d love to hear it since it’s rumored to be in a more Yo La Tengo direction (It featured new member Brendan O’Malley replacing Will Baum, who left to head out west. He formed the band 9 Iron. Never heard them). I do own the debut 7” on Trash Flow and the Moondog covers 7” on Forced Exposure. Both are dandy. But I’ll let you in on a secret. If some enterprising and cutting edge label (say Merge, who’re getting a rep for righteous indie collections/reissues, Honor Role and Dino Jr. and Volcano Suns and Destroyer to name four) decided to compile the entire output of Love Child into a jam packed 2CD set, I don’t think I could resist picking it up, largely because they were such an aesthetically solid and purely rewarding band. They are always at the top of my coulda-shoulda been contenders list, a group that was clearly tailor made for my mindset (then and now), so any motion in the contemporary marketplace toward justifying their too brief existence would seem to require a reciprocal gesture on my part. The least I could do, essentially. What’s that? My favorite tracks? I’ll type this slowly, so nobody misses the point. Every fucking one. OKAY?’s landscape ranges wildly from start to finish, but every second is essential. Until somebody with the wherewithal to make waves wakes up and smells the caffeinated breeze, I guess it’s up to me to light a candle for these three. If you stumble upon them and find yrself similarly impacted, perhaps you might do the same.

Alan Licht playing No Fun Fest NYC

(any idea how hard it is to find a pic of Love Child online?)

The BYG/Actuel Series Part Three: Kenneth Terroade - LOVE REJOICE (Actuel 23)

Jamaican born UK resident Kenneth Terroade recorded just this one album as a leader and was a part of only a handful of sessions under the direction of others, the majority belonging to free-drumming master Sunny Murray; three Actuel dates (we’ll get to them later) and a fourth, BIG CHIEF, originally released by the French Pathe label and recently reissued by the excellent Massachusetts label Eremite (I’ve previously covered BIG CHIEF elsewhere in the guts of this blog). Along with Actuel sessions by Alan Silva, Claude Delcloo and Dave Burrell, Terroade is also on a very enticing LP (kindly reinstated to availability by Downtown Music Gallery) by South African expat-drummer Selwyn Lissack, a date that just happens to feature another legendary lost guy of freedom, Ric Colbeck. Other than playing flute on Dr. John The Night Tripper’s SUN, MOON & HERBS from 1971 (and rumors of other rock sessions), that appears to be it for Terroade. I actually have that record by the Dr. on the shelf and recall that it’s a good time, though not as hot as his first few (Clapton’s on it, what’d ya’ expect?). I just might pull that one out for a spin, though I’ve been locked into LOVE REJOICE all damn day and it’s not even close to wearing out its welcome.

Terroade plays both flute and tenor sax, and while I almost always prefer sax to flute (I’m just that kinda guy) I’m thankful for his abilities as a flautist, partially due to his sound (it’s good, reaching for urgency over prettiness) but mainly because his dual horn status probably helped to increase the man’s meager number of discographical spots. It’s a stone drag that he didn’t have more opportunity to head sessions, because based on the evidence of his sole shot he was well suited for the role. Before LOVE REJOICE is even slapped upon the platter it’s clear that this will be a unique listen. The instrumental makeup is notable for the inclusion of two bass players and a bevy of multi-horn action, bass clarinet most notably. And the names involved really stand out. South African expat Ronnie Beer, a cohort of the late Chris McGregor, plays tenor, alto and flute. Evan Chandley, a member of Cohelmec Ensemble (who’s 1971 LP HIPPOTIGRIS ZEBRA ZEBRA is a superfine and ultra rare slab of zonked French jazz) plays bass clarinet and flute (we’re up to three flutes, if you’re counting. Yes, parts of this do sound a bit like a fife and drum corps showed up to jam after gobbling a sheet of prime blotter. That’s very nice, yes). Wily Frenchman Francois Tusques, leader of the hard to find though top heavy with names INTERCOMMUNAL MUSIC on Shandar (amongst other important recordings), plays keys. The quite prolific Bob (or Beb, or Bab, or Bernard) Guerin plays bass, as does Earl Freeman, a vet of numerous very heavy Archie Sheep groups of the same period and two vital Noah Howard ‘70s dates PATTERNS/MESSAGE TO SOUTH AFRICA (combined and reissued by Eremite, BTW). Claude Delcloo, a reliable part of the Actuel story, rounds out the group playing drums.

The result of getting all these guys into one room is two side long improvisations, both excellent and distinct. “Blessing” wastes no time getting right down to business. By the one minute mark the horns have taken off and Delcloo is fervently attacking his kit, Tusques passionately accenting while the basses rumble from the bottom. From there the intensity and density ebbs and flows, with players dropping out momentarily, and there are hints of late-Coltrane and early Impulse!-era Sanders, something vaguely remindful of Ayler circa LOVE CRY (a certain ache in the melody) and a more prominent line of influence to Don Cherry’s embrace of trad global folk. The rhythmical triangle really succeeds in keeping the proceedings at a constant simmer, and with one or both of the bassists using a bow through the majority of the piece the sonic range is expanded even further. At a few points, bowed string combines with lung heave to produce an air of bluesy lament. Delcloo’s aggressive tactic never falters by overstepping or breaking down the communicative flow, and Tusques’ steady keyboard clatter provides both necessary momentum and additional coloration. What a fine nineteen minutes.

The same can be said for side two, though there are some key differences, foremost being the pace of the music. “Love Rejoice” begins as a slow gnaw that builds and releases tension throughout, allowing for periods of sustained and harried horn junk and some quite attractive engagement between the two bassists and Delcloo. Long passages develop dirge like qualities, and the feeling of New Orleans is palpable in the Paris night. There’s a sound, I think it’s coming from the bass, that’s like someone’s precocious kid bouncing around the studio with an electric pogo-stick. Boing! Flutes arrive and flutter about. Slowly there is a shift, a rising of the intensity, the music attaining a maelstrom-like force. Everyone’s in with both feet, going for broke. They hit the sweet spot and then expertly rein it back, winding it down. Amazing. And while it’s a bit of a craw-sticker to see LOVE REJOICE and players as strong as Terroade and his band treated so shabbily by history, any ill feelings are easily remedied by simply playing the music again. That’s why they recorded it, you know? And after its beauties have unspooled into the air the sheer number of ears that hear it matters far less than those instances where the evolution of improvisational dialogue (what Oliver Nelson called the “abstract truth”) grabs a listener’s attention and won’t let go. Kenneth Terroade, welcome to my personal canon.

photo of Kenneth Terroade by Valerie Wilmer

Spotlight on Scientist Rock: Minutemen's THE PUNCH LINE (SST 004)

By this late date, I’ve become so familiar with the music of the Minutemen that it's almost part of my DNA. I can still recall quite vividly the first time I played THE PUNCH LINE, dropping needle to vinyl in my basement bedroom and preparing to flail my flabby frame to whatever my modest speakers spat out. This was a common ritual in those anything-but-halcyon high school days; however this occasion culminated with a different result. By the end of side one, I wasn’t all sweaty and puffy but was rather standing completely still, inspecting the album jacket in my hands like it was a piece of Mayan pottery that I'd inexplicably found under my bed during an all too infrequent cleaning session. Instead of flipping the record over, I replayed the first side again, and then a third time. It was a memorable afternoon, to say the least. At that point, I'd heard maybe a dozen or so punk records and a handful of homemade comps from friends where the music of assorted bands basically blended all together like the ingredients in a well-prepared fruit salad. Yum. When something stuck out, I elected to investigate further. First, I scored a copy of the justifiably legendary THE BLASTING CONCEPT compilation LP (SST 13), the contents of which felt like the sonic equivalent of being wailed on by a bunch of thuggish rouges, only to then be helped up, dusted off, and sent home with a playful ass slap. This led me directly to THE PUNCH LINE. One quality that still excites me about the record is how goddamned up-to-the-moment it sounds, specifically because the band's music was so extremely personal and, dare I say it, original. The "Ohh" word is best avoided as a rule when writing/talking about music (because there will almost always be someone ready to pounce and decry claims of originality with scenarios of influence, sometimes overstated and occasionally IMO imagined, though I’m getting submerged in a whole other bucket of guppies), but in this instance I feel it's acceptable to let it slip, mostly due to how it connects with the example of bassist Mike Watt's professed love of Modernist writers like Joyce and Faulkner.

The whole broad scope of Modernism (and 20th Century art in general) was flat-out ass-kicked by old man Ezra's challenge to "Make it new", and the still utterly unique music of these Pedro proles confirms to my ears that they really understood how to pull off that difficult task. In a nutshell, the only way to really, effectively make it new is to soak up and learn from the whole vast avalanche of worthwhile antecedents, and then after appropriate consideration distilling it into a potent brew that can make the receiver feel drunk (but not too drunk) with the liberating possibilities afforded by the freshness of this particular path. History so often repeats itself because too many hambones haven’t done their homework.

If all this sounds somewhat hyperbolic and worshipful, please allow me clarify. Regarding worship; if the story of this band is unfamiliar to you, I'll state that they were not a not a group that were knelt down to, at least not in the bright light of day. They were modest, positive, encouraging guys who in no way attempted to elevate themselves over their fan base, and were in fact vocally uncomfortable with the idea of musician as deity. If any band can be said to have brought the true essence of the punk rock ideal hurling into the indie-rock era and beyond, it was Boon Watt and Hurley. A book about the whole indie-rock explosion was thoughtfully titled from one of Minutemen's blunt lyrics: "Our band could be your life", a direct, level-headed mantra that sits in sharp contrast with some of the "Mascis is God" (new new Claptonism) or "Sonic Youth are geniuses" (new new Beatleism) remarks that I heard in smoky dorm-rooms and during car rides, so I hope you absorb the point that my verbiage is less designed for pedestal placing and is intended instead like the enthusiastic kudos you'd give to family or close friends when you discover that they've managed some particularly righteous feat. As for hyperbolic, I'll surrender guilty as charged, since the success and appeal of Minutemen is intrinsically linked to a workmanlike, kinda ordinary, no-big deal anti-swagger. Get in the studio, get onto tape, get outta there and get heard, and get back to being dudes. Indeed a large friction does exist between the reality of this band and my attempts to give them their due within the context of art and history and the struggle of moving onward (forward!) in the intertwining lives we're handed (i.e. SHIT THAT MATTERS), but if you just (re)consider that basement bedroom remembrance and how it's still hanging on tight after over twenty years of existence (fuggin’ nostalgia, it’ll get you every time), I hope that friction isn't difficult to swallow.

In one sense, I’m a bit disappointed that THE PUNCH LINE is no longer available as a standalone work, being currently in print as part of POST MERSH VOL. 1, the first of three collections that do an important job of showcasing the majority of the band’s pre DOUBLE NICKELS ON THE DIME output (though the greatest Minutemen comp will probably always be the gargantuan MY FIRST BELLS cassette (SST 32), an exhaustive road-trip readymade that smartly pulled together nearly everything these guy’s recorded pre-NICKELS and that I somehow stupidly and sadly allowed to slip through my fingers. I blame it on the format: convenient enough to fit in yr shirt pocket, but far easier to lose. It’s probably under the passenger side seat of a grey Chevy Chevette in some skanky junkyard at this very moment. Blah). Minutemen’s original releases are very distinct. While their sound was in constant flux they were also strict and thoughtful documentarians of their music and no-nonsense operators in the studio, the result being LPs and EPs that when lined up and played in something resembling chronological sequence present a thread of artistic progress that’s the equal of any rock band ever. And if you think THAT is hyperbole I simply ask you to shine a light on their betters. That said I don’t want to carp too loudly over how digitization can distort the beauty of a band’s evolution. Who’s to say that my approach to their sound is any more worthy than a sixteen year old skate rat pumping the band on IPod shuffle, anyway? Still, my passion for historical clarity burns.

THE PUNCH LINE is very much a punk rock record, eighteen songs in roughly fifteen minutes spinning at 45 RPM, and the overall hefty brevity is comparable to other get-it-over-and-done-with punk slabs from the same time period such as Circle Jerks’ GROUP SEX and Angry Samoans’ BACK FROM SAMOA (all three from Cali, I’ll add). The weight and shape of the sonics are quite different, of course, since Minutemen were squeezing out compact shards of what’s essentially a brutal and hyper punk/funk that continues to stand apart due to its solid minimalist tendencies, its sheer urgency, and its ultimate lack of egoist flash. They didn’t sound like anybody else, then or now, but this feat was achieved, as detailed above, through the absorption and consideration of precedent and the inspiration of their contemporaries. For instance, the music’s hooky minimalism took cues from the UK art-punk of Wire and marched in solidarity into the 1980s alongside fellow Californians Urinals (who’s “Ack Ack Ack” was covered by the ‘men). Certainly urgency and the avoidance of show-off moves aren’t uncommon traits in punk rock, but on this LP these qualities combine with the stridently political lyrical focus to attain a rare power. Where the words of so many punk bands are their least admirable quality (particularly as the ‘80s marched on), they were integral to what Minutemen were doing. They could say more with one song title than some bands could with an entire lyrical arsenal. THE PUNCH LINE shows them plumbing into the Beat-style word-smithing that later came to dominate their sound (moving away from the tyranny of the rhyme, but not forgetting that they were writing lyrics for instance), but at this early point they were still quite happy to embrace an edgy and well-considered didacticism, and you can feel as the record roars that the trio were fiercely proud to be political (a quality they never lost, in fact). And the ingrained influence of countless hours of pre-punk hard-rock listening (Blue Oyster Cult being the example the band most often championed) provides the record with both an amazing instrumental dexterity (attained through constant practice) and an unfailing balance between tight and loose, which for my ears is crucial due to the funk angle of the music (I’ll confess that when funk gets too tight it almost always loses me). Yet the dominance of punk in the total stew insures that they never succumb to hard rock’s excesses.

The idiosyncratic (though never obscure) nature of the Minutemen sound has gained them a strong following in the long term, but back in the ‘80s it caused many to hold the band at arm’s length: I often heard it spoken that they weren’t appropriately “punk” or “heavy” enough. I thought that sorta talk was crazy (natch), and I’m glad that hearing it has become less frequent than sightings of DRI muscle shirts. Faux Pas! The second hand vinyl of THE PUNCH LINE can’t be too hard to find or expensive when found, so if I’ve stirred yr interest, please don’t hesitate. It’s a very specific part of the Minutemen picture, and I contend that grappling with it alone will bring a sweet reward.

Ten from the 90's Part 1 (1990): Daniel Johnston- 1990 CD (Shimmy Disc)

It seems a bit odd in retrospect, but 1990 was the first gospel recording to enter the hallowed confines of my record collection back in the year of its release. What’s even odder is how, even though the record far from resembles a traditional gospel album, it took me over a decade to recognize it for what it clearly was. This largely speaks to my (former?) knuckle-headedness and lack of maturity, but it also (just a little bit) points to how aberrant was the concept of spiritual music in the scene that then embraced, with varying degrees of ironic distance, Johnston’s work. There was such a range of appreciation from the guy’s fans (along with naysayers who harrumphed that his popularity was just one big hipster put-on, though happily this has largely subsided), from borderline exploitative (curiosity seekers) on one side to naively adulatory (“outsider genius”) on the other. In the days before Cobain donned a HI HOW ARE YOU? T-shirt there was much debate over Johnston’s underground popularity. One odious line of thinking accused his musician collaborators and the wealth of his fans of using Daniel for credibility and cool-points. Time has proven this to be nonsense, of course (IMHO there were undoubtedly higher percentages of phonies professing to love Sonic Youth during this same period, but that’s another story). 1990 has moments of sheer beauty, but it’s also a troubled, rough, and at times difficult record to listen to, and I can sorta see it from this distance as a goad to those who were suspicious of the Johnston phenomenon. The original LP release featured eleven songs, six produced at Mark Kramer’s Noise New York studio, four live and one non-Kramer recording of a Beatles’ song. Six of the tracks are overtly spiritual in content, a couple more are ambiguously so. An additional few touch on the familiar Johnston themes of love and pain. But the whole damn thing feels like the testifying of a tortured man desperately in need of salvation. The studio cuts work best, stripping Daniel’s music of the tape hiss and “amateur” status that previously adorned so much of his work and in turn adjusting/sharpening the focus. It enriches the acapella opener “Devil Town”, making it sound huge where on a home-tape it would likely be quaint. And the studio really becomes an additional instrument on “Spirit World Rising”, where moments of intense quiet and the resonating of guitar strings combine most excellently with the booming yet adenoidal echo of the voice. Both “Held the Hand” and “Lord Give Me Hope” benefit mightily from the crisp studio atmosphere and how it not only captures the mood of injured desperation but also the later song’s sharp shifts in dynamics. Johnston’s piano playing displays incredible musicality (though he’s no virtuoso), even when the instrument sounds out-of-tune and possibly broken: “Got To Get You Into My Life” becomes deluged in cascades of rumbling low notes and the song is cagily transformed from The Beatles’ ode to sexual yearning into one of religious need. But it’s the pristine rendering of “Some Things Last a Long Time” that provides the album’s highlight. A haunting tune of love and loss, it’s one of Kramer’s strongest productions and really shows how adept Johnston is at interpreting other’s material (words are by Jad Fair). The live tracks all pass muster at differing levels, though “Don’t Play Cards with Satan” and “Funeral Home” both sound superior on the Mike McGonigal compiled long OOP Atavistic Video MOUTHFUL OF SWEAT. And “Funeral Home”, recorded live at Jersey record store Pier Platters (RIP), gets us back to the opprobrium of the naysayers. As a lazily strumming Johnston encourages a sing-along, it’s difficult to swallow the laughter of some attendees, which definitely feels aimed “at” the performer not “with” him, because the player clearly ain’t laughing. This contrasts sharply with “Careless Soul”, an acapella cover of a fire and brimstone gospel chestnut where the crowd is so quiet you can hear a pin drop between the anguished, emotionally distraught verses (I can positively feel the tears on his cheeks) and the dissonance between one believer and a room full of probable cynics is thick as George Steele’s neck. Yes, I’m inferring some of this, but only because on more than one occasion I witnessed folks become uncomfortable with “Careless Soul” (as well as other parts of 1990). Once a house guest asked me if the song was “some kind of fucking joke”. Um, no. The joke is on you I’m afraid. What’s also interesting is how I feel quite different about Daniel’s getting into the emotional deep weeds on MOUTHFUL’s organ drenched version of “Don’t Play Cards with Satan”. I can clearly see the tears on that clip, but in this case my heart swells up with empathy (instead of concern) since he’s being taped not in a club but in a house and is clearly amongst friends. I’ve felt for a while that the inclusion of “Careless Soul”/”Funeral Home” on 1990 was an attempt to delineate between the listeners who truly accepted and embraced the full range of Daniel’s artistry and personality from those who perceived it as some sort of yuk-it-up eccentric fun-fest (I can’t help but view the lingering notoriety of the late Wesley Willis through this lens. If this makes me a killjoy, I’m sorry to leave that impression. I’m really a fun loving person. Honest injun. Equal to a barrel of monkeys, in fact). I think Kramer (who ran Shimmy Disc, still does I think) largely succeeded in separating the lovers from the fakers, so to speak, and he surely had a helping hand from the advocacy of Kurt: three years later, Daniel would release another studio album, this time on a major label (Atlantic), the far more fine-tuned and stable FUN, with production from longtime friend and Butthole Surfer-member Paul Leary. Its title was accurate and fitting, but it was also more than just that. It deserves a separate post for ample discussion. These days, Johnston’s songs have been covered by dozens, he’s collaborated with just as many, his art’s been bound in books and displayed in New York galleries, and he’s the subject of a great, loving documentary. Success is surely sweet, particularly when it’s so hard fought. 1990 is an unflinching portrait of the trouble along the way, but it’s also a fine study of the work’s severe quality and the sincere beauty of the man. As such, it’s one to cherish.

photo by Michael Macioce