KETCH AS KETCH CAN

East Link
S/T cassette
Little Big Chief/Creep Dreams 2012

Imma admit straight-up, something about this tape caught me with my ass out. After 3 plays (that's 6 flips!) through in a row, I still felt I didn't know my onions enough to say or think anythang illuminatin'. Got all tangled up in tags & the strings there attached: surf, noise, psych, and on and on.
Why expose the business of this mishigas? Only to demo how dumb I am. Here I was, down on all 4s, scrutinizing a crushed Bud Light in the middle of Burgess Shale--which is to say, "This thing ROCKS." I find myself spewin such verbiage so infrequently, what with my piles of buck bin chud to munch through, it takes me a minute to pick out such anvil-sized tasting notes. Sad, really, but no discredit to East Link. Composed of Aussie fringe elements from the likes of UV Race, Total Control, Lakes, Straightjacket Nation and a handfulla others, they here set sail* in their own creaking schooner to crush shrimps and dislodge coral errywhere. Speakin' on "reefs," (ha, I think? --Ed.) these hominids pound the pebbles with an abject twang (made possible by short delays and heavy face-to-face amp screeds) that just 'bout turned my speakers into sheet pasta. Track 2, "Ansett Australia" is at least as obnoxious as the Crucifucks (emphasis on "noxious" --Ed.), without sounding a bit like em, though it do contain a slew of notebook-carved rhyming couplets and that gloriously brutal economy. Side Bummer stretches out the thudding to great effect, in an era when that's usually a bad idea. It also features a manic whistling section which really oughta happen in this green world with greater frequency. Is that man or Memorex? Don't ya just love havin' to ask? 

There's rumors of a hefty surf vibe up in here, but I can detect little resembling The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun....oh, you meant that kinda surf! You wanna tag this as the gory followup to Earle and Holcombe's work in Horror of Party Beach, you go ahead. There is certainly sumpthin to be said for the efficiency of the whole thing; the compartmentalizing of total wilderness, which you definitely get with the concussed wing of surf music. But hey, I just wrote somewhat kindly things about an LP on a smooth jazz label. What the fuck do I know? When faced with a sodium cocktail such as this, ain't much for me to do but glug it down.

A small sum stands like a hard-gainer between ye and them. I say, go! Amurricans go here, others go here.

Sure did talk to you. Here's "Wild Dog," featuring that glorious whistling treatment:












*This is Creep Dreams maiden voyage, too, as well as LBC's first foray into the People's Format.

$10 HOLLER #5: STEPHEN WHYNOTT

Stephen Whynott
From Philly to Tablas LP
Music is Medicine MIM 9001 (1977)

Copies of this can pop serious squats on the wallet, but be not discouraged: I nabbed mine for a 5-er. I'd be foolin' if'n I told ya you was gonna get mad plays offa the whole thing. You might have to do some scanning, but herein lyeth some truly lonesome spaces. Whynott caters largely in spooked but ultimately breezy cafe folk strolls with stoned and/or psych-ed brushwork. There's some winsome whimsy to be swallowed as well ("Oh Boy I've Won the Contest At Last"), and I'm afraid the good stuff isn't at the bottom of the glass. Typically, things fizzle before they pop on those numbers. But here and there he skirts gamelan (the opening passage of "Nine Day Sunflower") and, on the particularly puzzling "Snows Edge," even blunders into Perhacs county! Never does it advance as far as, say, John Palmer's Shorelines or anything by Bobby Brown, but I weren't just imagining the fellow feeling. They's all on facin' pages in the same unfathomable book that be 1970s small press folk.
Music Is Medicine (stone lost child label of First American) eventually made good on the sucky promises that peek over the yacht club event horizon of this LP, releasing things that square firmly with the "smooth jazz" tag. But ah the early days...! I guess.

Case you need a further push toward the shores of white male monomania, here's a solid nudge. As if it don't already take an eon to load this blog! (Note it is the only Whynott track up on the Tubes of Your):

GUAIFENESIN BLUES (AND GREENS)

Mountain Cult
s/t LP
Little Big Chief Records 2012

I wait for the next cleansing flush of expectorants to turn my bean into a cider spigot. From the opposing side of my cramped front room booms the hungry clamber of a band from Brooklyn whose name does not cause snickers to jerk the faces of the smart marks. Hey, if you can't get "Location, Location, Location" right, ain't there always good ol "Timing"? It mightcould be the mucus talking or the room ringing and throbbing like an old TV, but this music makes perfect sense to me. A touch of heavy blues, a crash course in Dope Guns and Fucking in the Streets, and a healthy rinse from a Tori Kudo neti pot* will get you far in these tryin' times. Hell, in any time! "Overachiever" alone shoved 80+ blues/noise wannabe messes into my "maybe" pile, and it's all the way on Side 2! No idea what is being sung/said since there's so much tranquilized vocal fry (in my family we call it "talkin' up yer sleeve"), but I ain't worried none. Even the extendo-jam "Videodrome" what closes out this mug is so soaked in fever sweats, you won't need that electrified clay wall after all. What was I sayin' about Brooklyn? Ah, who cares. These scuzzbags can hail from wherever they like. Now, pass the NyQuil; I got work to do.

Kudos to Little Big Chief for pressin' this creepster on 45rpm; I need the exercise. (Though, like most good things, it is even better at the wrong speed.)

Knock 3 times here and give a listen here.






* He really do make these! 'Course, now that I say so, I won't be able to find that one distro that was hockin' em for 35 a go...

OUR MUTTER THE MOUNTAIN

F.J. Macmahon
Spirit of the Golden Juice
Circadian Press reissue 2012 (original: 1969)

Wasn't I just talkin' bout this up in here?! Think it was when I was really talking on the Lower Plenty LP. (note: Hard Rubbish gets better every go-round.)

Unbeknowst to most (and me) it seems, Circadian Press brought this rare bit of quaffage back into the fold after a sizzurp-length minute. Won't be a long run neither, and these are prob'ly slipping into home shelving units all over right. RIGHT NOW.

I suppose it's worth askin whether you're really hurtin' for another vurp from the ever-churning guts of private psych-folk reissue campaigns. This is a bit differn't, ya feel me? F.J. done did but one long player and made every second of it drip with one-take clambers and hungry chances. Don't expect another Higney herein, but an inauspicious swab of Van Zant-style country and Leonard Cohen would get ya nearer. Circadian says it stands beside Neil and Kristofferson, but this is too alienated to be that jovial. And the picture just gets fuzzier from there, I'm afraid. Just rest assured it's as awkward, heartbusted, and American as one could hope--and that pretty much sells itself in my county.

Holla at yer boys!

COUPLA OLD SOLES

Mordecai

Waste 7" ed of 220

Wantage Records Aug 2012

Let's out with the excuses first, so's I can get back to what I does: apartment shuffle, fridge disaster, faulty wiring, 4am circumcision, cat stuck in beard, temporary lack of internet. Only one is real, but I'll let you pick it out.

Now then.

What itchy, pimply, perma-belching noise would a pair of math majors from Albini's home state, weened on the Dead and the Stooges and sired by an AbEx painter produce? A galldern good'n! But that shouldn't be much of a cold, clammy slap to them that peeped Mordecai's debut (now available for free peepage in full on they bandcamp doodad). Therein promises were made, and herein they are overnighted.

Despite the suspicious date stamp on this missive, I aint' been sleepin' on this, just beside it. Granted, it be fitful snatches of snooze, but well worth it after a full eve throwin buckets of shade on my landlord's voicemail. "Waste" busts n oozes like a cold sore I picked up off the floor of a bar one time, then lets loose with a lost Columbus OH riff on heinous painkillers only to toss itself out a first floor window and into the compost 2 minutes later. A killer start whose inner puss floods with each successive needle drop. It's Cleveland, Christchurch, London & Melbourne all at once without a shred of study or even a map. Just a long, damp basement fermentation, mean as Honey Bun wine from a juvie toilet. Hell, it even works on 33, which is high praise where I stay. "Drag Down" starts like such a beater, I thought Mike Pagan was finna show up with a gas can & a wrench. But under the hood revs an anxious lil engine that'll get you to & from in a Missoula minute. It also boasts my favorite guitar defrags of the year so far.

Sure, you could just tool on over to the aforementioned bandcamp and get the goods for the price of a dented Steel Reserve, OR you could be a decent human and holler at Midheaven, Wantage, or Little Big Chief for actual sound.

Sure did talk to ya.

$10 HOLLER #s 3 & 4: BACK IN THE HABIT

Songs of the Humpback Whale
Gatefold LP
1970

Wait! Wait! Don't run away yet! I haven't finally popped a lotus squat and gone bonkers. This ain't the Raffi-helmed kindergarten snooze parade it seems like. If nothing else
a) you could probably cop three perfectly serviceable copies of this for ten bills (Xmas in July?);
b) the recording is beautiful and so's the fancy, vaguely Greenpeace, though well-researched booklet;
c) if the thought of listening to this with any seriousness is laughable, just change the pitch or crank it up to 45 and it'll sound like a Kaoru Abe show with Lee Perry at the board.
After all, what's the point of cheap records if you they ain't makin you bust a hearty grin? The original is on CRM and can fetch mad bones, but the Capitol reissue is just as tidy and way more plentiful. Me, I got lucky on a CRM copy for $5 in a shop where the staff is far more innarested in snarling at each other and keepin up on Daredevil compendiums than peepin eBays. (Yes, those places are still to be found in the wild; just keep your voice down about it, ok?)

Train Your Bird to Talk
LP and Brochure
Pet Records
1976

I dunno: I guess I was on a 70s animal record tear that day. (Also nabbed one about wolves just to give my neighbor's mutts another reason to snarl at the walls.) This does not feature examples of loquacious parakeets or erudite budgies like I'd been hoping, but what it wound up being was even more valuable: an instant room clearer. Hell, the first time I dropped the needle, I booked in seconds flat! The unidentified language coach intones single words and phrases like "Hello" or "See You Later" for literally MINUTES at a time, in total monotone with a rhythm that bobs and jerks like a dazed boxer. How could any beast or bird glean a fucking thing from this without first wondering where its owner keeps his .38? Were I an innocent lorikeet left alone with this bizarro Laurie Anderson nightmare, I'd learn how to say, "Shut this shit off, you fascist fucksock," but quick.

Pure brutality. Weaponized vinyl. Not to be wielded gently.

THEY LIVE (I SLEEP)

The Men, Liverhearts, Vincas, Wymyns Prysyn, Widowspeak

@529 East Atlanta

July 3rd

Lead paragraph delineates author’s conflicted relationship with live performances—specifically an overwhelming confusion regarding the reasonable expectations-payoff ratio. Author notes running an experiment for the duration of the evening in question: no cigarettes smoked nor alcohol consumed.

Second paragraph describes the crowd in somewhat elitist terms, really, with a few smiles and encounters with friends/acquaintances mentioned (insofar as this editor is concerned) to not come off to the reader as a hermit, snob, sociopath, or one lacking any and all self-awareness.

Third paragraph describes the five predominantly-local opening acts. He notes a band from Philadelphia as the lone exception, though admits to having missed the first band and lacking information about them. A somewhat pretentious excuse for his tardiness is made, where a simple schedule conflict would suffice.

Fourth paragraph describes in excruciating detail rife with trademark hyperbole a feeling of ennui arriving at the first signs of raucous behavior from some of the younger audience members. Complaints about old injuries, sore knees from standing all day, and a general exhaustion follow.

It is at this late point that the author begins his coverage of the headlining act, The Men. References to the Meat Puppets are at first invoked, only to be immediately revoked and replaced with Husker Du, which is just as quickly interrupted with Dead Flowers and followed by ellipsis. This is meant to imply (however thunderously delivered and inherently lacking in subtlety) the band’s alleged lack of identity in the face of their stylistic predecessors. The author closes the paragraph by admitting to being inured to The Men due to the preceding “onslaught of tired white people in t-shirts watching their own hands play instruments.”

Article closes with a non-denial denial of the author’s investment in the success/failure of the evening in the first place. Blame is placed on the aforementioned experimental sobriety; a firm commitment to never repeat said experiment follows.