It's me, not you.

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There's been buckets of ink already spilled about 1980's Stone Age cassette culture and spinner dial broadcasting to warrant a Penguin size tome, and may much more pour forth. For now, here are my digital contributions. Caveatz tho’~~~~Air check playbacks of my 18-22 year old self are characterized by a superficially outsized air personality, elitist nods to the imagined cognoscenti and strained analysis accompanied by lame one-liners. I sound like an ESPN announcer (more so on WMUA than WPRB or WMFU)~~~~But even though there’s nothing as immediate and tasteful as the meat sliced by the original Pat Benatar band, the selections were choice then and remain so now, yes?~~~ No?~~~ Love is a battlefield!~~~~~All shows at 320 kbps, chopped into proper MP3s with lovingly detailed labeling~~~~Download Qs: leftofleftofthdial@gmail.com

Friday, December 30, 2011

A Time Before This: ATPJR on WPRB 12-30-88




In the event my progeny care to know, dad realizes he seems a little distracted on this here episode of Left of Left of the Dial from 1988. It wasn't called that, by the way; I don't think I called the show anything when I was on WPRB. Anyway, air checks evidence a clipped and distracted ATPJR, as if I'm biding time until the Program Director leaves - he who was in charge. Boys, dad plans on being around for a long time, but in case I fail to mention it, try not to worry about what others think. Unnecessary compromises will just result in a life listening to stuff like this, and that's no road to travel! 

Likewise, it's also possible the stilted delivery was a function of being self-conscious around WPRB heavies - particularly Eric Weisbard  - who I perceived to be disdainful of the more aggro scum noise favored by some of us back in the day. Anyway, as anyone can hear, the selections on 12-30-88 are obviously peerless and have stood the test of time. There was no need to worry after all.

Air check gaffes are listed
 after the jump.
After the Jump

Uhs and hmmms:  On this episode, ATPJR's embarrassing air checks include the following: 

  • Misidentification of Hoagy Carmichael's "Serenade to Gabriel" as "Serenade to Gabriella and awkwardly saying something like, "...it's from a Smithsonian box set that includes all the collaborators who he...collaborated with." Smooth.
  • Referencing the Mudhoney, Fugazi and Halo of Flies extended plays as "hot", as in "hot new eps". I mean, they were brand new and unmistakably exciting, but oh boy, "hot"? I talked like that. Not hot.
  • I'd also like to point out that the same enthusiasm was evident for the equally hot - as in new and exceptionally great at that moment in 1988 - records by Death of Samantha, Eleventh Dream Day, the Ex, Thee Mighty Caesars and Bastards, among others. It was such a bounty of rocknroll greatness, which is true of any time I suppose, if you know where to look. And this is where I was at that time in 1988 and I was definitely looking.
  • Cluelessly asking the PD what tomorrow night is (New Year's Eve), as if I'm attempting to make small talk. See above.
  • When introducing Death of Samantha, I say something like, "One of America's greatest bands...they remind me of college hoops (what?) and Jim Thompson novels (guess that's a little better, but what?).
  • Incessantly saying the call letters and station ID.
  • There are more, for sure!

So I guess this can be utilized as a training device for newbie djs - should they even exist anymore -  as well as an awesome moment in rocknroll history, given the stuzzadelic, and slightly tempting, selections.
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Tuesday, December 27, 2011

2010 Revisited: The Chinese Restaurants' River of Shit 7" ep (S-S)


From the Best of 2010 list, just to keep it moving and body grooving: "ATPJR sent presents to his own ears throughout 2010 and the 25th best was the River of Shit 7” by The Chinese Restaurants.  Its faux skuzz reminded me of when that band killed the bouncers at The Ritz.  Bravo!"

Brevity counts!


Over at S-S Records, they got records

Youtube
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Monday, December 26, 2011

2010 Revisited: J.C. Satàn's Sick of Love (Slovenly)

Looks like 2011's list is gonna take forevuh. From 2010's Best of 2010,  just to keep it moving:

"ATPJR is weary this Xmas eve and not sure what the 19th best present he sent to his own ears in 2010 should be. What goes with mom’s cheap Leroux Anisette? Not the Puffy Areolas with the guy from Milk Music, no. But J.C. Satàn’s Sick of Love, that smells like cheap liqueur. Seedy popular song saturated in reverb, infused with dream weapon harmonies + disaffected Italian-French posturing. It’s like a reckless teen version of The Jack’s Vacant World with better songs. Santa? Satan? Satàn? One can never really tell."




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Sunday, December 25, 2011


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2011’s Wicked Company/19th seating - Decimus 3 (Kellipah - 2011)

fireflies 
are 
magic


There's an illusion that it will carry on forever - you, me, us, all of it.  We know it won't, but illusions can serve us well sometimes; depends. If another piece of music is never acquired ever again, I'd still not get to hear all the great stuff surrounding me at this moment even once, and of course I'm only surrounded by great stuff, 'natch.  But I acquire regardless. The suspension of existential constraints persists and carries you, me, us, all of it forward. It’s most persuasively radiated – for me – in noise.

Songs possess fence posts, demarcations of beginning, middle and end.  Rusted Shut may not recognize that, but they’re the exception. More open-ended practices by contrast - improv, noise, drone, the collective whatsis of NNCK - suggest the road goes on forever. Arcs emerge of course, but tapping the stream at any point is as viable as being present at the start, if you can find it.  Private immersion in the illusory eternal loop of such whatis, I often find myself calmed, even when flaming. Tapping the stream designated by Pat Murano as that of Lord Decimus has enveloped me in unexpected washes of calm and wonder - like a nice, warm shower. As far as I can tell, there are eight Decimus releases currently available. I'm entranced by Decimus 3. Midday psych report writing, late night dishwasher unloading and staring out at the woods when visiting mom have all been deeply enhanced by the syrupy smears of Decimus 3. I have no idea how it compares with the other Decimi, even though a few have been downloaded from bandcamp, but I take them all to be of a piece.

So noise is the cosmos then. Decimus is noise. The cosmos is Decimus. Not the scorched earth analogue assail of Incapacitants kind of noise; more like a summer walkabout through a northeast woodlands of fx equipment and corroded sequencers. There are fireflies though, and as anyone who’s grown up in the rural northeast can tell you, fireflies are magic. At parts Decimus 3 chugs and wheezes like an old radiator, in other places synth washes drop in from the first Agitation Free record. There are even sections that approximate the ghostly marvel of Paavoharju.  How Pat Murano channels such magic out there in Red Hook is a wonder.  I imagine him during the predawn haze at the corner of Coffey and Ferris like an alchemist of old, toiling over a pot of herbs and garnishes. Decimus 3 is touching, powerful. It is love, live, life + 1. With this knowledge, illusory or no, I invite Decimus 3 as the 19th seating of 2011’s Wicked Company.

You never spent a better $5 of discretionary income in your life

Can't stop, won't stop

Decimus at Facebook

David Keenan says, "Cut with enough wig to make it a trip."


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Sunday, December 18, 2011

2011’s Wicked Company/20th seating - The Obnox: I'm Bleeding Now (Smog Veil - 2011)



The young generation needs arms for its marches and sit-ins. We have psychedelic shotguns, grenade necklaces, rock and roll weapons, mystical weapons for Buddhists, Jews and Christians.

It's a well known fact that drummers hate their bands. Not the bass player with whom they sometimes share an allegiance, perhaps, but certainly the lead whose noodlings are the very reason the drummer has a job. Bands not being exactly democratic enterprises, this means drummers usually end up working for the man. And everyone hates working for the man. Revolutions happen for good reasons, often.

So, who does Lamont Thomas drum for?  When I finally caught up with Puffy Areolas' mayhem at Cake Shop last spring, it was an hour of thrilling silt dirt noise and he was beating the traps (without drink tickets, apparently).  But I can never tell who's in Puffy Areolas anyway, or if they even have a leader, so whatever. Then there's This Moment IBH. But Thomas may be best known for his work in the Bassholes, the vehicle by which Don Howland impresses babes and intimidates record hounds.  As such, and despite ostensibly being a righteous rocknroll guy, Howland is, after all, an artiste. He probably countenances no miscues or misreps of his art, the proper presentation of which is dependent on none other than Lamont Thomas. An artiste in this context  = band boss, just like Captain Beefheart or John Petkovic or Sun Ra or Jon Spencer or Lemmy or Nancy Wilson, and band bosses can, do in fact,  incur the resentment of their band. It's the natural order of things (“Play it faster!” “Play it slower!  “Play like Ellen Hoover!”).

Of course, this could just be a misplaced sound off about my boss. Then again, Lamont Thomas offers clues: “I never liked you anyway” he wails on “I’m Bleeding Now”; he refashions Howland's "Daughters" in his own image; and he stares out from the cover, mouth soaked with blood as if he just pulled Howland's heart out from his chest and ate it. You tell me what the message is.  I’m telling you what it looks like.

What it sounds like is an amazingly crude occupation of the space around 1’10” into “Skunk (Sonically Speaking)" at which point the guitars unfurl and open the portal to where gnarled clots of Cheater Slicks vomit wet kiss the delirium psych of the Original Sins. Thomas apparently plays all instruments and owns every piece of this record.  It's a stupefying and grimy pile up of unbeatable freakbeat action - howling and relentless.  He also undrapes some lovely tunes – buried ‘neath the murk they may be, but they’re keepers, some with falsetto and crush, all audacious and bold. It’s the record to be flaunted when pretenders are done pretending. And while it won’t necessarily foment revolution being played three times in a row on my way into work, that doesn’t mean I won’t cut my eyes and think some nasty thoughts. It’s that kind of soundtrack. That’s why Obnox’s I’m Bleeding Now is the 20th seating of 2011’s wicked company. Thank you Lamont Thomas for taking the time.

At Smog Veil - yours for the buying

Agit Reader says...

Ohio Authority says...


he works hard for the money (so hard for it honey)
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Saturday, December 17, 2011

2011’s Wicked Company/21st seating - XRay Eyeballs/K-Holes


  • Xray Eyeballs: Not Nothing (Kanine - 2011)
  • K-Holes: K-Holes (Hozac - 2011) 


Great is the power of steady inclination. Only 18 years passed between Larry & the Blues Notes’ “Night of the Phantom” and its resurrection on the first issue of the first volume of Back from the Grave – 1983 mind you. The Blue Notes and Alarm Clocks and Henchmen and One Way Streets, et al had a colossal impact on me from that moment in 1985 when I snapped up their comped teen angst from Main Street Records in Northampton, took the bus back to Amherst (with a nonbeliever – what a bummer) and dropped the needle after soaking in Warren’s supercilious liner verbiage: KAPOW! The Elite's “My Confusion”! Satisfaction, sweet spot tapped. Looks like I wasn't the only one. Hey Tim Warren, you win. 

Fast forward 24 years later to September 2009 at Mercury Lounge for a first encounter with Golden Triangle. They're opening for Ty Segal, whose set was lousy, although I’ve seen him since and he’s doing just fine.  Anyway, they looked like refugees from those Back From the Grave covers – tattered goth zombie ghouls in leather jackets, higher heels, vampy puss faces and bad girl posturing. But when their grimy garage zoink launches it really shuts me up. I am all in. Haters may abound, but there's no denying the rat like edge of their pilfered boogie. Isn't this the expected upshot of those Crypt seeds? Far better it be Golden Triangle than the gunk punk metaled minions who flexed their interscopes across the 90’s and beyond (although I lost the thread in ’92).  I saw GT three or four more times prior to their late 2010 suspension and each episode was a real cool time, positioning themselves as BK conduits to the horizontal action in-love-with-these-times neo garage faux degeneration. Go.

(Then again, sometimes I feel like a chump throwing in with these ersatz heathens, especially when standing next to Doug Mosurock or John Allen, whose esteem for the form is far less forgiving.  Perhaps I’m still scarred from John’s first visit to my apartment 20+ years ago when he mocked my Fuzztones albums. Yea, I know the qualitative difference between the Fuzztones and the Cheater Slicks, thank you very much and I am also awares, I think, that those early Crypt salvos’ve spawned more contemporary variants than should be counted. If there’s a form in which the distance between phoning it in and peanut butter love is a trifle, this is it, and some folks just don’t have the love. Who can blame them? Who really misses Sympathy’s impenetrable lack of quality control?) 

Excuse the seesawing self-doubt, it's in my nature;  back to the rat pedal combustion. Whatever confusion there is about these times, all senses tell me that the GT subdivisions conjured two distinctively peanut butter worthy records in 2011.  O.J. San Felipe - this guy appears to be everywhere, doing everything. I leave my exclusively secluded neighborhood to socialize maybe what -  twice every month? - and this guy is always around. I’m at the Duane Reade picking up my Hair Club for Men products, he’s there. Dropping the kids at school, he’s there. At the DMV, he's there. Yet, he's got the songs. They churn like weird spiders glitzed with spankled twang, a constant buzz and that Sponge Bob voice. Can’t believe he pulls it off, but he writes distinguished AM radio hits – in a universe where zombie ghouls eat Duran Duran records in an inverted simulacrum of 1965.

Who’s been playing K-Holes the first two Bloodloss records? No, not the one with Mark Arm, those real early ones – Human Skin Suit (1987) and The Truth Is Marching In (1990). That’s some ugly greasy pop right there. What makes K-Holes so convincing is yea, that swamp sax (finally someone gets it right!), but also the freak art vibe leaching from every note. There’s a sense of purpose with this group that eludes many other practitioners of ugly music, the homoerotic enthrall just one facet of how they can effectively hustle the evil hoodoo.  It may all be a put on, but when the garage is this outré it warps lover’s wands all the way back to Esquerita.  Xray Eyeballs and K-Holes make like it ain't the summer of love all over again (let's hope Tim Warren can still make the rounds). There's no question then that they've earned their place in 2011 as the 21st seating of a wicked company.

Xray Eyeballs at Kanine

K-Holes at Hozac

I swear I wrote this before I saw this

Conspicuous degeneracy 

And what ever happened to the Heavenly Blows?

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Thursday, December 15, 2011

2011’s Wicked Company/22nd seating - The Scene Is Now: Magpie Alarm (Tongue Master - 2011)


Listening to the Scene Is Now is like eating a scoop of chocolate chip mint ice cream with sriracha sauce – sweet and creamy on top with a chaser that bites. I forget about them some times, a lot of the time, actually. Their last record of new stuff, not including the cassette no one saw, was Tonight We Ride – greatest title ever – and it came out in 1988. Although I’d answer correctly on a multiple choice, any open ended essay on the back story would probably overlook Phil Dray and Chris Nelson’s jamz with Rick Brown as Information on top of abandoned tenements back in mutant times. So, of all the worthy iconoclasts from yore who’ve rioted in 2011 and will find a place in this here wicked company – Antietam, Eleventh Dream Day, the Feelies, the Bats, Rocket From The Tombs, Wussy (liberally speaking re: Chuck Cleaver), Ut (live anyway), Come (as well), the Scene Is Now is most unexpected! (Btw, if you see Fish & Roses tell them about the party.)

But that was then, this is now, and now finds our heroes marrying notebook sketches about the F train, all the grass in Cleveland and changing skylines to maxist pop weirdness. Hummable broadsides snuggle up nice and friendly only to send you teetering diagonally across the room in a spinning teacup.  That’s the no wave sriracha underbelly calling the shots. No matter how approachable the complementary sonic garnishment –  lead trumpet moms would love, organ fills seemingly lifted from Thomas Jefferson Kaye’s second North Cal stoner beard put down classic First Grade (Dunhill – ’74), piano tinkle as tinkle –  a perpendicularity cuts these fourteen missives sharp. There’s also pensive drama, yet again, about how growing old is always at the back of our minds and how to handle the impending inevitable. This seems to be a theme this year.  (That being the case, I’d like to send a shout out into the digital abyss to Angst before they go the way of the dinosaurs. They were another great band deserving of something.) Given the fourteen damn fine songs and how aging is rendered so coolly and how they make it seem so easy, it is hereby decreed that the Scene Is Now’s Magpie Alarm  – notice they could also be called the S.I.N. – is 2011’s 22nd seating of a wicked company.









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Tuesday, December 13, 2011

2011’s Wicked Company/23rd seating - Shoppers: Silver Year (Feeble Minds - 2011)



Who will save the world? It’s not like Tony McPhee didn’t try, but that was nearly forty year ago and much has passed since. Reflexive or passive association will suffice no longer, what with the rate of eclipse shrinking to nanocultural blips - post-core, avant prog, goth garage, improv psych, gaze gaze, beard folk, lower case noise...reincarnation bears fruit every time the stream is tapped. Ten minutes later a scene thrives, with limited print vinyl and associated accoutrement. Music has no end.  Deciding which shoots are worth a nickel, that’s the trick (would that it was our only problem).


And so it comes to pass that Shoppers exist and thankfully, One Base On An Overthrow highlighted their 10/16/11 Flywheel show. No clickthruz though, so an annoying 25 searching seconds later of my own time landed me at their bandcamp page, which clicks through to Shoppers’ roiling nth gen noisecore squall. Touchstones here sound like 1st gen scum rock whatsis, as if Thalia Zedek fronted the Unsane instead of opting for Live Skull. Shoppers reveal no secrets though. Some emo’s probably in the dna as well, but having never listened to Fugazi after the first ep I’m not the one to say. The Overthrow guy wrote, "It kinda sounds like if Drundriver made a new record that was Foreign Objects/ Libyans catchy, but still sounded like  Drunkdriver." I only get the Drunkdriver third of that reference, so more research lies ahead.

One dimensional aggro thrust this is not, mind you. Granular layers shift – relentlessly – adding vertical plunge every eight bars for a totally awesome rock blitz. I’m hopeful for what the next year brings.  For 2011, it’s the 23rd seating of a wicked company. 
Completely unauthorized borrow
from the besotted chronicles of















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