ATTACK OF THE KILLER FILLER

 WILD! RAW! UNINHIBITED!

These savage young rock'n'roll instrumentals live for 'kicks'! And beware the 'square' who stands in their way!


In the 1950s and 1960s, countless records were cranked out by the "budget labels," whose releases were essentially the music industry equivalent of cheapie exploitation films. Like those groovy movies, screened at drive-ins and grindhouses away from respectable cinemas, budget records were usually not found in record stores, but in the racks of places like drugstores. They were impulse buys, sold for a dollar, at a time when proper albums went for $3-4. And like z-movie producers, budget labels used all manner of deceptive, eye-grabbing visuals to lure suckers, er, I mean customers into buying their often inferior products. Case in point: an album called "Bye Bye Birdie" with an album cover (pictured right) presumably depicting a scene from the musical film of the same name. This album features a grand total of ONE (1) song from the film (and a remake at that). Also featured here are albums by popular folk/pop star Trini Lopez, and jazz-man Buddy Tate, both featured only on side one.

So who was performing on the rest of these albums? Who knows? It is safe to say that there never were any actual bands with names like the Exotic Guitars or the Rock and Rollers Orchestra. Budget labels would acquire tapes, sometimes thru rather dubious means, and release them under a variety of phony artist names and song titles. It may seem hard to believe now, but in the '50s/early '60s such now well-regarded styles as blues, r'n'b, and rock'n'roll were, for the most part, not considered mainstream. So these tapes could be had for cheap.

It's unfortunate that we'll probably never know who performed this music, since it's quite good. The Exotic Guitars sound like session cats doing their impression of surf rock, and the Rhythm Rockers might be sessioneers, too. But I would imagine that the Rock and Rollers Orchestra was a black rhythm-and-blues nightclub band - they blow like crazy, dad. Music scientifically designed to rock a party  to da break-a-dawn. The band probably never made a penny from these recordings.

Of course, there's lots of uninteresting filler out there, too. And we're lucky with today's selections so far as sound quality is concerned, since budget labels like Crown were notorious for using the worst quality vinyl, and these sides sound pretty good. Both the Bella St Clair and the R'n'R Orch records start off fairly low key before getting increasingly crazed, so perhaps there was some actual thinking going into the sequencing at least. Those albums cover, tho...oy. That Buddy Tate one's a beauty, eh?


KILLER FILLER
(All tracks sourced from 99 cent vinyl)
Exotic Guitars:
1. Walkin Around [essentially a rock rip-off of Ray Barretto's "El Watusi," which was a great song, so fine by me.]
2. Time of My Life
3. Goin Home
4. Susan
5. Beach Party

Bella St Clair and the Rhythm Rockers:
A1 Rock A Bye [continuing in the surf-y vein]
A2 Rocking Guitar
A3 Tribute To Birdie [now it's starting to get wild, w/some screamin' sax]
A4 Rolling Theme [superb rockabilly - frantic, man, frantic!]
B1 Rolling With The Punch
B2 Teen Frenzy
B3 Jamboree
B4 Final Farewell
B5 Phone Fancy

The Rock and Rollers Orchestra:
1 - Let's Rock and Roll
2 - Romp And Stomp
3 - Long N Lean
4 - The Screwdriver No 1
5 - Cool Fool [the screwdrivers must be kicking in, cuz this song is nuts]
6 - Soda Bob [a bump-n-grinder for you burlesque dancers]

4 Albums from Pat Smear: The Lost Years

I had a dream the other night that Elvis Presley was fronting a young, collegiate alt-rock trio called The Masters Of Logic. Elvis, in a white jumpsuit, appeared to be in his '70s Vegas era, and despite the lack of the expected brassy big band, he appeared to be acquitting himself quite nicely with this aggressive guitar/bass/drums lineup. Unfortunately, I can't recall exactly what the music was like.

Even more surreal: the fact that a Grammy was recently awarded to a man formerly of a punk group originally called Sophistifuck and the Revlon Spam Queens, who had food regularly thrown at them by audience members, and would throw up on stage.

Good gawd awmighty, PAT SMEAR won a Grammy.

Smear was in The Germs, perhaps the first true hardcore punk band and certainly one of the most notorious, and I guarantee that no one in the late ‘70s thought that this guy was headed for anything other than jail or a mental hospital. Allow me to cut-and-paste:

“The band started when Jan Paul Beahm and Georg Ruthenberg decided they should start a band after being kicked out of University High for antisocial behaviour, allegedly for using ‘mind control’ on fellow students. They named themselves “Sophistifuck & The Revlon Spam Queens,” with Beahm (then ‘Bobby Pyn,’ and later Darby Crash) on vocals, Ruthenberg (then and later called Pat Smear) on guitar… the Germs began as an objectively pathetic musical outfit. The first single…arrived back from the pressing plant with the note, “Warning: This record causes ear cancer” printed on the sleeve by the plant staff, much to the band’s displeasure. They were supposed to appear in the Cheech And Chong movie, Up In Smoke but were not invited back mostly due to the fact that The Germs’ anarchic performance included a full-on food fight.... Singer Darby Crash often arrived onstage nearly incoherent from drugs, singing everywhere but into the microphone and taunting the audience between songs. The other band members had similar problems, with many contemporary reviews citing collapses, incoherency, and drunken vomiting onstage."

Darby did in fact O.D.  Smear spent the next decade/plus hanging around the L.A. scene until fate came a-calling, and he joined another band with a lead singer who killed himself, Nirvana. (If I was singing in a band with Pat Smear, I would be very, very nervous.) Nirvana led to the Foo Fighters, who somehow ended up recording with Sir Paul McCartney last year, who all won a Grammy. Forget the Grateful Dead, this was a long, strange trip.

Smear's a great guitarist, and his contributions to the Germs, and punk legend, are inestimable, but as I recall, after the disintegration of the Germs and his subsequent sometimes-excellent band Twisted Roots (whose stuff is in print) in the early '80s, and before his early-'90s Nirvana/MTV stardom, Smear was considered kind of a has-been, wandering thru the L.A. club scene a decidedly minor player. Even recording for the "It" label of college radio, SST Records, didn't help. I rarely recall his albums getting reviewed, airplay, or any kind of buzz.  I knew a grand total of one (1) person who bought one of his albums, and that was just because, y'know, he was the guy from the Germs.  I don't remember actually hearing the album.

 
And now Pat's playing with, of all people, a Beatle.  And not Ringo!  A knighted Beatle. And he's winning Grammys. Does the Academy know that they just gave a trophy to a key figure in a scene that was (allegedly) opposed to everything the music industry stood for?  Oops, heads will role!  Or not - if a Beatle says it's okay, then it must be okay. I wonder how many music biz weasels will now claim that they loved punk all along. "Marvelous stuff the young people were doing." 

And so Mr. Smear, we salute you, and your half-assed albums. Albums that, to their credit, often fit no known genre, and are almost punk-free. Albums that have never seen digital release (tho maybe they will now). 
At least he doesn't sound like he's taking himself too seriously on these four obscurities.

Pat Ruthensmear "Ruthensmear" (1988) - Amateur glam w/synths, drum machines, Smear's guitar (work that wah-wah!) and strangled vox; an odd, almost random eclecticism. "Golden Boys" is the completion of an unfinished Germs song.

The Death Folk "Deathfolk" (1990) - Acoustic duo with Gary Jacoby from the band Celebrity Skin, but hardly "folk" music; covers Queens' "'39."

Pat Smear "So You Fell In Love With A Musician..." (1992) Sounds properly grunge - his audition for Nirvana? - but hints of glam still pop thru. As usual, he sounds like he's having fun, uttering lyrics like "Wicked witch, your titties drip red lava 3-D fantasies." 

The Death Folk "Deathfolk II" (1992) - No longer acoustic, but grungy glammy pop-rock. This former punk minimalist is not afraid to guitar-wank as much as any arena-rocker. "Medely" honestly isn't that far removed from Styx' "Come Sail Away." Covers The Go-Gos' "Automatic."

Do Other Music Bloggers Get This Kind Of Mail?

"Hello:

Guinness World Record holder (for woman with the longest fingernails), The Dutchess, is breaking into the music industry. The multi-talented phenomenon has recently announced the debut of her rock single, “Phoenix" The song was released on YouTube earlier this summer and created a buzz..."

So sayeth her publicist. Which is why I couldn't go into publicity. The Python-esque results would have been something like:

The Dutchess: I want to be a singer.

Publicist: Okay. And what are your qualifications?

The Dutchess: I have the world's longest fingernails.

Publicist: I see...You know, if a record company is looking for singers, I doubt that the first thing they'll ask is, 'Does she have long fingernails?'

Her useless song features Miss ScaryNails' r'n'b vocal stylings over rock guitar. The video (which I bailed out on half-way thru) had me wondering: how does she do anything with those nails? It would be more interesting if they showed her going about her day, getting dressed, etc. Maybe I shoulda watched the whole video...

IDIOTS

*sigh*

Got this email this morning, re: CCC's "Cracked Pepper" mashup album that I posted last week:

Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright

Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the

copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to "draft" status.

(If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement,

regardless of its merits...You may edit the post to remove the offending content

and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers

again.  



Blah blah blah, etc. etc.  As I wrote in my original post: You're not gonna find too many mashup albums better than

this 2007 release by the UK's CCC (aka   Chris Shaw) and his helper-pal Ill Chemist.  Don't know Mr. Chemist,   but

CCC is a true mash-master.  This release is a follow-up to his   tackling the entire "Revolver" album, and is worth a

listen even for   those (like me) who are long tired of hearing any more from those   mop-tops from Liverpool.

On a technical level, it's well produced,   on-time and in-key even as some tracks juggle as many as 10 songs in

one   track.  More importantly, imaginative touches abound: how did I never   notice that Lennon swiped the

melody of "For The Benefit For Mr. Kite"   from his earlier "It's Only Love"?  Well spotted, sirs.



Weirdly enough, before his mashup career, CCC started the Monkeyman superhero hoax. 



And if you want the album (I'M NOT HOSTING IT, NEVER DID) it's easy enough to just search for "mediafire" + "ccc

ill chemist cracked pepper," so I don't know what all this nonsense accomplishes.  Sorry, all of your original

comments are gone. 

ALL RIGHTS REVERSED

The new Evolution Control Committee album, "All Rights Reserved," is a masterwork of hilarious sound collage and mashups, utilizing strange thrift-store records, ranting preachers, outsider music recordings, pop hits and boomin' beatz. Buy it, if you can find it. But whatever you do, do NOT listen to it:

"The lawyers had concerns," ECC's TradeMark Gunderson explains. ..."We thought the best solution would be a legal agreement that forbids anyone -- everyone -- from listening. Period."

(Don't listen to it HERE.)

'What Would You Think If I Sang AutoTune' = hilarious misuse of technology. 'Don't Let The Devil Blow Your Mind' kicks butt like prime Fatboy Slim or Chemical Brothers. 'Stairway to Britney' reminds you that ECC practically invented the mashup. 'Listener License Agreement Reminder' = even more hilariouser. 'California Dreamings' stitches a new version of a certain Mamas and Papas hit out of what must be every version of that oldie ever recorded - a helluva lot of work. The sampled voice of Luie Luie pops up, as does J & H Productions (already sampled by RIAA a few years ago!) And so on. Fun, fun stuff.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

From this article in the LA Times: "I spent an entire career at the major labels," [Larry] Jenkins [head of CBS Records] said, "and I learned a lot of what to do -- and a lot of what to avoid. I thought, 'What if we went into this where we'll only sign artists who are really talented?"