9/30/09

Do The Dog

Don Francisco, the hound of San Quintin (and Johnny's best friend), shows off the twist but is also an accomplished contortionist. sound UP!

The Dirty Three - Ocean Songs (Studio 22)

May 1st 1998. ABC TV Studios, Melbourne Australia. 1.) Last Horse On the Sand, 2.) Distant Shore, 3.) Authentic Celestial Music, 4.) Sue's Last Ride, 5.) Deep Waters Dirty Three; Founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 1992, instrumental trio Dirty Three was formed as an offshoot of various established local bands, including Busload Of Faith, Fungus Brains, Venom P. Stinger and the Blackeyed Susans. During breaks from these bands, Warren Ellis (electric violin), Mick Turner (guitar, ex-Moodists) and Jim White (drums) worked together on a high-energy bar room set, which eventually made them one of the area's top live attractions. They soon picked up impressive support slots to touring acts including Pavement and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, before their debut album Sad & Dangerous was released on the small Boston label Poon Village Records. Essentially a repackaging of their home-made demo tape, its release was followed by an extensive north American tour. The trio's meteoric rise was confirmed by a place on the 1995 Lollapalooza mobile festival, before arriving in England to provide a live soundtrack to Carl Dreyer's silent film La Passion De Jeanne d'Arc, shown at the National Film Theatre. They were joined in this performance by fellow expatriate Nick Cave on piano, who had been enraptured by the trio's furious performances in Australia in 1994, often appearing onstage for impromptu jam sessions. Ellis later joined Cave's backing band the Bad Seeds and, with Dirty Three, Cave performed two unbilled songs on Songs In The Key Of X, a soundtrack album to the hit television show The X-Files. The trio also collaborated with Will Oldham of Palace prior to the release of their third album, 1996's Horse Stories. Their most restrained effort thus far, it nevertheless sustained the trio's reputation for lyrical instrumental work that transcends expectations and offers a genuine alternative to contemporary rock sounds. Ocean Songs (1998) and Whatever You Love, You Are (2000) were further collections of quietly evocative and atmospheric music. The trio put Dirty Three on hold after scrapping the follow-up to Whatever You Love, You Are, with Ellis concentrating on his Bad Seeds commitments and Turner starting up the King Crab label. They reunited in 2003 to begin afresh, teaming with producer Fabrice Lor to complete She Has No Strings Apollo. The follow-up Cinder featured vocal input from Cat Power ("Great Waves") and Sally Timms ("Feral"). NME Since then so much has been accomplished by all three of 3, solo and together. See; Warren Ellis Jim White Mick Turner

9/29/09

Shocking

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Current Events - Trucker, Soccer Mom and Taser X3
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorMichael Moore

Nublet vs Tuna

The RoQ Tapes

From The Garage is a historical archive blog of KROQ shows for download. I believe it's just begun, so you can imagine the great shows and guests that will reappear especially on Rodney's shows. Below is a sample. Some are four hours long and others one, so tune out, if necessary. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=3F49PB30 Runtime Approx. 2 Hours 20 Minutes (123MB) 128kbps Los Angeles Radio KROQ 03/04/79 Rodney Bingenheimer w/Kim Fowley Rodney has Kim Fowley as his guest. Kim Fowley brings along Australian actress Sue Smithers into the studio with him and an assortment of records from down under. Lots of local phone in questions. Holly of Holly and the Italians stops by to plug her new record.

Frozen Birdy

Barack Obama's amazingly consistent smile from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

via

9/28/09

Speed

Sea Of Joy Soundtrack- Tully

1971: Harvest /EMI Tully – a compact biography To come to an adequate understanding of the relationship between Tully and the Australian surfing scene of the late sixties, early seventies, it is important to know that while the members of that enigmatic group lived in the northern beach-side suburbs of Sydney where many famous and talented surfers and surf film makers also lived, they were not surfers themselves. Being lovers of beauty, however, they were irresistibly attracted to the vast expanses of the sea and sky, the natural world. This was their affinity with the surfing fraternity. When Paul Witzig asked Tully to compose the music for Sea of Joy he was seeking a soundtrack to suit the mood of a generation, for whom peace and freedom were the guiding lights. It was an obvious choice: in the vanguard of the Sydney underground Tully had already carved a deep and impressive curve into the pipeline of musical innovation, a wave it would ultimately ride to the shore. The music the group produced for Sea of Joy is testimony to the accolades it received at the time, and makes the film uniquely different to anything that precedes it. The band that recorded Sea of Joy was the precocious child of two very different creatures, Tully the First (then Robert Taylor, percussion, Ken Firth, bass, Terry Wilson, vocals, Richard Lockwood, saxophones, clarinet and flutes and Michael Carlos, keyboards) and Extradition. They were brought together by NSW Arts Council director, John Cooper. Before they met, the wild and capricious, vain and sometimes luminously beautiful Tully, during the band's rapid rise to prominence on the Australian music stage, had already given many highly successful concerts in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide and Brisbane for entrepreneurs Harry Miller and Clifford Hocking, and others. Now John Cooper, keen to promote the innovative and outrageous, hit upon the idea of presenting Tully's sound in concert with something completely different. The Cell Block Theatre in the grounds of the National Art School, East Sydney, was the selected venue for this occasion, and the other 'sound' was Extradition, a breakaway group working the non-folk fringe of the Sydney folk scene, that mostly played the original songs of British guitarist, Colin Campbell, sung by the exquisite-voiced Shayna Karlin (now, Stewart). A quintet at the time, it was completed by singer-songwriter Colin Dryden, guitar, Robert Lloyd, percussion, and American, Jim Stanley, bass. The group was co-founded by Campbell, Karlin and Dryden in Sydney. John Cooper knew and appreciated both groups for their individual merits. He also thought they had something in common and should meet... indeed, before the Cell Block they were complete strangers. As Col Campbell puts it, ‘It was John who saw us as two bands representing the best of two vastly different Sydney genres.’ Extradition was the antithesis of Tully the First, gentle, eloquent and delicately lovely. When they met, however, it was love at first sight! Here is a previous post on the film with music/video of the backlit Lynch clip. The short of it is, the Cell Block event was a precursor to a tour of New South Wales they were scheduled to do for the Arts Council. (‘The tour was designed to bring some culture to the outback rather than as a showcase for the benefit of the bands. That was the Arts Council’s raison d’etre, at the time. Very successful it was, too.’- Campbell). During the six weeks they were together on tour, not only did they become friends, they also conceived the idea of a new group embracing the multifarious talents, influences and styles of both. This ultimately became Tully the Second, the band that recorded Sea of Joy. The retrospective HowlSpace now concludes, ‘In the Australian music landscape of the late sixties, Tully was a creature totally apart from the rest of the pack.’ And the godfather of Australian Jazz, the late John Sangster, called Tully the First ‘The best band in the world at the time.’ via highlights; "Follow Me"(above) is a Can-like track that is, i feel, more of the root of the band rather that the gratuitous flower songs for the film as Witzig described it. Also, "Syndrone" takes them into the ethnic jams again i believe are the bands strong point. Download

9/25/09

The Bare Necessities

Nole Cossart and Chadd Konig building and riding wood boards, alaias, in California.

Twist Barbie and the Burning Farm

Shonen Knife's first album, 1983's Burning Farm, has all the things the band became (slightly) famous for, well, the things that endeared them to indie rockers, anyway, like cuteness and catchy tunes. While they can barely play their instruments and the vocals are amateurish at best, they play and sing with an unbridled joy that gives the record all kinds of charm. They sound like schoolgirls playing early Beatles songs filtered through the Ramones, Blondie and the Rezillos. Only with no pesky technical proficiency to get in the way. The lyrical concerns are truly their own, too, with songs about parrots, elephants, Barbie and cleaning products sung mostly in Japanese. It would be easy to go too far and call them the Japanese Shags and wink at their cuteness, but if you forget the image and just listen to the music, they are so much more interesting than that. Very influential also to bands like Redd Kross and Nirvana, as well as the whole American indie pop scene of the late '80s and early '90s. Many of these songs ("Twist Barbie," "Tortoise Brand Pot Cleaner's Theme," "Burning Farm," and "Watchin' Girl") were re-done for 1993's Let's Knife in inferior, cleaned up versions. If you have that album you need to check this one out to hear the Knife in their early, more exciting stage. If you have no Shonen Knife and are looking for a place to start, picking up this record and the slightly superior second album, Yama-no Attchan, would be a good idea. Burning farm DL

9/24/09

The Grand Illusion

Inspiration Information (con DL)

Here is a taste of the 1st and 2nd track(Inspiration Information & Island Letter) which basically sums the LP with a variety of straight funk mixed with atmospheric beauties. Then of course there is the hit "Stawberry Letter 23" made famous by The Brothers Johnson. I prefer Shuggie's. TIM: Tim Gane (Stereolab) SEAN: Sean O'Hagan (High Llamas) JOHN: John McEntire (Tortoise) ["Inspiration Information" plays on the hi-fi] TIM: I really can't think of any other record that sounds like this... JOHN: Would you say the production is atypical for the time? It has a lot of the elements that were common in the early 70's, but somehow this is far beyond what you would consider common. SEAN: A lot people making R&B based music were afraid to be experimental in any way, especially with the idea of being completely belligerent with the arrangements. TIM: He's highlighting every non-R&B element… SEAN: It sounds like it could have recorded on 8-track, or 4-track even. TIM: It does sound like a really early home recording SEAN: Which is another really nice thing. It sounds like things are being bounced [submixed on tape] all over the place. It's got that nice woolly quality you get when you bounce. But when the strings happened, I started to think, how is he doing all this? TIM: It sometimes sounds like a "solo" record, like one person doing a lot of the parts. SEAN: Which again would be extraordinary for that time. JOHN: Are there credits? [looks at record] Oddly enough, it is a studio record... Hawk Sound and Columbia Studios, Los Angeles. He [Shuggie] is credited with all the arrangements, which is pretty remarkable. TIM: Yeah, if you listen to, for example, Jenny Lee or Strawberry Letter, he makes very simple chords sound like so much more is going on. JOHN: In terms of the way it's arranged, or the way it's played? TIM: The arrangements. It leads you believe a lot more is going on, but when you work it out, the chords might be quite simple. Just major and minor, nothing more than that. SEAN: There's a kind of naiveté to a lot of this stuff I really like. And who else was making 50% vocal, 50% instrumental records at that time? JOHN: It's funny, to a large extent what's great about this stuff is pretty intangible. For instance, when we were doing [High Llama's] "Snowbug," things would come up where we'd say, "Oh, that has a real Shuggie feel to it" but it would be hard to pinpoint why that was. SEAN: It's total eclecticism. When you make music, you can get stuck in a rut of doing things you're familiar with. And a record comes along every now and then that shocks you out of that. This is definitely one of those records. This is an album that I play for people, and it always gets an extraordinary reaction. There really aren't many records like that. ["XL-30" plays on the hi-fi] SEAN: This is great, this could be... JOHN: ...Jimi Tenor... SEAN: ...or ESG, or even Cabaret Voltaire. You have to wonder if people at the time thought this was a fantastic record. Or did they think, (incredulously) "Why are you doing this?" I'm always aware that the early 70's were one of the worst times for objectivity in music because everyone was so focused on technique. People were so obsessed with being good players. There was a preoccupation with this idea about finally creating high art out of Pop and R&B music. It's reflected in the fact that there were many people of great ability and accomplishment. You've got to remember that this record was made at that time. JOHN: There are really no concessions to that, even though the playing is great in a totally different kind of way. SEAN: We know it's great playing now, but in the context of the time it might have been perceived differently. JOHN: Some of the things he was going for were really walking the plank. [last track plays] Just the Uncle Funk [drum machine], Wurlitzer [Electric Piano], then those great strings at the end. Fantastic. I get the feeling people at the time just wouldn't react to this. SEAN: What I find interesting is that this record is 25 years old, but it does feel so fresh that its almost like a contemporary influence. There's also the feeling that there was an enjoyment in the process itself. You can definitely hear that in the quality of some of the sounds, like that really rough DI'd [direct injection, i.e. no amplifier] guitar there. It was probably a matter of "Oh, that sounds great right now" even though it wouldn't be considered technically perfect. That gets back to the whole naiveté thing we were talking about earlier. I think that's really good. JOHN: You have to wonder how this sensibility could exist 25 years ago. It obviously wasn't formulated or anything. TIM: It's outside of "normal" procedure. Its just people making the music they want to make. I think what's very bad about modern music is that it's so competitive. Because of that competitiveness, you wipe away the small things that make the best music great. Phil Spector used almost all major chords, it's the arrangements and details that makes that music really work. How many people have tried to use that formula but totally failed? So often people will listen only to the shallow style of something and completely miss the point about what makes something good. SEAN: Most people tend to get bored at a very early stage. Obviously, these [Shuggie's] records are never going to appeal to the masses, although to me that's a good thing. JOHN: You know, I think if just a few things had been different this stuff could have had that sort of appeal. There's something about it which is just a little too original that somehow prevented that from happening. TIM: It's almost like a new style of music that could've developed but never did. And that's the problem. It never developed past this record.-- Some things in life just seem to make sense. via Download Shuggie Gratis Track List; Inspiration Information Island Letter Sparkle City Aht Uh Mi Hed Happy House Rainy Day XL-30 Pling! Not Available Strawberry Letter 23 Sweet Thang Ice Cold Daydream Freedom Flight Players: * Johnny Otis - Percussion, Vocals (bckgr), Engineer * David Byrne - Executive Producer * George Duke - Organ, Celeste, Piano (Electric) * Shuggie Otis - Organ, Bass, Guitar, Percussion, Piano, Arranger, Vocals, Producer, Vibraphone, Executive Producer, Mixing, Bottleneck Guitar * Bobby Bloom - Engineer * Rockie Robbins - Trumpet * Aynsley Dunbar - Drums * Richard Aplanalp - Oboe, Sax (Tenor) * Wilton Felder - Bass * Jackie Kelso - Saxophone * Mike Kowalski - Drums * Jeff Martney - Horn * Jim Pringle - Trombone * Carol Robbins - Harp * Curt Sletten - Trumpet * Doug Wintz - Trombone * Jack Kelso - Flute, Saxophone * Marcia Zeavin - String Arrangements * D. Jones - Strings * S. Boone - Strings * J. Parker - Strings * N. Roth - Strings ENJOY!!!

9/23/09

Pocket Joy

Everyone Is Special!

..no shortage of rebellion fodder for the young ones. See whole episode here.

9/22/09

Aspects of Trim and Dive

To Beat the Devil (and much more)

Kris Kristofferson - 1990 - Me And Bobby McGee [Orig. Release: 1971 Kris Kristofferson is one of that small group of musicians (like Bob Marley) who transcends the musical genre he is generally said to belong to and who should therefore appeal to anybody who appreciates great music. His music is so, so much more than country music: it is lyrics verging on poetry sung beautifully to incredibly catchy tunes. The songs on this album are all in the good-to-great category, but my particular favourite is the classic Sunday Morning Coming Down. I also love the humour in Kristofferson's lyrics, which he fortunately performs in such a way that every word is clearly audible. I defy anybody not to smile upon listening to the lyrics of Best Of All Possible Worlds. In short, an artist whose music should be in every music lover's collection. Do not be put off by the country label- Kristofferson is a musical genius. More from Me & Bobby Mcgee Reviews, song by song. 01. Blame It On The Stones 02. To Beat The Devil 03. Me And Bobby McGee 04. The Best Of All Possible Worlds 05. Help Me Make It Through The Night 06. The Law Is For Protection Of The People 07. Casey's Last Ride 08. Just The Other Side Of Nowhere 09. Darby's Castle 10. For The Good Times 11. Duvaliers Dream 12. Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down Gratis TO BEAT THE DEVIL Kris has never again reached the simple poetic purity and soulfulness on this, his first record. "To Beat the Devil" is my all time favorite song and I also prefer Kris's 'down home' version of "Me and Bobby McGee" to Janis Joplin's famous one. Most of the songs here are certified classics that have been recorded by God knows how many country and pop/rock artists; nevertheless, Kris' own versions have the stamp of his unique personality which I would roughly place as located somewhere between John Wayne, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and his idol William Blake. via same link

9/21/09

Hi-Fi

M. Ward

9/20/09

Autumn Gold

Ed Ruscha, “Fall All Leaves All Fall” (2009). NY Times Published: September 20, 2009 Op-Art Ed Ruscha’s visual interpretation of autumn. via south willard

The Secret Life of the Hag

Merle Ronald Haggard (Born April 6, 1937) is an American country music singer, guitarist, instrumentalist, songwriter and rumored marionette with International Rescue. (you decide) "Mama Cried"(watch and listen! GREAT SONG) Jeff Tracy is the head of International Rescue. His full name is Jeff Tracy and he was born on 2nd January 2009. He is the father of Scott, John, Virgil, Gordon and Alan Tracy and possibly Merle.

9/19/09

Still Alive and Well

Polaroid Spectra 2; coming soon plans for a ziplock housing to get some closer water shots.

Teenage Vocals Extraordinaire

Red Cross- Annette's Got The Hits Here is the first Red Cross ep, from before the spelling change in the name and from before they added other influences. This is fantastic early SoCal punk. Six songs. All classics. The songs on here are so good. The highlights are 'I Hate My School' with the memorable opening bass line and 'S&M Party' with its killer guitar lines. This has always been one of my favorites and I hope you like it too! Enjoy the music! Whole EP on one youtube clip! Only Southern California (Hawthorne, actually) could have bred brothers Steven (bass/vocals) and Jeffrey (vocals/guitar) McDonald, who drove onto the LA punk scene as adolescents in 1980 singing merry jingles about culture icons and local clothing stores. Moving through a series of lineups. (the first had future Black Flag member Ron Reyes and future Circle Jerk Greg Hetson) RED CROSS 12" 01. Cover Band 02. Annette's Got the Hits 03. I Hate My School 04. Clorox Girls 05. S&M Party 06. Standing In Front of Poseur Label: Posh Boy Records Cat #: PBS 1010 Format: 12" Released: 1980 The music is here...(Vinyl is key for this EP...yet, alas!)

9/18/09

Making Fun Out Of None

heavy-handed cross processed.

Keep An Eye On The Sky

BIG STAR (Boxed Set) Big Star inspired a fevered allegiance among fans of power pop, giving rise to a cult of believers who spent decades spreading the gospel. Their enthusiasm turned this obscure Memphis pop band-one that got little airplay, sold few records, and only played a handful of times- into a remarkable rock and roll resurrection story. Big Star's trek from obscure Memphis band to standard bearers for an entire genre of music has never been fully mapped-until now. Rhino presents the definitive look at the definitive power-pop band with a four-disc boxed set divided between key cuts from Big Star's three studio albums and unreleased music. KEEP AN EYE ON THE SKY will be available September 15 from Rhino Records at all retail outlets, including www.rhino.com, for a suggested list price of $69.98 (physical), it will also be available as a digital release the same day. A Deluxe Edition release of Chris Bell's solo album I Am The Cosmos is due September 14 from Rhino Handmade. KEEP AN EYE ON THE SKY spans 1968 to 1975 and shows the progression of Big Star through selections from such studio precursors as Rock City and Icewater; music from Big Star's acclaimed recordings (#1 Record, Radio City, and Third/Sister Lovers); and relevant solo work by group principals Alex Chilton and Chris Bell, who formed Big Star in 1971 with bassist Andy Hummel and drummer Jody Stephens. The collection also uncovers a trove of unreleased demos, unused mixes, alternate versions of songs, and a 1973 concert recorded in Memphis. In these 98 tracks you can hear what turned artists as diverse as Cheap Trick, R.E.M., and The Replacements into Big Star fans. Spotlighting the band's roots, the boxed set opens with several songs recorded before Big Star formed, including “Try Again,” one of the first songs Bell and Chilton wrote together. Those early cuts are followed by Big Star's 1972 debut #1 Record, reimagined here using a mix of album tracks and unreleased alternate mixes of favorites like “Thirteen,” “When My Baby's Beside Me,” and more. Among the disc's rarities are “Country Morn'” (issued as a flexi-disc single by a Big Star fanzine), the demo for “I Got Kinda Lost,” and an unreleased acoustic demo of Chilton singing Loudon Wainwright's “Motel Blues.” Ardent Records, the band's label, experienced problems with distribution that hindered any chances at success for #1 Record. Its failure was a major blow to Bell, who quit the band to go solo. In 1974, the Alex Chilton-led Big Star regrouped and released Radio City, an album more attuned to the band's live energy that featured the power-pop confections “September Gurls” and “Back Of A Car.” The second disc of KEEP AN EYE ON THE SKY opens with a trio of unreleased demos: “There Was A Light,” “What's Going Ahn,” and “Life Is White.” The original song sequence for Radio City follows, combining album versions with unreleased alternate mixes (“Way Out West” and “You Get What You Deserve.”) The disc features unissued versions of “She A Mover” and “Mod Lang,” several unreleased demos for Big Star's third album, plus Bell's acclaimed 1978 single “I Am The Cosmos” and its B-side “You And Your Sister.” Sadly, Bell died in a car accident a few months after the single's release. When Big Star reconvened in 1975 to record Third/Sister Lovers, only Chilton and Stephens remained (Hummel left shortly before Radio City's release). Famed Memphis maverick Jim Dickinson was enlisted to supervise the recording, which languished on the shelf for years before its release in 1978. Despite its bleak timbre, wild dynamics, and fragility, the music possesses a startling grace. KEEP AN EYE ON THE SKY's third disc opens with seven demos (most previously unreleased) for songs that appear on Third/Sister Lovers, including “Jesus Christ,” “Take Care,” and “Holocaust.” Among the album's 19 songs collected here is “For You,” “Kizza Me,” and “Kanga Roo.” Also featured is “Lovely Day,” an early, unreleased version of “Stroke It Noel” with different lyrics; Chilton vamping with photographer Bill Eggleston at the piano for Nat King Cole's “Nature Boy” and a raucous cover of The Kinks' “Till The End Of The Day.” Big Star "Lovely Day" from Box. "Stroke it Noel" (the finished song on 3rd) Compare/ Contrast! The collection's final disc contains unreleased highlights from three sets Big Star performed at Lafayette's Music Room in Memphis in January 1973. It is the best live recording ever of the band. The show captures Chilton, Hummel, and Stephens playing many of the songs on #1 Record, which had just recently been released. The set list includes a retooled version of “ST 100/6” lengthened by both guitar and drum solos (with a middle eight heisted from the Rock City song “The Preacher.”) Also in the repertoire are “There Was A Light” and “I Got Kinda Lost.” In addition, the concert includes fully formed versions of several songs recorded later for Radio City: “Back Of A Car,” “Way Out West,” “O My Soul,” and a particularly rocking “She's A Mover.” Those originals are mixed with a selection of covers: Todd Rundgren's “Slut,” T. Rex's “Baby Strange,” The Kinks' “Come On Now,” and The Flying Burrito Brothers' “Hot Burrito #2.” Via Rhino This is a fan's dream box. Seems every cover song is something I myself would have chosen for them to do! (if for some reason they cared what I thought)

9/17/09

Six to Ten By Land and Sea

"A Tapestry of Influences"

"Being a white English South African means being schizophrenic. It means not having a firm foot in any culture, but also it means being priviledged to be exposed to many wildly diverse aspects of social life. A tapestry of influences." Kalahari Surfers -- biography Formed in 1982, the Kalahari Surfers was essentially a string of studio projects realised by Warrick Sony at Shifty Studios(Operating from a caravan hitched to a Ford V6 truck, the Shifty studio would produce an album every two months) during the 80's. These involved various personel from that environment whose names were altered or simply reduced to first names to safegaurd against security dirty tricks persecution.The band itself was a fictional collective designed to dodge any flak that may have appeared from these forces. The first release was inspired by the DYI ethic and was a cassette packaged in a silver spray painted box containing 60 minutes of music all recorded in a bedroom on a 4 track portastudio. It was titled 'Gross National Product'. Material was made up of early tape experiments, audio collage , songs , cyclic trance tracks accompanied by free verse and looping bass/drum ideas. The Surfers second release was a double single package released on the Pure Freude label in Germany and consisted of 4 sides of heavy dub influenced songs. German group CAN were involved with this label and were an important influence on the Surfers sound at this time. Many of the Canterbury music scene bands in England were influential on the surfers sound but mostly the work of Robert Wyatt and Henry Cow. In 1984 the first full album 'Own Affairs' was completed at Shifty Studios and taken to EMI to press. On the grounds that it was too politically sensitive EMI refused to press it thereby censoring the work before it was made. Radical far left British label Recommended Records pressed it and set up an alliance that continues to this day. Chris Cutler from RecRec helped set up tours and the Surfers rode forward with confidence. In 1985 they put out 'Living In The Heart Of The Beast' to critical acclaim. title from a Tim Hodgkinson composition on the Henry Cow album "In Praise Of Learning". The mixture of dub rhythms and hard punk social comment made it a unique South African album which pushed the barriers of local independent music. Musical styles ranged from the avant garde to straight rock. Quite Zappa-ish in places with the use of tape splice edits and juxtaposing diverse styles the album was a South African veiwpoint that provided some relief for those who didn¹t like the Johnny Clegg-CatStevensgoeszulu sound. Like many other Shifty Records albums it inspired many younger artists who are still working today. The need to tour was evident and Warrick moved to London to work on promoting the album. He toured with Chris Cutler and other friends from England. A third album 'Sleep Armed' was completed before leaving and released in 1986.The Kalahari Surfers were seen as far afield as Holland, Germany, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Moscow, Lenningrad, Riga, East Berlin and London. Back in South Africa during the late 80¹s the album 'Bigger than Jesus' (title from the famous John Lennon quote ) was recorded and released locally and officially banned for distribution and possesion . After an appeal to the publications control board the ban was lifted and set a legal precident. The early 90's saw a collaboration with Sowetan rebel poet Lesego Rampolokeng resulting in the album 'End Beginnings'. Which took them on a tour of Brazil and France during the mid 90¹s. This was also released in London through REcRec. Lesego is the most powerful black voice to emerge from the 80¹s with his brain intact. A product of the lost generation who suffered detentions and beatings from our country¹s notorious security forces. He is a rarity and fittingly teamed up with fellow nomads in the South African cultural wasteland. Kalahari Surfers have been operating the Shifty Studio for a few years doing sound design, film music and various collaborative projects. A partnership with Brendan Jury resulted in an album under the name TransSky as well as a tour with Massive Attack last year. A project with ex ORB members Greg Hunter and Kris Wesson is half completed and will be released early next year as a Transsky album. Warrick has been busy working on various remix and producing projects at the Shifty Studio now based in Cape Town and has hosted Brian Eno's workshop in Cape Town for CAMA as well. A new Surfers album is expected early next year. I've been meaning to post some of this great band for a while yet I'd lost my favorite LP and really have not been paying attention to the amazing music they have kept on doing. Only familiar with the SLEEP ARMED LP I went ahead and made a crappy throw together YouTube for the song GOLDEN RENDEZVOUS. Crap video, good song along with the band history included. Finding this work of art video for Kicked By The Ball from the LP AKASIC RECORD was good fortune. The earlier song from SLEEP ARMED represents more of the Quirky side of the band, IMOP. (basically posted for the song) Selections from Kalahari Surfers first 4 LPs you can download here: Kalahari Surfers (12 tracks, approx time 48min) compiled by La Folie Du Jour blogspot 01. Free State Fence (Own Affairs) 02. Prayer For Civilization(Own Affairs) 03. Hippo In Town (Own Affairs) 04. Europeans (Living in the heart...) 05. 1999 (Living in the heart...) 06. Township Beat (Living in the heart...) 07. Healthy Way Of Life (Sleep Armed) 08. Golden Rendezvous (Sleep Armed) 09. Mafikeng Road (Sleep Armed) 10. Gutted With The Glory (Bigger Than Jesus) 11.Gold Reef City (Bigger Than Jesus) 12. Reconnaissance (Bigger Than Jesus)

9/16/09

From Moon To Noon

Made In The USA.

Altadena Works is a creative partnership based in California that emerged from our shared desire to produce quality goods manufactured within the USA. Our products are rooted in simple and straightforward design, constructed meticulously with functionality and longevity in mind. Understated yet luxurious in their material quality, our bags deliver a solution both modern and practical for everyday use. The backpacks are designed with the attitude that a bag should be an extension of what you’re wearing, with minimal design and slimmer profile referencing the simplicity of 1970’s outdoor equipment. Everything about the bags has been considered, from unique color schemes to user-friendly pocket placement and zipper pulls. All our bags are made in the USA using the highest quality materials, including heavyweight canvas duck, military spec nylon webbing and hardware, and leather custom ordered from Horween, one of America’s oldest tanneries. Construction is fundamental – Altadena Works products are made by seasoned American artisans who’ve worked in bag production for over 30 years. Taking the utmost care through every stage of production, they ensure the bags meet their own high standards as well as ours. Our products are built to last, and provide functionality in every context, whether you are hiking, traveling, or on your daily commute. We believe the best design results from reduction. We don’t make anything we wouldn’t use or wear ourselves, and we’re pretty particular – you should be too. Thanks for looking, and please check back for more Altadena Works products. Available/ more products and information here

9/15/09

Shadow Figure

7'4" PG Bladerunner by Spence. Thumbs oop. Got to love polaroids and the ghetto double exposure.

Alphaville

Lemmy Caution and Natacha Von Braun discuss the meaning of love in Jean-Luc Godard's "Alphaville". Purity. In many ways, Jean Luc Godard’s Alphaville remains cinema’s most unconventional science fiction film. With science fiction, filmmakers usually ask the audience to believe that certain technologies have advanced, or in the case of dystopian scenarios such as the brilliant Blade Runner, that technologies have advanced and subsequently corrupted society, standing as a testament to the foolishness of blind faith in progress. Godard, on the other hand, has made a film that asks its audience to take downtown Paris as the center of the galaxy by eliminating all special effects and simply shooting the film in the nocturnal, fluorescent and neon lit interiors of hotels and office buildings. That this technique works so well (much better than many films with millions of dollars worth of effects) represents only one of the triumphs of this remarkable work. Besides being the only film in history where the galaxy is, in effect, saved by poetry (here Paul Eluard’s gorgeous poems in the book La Capitale de la Douleur), Alphaville teems with an eccentric mix of high and low culture – from references to Louis Ferdinand Celine, Dick Tracy, and Heckl and Jeckl, to dialectics and philosophy mixed with science fiction. As a result, the film looks more complicated than it actually is. Formally, it is a radical work, almost avant-garde, though rooted in American B-movies as well, with Constantine’s craggy, trench coat-wearing secret agent almost a stereotypical private eye from a ‘50s film noir. The cinematography by the great Raoul Coutard is black-and-white raised to the level of high art, expressive in ways color seldom is. An influential film, one can easily see its influence on films such as Terry Gilliam’s wonderful Brazil as well as Blade Runner, and its depiction of a computer artificial intelligence gone haywire prefigures the HAL 9000. Alphaville is ultimately one of Godard’s essay movies, bits of his aesthetic in short parcels that reflect the kind of diverse intellectual training completely absent from cinema today. As in Pierrot le Fou, in which he flashed pictures by Velasquez, Renoir, and Picasso along with comic strips, Godard’s world is one where pop culture is on equal footing with the profound and where the possibilities in life are the endless possibilities of cinema. If one still insists on seeing Alphaville as a complex film, it’s a complex film with a simple message: all you need is love. continued/ more on plot

9/14/09

Jim Carroll Died

By WILLIAM GRIMES NY Times Published: September 14, 2009 Jim Carroll, the poet and punk rocker in the outlaw tradition of Rimbaud and Burroughs who chronicled his wild youth in “The Basketball Diaries,” died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 60. As a teenage basketball star in the 1960s at Trinity, an elite private school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Mr. Carroll led a chaotic life that combined sports, drugs and poetry. This highly unusual combination lent a lurid appeal to “The Basketball Diaries,” the journal he kept during high school and published in 1978, by which time his poetry had already won him a cult reputation as the new Bob Dylan. “I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation,” the singer Patti Smith said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty.” The diaries began, innocently: “Today was my first Biddy League game and my first day in any organized basketball league. I’m enthused about life due to this exciting event.” By the end of the book, Mr. Carroll was a heroin addict who supported his habit by hustling in Times Square. “Totally zonked, and all the dope scraped or sniffed clean from the tiny cellophane bags,” the final entry read, continuing, “I can see the Cloisters with its million in medieval art out the bedroom window. I got to go in and puke. I just want to be pure.” “The Basketball Diaries,” reissued in a mass-market edition in 1980, became enormously popular, especially on college campuses. In a film adaptation in 1995, Leonardo DiCaprio played the part of Mr. Carroll. The writer’s good looks and flair for drama made him ideal raw material for rock stardom. “When I was about 9 years old, man, I realized that the real thing was not only to do what you were doing totally great, but to look totally great while you were doing it,” he told the poet Ted Berrigan in the 1960s. In the late 1970s, with the encouragement of Ms. Smith, he formed the Jim Carroll Band, whose first release, “Catholic Boy” (1980), is sometimes called the last great punk album. James Dennis Carroll, the son of a bar owner, spent his childhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where he attended Roman Catholic schools. After the family moved to Inwood, at the northern end of Manhattan, he won a basketball scholarship to Trinity. There he discovered a love of writing and began spending time at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project in the East Village, falling under the spell of Allen Ginsberg and Frank O’Hara. Still in his teens, he published a limited-edition pamphlet of his poems, “Organic Trains” (1967), which, with its successor, “4 Ups and 1 Down” (1970), won him a cult following that was enhanced when The Paris Review published excerpts from his journals in 1970. “Living at the Movies” (1973), issued by a mainstream publisher, won him both acclaim and a wider audience. His life was colorful. Hailed by Ginsberg, Berrigan and Jack Kerouac as a powerful new poetic voice, he became a fixture on the downtown scene. After briefly attending Wagner College on Staten Island and Columbia University, he found his way to Andy Warhol’s Factory, contributing dialogue for Warhol’s films. Later he worked as a studio assistant for the painter Larry Rivers and lived with Ms. Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, the photographer. He chronicled this frenetic period in “Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries, 1971-1973.” In 1973 Mr. Carroll left New York to escape drugs. He settled in Bolinas, an artistic community north of San Francisco, where met and married Rosemary Klemfuss in 1978. The marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by a brother, Tom. Mr. Carroll’s music career started by accident when Ms. Smith brought him onstage to declaim his poetry with her band providing background. Encouraged by the response, he formed his own band. It caught the attention of Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, who arranged a three-record deal with Atlantic Records. The critic Stephen Holden described Mr. Carroll in The New York Times in 1982 as “not so much a singer as an incantatory rock-and-roll poet.” Like Lou Reed, he had a mesmerizing power, evident on songs like “People Who Died” from “Catholic Boy,” a poetic litany of his dead friends that became a hit on college radio and part of the soundtrack for “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.” The group’s next two albums, “Dry Dreams” (1982) and “I Write Your Name” (1984), caused much less stir. After writing lyrics for Blue Oyster Cult and Boz Scaggs, Mr. Carroll returned to the studio in 1998 to record “Pools of Mercury.” Mr. Carroll published several more poetry collections — “The Book of Nods” (1986), “Fear of Dreaming” (1993) and “Void of Course: Poems 1994-1997” (1998) — as well as releasing several spoken-word albums. via Jim reading an excerpt from The Basketball Diaries. Personally, I've read The basketball Diaries and Forced Entries many a time. So many great stories and the writing you just can not put down! These are not just "junkie books"! This is a book of a disaffected youth going through hell and the battle of pulling himself together. A very smart book that, although filled with horrible street living and dark humor, carries a positive message. Quality writing from a very smart man/boy. The Jim Carroll Band Catholic Boy Download

The Fixer

Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi . Democracy Now 8/17/09 (sorry for the late posting yet this is still a shocking story) NPR reporters don't do all the work you think they do, especially in war zones. The same could be said of reporters for The New York Times, The Washington Post and the TV networks — we rely, and rely heavily, on people called "fixers." They are locals with good English who drive us around, interpret for us, set up interviews and sometimes even do the interviews. They assume an immense amount of risk in exchange for little recognition, but a decent paycheck. A new documentary airing Monday night on HBO, Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi, tells the story of one of these locals in Afghanistan. 'He Will Be Murdered' Fixer opens with grainy television footage shot by the Taliban. It's spring 2007. An Italian journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, is on screen — a hostage. He's pleading for help from the Italian government. You also notice a voice, off-camera, asking in English, "Do you have any message for your wife and mother?" continued

9/12/09

9/11/09

The Ghost and Mr. Hall

y Octafish.

Man Of Steel

Steel-guitarist BUDDY EMMONS Live in England 1981 People Buddy has worked with: (Not including sessions) Little Jimmy Dickens - 1955-56 Carl Smith - 1956 Sho~Bud - early 1957 Ernest Tubb - late 1957-58 Gordon Terry (in CA) - 1958-59 George Jones - 1959 Ernest Tubb - 1959-62 Ferlin Husky 1962 Ray Price - 1962-68 Claude Gray - 1968 Roger Miller (on bass, living in CA) - 1968-74 The Everly Brothers - 1988-2001 and sooo many others. He IS the master of the pedal and in so many recordings he's filling atmospherics that can barely be heard alone. Breakdown of the Emmons Guitar. Here.

9/10/09

Operation Grand Slam

One perk of having many roommates throughout the years is that, many people end up leaving things of value....to me. (having the space helps) This patio love seat was used on the set of Goldfinger and through the years has been refreshed a bit because of shear age. You can see it in the background of the movie as matching furniture to the one pictured at the horse ranch/ evil lair. Shame it's not the exact love seat that Pussy Galore(Honor Blackman) is seen above sipping her mint julep. Trivia for the Goldfinger fanatic; Honor Blackman is the oldest ever Bond Girl; she was thirty seven years of age at the time of filming. The Pussy name is said to have been named after Fleming's pet octopus. First appearance of a laser beam in a movie. Gert Fröbe (Goldfinger) was the name Mathew Brodrick uses in the restaurant scene in Ferris Bueler.(Gert B. Frobe) The debut of the Aston Martin. Tilly Masterson's Ford Mustang was supposedly the first appearance by a Mustang in a major motion picture. The Mustang was introduced in April of 1964 and Goldfinger was released in December. Ford supplied many cars to the film including the CIA agents' Thunderbird, all of Goldfinger's goons cars, and the Lincoln Continental that is crushed. and much more