SWIPING SWOPE

Whilst listening to another fine episode of The Bopst Show, I was struck by a song called "Baby" from The Phenomenal Handclap Band. They sounded like a '70s group, but it turns out that they are a new soul revival band from New York. It was the ending part of the song that stopped me in my tracks: "Hey, that's 'Swopepusha'!"

"Swopepusha" is an almost-decade old track from Poopoo Varmint, a side project of mashup pioneer Evolution Control Committee. After downloading it back in the earliest days of such activities, I played it constantly. Still do, in fact. I couldn't get enough of what sounded like a brilliantly catchy melodic bit of '60s E-Z kitsch obliterated by a blizzard of pummeling electronic beats. That catchy melodic bit? You guessed - the same tune at the end of "Baby." Coincidence? Did the Handclap Band steal it from Poopoo Varmint? But where did they get it from..?

TradeMark G., the president of the Committe, informed me that they sampled it from "...Putney Swope, an awesome 1969 movie is it. It appears the soundtrack music is by Charley Cuva, and although a soundtrack album was not released at the time of the movie, an after-the-fact soundtrack was made later (and the LP of that would make a great birthday present for me... ahem). The music's from a commercial in the movie for Go Lucky Airlines; that soundtrack webpage includes a 45-second preview of the music that ECC sampled."

Our chats on this subject led Mark to go back and remix "Swopepusha." It possibly kicks even more butt then the original, but you can get both old and new versions HERE, as well as all the juicy details abut the song and Poopoo Varmint's brief history. But I'm just gonna post the new version, with the Handclap Band song, for your comparing and contrasting pleasure. (Remember, it's the end part of "Baby" we're talking about.)

The ECC/Poopoo Varmint "Swopepusha (2009)"

The Phenomenal Handclap Band "Baby"

So, did the Handclappers swipe the tune from the "Putney Swope" soundtrack? Or maybe they are ECC fans, or maybe it's a big coincidence. Or maybe the "Putney Swope" soundtrack guy got in a time machine and stole it from the Handclap Band. Or...

Oh, and in "Swopepusha," "by the way, that's Mae West moaning in the background."
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Music for an Underground Circus

Cutting-edge composers started off the century playing with classical music traditions, then moved to electric rock sounds and electronics. But recently I've noticed (am I the only one?) how many experimentalists are drawing inspiration from years/centuries gone by, writing things like sad accordion waltzes.

Chris Butler is an unlikely pioneer of the antique-garde movement. Veteran of wacky '70s proggies Tin Huey and superstar new-wavers The Waitresses, Butler recorded a series of singles in the '90s compiled on a fine 2002 collection called "The Museum Of Me" that featured original songs recorded with everything from primitive technologies such as Edison wax cylinders and '40s era wire recorders to modern methods. He's still an alt-rock 'n' roller at heart tho, filling his songs with the kind of biting observational lyrics that made Waitresses hits like "I Know What Boys Like" so memorable.

Chris Butler "The Man In The Razor Suit" - totally killer twisted intense kinda-sorta-Delta blues, recorded onto wire; in a perfect world, this song would be as big as "Christmas Wrapping"

Chris Butler: "Thinking About Them Girls" - fun, catchy tune with Butler's voice and 12-string guitar recorded onto a wax cylinder, other musicians on jug (!), banjo, slide whistle, kazoo and spoons recorded with modern technology; as disorienting as watching, say, old footage of Buster Keaton trading lines with modern actors in a current film.

The non-antique garde songs are cool too - I like the Beach Boys-ish summer tune, and the spooky surf instro amusingly entitled "Bad Moon Over Mel Bay."

The handsomely packaged album comes with a booklet featuring photos of the tools used, and more technical information then a '50s hi-fi album, as well as 10 bonus tracks not listed on Amazon that feature the songs in various stages of construction, as well as "talking bits from a used spool of wire. I found it at a flea market. I think it dates from the Korean War era, when a NE Ohio family sat down at a kitchen table to play cards on a Saturday night..." He says he'll make a cassette tape of the entire recording for you if you write to him. Don't know if that offer still stands.

"they marry young down there"

I recently wrote about Ergo Phizmiz' amusing demolition of '90s club hits, but the astonishingly prolific British nutter has been posting plenty more free sounds, including an album described as "Instrumental music from the forthcoming 10 part Ergo Phizmiz radio-art cycle "The House of Dr Faustus." Instruments include "Harmonium, Toy Piano, Melodica, Balinese Xylophone, Messiah Box (huh?), Ukulele, Euphonium, Bagpipes, Didgeridoo, Desk Bell, Mechanical Birds, Pixiphone (wha?), Tibetan Flute, Kazoo, Autoharp" and about a zillion others.

For me, this haunting song is not only the album's standout track, but, as experimental sad accordion waltzes go, one of the best.

Ergo Phizmiz - Music for an Underground Circus

The band Piñataland are responsible for the phrase "antique-garde" actually - a Village Voice review of this intriguing New York combo described them thusly. Their debut from a few years back, "Songs For The Forgotten Future Vol. 1" mixes samples of early recordings with original songs performed on tuba (no bass!), strings, slide guitar that suggests country music without actually being country music, and, on this song, theremin:

Piñataland "Devil's Airship"

The lyrics are true stories about overlooked oddities of American history - the above song deals with the "phantom airship" scare of the late 1800s. The song sampled in the intro is a 1912 Edison cylinder called "Mysterious Moon."

They released "Vol. 2" more recently, which I haven't checked out yet. But this one's another well-packaged product: photos, historical news-clippings, sample info, lyrics. And, yes, the album features sad accordion waltzes.

OUTSIDE AFRICA

Staff Benda Bilili are a truly remarkable find - their debut album is possibly both the African and outsider music release of the year. Qualifications:

Outsider: this large group is comprised of homeless street kids and handicapped adults who live in a park. They not only feature homemade instruments, particularly a buzzy one-string invention made from wire and a tin can played brilliantly by one of the youngsters, but the disabled guys make their own wheelchairs out of bicycle tires and plastic lawn furniture. Their album was recorded live in the park using power bootlegged from a snack stand's electrical lines.

African: The Congo produced a seemingly endless parade of sound-alike soukous bands throughout the '80s and '90s. No predictable Kinsasha cliches from Staff Benda Bilili - they're all over the map, literally, from Cuban rhumba (long a Congolese influence) to American James Brown-type funk (one song finds them shouting "sex machine!") to the Carribean, e.g.: the highly energetic calypso/ska-inflected insta-classic posted here. But the junk instruments give everything a slightly alien sound, ensuring originality.

Unlike a lot of so-called "dance music," listening to this stuff make my legs uncontrollably twitch like a spastic (which, yes, sadly passes for dancing for me).

Staff Benda Bilili - Sala Mosala

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The Sound of Wonder!

India's madcap Bollywood filmi songs have become pretty familiar to Western ears lately, but India's neighbor to the north, Pakistan, apparently had their own musicals-obsessed film industry. The thoroughly delightful new comp The Sound of Wonder! highlights this weird world of '70s Moog/ lounge/cheesy/sleazy/disco.

These songs are similiar to Bollywood fare, but without the ubiquitous female voices of Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle, who seem to do every single filmi female vocal part. I didn't realize how integral those two were to Bollywood's sound until I heard this collection - I kept waiting for those high-pitched voices to come in. Instead we get a suave male singing about playboys, an apologetic female mournfully telling some fella "I am vedy sorryyyyy," and this twangy guitar/ accordian/ scat-singing nutty nugget. The funniest part is when the flatulant Moog comes in.

Tafo (feat. Nahid Akhtar) - Karya Pyar

Listen to those Amazon sound samples. See? Am I lying?!
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"Denizens of the Deep" - Ferrante & Teicher

Art Ferrante of Ferrante & Teicher just died at age 88, following the death of his musical partner last year. And so ends the lives of one of the very first avant-pop bands. Decades before The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, Brian Eno, et.al. fused pop music with experimentation, the two pianists were crossing the aisle. The academic avant-garde was way over on this side, and the mainstream popsters were all the way on that side - two groups that scarcely knew the other existed.

But in 1950 Ferrante & Teicher went into a New York studio to start recording this album, playing short catchy piano instrumentals with whimsical titles that unlike, say, Lawrence Welk or Montavani, also used all manner of Space-Age studio effects, and a John Cage-like "prepared piano" technique, inserting objects within the piano strings to produce unusual sounds, tho they claim that they came up with the idea on their own.

They abandoned that session, but went on to record similiar albums in the '50s like "Soundproof," "Blast Off!" (courtesy of Mutant Sounds) and "Hi-Fireworks" (courtesy of Music You (Possible) Won't Hear Anyplace Else.) By the '60s they had largely dropped the weird stuff in favor of a hugely lucrative EZ career, but a half-century later they rediscovered the tapes of the 1950 sessions and finished the album you now hold in your hands (as they used to say in the days of record liner notes).

It's moody (dare I say 'ambient'?) stuff. At a mere 27 minutes long it hardly wears out it's welcome. Track 11, "The Loch Ness Monster Stomp," is a particular fave - an alternate-universe '50s sock hop classic.

Ferrante & Teicher "Denizens of the Deep"

1. Underwater Expectations
2. Things to Come at Sea
3. Whiptailed Stingrays
4. Barracudas on the Chase
5. Spinning Steelheads
6. Floating Manatees
7. Plunging Sharks & Diving Swordfish
8. Crafty Bowfin
9. At Sea Watching Voracious Piranha
10. Searching the Seas
11. Loch Ness Monster Stomp
12. Electric Eels
13. Treacherous Octopi & Devilfish
14. Manatees & Dolphins
15. Sneaky Spiny Sturgeons
16. Ink of the Giant Squids
17. Underwater Reflections
18. A Whale of an Aquarian Finale at Sea

"HERE'S A PICTURE FROM CORONER AND KNIVES..."

Al Duvall is a contemporary New Yorker with the soul of an old time American snake-oil salesmen, a P.T. Barnum of bad puns, black humor and banjo pickin'. He's the Tom Lehrer of bluegrass, cheerfully singing surreal lyrics unpredictably capable of eliciting gasps of astonished laughter.

His thoroughly entertaining album "Coroner and Knives" came out a few years back and it's contents range from almost-punk energy levels (tho all instrumentation is acoustic) to bluesy dirges:

Al Duvall "William Knave"
Al Duvall "Croaching in the Thicket"

This comes to us courtesy of dualPlover records from Australia (famed for M4M fave Singing Sadie), a label run by a guy who crushes his face into a bloody mess with glass outfitted with contact mics. Good news! The Free Music Archive has some of Duvall's tuneage available. I especially like "Where The Comet Falls" from his "Recluses Unite" album.
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AS MEDICAL AS HE WANTS TO BE

New York's Dr John Clarke put down his stethoscope and picked up a mic, spitting rhymes about how to protect yourself from the swine flu virus. It's "edu-tainment"! I recorded the music off of the video.

Dr. Clarke - H1N1 Rap

Looks like he's been at this for a while. This tune's even better:

Dr. Clarke - The Rules (Diabetes) AUDIO
Dr. Clarke - The Rules (Diabetes) VIDEO

Dang dawg, look at all these albums he's dropped! (Well, they're EPs, mostly.) The video tracks are just one minute long public service announcements, but the album's have the full-length versions. I'll be ordering some of those. Something tells me we haven't seen the last of the "Physician Musician" 'round these pages...
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IN A TIPSY MOOG

Two retro-techno acts have new albums out. Well, the Thelonious Moog album is new, Tipsy's latest came out last year, but I just got it, so, hey, it's new to me.

Thelonious Moog's debut was, as you might expect, jazz cats playing Mr. Monk on vintage synths. Their follow-up, "American Standard," ditches the music of their namesake for an unpredictable, irreverent romp ranging from heavy cats like Gershwin, Brubeck, & Zappa, to the EZ kitsch of those thrift-store inevitables "Alley Cat" and Al Hirt's "Java," all getting the same zany Space-Age treatment. Duke Ellington's exotica standard "Caravan" goes surf-rock (+ odd noises) and one of my fave kooky '70s glam classics, "Hocus Pocus" by Focus, gets tackled here twice. All quite silly, but played by pros, and plenty fun.

Raymond Scotts' "Powerhouse" gets the full-on wacky cartoon sound-effects treatment:

Thelonious Moog: "Powerhouse"

Tipsy made two albums in the '90s that were very well received by the Cocktail Nation for their "liquor-delic" sound: sampling snippets of '50s records and drenching them in echo and disorienting production. After spending much of this decade in commercial music production, they have finally dropped their third album "Buzzz." It still has their trademark dreamy late-night weird feel to it, but I don't think that they're using much sampling this time out. Rather, they are making original music that sounds like it's been sampled, if that makes any sense. Except for some wispy female Japanese vox, it is, like the T.Moog album, all instrumental.

This tune sounds like reggae dub from a Sid & Marty Krofft show:

Tipsy: Chop Socky

And San Francisco's theremin-driven lounge combo Project: Pimento released their thoroughly non-new second album "Space Age Love Songs" well over two years ago. I actually do not have a copy of it yet - all I can do is lamely link to a track off of it. But I mean well.

Project: Pimento: You Only Live Twice - killer version of a James Bond theme originally done by Nancy Sinatra.

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THE SOUND OF EVIL

"Phillip Garrido who is accused with his wife Nancy of kidnapping and raping Jaycee Lee Dugard and holding her captive for 18 years in their backyard, gave two disturbing CDs to Marc Lister in 2006, according to his local newspaper.

Mr Lister, who was a client of Garrido's printing business, initially put the music away unplayed...But he has now listened to the collection of suggestive rock songs and trippy synthetic ballads apparently written by Garrido - and has discovered repeated clues to his warped sexual tastes. " So says this report, which analyzes some of the lyrics.

I found a 20 minute audio clip of Garrido's music lurking on the website of Northern California station CBS5 which I then recorded, and chopped into 4 smaller sound clips. Whoever posted this didn't include the entirety of each song, just a minute or two of each. Which is plenty, believe me.

So what does the music of a crazed religious-fanatic pedophile kidnapper who fathered two children from his victim sound like? Lightweight rock that occasionally suggests the likes of Chicago or Foreigner - and those are the best songs. A crappy demo, like countless others from not-too-talented would-be rock stars. Actually, the bouncy bubblegum that begins the second segment threatens to be a fun tune until the unappealing vocals kick in.

And that's what evil sounds like. Nothing like death-metal or gangsta rap. Just a bunch of routine Dad-rock. The songs aren't even religious, as I was expecting. Sure, the lyrics declaring his love of some "little girl" are now creepy in context, but I didn't hear anything explicitly depraved in them. If it was anyone else singing, no-one would raise an eyebrow, any more then when the Beatles (or Stooges) sang about their "little girl." Apart from some lyrics referring to his time in jail for a previous offense, there's nothing remotely dark or menacing here. They're love songs. The truly evil don't think that they're evil. He thinks he's full of love and the Holy Spirit. And Charles Manson wrote mellow folk songs, and John Wayne Gacy painted pictures of clowns.

Phillip Garrido1
Phillip Garrido2
Phillip Garrido3
Phillip Garrido4
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WESTERN SOUNDSCAPE ARCHIVE

westernsoundscape.org/

The University of Utah has this insane idea to record all non-human areas of the American West. There are hundreds of wildlife/ambient recordings up so far. Read all about it.

Right now I'm in the Alaskan Arctic tundra (Brrrr!). At least, for 11 minutes. Some of the ambient soundscapes last for over an hour. It makes for addictive listening, and from both a scientific and aesthetic viewpoint, it's absolutely crucial.

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge-Beaufort Lagoon-Tundra (060605-81)

The recordings can be detailed, but you gotta pump up the volume - the levels are pretty low.

All this Arctic stuff reminds me of Tanya Tagaq. She's an Inuit (Are they Eskimos? Or are they not called Eskimos anymore?) from far northern Canada who makes singing/grunting/beat-boxing a capella music that ranges from scary death-metal growls to orgasmic moans, sometimes coming off like Bjork choking on a whale sandwich, electronically looped into rhythmic dementia. It's supposedly based on traditional folkloric styles, but with artsy folks like Mike Patton and the Kronos Quartet guesting on her albums, I'd say she's sled-dogging off into fairly uncharted territory. In any case, it is some deeply weird stuff, even for this blog.

Tanya Tagaq - Qimiruluapik

Her most recent album has the string quartet backing, but I prefer the stark (mostly) voice-only sound of her debut. And it goes well mixed with the Arctic ambience I posted above.
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STRANGE INTERLUDES

Strange music for strange weather: As you may have heard, out-of-control fires have made it positively Satanic here in L.A. (well, more Satanic then usual): hot, a brown haze in the air, an acrid smell, and a blood-red sun, at least where I live in the Valley where I can see the flames from my house. It reminded me of a mix tape I made in the '90s that I've set about for the last few nights re-compiling called "Strange Interludes." Not exactly noir or Halloween musics, these were mostly '40s-'60s early jazz, EZ, and Space-Age pop songs with a weird, moody feel. The tracks were mostly plucked from otherwise-normal albums, like there might be a collection of soundtracks hits with one theremin tune on it, or an organ collection of pop standards with a dark exotica track thrown in between the Beatles and the Bacharach covers.

My tape was inspired by an early '60s album recorded by Lew Davies & his Orchestra for Command Records called "Strange Interlude," which you can get HERE. I loved it. Unlike your usual Command stereo hi-fi upbeat gimmickry, it was low-key, creepy, with songs like "The Witching Hour," "Old Devil Moon" and "In A Mist".

Using my old cassette as a guide, I re-recorded the songs from my thrift-store vinyl. But a number of these tracks have since been re-issued on CD so I've tried to include as many good digital copies of these songs as I could. I've also added some songs that I've discovered since I made the tape, as well.

Apart from the afore-mentioned theremins, there's also harmonicas, Phantom-Of-The-Opera pipe organs, sound effects, ondiolines (an early electronic keyboard), a capella vocal groups, and plenty of percussion (e.g.: tuned bongo drums) mixed with the usual '50s EZ lush orchestrations.

Strange Interludes

1) Johnny Kemm "Taboo" - Man, I loved this track so much, I've scoured the net looking for any info; all I've found was that he was a popular organist from Joplin, Missouri who, according to this newspaper archive (scroll down) died a bizarre death, and had "been employed as an organist by the Missouri State Hospital for the Criminally Insane"! Huh? Any Maniacs live in the area who can do some research on this guy?
2) Marty Gold And His Orchestra "High On A Windy Hill"
3) Duke Ellington "The Mooch" (Buy it!)
4) Dick Hyman "Stompin' At The Savoy"
5) John Buzon Trio "Mister Ghost Goes to Town"
6) The Four Freshmen - "Crazy Bones" (Buy it! tho this is taken from my vinyl)
7) Phil Kraus "Buffoon" (Hey, entire album posted here! I agree with Mr Purse - this is one of the best songs on it)
8) Georges Montalba "Anitra's Dance" (never expected this obscure pipe organ record to be not only in print but a collector's item for being mistaken as an Anton "Church of Satan" Levey album)
9) David Carroll - "Hell's Bells"
10) Billy May & Samuel Hoffman "I Dream Of a Past Love" (Buy it!)
11) David Rose - "City of Sleeping Dreams"
12) Dick Schory & The Percussive Art Enemble "Cloud 9" (at 1:50 or so, doesn't this sound like Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express"?)
13) Enoch Light and the Light Brigade, arranged by Lew Davies "Bidin' My Time"
14) George Gould - "Dark Eyes"
15) The 3 Suns "Autumn Leaves"
16) Eartha Kitt - "I'd Rather Be Burned As A Witch" (Buy it!)
17) George Shearing - "Bewitched"
18) Lionel Hampton - "Blue Moon" (Buy it!)
19) Creed Taylor Orchestra "Monster Meet"
20) The Mulcays - "Kiss Me Again"
21) Carl Stalling "Skeleton Dance" (audio recorded from a cartoon)
22) Leroy Holmes & His Orch - "Spellbound"

I'M JUST CHILLIN'/LIKE BOB DYLAN

Was there ever a more bizarre musical moment then Bob Dylan's appearance - rapping - on hip-hop pioneer Kurtis Blow's 1986 album "Kingdom Blow"? I can't think of a more unlikely cameo off the top of my head, especially since Dylan rarely collaborates. True, hard-core punks The Circle Jerks did a tune with Debbie Gibson, but that was a bit of a joke, obviously.

Kurtis Blow: "Street Rock"
All weirdness aside, "Street Rock" is good bit of Run-DMC-esque crunchy guitar/beatbox rap.

Wouldn't it have been amazing if Dylan had appeared on these goofy, '80s pre-gangsta jams:

Kurtis Blow: Super Sperm
Kurtis Blow: Magilla The Gorilla

Look at that picture. No, it's not a war zone. It's part of New York City, one of the richest areas in the world, in the 1970s. The fact that such unwanted, ignored human beings were not only able to live in such wretched conditions, but were able to create a culture that took over the world - hip-hop - was one of the great inspirational moments of the '80s. Watching new forms of dance, music, and visual art arise from this rubble certainly thrilled me.

So I'm pretty psyched about the upcoming Old School Jams Live show at the Greek Theatre in here in LA this Sept. 13. I mean, peep this lineup: Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Melle Mel & The Furious Five, Egyptian Lover, Afrika Bambatta's SoulSonic Force. Vocoders! Tracksuits! Jehri Curls! (Lisa Lisa, Ready For The World, and Klymaxx's r'n'b, and Peanut Butter Wolf showing back-in-the-day videos are also on the bill.)

There's been a lot of remixes and mashups of Grandmaster Flash's "The Message," but I love this mixture with a Medeski, Martin and Wood instrumental that sloooows down, then speedsuprealfast, the vocals always on time. Amazing.

Gordyboy: "Bubblehouse Message"

I recently wrote about Uncle Jamm's Army, LA's first hip-hop crew on record, and since I see that Egyptian Lover will be in the house, that gives me an excuse to post one of my all-time fave old-school joints since he was associated with the Army. This 12" single has one of the most greatest window-rattling, knock-plaster-from-the-ceiling beatz ever, coupled with funny kitschy vocoder vocals. Recorded off my vinyl; can't believe these guys have never appeared on CD.

Uncle Jamm's Army "What's Your Sign (Of The Zodiac Baby Doll)?"

Yes yes, y'all, it's like that, y'all...

The Boston Typewriter Orchestra

Does what it says on the tin: polyrhythmic percussion music with no other instruments, almost no singing, music tracks interspersed with intentionally banal office chatter ("How was your weekend?") for "Office Space"-like satirical effect. They even redact the Surfari's "Wipe Out" into "Whiteout." Funny, but with compelling rhythms.

Non-musical objects turned into musical instruments is a fascinating phenomenon. This got me thinking: when was the last time I used a typewriter? Does anyone (besides 80-year-olds?) Which makes this another fine example of artists recycling industrial society's waste.

Boston Typewriter Orchestra - "Pyramid Scheme"

MILES DAVIS AND WEEZER PLAYING VIDEO GAMES

Amidst all the hubbub over the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis' jazz classic "Kind of Blue" comes "Kind of Bloop," a brand new (just dropped last week) utterly unlikely song-for-song tribute performed only on primitive video game technology - Gameboys, Nintendos and the like. I've always enjoyed 8-bit music's rinky-dink charms, but as funny as this album can be (if you're familiar with the original), it's also amazing. These cats are blowin' mad jazz. The shimmering "Blue in Green," in particular, is a kind of dreamy '50s Space Age ballad, like what the wedding chapel on Forbidden Planet would be playing. 8-bit is, finally, real music, folks. Maybe it always was.

Ast0r - So What

This comes on the heels of an 8-bit tribute to Weezer, a band I know little about. The only song I recognized was "Buddy Holly," and I think that's probably because of the Moog Cookbooks' cover of it. Regardless, it's great stuff. Warning: 8-bit purists may be put off by vocals on some songs, and at least one track has a hard rock band arrangement that isn't cheesy at all.

Pterodactyl Squad: You Won't Get With Me Tonight
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thanks to solcofn!

THE NEW OLD

I didn't invent the term "antique-garde," but I sure use it a lot lately to describe some of the best new experimental sounds out there. And by "new" I mean "old": inspired by obsolete, forgotten styles and instruments. Case in point: a combo led by veteran Detroit oddball Frank Pahl called the Scavenger Quartet. Pahl plays on such junkshop refugees as the Farfisa organ, banjo, ukulele, euphonium, zither, toys (piano, popcorn maker), and occasionally resorts to digital technology so that he can sample that old circus music maker, the calliope. And doorbells. Yes, doorbells. They're honestly quite mellifluous in Pahl's hands. His fellow band members add horns, reeds, guitar, and all manner of percussion. A high school marching band appears on one song. Not only that, but some of Pahl's mechanical musical automatons are featured here as well.

Which is all well and good, but this would be mere gimmickry without quality songwriting. Fortunately, the Quartet's got such grand tunesmithery that their addictive second album, "We Who Live On Land," has not left my CD player in weeks. The unusual sounds suggest Harry Partch or Tom Waits, but with an identity all their own, sometimes sweetly nostalgic, sometimes cartoonishly crazy.

Scavenger Quartet: "We Who Live On Land"

The album's artwork and song titles were inspired by another antiquity: a century-old book about sea life.

1. Marvelous Argonaut

2. Crimson Jellyfish

3. Wonderful Nautilus

4. Elegant Mermaiden

5. Fine-Haired Medusae

6. Excitable Sea Porcupine

7. Shy Polyps

8. Savage Sawfish

9. Sea Mirage

10. Gummy Stickleback

11. 6,000 Mureys of Julius Caesar

12. Dreaded Cuttlefish

13. Curious Barnacles

14. Brittle Starfish

EVERYBODY STUMBLE DRUNKINGLY NOW

British mad hatter Ergo Phizmiz has a FREE! new on-line 7-song EP of hilarious demolitions of '90s techno club hits. "Now That's What We Pump At The Party" sounds more like wheezing, shambolic circus music then house. His new band The Midnight Florists cover C & C Music Factory, Dee-Lite, and other half-forgotten (if not totally forgotten) one-shit blunders "...arranged for acoustic, electronic, homemade, and toy instruments." Everyone sounds like they're having a blast.

Never even heard of Eiffel 65 before, but the haunting waltz version of their song "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" led me to check out the original. BIG mistake. Needless to say, Sir Phizmiz & Co. have improved upon these songs by several orders of magnitude.

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1984: LOS ANGELES' BEST YEAR?

Exactly 25 years ago, Los Angeles was playing host to the Olympics, and both parties never had it better. Terrorism, boycotts and financial disasters had the International Games on the ropes, ready to throw in the towel. L.A. practically saved 'em with what is still the most successful Olympics ever. And the city never ran better. Tom Bradley was then in the middle of his almost 20-year run as mayor, overseeing the transformation of second-rate cowtown into a world-class city. So what's the big deal about a black president? We had a black mayor who kicked butt decades ago.

It was summer vacation. Back East relatives were staying with us cuz they wanted to see the Games. As a basketball-loving kid, I was in heaven. My friends & I got to see Team USA, featuring future pro legends Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing, stomp all over the hapless French team. And I was glued to the radio, buying more records then ever...and taping records from friends. (Hey, I was young - that allowance only went so far.)

It was a great year, maybe the greatest year, for the punk-spawned independent rock scene, and L.A. was in the thick of it. SST Records was ruling college radio with landmark releases by Husker Du (from Minneapolis, not L.A.) and The Minutemen - their 2-record set masterpieces "Zen Arcade" and "Double Nickels On The Dime" came out the same month. And Arizonans The Meat Puppets, who spent so much time here early in their career that they could practically be called locals, released "II," yet another classic that I never seem to tire of, immortalized years later when Nirvana performed not one, not two, but three songs off it on their "MTV Unplugged" appearance. Though, of course, the Pups versions were superior. Here's an exclusive mashup from RIAA, pairing a "II" tune with a British hit from around the same time, Yaz's "Don't Go":

RIAA "Split Yourself And Go"

The Bangles and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, years away from their enormous commercial successes were, at the time, scrappy local club bands. The Bangles were never better then their '84 release "All Over The Place." Early on, they honestly really didn't suck. Suspend your disbelief! I mean, check this tune. It's a great bit of pop-punk that the Buzzcocks would have been proud to do, and should hopefully rinse "Eternal Flame" from your mind:

The Bangles: Silent Treatment (Even after all these years, I can never remember that title; I always called it the "she said nothing" song)

The Chili Peppers had such an insane live show (did I really see them toss vats of yogurt at each other?) that their slickly-produced album debut was a disappointment (apart from the album cover by the great cartoonist Gary Panter). But this demo of one of those early songs is a totally killer one-minute blast of punk/funk that actually sounds like The Minutemen, and hints at what a great album it could have been:

The Red Hot Chili Peppers "Police Helicopter" - a very LA kinda tune; do other big cities have cop 'copters ("ghetto birds" as Ice Cube calls 'em) buzzing overhead so frequently?

America's first goth scene was forming here. This might seem unlikely, but I think the relentless heat and sunshine makes a little cool darkness refreshing. Some of the "death rock" (wasn't called 'goth' yet) bands like 45 Grave owed more to the 'Monster Mash' then anything else, but before Jane's Addiction, Perry Ferrell's group Psi-Com had a pronounced British post-punk* influence. No-one remembers these guys, but I dug this one:

Psi-Com "Hopeful"

Philip Glass, a New Yorker, recorded a stirring piece for the Games that sounds a bit overly-familiar now, but his brand of Minimalism was quite a welcome shock at the time. Don't think this is in print.

Philip Glass "Olympiad - Lighting of the Torch"

Back to the locals: Redd Kross provided a lot of the music for a crazed Super-8 film called "Desperate Teenage Lovedolls," along with Black Flag (moving into their post-hardcore avant-jazz phase) and Bad Religion. Swell power-pop; they should have been as big as The Bangles.

Redd Kross: "Ballad of a Lovedoll"

1984: Compton's KDAY ("AM stereo!"), America's first hip-hop station, goes on the air. I read somewhere that this was when Uncle Jamm's Army released LA's first hiphop record. This enormous crew was a virtual who's-who of early West Coast rap, including future legends like Egyptian Lover and Ice-T. This tune's off my 12". Don't think their stuff ever appeared on CD. Though not the classic that '85's "What's Your Sign" is, it's still a pretty fun bit of fast-paced electro nonsense, and certainly nothing like the kind of thing that LA rap would be famous for a few years later.

Uncle Jamm's Army - Dial-A-Freak

Ah, what the heck - it's Saturday, don't have much to do today. Let's mp3-isize a cassette of a 40-minute radio concert I taped off the air way back when. Background hiss! In mono! But who cares. A godhead band. Don't know the exact date, but it's at least '84 judging by the tunes. As critic Robert Lloyd wrote at the time regarding "Double Nickels," The Minutement go "from funk to punk, from folk to polka."

The Minutemen live on KPFK - Corona/Fake Contest/The Only Minority/Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want The Truth?/King of the Hill/Hey Lawdy Mama/Cheerleaders/Maybe Partying WIll Help/Time/AckAckAck/Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love/This AIn't No Picnic/History Lesson pt2/Little Man With A Gun In His Hand/Green River/Red & The Black/Themselves/Tony Gets Wasted In Pedro/Anxious Mofo/Toadies/The Big Foist

The early '90s saw dark days for LA (earthquake, riots) but things have been great lately - Lakers won the title, lowest murder rate since the '60s, subway, etc. Culturally, we're still the 800 pound gorilla. So I'm not being overly sentimentally nostalgic here. (Am I?)

*a phrase NO-ONE besides music journalists used at the time

I'M JUST WILD ABOUT IRVING AARONSON

I was listening to an album of 1920s music that I found in a thrift store recently, and a song called "I'm Just Wild About Animal Crackers" jumped out at me. It was like something the Bonzo Dog Band would have recorded - a hilarious, high energy, completely wacked-out jazz novelty of absurd lyrics and ludicrous sound effects. Who was this guy?

His name was Irving Aaronson. A New Yorker, he was quite popular for a while in the '20s and 30s, nailing the zeitgeist on the head with a song called "Crazy Words, Crazy Tunes" that introduced the once-ubiquitous phrase "vo-do-de-o." I never knew that phrase actually came from somewhere. I thought it was just something people said at the time, like "yo, whassup?"

Even though heavyweights like Artie Shaw and Gene Krupa played in his band, jazz snobs tend to dismiss him for the same reasons that I like him. Early jazz is full of, to quote Aaronson, crazy words and crazy tunes. When (and why) did jazz lose it's sense of humor?

Unfortunately, Aaronson's music has apparently never been compiled. One or two songs here and there are in print, including, perhaps inevitably, on Woody Allen soundtracks. It's tragic that he's dropped off the planet, not as well-remembered/re-discovered as Spike Jones or Raymond Scott are. Fortunately, nice people in internet land have collected many of his 78s.

Irving Aaronson & His Commanders: "I'm Just Wild About Animal Crackers"

Plenty of his other songs are almost as cracked. I just love that he has a song called "Waffles." "Waffles" is a funny-sounding word, isn't it? The tune lives up to the title.

Irving Aaronson & His Commanders: "Waffles"

As much as I appreciate collectors posting these records on-line, I do think they sometimes go a little overboard with the noise-reduction. A little surface noise is fine by me, especially when the alternative is an un-natural warped sound. These Irving Aaronson collections are generally (though not totally) well-recorded, but I'm still hoping for a proper collection with an info booklet, etc.

AVANT HOUSEWIVES & THE HISTORY OF WHITE TURNTABLISM

Two reissues in Amoeba's "Unusual/ Experimental" section recently caught my eye, tho the original recordings were so obscure that these are virtually new releases.

Ursula Bogner was "a pharmacist, wife and mother, and she was obsessed with electronic music -- an obsession that drove her to build her own studio for extensive recording and experimentation." This started in the '60s, making her yet another female electronic music explorer (see also: Delia Derbyshire, Bebe Barron, Pauline Oliveros, etc.) Her music is not as pop as the Moog stuff going on at the time, but neither is it as abstract as the atonalities then dominating academia.

I got the album out of curiosity (a German female Bruce Haack?!) but ended up really liking it on it's own terms. Some is proto-industrial (I await the inevitable remixes), some BBC Radiophonic Workshop-esque sci-fi soundscapes, and some almost pop, like this delightful opener:

Ursula Bogner: Begleitung für Tuba

Her eccentricities went beyond music, e.g.: "...a strong fascination for mysticism, esotericism, and Wilhelm Reich's "orgonomy," the psychoanalyst's bizarre late work on his discovery of "orgonenergy" or life-force."

Dennis Duck is best known for his alt-rock drumming duties. In fact, he played on the Dream Syndicate's classic "Days of Wine and Roses" album, one of my favorite '80s rockers. But history may remember him as the first recorded turntablist. A short-run cassette called "Dennis Duck Goes Disco" featuring Duck playing nothing more then records was first released courtesy of the legendary Los Angeles Free Music Society , and is finally available on cd.

A whole album of nothing but skipping records! From 1977, no less. How great is that? Though few heard it at the time, he did beat Grandmaster Flash, Christian Marclay, etc. to the punch, as those New Yorkers didn't make recordings 'til almost the '80s (tho supposedly DJ Kool Herc was cuttin' wax as far back as '73.)

There's no fancy wicka-wicka scratching that we're now used to hearing, so it's fascinating to encounter turntablism from the perspective of almost no history. True, avant-gardists like Cage had used turntables before, but usually using their own prepared recordings. Duck, however, went to the thrift-stores and used record shops and bought kiddie records, religious sermons, musical kitch, etc., prefiguring everything from hip-hop, to Negativland-like sound collages, to mashups. Again, this isn't just of historical interest - it's a lot of loopy fun.

A jazz records skips to a crazy swingin' beat:

Dennis Duck: One O'Clock Jump

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