BACK FROM THE GRAVE Rockin' 1966 Punkers!

          I love compilation CDs of impossibly obscure, great old singles. These compilations allow a cheapskate geek like me to own hundreds and hundreds of ultra – cool songs without having to waste the money and time that collector geeks spend to score the original old records.

          In the area of 60’s rock ‘n’ roll, the Nuggets and Pebbles series get the lion’s share of critical attention. Every Pebbles disc has at least  three or four mind blowing classics, and the first two Nuggets boxes are sheer ambrosia. My favorite however, is the Back From The Grave series. While Pebbles and Nuggets intermix garage band trash (That’s a compliment!) with psychedelia*, folk rock* and full - blown pop music productions**, “Back From the Grave” never veers from pure, sinister, ultra primitive, demonic, garage band trash! Before the more common term “garage band rock ‘n’ roll” took over, this type of music was referred to as “60’s punk”, and these comps show the accuracy of that term! You won’t think for one second that any of these musicians are professionals or over the age of twenty at the most. (And that’s the way rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be!!!) On the CDs there are five volumes, numbering 1 through 4, then skipping to #8. (There were eight original vinyl double - record volumes, the contents of which can fit into five digital discs, so apparently the fifth CD is listed as the “eighth”  as a sign of completeness.) Each of these CDs contains between 29 & 32 songs!

       These songs have to be heard to be believed, but I can’t resist trying to describe a few. On Volume One; “Jack the Ripper” by The One Way Streets, in which the singer is out in the slum after dark in the age of the Ripper murders. The song is something of a call and response, with the lead singing things like “Now I hear my mother calling me”, followed by the band shouting “Jack the Rippa! Jack the Rippa!”. He needn’t have worried – at the end of the song he realizes he is Jack the Ripper. The lyrics (but not the wild music) of “Surfside Date” by The Triumphs is a great, sarcastic fun – in – the- sun parody; “We’ll take a dip in the waves / Like sun – ripened surfside slaves / After that usual razzamatazz / I’ll take you home and all that jazz / We’ve had a surfside date!” When someone unearthed it years later, they assumed “The Crusher” by The Novas featured the TV wrestler The Crusher on lead vocals. However, it was really a 300 pound 16 year old boy imitating “the great athlete”. The lyrics go along the lines of, ”Do the hammer lock, Do the hammer lock, Do the hammer lock you turkey - necks, everybody do it now. ROAR!!! Do the eye gouge, Do the eye gouge, Do the eye gouge you turkey necks etc.)

          Volume Two is just as great – among the many highlight is “Willie the Wild One” by Willie the Wild One. According to the song, the guy drives a motor cycle and has long purple hair. After singing the verses he likes to holler masochistically “AW – SUFFER!” Oddly, Conrad Birdie, the Elvis parody character in the wholesome Broadway play “Bye, Bye Birdie” frequently yells that during one of his songs, after which the girls all swoon.  

            The insanity is unabated through Volumes Three & Four. The former kicks off with a gloriously tacky, hyperactive organ riff from “In the Hall of the Mountain King” introducing the great “Stormy” by The Jesters of Newport”; “ I love you girl, but you’ll never adore me / You’re like the ocean / You’re stormy”. “Nonymous” by The Treytones sports the lyric, “Had a blind date the other night / She looked like the loser of a hatchet fight!” The song is unrelenting until the band stops on a dime after the lead singer shouts “That’s it! I Quit!”

            The latter has “The Snails’ Love Song” by The Snails. The band plays the same four note R&B riff over and over again, while the vocalist (an ultra nerdy looking white teenage boy – pictured in the CDs booklet) does a James Brown type rap: “Yeh, we’re the snails, (“audience” cheers) over here is Mister Randy Corley on gee-tar (“audience” cheers)” Apparently the band invited about a dozen friends into the studio to create a party atmosphere -- punctuated by cheers from the audience and calls for sandwiches! Volume four also includes two songs by The Spiders, Alice Cooper’s original teen garage band!

          By the way, the same label, Crypt, that released Back From the Grave, also released two volumes of Garage Punk Unknowns. Every one of the 31 songs on Volume One is great. It includes great Mersey Beat style remakes of Bobby Vinton’s Roses are Red My Love, and

Frankie Lane

’s Jezebel. It’s every bit as great as the first four volumes of Back from… and beats that series’ lackluster Volume Eight all to hell. Garage Punk Unknowns Vol. One is a tad less wild than that other series – perhaps that warranted a different title in the producer’s minds. Like Back From 8, Volume Two of Garage Punk Unknowns is a disappointment too, except for The Little Boy Blues remake of The Yardbirds remake of Tiny Bradshaw’s R&B classic “Train Kept A Rollin’”. It features the wild, rewritten lyric, “She was a heifer, and I’m a real gone stud!” I recommend getting the song on the vastly superior Pebbles Volume 10.

      

         

* (not that there’s anything wrong with it)

** (not that there’s anything wrong with ‘em)

World's Weirdest Comic Books Pt.1

From the creators of Shazam! (aka Cpt. Marvel) came "Fatman the Flying Saucer" (no. 1 April, 1967). Van Crawford saved the life of an extraterrestrial. The grateful E.T. gave Van a chocolate drink that would transform him into a flying saucer. Van teams up with Lucious Pindle, a thin teenager alias The Tinman.
In issue one (was there ever an issue 2?) Anti-Man (who is similar to The Creature From the Black Lagoon) is hell bent on destruction of the human race, since they have destroyed his race, leaving him the last of his kind. Before any real destruction can be done, anti-man's battle-ax wife shows up and tells him he needs to support their 5,000 tadpoles. She explains that "Every time he gets hopped up on seaweed juice", he goes around claiming he's the last of the species.

Of course, Elsie is the mascot of Borden Foods, and her husband Elmer is the namesake of  Elmer's glue. This November 1949 comic is about their domestic adventures with their children Beulah and Beauregard. In one story, Elmer is shrunk down to the size of a mouse by Beauregard's chemistry set. The mice tell him they would prefer cheese rather than the bacon he puts in their mouse traps.Surprisingly, this is the only pro-dairy product statement in the book. 

A parody of the Johnson administration. Ladybird as Wonder Woman is hilarious. (1966)

(June 2004) These guys spend a lot of long, lonely nights on the road. One night, despite their being in denial, old mother nature takes her course, and the duo begin an ongoing homosexual relationship. (The smell of Petey's socks drive Butch insane with desire, and cupids fill their tawdry hotel room.) They begin seeing penis shapes everywhere they look.  To confirm to themselves that they "hate the fags", the two engage in a killing spree, mass murdering homosexuals. (Hey -- I said these were weird!)

This is the first in an on-going series I will do whenever I can't come up with anything else to do.
 

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS -- The Mesopotamians

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS -- "All about the public acceptance of fragile ideas."

          Last Sunday, October 30, I saw They Might Be Giants perform at The Englert Theatre in Iowa City, Iowa. I am used to seeing bluegrass bands, where five or six people come out with acoustic instruments and blow the audience away with nothing more than their pure musical virtuosity. TMBG’s huge, rear – screen projections, dozens of colored light effects, disco mirror ball & dry ice fog struck me as a bit of culture shock. (I was a bit prepared for it, because their show was like this when I saw them in person ten years ago.) My unavoidable reaction – “is this about dazzling an audience with special effects, or is it about MUSIC & IDEAS?”  I enjoyed the show, but felt it was seriously lacking content. Happily, I would be proven wrong as the night progressed.

           Surprisingly, just as they had done ten years ago, the band played “Fingertips” in it’s entirety. “Fingertips” is 20 separate, utterly disjointed song fragments ranging from about 10 to 20 seconds in length. An audience member who has never heard the original  “Apollo 18” CD would have absolutely no idea what was going on during this. Hey – I’ve owned the album for something like 20 years, and I still have absolutely no idea what was going on during this.

            Well into the show, John Flansburgh made a valuable comment – “This show is about the public acceptance of fragile ideas.” Shortly after this, one of them stated that it was time for The (somebody?) and (somebody?) Show”. (the vocals during the music were perfectly amplified, but when the guys were speaking, their voices were often so distorted they were incomprehensible.) Anyway, the guys had a small camera they could use to project a live image of the audience on the huge rear screen. They turned this camera around and performed a puppet show projected on the screen, featuring a pair of somewhat linty looking, knitted, googly eyed puppets. Even though I couldn’t make out most of what they were saying, the concept itself was hilarious and charming, and it completely won me over for the rest of the show.

          NOW I understood what they were doing! They were using all their high – tech gadgetry to strong-arm a rock audience into accepting their “fragile ideas”. To perform a puppet show in the middle of a wild rock concert is “a fragile idea”. Their stubborn insistence on performing the utterly incoherent “Fingertips” was a “fragile idea”.

          Throughout the evening, They performed “Birdhouse In Your Soul”, “Snail Shell”, “Ana Ng”, “Dead” (remember, “I returned a bag of groceries accidentally taken off the shelf before the expiration date etc.”) and many others. At some point they performed their mind boggling new song “Cloisonné” with John Linnell playing a huge bass saxophone. Now, a week later, I don’t quite remember when certain songs were performed in the show. Hey, I go to a show to enjoy it, not to take notes! Anyway, towards the end of the show, Linnell finally got out the accordion, to joyous applause from all. They performed their classic “Triangle Man”. The show proper ended with the anthemic “The Mesopotamians”.    

            For the first of two encores, they performed “If I Was A Girl”, as a duet, with both guys on vocals and Linnell’s accordion the only instrument. (Most of the show had Linnell and Flansburgh backed by a four piece rock band.) They performed one of my all time favorites, the jazzy “Lie Still Little Bottle” with Linnell on bass sax, Flansburgh improvising on a portable little electronic noise making machine (fragile idea, anyone?), and another band member on keyboards. The first encore ended with the rather anti – climactic “Why Won’t You Die?’

           The second encore got off to a rousing start with the standard, “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”, and ended with an equally rousing “Hi, We’re The Replacements”. So, They Might Be Giants ended their show by introducing themselves as a different band! I think that would be yet another of this bands’ fragile ideas.   

Robbie the Werewolf

         
          Robbie the Werewolf was a nightclub performer in the early sixties. Yes, he would actually perform disguised as a werewolf. His act combined "sick" beatnik comedy with rock 'n' roll and folk songs rewritten with funny monster lyrics. Surprisingly, the act also showcased his virtuosity as a flamenco guitarist!
          According to Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, "(Robbie) was a monster talent --no pun intended!"
          His act was captured for posterity on a super rare LP "Robbie the Werewolf  at The Waleback". The LP has supposedly sold for as much as $1000.00 a copy. I wouldn't recommend spending that much, but I downloaded it for free a few years ago and it was well worth the effort. You can hear (and maybe download?) Mp3s for the album at the link below. Hey --'tis the season!
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/07/robbie-the-were.html

Cute Li'l Halloween Costumes!

I don't care how old a guy gets -- he never gets too old to enjoy seeing "youngsters" in their cute li'l Halloween costumes. Check out the link below!
http://www.legavenue.com/en/women/costumes

Elephant Toenail Report Blog Rules, Man!!!!

The band above is the Czech novelty band, Ivan Mladek & Banjo Band. It is typical fair from the great weblog The Elephant Toenail Report at www.elephanttoenailreport.blogspot.com  The blog is full of weird and hilarious stuff, reported in a dry "we can all identify with this" (although no sane person could) manner which makes it that much more hilarious. It is the best thing on the internet.
Honestly, where does he come up with this stuff? CHECK IT OUT!

The FUGS' Tuli Kupferberg (86) RIP

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/arts/music/13kupferberg.html

Click above for a fine obit, on Tuli Kupferberg, who brought a lot of laughter and happiness to people while shocking them into thinking! (about peace and love (all kinds), tolerance & the joys of art and freedom.) How many popular artists have accomplished that?
I know this is old, but it is news to me.

The HUNGARIAN SUICIDE SONG

My strangest experience in a lifetime of being a record collector / music listener;
Years ago, I bought the Rykodisc reissue of one of my favorite old albums “Trust” by Elvis Costello. One of the bonus tracks on the CD had a disturbing effect on me – it made me feel profoundly depressed for hours. No mere song, no matter how depressing in subject matter should have that degree of effect on a normal, mentally healthy human being. Corny as it might sound, the song actually scared me, and I vowed to myself that I would never listen to it again.
Years later, I bought an inexpensive book called “Strange But True – Mysterious and Bizarre People” by Thomas Slemen. It contained a chapter on “The Hungarian Suicide Song”. I quote;
“In December, 1932, a down and out Hungarian named Reszo Seress was trying to make a living as a songwriter in Paris, but kept failing miserably. All of his compositions failed to impress the music publishers of France, but Seress carried on chasing his dream nevertheless. He was determined to become an internationally famous songwriter. His girlfriend had constant rows with him over the insecurity of his ambitious life. She urged him to get a full-time 9 to 5 job, but Seress was uncompromising. He told her he was to be a songwriter or a hobo, and that was that.
One afternoon, things finally came to a head. Seress and his fiancée had a fierce row over his utter failure as a composer, and the couple parted with angry words.
On the day after the row - which happened to be a Sunday - Seress sat at the piano in his apartment, gazing morosely through the window at the Parisian skyline. Outside, storm-clouds gathered in the grey sky, and soon the heavy rain began to pelt down.
"What a gloomy Sunday" Seress said to himself as he played about on the piano's ivories, and quite suddenly, his hands began to play a strange melancholy melody that seemed to encapsulate the downhearted way he was feeling over his quarrel with his girl and the state of the dispiriting weather.
"Yes, Gloomy Sunday! That will be the title of my new song" muttered Seress, excitedly, and he grabbed a pencil and wrote the notes down on an old postcard. Thirty minutes later he had completed the song.
Seress sent his composition off to a music publisher and waited for acceptance with a lot more hope than he usually had in his heart. A few days later, the song-sheet was returned with a rejection note stapled to it that stated: "Gloomy Sunday has a weird but highly depressing melody and rhythm, and we are sorry to say that we cannot use it."
The song was sent off again to another publisher, and this time it was accepted. The music publisher told Seress that his song would soon be distributed to all the major cities of the world. The young Hungarian was ecstatic.
But a few months after Gloomy Sunday was printed, there were a spate of strange occurrences that were allegedly sparked off by the new song. In Berlin, a young man requested a band to play Gloomy Sunday, and after the number was performed, the man went home and blasted himself in the head with a revolver after complaining to relatives that he felt severely depressed by the melody of a new song which he couldn't get out of his head. That song was Gloomy Sunday.
A week later in the same city, a young female shop assistant was found hanging from a rope in her flat. Police who investigated the suicide found a copy of the sheet-music to Gloomy Sunday in the dead girl's bedroom.
Two days after that tragedy, a young secretary in New York gassed herself, and in a suicide note she requested Gloomy Sunday to be played at her funeral. Weeks later, another New Yorker, aged 82, jumped to his death from the window of his seventh-story apartment after playing the 'deadly' song on his piano. Around the same time, a teenager in Rome who had heard the unlucky tune jumped off a bridge to his death.
The newspapers of the world were quick to report other deaths associated with Seress' song. One newspaper covered the case of a woman in North London who had been playing a 78 recording of Gloomy Sunday at full volume, infuriating and frightening her neighbors, who had read of the fatalities supposedly caused by the tune. The stylus finally became trapped in a groove, and the same piece of the song played over and over. The neighbors hammered on the woman's door but there was no answer, so they forced the door open - only to find the woman dead in her chair from an overdose of barbiturates. As the months went by, a steady stream of bizarre and disturbing deaths that were alleged to be connected to Gloomy Sunday persuaded the chiefs at the BBC to ban the seemingly accursed song from the airwaves. Back in France, Rizzo Seress, the man who had composed the controversial song, was also to experience the adverse effects of his creation. He wrote to his ex-fiancée, pleading for a reconciliation. But several days later came the most awful, shocking news. Seress learned from the police that his sweetheart had poisoned herself. And by her side, a copy of the sheet music to Gloomy Sunday was found.
At the end of the 1930s, when the world was plunged into the war against Hitler, Seress' inauspicious song was quickly forgotten in the global turmoil, but the sheet-music to the dreaded song is still available to those who are curious to know if the morbid melody can still exert its deadly influence...”
Although I didn’t remember the name off the top of my head, I instantly KNEW this had to be the song I had heard on the Elvis Costello CD several years earlier. No two songs could be THAT depressing! I dug the CD out and of course, I was right.
However, Slemen’s suggestion that the song is rarely (if ever) heard these days is an outright lie, to add mystique to the song’s reputation. I did not bother to include a video clip of the song here, but several of them can readily be heard on You-Tube. An iTunes search reveals that over 100 artists have recorded the song, including Billie Holiday (who was forced by her label to tack on an “it was all a dream” ending, as they found it too depressing to release otherwise), Sarah Brightman, Mel Torme, Etta James, Sinead O’Connor, Artie Shaw, Ricky Nelson, Ray Charles, Marianne Faithful, The Smithereens & The Lightcrust Doughboys. The most depressing version I’ve heard is by Diamonda Galas, which is also a You-tube clip.

Car Crashes Into Cedar Rapids Eye Clinic

(Wednesday 10/05/11)
A car crashed through the front entrance of the Wolfe Eye Clinic building in southeast Cedar Rapids this morning.
The car came through the front entrance around 10:15 a.m. Wednesday, authorities said.
Everyone in the clinic, located at

1245 Second Ave.

SE, was asked to evacuate, but patients are now back in the building. Appointments are expected to resume sometime after 11 a.m., but some services are being canceled because of debris and dust in the air.
The female driver involved in the accident was a patient at the clinic, officials said. She was the only person injured in the incident.
The car came about a foot from hitting the clinic’s front desk

From Beto & Jaime with Love & Rockets

Gilbert Hernandez (left) Jaime Hernandez (right)

 (Above) Examples of Gilbert's art 

(Above) Examples of Jaime's art

          Last night I got to see a Q&A session with Gilbert (aka Beto) & Jaime (pronounced HI-may) Hernandez – two of the world’s greatest living cartoonists. They appeared at Shambaugh Auditorium on the campus of The University of Iowa in Iowa City. Although they are still young men, for over thirty years they have been writing and illustrating the classic alternative comic book “Love and Rockets” (later appropriated as the name of an unauthorized rock band.) “Love and Rockets” is a comic book made up of two unrelated, yet somehow complimentary halves. Jaime’s half concerns Maggie and Hopey, a pair of young lesbians living in Hoppers, a Latino community in Los Angeles. Gilbert’s half is set in the South American pueblo of Palomar, featuring Luba and her many children. 

          Embarrassingly, I have to admit that I am not very familiar with their writing – there is so much great stuff in the world, there simply aren’t enough hours in a lifetime to see and hear and read everything great that’s out there. Suffice to say that they have received pretty much universal acclaim for their writing. Interestingly, the moderator last night (who, overly modestly, did not state his name) is not an art teacher, but an English teacher.

         What I do know about the Hernandez brothers is that their black and white artwork is exquisitely beautiful. Every panel is a masterpiece, every page is a masterpiece. Interestingly, last night’s moderator showed slides of several full comic pages, almost none of which contained any writing or dialogue. Jaime’s elegant, mostly solid blacks on white is perfect for his sleek, modern storytelling. Gilbert’s funkier approach is perfect for his stories about down- to- earth characters who share magical, mystical beliefs. Don’t take my word for it, though. In the most recent Comics Journal (issue 301), R. Crumb (the greatest cartoonist in history) singles out (doubles out?) The Hernandez Brothers as masters of anatomically correct drawing, and masters of drawing beautiful women. (Crumb claims limited ability at the former and NO ability at the latter). In relation to their drawings of beautiful women, one critic (I don’t know his name) memorably wrote of the Hernandezes “Their genius is like cruelty – it makes you fall in love with lines on paper.”

          Considering their considerable reputation, the two men came across as genuinely modest and likeable.

          Last night’s most memorable moments;

          Gilbert related that their mother would occasionally spend hours telling them stories about her growing up in Mexico. The Hernandez children were utterly fascinated by her stories, which regularly combined realistic situations with supernatural elements presented unquestioningly as fact.

          Jaime related that one of his favorite cartoonists was a creator of Li’l Archie comics. As an example, he described one panel in which a single element – a dark side of a barn – almost subliminally related to the reader that it was sundown and therefore, Li’l Archie, walking on the road, is headed for home before it gets dark.

          “Love and Rockets” used to appear about three times a year. It is now an annual. I was surprised to learn that nowadays each artist only produces 50 pages a year, but that is more than they ever produced in years passed.

          Their work is available, as always, from their long time publisher Fantagraphics Books.   



MONROE CROSSING -- A Man of Constant Sorrow

MONROE CROSSING -- Into the Fire

Part 3 -- BLUEGRASS -- The Best Bands You've Never Heard In Your Life!

www.monroecrossing.com
MONROE CROSSING

FOUNDING MEMBERS of MONROE CROSSING;

ART BLACKBURN – Lead vocals, guitar, harmony vocals

LISA FUGLIE – Lead vocals, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, harmony vocals

MARK ANDERSON – (Lisa’s husband) Bass, bass vocals

MATT THOMPSON – Mandolin, fiddle, harmony vocals  

BENJI FLAMING - Banjo

Art Blackburn has recently retired and been replaced by a fine singer, songwriter, guitarist DEREK JOHNSON

          My month - long coverage of the bands that appeared at The Aledo Bluegrass Festival Labor Day weekend ends with my favorite current bluegrass band, Monroe Crossing. They are the current leading purveyors of traditional bluegrass music a la Flatt & Scruggs, The Stanley Bros., Reno & Smiley, & their namesake, Bill Monroe.

          Yet, there is more to their act than staunchly following tradition. Highlights of their stage shows and albums also include The Temptations’ “My Girl” & Etta James’ “At Last”. Their comedy shtick often includes the band playing short bursts of The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me”, The Troggs’ “Wild Thing”, Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love”, Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk” & the music that plays whenever Darth Vader appears on screen.

          Highlights of the Labor Day shows included Lisa’s take on Bill Monroe’s take on Jimmie Rodger’s “Mule Skinner Blues”, & her vocal tour de force “At Last”.  The Saturday night show ended with their perennial showstopper “The Orange Blossom Special”, resulting, as usual, in a hollering and cheering standing ovation. They topped it all off with a rousing rendition of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. Overall, their performances were much subtler & low – key than I remember them being in the past, but these guys are so brilliant that, even when they are tastefully understated, somehow their phenomenal playing ability still shines through brightly.

           If you can’t see them in person any time soon, I recommend you go to their website and purchase a copy of their great DVD – the next best way of experiencing their showmanship, humor & musical virtuosity.

           Happily, all ten of their CDs are available for download from iTunes. With the exception of their bizarre experiment “The World Beloved – A Bluegrass Mass”, they are all uniformly excellent. They are characterized by an endearing, gentle, folky approach. If I had to recommend ONLY ONE, I guess it would be “The Green Mossy Ground”. It contains the best mix of bluegrass standards and original compositions by the group and their friends.           

FREE KOZMO !!!

If you want to add some FREE humorous content to your website, why not include “Kozmo of the Cosmos” comic strips? They are a great source for humorous internet content. According to strip creator Bob Kronlage, “I only have a few requirements;

1) You must get my permission by e-mailing me at kozmoofthecosmos@hotmail.com. The only way I can only imagine I would turn down your request is if your site has material not appropriate in relation to an innocent strip like “Kozmo”.

2) You must include my copyright info. (Naturally!)

3) You must always reference www.kozmoofthecosmos.com

4) You may not change any content of the strips.

Otherwise you can go crazy.” This thing won’t go viral on its own!

HELLO KITTY -- A brief character study.

Hello Kitty is the height of five apples, and the weight of three apples. Her favorite food is Mama’s apple pie. She has her own fragrance, Hello Kitty Cologne. It has the fragrance of apples – yellow, red & green ones. Her turn-on’s include sushi bars and the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Her turn offs are mean puppies and shallow people. Oddly, even though she is a kitty, she has a pet kitty named Charmmy Kitty.

(Two sentences in Ms. Kitty’s profile were just made up by me.)

DENNIS THE MENACE What the hell were they thinking?

Hard to believe, but this Dennis the Menace strip ran all over the world in 1970. Yet again, NO ONE in the entire process spoke up to suggest this might be a racist depiction of a black person?” Following outraged responses, the strip’s creator Hank Ketcham apologized that the strip was a product of his own naivete, not racism. Had the man never met a black person in his life? Crazily enough, according to Ketcham (according to the authoritative source “Hank Ketcham’s Complete Dennis the Menace” (Fantagraphics Books) “I named him ‘Jackson’ and designed him in the tradition of  Little Black Sambo, with huge lips, big white eyes, and just a suggestion of an afro.” YEESH!

AMISH MUG SHOTS

These Amish men from Kentucky got arrested for refusing to put those big orange reflective triangles on the back of their slow moving vehicles. Also, apparently there have been major advances in haircuts in the last 100 years or so. Who would have thought that?

Part 2 BLUEGRASS- The Best Bands You Never Heard in Your Life

www.bankesters.com

http://www.harmansbluegrass.com/home.html

www.theexpeditionshow.com

Three more bands that appeared at The Aledo Bluegrass Festival were; The Bankesters, The Harmans & The Expedition Show.

The Bankesters (pronounced in three syllables (Ban kes ters) are a family band consisting of Mother (Dorene) & Father (Phil), three of their four daughters (Alysha & Emily, & Melissa Triplett) & the oldest daughter’s husband (Kyle Triplett). They are all fine singers. The youngest daughters appear to be about 13 and 15. The youngest plays mandolin and fiddle, the second youngest (featured in the above video) plays fiddle, mandolin & claw hammer banjo. Their self titled CD is excellent. It is very sweet and smooth, without ever becoming boring or cutesy. The producers created an album that is as near to perfection as I can imagine – a perfect showcase of this family’s talents. Many of the songs probably would have to be categorized as modern Christian music, but they are presented in a completely unpreachy, this – song – has – a - message – if – you – want - it manner which perfectly fits the family’s attitude. There is old fashioned bluegrass too; a great vocal / instrumental medley of the old fiddle tune “St Anne’s Reel” & notably Ralph Stanley’s creepy “I Am the Man Thomas” (The resurrected Jesus confronting Doubting Thomas). Another very dark gospel tune is the great “Water Grave” which equates suicide by drowning, with baptism by submersion. One of the band’s mentors is country song writing legend Tom T. Hall, founder of the CD’s

Blue Circle

label.

The Harmans hail from Bethalto Illinois, a very small town where they run the sales barn. Obviously, it is another family band. Their leader is their father Mike, formerly banjo player for Alison Krauss. Highlights of their performances included a Mexican gunfighter ballad called “Gunfighters Lament”, appropriately Leroy Van Dyke’s “The Auctioneer”, & a finale of “John Hardy” which featured the band playing their instruments behind their backs. The CD I got, ”Timeless and True” features a vocal duet with Ms. Krauss, the afore mentioned “Gunfighter’s Lament”, and surprisingly, a bluegrass remake of The Orleans old 70’s pop hit “Dance With Me” (Remember “Dance with me, I want to be your partner, can’t you see, the music is just starting, night is falling and I am calling, dance with me”) The remake sounds shockingly similar to the original.

The Expedition Show were the headliners from Nashville. They were formerly The Williams & Clark Expedition before Clark quit. Their leader is banjoist / songwriter  Blake Williams who played banjo with Bill Monroe for ten years, followed by another ten years as bassist for Mike Snyder, followed by ten years with The Expedition. Surprisingly, they were the most low key band of the weekend, but they are a fine band, and a little extra listening effort revealed Blake is an incredibly ornate back-up banjoist. I like their self titled CD even better than the live performances. It is available on i-Tunes, so check out the song clips!

Next time, my heroes, Monroe Crossing!    

Ashley Lewis --Haunted

Pt. 1 - BLUEGRASS - The Best Bands You've Never Heard in Your Life!

http://www.barnesbluegrass.com
www.ashleylewis.net

          Friday night, and all day Saturday. Labor Day Weekend, I attended The 39^th Annual Barnes Family Bluegrass Festival in Aledo Illinois. It was excellent as always. The acts were; Ashley Lewis, The Bankesters, The Harmans, The Expedition Show & Monroe Crossing. All week long, I’ve been facing the daunting task of trying to write a review that would cover five bands, each performing three times, plus reviews of their CDs I bought. This flies in the face of my goal, which is to create this web log using little or no effort. The above video of Ashley Lewis goes a long way towards relieving me of my writing duties. “Haunted” is one of her original compositions. Her live act also included some Django Reinhardt / Stephane Grappelli style swing jazz numbers, traditional bluegrass, and fine bluegrass arrangements of “Johnny B. Goode” & “Burning Love”. Funny – I’ve heard Elvis sing that song a million times, but it’s as if I’d never heard the lyrics until I heard Ashley sing it, (ie; “my chest is heaving… higher & higher the flames are licking my body, ‘til I’m a hunka hunka burnin’ love.”  Yow! (She’s even cuter in real life than on the above video.)

          She provided the weekend’s most impressive moment of showmanship. On the first song of her second show, her mike was creating horrible feedback any time she got anywhere near it. Undaunted, she walked down in front of the front row of the audience, unmiked, playing what must have been a minute-and-a half long, ferocious  mandolin solo, stopping walking several times to play for whoever she was standing in front of. This fearless improvisation really won over the audience.

          Her CD “Here I Stand” is excellent. Most of the songs on it are her original compositions, & they reflect an artistic maturity beyond her years. (I would have guessed she was 18, but apparently she is a few years older.) Unfortunately, only two songs from it are available on iTunes.         

          I’ll be writing about the other groups soon.

JC PENNEY What the hell were they thinking?

For girls ages 7 to 14. T-shirt says, "I'm Too Pretty to Do Homework so my brother has to do it for me." Copy says "With the new Justin Beiber album out, who has time to do homework? She'll love it because it's just as cute and sassy as she is." Empowering!
Seriously, JC Penney is a huge corporation. How many people had to see and hear about this shirt during it's concept, design and production, yet NOBODY SAID, "What the heck are we saying with this shirt?"  

Nick Lowe -- Marie Provost

(see also, August 6th 2011 "A Post on Marie Prevost")

JERRY LEIBER Poet Laureate of Rock 'n' Roll & Rhythm & Blues

Mike and Jerry (right) with unidentified singer.

JEROME “JERRY” LEIBER

(04-25-33 to 08-22-11)

          I learned Monday of the death of Jerry Leiber, who wrote the coolest, most hilarious lyrics in all of rock ‘n’ roll & rhythm & blues. The NPR obituary mentioned only that Leiber & his partner Mike Stoller had written “’Hound Dog’, ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and many others.”

          Is this the appropriate summation of the output of an artist who spent his life creating the following list of songs?

          “And many others” includes; practically everything ever recorded by The Coasters, including; Charlie Brown, Yakety Yak, Poison Ivy, Along Came Jones, Three Cool Cats, Searchin’, & Youngblood. Plus; Love Potion #9, Smokey Joe’s Café, Stuck in the Middle with You (Remember? “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am…”), Treat Me Nice, I (Who Have Nothing), Don’t, Love Me, Dance with Me, Ruby Baby, Kansas City, Fools Fall In Love, I‘m A Woman (W-o-m-a-n), There Goes My Baby, On Broadway & Elvira. (O.K., I could have lived without that one, but hey, thousands of people liked it.) AND MANY OTHERS!........

             Mr. Leiber wrote my all time favorite lyric;

             “One little piggy ate a pizza,

               One piggy ate potato chips,

               But this little piggy’s coming over to your house,

               He’s gonna nibble on your sweet lips,

               ‘Cause I’m a hog for you baby,

               I can’t get enough of your love.”

Now that’s poetry! The first time I heard this lyric, especially in the context of its ultra cool R&B tune, I literally almost fell off my chair laughing.

If there’s any way you can get your hands on a copy of Rhino’s two CD set The Coasters’ “50 Coastin’ Classics” GET IT!!! It’s funky and hilarious. It just might be my all - time favorite album (and I’ve heard a few!)

Rest In Peace Mr. Leiber

Celebrate Going into Labor Day!

Sure, we are all looking forward to celebrating the upcoming Labor Day Weekend, and I'm sure we'll all have things to do -- it's so easy to come up with ideas. However, what can we do to have fun in the up coming weeks of anticipating going into Labor Day? Why not throw a "Going Into Labor Day" party?Celebrate with fetus shaped cookies from a fetus shaped cookie cutter. You can't have "Going Into Labor Day" without a fetus!

 order yours at http://www.stupid.com/fun/FETS.html

CITRUS CHRIST / NAVEL ANGEL

Although his name, apparently, has already been lost to the internet ether, some devoutly religious person sat down for breakfast recently, cut open his orange, and was convinced that what he found there strongly resembled Mr.Jesus Howard Christ. He took a photo so you can judge for yourself;

As part of an art project, I was playing around with the image in Photo Shop. I selected the image, clicked "filter", "stylize" and "glowing edge". The end results strike me as looking surprisingly angelic;

Still, Our Lady of Fatima it ain't!

The FIRESIGN THEATRE "There's A Seeker Born Every Minute"

DUKE OF MADNESS MOTORS (The Complete “Dear Friends” Radio Era 1970-1972)

          A few months back, when I started this blog, I made the comment that with all the great stuff coming out, we pretty much have paradise on earth pop culture – wise. When I made that comment I wasn’t even aware that February saw the release of “Duke of Madness Motors” a 100 page book and MP3 CD containing a whopping 88 hours of improvised radio comedy by the legendary comedy team The Firesign Theatre.

           To hear it, you would never know that it was improvised – their delivery is so fast & slick, and their content so elaborate it’s almost impossible to imagine people coming up with this stuff entirely off the top of their heads. Well, they didn’t come up with ALL the material off the top of their heads. The team brought in pre-written original pieces, and “found objects” –  communist propaganda, poorly translated technical manuals, children’s homework essays, bizarre old print ads and magazine articles – anything that would sound absurdist, or surrealistically poetic in this context. They are so unbelievably good at improv, you never hear an “um” or “er”, or someone killing time while trying to formulate a witty response when he’s put on the spot.

            I imagine them as being hard to listen to on the radio because their flow of verbiage is so unrelenting and elaborate. Luckily the booklet includes a detailed summary of each show. Each general “gist” of conversation is titled and listed in order, so by following it, the listener becomes more attuned to the general thrust of the show. (In other words, the summaries create the illusion that the shows are linear and more followable.)  

            What’s also amazing is that, with few exceptions, these shows were never recorded by the stations or by the Firesign guys. Amazingly, the vast majority of these shows exist only because fans recorded them off the radio at home and maintained the tapes for 40 years. Now that’s an amazing degree of fan devotion.  

            I haven’t gotten anywhere near listening to everything yet, but so far my favorite episode is “Live at the Basilica of the Blessed Gaffe”. It’s one of the few episodes performed in front of a live audience. I can’t imagine that the audience, expecting to see a comedy team, could have anticipated the content they would hear that amazing night. There are five or six comedic bits spread throughout, but the rest of the 90 minute show drifts in and out of poignant, thought provoking, deeply dramatic material, in a psychedelic sound college that only the Firesigns could have created. Even though they were easiest to market as a comedy team, the Firesigns truly were about providing their audience with a THEATRICAL experience. The fact that the show was performed in a church, deepens its impact – not that it is sacrilegious to perform comedy in a church, but because, as Neil Innes sang, “Oh, tell me what could be, more holy than absurdity?”

          The booklet is great too. It contains a 13 page essay, interviews with The Firesigns, their engineer and producer. It includes reproductions of many of the “found items” that are quoted, and reproductions of various promo materials. Best of all are Phillip Proctor’s amazingly beautiful, darkly satirical photo collages.

           As great as it is, this mammoth collection is probably not the best place for the novice listener to discover The Firesign Theatre. The best are their official albums. They are multi-track recorded and feature scripts full of clever layers of meaning and elliptical plot points which reveal themselves only after repeated listens.

My personal recommendations:

EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG

               The FT album that’s most coherent on the first listen. Several years ahead of its time, it’s a wicked parody of New Age stupidity. Space aliens invade Earth, Bear Whiz beer is brewed, suburbanites throw nude trailer home parties, and daredevil Rebus Canebus jumps his motorcycle into the center of the hollow earth. “There’s a seeker born every minute!”

DON’T CRUSH THAT DWARF, HAND ME THE PLIARS

               It’s universally acknowledged as their masterpiece, although it’s also their most challenging work. A young college student of the future spends a sleepless (probably stoned) night viewing himself on TV in various guises (star of Andy Hardy / Henry Aldrich style b-comedies, war films, court dramas and countless insane / inane  commercials). He emerges from the experience transformed into an elderly film comedian with phone messages pouring in from the likes of W.C. Fields, The Marx Brothers and Laurel & Hardy. The call of a passing ice cream truck proves irresistible, and our elderly hero chases after it, magically transforming himself into a little boy as the album fades out.

HOW CAN YOU BE IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE, WHEN YOU’RE NOT ANYWHERE AT ALL?

               This one sports the famous Marx & Lennon (Groucho & John) album cover …yes… On side one, Ralph Spoilsport sells an auto that literally embodies the American Dream …yes… Elfin creatures recite dirty jokes from Junior High …yes… W.C. Fields waxes eloquent bullshit about the Egyption de-vine-a-tise…yes… our hero Misterandmissusjohnsmithfromanytownusa checks into a hotel only to find himself in a doubletalk pageant of American patriotism…yes… Ralph Spoilsport is transformed and transfigured into Molly Bloom from James Joyces’ Ulysses …yes…

               Side Two is the Firesign’s most famous skit – the hilarious radio noir parody “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye”.

HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY

It's dawned on me that the content of this weblog has tended to be pretty dark and nasty -- Larry Tate's Death Mask, members of "our finest generation" keeping Japanese body parts as souvenirs, Marie Prevost being eaten by her dog. This is odd because I have a reputation among those who know me for being a happy- go- lucky guy.
SO.... IT'S HIGH TIME FOR A POSITIVE COMMENT! Here goes...
Wednesday we had a nice day at work. The bosses weren't there. We had cake.
Thursday wasn't bad either -- Susan brought me a brownie.
Today (Friday) I had a vacation day. I went to Des Moines. I listened to a lot of good CDs on the way there and on the way back. I did some shopping and found some good stuff I wanted real cheap. I watched the DVD "Phantom of the Paradise" a movie my brother and I went to when we were kids. It is intentionally really stupid, so I can't recommend it, but watching it was more fun than being at work.

KOZMO IS INTERNATIONAL SENSATION!

http://www.kozmoofthecosmos.com/
Since it's introduction in late April of this year, the website for the internet comic strip KOZMO OF THE COSMOS has been viewed by fans in The United States, India, Germany, Canada, The Netherlands, The Russian Federation, Malaysia, Great Britain, The Ukraine, The Phillipines & Poland! Pretty Cool! What are you waiting for? Check it out.

So what the heck is "Koozbane"? This may refresh your memory

A Post on Marie Prevost

The scrumptious Marie Prevost

According to Wikipedia:

“Marie Prevost (November 8, 1898 – January 21, 1937) was a Canadian-born actress of the early days of cinema. During her twenty year career, she made 121 silent and talking pictures.

Just as her career was blossoming, Prevost's mother was killed in an automobile accident while traveling in Florida with actress Vera Steadman, another Canadian friend, and Hollywood studio owner, Al Christie in 1926.
Devastated by the loss of her only remaining parent, Prevost began drinking heavily and developed an addiction to alcohol. After seeing Prevost in The Beautiful and Damned, Howard Hughes cast her as the lead in The Racket (1928). During filming, Hughes and Prevost had a brief affair. Hughes quickly broke off the affair leaving Prevost heartbroken and furthering her depression. After playing the lead in The Racket, Prevost's days as a leading lady were over.^[6]
Prevost's depression caused her to binge on food resulting in significant weight gain. By the 1930s, she was working less and being offered only secondary parts. A notable exception was Paid (1930), a role which, while secondary to star Joan Crawford, still garnered her good reviews. As a result of all this, her financial income declined and her growing dependency on alcohol added to her weight problems. By 1934, she had no work at all and her financial situation deteriorated dramatically. The downward spiral became greatly aggravated when her weight problems forced her into repeated crash dieting in order to keep whatever bit part a movie studio offered.
On January 21, 1937, at the age of 38, Prevost died from heart failure brought on by acute alcoholism and malnutrition. Her body was not discovered until January 23, after neighbors complained about her dog's incessant barking. A bellboy, who ignored the note Prevost posted on the door asking that no one knock on the door more than once, finally forced the door open. Prevost was found lying face down on her bed, her legs marked with tiny bites. Prevost's pet dachshund, Maxie, had nipped at her legs in an attempt to wake her up.”
I normally tend to believe the less exaggerated versions of stories, yet, considering that this version of the legend ascribes psychological motives to a dog, I question it’s truthfulness. Perhaps a more honest version of the story has been immortalized by the great Nick Lowe, in his ironically upbeat pop tune Marie Provost (sic);

Marie Provost by Nick Lowe

Marie Provost did not look her best
The day the cops bust into her lonely nest
In the cheap hotel up
on Hollywood West July 29
She'd been lyin' there
for two or three weeks
The neighbors said
they never heard a squeak
For hungry eyes that couid not speak
Said even little doggie's have got to eat

She was the winner
That became the doggie's dinner
She never meant that much to me
(But now I see) Oh poor Marie

Marie Provost was a movie queen
Mysterious angel of the silent screen
And run like the wind
the nation's young men steam
When Marie crossed the silent screen
Oh she came out west from New York
But when the talkies came
Marie just couldn't cope
Her public said Marie take a walk
All the way back to New York

Those twin “bombs” didn't help her sleep
As her nights grew long
and her days grew bleak
It's all downhill
once you've passed your peak
Marie got ready for that last big sleep
The cops came in
and they looked around
Throwing up everywhere over
what they found
The handiwork of Marie's little dachshund
That hungry little dachshund

She was the winner
That became the doggie's dinner
She never meant that much to me
(But now I see) Oh poor Marie