Music of Mind Control

"Music of Mind Control is a podcast highlighting the wonderful world of organizations and religious cults that practice mind control techniques and the weird, awful music they produce. Hosted by Amy and The Commander."

Well, halleluyah!  Weird, awful music is right, as well as commentary by the hosts telling us just who these characters are, the significance of the particular track they're playing, and what they're in jail for. The three shows they've done so far feature many familiar kooks 'n' cult leaders that have been featured in these virtual pages over the years, but there's apparently plenty more out there that I did not know about. Got a particular kick out of Jan Crouch in episode three - she's an enormous-haired televangelist much smirked at by me and my friends when we were growing up. Was wondering what happened to her after hearing her hysterical track.  Internet sez: she's still alive, her and her husband have 13 mansions, a $100 million jet, a $100,000 house just for her dogs, and there have been the usual child sex abuse and marital scandals.  I am shocked - shocked I say!

Llyn Foulkes, King of The One-Man-Bands

I went to see a free performance by Llyn Foulkes last week (a day after I saw The Residents - can this year get any weirder?) and even tho I was a half-hour early, there was a shockingly long line around the UCLA Hammer Museum courtyard, and I couldn't get in to the show - I had to watch it on video in another room. Gol darn it!  I'd seen him twice before and there was a crowd of maybe...30? What are all these people doing here at a show by a 78-year-old eccentric singing about old L.A. whilst performing on a crazy one-man-band contraption of honk horns and tuned cowbells?  That's my department! 

Hey, I get to be an old punk-rocker now: (snearing) "I was into Llyn Foulkes before anyone.  All his fans now are poseurs."

I guess the fact that the prestigious Hammer Museum is in the midst of a career retrospective of Foulkes' paintings had something to do with it.  Or the awesome tremendous influence of this blog, as I've written about him before.  Yeah, that's probably it. So while much verbiage is being spilled about his visual art, his music only gets mentioned in passing.  Okay, this is my department: he's crazy brilliant, starting with his instrument building - his 'Machine' is huge and heavy, not the usual guitar w/harmonica holder/cymbals on the legs kinda one-man-band. He's a tremendous performer, skillfully honking out the 'horn charts,' grabbing drumsticks and playing melodies on cowbells and a xylophone, blowing free-jazz on a hose, rubbing his foot along a bass guitar on the floor as his other foot hits various drums and cymbals.

And he's a good songwriter.  Original tunes are a rarity in this gimmicky field, and Foulkes' memories and observations of Los Angeles (and his own foibles) are a perfect match for his swingin' tunes, inspired by the big-band and Spike Jones records of his youth. The Jones influence is prevalent not just in the tuned cowbells, but in the funny sound effects that punctuate the songs, lightening up the sometimes morose nature of the lyrics. His singing's okay, but has a rough charm.

It looks like his sole release from 2004 has vanished, so I'm giving you-all not only its original contents, but 5 more recent performances, audio recorded off various videos. All origs, except for a cover of Hank William's "Your Cheating Heart."

Llyn Foulkes and his Machine - Live!

HER TEENAGE DREAM ENDED, YOUR NIGHTMARE HAS BEGUN

At first listen, "reality" show star Farrah Abraham's album "My Teenage Dream Ended" is striking in it's ineptitude: lyrics possessing neither rhythm nor rhymes, one-guy-on-GarageBand music, and hideous abuse of Autotune on tune-less "melodies."  It's really quite awful!

But this is no talentless bimbo's attempt to be a "diva" - it's a soul-searching autobiographical concept album.  Like any genuine outsider artist, Abraham seems to be incapable of putting on the masks and personas of show-biz pros, and uses the album like any other angst-ridden teen would use their diary.  And as the star of a show about being a single teen mom, I would guess she has even more angst then most teens. For one thing, there's that name: Farrah Abraham.  Yeesh, what kind of name is that, a cross between a '70s sex symbol and an Old Testament prophet? She had one strike against her from birth.

Yes, at times it is jaw-droppingly horrific, in a "how-the HELL-did-this-get-released?" kind of way, but it's also sad, hilarious, utterly sincere, and in it's own musical universe. An album that all (and probably only) outsider-music fans would appreciate.  Clicky, if you dare:

"Caught In The Act"
"On My Own"

Re-Posts Redux

By request, a "real" exorcism:
http://musicformaniacs.blogspot.com/2010/05/crying-demons-crying-demons-crying.html

Hey ladies! By request:
http://musicformaniacs.blogspot.com/2012/10/hey-gals-still-single-go-to-charm-school.html

WELCOME TO THE TERROR-DRONE

New releases currently sending me off to dream-land:

Ambient-Hypno-Drone mix, containing bits of:

Nac/Hut Report's new album "Angel​-​like Contraction Reverse" is a swell follow-up to their debut we reviewed here a few years ago, and these Europeans continue to do the impossible: make noise sexy.  Brigitte Roussel's husky vocals add both melody and sensuality to the drum-less industrial sound-layering (and I use the phrase "industrial music" in it's original sense, not meaning funkless-disco-for-goths). Pick hit: "Greetings Blue, Summer 98," a fantastic mélange of electronic pulsing percussion noises, sharp shards of guitar, and languid vocals. They've made available two free songs, one off the album, and a b-side: 

Nac/Hut Report  “Junkstarrr/Bright Future” (streaming)
Nac/Hut Report “Junkstarrr/Bright Future” (download)

Avant composer Michael Gordon of New York's popular Bang On A Can ensemble has a spectacular album that consists of nothing but drumming on wooden planks. Yep, no other instruments, just the six-man Dutch percussion group SlagwerK Den Haag going to town on 2x4s cut to different lengths. Minimalism so spellbinding that nothing else is needed. AND the CD comes in a snazzy wooden box. Buy/listen: "Timber" 

Andrew McPherson's new album "Secrets of Antikythera" is a (mostly) solo piano album for people who don't like solo piano - the piano is "prepared," not in the Cage sense, but by using magnets.  "Sound is produced without loudspeakers using electromagnetic actuators to directly manipulate the piano strings". I don't know exactly what that means, but damn it Jim, I'm a doctor, not an experimental instrument technology explainer guy! (Check the video below for all that.) I can tell you that, following a couple violin pieces that didn't do much for me, it is some blissed-out  instrumental loveliness, commencing with the ghostly drone tones of "Prologue: Mystery", giving way to tracks like "Creation3" that sound increasingly piano-y.

Hanetration, a London artist I've written about before (I really liked his previous EP 'Tenth Oar') has a free 22 minute slice of sublime ambient drone now available. "Nae Troth" consists of nothing but looong sounds that start off chilled, but gradually intertwine, growing more complex and ominous. Electronic sounds build until, finally, they start to relax and drift off into the mist. I can imagine Brian Eno listening to this, nodding his head, saying: "Niiiice..." 

Hanetration "Nae Troth"

Gel Nails is an intriguing Canadian project whose Bandcamp tags pretty much tell the story: "experimental ambient electronic noise weird Edmonton." Yes, but subtle vocals also enter the picture at times. Their tumblr page has a number of free download releases that I quite liked once I asked how to download them: "if you put your cursor on the image, say the h.n.w. album cover, you will see 4 little icons appear in the top right corner. Click on the icon that looks like 2 links of a chain. Scroll to the bottom of the new page and there you will see a mediafire link." (But you knew that.) Or dig this name-your-price EP:

Gel Nails "H.N.W."

Anyone Have The "Tiki Gardens" Album..?

...that I posted last year? This one. Had a request for it but it seems to have gone missing.  Mahalo!

UPDATE: It's back up, thanks to a super-wonderful anonymous Maniac out there. Someone buy him a Mai-Tai.

AVANT-POLKA

Following on the heels of our last post, which featured The Mighty Accordion Band...

Well, why not avant-polka?  Who says classical, jazz, and rock should have all the fun? Guy Klucevsek's "Polka From The Fringe" is just that, a newly released 2-disk set of originals and commisioned songs written for accordionist Klucevsek, an '80s downtown New York arty-smarty who grew up playing polkas in Pennsylvania coal-mining country. He originally released this album over twenty years ago, and the label promptly went out of business. This new version is greatly expanded, boasting a whopping 29 tracks, many written by prominent avant-garde composers like Tom Cora, Carl Stone, Fred Frith, and Elliot Sharp, whose "Happy Chappie Polka" is downright punk. Despite the heavy art credentials of all involved, it's still alot of fun.  You just can't play a pretentious polka. (Tho it is a lot to absorb - took me a few listens before I finally realized how good this album is.)

Another awesome avant-accordion album comes to us from, of all places, Belarus.  Pictured left, Port Mone's album "DiP" is an excellent collection of moody instrumentals sporting unusual ethnic percussion and some surprisingly funky poppin' bass. I can now say that I have listened to an entire album from Belarus (and so should you.)

Petrojvic Blasting Company (pic below) are a crazy-fun L.A. band featuring a big brass section that suits both European Balkan and New Orleans styles.  Tho probably best experienced live and drunk, their debut album (also available on vinyl) shows off their ace songwriting and muso skillz. They recently toured the old country - Poland, Latvia, Lithuania - but, like the above artists, don't expect anything too authentic.

Norteño literally means "northern", as in the US/Mexican border areas where Mexican musicians mixed their Spanish melodies with Dutch and Geman settlers' polka. A muy bueno norteño album I discovered on the jukebox whilst waiting for my order at a local taquería is Los Dareyes De La Sierra's "Corridazos Con Tuba Y Acordeon." Yep, pretty much the whole album is nothing but accordion and tuba duets.  And the tuba player is loco. Ever bought an album for the tuba?  Now's your chance. Tho I have my reservations about recommending it - I suspect that some of the songs are "narco-corridos," songs about, or even in praise of drug cartel thugs.

Tijuana's Nortec Collective offers a more self-consciously experimental approach to norteño. Like Wu Tang, the Collective quickly split off into solo projects, some leaning more towards techno dance territory, and others, like Bostich and Fussible's 2008 release "Tijuana Sound Machine" still keeping that border-polka beat in there amidst all the space-age sounds.

We then head even furthur down south to Columbia, where the accordion rules the cumbia scene...even as they cover Queen. That's what happens when a British producer (Quantic, in this case) moves to Sud America. From the self-titled album "Los Miticos Del Ritmo."

Ah, what the heck - the link to Duckmandu's accordion cover of the Dead Kennedy's "California Uber Alles" is dead, so I'll throw it in here.

AVANT-POLKA

1. Duckmandu: California Uber Alles
2. Port Mone: River
3. Petrojvic Blasting Company: Princess Andy
4. Port Mone: Youth
5. Guy Klucevsek, Ain't Nothin' But A Polka Band: The VCR Polka (by David Garland)
6. Guy Klucevsek, Ain't Nothin' But A Polka Band: Happy Chappie Polka
7. Guy Klucevsek, Ain't Nothin' But A Polka Band: The Disinformation Polka (Fred Frith)
8. Los Dareyes De La Sierra: La Tragedia Del Compa Man
9. Bostich and Fussible: The Clap
10. Los Miticos Del Ritmo (Feat. Quantic): Otro Muerde El Polvo (Another One Bites The Dust)

Resuming Re-Up Requests

More mopping up the mediafire mess. Per your requests:

- a big ol' batch of Zoogz Rift
- Tiny Tim Plays in Your Living Room
- RIAA "USA"

The Mighty Accordion Band - They Said It Couldnt Be Done!

Apart from having one of the all-time great album covers (pretty obvious why I snatched this one up for a mere 99 cents at my local charity thrifty emporium), The Mighty Accordion Band 's "They Said It Couldn't Be Done!" is an excellent listen. 20 - count 'em - TWENTY squeeze-boxes playing together creates a unique symphonic sound that ranges from exotica (the Les Baxter soundalike "Jungle Fever") to finger-snappin' jazz, dreamy ballads (great version of "tenderly") and swingin' big band. Pretty much everything but polka. I especially like the bizarre cha-cha version of "Swanee River." Perhaps their taking a corny old tune that no-one was playing anymore and giving it a hip new Latin spin was equivalent to all those New Wave covers of classic rock songs I posted a while back, e.g.: Devo's dismantling of the Stones' "Satisfaction."  Did The Mighty Accordion Band record the first ironic cover?!

Dominic Frontiere is credited as the mad genius behind this project. Hey, I know him! He became a top film soundtrack composer, his "Hang 'Em High" theme being one of the best Spaghetti Western themes.  

The Mighty Accordion Band - They Said It Couldnt Be Done!

Re-Post: Authentic Music from Another Planet

With over a thousand posts, I can't go back and re-up everything that those Mediafire dill-weeds have taken down, but, as ever, I endeavor to satisfy your requests, to whit:

http://musicformaniacs.blogspot.com/2009/07/authentic-music-from-another-planet.html

A Simple Sample-Music Sampler

Making music out of music is common currency now (not so much back when this blog was founded and mashups were regularly featured), so sound-collage music has to really blow my mind to get me to pay attention to it nowadays. 

Chief mind-blower of late is "Border Towns," an album by one Nick Brooke, a young avant-composer whose new album on Innova mixes a vocal choir with a mad brew of samples ranging from field recordings, to music, to radio dj chatter.  It's all meant to drop the listener into the US/Mexico border realms. The m.o. of this album actually reminds me of the KLF's classic "Chill Out," which mixed numerous samples with electronic music to create a theoretical late-night cross-country drive across the southern U.S. Good luck trying to chill out to this album, tho - it's varied, dynamic, exciting, and a lot of fun. The idea of a choir is an odd choice, but works a treat.  Sometimes they don't even sing, but do things like recite radio I.D.s with a straight-face ("more music...mas musica!")

Ergo Phizmiz and People Like Us are old pros, the deans of the collage college, but for a recent project, the music is all played and sung live. "The Keystone Cut Ups" is a multi-media show featuring all found video footage from black-and-white silent movies, mashing the more self-consciously anarchic works of the Surrealists with early Hollywood comedies. Numerous antique songs are suggested, and blended with others, and with original songs. New lyrics are sometimes sung over old tunes. Ergo told me "The only sampled bits are the bits from the films that pop over. Vicki [aka People Like Us] also did quite a lot of sound-effects on it." Live mashups, beautifully played and crooned on banjos, accordions, etc. Magical. There is a DVD of the show out that's on the top of my wish-list. The album can be downloaded thru illegal-art.

CutUp Sound is satirical sound-collage project only now coming to light, thanks to Rich at KillUglyRadio in Portland. He finally got his old pal Mr. CutupSound to go thru his tapes (some going perhaps as far back as the '80s) and put a career-spanning collection together. Lots of funny mass media/political/religious cut-ups in the Cassette Boy/Wayne Butane school of audio pranksterism, as well as some really impressive more musical tracks.

And finally, a completely ridiculous good old-fashioned A+B mashup by newcomer The Don Music Show, from Wisconsin. There's probably no artistic justification for this nonsense - I just wanna hear it loud when it's late and I'm drunk.

Sample-Music Sampler

1. Ergo Phizmiz and People Like Us - Orchestra
2. CutupSound - It Is Called Radio
3. CutupSound - Breakfast
4. Nick Brooke - Del Rio
5. Nick Brooke - Columbus
6. The Don Music Sound - One Trek Beyond...

P.S.: Tim from Radio Clash (aka Instamatic, DJ NoNo, etc) has been putting up his '90s works from the days before he became a founding father of the British mashup scene.  His Reality Engine release has a strange, creepy, and sometimes funny late-night atmosphere to it, accurately described as "ambient tracks, noise, electronic toys, feedback, hum, cut-ups, found sound, radio scans and noises, interruptions, drones, test tones and squeaks..."  A journey thru England's dark underworld, e.g.: this snatch of intercepted conversation: 'I have not slept with anybody else, apart from you, and obviously, my wife.'

A Miserable, Depressing Album About Divorce - Happy Valentine's Day!

Bashful Hips is a solo electro band from Colorado whose free download album "Divorce" consists of song after sound-alike song of mid-tempo slightly-distorted synth tunes, all sung in a woeful one-note drone. Tho there's some nice musical touches here and there, e.g. the popping percussion on "Color Me Blue," I can't really say it's a genuinely good album - the songwriting seems more like diary entries than lyrics, with scant attention paid to things like rhythm or rhymes. But it certainly seems heartfelt, packed as it is with excruciating details like "mornings are now so confusing/now that I don't get to awake to the sound of your hair dryer." Over the course of a whole album, tho, it almost becomes comical.  The one-note singing makes the album seem like one long song. Strangely compelling.

Bashful Hips "Divorce"

SPRINGTIME FOR MUSSOLINI

Everything's always "Hitler this, Hitler that." What about Mussolini, huh? He was a bloodthirsty dictator, too! And he was Hitler's bud, eventually overthrown and killed by his own Italian countrymen, they hated him so. Well, not all of them. Like whoever started the mussolinibenito.net site (sign their guestbook!). Quite a generous assortment of pro-Fascism/Il Duce mp3s are found on the site - mostly music, but some speeches ("discorsi") as well. The music seems to consist of upbeat marches and rousing sing-alongs, e.g. "Allarmi siam Fascisti," which translates to "At arms, Fascists!" It's the kind of pre-caffeine anthem you need on a Monday morning.

 

This article details Il Duce's love of music.  He even played the fiddle.

 

CANZONI MP3 DELL' EPOCA FASCISTA - click on 'Canzoni MP3' in the left-hand column

There are also some Irish rebel songs on the bottom of the page. I don't know why.

 

(I tried to add info to the mp3 tags of the songs I downloaded, like 'Mussolini songs' or whatever, but it wouldn't let me. It's locked, I guess.  Buncha fascists...)

ROBOTS PLAY EXOTICA

- You got robots in my gamelan!

- You got gamelan in my robots!

Two great tastes that go great together: Gamelan Galak Tika (pronounced 'Galactica'?) & Ensemble Robot, from Boston's MIT and UMass, respectively, combine forces for 19 minutes of free awesomeness that you can download here:

Gamelan Galak Tika & Ensemble Robot: Heavy Metal

A few other instruments like violin and electric guitars join the machines and the Indonesian bells 'n' gongs for a thoroughly mysterious and wonderful sandwich spread of rock 'n' roll, island exotica, and avant-garde. Now, with added chunks of sci-fi futurism! A combo this bizarre shouldn't exist. And yet it does:

And speaking of robots playing heavy metal...

Compressorhead

are a metal band - literally - whose videos show them jammin' on Motorhead, The Ramones, and AC/DC. They do live shows, and apparently an album is in the works.

One Of The Most Famous Songs in History is Marxist Propaganda That Involves Raping A Minor: The Story of "Mack The Knife"

"Oh, the shark bites
With his teeth, dear
And he shows them
pearly white..."

Yeah, you know it, "Mack The Knife", #3 on Billboard's Top 100 Songs ever. You've heard it a million times, from Bobby Darin's #1 hit version in 1959, to countless crooners ever since. But who first recorded it?

Feel free to smack the next smug twerp who tells you "Google is your friend." No, it's not, not always, and I couldn't find the answer to that question. I knew it was written by the great German composer/playwright/anti-capitalist team of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht back in 1927 for the musical "Threepenny Opera," but that's well known. Heck, that Weimer-era Berlin cabaret style is probably more popular now then it was in the 1920s.  Tom Waits, Amanda Palmer, The Tiger Lillies, and numerous other alt/dark-cabaret performers owe much of their careers to it, and countless jazz, pop, and theater singers have been performing these songs for decades. (That's an original German 1929 poster to the right.)

So you'd think the question of who made the first recording of "Mack The Knife" would be a pretty basic one. But it gets confusing early on.  For one thing, the song wasn't even originally entitled "Mack The Knife." Nope, it was called "Moritat," a term from German folklore meaning a bad-man ballad, similar to Old Western songs about bandits and outlaws. It then became popularly known as "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer (The Ballad of Mack the Knife)." In the Fifties, it finally became known as "Mack The Knife" when it was discovered by the American jazz and theater world.

So who did it first? I went to the source, and asked the Kurt Weill Foundation, but even spokesperson Dave Stein isn't certain. He wrote me:

"I'm not absolutely sure, but it seems pretty clear that the first recording of the "Moritat" was made in December 1928 by Harald Paulsen, who played Macheath in the original production of the Threepenny Opera. Brecht himself also recorded the song early on, but my sources say that was made a few months later, in May 1929. It's odd that the standard Brecht biographies and chronologies we have here seem to make no mention of this recording, which you would expect to be a little more noteworthy. Paulsen's recording is available on a recently reissued Capriccio 2-CD set

"Die Dreigroschenoper: Historische Originalaufnahmen" (C 5061, reissued 2011, originally released on CD in 1990).

I should point out that the "Moritat" was not the biggest hit from the show in Weimar Germany; it did not become the hit song from Threepenny until much later, when Louis Armstrong's 1955 recording paved the way for so many successors."

Needless to say, Paulsen's and Brecht's versions sound little like the ones you know. With their German lyrics, oom-pah sound, and different vocal phrasing, they almost sound like different songs altogether from the later finger-snappin' remakes. They do sound great, tho - I'd take Brechts' version over many of the later, more famous recordings.

And then there's the matter of the lyrics. The famous versions from the '50s and afterwords usually use Marc Blitzstein's somewhat sanitized translation. The eye-opening original lyrics feature such lines as "And the minor-aged widow/ Whose name everyone knows/ Woke up and was violated/ Mack, what was your price?" Yikes, that's getting a bit rape-y, isn't it? Macheath wasn't just some loveable Rat-Pack type rogue, but a genuinely Bad Dude. In the eyes of Brecht and Weill, Mack was a symbol of unrestrained capitalism. This context disappeared, of course, after the off-Broadway 1954 revival of "Threepenny" became such a huge success using Blitzstein's translation. My mom even attended a performance! And I have a copy of the hit cast album, featuring a young pre-sitcom star Bea Aurthur, then still known as "Beatrice." (Hey trivia fans! A pre-Law and Order Jerry Orbach would eventually play Mack in the same production.) Darin did his version based on the Blitzstein revival, and here we are.

All of which got me thinking...I bet many of you remember the 1985 album "Lost In The Stars - the Music of Kurt Weill."  With it's fresh re-workings of numerous Weill classics and it's all-star cast, it was pretty popular in the college/public radio scene of the '80s. I liked Slapp Happy/Henry Cow singer Dagmar Krause's track so much, I then bought her "Supply & Demand" German cabaret covers record. Producer Hal Wilner, on this and other albums he organized, actually made the dreaded 'tribute album' seem like a great idea.

"Lost In The Stars - the Music of Kurt Weill" 

I added the two previously-described earliest known versions of "Moritat" to the file.

Get the artwork/liner notes to "Lost in The Stars" HERE.

1. Mahagonny Songspiel (Intro) - Steve Weisberg

2. 'The Ballad Of Mac The Knife' - Sting/Dominc Muldowney

3. 'The Cannon Song' - Stan Ridgway, The Fowler Brothers [Bruce Fowler of Captain Beefheart's late-period Magic Band?]

4. 'Ballad Of The Soldier's Wife' - Marianne Faithfull

5. Johnny Johnson Medley - Van Dyke Parks

6. The Great Hall - Henry Threadgill

7. 'Alabama Song' - Ralph Schuckett, Richard Butler (of the Psychedelic Furs)

8. 'Youkali Tango' - The Armadillo String Quartet

9. 'The Little Lieutenant Of The Loving God' - John Zorn

10. Johnny's Speech - Van Dyke Parks

11. 'September Song' - Lou Reed

12. 'Lost In The Stars' - Carla Bley

13. 'What Keeps Mankind Alive?' - Tom Waits

14. Klops Lied (Meatball Song) - Elliot Sharp

15. 'Surabaya Johnny' - Dagmar Krause

16. Oh Heavenly Salvation': Hurriccane Introduction - Mark Bingham & Aaron Neville

17. Oh Heavenly Salvation: Oh Heavenly Salvation - Mark Bingham & Aaron Neville

18. 'Call From The Grave/Ballad In Which Macheath Begs All Men For Forgiveness - Todd Rundgren

19. 'Speak Low' - Charlie Haden

20. 'In No Man's Land' - Van Dyke Parks Oh, so how's Sting's version of "Moritat"? It's really good, except for the Sting part. And if you like Tom Waits' take on "What Keeps Mankind Alive?," dig William Burroughs' version:

I'LL TAKE LAS VEGAS: A LOUNGE COMPILATION

 Back up, by request:

I'LL TAKE LAS VEGAS: A LOUNGE COMPILATION

 Plus!

 Zoogz Rift, "Torment," and "Idiots on the Miniature Golf Course."  

ZOOGZ TOOZDAY: Early Rarities

Zoogz Toozday is back, for one post - a large collection of early recordings from the late Zappa/Beefheart-inspired-bandleader-gone-punk/ comedian/ crank/ mad genius Zoogz Rift. We featured an album of Zoogz with his band The Amazing Shitheads every Tuesday for a while there, then super-awesome generous reader myxsoma laid some more on us, and, once again, he has gifted us with 3 bootlegs taken from cassettes of Zoogz and various enthusiastic cohorts chronicling his earliest recordings, some going all the way back to 1973: "The first two are apparently from his band "Zobus" which was his earlier band before the Shitheads." All 3 volumes contain text files with useful notes. Longtime sidemen Richie Hass (vibes) and Scott Colby (slide guitar) are featured. Sound quality varies, but is generally pretty good, considering.

The first folder "Zobus - the first demo - 1973" is the early stuff. In 1973 Zoogz would have been a mere 20 years old, and still in New Jersey, before he made his name in Los Angeles. If you're used to the thorny complexities of Rift's music, this stuff may surprise you - it's as much garage-rock as anything else. His style may not have gelled yet, but his attitude certainly had: the punk-before-punk "Rock 'n' Roll" has him and his bandmates howling: "I'm sick and tired of rock 'n' roll, so fuck you!" Elsewhere, there's "Jugular Vein," a Sun Ra-like freeform freakout; a latin music/Santana parody; an almost respectable bit of fusion with the not-so-respectable title "Not Drenched In Farts;" tape tomfoolery; Moog mania; and an acapella shouter, with the band exclaiming: "We've run out of ideas!" Fun, funny, and certainly unpredictable. The man was well on his way.

"Zobus 1975-1977 - Lovely Girl demo and rehearsals" is the next folder, and it's sounding better, more professionally recorded. "Would You F-I-B to the FBI" is a brilliant oddity, a Chipmunk-style novelty that turns into a circus waltz. "Tits and Ass" is cool, if a bit too obviously derivative of its inspirations: Zappa-esque lyrical crudity + Beefheartian growly vox and bluesy rock. Some of the soloing on the 6+ minute instro "Can't You See That B Can Be C Flat ?" is questionable, but is more than made up for with "Inside My Head There's A Vacuum," a live (but well-recorded) 17-minute groover from their last Jersey show before heading west. It's a downright sample-able funk-fest, with some real tasty Haas marimba solos, and spoken word nuttiness: "What do you think it's gonna be like when we finally get to California and show them our avant-garde weird music to the record companies?" "It's not gonna be any different."

"1978-1979 - Outtakes and alternates" features versions of a number of songs that did get released on a proper Zoogz album, "Idiots on the Miniature Golf Course", as well as songs that didn't make the album, inc. another version of "Would You F-I-B to the FBI", and the cowboy piss-take "The Man Who Slugged Your Mother" (did county bands ever actually use vibraphones?) No longer known as Zobus, they're Zoogz Rift's Micro Mastodons, and their playing is as tight as a drum. Loony guitarist John Trubee is now on board. Next stop: SST Records, and '80s college-rock notoriety.

Zoogz Rift - rarities

Funny (or not) - just as I was listening to this stuff today, I checked my email, and learned that Mediafire had taken down two albums from this blog. Two of those Zoogz Rift albums that I posted couple years ago.  What timing.  I'll try to get 'em back up soon.

Another Repost

By request: the absolute wimpiest versions possible of classic rock hits, "Soft, Safe & Sanitized," is back on-line.

BROWN-SKINNED MORMONS A-GO-GO!!

Lamanites? Is that what your kitchen counter is made of?  No, silly, Lamanites are the original inhabitants of North America, according to the Book of Mormon, and since Mexicans and Polynesians are brown people like the Indians, they must all be related!  Let's thrown them into the same category, make 'em wear Indian costumes, and sing cheery, cheezy, '70s variety show-type music! So someone thought at Utah's Brigham Young University, from whence this group comes.

Lots of fun stuff on this album that Our Man in Salt Lake City, windy, sent our way.  Just don't expect much in the way of ethnic authenticity. The low-budget lounge combo's instrumental backing and the singer's enthusiastic performances can get absurdly entertaining. I mean, check out the cat in the headdress to the left. That's gotta be the crooner swingin' his way thru "Navajo Baby." "The Mountains Cry Out," believe it or not, is practically surf music. And a song with a title like "The Big Mouth Frog" has got to be good, right? Right. Oddly, there's almost no overt religious content. Maybe they were hoping for a mainstream crossover a la The Osmonds.

 The Lamanite Generation

(Bless you, windy!)

THE TOILET BOWL CLEANERS

The Toilet Bowl Cleaners is a guy from Massachusetts. As I wrote last month when I posted "... 2 tracks off their album "Songs About Poop, Puke & Pee." The fact that such an album even exists is amazing; the fact that the Toilet Bowl Cleaners have many albums, all focused on the subject of human waste, and that some of the songs are actually good, is nothing short of mind-boggling. The main toilet-bowl cleaner sez that he's released 8000 songs in the last 4 years. That's kinda prolific." 

As funny and/or gross as you'd expect, but these simple, catchy Billy Joel-ish piano-driven songs are so obsessively single-minded in their examination of the more taboo aspects of human corporeality that it's kind of impressive. I almost feel like congratulations are in order. He seems to be a sane man, a regular guy, not someone you'd think were you to meet him on the street "Hey, now that's the kind of guy who would record 7 whole albums about bodily functions!"

THE TOILET BOWL CLEANERS sampler

01 Gotta Poop, Puke and Pee (Simultaneously) [Songs About Poop, Puke & Pee]
02 Happy Mother's Day (Thanks For Wiping My Bum, Mum) [Holiday Poop Puke & Pee Songs]
03 The Diarrhea Bounce Back [Still Farting, Pooping, Puking, and Peeing]
04 Scarlet Johansson Farts [Celebrities Fart and Poop (Just Like You & Me)]
05 I Pooped On Santa's Lap [Holiday Poop Puke & Pee Songs]
06 The Defecation Song [Still Farting, Pooping, Puking, and Peeing]
07 Swine Flu [I Love Poop!]
08 Peeing In The Shower [Songs About Poop, Puke & Pee]
09 Girls Don't Poop [I Love Poop!]
10 Picking My Nose [Let's Not Forget Snot, Boogers & Ear Wax!]
11 Taylor Lautner Poops [Famous People Fart & Poop]
12 Wiping My Bum With My Hand [I Love Poop!]
13 Bed Bugs [Let's Not Forget Snot, Boogers & Ear Wax!]
14 Rudolph The Red-Nosed Hemorrhoid [Holiday Poop Puke & Pee Songs]
15 Barack Obama Farts [Celebrities Fart and Poop (Just Like You & Me)]
16 Everybody Farts

Albums also available thru CDBaby.

REPO(ST) MAN

By request, the following are back up:

- Classic Schlock: a Kitsch-Ass Rock n Roll Mix

- Hollywood Stomp - Los Angeles in Song 1920s - 1940s

The FLYING DUTCHMAN - ONE-MAN BAND SHOW

How's THAT for an album cover? 

I think you can see why I picked up this private-press piece of vintage vinyl recently - it truly is a slice of authentic Americana, a peek into un-hip rural backroads (in this case, Pennsylvania Dutch country) where Ma & Pa go out on a Saturday night to the local tavern and dance to the kind of music left out of the history books, played by the sort of performer usually considered to be not worthy of critical consideration.

Recorded live, Mr. Dutchman is  clearly having a good ol' time, chatting with the crowd,  letting loose with whoops and yee-haws! on occasion. Everything that doesn't sound like a polka (even the Elvis cover) is delivered in a wave-your-mug drinking song waltz-time. And might I direct your attention to the song that features our man playing the accordion and tap-dancing (!) at the same time. They don't make 'em like this any more.  (Or do they?  I suspect that this fellow might be the same guy.)

The FLYING DUTCHMAN - ONE-MAN BAND

More Experimental Music From A 3-Year-Old Girl...

...tho I think she's at least 4 years old by now. Anyway, Stinky Picnic's long-awaited (by me, at least) follow-up to last years' swell "Cockles" has dropped, and it's even more swell. So swell, it is practically swollen, with more of dad's psychedelic minimalistic grooves and his girl's lyrics about monsters, birds, lizards (and the smelliness thereof), and, er, "bear mummies." And she can count up to 22. "...nearly 100% improvised live using loop pedals and piles of instruments." "Cat Collar" has such an ill groove that even those poor souls allergic to the charms of cute li'l girls will be nodding their heads to the shoegaze-y beat.

Stinky Picnic "Peaceful and Quiet"

Pops sez: "Indigo said we should call it "Peaceful and Quiet" so that when people hear a track like 'Brains' they'll "totally freak out"! Man, I love that girl o'mine..."  I feel ya, dad: yesterday, my daughter was singing "Old MacDonald" over an instrumental version of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Baby's First Mashup! And she was making up lyrics about critters I don't recall being on Ol Mac's farm, like butterflies (..."with a flap flap here, a flap flap there..."). Already showing a healthy disregard for musical traditions.

A STONER'S TRIBUTE TO CARL SAGAN (Milvia Son Records Sampler)

I've passed the 1000 posts mark. And boy are my fingers tired.

On to 1001! Milvia Son Records from up in the Bay Area sent me a batch of their vinyl-only goodies, and the first thing you should know about 'em is that they've released an album by Can's first singer Malcolm Mooney. If that doesn't automatically score cool points, what will? They didn't send me that one (it sells itself, presumably), but there's other fun to be had in their catalogue of "head music" that bears little resemblance to most psychedelia or stoner rock currently being made.

Milvia Son sampler

1. Bad Drumlin Grass "All Night Long" - Bad grass? Actually, this New Wave-y tune from a 7" is made from good stuff, like synth farts and nonsense vocals. And nekkid ladies on the cover!
2. Bad Drumlin Grass  "Can Do" (excerpt) - Speaking of Mooney-era Can, I was digging this lengthy jam, the opening track to their album "The Invigorating Scent of …" and it reminded me of Can's "Yoo Doo Right." Then I checked the song title. So probably no coincidence. The song "Out on the Tracks" is an ill synth jam; the album gets increasingly jazzy/trippy, less groove-y as it goes on and the chemicals kick in.

3. Bob Frankford "O Carl" - Totally ridiculous ode to Carl Sagan sung (?) over a mangled recording of the theme to Sagan's tv show "Cosmos." I shouldn't love this, but I really do.  From the four-track 7" sampler "Just a Little Bit of Milvia Sun," which includes a pic of Dr. Carl, and a lengthy quote allegedly from the famous astronomer himself describing how great smoking pot is, e.g.: "Experiencing orgasms while high and listening to music, particulary electronic or 'psychedelic' music, is one of the greatest pleasures of my life.'  Wow, did he really say that?
4. Jaki Jakizawa " Period Fart" - All of side one of Jaki's album is super cool disco electro improv - like Giorgio Moroder goes free jazz.  I spent part of the '90s looking for anyone who was doing to synths what Coltrane did for the sax, what Jimi did for the guitar, and not coming up with much besides Sun Ra. A much-welcome approach to the synth. The flip is drum-less cosmic electronica recommended to Tangerine Dream fans. And there might still be a few of them left.
5. Old Yeller & The Pigbites - "The Wreck of the Jerome Garcia"/"Handsome Stranger" - This no-fi mess of acoustic guitars and vocals piled on top of each other makes Daniel Johnston sound as polished as Celine Dion, but some gems do rise thru the muck. ("Handsome Stranger" = Not Safe For Work.)

By the way: If you are a Can fan, the new "Lost Tapes" box set really is a treasure-trove, not just a hodge-podge of leftovers, crappy-sounding live tracks, demos, etc, as these types of collections usually are.

The Conceptual Crank-Call of "Conversations (Revisited)"

As I wrote last year: "Brandon Locher's "Conversations 2012" is a near-20 minute tour de force that does for prank phone calls what "The Velvet Underground & Nico" did for rock 'n' roll, uncovering unexpected depth and scope in what had been dismissed as childish nonsense.

What he basically did was call a store in a Johnstown, PA shopping mall and then did not speak. The "Hello? Hello" etc. response was recorded and then played to another shopkeeper in the same mall. Then their bewildered response was recorded and played for whoever answered the phone at yet another store in the same mall, and so on, until this game of tag went throughout the mall.
It does what a crank call is supposed to do - makes ya laff! - but there's much more going on here. It's ingeniously constructed, a well-edited piece of sound-collage, if nothing else."

Locher's back with another epic of prog-prank, 15 minutes longer then the last "conversations," and we're not in a shopping mall anymore. Just random folks are the unwitting stars rockin' the mic here. The first couple minutes are just people saying "Hello?," but the random collisions eventually become fascinating, thought-provoking, hilarious, and, when the really ancient-sounding old ladies are talking, kinda poignant.
I could listen to this all day - but bursting into laughter doesn't look so cool at the office.

Brandon Locher "Conversations (Revisited)"

GUNS TURNED INTO MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

Here's an idea who's time has truly come: a project called "Imagine" in which Mexican artist Pedro Reyes leads a team that takes guns donated from citizens of a county particularly wracked by violence and transforms them into musical instruments. Pistols form a guitar's body, gun barrels have holes drilled into them and made into flutes, or are arranged according to size into a xylophone, etc. The remarkable lyre pictured above is as much a triumph of visual design as musical. Go

HERE

to read/see the pics/watch the making-of vids. The video below is a 6-minute "Imagine Concierto" featuring the instruments. Yes, the music is based on the Lennon song, but even if you're sick of that tune, you must admit to how good these instruments sound, how well they're played, and just the general awesomness of the project. The percussion in particular gets increasingly sorta funky as the song progresses.

And I'm outta here til sometime in January. Much thanks to the many of you who have contributed to this-here web-log this year. Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men, and all that jazz.

SPACE-AGE SANTA

William Shatner! Theremins! Daleks! Annoying child singers!  Truly, this is what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown. 

If we must be subjected to Christmas music every year, at least let's make it bad/strange futuristic-y sci-fi songs. Space travel and Christmas - two things that have nothing to do with each other.  So why are there so many songs about both? Maybe cuz kids love 'em both. Or because Santa's reindeer routine was a wormhole-like traveling thru space/time? Or cuz everyone gets sick of "White Christmas" after a while? Regardless, here are 24 mainly '50s/'60s songs collected over the years, stuffed into one handy stocking:

SPACE-AGE SANTA
(Is this divshare business working?)
Space-Age Santa (Zippyshare)

These tunes are mostly off hopelessly obscure 45s, but I added artist info, if any

01 Hal Bradley Orch wPatty Marie Jay - SpaceAge Santa Claus
02 Zoot, Zoot, Zoot Here Comes Santa In His New Space Suit - Tiny Tim and Bruce Haack (as previously discussed)
03 Introduction-Hooray For Santa Claus - Miton DeLugg (from the badfilm classic "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians)
04 I Cloned Myself For Christmas - Neutron 606
05 Good King Wenceslas - Douglas Leedy (from a Buchla - not Moog - album from the late '60s that's all pretty cool, but this is the stand-out track.)
06 The Go Go's - I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek (No, not those Go-Gos, this was a '60s British studio "group.")
07 Outer Space Santa - Lawrence Welk's Little Band
08 Santa and the Satellite - another proto-mashup from Buchanan & Goodman
09 Northern Telecom - I Want An OC192 For Christmas 
10 moog cookbook - santa claus is coming to town (time-traveling to the '90s for this nutty instro)
11 Tim Dinkins - Santa's Rocket
12 Take A Ride On Santa's Rocket - The Sounds Extraordinare
13 Bobby Helms - Captain Santa Claus (Yep, the "Jingle Bell Rock" guy)
14 Lothars - Oh Holy Night (great contemporary theremin group)
15 barry gordon - Zoomah the Santa Claus from Mars
16 The Servotron Evaluation of the Christmas Season
17 Fountains of Wayne - I Want an Alien for Christmas (more actual not-old music! From their 2005 album "Out-Of-State Plates")
18 a sonovox (a kind of '40s vocoder) version of "rudolph"
19 troy hess - christmas on the moon (singing 6 year with thick hick accent - OUCH)
20 William Shatner - Good King Wenceslas (hearing all the verses, recited in Captain Kirk's ponderous delivery, reminds me that I have no idea what the hell this song is about)
21 Scene 1 Come Rejoicing-Its The Very Best Time of The Year-Make A Joyful Noise (from a kiddie xian xmas album I found in a thrift-shop called "Christmas 2001 A Space-Age Adventure"; I actually digitized the whole thing, but, believe me, you don't need to hear it)
22 Christmas in the Stars (from the infamous "Star Wars Christmas" album; I also have this one on vinyl - featuring a young Jon Bon Jovi! - but you REALLY don't need to hear the whole thing)
23 MIT computer 1962 carols
24 Space Age Santa Claus - Gus de Wert Trio (Incredibly, a cover of track #1)

Thanks to J-Unit 1!