$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.

WHAT WE DO IS SECRETE

V.A.

Poetry Out Loud, Volumes 4&10 LP

De Stijl somehow landed a stack of OG sealed copies of Klyd and Linda Watkins’s Poetry Out Loud series. At the time, and even now conjecturin bout its possible dissemination, they were out on their own, making their “audio magazine” post-Charles Olsen creep-out mixtapes. I've tried, Lawdy, but I can’t quite hang a shingle on these. ‘S not sound poetry cuz, despite their collective literary pedigrees, Poetry Out Loud don’t strike one as academic as even the Giorno camp (Ginsberg got a rejection stamp!) let alone the Euro whackos. Even “psych poetry” is more reserved for Ward E lifers like Bill Bissett. Or maybe it’s just me billboarding over every potential linkage with “Mid-Atlantic,” cuz the Missouri/Nashville smog coughing out of these sides has clouded my brain. How can any American with a sense of regional identity not perk a lobe at these folks? Don’t it just reassure you that St Louis—post-white flight, & bobbing in the eddies of dropouts and one-bulb bars—produced accidental progenitors of Michael Gira, and the Space Lady. Folks be salivatin over Michigan psych, but I get the sense that maybe there was just something in the water up there. And yet scarcely a cry from the kingdom of Jim Crockett, where 10W30 and local suds stained just as many Wranglers and parking lots. Weird, right?

Well, here we got 2 of the 10 cries of defiance. Volume 4 seems to be a lotta folks’ favorite, and I ain’t here to steer you away. Each volume has the wonderous stereo-ricochet and rickety delay that made Alan Vega sound so sweet back in the day--so that box is already checked. Volume Four runs on a more comfy engine that some of the other volumes, though, if’n you wanna track the LSD trickle into Middle America (though Volume Seven’s “29 Cats,” ‘ll do you right, too). It’s also got healthy doses of napalm-scented lamentations and Native American-style/hippie chants. But for my ducets, the final installment, Volume 10, is where it’s at. Gospel and Appalachian musics get decanted into righteously tense and paranoid moaner anthems. Check “Bad Man,” and the slow-mo tunnel chase of “Going Below,” for evidence.

How De Stijl is still holdin stock is beyond me, but maybe some folk see the word “poetry” and turn tail. Silliness, cuz Billy Collins this ain’t. If you happen to miss out or you’s one of the Technics-challenged among us, they’re all up on iTunes for virtual grippage.

For further info and a better tellin’ of the halcyon days than I could ever hope to muster, check this recent interview with Watkins himself. Dude is dude.

 

CLOSE YER HEAD, YER LETTIN THE AIR OUT

Girls Girls Girls

Borsh LP, ed. of 250

Little Big Chief Records 2012

Temperature's surely rising in the ATL this week as we say goodbye to our 48hr springtime, so this sticky slinger & I been drinkin from the same bottle. Turns out this is an archival callback from the Breakdance the Dawn label what kickstarted a shit-ton interest in latter-day Aussie noise-making, but I'd been thinkin this was an unearthed reel from The Silver anticipating Torch of the Mystics. How they might've found themselves in the Charles Goucher Desert I have no earthly notion. (I never had field trip chaperones quite that good when I was a buck.) But from whatever dimensional transport these cats was belched, Majora or B.D.T.D., both would seem to a first timer familiar yet unimaginable. Hell, the landscape's 'bout the same! Through all 4 tracks, GGG bat sleepily at the toes of punk and private psych just enough to make you think they some woozy kittens, then wail away like you spooked em. Prepare yourself for cymbals that sound like plastic bags and guitars down in the basement with mother. Which is to say, this is the kind of band we all could have if we had half a brain (no, like, literally one lobe each) & just as much fun. Lay on, ratcatchers!

Xwave

Cities On Flame LP, ed. of 250

Little Big Chief Records 2012

2nd B.D.T.D. reish to come down the Little Big Chief pike (originally in some single-hand CDr edition) is just as much an edge-piece to the Aussie crud puzzle as the aforementioned. This feast, however, gets a little more loose in the waist. Served up is a whole heapa predigested basement sludge and amp defiance choking on cave cinders. Think Stone Harbour's Emerge gummed up in an oil-stained underpass and yer gettin warmer. Track two, "Sweet Love," has the instantly recognizable wheeze of a battered VHS to remind you "fidelity" will forever be a relative tag. That and the other 3 A-side cuts hiccup in and out like a Chilton take, but the nearly-eponymous B side, "Citie On Flame," is my favorite long burner so far this year. Time, love, and meds seem to do Xwave just right. After a good five-r of pea soup-thick grumblings, what sounded like a Circle of Ouroborus boot dropped in to yank out my hampsteads slow-like, all the time askin', "Is it safe?" This was immediately followed by a mounting hum in my forsaken jaw and a dreary march toward a thankless sun. Twas time to hop back on the Shetland & ride, bunkie. Check the crossed out price tag on the sleeve for add'l bindle punk desperation.

 

Get yers direct if'n you in These United. Email breakdancethedawn if'n you Aussie. Dial up Volcanic Tongue if'n you elsewheres.

$10 HOLLER #2: CM ELLENBURG

CM Ellenburg
Just Chewin'
Country Brand 197?


I'll admit outright: in my head this record's called Three Cobs In a Fountain. Maybe it's just me, but an album featuring a seasoned hockiologist telling rambling country jokes sounds right as sunshine to me. Somehow, whenever this comes up (rare as that is), it's always as a country rock record of some make or model. Granted, there is an act called Dixie Single plinking gently in the next county in these dip-soaked grooves. But this show is all about C.M. sprayin' yarns like they was ground beef--everything from why the septic business is a safe bet in rural Alabama to why farmer's without commodes always carry three corn cobs in their coverall pockets. ("They use the white one to see if they need to use the two red ones again," or something to that effect.) Many tracks are marked "not for airplay" like, "Where's the Clapper?" & Lo, many a knee was slapped & lo, I am probably having a different kind of good time than the one Just Chewin' had in mind. Still, there is something in Ellenburg that gets you all dumbstruck about the American South which, even in Atlanta, is kinda scarce in the Mon-Fri.

I'm plum-perplexed why the family business doesn't glean all the cred and ducets they could offa their dad's record. (Well, a couple 8 bucks. --Ed.) Hopefully they won't ill me next time I roll through Coffee County because all the customers complained when they search for them on Google, the first word they see is FUCK. I mean no harm, oh pilots of the pipes! Y'all surely-do provide a good quality service. I'll admit it: I love this record.

HARD FILED

SONGS FROM A RHEUM

Lower Plenty

Hard Rubbish LP

Special Award Records/Easter Bilby 2012

If the Aussies have a Lawrence, Kansas, circa 1996 of their very own, that scrapper of a town is surely where such a lumbering squad as Lower Plenty 1^st found purchase. A collaborative release between Special Award Records and Easter Bilby (giving chase to their solid distro quick-snap), Hard Rubbish takes me away to a strange teenage street, where feared abandominiums get snuck-through in the middle of a Thursday night; where somebody steals a copy of F.J. McMahon’s Spirit of the Golden Juice from their friend’s uncle at a party and plays it through a Sears portable on the front lawn and nobody laughs at it; where cigarettes are passed between friends on aimless car rides. Youth, after all, is kinda meant to be wasted, and these Lower Plenty kids seem to be wasting it good & proper. Though I ain’t quite sold on the whole affair, they’s certainly takin the pimply post-Midwest indie thing to dreamier, groggier places than I’m used to hearin’. “Nullarbor,” which I’m assumin’ is the single or some approximation thereof, nails a 3-beer afternoon to the attic floor like it oughta and it’s definitely serviceable at 2am on a long ride home, too--sorta like Galaxie 500 without the collegiate wank to the third power. The stinkweed of factory towns is perhaps more fragrant on cuts like “Strange Beast,” and the dream-speak opener “Work in the Morning,” though, and that's where the real fear/fun dichotomy rides like thunder.

Can’t complain too much, since what we get to witness here is the growing pains of a promising lil charmer of a band. And just think: I coulda written about the new Fushitsusha. Coulda but dinna. Glad.

$10 HOLLA #1: JOHN MILLS-COCKELL

(The first installment of a new series highlighting a pastime that scarcely needs a-budgin' round here: CHEAP RECORDS. --Ed.)

John Mills-Cockell

Neon Accelerando LP

Aura Records 1979

Periodically, the process of writing about music turns abruptly sour. Patterns, moods, production techniques & musicianship suddenly read more like symptoms of a pandemic threatening to engulf the whole medium, Blob-like. Every household’s got its own homespun remedy, but around here it remains a thick, oozing slice of stinky, wobbly humanity; the audio manifestation of Epoisses thrown together by your creepy downstairs neighbor’s uncle. For whatever reason, records like Neon Accelerando set me righter than a beaker of bitters.

Mills-Cockell was keymaster and chief composer for Canadian OOP RAER PROG SYNTH W0W band Syrinx back in the 70s. Here, Johnny boy gets waay more symphonic in his structures all by himself, wandering into scores of queasy, misty, magenta throw rug moments. “Maelstrom,” opens like the tourist lounge version of Wagner, modulating violently from thin library funk to gooey alien vistas. Track four, “Gateway,” contains what I can only describe as a back alley sax solo, spotlit by sparkly organ showers and shivering percussion. Such are merely candid snaps of the manic, perverse emotionality contained within. Were it not for the Euro disco production, compressing everything into the kind of fidelity one might find on a 9^th-gen VHS of Galaxy Express 999, this might be a kissin’ kin of Lauri Paisley’s Fire of Dreams or, conversely, the awkward gamer cousin of a great many privately issue cult drifters. Which is to say, the reek of cable knit sweaters marinated in AquaNet and dog-eared fantasy mags is so strong it’s almost tactile. So go ahead. Fold the pages. Shake the can. Face the mist. Lose an hour or two lost in the land where everyone, it seems, is lost. Nothing, I say, nothing will seem generic for months.