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

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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.

• MUDHONEY "In 'N' Out Of Grace" Superfuzz Bigmuff 12" ep (Sub Pop - 1988)
• FUGAZI "Give Me The Cure" Fugazi 12" ep (Dischord - 1988)
• WHIRLYWIRLD "Moto" (1979) Complete Studio Works lp (Missing Link, Australia - 1986)
• the SHRUBS "Serial Revelry" Take Me Aside For a Midnight Harangue lp (Ron Johnson, UK - 1987)
• HOAGY CARMICHAEL "Serenade To Gabriel" (1957) The Classic Hoagy Carmichael: The Indiana Historical Society and The Smithsonian Collection of Recordings [box](Smithsonian Institute - 1988
• HALO OF FLIES "Easy Or Hard" Headburn 12" ep (Twin Tone - 1988)
• COSMIC PSYCHOS "Down On The Farm" Down On The Farm 12" ep (Mr. Spaceman, Australia -1985)
• the SHAGGS "Sweet Thing" (1969) Philosophy Of The World lp (Red Rooster/Rounder - 1980)
• IDIOT (the) "Knock Yourself" IDIOT (the)/VOMIT LAUNCH Knock Yourself  7" (Rat Box - 1987)
• BIRD NEST ROYS "Alien" Bird Nest Roys lp (Flying Nun, NZ - 1987)
• the EX "Carcass" Aural Gorilla lp (Homestead - 1988)
• STEVE LACY TRIO (w/ JEAN-JACQUES AVENEL and OLIVER JOHNSON) "Flakes" [in two parts, with lousy editing] The Window lp (Soul Note, Italy - 1988)
• GUM/CHROME mashup
• GUM "Fear" Gum lp [ANDREW CURTIS & PHILIP SAMARTZIS](no label, Australia - 1987)
• CHROME "Mondo Anthem" Half Machine Lip Moves lp (Siren - 1979)
• JUDAS BULLETHEAD "Love Is A Tank Of Gas" If They Itch...Scratch 'Em!" 7" ep (Death Train Music - 1988)
• the WIPERS "Time Marches On" The Circle lp (Restless - 1988)
• SEMINAL RATS "Tunnel Vision" Hot Snapper Pie 12" ep (Mr. Spaceman, Australia - 1988)
• ELEVENTH DREAM DAY "Driving Song" Prairie School Freakout lp (Amoeba - 1988)
• NIGHTS & DAYS/THEM as one mp3
• the NIGHTS & DAYS "It Goes Without Saying" Garbage Can + 2 7" (Regal Select - 1988)
• THEM "Something You Got" (1967) Them featuring Van Morrison, Lead Singer 2 lp (Parrot - 1972)
• THEE MIGHTY CAESARS "You Make Me Die"  Thusly, Thee Mighty Caesars lp (Crypt - 1988)
• BASTARDS "Who Cares?" "Who Cares"/"Shit For Brains" 7" (Treehouse - 1988)
• PUSSY GALORE "Adolescent Wet Dream" Sugarshit Sharp 12" ep (Caroline - 1988)
• SISTER RAY "Feel Like This" 7" (SAD 1988) 
• KIP TYLER & HIS FLIPS "Jungle Hop" (1958) Born  Bad, Volume 3 comp lp  (Born Bad, France - 1988)
• DEATH OF SAMANTHA "Staring At It Now" Where The Women Wear The Glory And The Men Wear The Pants lp (Homestead - 1988)
• the CELIBATE RIFLES "Eddie" 7" (Hot, Australia - 1986)
• RAT AT RAT R "No Ears" (edit) Ameri$ide/Rock & Roll Is Dead Long Live Rat At Rat R lp (Neutral - 1985)
    

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.

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

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."

• J.C. Satàn @ St Ex Bordeaux 10/2/2010...Sufjan Chen a la deuxieme camera merci
• Slovenly records in Reno, Nevada
• There's a brand new J.C. Satàn for 2011, wouldn't ya' know? 

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 19^th 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."

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 20^th 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)

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?