No, I Will Not Leave U2 Alone

In a July 5th, 2015 Salon article, Annie Zaleskie wrote that we should "leave U2 alone." I sent Slate this rebuttal, which went unpublished. In light of recent news of a forthcoming U2 release, I thought it was time to dust this off. As this was written a decade ago, there might be some dated references in here (does anyone remember Tony Robbins?), and the final section discusses a media omnipresence that I don't think really exists as much anymore. But I think the basic points still stand.

Zaleskie declared that the veteran, much-despised Irish quartet "one of our best bands." Tho admitting that the band has engaged in numerous transgressions, she pleaded that "enough is enough."

I like some of their songs, and if you like the band, or love them, that's fine. There's no point in trying to de-convert a fan. I would just like to answer Zaleski's question: "why did they become so loathed?" Oh, there are reasons. There are many reasons...

The Sound and The (Lack Of) Fury

The late '70s/early '80s punk scene made a decisive break with rock 'n' roll's traditions by largely rejecting blues-based guitar styles. After the initial punk uprising cleared the decks, the so-called post-punk bands set about creating a new rock vocabulary, as brilliant guitarists like Public Image Ltd's Keith Levine, and Magazine and Siouxie and the Banshees' John McGeoch innovated unique styles that had seemingly nothing to do with rock's blues past. 

U2's guitarist The Edge (his friends call him "The") has admitted that he was profoundly influenced by all of this right from the band's start. U2's shimmering guitar sound may have been strongly influenced by the punks/post-punks, but it was missing many of its' emotional elements. Punk and post-punk was music that trafficked in darkness, madness, and excitement; anarchy, angst, and anxiety.  The snotty rebellion of the Sex Pistols, the awesome intensity of the Ramones or Black Flag, the droning horror of Joy Division, the dissonant rabble-rousing of Gang of Four or the Minutemen - all of it was scrubbed off, leaving a nice, clean replica. U2 did to post-punk what Eric Clapton did to blues and what Huey Lewis did to that old time rock 'n' roll - made it safe, bland, and easily chewable. "Alternative" rock for the timid.

In time, the band would experiment with other sounds and styles. I liked the unexpected funk groove of "Mysterious Ways"...that is, until Bono opened his mouth. And therein lies another problem:

No Pro-Bono Work

There are many incredible things that one can do with the human voice: crooning, opera, rapping, multi-part harmonies, soul power, rock roar. U2 singer Bono chooses to bellow. An open-mouthed, from-the-gut bellow, like Cher, or her sound-alike Danzig. For U2, this style of singing means...Drama! Passion! Inspiration!  

Bono doesn't seem to have lived his songs, even if he really has. He seems as far removed from actual everyday human experiences as a politician rolling up his sleeves at a photo op and "working" at a shop for a couple of hours to show what a man of the people he is.¹ Combined with the neutered rock music, the effect resembles less pop and more pep rally, or corporate anthems to motivate the workers. See also: most Contemporary Christian music; fellow '80s flag-wavers Bruce Springsteen, The Alarm, and The Call²; Army recruiting jingles; and Up With People. It isn't art so much as a Tony Robbins motivation seminar set to music. 

I don't want motivation, and certainly not from a bellower. This is supposed to be rock 'n' roll, a little wild, reckless, and dangerous. We don't want to be uplifted, we wanna get high!

One need only compare two songs inspired by the black civil rights movement of the '60s, the Beatles "Blackbird" and U2's "Pride (In The Name of Love)" to see how hollow U2's attempts to "uplift" are: "Blackbird" is simple, musically low-key, and beautiful: "Take these broken wings and learn to fly/All your life/You were only waiting for this moment to arise." (The song has been covered by numerous black artists, incidentally.) Compare that with the MLK tribute "Pride," where Bono is hollering about...oh, who the hell knows? The man himself even admitted: "I looked at how glorious that song was and thought: 'What the fuck is that all about?' It's just a load of vowel sounds ganging up on a great man." But don't tell that to U2 fans who made it the band's biggest American hit up to that point in their career.

Apart from namedropping MLK, they've also: sang about Billie Holiday, covered Lou Reed, quoted from and dedicated a song to Charles Bukowski, recorded in Sun Studios, and hired B.B King and Johnny Cash to sing on their recordings, all to little effect, except perhaps to give themselves (and their listeners) a pat on the back for making all the right cultural references. I mean, Bukowski? The man was the anti-Bono: down to earth, profane, and in his work, devoid of histrionics, and utterly dedicated to the personal as opposed to the political. About the only thing they had in common was their prodigious drinking abilities.

"These Guys Are From England And Who Gives A Shit?"

The fact that U2 have been making socially and politically conscious music from the get-go, and are such high-profile supports of do-gooder causes makes their personal transgressions and hypocrisies all the more galling.  From moving their business out of Ireland to avoid paying taxes; to The Edge's attempts to build not one, not two, but five mansions in the environmentally sensitive Malibu hills³; to the already-noted iTunes debacle4 and their clueless response to it, it's readily apparent that "the conscious of rock" behave like any other entitled, arrogant rich kids, or like some massive corporate entity that does what it wants, when it wants, and to whom it wants.

In 1991, U2 practically crushed the great experimental band Negativland, and one of the greatest indie labels ever, SST Records, for daring to sample them in a silly prank record. The horrible lawsuit dragged on for years. But then, U2's subsequent Zoo TV tour featured the very sort of multi-media sampling and satire that Negativland pioneered. Coincidence? I find it amusing that one of U2's most celebrated collaborators and producers, Brian Eno, seemingly sides with Negativland. In his 1996 book "A Year With Swollen Appendices," he writes that Negativland "...believe any attempt to copyright 'intellectual property' is retrogressive...I became more and more persuaded by their points of view." He even gives out their web address, "...where they are conducting this very interesting discussion."5


With Or Without U2

The misery of the U2 non-fan is compounded by the fact that they seemed to be everywhere. Their every move becomes some big ol' whoop-de-do on which the media must breathlessly report. We couldn't turn on our tvs, computers, radios, or pick up a paper or magazine with hearing or seeing them. Their greatness is stated as an insurmountable fact. It's like being surrounded by "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"-like pod people. This has all become fairly oppressive over the years because U2 won't freakin' break up!  They just go on and on...

And if you are still one of their supporters, check out FU2: a free download album of anti-U2 songs. The "Letter To Paul McGuinness," a U2 fan club members' account of her appalling treatment at a concert, should sway any last remaining Bono apologist. The fact that the fan club was named "Propaganda" should have been a tip-off. After all, the dictionary definition of the word 'propaganda' is: "information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view." Uh-huh.

Again, I admit that they have made a few good tunes, and am not bothered by anyone who likes them. But the article asked: why did they become so despised? You got questions, I got answers!
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 Footnotes
1. Bono certainly behaves like a politician, the way he palls around with world leaders. I don't understand why this is considered to be a good thing. An artist has a far more important job than the politician. Thru the great gift of imagination, artists contribute to mankind's information pool, along with all manner of scientists, creators, thinkers and doers. The best thing a politician can do is fill in your street's potholes.
2. Big Country, and the Waterboys were posed perilously close to this style, as well. 
3. Mr. The Edge finally got his way by making million-dollar 'donations' to conservancy groups. Bribery makes the world go 'round, eh?
4. for YEARS, my wife kept getting that damn album popping up at unexpected times. Like an annoying fly buzzing around, we could not get rid of it. Why do we have to be frikken computer programmers to delete some space-hogging files from our phone?!

5. Brian Eno "A Year With Swollen Appendices," pg. 396

The Death Of Disco Was An Inside Job

Chicago shock-jock Steve Dahl at the 1979 Disco Demolition event.

"Revisionist history" can be useful if it's done to correct errors or biases in past historical accounts. Or it can be a thing of evil when it is merely the lazy process of ignoring reams of data, refusing to perform in-depth research, and skipping over logical conclusions in favor of pseudoscience for sensationalistic commercial purposes, trolling for attention, and/or to prop up pre-determined political/religious beliefs, e.g.: The Civil War was about states' rights, not slavery! The Sex Pistols weren't punk, they were just a boy band! Martians built the pyramids!

Which brings us to disco.

There’s been a fair amount of revisionist history in recent years regarding the mid-to-late 1970s disco explosion. Disco’s short life and spectacular flame-out in 1979 has been attributed to “rockism,” racist, and anti-gay attitudes, and although these elements may have had some impact on the sudden backlash, there needs to be a more fully nuanced explanation for the death of disco. In short, disco had no one but itself to blame for its’ sudden demise. Let us, as they say in funk, break it down, to five main points:

1. The Race Argument:

Disco was built using many of the same musical elements as funk music:

-Afro-Latin percussion (cowbells!)

-Guitars played high on the neck (thank you, James Brown), and/or with wah-wah pedals

-Steady, high-energy mid-tempo dance beats

-Occasional lush orchestrations

However, disco smoothed out the sometimes complex African-derived rhythms of funk (e.g.: Brown’s "Cold Sweat") to a thump–thump–thump beat so simple even the nerdiest white people could follow it. This caused resentment in the black community, as did how the inherently political Black Power message of funk had become diluted. Dance music went from “Woman of the Ghetto”, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” and “Say it Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)” to “Shake Your Booty,“ “Get Up And Boogie” and, er, “Boogie Oogie Oogie.“ (see Professor Rickey Vincent’s book “Funk!“).

The idea that disco was made largely by people of color is a bit disingenuous. Actually, FUNK was largely made by people of color. As Vincent points out, few non-Blacks made - or could make - funk. But disco opened the floodgates to anyone who could keep a kick-drum ticking away at 120 beats-per-minute. It is certainly a positive thing to create a musical genre that is available to any and all musicians. But the effect of disco was, as Nelson George details in his book 'The Death of Rhythm and Blues," essentially a whitewashing of dance music in the music industry's attempt to get "crossover" hits.

Of course there is (newsflash!) racism in America. Ask anyone who was a FM rock jock in the '70s about complaints they would receive whenever Black artists like Jimi Hendrix would get spins. But the idea that racism was a major element in the “Disco Sucks” movement doesn't really hold water when a simple scan of 1970s/80s record sales charts reveals that some the biggest albums and songs of the ‘70s (and of all time) were by Black artists. Even as a mob was descending on the 1979 “DiscoDemolition” event in Chicago (with racists chucking actual soul and funk records onto the bonfire along with the disco), the Michael Jackson phenomenon was just starting to explode to an unprecedented degree. Hip-hop, which developed in the late '70s alongside disco, became for a time the world's biggest selling genre and it's the blackest music ever.

2. The homophobia argument doesn’t really wash as the average public had no idea that gay people were making/liking disco. Feel free to peruse radio airchecks or news articles of the day, and you will find very few references to queer culture in disco music. In fact, most people really didn’t know what gay culture was like at all. Very few listeners at the time were even aware that disco stars the Village People were singing about gay life. How could they know? Realistic depictions of queer lifestyles were almost nonexistent in mainstream media. Think there’s an episode of “The Brady Bunch” where Mike decides to cruise Santa Monica Blvd? Or even in the “sophisticated“ urbane films of Woody Allen, ever seen scenes set in a Greenwich Village bathhouse? You just keep lookin’, and you’ll soon see how invisible gay life was in 1970s America. To most, disco was just sounds on the radio, not signifying anything else.

In any case, ‘70s glam rock was the queerest music ever, and people loved it. The “Rocky Horror Picture Show” soundtrack (“I’m just a sweet tranvestite from transsexual Transylvania”) Elton John ( “I’m a bitch, I’m a bitch!”), David Bowie (“You’ve got your mother in a whirl/she can’t tell if you’re a boy or a girl”), Queen, the Kinks (“Lola” who  “…walked like a woman and talked like a man”) Lou Reed (“Walk On The Wild Side,”) etc. all had much more explicitly queer themes, and yet still were hugely popular with the mainstream on both sides of the Atlantic. By contrast, what would trigger anti-gay sentiment in, say, “Night Fever” or “Boogie Wonderland”? Really, again only the Village People (or Diana Ross’ “I’m Coming Out”) brought gay themes to the Top 40, but with messages so oblique that they went over the heads of most listeners. As opposed to Lou Reed’s “Vicious” (“You must think I'm some kinda gay blade”) from his best-selling 1972 glam rock album pointedly titled “Transformer,” with a leather boy posing on the back cover.

Likewise, The B-52s, who were far more overtly campy than most disco acts, were shooting to stardom in the late '70s, just as disco was collapsing. And then as the ‘80s dawned, numerous New Wave artists like The Culture Club, Soft Cell, The Smiths (and later Erasure, The Bronski Beat and The Communards) had much more explicitly gay personas and songs than anything from the disco era. This didn’t prevent them from shooting to the top of airplay and sales charts.

So if racism and homophobia were not such big issues in the death of disco, what was?

3. Formulaic cliches, rolling off an assembly line...

 The publics' taste in art and entertainment can be very fickle indeed. And that’s bad news if you are a giant corporation looking to increase profits on a quarterly basis. Record company execs would pull their hair, asking, “Why did they like The Dave Clark Five last year, but not now??” as they sat on warehouses full of unsold product. 

By the mid-'70s, disco records were starting to sell well. 1977 saw the release of the disco-themed film "Saturday Night Fever,” and its’ blockbuster soundtrack. Therefore, in the music industry’s quest for a sure-fire hit-making formula, they directed nearly all of their artists to release a disco song. Sinatra? The Beach Boys? Classical orchestras? Think of the most utterly unlikely artist expected to make a dance-floor banger, and odds are, if they were active in the 1970s, they made a disco record.

And they were terrible. Oh dear lord, there was so, so much terrible, terrible disco. One dumb, gimmicky novelty record after another came oozing off the assembly line: Lawrence Welk's accordion-wielding polka-meister Myron Floren released an album called "Disco Polka." And it wasn't even the only disco polka record!  "Tuxedo Junction" was a disco recreation of 1940s Big Band hits. There were even rip-offs of other disco hits, like the martial arts/Chinese titles released in the wake of Carl Douglas' hit "Kung Fu Fighting." Soundtrack themes to such films and tv series as "Star Wars," "Star Trek" and even "Close Encounters of the Third Kind' all got the disco treatment. Check out the Wilton Place Street Band’s disco version of the “I Love Lucy theme,” an actual Top 40 hit, for sheer laugh-out-loud stupidity.  There was not only Rick Dees' hit “Disco Duck”, but someone else did a Christmas version of “Disco Duck,” which might be the worst record ever made. I have a 12 inch Single called “Disco Rabbit.“  

Some of the biggest names in music attempted to pound their well-established square peg styles into the round hole of disco. Faded stars like Frankie Avalon, Petula Clark and Teresa Brewer remade their old hits inna disco stylee. EZ listening acts like Percy Faith, Andy Williams and Johnny Mathis figured this would be a way to squeeze into modern music charts. Leftover hippies like Country Joe McDonald (who recorded the truly wretched "Bring Back The Sixties, Man") and The Byrds cut new songs designed to get them back into the good graces of their old Baby Boomer audience, now living a coke-filled life of affluence. 

Resentment started to run high among both artists and the public as the relentless pounding of that disco beat was freakin' EVERYWHERE. Apart from the afore-mentioned funk fans, there were also many rock, country, and mainstream pop fans who felt like they were being pushed aside. This fear that genres such as rock were being killed off might have been the number one reason for the anti-disco backlash. There were several punk-ish records released based on the theme of "disco sucks," as well as "Disco Sucks" bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc. I don't recall such similar "Funk Sucks," "Glam Sucks" or even "Punk Sucks" activism. 

Of course, disco, like any form of music, was capable of producing gems. Artists like Chic and Donna Summer continue to resonate with contemporary audiences. But with funk/r'n'b acts, rock ‘n’ rollers, lounge crooners, ethnic artists, et al, all being told to make a disco record, and with not nearly a high enough public demand to sustain all this bad music, it naturally burned itself out - the cultural equivalent of an economic bubble.

4. Disco production was expensive.

Like the swing jazz of the 1930s/‘40s Big Band era, disco productions usually relied not on garage bands or rec-room DJs but on lush orchestrations performed by large groups of top session pros. Partially out of economic necessity, the Big Bands of the ‘40s had to pare down to small combos, thus ushering in the Bebop era of jazz, which has been the mainstream approach to jazz group organization ever since. Disco, years after its decline, would similarly mutate to such low-budget forms as house and techno. (Tho, unlike what happened to jazz, where former Big Band musicians mostly just immediately moved on to smaller groups, the growth of House in the 1980s occurred with no input from the original disco performers or record companies.)  Disco’s big budgets were not the sole reason for the genre’s demise, but they sure didn’t help. 

5. Disco had an extremely limited artistic and emotional range. 

You pretty much had to stick with that off beat high-hat rhythm or it wasn’t disco. If it was too slow, or too fast, it wasn’t disco. If it was too experimental, low-fi, or jazzy, then, even if it did have that disco beat, it was probably going to be considered jazz (like Pigbag's "Papa's Got A Brand New Pigbag,") or New Wave, a la Ian Drury’s “Sex and Drugs and Rock n Roll,” or Public Image Ltd’s “Swan Lake” aka “Death Disco,” and hence had little chance of getting spins at Studio 54. Basically, if it broke from the strict rhythm formula and shallow dance/boogie themes, then it was no longer disco, which had painted itself into a corner, leaving little chance to grow, as all art movements must do, lest they stagnate and die.

Other musical genres born in the same mid-‘70s time period such as punk (and the subsequent alternative rock movement) and hip-hop are still thriving today, as they had much more open-minded attitudes. A hip-hop or punk/New Wave/alt-rock artist could be personal, political, funny/satirical, and/or totally weird. Themes of darkness and anger, unimaginable in disco, were welcome. One could also record these styles relatively cheaply, while utilizing wildly varying tempos and textures, unlike the predictable machine-like anonymity of studio pros cranking out high-gloss disco records. At least in their original purest forms, punk and rap were street-level peoples’ movements, not directed by - indeed, opposed to - record company machinations. Their constant boundary-pushing ensured their longevity.

ADDENDUM: Thanks to Trouser Press writer Brad Reno for reminding me of how the whole "beautiful people" attitude of disco was such a turn-off to many. The rich snob aspect was grating to normal people in Kansas who hadn't a chance in hell of getting past the snooty doorman into Studio 54. That elitist message of "Hey, losers! Look at all the fun THESE people are having. Sucks to be you!" was implicit in every TV and magazine report.

And so...

The results of the audio autopsy are in: disco never stood a chance. "Disco Demolition” simply pulled the plug on a terminally ill patient. I do not support violence or vandalism, but there's a part of me that is ok with the “Disco Demolition” night. Yes, it was a messy event, and there were certainly some bad actors involved. But it was organic. It had the feel of people standing up and saying: "We have had enough." Of course, there are better ways to fight back against the corporate take-over and white-washing of culture, but "Disco Demolition" did so in such a forceful manner that it sent shock waves thru the music industry. At least for a little while, the suits realized: these people love their music. We better not mess with it.

 

"DO EVERYTHING WRONG: The First History of 20th Century Music" - Introduction

To paraphrase Elton John: I'm a blog, I'm a blog, and the blog is back!

But this time around, I'll be writing articles detailing what I've learned about 20th century music from a few decades of listening to whole lots of records across multiple genres. Revelations! Revolutions! Upsetting the apple cart of music history...Crucial moments in music's development that have (so far as I know) been left out of much music history and criticism volumes. Hence, the somewhat cheeky title "the FIRST history," as there are important aspects to recent music history that have scarcely been dealt with. Well, to my knowledge. I haven't read anywhere close to all music books/articles, so feel free to hep me to any that have in fact dealt with some of the topics I'll be exploring here. 

These articles could be a book, maybe, one day...But first, to quote The Jimmy Castor Bunch: What we're gonna do right here is go back...way back...back into time:

By the 1990s, record stores, thrift shops, and antique dealers were hit with a tsunami of vinyl. Compact disks supposedly made vinyl records obsolete, and so they were ditched by the masses in favor of the Space-Age Miracle of the compact-disk (cue: heavenly choir). Meanwhile, the 1950s/1960s generation was downsizing. They were now empty-nesters, transitioning into retirement mode, and were also unleashing their old records unto the world (along with their tiki mugs, Midcentury-Modern furniture, vintage Hawaiian shirts, etc) The result, to this young spud, was finally - at last! - being able to get the real history of 20th century music unfiltered, as it actually happened, from the people who made it, bought it, listened to it. And at dirt-cheap prices. 

This was mind-melting to someone who had only heard the official word from, so far as mass media was concerned, the 3 types of music critics: rock, classical, and jazz. There was nothing else. Other forms of music scarcely existed. And the Three Types of Critics did not talk to each other. There was very little cross-over. With this flood of vinyl at prices even a kid like me could afford ("for 5 bucks, you can take this whole crate of rekkids") it was possible to delve into forbidden realms of music that were ignored by these writers, even tho this music might have been hugely influential and commercially successful. (All of this was taking place, of course, in the pre-internet era. If you wanted to hear a record, you had to find the actual vinyl and play it on a record player.)

Much of the music criticism I was exposed to growing up seemed to focus on personalities/biographies, lyrics, and the social scene in which the music existed. Which I get - that is indeed part of the story. But magazine interviews with Brian Eno, who discussed the actual sounds of music, made my teen self realize that the building-blocks of music - rhythms, timbre, technology - were nowhere to be found in a review by, say, Robert Hilburn. Also, listening to a wide variety of records led me to another discovery - that different genres of music lept thru time and space to influence each other. e.g.: The 1950s Cuban cha-cha-cha craze helped shape the template of modern rock'n'roll. (Latin music in general was, despite its absence from Boomer nostalgia, one of the biggest crazes of the 1950s/60s.) And the Black Power-inspired "free jazz" scene of the 1960s directly led to punk and alternative rock. And so forth. This type of cross-pollination was often overlooked when critics only stayed within their own proscribed genre. 

It's often said that "writing about music is like dancing about architecture," but that's not really true. There is a vocabulary to describe music, which I will attempt to use in a way that doesn't require a degree in music theory. After all, I don't have a degree in music, but I can link to examples that will hopefully connect the dots in an effort to illuminate various corners of the vast, explosive history of 20th century music.

I realize that this is all an absurdly enormous, hopelessly ambitious undertaking that can't possibly cover ALL 20th century music. But I can chip away at it, a little bit at a time. Hey ho, let's go...

Jungle Room Records

Ungawa! I'm unleasing obscure oddities from 35 years of record collecting that (hopefully) have not appeared on other compilations of wild, weird Mid-century vinyl fun. Some of these tracks appeared here on M4M, but I've cleaned them up quite a bit. NINE (9) releases so far.

https://jungleroomrecords1.bandcamp.com/

The much-appreciated proceeds go to our daughter's education. 

 

WFMU's SHEENA'S JUNGLE ROOM internet radio

Now screaming, er, streaming via the world's greatest radio station: 

https://wfmu.org/sheena

All lowbrow all the time...uncensored audio entertainment and enlightenment for an uptight world! Featuring plenty of stuff from this here blog, including plenty of rarities recorded from vinyl (and video) - coolness not digitally available. 

Thanks to all the contributors over the years - your gifts to this blog now have a semi-permanent home beaming out to the world.

So now you know what's I've been doing with myself lately. See y'all at the Room!

AND NOW, THE NEWS...

Good evening. Here's what's happening in the world of outsider music. Our top story today:

- Florence Foster Jenkins, "The World's Worst Opera Singer," is not only the subject of the recent Meryl Streep film, but of two books, including one written by ma music bloggin' homie Darryl Bullock, of "World's Worst Records" fame. The other book is supposedly the one that inspired the film. Still not enough? Dig the documentary DVD.

- Was quite surprised and delighted to hear Shooby Taylor the Human Horn in the recent animated film "Sing." 'Twas only a few seconds of "Stout Hearted Man" but still, Shooby's fnally hit the big time! They better include him on the soundtrack album.

- All Eternal Things is a beyond-great blog dedicated to lounge private-press vinyl. The album cover pics are priceless, and the mixes and vinyl rips are hours of good bad listening.

- The Everyday Film, whose recordings were once so elusive, has now thrown up everything (if you'll pardon the expression) on Bandcamp.

From all of us here at M4M news, thanks for watching. Good night!

David Liebe Hart & Chip The Black Boy gets Chopped & Screwed

One of LA/s outsider music heroes David Liebe Hart and his ventriloquist dummy Chip (who he treats as his son) has a new, all-too-brief 5-song EP that takes his usual flying saucer obsessions and gives it the DJ Screw technique, (minus the Purple Drank, one assumes). Apart from odes to aliens (including one who doesn't want him to look at porn), there's also "Nature," about his experiences on 4-H Club camping trips, in which Hart delivers this memorable lyric, in his warbly baritone:

"We rub sticks together to make fire/We had joy, and desire." 

But you'll have to buy the release to hear it, as you only get a short preview on the EP's Bandcamp page:

David Liebe Hart & Chip The Black Boy gets Chopped & Screwed

I've never been a major fan of the chopped 'n 'screwed sound, but the results here perfectly suit Hart's weird world. The result is sharp music shot thru with hilarious strangeness. I've already listened to this one 3 times. Pass the purple drank, please..?

ZOOGZ TOOSDAY: Son Of Puke

It's the (slight) return of Zoogz Toozday!

Like a cross between cartoon soundtracks and free jazz, side 1 of this 1987 cassette-only release is a sprawling smorgasbord of countless samples and snippets of prior Rift releases mixed into a 44 minute sound-collage. Hear the album Trouser Press called: "patience-defying"! Casios, Chipmunk voices, backwards voices, video-game-like bloops 'n' bleeps, some things resembling actual rock music, and what sounds like 5 records playing at the same time...Fun stuff!

Side 2 is a found tape Zoogz claims was rescued from a garbage bin. It's a side of a polite jazzy group apparently called the Transients covering Beatles and (some fairly obscure) solo Beatle songs. That story might be more believable if the voices weren't so obviously sped-up. And then there's their, er, "cover" of "Revolution No. 9" which gives it all away. Still, judging by this set, Zoogz & Co. could have worked as a Holiday Inn lounge band. And who knows, maybe they did.

Zoogz Rift: "Son of Puke" - in 2 files, Side 1 and 2, just like a real tape.

Much thanks to maniac Michael B. for sending this rarity our way.

New Leaders of the Eldritch Cult

If H.P. Lovecraft-inspired Christmas carols just aren't, you know, dark enough for you, dig:



It's an excellent new album from The UK's Will "Seesar" Conner and his large contingent of daemonic underlings creating Lovecraft-inspired dark ambient soundscapes, much of it created with found things on which mortal man was not meant to be making music.  You might not necessarily know that from listening to this album, tho, as it's all quite musical, with each track creating its own sonic world. No random, self-indulgent banging-and-clanging here - Dr. Connor does have a PhD, after all.

The opening track is some genuinely spooky stuff - Mr. Connor shouldn't be surprised if horror film directors come a-calling. "Sirens" sets us adrift on a haunted ship lost at sea. Other tracks suggest dense rain forests, or swarms of giant insects. Way cool! Too bad this album came out after Halloween.

I asked Connor about he and the other members of his coven's use of found/invented instruments: "the re-purposed stuff is on all the tracks and that's all me, for the most. There's bicycles, pot lids, mixing bowls, unopened 2 litre bottles (they make great chime sounds!), bags of fertilizer (that was a less than pleasant day at the studio for my nose...), glass jars, various bottles, pieces of aluminum, newspaper, plastic, and much more. Arcaide makes a lot of his own electronics, and I think Benjamin Pierce does as well. Hell is Carbon is entirely guitars, but he used extended techniques for all the tracks to which he contributed. I think Druha Smrt, Babalith, and The Strange Walls (for this one track) used primarily store-bought instruments played traditionally, but, as you can hear, they stayed well away from standard melodic and harmonic material for the most."

ANOTHER WEIRD-ASS CHRISTMAS

Our pal Cat A. Waller has assembled another great batch of oddities, novelties, and cheese with a yule-time spin and I'd love to break it down for you, but Cat fears the copyright nazis, and would rather you just download this beast and check it out for yourself. Actually, a lot of it is quite old, so it's probably ok, but hey, can't be too careful nowadays. I can tell you that it's ingredients include: polka, lounge, the voice of Mr Magoo, holiday hillbillies, some helpful radio Public Service Announcements, some vintage burlesque naughtyness, a well-known indie rock band covering a song-poem, and a quite inexplicable number about a prog-rock star in his own winter wonderland. A wildly entertaining assortment that helps to make the season bright.

Cat's other collections, and a great discovery (The Ghostly Trio album) are also available here:

Cat A. Waller's Xmas mixes

Thanks, Cat!

ROCKING STOCKING STUFFERS

To make up for my absence from blog-land*, here's about five bajillion hours of weird Christmas music. There's even a new blog called WeirdChristmas.com that has two swell podcasts so far, featuring the likes of Hasil Adkins, Tiny Tim, song-poems, and the truly horrifying Danger Woman. Hoo-yah! Pour the spiked eggnog, we got ourselves a party.

Our Central California agent-in-the-field Don-O has whipped up this HI-larious collection of Christmas Chomedy. Only 11 tracks, but classics from Albert Brooks, and the Portsmouth Sinfonia ("The World's Worst Orchestra" - featuring Brian Eno on clarinet!) sit alongside more recent gems from Stephen Colbert (one of the first things I ever downloaded from iTunes), and rad rarities that are new to me, like the one from ye olden Los Angeles radio personality "Sweet" Dick Whittington, and the gnarly surf rocker from the Go-Nuts. Oh, and speaking of L.A. radio, The Credibility Gap was a great '70s comedy show that featured Harry Shearer and Michael McKean.

"Santa Shtick"

Despite the back cover artwork listings, there are actually 11 tracks; not listed is a message for KMart employees, and Jon Stewart's "Message From A Jew."

Don-O has also hepped us to the fact that the glory and wonder of Shittyflute now features Christmas songs. Yes! Inept flute/recorder solos (even the occasional violin) played over classic songs is a deceptively simple strategy that still makes me laff every time. Irri-tainment at it's finest. Much thanks to Don-O, whose "Hour of Crap" is happily now being archived.



It's Christmas-time, in the Shitty...

And if all that wasn't enough, prepare thyself for albums and albums of kooky kids and their DIY smart-ass home-brew christmas chrap, accurately described by our new Maniac pal Quentin as The Motherlode of F'ed up Xmas music: "people at the Something Awful forums have been doing an annual Christmas album since 2009. The complete archive is on Bandcamp at  

http://saxmas.bandcamp.com/
- some highlights are:

http://saxmas.bandcamp.com/track/ho-ho-ho-its-christmas-time (possibly
the greatest Christmas song of all time)

http://saxmas.bandcamp.com/track/we-wish-you-an-adequate-festive-period

http://saxmas.bandcamp.com/track/good-king-wenceleslas

http://saxmas.bandcamp.com/track/das-sexy-reindeer-danz (this one's also
really good)

http://saxmas.bandcamp.com/track/alcoholic-christmas

http://saxmas.bandcamp.com/track/hell-bring-you-coal (parody of the
great "Hand of the Almighty" by John Butler)

http://saxmas.bandcamp.com/track/christmas-cucumber-in-da-butt

http://saxmas.bandcamp.com/track/hey-everybody-its-christmas-time


There's also supposed to be a torrent of the whole collection at magnet:?xt=urn:btih:4DBFD6935BEB93965A4601A8B42CBE72B50947E7&dn=Goon%20Christmas%202009-2015&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3a80%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.opentrackr.org%3a1337%2fannounce - but I haven't tried the link, as my connection has a data cap. [UPDATE: Quentin tried it, and it works.]

I actually submitted one to this year's collection, which will probably be released shortly before Christmas - I sampled my cockatoo doing his normal spaz when I leave the room, turned it into an SFZ instrument, used a MIDI of "Carol of the Bells", and added some samples of my macaw talking. The result was described as "Christmas in bird hell" in the thread."

Eagerly awaiting that - Sampled animals are always welcome 'round my pink aluminum xmas tree. Thank you, Quentin.
 
*A nice Maniac even wrote asking if I was ok. I'm fine, just very busy.

Lloyd Marcus - American Tea Paaaaaar-TAY!

My fellow Americans! Not too crazy about any presidential candidate this year? Here's someone more entertaining then all of them put together: an ultra-conservative black man!  Who can sing like a Motown star! We truly live in an age of wonders.

Lloyd starts off this 2009 release dealing, like any good politician, in generalities - stuff that anyone can get behind. He even takes a swing at Louis Armstrong's chestnut "Wonderful World."  But then you get two back-to-back bits of hilarity, the somewhat baffling (and thoroughly dated) "Twenty Ten," and his "My Girl" parody, where Marcus sings the praises of the likes of Sarah Palin and the already-forgotten Michelle Bachman. Classic. Just the thing to 'take back America' to the good ol' days of slavery, segregation, lynchings... "What a wonderful country this is!"

But hey, if nothing else, he is a pretty decent singer. A patriotic round of applause for our representative from the great state of Utah, Windbag, for sending us this one.






Lloyd Marcus - "American Tea Party"

1	American Tea Party Anthem
2	We the People
3	Feet to the Fire
4	Wonderful Country
5	Twenty Ten
6	Our Girls
7	Hello Mom, It's Me
8	Let the River Flow
9	United We Stand
10	Can't Afford the Sunshine
11	Dance with the Devil
12	It's About Love