Me shavin' razor's cold, and it stings

Now that Marc Bolan, Ronnie James Dio and Davy Jones are gone, the Awesome Short Guys Club (aka  Randy Newman Haters) - of which I've been a member since 1986 - is seeking applicants to fill quorum requirements and pursue club biz. This primarily involves pushing you taller freaks out of the way at shows with more than 75 people and devising heels that add inches, yet don't look ridiculous. (Keep in mind we kicked Danzig out years ago, for obvious reasons).  The surviving members (me, Prince, Malcolm & Angus Young and that guy from XRay Eyeballs) wish to express our condolences to Davy Jones' fam and fans.  

Yea, Jones' showbiz hack inclinations made an awkward fit with this ersatz collective. It brings to mind Byron Coley's description of Steve Shelley (no giant himself) upon replacing Bob Bert in Sonic Youth in'85 (and I paraphrase): "He looks about as comfortable as a worm in a colostomy bag." Watching Jones in the linked video, one must admit he seems out of place. But nevertheless, the guy did what short guys gotta do: persevere. Me shavin' razor's cold, and it stings.

SCREAMING URGE demystified at Straight to Video

So I've been staring at this Screaming Urge comp (Impulse Control - The Complete Recordings 1980-1981 on Hyped2Death) on my shelf for months, thinking, you know, I should probably listen to that one day. I think the same thing about all those Chuck Warner comps. Heck, I think that about just about everything on these shelves. Anyway, this recent thinking about Screaming Urge coincided with an excellent overview/interview posted over at Straight To Video by the mysterious R. Kellie, which outlines the nascent Columbus scene and moves me that much closer to a Screaming Urge listening party. And, there's a "Homework" video that answers the question of what my next Halloween costume will be.

comp seems to have been discontinued at H2D 

fusetron may have some though

PINK FAIRIES live 1973

This exists.

A Wicked Company, Valentine's Day seating: TECHNICOLOR TEETH: Teenage Pagans (2012)

Well, this is an unexpected treat! Did you know that we here at LOLOTD  passed on the initial run of gaze gaze, cuz once You’re Living All Over Me is imprinted, there ain't no room for pretend? It appears, howevuh, that Technicolor Teeth have just enuff distance between gazeluh and the unblinking now to've convincingly reconfigured the stuzz in their own gaudy festoon and so, we’re rethinking our position. But that's for later. At the moment - and let me be clear - we are dazzled by the gaudy arrogance in which these Wisconsin shark fucks plunder feedback, echo and verse via the soft white underbelly of mid 90eez toss off civilization. That is, we love it. It’s almost as good as the Negro Spirituals. And for $5, that’s a damn good deal. 

Help some brothers out

ANTIETAM and ELEVENTH DREAM DAY visited upon us in 2011

ANTIETAM Tenth Life (Carrot Top - 2011)

ELEVENTH DREAM DAY Riot Now! (Thrill Jockey - 2011)

RICK RIZZO & TARA KEY Double Star (Thrill Jockey - 2011)

The Antietam/Eleventh Dream Day bundle starts at 1069 Bardstown Road, a tale laid out in loving detail on Noise Pollution’s unbeatable Bold Beginnings: An Incomplete Collection Of Louisville Punk 1978-1983 comp. For this is a story about Kentucky, and as Abraham Lincoln realized, “I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky." He must have also known that art damaged combustion is not confined to Ohio alone.  

As the story goes, Tara Key emerged in 1978 from the University of Louisville’s library, amped up a Gretsch and was electrocuted instantly. Not only was she not fried, but the surge bestowed the gift of steel wire elocution, and she spoke to atoms. It was a gift. A union of atypical neighborhood punx and local academic droppies transforms the local weirds into admirers of the Hampton Grease Band via the Nedelkoff family barn in southern Indiana. By the time Janet Bean shows up in Skull of Glee four years later, there’s egg drop soup, Rick Rizzo’s eyeliner and love, Halifax style. Grease splatters and the 1069 circle is unbroken.

That grease splatter swells in the music of 1069 alum. The palpable distinction between American treasures Antietam and Eleventh Dream Day and contemporary NPR heartland constructions like the Hold Steady and the National and Arcade Fire - who I don't believe actually exist and were only invented by NPR to give Soundcheck's Jon Schaefer something to wrinkle his eyebrows to - is that our heroes are knee deep in the stench of art damage. This lends even their most accessible strumming - stuff you could play your grandmother - an electrifying and moody depth that’s an inch removed from a heart full of napalm. Antietam and Eleventh Dream Day may bear a superficial similarity to indie rock - blech! What an unlovable nom de puke - but the Byrds are not the launch point, no. The pole position for Tara Key and Rick Rizzo is tethered to Ron Asheton, Glen Buxton, Danny Whitten and early Glenn Phillips. Thirty years on from their 1069 launch point, what remains is some reliably combustible rock action. 

So I aim my arrows right at you

Tara Key is the premier rock guitarist of her generation. She's a wicked southern rock maestro stitching zen twang into punk demon invocation with élan. How many can pull that off in a tenth life? No slight on Tim Harris or Josh Madell; it’s just natural for a guitar player with TK's gift to garner gapes and awe. But, this is a band after all, so let us praise the explosiveness of the unit. 2007’s Opus Mixtum may be their Music To Eat, but Tenth Life is, well, the great record made after Music To Eat, which Hampton Grease Band never made anyway. Antietam has made that record. Tara, Tim and Josh have been playing together for 20 years, at least, and it seems they can churn out their peculiar paeans to southern desire at will. Tim’s ability to foreground fish wire lines while Tara haunts the space inside, all the while peeling it back, with Josh playing it just right, occasionally leaves me with a chill in the best way possible. It’s a treasure. When "Better Man” hits that first dip – so I aim my arrows right at you – I catch my breath. Such a rush sometimes comes about while immersed in the first Come record, so do with that what you will.

You think it all starts with you, 

begins and ends with what you do

But anthems? Rick Rizzo’s handle on classic antheming causes wonder, as in, “I wonder, have I heard these implausibly great hymns somewhere else?” But no, he’s just tapping the source, the archetypal grit that makes the best rock music so ominously potent and simultaneously jarring - moving, really - ruminating on it, yet pressing forward. The internet tells the story of a man who just plugs away at his guitar behind a desk after work, year after year, compiling these moments of inspirational lift, then a downward turn, a pensive pause and always coupled with glowingly combative chording. I confess, Rizzo's songs speak to the conflicted 45 year old in me, the guy who connects with the drunken potency of daze long ago when Prairie School Freakout ripped asunder; yet I don't care to be absurd either, cuz those times are long gone and I know what's coming. There's resolve in the best bands of this generation, those who've struck that intuitive balance, not forsaking what they do so well while pushing boundaries within their chosen form. It's a righteous operandi, cuz the way the Stones and their cohort unraveled after they hit their forties was pitiful. Riot Now! may be Eleventh Dream Day’s most bracing anthology of anthemic tuneage yet. Each one of these rippers is classic rock wrung anew. Janet Beveridge Bean’s evocative counterpoint haunts all but a few of these beauties and the slow burners, “That’s What’s Coming” and “Away With Words” are exquisite. Rizzo continues to harvest that desperate Crazy Horse squall like nobody's biz.

So naturally, Rizzo and Key loop back to 1069 via Double Star, their second Thrill Jockey tally in twelve years, a gorgeous slice of timeless reflection wrought in instrumental sweets, with rusty noise excursions and an eye on the horizon.   Is there a more fitting soundtrack - dare I use that word – to the blur of the passing fields and woods down Route 130 south of New Brunswick?  These pieces evoke that kind imagery, or alternately, sitting on your porch during the humid summer morn as interest flags in those Fahey turtles lumbering sideways across the lawn. You think you’re in the clear, but keep an eye out all the same. That’s the art damaged napalm oozing, ready to spark, even during the ostensible calm of these sweets. Keep an eye out.

My own arc takes me away from these two bands around 1993 or so, losing touch after embracing them with a convert’s zeal during their initial runs. Having forsaken Antietam since their residency at the old Knit and the Spiral and other shuttered spots long gone, I was totally unaware they’d continued to issue such vital contributions to the American rock canon. Likewise, Eleventh Dream Day, who seem to’ve enjoyed a somewhat higher profile across the years, despite the usual assortment of disappointments and then some. That’s documented elsewhere though.  Blink and you'll miss it, I guess. Apologies to both bands for my van winkle and lack of support when it might have counted.

On the other hand and as penance for my oversight, I now annoy everyone with accounts of how great these bands still are, sounding just like another incipient middle age indie rock dad standing down on Metropolitan and Havermeyer in a Sunn 0))) t-shirt. But forget whatever those guys are talking about.  My Antietam/EDD blather is where it's at and may just win over a few hearts, even though I couldn’t tell a Wilco from a Jayhawk and fuck that stuff anyway. Good taste is timeless!

RHYTON LP (Thrill Jockey - 2012)

I've no business using the phrase come correct, but that's exactly what the USPS did this February afternoon when it delivered the Rhyton lp, just in time for the decompression required following our progeny's early morning ice hockey game in the north Jersey hinterland.  That's right, we here at LOLOTD take care of live humans and will be subjecting them to these unexpectedly avant prog dirges for much of the late winter. 

I've only had one pass through Rhyton so far, but if those Igra Staklenih Perli sides are buried deep in the basement stacks and dearly missed, then this is just the ticket. Is there anything David Charles Shuford can not do (in unison here with Spencer Herbst and Jimy SeiTang)?

Thrill Jockey has what you need 

“Stone Colored”