FM DUST

Gettin' A Move On

2010-05-17T21:20:00.009-04:00

I decided to move my blog to Tumblr because it's a lot easier to embed mp3s and videos, and a lot easier to manage a design that I like. Here 'tis FM DUST: the Tumblr version. I will do the Tumblr thing of posting visual non-sequitirs and all that on occasion (as weird as that whole culture makes me feel), but I PROMISE I will keep writing substantial things, as well, at LEAST as often as I ever have here. Don't forget to check the FM DUST WEBSITE regularly for new tapes and fun stuff. Thanks, dudes...

-Dustin K.
5/18/10

NOTE TO PEOPLE WHO WANT TO GIVE ME MONEY

2010-03-08T14:39:00.005-05:00

Hey everyone! I've noticed some links floating around the internet saying that this is where you come to order FM DUST label product (ie., the Campfires/Benoit Pioulard split, Teenage Tit, etc.). This was once the case, but is no longer so. Please follow the link below and feel free to give me all the money you feel like throwing around:

HTTP://WWW.FMDUST.COM

Thanks, and I look forward to your money. Real update coming soon here...

///Dustin K.
3/8/10

Sweet Georgia PHWEEEEEEEEEEET!

2010-02-02T02:24:00.012-05:00

Ethel Romelfanger. Man, it doesn't roll off the tongue so much as stumble and start yelling expletives. I mean, I ain't makin' fun here... my last name IS Krcatovich, after all... but damned if that name's neither pragmatic nor aesthetically pleasing (in a conventional sense, you see).

All the better, then, that that is the name behind my favorite record I've heard so far this year (Sten Hanson has an LP in the running for same, but I'll get back to that some other time). Brass Whistles Somers Steam Calliope (come to think of it, that doesn't roll off the tongue too easy, either) is like listening to everything great about humanity being evaporated into steam, then blown out of a series of... well, brass whistles. By way of steam calliope, I mean. Sorry, That wasn't a very good analogy, I guess...

photo by Patrick Pyne

I'll tell ya the truth. I've never made much of a practice of listening to steam calliope records. I know: weird, right? Some quick "research" (two minutes on Wikipedia) has yielded the understanding that, typically, the higher register of the instrument tends to have trouble staying in tune, a circumstance which makes the occasional bum note inevitable. This is a important for a couple reasons:

1) If the instrument on this record were perfectly in tune, then Ms. Romelfanger was in the wrong line of work, and I hate feeling like I'm laughing at people who are bad at their job, and

2) I need to hear every bit of steam calliope music ever committed to tape, because it makes me giddier than a 12-year-old girl at a Babysitters Club convention.

Let me explain: on this here platter (recorded at the Circus World Museum of Baraboo, WI), a tune will get going, and 90% chance it's gonna be a melody that everyone everywhere ever knows, like "Sweet Georgia Brown" or "Baby Elephant Walk". At first, it'll be tootin' along just fine. The low end sounds great, kinda like a buncha dudes playing tuned jugs together or something. The melody is going okay in the higher register, too, BUT THEN

"HONK!",

and you're all like, "Jesus, that was a sour note!", and then

"PHWEET!",

and you're like, "DANG! That's raw!". Y'know what, though? IT KEEPS ON LIKE THAT. Whole record. Every five seconds, that old dog (I mean the calliope, not Ethel) hits a note that is so far off the mark, shit's almost avant-garde. Doesn't get old, either. I could listen to this shit at least as often as I check out Astral Weeks, or anything else comparably "human" or "transcendent". Easy.

Seriously, I'm at a loss for words on this one. This record just makes me HAPPY. Like, Sammy Hagar happy (and that's SERIOUS, brother). If you're ever trucking through Baraboo, you'd be a damned fool not to do a quick thrift store sweep for this disc (or you could do the other thing and order it on CD here). Here's a quick piece to whet your whistle:

ROMELFANGER!!!!!

Okay, enough gushing for now. More soon. In the meantime, please visit the new FM DUST WEBSITE (unless you're epileptic... if so, I apologize). Ciao for now...

////Dustin K.
2/7/10

Haunted Magic From The Underbelly Of Hog Heaven

2009-11-14T20:11:00.004-05:00

Now, lookie here: there's no such thing as a review written sans personal bias. That shit is a myth. One could choose to try to swath the inherent bias of a review in "journalistic integrity" (a dubious prospect for the form, to say the least), or one can just come right on out and say "I feel this way about _______ because this is me, these are my personal experiences, and this is my opinion".

Ahem.

Haunted forest melancholia. I just came up with that! Who wants to give me money? Tiny Mixtapes, perhaps (do they even pay)? Anyway, that's the most evocative phrase I could come up with to describe Portland, OR's Ah Holly Fam'ly. If you see them in Portland, "chamber-folk" wouldn't be a wholly inappropriate descriptor, as they've been known to incorporate strings, brass, winds, and a bevy of odd percussion into their live sets over there. I'm hesitant to use that phrase, though, because it sounds like something I wouldn't like all that much, and brother, I fucking LOVE Ah Holly Fam'ly.

When I first met Ah Holly Fam'ly, they were living in Moscow (former town name: "Hog Heaven", swear to God), a lovely small town in the Idaho panhandle. Moscow was the second stop in a Greyhound bus tour/soul journey that I had embarked upon from Ann Arbor back in May 2005. My roommates, who had just been on a similar adventure and stopped in Moscow, said that I would love it there ("it's like 1/8 the size of Ann Arbor!"), and it was on the way to Seattle, so why not? My roommates helped me book a show at a house, Le Cold Lab, that had previously held shows for then-respectable-but-increasingly-famous acts like Animal Collective and Devendra Banhart. I took from this that a) it was basically the only game in town, but also b), it was not a bad game.

Good perception, that. Despite a brief feeling of being hornswaggled as the Dog rolled into town (the outer edge of Moscow greets you with the same vile Big Box horror landscape as pretty much anywhere else in the United States, which never bodes well for a decent show despite the fact that it's like that, y'know, everywhere), Moscow ca. 2005 indeed held up to its lofty promise. The people I met during my brief stay, in fact, could have justified the entire cross-country journey even if the rest of the tour had been a bust. I will forever treasure memories of drinking "Red Pabst" at a jam-band bar with James Victor Yeary, or collabo-jam painting in a garage with Brad Watkins and talking about his "noise art" concepts, or improvising music in the living room of Le Cold Lab as James read excerpts from Ionesco over the top (a clip of the latter can be heard towards the end of "Tender Shades Of Fuchsia And Greige", a track from my album Vive La Fantastique! Avec Actual Birds And Friends. Sorry for the scummy self-promotion, but it's relevant, at least...?).

Just as much, I will always treasure seeing Ah Holly Fam'ly for the first time. Their music, performed as a 3-piece that night (the core duo of Jeremy Faulkner and Becky Dawson, plus regular drummer Whitney Menzel), was simple, understated, and gorgeous. Every bit of the music was intriguing, every touch necessary. They incorporated potential novelties like banjo and washboard in a way that stripped them of all novelty value; they sounded like they simply HAD to be there. I am typically one for grand, gaudy strokes in my live shows (if you've ever seen me play, or fuck, if you read this blog at all, this should come as no surprise), but everything in Ah Holly Fam'ly's music was so organically, subtly placed that night that it seemed to grow out of the ground, or perhaps gently sway down from the trees above. It was quiet, it was subtle, but Jesus, was it potent!

A year and change after this lovely experience, I moved to Portland, OR. My old roommates weren't too far off regarding how I'd feel about Moscow, but still, I didn't see myself LIVING there; Portland, however, felt like a second home at the time. Whenever I'd visit PDX, there were all these moments of beauty and serendipity that... well, that require a whole other think piece (I threw that phrase in to piss off one of my best friends in the world. You're welcome, Alx) to really explore. Suffice it to say, Portland had a leg up over Moscow.

Apparently, all of my friends in Moscow had felt the same way, because virtually all of them trickled into Portland around the same time as myself. I saw Jeremy from afar at Vashti Bunyan's first U.S. performance a month after I'd arrived, but wasn't convinced that it was actually him until I saw a blurb for an Ah Holly Fam'ly show in the Portland Mercury the following week. I became reacquainted with the band at said show, at which point I found out that James and Brad were also moving to Portland. Wow! Half the people I wanted to be with in this world were going to be living in the same city. This was going to be great!

Well, it was and wasn't. That's another story. What WAS great was getting to see Ah Holly Fam'ly on a semi-regular basis. For awhile, they seemed to get better, more transcendent, with every show. They had, for most of these shows, swelled into a quintet (joined by Jeff Diteman and Morgan Hobart), but their sound, despite being mostly acoustic, sounded like that of a band twice their size. Even then, the grandiosity of their arrangements was always tempered by an almost crushing intimacy: I remember opening a beer can during a song once, and feeling like I had opened up a small black hole for ten seconds. Full, rapt attention is almost a prerequisite here, or at least, it should be. When my then-girlfriend and I started dating, they were one of two bands I bullied her into seeing that we both agreed were beyond excellent (which is saying something, given that she often thinks I'm a total 'tard about music).

When I moved back to Ann Arbor in the fall of 2007, The Moscow expat crew were almost definitely the first thing I missed about Portland. Sure, there's plenty of other great stuff about Portland, not much of it is magical. I'm pretty sure the music of Ah Holly Fam'ly is magical.

Before I moved, I offered to release an album for the band. Jeremy sent me an excellent recording entitled Your Body Will Become An Anchor, which circumstance prevented me from ever putting out, which WOULD be a goddamn crime against nature were it not currently available on CD through their website and at shows. Good news. Even better: this year, the good folk at Portland's Lucky Madison label have had the good sense to release their new album, "Reservoir", on CD and vinyl, finally immortalizing the band on God's chosen format. I would've loved to have the honor of same, but I just didn't have the hustle... still, who cares? I don't give a shit, and neither should you. Regardless of who put this record out, you should get it into your life ASAP. It's a damn stunner. The arrangements, the harmonies, the melodies, the lyrics... all this shit is almost eerily spot-on in a way that even a cynical, bent-eared idiot like myself can appreciate as simply GORGEOUS. It's like looking out over the Columbia Gorge or something... only a monumentally fucked person, I think, could experience this and not think it's lovely.

Okay, now I'm getting pushy, and yeah, I may be letting my critical guard fall to the wayside a LITTLE bit. Read: biased. Yes, it's true (full disclosure!!!): I do think of the people in this band as my friends. When Jeff's other band, the lovers duo The Areyoumadatme?s (with relatively recent Fam'ly addition Amelia Harnas), came through Ann Arbor this summer, they thoughtfully brought me a very nice bottle of Portland IPA even though they barely got paid to play; when Jeremy and Becky came through on tour earlier this week (with Ryne from Ohioan and their friend Nathan playing pick-up quite ably, an alternate version of the band made necesary given the economic realities of touring, which are not kind to what has swelled in Portland to an octet), I was just as happy to see them and chat with them as I was to actually see them play. If you choose to read all that, though, as reason to disregard my endorsement, you're only fucking yourself.

-Dustin K.
11/14/09

Ah Holly Fam'ly website
Ah Holly Fam'ly Myspace

Hail To The Woz/NO HEAVY TRUCKING

2009-10-24T20:25:00.008-04:00

Shit. Busy times, ups and downs, and everything moves me. I've heard some beautiful, borderline-sappy old r&b songs in the last month or so that have moved me to tears and/or made me sit there mumbling "good goddamn, what the hell?". I've dug up some buckwild noise bleeders that would drive a sensible person to distraction even as they give me the damn chills. I got that Joseph Spence reissue on Mississippi (order that from Exiled, my favorite PDX record store, or come by my work sometime... we should be getting more soon), and that was a totally unsurprising headbreaker.

What I'm trying to insinuate here is that I haven't kept up on this here blog because, other than the fact that life is stealing all my time, I just can't figure out what to focus on. When all else fails, though, I can just grab whatever shit Brian Wozniak sold back to my store and know that it'll probably give me SOMETHIN' to write about.

To wit: when I found a copy of Kenneth Higney's Attic Demonstration at work, I had no idea it was a desirable "underground/private press psych gem" or whatever... the cover would lead you to think that this was possible, sure, but its appearance suggests a lousy, rote Christian folk record just as much. Despite my ignorance regarding its content, I listened to it on spec and discovered that it was, in fact, a total woolly weirdo WTF WOW. Naturally, I took it to the face of the aforementioned Woz and said "dude, you GOTTA hear this!"... and he was all like "yeah, dude, that record rules! I sold that to you guys!".

OF COURSE. You can't get anything past Brian Wozniak. He's every decent Michigan noise dude/record collector's favorite brother, all the cool girls love him to death, he can turn a wolverine into a unicorn with his giggle... in short, dude rules. The fact that he made it possible for me to find this Kenneth Higney platter is just icing on the cake.

That said: man, is said icing TAY-STEE! The story goes that Higney was a New Jersey trucker trying to get a break as a singer/songwriter; his main reason for producing this record was simply as a demo, to get other artists to record his songs.

I can't imagine any even semi-mainstream singer, though, tackling anything on here: though the recording is fairly clean, it is still permeated by intense, supremely damaged bedroom spirits. In other words, a BUMMER. Higs is borderline Jandek vocally/lyrically: most songs are delivered in a largely monotone mumble-sing (shades of Alan Vega... Coincidence?), and he flops betwixt opaque quasi-surrealist ferlbahoo and high schoolish "woe is me" poetry in a means much akin to those of Corwood's representative. In short: heavy moods. Heavy, heavy moods. Musically, I suppose it's a piece more together than all that, but maybe only inasmuch as the guitars are at least ALMOST in tune (or should I say "conventional tuning"). Still, this is droning, relentless stuff. Two chords and the uncomfortable truth. A hot mess. Some of it comes across kinda more hushed, like our man is trying to keep this shit secret, but even some of those bits are jolted with some reputable-but-jarring lead guitar, or synth farts that rarely fall in time with the other instruments. It's unreal... nothing grounds this record in anything that makes sense for the time of its release (1976), and hindsight and context only do a teensy bit to change that.

VIBES. DUDE, VIBES. That's what this record fucking has in spades. Put it on with the lights out and it's fucking spooky. Shit just seems a little unhinged, but it's creepier for the fact that THE MADNESS IS NOT TOTALLY THERE... BUT BUT BUT IT COULD BE ON ITS WAY. It's kinda like how Yip/Jump Music is a better record than Hi How Are You?... the former is always threatening to collapse into despair but doesn't, whereas the latter is essentially an audio document of a nervous breakdown. I dunno, maybe other people feel differently, but that kind of voyeurism is just too uncomfortable for me. People in a bad way getting their shit together enough to make a classic album by simple plain-folk means, however, is goddamn inspiring. Not sure if that's really the case here, but dude definitely sounds it, and it works real fine.

Either way: thanks again, Woz. This record kills. I owe you a beer.

-Dustin K.
11/1/09

PS: you can order a CD reissue of this on CDBaby, right here... Higney himself did the reissue! They even have a couple sound samples. There's supposed to be a vinyl reissue, too, but it doesn't seem to actually be kickin' around anywhere. Big surprise, it's supposed to have liners by Byron Coley... keep your fingers crossed, looks like it's already some 6-8 months late comin' out...

Maybe I'm Just A Guy Who HATES Heels

2009-10-09T10:42:00.002-04:00

Alright, so I was slaving over an entry for the past week about something else, and I do intend to get back to that. However, I need to steer the discussion away from records for just a minute. Instead, let us consider VHS tapes, and the death of the rental shop.

The one cool video rental place in Ann Arbor, Liberty Street Video, will be closing its doors soon. I admit that, since I started working at used record/media store where I'm allowed to borrow whatever DVD might come in, I've done nothing personally to prevent this. I'm still pretty bummed about it, though.

When I first moved to Ann Arbor in 2000, Liberty Street Video was one of those local institutions that made Ann Arbor cool (along with Encore, Wazoo, and the Fleetwood Diner, and a few other places that hadn't garnered my attention yet). They had videos you had read about, but never thought you'd be able to rent (if you grew up in the sticks like me, anyway). Their staff was young and hip, and they were almost always watching good movies in the store. Even though it paid poorly, it was nearly as coveted a job as the ever-desirable record store gig.

So it goes, I guess. The store had changed ownership a couple of times in the last few years, which had kind of changed the character of the shop. Business had slowed to a crawl. A competition clusterfuck between free DVD rentals at the nearby library, Netflix, and digital downloads assured Liberty Street's eventual passing. Familiar story: another one bites the dust of the information age. So long, community space for film fans. Hello... Starbucks? Condos? Ooh, I hope they put in another Potbelly's sandwich shop!

Of course, the selfish piece of good news is that the store is selling off its stock. These sales always tug at my heartstrings, but happenstance finally pulled me in there with a couple dudes yesterday. It was bittersweet, indeed, but the sweet part almost made it worth it: I have finally procured a copy of Crimewave.

For those not in the know: Crimewave (1986) is a feature-length collaboration between the Coen Bros. and Sam Raimi. When I tell people this, the typical reaction is "Sam Raimi and the Coen Bros? No way!", the usual implication being that Raimi was a b-movie director at this point, while the Coens were well on their way to high-falutin' critical acclaim. Why would the latter bother with the former? People who know the filmmakers for their more famous works tend to be surprised that these guys ever worked in tandem, but us nerds know that they were actually a tight-knit crew back in the day (look for Bruce Campbell's EXTREMELY brief cameo in Fargo; he's on the TV that's on the fritz in the hideout cabin). Like Tarantino and Rodriguez, it's hardly a surprise that these guys would work together, but it's still an event to be savored.

That said, the film has never been domestically released on DVD, because the filmmakers have basically disowned the film. The production was plagued by excessive studio interference, among other fiascoes, which left virtually all involved with a bad taste in their mouths. Crimewave, thus, is typically glossed over in the filmography of its creators, the black sheep of a critically-acclaimed film family.

Understandable, but a damn shame. Flaws aside, this movie is a hoot! I first saw it with my friend Mike when I was 16, and we felt like we'd discovered buried treasure. Being fans of both Raimi and the Coens (not to mention Bruce Campbell), we loved picking out whose stylistic tics were whose in the production. One of the Coens' earliest forays into crime comedy, it strikes one as a classic '60s screwball-fest, until you realize how self-aware the corny jokes are, how willfully stereotypical the characters.

Whether they like it or not, this film is Coen Bros. 101 (at least for their comedic side). It's loaded down with cartoon violence, ridiculous dialogue, and absurdist caricature; the only thing missing is the ironically verbose dunderhead. The photography and shot direction seems a blend of both directors' nascent styles (although I believe Raimi was mostly responsible for this aspect). The plot (hired "exterminators" flub a job, go on a killing rampage but exterminate themselves in the process, the nice guy hero gets blamed for the whole thing and put on death row, and only has mere minutes to be saved when the only witness is his love interest who has mysteriously disappeared... GOOD GOD, HOW WILL IT END?!) is cliche and silly, but the exploitation of same is kind of the point. I can see how the end product could've been better with greater creative control, but it's still pretty great.

I've tried (and failed) to get a copy of this movie for 11 years, so I'm pretty stoked to finally have it. If only one of the last gasps of interesting local business in Ann Arbor didn't have to shut down for me to get it, I'd be pretty happy. If only...

-Dustin K.
10/09/09

Dork Side Of The Goon

2009-10-04T11:05:00.011-04:00

Okay, there are a couple of things I need to establish right off the bat:

a) As soon as I came up with the title above, I knew what I was going to write about for this entry, and

b) I fucking hate Roger Waters.

I mean, I've never met him, so who knows? Maybe he's an alright dude. One can never really know unless you spend time with a person; one must always remember that there is a human lurking inside every unsavory public personality who is as real and fragile as any of us. That, of course, means that maybe George W. Bush is an alright dude, too... I've never met him.

Both, however, certainly come on like the Lords of Douche Village on film/in print. So, to be more specific: as a songwriter, public personality and historical figure, I FUCKING HATE ROGER WATERS. I know that I'll be towing the party line for "my people" by saying that Pink Floyd started as one of the finest psychedelic pop bands of the day, then proceeded to sink further and further into the mire of "rock-as-art" bullshit after fatefully not bothering to pick up Syd "Mandrax Shampoo" Barrett for band practice... but that's the party line because it is basically true. If they had started a new band to pursue their shitty muse (okay, it's not all shitty, but play along), I don't think I'd be so up in arms, but to let Bigface Waters take the reins whilst keeping/disgracing the name Barrett came up with for HIS band remains a harsh toke 40 years on (and don't get me started on the tackiness of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond").

That said, I recently gave Atom Heart Mother a fair shot after ignoring it for years, and found the first side to be quite pleasant. I'd say I was pleasantly surprised, but I was more relieved. This revelation merely bolstered my already-high opinion of composer/performance artist/producer/nutjob Ron Geesin, who co-wrote this epic title track, without increasing my respect for Pink Floyd one iota. Given that most of Pink Floyd has gone on record discediting Atom Heart Mother, it actually served to remind what a bunch of dildoes they all are, especially (you guessed it) Roger Waters. Quote:

"Atom Heart Mother is a good case, I think, for being thrown into the dustbin and never listened to by anyone ever again."
-Roger Waters

Would you trust this man with your rock and roll?

Man, I wish they would've left this guy waiting on the side of the road instead of Syd. Just imagine all the self-important twaddle we would've been spared, and what latter-day makers of same wouldn't have had Waters around to influence their ponderous decisions (although, of course, it probably would not have kept us safe from Peter Gabriel, but that's a whole other thing).

Okay, so now y'all know where I stand on THAT. Hey, I mentioned Ron Geesin, didn't I? Now, that dude RULES. He's like a British Henry Jacobs except maybe a generation younger, or a one-man avant-Monty Python. Why he would associate himself with such a seeming tool as Roger Waters is a mystery to me... but then, who knows what the inner mechanisms of the Carnaby Street scene might've wrought back in the day?

Anyway, these dudes collaborated a couple times. Before Atom Heart Mother, they did Music From "The Body", a soundtrack to a film that I've not seen but which seems to mostly involve close-ups of nipples and nose hairs. Maybe the sections I've seen are misleading (search for it on Youtube and judge for yourself). I have, however, listened to the soundtrack, which is a valuable experience in itself.

Even without the helpful liner notes indicating who's responsible for what, you can definitely hear the division between Waters' and Geesin's contributions here. Multi-tracked voices making weird noises and giggling, sideways electronic experiments, beautiful instrumental passages, and just generally being entertaining and engaging? Oh, hmm, I think that's Ron Geesin. Lukewarm balladry with gospel choir? Hrmmm, I wonder who that could be..?

Okay, okay, you're right. That was harsh. Waters' contributions to this LP aren't all that bad, to be honest, and they most assuredly make the album more accessible. I'm sure, also, that having his name attached to the project didn't hurt sales of the soundtrack album a bit. In fact, I sincerely doubt I would've ever seen a copy without shelling out a mint had he not been involved... hell, and that assumes that it even would've gotten pressed in the first place! God knows I have a bitch of a time finding any of Geesin's solo albums. Ah, the mechanics of the music biz!

Fuck it. Thanks, Roger Waters. You may be a butthole, but if you tripped into being on a couple of good records through no fault of your own, I guess I have to at least give you credit for that. Kudos!
-Dustin K.
10/11/09

21(sic) Century Boy

2009-09-24T11:24:00.014-04:00

An old buddy of mine, who ironically did much to encourage my nascent interest in underground musics in high school, once said of noise recordings: "if I wanted to listen to static, I'd just turn my TV on. Anyone can do that". Another toolbox, who was roommates with a cooler cat than himself (thus my acquaintance), suggested that noise, such as it is, was suitable only as the "spice" of music, and that "you can't make a meal out of black pepper".

Seriously, though? fuck those guys. I mean, not really (at least not the former... the latter was totally making out with this girl I had the hots for in the time period when he said that, so maybe fuck him anyway), but they just don't GET IT. To paraphrase Albert Ayler (as quoted by Amiri Baraka): they think it's about NOTES.

Noise is fun. People who aren't in it have this idea that noise is a form cultivated by serious artistes who are striving to be pretentious and obtuse, but in my experience, noise people are mostly a bunch of get-down dudes who eat Little Caesars Hot 'N' Readies, drink shitty beer, do shitty drugs, and watch stupid TV just like anyone else you know. The only difference is, said dudes like to howl at the moon sometimes, and choose to do that through the conduit of mixers, oscillators, broken instruments, etc.

Admittedly, that too is a generalization... no doubt, there are a smattering of dudes who take themselves and their tinkering real seriously. That said, I don't think Dylan Nyoukis is probably one of the latter. Never talked to the guy or anything, but check out the website for his Chocolate Monk label, and especially read the descriptions of their available releases. He's like the British daddy of the verbose goof troupe international underground that you thought John Olson invented (between modifying blenders to turn on lightbulbs, or whatever). No wonder Olson, on the page for his Podcast Inside Inzane Studios, describes Nyoukis's old band Prick Decay as "the best band of the 21(sic) century".

Fuck, I admit it: Olson's podcast (excuse me: John AND Tovah Olson's podcast) is where I first caught wind of Prick Decay myself. Given that John and I are both hankering hard for the same Vomit Visions 7" at the current date (and I'm sure he'll get it before me, if he hasn't already), and the fact that (sure, fine) Burned Mind is on the high end of my Top 10 list of wall-melting platters of the last decade, I figured that his "best band..." would be at least be worth a cursory listen. As luck would have it, Pete Larson (of BULB Records/Couch/25 Suaves notoriety) came into the store I work recently and sold off a stack of 7"s to make room in his love nest. Among them: Prick Decay's Rotten Groove (Ignivomous, 1996).

THANK FUCKING GOD. Not just because it's way more satisfying to hear something in its original format than as streaming mp3s, to hold the sleeve in your hands and such... but because this record is just a damn gem. It really drives home for me, in its hiss-encrusted goofiness, how boring and lame I think a lot of "power electronics"/"harsh noise" can be. This little guy ain't that, no sir. It's funny and fun, but still fucked. Vocal loops with the "warble" knob on 8 or so. Lots of weird bathroom rumble. The two most seasick locked grooves I've heard since I don't know. Just like if I saw the actual physical manifestation of the phrase "prick decay" in person, it makes me wanna hurl... but just as when you do so after one too many pulls of Canadian Club, I'd be so relieved to let that yawn go that I'd probably just fall asleep by the thundermug, content in my knowledge that this record made my day. Next day off I get, it's third in line for my morning turntable ritual, right after "Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)" by Looking Glass and "Sweet City Woman" by The Stampeders, my two other most prized 45 acquisitions of late. Shit, ya gotta have balance in this life.

-Dustin K.
9/27/09

We interrupt our regularly scheduled folderol...

2009-09-23T21:04:00.004-04:00

Hey, so... when I'm not writing this blog (or, occasionally, living a real life), I'm doing this record label thing. Actually, I was doing one from 2004 to present called "CASANOVA TEMPTATIONS", but I'm getting rid of that one. Gotta tie up some loose ends first, though.

To wit:

AVAILABLE TODAY:

HAKUNA MATATA- Worried
CT #0034/PT#32
C-20 Cassette
$7 ppd (contact for international postage)

Completely sideways, sick collab between Thom Elliott (Ypsi-based harsh sicko, heralded in THE WIRE) and Dustin Krcatovich (A.K.A. (DJ) Actual Birds, heralded nowhere). Doesn't sound quite like anything else either does in their other projects. Actually, it sounds kinda like the most terrifying jungle safari imaginable. Tronics getting mangled by stampeding antelope, or something. Undead lemurs swinging at you from weird places. Mystery yelps from the depths of labyrinthine caves. Fucked up. Split with Thom's label, PLEASUREDOME TAPES. Limited run of 25!

Watch out for the FINAL CASANOVA TEMPTATIONS RELEASE, a split CD by Valterra Blue and The Telephone Callers. THEN THEN THEN, watch out for my new ALL-ANALOG label, which shares a name with this blog. It will be so SICK (good sick).

Alright. Real blog entry later this week. Thanks for indulging.

-Dustin K.
9/22/09

Herbie Mann? Really?

2009-09-15T20:31:00.010-04:00

How many people do you know who claim to be a "noise musician"? Personally, I know a lot. Some of them are great. Some of them... uh...

Not tryin' to harsh on anybody, of course... I occasionally claim to be one of them, after all, and who's to say that I'm any good at it? Noise, in the modern sense, is pretty easy to do, but that doesn't mean it's easy to do particularly well. That's totally fine: that just makes it folk music. Part of the charm of folk music is that it doesn't necessarily have to adhere to conventional standards of what is "good". In an interview I conducted awhile back, Ju Suk Reet Meate (of legendary Portland, OR-based noise/improv/"avant-garde folk" band Smegma) described keeping things "half-crappy" as a defense mechanism against outside influences that might ruin their music. Another succinct way of putting it, courtesy of Abner Jay: "folk music is TURRIBLE, because people is TURRIBLE".

Anyway, per noise: contrary to the belief of a lot of other people with no sense of history, not to mention things I myself have said in print in the past, this shit ain't new. Indeed, the impetus to record fucked-up shit in your bedroom goes back about as far as the technology to do so. That said, 'twas indeed a more rarefied group back in the genesis of home-recorded skree than it is now, populated more by moneyed music-school dilettantes and honest-to-god WEIRDOS than by skater nerds with a mixer and some distortion pedals. Given that the equipment was not as idiot-proof as it is now, that makes sense, but it can also make the results seem a bit more academic at times.

All of the which serves to make the Lee Rockey Music album (De Stijl, 2007) seem sorta revelatory. Rockey (1926-2002) was once a jazz drummer by trade, playing with Herbie Mann and Neil Hefty on the East Coast in the '50s. After moving back to Oregon later that decade, his more experimental leanings got the best of him, a point to which this record ably attests. He later went on to collaborate with the Smegma crew (check The Mad Excitement, The Barbaric Pulsations, The Incomparable Rhythms Of Smegma for a taste), but the bulk of the recordings on this record predate even the Smegs' migration north from L.A., let alone their meeting/eventual jamming with Rockey.

Ju Suk Reet Meate details a mid-seventies performance by Rockey in the liner notes:

"In the auditorium drums, electric violin and cello played thru an echoplex, a 4 channel tape deck was playing pre recorded electronic scronks, flutes, and off speed voices, dancers were holding video cameras, connected to a paik video synth, that was creating a live video projection. the music was crazed, scary and funny and beautiful. Of all the live shows I've seen, this one stands out".

The visuals sound killer-for-sure, but the sound does just fine by its lonesome. The homemade electronics workouts that pop up on (and out of) this record could be anyone from Rodger Stella to John Olson, albeit predating their jams by some twenty years (at LEAST). The more musique concrete moments, featuring violin, cello, etc., owe a more apparent debt to the progenitors of the form, but that doesn't mean that they don't make for fine listening.

What's most interesting to me, though, is the apparent impetus for recording these pieces, or lack thereof. Meaning: these were home recordings seemingly never intended for release, despite the fact that they are generally as intriguing as any noted avant platters of the day. It was not uncommon at the time for electronic composers to maintain home studios, but something about this record strikes me as altogether more cozy than other examples of same. It sounds intimate, almost secret. Like the paintings of Henry Darger (although please don't misconstrue that comparison as tacit suggestion that Rockey be considered an "outsider artist", because fuck that), the sounds on this record invite you into a very personal world that could only be that of Lee Rockey.

I dunno. I admit that I could be totally wrong-headed about this (it wouldn't be the first time: please see an article I did about Wolf Eyes in 2003, or better yet, don't). Maybe Rockey did intend for these to be noted electronic/electro-acoustic pieces, and just never managed to get the regard he deserved. After all, Portland was hardly the cultural hub back in the 1960s-70s that it is now, and in the pre-internet age, New York City was a long ways away. Either way, the feeling I get off this record is something very special, and I for one am thankful that it has seen the light of day.

-Dustin K.
9/20/09

PS: I KNOW, I didn't keep my promise of getting three entries done this week. Look: I'm not a machine. Anyway, I'll try to do two next week, and THEN we'll be caught up. Jesus, lay off...

PPS: I joined The Sixty One because I want people to give me money and make me famous, even though I actually kind of hate the internet. Here's a new song for you to listen to:

Green Ain't Mean Compared To Red

2009-09-12T11:36:00.007-04:00

Whoa, where did I go? To borrow a phrase from my buddy Brian, I think I may've fell into a manhole for a minute. Dear reader, please give me a chance to make it up to you. I promise that, within the week, I will have entries on three separate records, which should catch me up. Anyway, here's part one.

A very kind gentleman once told a mutual acquaintance that he should watch me play a show, as I was the "most sincere musician" he had seen in some time. When I caught wind of this descriptor being applied to myself, even though it was meant as a compliment, I must admit that I was set ill at ease. While it's surely possible that he meant the word "sincere" differently than I would in such a context, the implication of extreme sincerity in musical performance to me usually purports a shedding of self-awareness that would otherwise prevent a performer from putting forth a warts-and-all performance. Now, it's true that I was letting my warts show plenty back then, but believe me: I was ALWAYS fully aware of as much.

Sammy Hagar has always shown his warts, too, but I don't think that he's conscious of it. The first time this thesis occurred to me was upon reading an interview with Eddie Van Halen in Guitar World magazine some 12 or so years ago. Sammy had just been unceremoniously kicked out of Van Halen, and Eddie, with wounds still fresh, was detailing why. I don't have the interview in front of me, but I seem to remember that Van Halen was perturbed about a set of Sammy's lyrics that were intended for a song slated to appear on the soundtrack for the Helen Hunt tornado film Twister. As I recall, Van Halen was quoted as saying something to the effect of "we told him to write about anything BUT tornadoes, and he wrote about fucking tornadoes".

Man, did I ever think that that was GANGBUSTERS! Imagine, Sammy Hagar, the big golden-locked lug, stewing after a stern lecture from the Van Halen brothers (Michael Anthony spends said lecture conspicuously silent, lest he receive a tongue-lashing of his own):

"it's a movie about tornadoes. Why wouldn't they want a song about tornadoes? These dudes don't know what they're talking about. I'M gonna write a song about TORNADOES".

Now, picture Sammy in the vocal booth of some fancy recording studio, staring bitterly at Eddie through the glass as he belts out lines like

"watch for the crazy wind/the wind that can take you AWAY"...

See? Sincerity. The old goof doesn't know any better! Just look at the website for Cabo Wabo, Hagars's signature tequila. I bet you a sawbuck that our man came up with his fair share of the goof-ass copy on that website, and if indeed so, GOD BLESS HIM FOR IT! From "Bad Motor Scooter" to "Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy", there's not a lick of doubt or sarcasm in anything the dude does. Look in those puppy dog eyes. Shit, bro's more sincere than Daniel Johnston and Jonathan Richman combined.

Which, I have to admit, does not mean that he's as consistent as the aforementioned. I've been swearing up and down for the last year or so that Sammy's self-titled 1977 solo album (pictured above, and often identified as "The Red Album" for obvious reasons) is a stone classic, but I'm sorry: it's not really true.

What must be understood about me here is that, when people start railing against something I like, I get a little worked up. This sometimes causes me to overreact, and say things I don't mean. Example: when I was in 9th grade, I declared the Butthole Surfers to be my favorite band. A fine favorite band for a youth, to be sure, but they weren't actually mine (that would be Nirvana... ah, to be a kid again!). I just got upset when a teacher made me take off my Buttholes t-shirt foe fear that it might offend the more sensitive members of the student body and staff. I HAD to say, then, that they were my favorite band, if only to justify my crying about having to take the shirt off (true).

I've never been able to fully break this reactionary habit, which definitely plays some part in my decision to afford classic status to anything by Sammy Hagar (except for his performance on Montrose's aforementioned "Bad Motor Scooter", which rules beyond any shadow of a doubt). That said, this record is well worth a needle drop, if only for tracks 1-1 and 1-3: "Red" and "Cruisin' And Boozin'".

I first heard these tracks early in the decade, on a cutout bin "greatest hits" cassette entitled The Red Rocker. Having been personal favorites ever since, I feel that both warrant at least a separate paragraph of consideration apiece.

So: "Red". This is TOTALLY Sammy's theme. As most readers are probably aware, Sammy Hagar is THE RED ROCKER; given the sincerity and transparency we've already established as part of Hagar's character, it should come as no surprise that he'd write a song about his signature color, and this is just that. No innuendo, no metaphor, no nothing. Just a tribute to, by Sammy's personal estimation, THE MOST AWESOME COLOR AROUND. Key lines include

"I'm haunted by the mystery/the mystery of red",

and my favorite,

"Green ain't mean compared to red".

For real. This song is for real, and it's belted with such passion that you'd think he'd lost his virginity to red's "crimson intensity".

Yet, even that can't compare to "Cruisin' And Boozin'", which may well be Sammy's most effective anthem to date. What we have here is perhaps the greatest encapsulation of what '70s hard rock was about: that is to say, a paean to

a) drunk driving and
b), being a goddamn creep attempting to literally pick up girls.

I listen to this song at LEAST weekly, and probably 2-3 times that in the summer. It's beyond description, it's beyond quoting. It's simply beyond.

As Sammy says extemporaneously somewhere in the middle of the latter song, he "ain't tryin' to do nothin' wrong". Frankly, when I listen to these songs, I believe him. Dude's just tryin' to rock out, have a good time, and help you do the same by sharing his gift with you. Nothin' wrong with that, right?

Still, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the rest of this album is spotty. "Fillmore Shuffle" is pretty hot, and there are a couple other decent cuts hiding in the grooves. In the end, though, I'm still wrong: this album is not a classic. I'm sure as hell not getting rid of it any time soon, though. I mean that sincerely.

-Dustin K.
9/13/09

PS: If you want to hear evidence of my own unshakable sincerity, there's a new song this week on my Myspace page. Check it out!

"Now You Look So Forlorn, Passin' By In Your Uniform"

2009-08-25T15:23:00.025-04:00

Rock critics. What a bunch of scumbags, right? Kind of insulting to think that a bunch of nerdy sons of bitches and their sexual frustration have had so much sway over popular consensus in the last forty years. Don't get me wrong: I know that, by and large, nobody actually reads music reviews, at least not on a mass scale (especially in the internet age, wherein every dickhead with opinions, ie. me, can be a "published journalist"). There is a trickle-down, though, from critics and journalists all the way on down to Joe Schmoe McPixiesfan, which can have lasting, serious effects on a given artist's reputation.

An example: the most powerful critics in the early '70s (Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau, etc.) hated The Doors, and most bigshot critics have towed this party line since. I bet you probably hate The Doors, too, not because you hate the sound of their music, but "on principle".

Why, though? The Doors were just as fucked, dark, and arty as The Velvet Underground, and you all LOVE the Velvet Underground, right? Lou Reed, it should be noted, was/is just as big an asshole as Jim Morrison ever was, and both their lyrics on paper do not good poetry make. Both were listening to Ayler and Terry Riley and whatever other avant nonsense (said with love) back when it meant something. The only real difference, as far as I'm concerned, is that The Doors lived on the coast opposite the critical establishment, but resided adjacent to the mainstream music industry and Hollywood, etc. As such, revisionist history paints The Doors as some bubblegum ne'er-do-wells at best, which surely may hold SOME weight... but why should ya hate 'em just because they squeezed out a few hits? Besides which, it ought be noted that Morrison had at least as much sway over a young Iggy Pop as Lou Reed did, AND was way more of a raw dog creep than Reed to boot, which means (to me, anyhow) that The Doors WERE JUST AS (IF NOT MORE) PIVOTAL TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUNK AND ALL OTHER REAL COOL TIMES TO SURFACE IN THEIR WAKE AS THE VELVETS. There, I said it.

Sheesh. Here's another example: the first time I was sure that I had not a whit of faith in Pitchfork's reviews was when Sonic Youth's NYC Ghosts And Flowers album came out, and some douche gave it a 0.0 out of 10 (as I recall, they also broke their 10 point scale to heap praise on OK Computer, which is a retard of a different color, but not so relevant here). What a bunch of dipshits. Not saying anything about the album in particular (which I could care less about), nor about Sonic Youth's track record in general, nor about differences in personal taste... but fucking COME ON. A mediocre Sonic Youth album is still going to have more redeeming value than, say, Warrant's best album, the latter of which should still probably yield maybe a 3.2. Some asshole was just disappointed that NYC Ghosts wasn't as good to them as Daydream Nation, and proceeded to fuck up their whole curve just so they could pout. Fucking childish.

What got me thinking along these lines (today) is this: Allmusic's review of Alex Chilton's Like Flies On Sherbert album. If you're a fan of said album already, read the little sniper attack linked above and sneer for a bit, and then get back to me. If you're not already a fan, I guess do the same thing, but be sure to take Mr. David Cleary's review with a grain of salt.

Why? Well, because it sounds like a review of a ROCK AND ROLL RECORD (caps for emphasis) written by someone who hates rock and roll, for starters. "Instrumental playing is universally slipshod and boorish, and vocals are sloppy and lackluster... a cover of the Lonnie Mack hit 'I've Had It' contains vocals that, without exaggeration, sound like a group of tavern inebriates trying to sing." To which I say: well, he's got his facts pretty straight, I admit, but he seems to be implying that those qualities are some kind of setback. Baffling!

Listen up, buddy. Rock and roll is, at its most undiluted, nothing BUT music made by and for slipshod, boorish inebriates. If you'd prefer to get nice and smooth with a glass of brandy and some nice James Taylor, I guess that's cool, but it ain't the same thing, so don't review it the same.

Here's another pull quote: "Chilton's false-start vocal on "Boogie Shoes" is simply left in without correction."

*sigh*

Alright, David Cleary: have you ever heard The Kingsmen's version of "Louie Louie"? Observe: the false-start vocals after the guitar solo are the best part of the fucking song! Shit, this motherfucker probably puts Graceland in his top 10, along with something by U2, or perhaps Midnight Oil (more crit-cred, y'know). Read: someone who hates rock and roll.

Different strokes, so I won't say our man is WRONG, exactly. I will, however, say this: if you like rock and roll music, don't listen to that guy's review. Like Flies On Sherbert rules supreme. It is the ultimate in lazy, drunk, brain-bursting rock and roll parties. It's consistently either hilarious, heart-wrenching, or both at once. Ya ask me, Like Flies On Sherbert is probably Alex Chilton's best and most honest work, since it distills the soul roots of his work with the Box Tops and the anglo tunefulness of Big Star into a formula that encompasses the best of both, then proceeds to fuck up the whole formula by dumping half a fifth of Tennessee bourbon into the beaker. Which is (obviously) a formula for FUN.

Also: the production weirdness that Chilton first explored circa Sister Lovers is taken here to its murkiest depths. Bizarro synth stabs fart into the mix with WTF?! irregularity, drums are jacked up in the mix even though they're uniformly at least a little off, instruments bounce into the red like they've got an audio school freshman at the boards (except strategically?)... and Chilton, the whole time, is comin' off a straight ramblin' FOOL, all flubs, goofs, and unguarded sincerity.

All of which would certainly make for a pretty cool album as a general rule, but let's face it: there are LOADS of sloppy, half-assed records out there. Most of them are fun, but few of them are worth remembering. However, it's the material he's chosen to attack with this M.O. that makes the whole shebang pretty stellar. "My Rival", "Hey! Little Child", the outrageous/batshit/sublime title track.. it's all pop music, sure, but torn on down to a single, twitching nerve. You know those mid-period Guided By Voices records that people tend to regard the highest? It's gnarly/fucked/urgent/classic like that. It is part of the canon of American music, that whole goddamn melting pot that encompasses John Hurt, John Lee Hooker, Sun Records, Slim Gaillard, Albert Ayler, Hank Williams, etc. all the way to Cheap Trick, Minutemen, Daniel Johnston, Nirvana... like that.

Man, I dunno. Fuck. This record... it's brutal. Indeed, I do have to admit that David Cleary's half-right. This record is almost BAD... but that means, of course, that it's a perfect rock and roll record, principally because it is almost bad. As someone (remind me who?) once said, it's got everything a classic rock and roll record needs: limbo plus filler. Man, and HOW.

-Dustin K.
8/26/09

"He Wants To Destroy Everything And Build A Beautiful, Shiny World On The Rubble"

2009-08-16T18:44:00.015-04:00

The world of advertising is complicated. Well, okay, let's not split hairs here: advertising is basically a very complex system set up to sell you an endless string of BULLSHIT AND LIES. The savvy consumer can see through at least a portion of this thick, but translucent, shell of deceit, but most people are NOT savvy consumers. How else does one explain the unabated popularity of Mountain Dew, Paul Simon (okay, okay, Bookends is pretty great, but that was over 40 years ago), and Jerry Bruckheimer's seemingly endless stream of violence/fart joke pornography?

Ah, but I digress. None of that has anything to do with today's thesis.

Oh, yeah, which is: what the fuck were the suits at Verve thinking back in 1967 when they tried to sell this dude Jameson as a shitkicking, anti-war-rebel dude? His sophomore album Color Him In was surely a strong pop album, from the silly color-by-numbers front cover on in... but a hybrid Dylan/Ochs/Morrison, Jameson AIN'T.

I got ahold of Color Him In when the college radio station I work for sometimes was cleaning years of semi-discarded promo LPs and CDs out of its annex. I got several free albums from this purge; despite my complete ignorance to its content, though, I was most attracted to Jameson's album. The cover design, after all, is a real peach, and the piety of the liner notes ("You can't listen to Jameson's conversation for more than a minute without learning that he's as fed up with the competitions, wars and taboos of this country as anybody can be and still function.") is priceless. I figured I was in for a treat of the '60s revolutionary-on-a-major-label-who-cares-if-it's-a-dubious-prospect-there's-a-riot-goin'-on variety, and man, I LOVE THAT STUFF!

Unfortunately, Color Him In doesn't really deliver in that department. True, my favorite track on the album, "The New Age", does make some swipes in the general direction of the uptight squares of the '50s and their hypocrisy (chorus: "YOU/you taught 'em how to lie/to cry despise and DIE-I-YI-YI"), and does so against some great fuzz guitar and a truly killer bass line. Also, given the time period, it would be silly to doubt that Jameson genuinely was pissed off about Vietnam... shit, man, if the ghost of conscription was forever lurking around YOUR corner, you would be pissed too.

That said, most of the music on this record doesn't have anything to do with the peace and love and like-war-is-hell-man posturing of its liners. Mostly, what we have here is a fairly solid album of tasteful pop songs, with some potential rock crossover appeal. There are even moments on the album that recall Love's vaunted Forever Changes album, and famed producer/arranger Curt Boettcher (The Association, Sagittarius, Beach Boys, etc.) does throw some occasional psychedelic flourishes at his carefully constructed walls of reverb-saturated bubblegum ("See Dawn").

Seriously, though? It was 1967, dude. The fucking Four Seasons were probably dropping acid in '67 (see their Genuine Imitation Life Gazette album, although that actually didn't come out until 1969). As good a record as this may be, to paint Color Him In as revolutionary would be self-deceptive at best.

Alright. Alright! Time to slow down, take deep breaths. Geez! I totally set out to praise this underappreciated record, as is the general thrust of this blog, but all I can seem to do right now is dog the damn thing! I dunno, I guess it's probably because there's this girl I like, but it's not workin' out just the way I'd hoped, so I'm having trouble accentuating the positive right now. That, or it could (more likely) be because major record companies were, are, and will always remain EVIL, and I can't quit being stressed about THAT whole deal. The bullshit way that Verve tried to market this perfectly good record by (unnecessarily!) deceiving its potential audience is just another example of as much. Granted, such tactics aren't new: I'm sure you could trace such deceitful marketing back as far as you can trace the history of advertising. In the specific case of the recording industry's fetishization of faux-revolutionaries, you come right back through the ages to Pete Seeger, The Clash, Rage Against The Machine, Le Tigre (but not Bikini Kill), and whoever else comes on like they're against the man while simultaneously giving him a handjob.

So yeah, Jameson was just another sucker in a long line of poseur politico-philosophizers, or at least that is how it would appear from how he was sold (or NOT sold, as this album was never a big mover). With that in mind, all I can recommend is that you try to find this record without the back cover, so you don't even have to think about it. Minus that contextual snafu, the front cover and the album behind it are both a total hoot.

-Dustin K
8.17.09

We'll Go Sing Sha-La la LA la All The Time, And It Won't Go Wrong If Love Is On Our Minds

2009-08-05T21:12:00.013-04:00

Watch what you say, friends. Any sentence, any flip opinion, has the potential to change the course of history. At the very least, it could surely change the popular interpretation of same. This is doubly so if your opinion is ever published and/or disseminated widely.

I bring this up today because I feel that Lester Bangs, that eternal poet laureate of rock and roll (sorry, Richard Meltzer, although it must be said that Smegma with you on vocals, not to mention Vom, was always way better than Birdland ever stood a chance of being... but man, that's a whole other THING), could be said to be at fault for the short shrift long allotted to The Third Testament, the third (der) album by The Godz.

Now, I'm not railing on Bangs: perish the thought! Homeboy's writing is such an essential part of my cultural upbringing (hopefully not TOO obvious an influence on my writing, but honestly, probably so) that it would feel like straight heresy to say anything too harsh about the guy or his ouveure. However, that doesn't mean I don't have any bones to pick, re: his opinions.

To wit: in his well-known piece "Do The Godz Speak Esperanto?" (which is basically a love letter to the ESP-Disk label in general, and the Godz in particular), Bangs suggests that Third Testament is, after the joyously inept acoustic caterwaul of their classic debut Contact High With The Godz and the yakkety pot punk (phrase "pot punk" lifted from the M'Lady's Records website, I admit) of Godz 2, the point where the Godz fell off. I quote:

"[The Godz] were exciting to think about because they promised to break through and become even more outrageous by dynamiting all the stupid Standards by which esthetic-minded critics and technique-bound musicians sought to raise rock from pigmy squawl to Art-Form. Sadly, they blew that chance in the worst possible way. The Third Testament is a lame, psychedelically stereotyped, even smug album that sounds like everything their detractors might ever have accused the Godz of being."

...and so forth (although he does go on to lay heavy praise on the track "Womban", which is indeed among the best tracks on the album). Given that this is perhaps the only major press that the Godz received at the time, it has since been generally accepted FACT that Third Testament is, at least on a relative scale, BUNK.

Well, then: let it be said that I, for one, call bullshit. In fact, I'm going to go on record (risky) saying that The Third Testament is not only a very good record (riskier), but in fact the best Godz record (riskiest?) and an honest-to-Jehovah CLASSIC (WHAT THE FUCK, FOR REAL?!?!?!?!), at that. On Third Testament, the Godz stew the primitive yowl of Contact High in with both the more rockist as well as the more aut elements of Godz 2, throw in some avant-malarkey straight out of Red Krayola's Parable Of Arable Land (except funnier) or Henry Jacobs (except not as good, but c'mon, they're not magicians), and brings the whole thing to a boil that will BURN YOUR FACE OFF. Except in a good way. Got me?

Jeez, this platter is a hoedown joy to spin! I admit that it's maybe not solid in that you wanna listen to the whole damn thing all the time, like Marquee Moon or whatever classique you wanna pull out: the extended freakout "The First Multitude", while essential in context, requires patience and the right mood, just like "L.A. Blues" or "Revolution #9" or any of those psych "experiments" that squares either don't get and/or regard too highly just 'cuz they've never heard anything like it (outside of "psychedelic" pop records). Still, though, how many records do you actually, regularly sit through from start to finish? Like, ten? Twenty if you're being nice? Who cares, the whole concept of the "album-as-artistic-statement" is overrated, anyway.

Ah, but I digress. Anyway, there's a boatload of killer stuff on here. Ya ask me, the ratio is WAY high in favor of it being a stone classic. A quick rundown of some of the high points:

-"Like A Sparrow" is a slop-folk/punk classic on par with whatever you wanna throw at me ("Hey! Little Child" by Alex Chilton, perhaps, although it's only similar in that it's sloppy, and that it rules). It's romantic as hell, to boot. It's probably gone on every mixtape I've made for a girl I'm tryin' to make the moves on since 2002. Not bad!

-The aforementioned "Womban" is a great homage/parody to the Burdon/Jagger/Troggs/Farner school of scumbag rocker chest-beating, and back in '68 (pre-Farner!), to boot!

-"Ruby Red" is like a Charles Manson outtake (were there any real outtakes from those sessions? That whole album sounds like an outtake, albeit a great one), but without the eerie baggage.

-The companion pieces "ABC" and "KLM" are completely retarded. I know that's a rude way to put it, but I mean it in a nice way...? Listen to 'em, and YOU try to figure out how else to put it.

I could go on. Even "Walking Guitar Blues", the track that most offended Bangs and indeed the most cheese-dick song on the LP, grows on you in its dunced-out minstrelsy. At least, that is to say, it did on me.

If you can track down Third Testament, by whatever means you kids track nowadays (it's readily available from Amazon and other CD/mp3 merchants, and I'm sure you could steal it from some Torrent whatchamacallit... but where's the joy in that? Ya gotta stare at the cover and things like that...), give it a couple spins and tell me I'm wrong. We'll surely have to agree to disagree, but damned if it ain't entertaining to hear Radiohead fans try to talk me out of my most deeply-held beliefs. It's like Christians tryin' to get me worried about Hell. I'm not saying they're wrong, but how are they gonna prove it?

-Dustin K.
8.5.09

I Can Tell By The Way You Wash The Clothes, Your Cookin' Must Be Fine

2009-08-02T10:43:00.011-04:00

FM DUST. That's the new beginning for everything. What does it mean? I guess I don't really know, but y'know, use your imagination. Think AM Gold, think analog, think archaic, think beautiful. Think think think. Take out your earbuds and think. Hell, stop reading this, stare at your wall in silence, think for a little while. Then, come back and read, and thus justify my blogsistence.

RECORD OF THE WEEK: MICHAEL HURLEY: Armchair Boogie

Without Michael Hurley, there would be no Devendra Banhart. Don't judge Hurley too harshly for that, though: I'm not sayin' that Devendra Banhart is his fault, exactly. All I'm tryin' to say is this: if one had to pick a ground zero Genesis progenitor honcho for the whole "freak folk" thing, one could be way further off the mark.

Portland's ever-slaying Mississippi Records recently reissued Hurley's 1970 effort Armchair Boogie on vinyl (the only way they ever do anything, bless their hearts), and I don't mind telling you that it's a solid STUNNER. Enough so, in fact, that it holds its own in the face of the label's more common M.O. of digging up the most heavy folkouts (gospel/sanctified singing, African highlife, country blues, etc.) they can find. NO MEAN FEAT, let me tell you, since all those records are bonkers great. The fact that it's as good as the Rats records the label just reissued is whatever (although those are certainly class affairs), but when you're putting a "freak folk" record next to a buncha fire-and-brimstone screamers who hate rock and roll with the passion of the ages, it better be a damn sight ahead of the norm (no bargain basement beardos need apply).

WELL, THEN: Armchair Boogie may be less overtly spiritual than MSR comps like Life Is A Problem, but 'tis no less cleansing in effect. Its power is different, but no less potent. Dang!

Let us first say that it's easy to see why The Holy Modal Rounders were such a booster for this dude (they covered several of his songs over the course of several albums, and have been known to play with him over the years... they played together in Portland a couple years ago, which I totally missed, to my eternal chagrin). Hurley's humor is far more subtle and gentle than that of the Rounders, but the man is still whacked in the gourd.

Moreso than the Rounders, in fact: as much as I do love their classic sides, ie. Indian War Whoop and especially Moray Eels Eat The Holy Modal Rounders (both essential grips if ya haven't already), their weirdo qualities were always mostly a put-on, methinks. That is to say that, drug intake notwithstanding, at the end of the day I bet Stampfel and Weber could turn off the weird if the situation called for as much, whereas I have my doubts about Hurley (Of course, I don't know any of these cats personally, so I could be way off the mark...).

As such, Hurley's bizarro vibe permeates these beautiful jams in an understated way that is too deep for any pretenders to fake. Consider, if you will, Hurley being credited as playing "mouth trumpet" on the back cover. Sittin' in your room and making trumpet sounds with your mouth when you're working on a jam is one thing, but to take solos with same on a record set to be released by a major record label (the album was originally released/distributed by Raccoon, a Warner Bros. subsidiary, in 1970) is another something altogether. It sounds great, better than you'd think, but I do wonder what the suits at WB were thinking when they got the masters. Granted, I guess money was floating through those dudes like blood back then, so they probably didn't care one way or another. Remember the Warner Loss Leaders series, where they sold two-LP sets for a dollar and they'd sequence Beefheart next to John Sebastian or something like that, because Dr. Demento was in charge of compiling them? Man, the 1970s were fucked up, and probably way sweeter than anyone who was there will ever admit. Wish I'd been there... maybe Rhino would have put out my first 45.

ANYWAY, BACK TO THE RECORD AT HAND, AND WHY IT IS AS ESSENTIAL AS, SAY, VITAMIN B-12 (which is good for anxiety, btw, although it's hard to find naturally in anything except milk, which explains why so many vegans I've known have been so uptight). Well, how about this: the songs are great. So many of these "rediscovered gems", especially when talkin' psych-folk kinda things, have a great vibe, but are short on great songs. Not so, Armchair Boogie. "Sweedeedee" is a beautiful ramble that makes me think of Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing In America in its delicate romantic whimsy (although I'd better watch it with those kind of coy descriptors, lest I suggest that it's as toothless as, say, Chan Marshall's cover of same). "Be Kind To Me" is a raucous plea that must've killed in a live setting, and the loosey-goosey ensemble arrangement suits the melody just so. "Open Up" is a stellar cosmic come-on without being in any way suggestive or gross, and a great breezy summer jam to boot. These are just my favorites, but the record is full of potential mixtape fodder.

Hurley is still alive and kicking today. I think he lives in the resort town of Astoria, OR. Nice town. I wonder if he hangs out at the Yacht Club out there... nothing, at least nothing I can think of, would be more relaxing than having Michael Hurley serenade you in a sailboat. Come to think of it, I think I may have a goal for summer 2010.

Yeah, that's a great idea, actually, and possibly not entirely unattainable. After all, as Mark Borchardt (with whom I would also like to hang out in a boat) would say, "life is kinda cool sometimes". Wish me luck!

-Dustin Krcatovich
8/3/09