Sound Collector Audio Review #6

ISSUE 6

A MAGAZINE FOR LISTENERS

OCCULT, HOLLYWOOD SUICIDE & MYTHICAL KINGS

TARA MURTHA LOOPS IN ABOUT

DORY PREVIN PIERCE JORDAN

FINDS NO FAULT ON

LOMA PRIETA’S

DARK MOUNTAIN SHOTGUN IN THE ’66

JESSE PEARSON’S MOM REMEMBERS

DASHBOARD

8-TRACKS

KURT HEASLEY LIGHTS UP MISS UMBRARUM BY

DANIEL LENTZ

ARTIST

TIA ROXAE

MELTS WITH

COALTAR

OF THE

DEEPERS

Plus Reviews on Q-Tip Chick Corea Woo The Particles Sinéad O'Connor Mercury Rev Kara Jackson Lou Adler Takeru Muraoka & Takao Uematsu Huggy Bear Glare Maria BC Del Shannon The Fall Melvins Ed Kuepper & More

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CHICK COREA

MIDNIGHT BABY (BOOK ) Reviewed by Tara Murtha

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MY SPANISH HEART Reviewed by Anne Ishii

MELVINS / WHIPSMEN

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THROBBING JAZZ GRISTLE FUNK HITS SOUNDS OF DISCIPLINE Reviewed by Bob Nickas

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BAT TLE OF THE GARAGES Reviewed by Luis Mayo

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PAL ACE

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WEST PALM BEACH Reviewed by Kendra Gaeta

INTO THE HEART OF LOVE Reviewed by Andy Beta

LOU ADLER

LOMA PRIETA

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A MUSICAL HISTORY Reviewed by Michaelangelo Matos

DARK MOUNTAIN Reviewed by Pierce Jordan

DANIEL LENT Z

HAL DAVID, BURT BACHAR ACH

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MISSA UMBR ARUM Reviewed by Kurt Heasley

LOST HORIZON (SOUND TRACK ) Reviewed by Meredith Brosnan

SINEAD O’CONNOR

TAKERU MUR AOK A , TAKAO UEMATSU

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I DO NOT WANT WHAT I HAVE NOT GOT Reviewed by Cat Tyc

RIDE AND TIE Reviewed by William Pym

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MERCURY REV

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8-T R ACK MEMORIES Reviewed by Jesse Pearson

DESERTER'S SONGS Reviewed by Gabe Soria

HUGGY BEAR

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“HER JAZZ” PERFORMED LIVE ON THE WORD Reviewed by Ethan Swan

BREAKING DOWN THE WALL S OF HEARTACHE Reviewed by Eric de Jesus

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DEL SHANNON

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FALLING TREE ARCHIVES

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF CHARLES WESTOVER Reviewed by Carlos Acevedo

Reviewed by Alex Lewis

COALTAR OF THE DEEPERS

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY

SWIMMERS Center-Pullout-Poster Review by Tia Roxae

THE STR ANGERS

By Melissa Schriek

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THE PARTICLES 1980s Bubblegum BY DANA KATHARINE

BIG BLOOD First Aid Kit BY L ARIS KRESLINS

KENNY DRE W & NIELS-HENNING ØRSTED PEDERSEN Duo

BY FRED CISTERNA

Q-TIP Amplified BY RASHID ZAKAT

GL ARE Into You BY CHLOE MELLO

ED KUEPPER Electrical Storm BY EVERET T TRUE 44

42 MARIA BC Spike Field BY BEVERLY BRYAN K AR A JACKSON Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love

L AUFEY / DOJA CAT / THE SMILE / SKRILLEX & BOYS NOIZE Gen Z vs. Gen X single reviews

BY L AWRENCE LUI (GEN X ) & FIONA LUI MARTIN (GEN Z)

BY LOGAN CRYER

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PUBLISHER & EDITOR IN CHIEF

Laris Kreslins

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W. T. Nelson

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CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Cat Tyc

“Everything dies, baby, that's a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.”

L

before, and ever, Sound Collector is dedicated to giving writers and artists space to muse, critique or opine with little to no style parameters beyond word counts—and even those are elastic. As before, and ever, the subject matter of this publication is sound which encompasses anything ever released at any time, be it in album, single, documentary, aurally appropriate podcast, or sheet music.

Now, for the bad news... Actually, why dwell on that!? Life already weighs too heavily on our hearts near constantly. Instead, let's simply bask in the GOOD NEWS—

et's start with the good news— It turns out, you can resurrect the dead and rejuvenate the dormant.

The time feels ripe to breathe life back into Sound Collector Audio Review (and eventually Sound Collector the journal as well) so that’s what we’re doing. And we’re doing it the old-fashioned way—in print. In a world where the virtual realm overshadows the tangible, there's a certain thrill in the holdable, the tactile, the long and slow form. That’s what we think anyway so here we are, firing up the ole concern. As

Sound Collector Audio Review is back. May it expand your world! Or, at the very least, offer a momentary escape. And if you like what you see, please support what we do.

Subscribe, purchase merchandise when it becomes available, advertise with us, share Sound Collector far and wide, or participate in our very own homegrown crowd funding opportunities. E-mail us for more details. As Kurt Heasly says in his Daniel Lentz review, “Fully commit, there is no such thing as half a rebirth.” When the time comes, so will issue #7.

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A MILLION LIT TLE BLOODLESS DEATHS D

ory Previn’s 1976 book Midnight Baby is not your standard music memoir, but then again, Dory Previn was not your typical musician. Dory, who died in 2012 at age 86, was a pioneering singer-songwriter whose lilting shop-girl voice belied the eccentric darkness and searing intelligence of her vision. On six records released between 1970 and 1976 plus a live album recorded at Carnegie Hall, Dory sang of the occult, Hollywood suicide, mythical kings, mental illness, screaming in the dark and the million little daily bloodless deaths people didn’t typically write songs about at the time. Before her solo career, Dory wrote songs for motion pictures including ‘(Theme from) Valley of the Dolls’, which was sung by Dionne Warwick but intended for Judy Garland, who Dory saw as a fellow traveler. But Midnight Baby isn’t a book about Dory’s storied career, which is ripe for the reassessment coming soon by way of the forthcoming documentary Dory Previn: On My Way to Where. It’s a peculiar memoir written in rat-atat stream of consciousness from her point of view as a kid struggling to figure out why she perpetually feels “mixed up.”

“I didn’t want to deal with it,” Dory explained in a 1976 radio interview about digging into her painful childhood to write the book, which has been mostly forgotten but sold out its first printing within a month. “But I really felt a lot of things that happened to me in my adult life couldn’t really be

Dory Previn Midnight Baby (Book) MACMILLAN; FIRST EDITION JANUARY 1, 1976

Steve Krakow

“I don’t think I wrote this book, I think I wrote it down.”

explained in terms of contemporary issues [and] that the issues started way back, a long time ago.”

The first and last word of the book is screaming—a pure note of animal pain. This is the sensation that loops the end back into the beginning but like a Möbius strip, we’re on the other side of the experience by the time we

arrive again. One day, in a scene cleverly placed in the center of the book, her mom says, “You want to know why you’re mixed up, Dorothy? I’ll tell you… Your birth certificate states that you were born at Twelve-O-Five. To avoid future confusion. Actually, you arrived at the stroke of Midnight. Babies born at that moment will never be sure who they are… They’re forever divided.” Call it whatever aligns with your worldview—your truth, the mother wound, complex PTSD. Midnight Baby is about the thing that does all the talking even if you don’t talk about it.

Inspired by changes in film editing she observed while writing for motion pictures, Dory liked the way jump-cuts between scenes let the viewer fill in the rest. The technique imbues the narrative with the sense of shamanic channeling as we’re pulled into the perspective of a girl working to decipher a confusing universe where she is both star and black hole.

Dory’s trouble began before she was born. Her father, a veteran of the First World War, was told he might be sterile from the gas. It was a warning and not a diagnosis that he took as gospel. Believing he had a cheating wife and bastard child, he abused them both.

One day he decided Dory should perform so they could make money, maybe even make it to Hollywood. Soon the Shirley Temple of Woodbridge, New Jersey, as she was called in the local papers, was tap-dancing in competitions all over New Jersey. The first time he heard her sing on the radio, he proudly crowed, “That’s my kid!” But he didn’t believe it.

In Midnight Baby, adults are foreign dignitaries imbued with too much power to sustain positive relations. Sensitive and emotionally

Tara Murtha is a Bobbie Gentry expert, comms person, writer of untidy range of topics & forms, author of critically acclaimed book Ode to Billie Joe.

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starved, Dory worked to peel the skin off adult words to get at their true meaning. Clumsy metaphors jumbled her perceptions as she struggled to reconcile what she was told with what she overheard, tried to understand why her father hated her, why her mother tolerated him, and why she was haunted by a perpetual sense of dislocation.

Then her mother gets pregnant.

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The plan was to hurtle over the ocean and get to London to confront her husband over his embarrassing cliché of an affair. The mistress was a younger woman who was once Dory’s friend. Now she was pregnant with her husband’s twins.

We may as well get it over with, though I wish we could skip it, though it’s unjust, though an

"I wasn’t doing nothing, just drive about screaming at the dark, letting it out..."

Once again, her father believed his wife cheated, which reminded him of his contempt for Dory. She went from being his tap-dancing star to invisible. He pretended she didn’t exist. Cruelly, he’d silently gaze through her when she spoke to him. When the baby was born, he forced the three of them—Dory, her mom, and baby sister—into one small room in the house. She wrote about the moment before she followed her mother into the room: “I saw the glass eyes of the matching owl andirons. I saw the painted saint’s porcelain stare. The silent radio. The closed books. Nothing was alive in that room. Nothing saw me. I looked back at my mother … she smiled. And I followed her in.”

He nailed a two-by-four across the door. They lived as prisoners in that room for months, until one day a relative stopped by and she was set free. Physically, at least.

The boards came down, the gun got put away, and Dory’s mind erected a wall around the experience. She forgot about it almost immediately. “I guess I entered that room and just went to sleep,” she wrote. “Like in a grave.”

Eighteen years later, toward the tail end of her career writing for film, Dory broke the midnight baby curse. She did not remain forever divided—which brings us back to the beginning of the book. “Screaming. Somebody was screaming in the plane,” she wrote as the first lines.

“I felt bad for whoever it was. But I felt good for myself. It had been a great ride to the airport.”

She was sitting on a plane at LAX.

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artist as visionary and accomplished as Dory Previn shouldn’t be eternally tethered to a man’s bad behavior, even though she understandably resented how it’s burnished into her biography: Dory’s husband was the famous composer and conductor Andre Previn and his young lover was Mia Farrow, a situation Dory scathingly portrayed in her song, “Beware of Young Girls.”

She wrote the song in the mental health institution where she was committed after the plane incident and underwent electroshock therapy. A therapist urged her to write about her feelings, and so she did. The songs written while institutionalized became the critically acclaimed 1970 record On My Way to Where, an album that launched a solo career that expanded the boundaries of personal songwriting. She’d go on to release five more records and Live at Carnegie Hall before retiring from recording in 1976 due to “a certain disenchantment with the recording industry.” In the broader culture, Dory Previn was routinely reviewed and discussed alongside Yoko Ono, Joni Mitchell, and Joan Didion. The New York Times lauded her as a ”super contemporary” though certainly set apart from Laurel Canyon’s lilies and Bleecker Street’s hippies. Previn, however, insisted she thought of herself as a dutiful secretary. “We all have an incredible story to tell, and some of us write it down,” she once said. “That’s all.”

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BOB NICKAS

TAKE ME HOME AND MAKE ME LIKE IT S

omewhere in North Hollywood, in a dank, rundown apartment, light barely filtering through creased window blinds, a grandfatherly yet still formidable leather-man reminisces about his wild years gone by as if they were only yesterday. Neighbors rarely catch a glimpse of him, guessing his age to be around 80, describing him as quiet, keeping to himself, polite. On this day, he savors the attention of a curious ethnographer researching a rare artifact, a record titled Sounds of Discipline. When the young man introduced himself as Randy, the older quickly responded, “Oh ... are you?” With blackrimmed glasses occasionally nudged back to the bridge of his nose, dressed in a pale blue Oxford shirt and brown cords, Randy appeared seemingly straight-laced. Hmmm, the old man mused to himself, just the sort of innocence we prefer, a sexy nerd. Examining the front cover, they remark on the grainy blackand-white images of naked bottoms stroked by riding crops and a man cuffed by the wrists to a rack, poised in anticipation, rather than any immediate distress. They note the lettering. Sounds of Discipline is written in Black type, a font that amplifies power and strength, long associated with National Socialism in Germany, and favored by Neo-Nazis today.

Reaching for the record, the man says, “Here’s my copy, the only one I have left.” Informed by his visitor that originals routinely sell for $200 to $250, his eyes widen. “That’s crazy. We sold it for two or three dollars back then.” Randy, taking out his phone, brings up the Discogs page to show him the hefty prices, and points out an unofficial reissue selling in the $30 to $40 range. “Wait,” the old man snaps, “Pressed again without permission? I’m on a fixed

Melvins Throbbing Jazz Gristle Funk Hits AMPHETAMINE REPTILE RECORDS 2023

Whipsmen Sounds of Discipline ANVIL STUDIOS 1965 (REISSUE 2013)

income. I can use the money. Who did that?” Suddenly his eyes light up. “I believe someone is in for a good thrashing.” Asked when the record was released, the old man guesses “Mid-to-late ‘60s. Can’t remember exactly, it’s a long time ago.” Told there’s no information about the reissue label, Zorro, he mockingly echoes, “Zorro? Our label was Anvil.”

Looking back to the Discogs page, he notes, “The style is described as ‘erotic,’ and the genre as ‘non-music,’ I guarantee you that the sound of flesh teased, swatted and lovingly caressed, and those low writhing moans, that was music to our ears.”

The old man smiled, then read from the sticker on the back: Whipsmen, What Did It Take?

Well, we took a leather strap, two riding crops, a cat whip, two lengths of rubber hose, a buggy whip and a torture rack. We put them in a dungeon alive with swingers. From there came the sounds of pain and pleasure. So here it is. You will have fun with it.

Some people just like to listen to it!

On the drive home, having gently declined an offer to see the old man’s basement “game room,” Randy turns on the music he’d been listening to on the way over, recalling that line: “Sounds of pain and pleasure.” He’s playing a record by the Melvins, their collaboration with Void Manes on covers of songs

by Throbbing Gristle, who Buzz Osborne has forthrightly identified as “one of the best bands ever.”

Sounds of pain and pleasure ... an apt descriptor for TG as well. Long rumored, Throbbing Jazz Gristles Funk Hits was recently released as part of the Melvins’ yearlong 40th anniversary, although the initial recordings were made back in 2015, or possibly earlier. TG has clearly been on the Melvins’ radar for some time now. Their hypnotic reimagining of ‘Dreammachine,’ retitled ‘Trackfive,’ appeared on In Formation: A Tribute to Throbbing Gristle in 2000. The dream machine, an illuminated optical device conceived in 1959 by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville, and investigated

by their friend William Burroughs, is meant to be experienced with closed eyes. The device rotates on a turntable at 45 or 78 rpm, and its rapid flickering stimulates the optical nerve to produce kaleidoscopic mandala patterns, or as Gysin proposed, a cinematic experience of one’s own—behind our eyelids.

With ‘Dreammachine,’ TG may be thought to have created a soundtrack for seen/ unseen films, which is what all evocative music does, and which the Melvins have pursued across four decades. In their Tribute series of singles in 2015, there is a 7-inch with ‘Subhuman’ on one side, ‘Heathen Earth’ on the other, accompanied by a bonus Flexidisc with ‘Hamburger Lady’ —pure menace in slow motion. The back sleeve tantalizingly listed another four titles: ‘Hot on the Heels of Love,’ ‘Adrenaline,’ ‘Discipline,’ and ‘Zyklon B Zombie.’ But where were they? Had they been recorded and set aside? Would they ever see the light of day? All are included on Throbbing Jazz Gristle ... with another seven tracks, for a total of fourteen, and well worth waiting for.

Cruising down the 405 towards Santa Monica, the volume rises with the Melvins’ take on ‘Zyklon B Zombie.’ Whenever an artist covers music we’re familiar with, our ears are attuned to the difference between them, fidelity or its lack— true to the original, or not. But if you don’t do something else with a known piece of music, what’s the point? (A notable exception, Todd Rundgren’s 1976 album, Faithful.

The first side closely reproduces ‘60s classics by The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and The Yardbirds as if they were classical compositions, intended to be performed as written,

Bob Nickas is a writer & curator based in New York. His latest book, Corrected Proofs, was published by At Last in September 2023.

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without variation.) The Melvins’ ‘Zyklon’ is 180 degrees from the original. Where TG sustained a sense of simmering dread—the song’s title refers to the hydrogen cyanide used in the gas chambers—in the hands of the Melvins, tension has evaporated into dreamy, lush atmospherics and, at one point, gentle glissandos suggesting Hawaiian guitar and swaying palm trees. This recalls TGs affection for the “exotic” music of Les Baxter (Tamboo!, African Jazz, and Yma Sumac’s Xtabay, most memorably), which aligns with a photo they staged, dressed as retro South Seas tourists, posed before a bam-

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in ’97, with its reference to “Gristle— thick pork chop rot tan,” also registers as TG-tinged.) Although longtime fans will find that many of the Melvins’ versions of TGs songs are barely recognizable—the band’s surviving members, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, might not recognize their own music—that’s a good thing, and they would likely agree. Many listening to this record will miss the possessed shriek of Genesis on ‘Discipline’ and Cosey’s breathy soft-core vulnerable seduction on ‘Hot on the Heels of Love.’ But TG is not karaoke. TG challenged themselves and their audience, and if you’re going to play

Who else but the Melvins would cover TG for an entire album?

No one. boo screen as if they were a Tiki lounge act rather than “the wreckers of civilization.” The photo is reproduced on the back of TGs Greatest Hits album (as if they had them in the usual sense), appropriately subtitled, Entertainment Through Pain, released in 1981, when they announced “The Mission Is Terminated.” The Melvins’ greatly contrasting cover of ‘Zyklon,’ soothing but ominous, fits the gliding drive toward the Pacific, that is until its staccato conclusion, reminiscent of early computer music, breaks the spell. Passing the Getty on the right, Randy realizes he’s not far from the Murphy Ranch, with its bunkers built by a white supremacist, anti-Semitic couple in the early ‘30s, in Rustic Canyon. Eager to get home and review his notes, he pushes onward.

In 1977, Throbbing Gristle promised and delivered “Industrial music for industrial people.” Key to their sound was the “Gristleizer,” developed by Roy Gwinn, an effect that produces melodic tremolo as well as gnarly distortion. (Imagine if the Melvins had one for “Grinding Process.” Turns out it wasn’t necessary. They were already greased and dirty, pared down to the bone. Their abattoir-rattling ‘Lovely Butterfly’

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their music you dare yourself as well. Few have. And who else but the Melvins would cover TG for an entire album? No one. The sheer audacity of it, the respect for what TG accomplished as well as respect shown by taking their music elsewhere. By making a mostly instrumental album, distancing from the (at times) plaintive quality of TGs vocals and Cosey’s cornet, the Melvins have in a sense made TG less human, more machine-like, and yes, even more industrial. Listen to the intros and outros of the Melvins’ own songs, to what happens in between one and another when the band is on stage and you’ll understand how consistently they open up to ambient, abstract spatiality, to drone, noise and dissonance—all very much TG-related.

Pulling into his driveway, the final track turns out to be a lock groove, a strangled voice on endless harangue: “Subhuman, subhuman, subhuman...” Turning it down so as not to alarm anyone nearby, Randy asks himself, “What links Throbbing Jazz Gristle ... and Sounds of Discipline?” Each in their own way, he reasons, couldn’t more perfectly define the term High concept. He takes a deep breath. “What a day.”

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webs of their moldering attic, they nachronistic” is a word that would sound like Woo. often springs to mind when attempting to describe the music Can a magnum opus be made up of Woo. At the very least, it was a of such small glass menageries?

CD reissue of their first two albums The Ives’ 1990 album Into the Heart that caught my eye while shopping of Love suggests as much. Some 23 at Other Music one day, if only bepieces drift in and out of focus, a daydream nesting inside anothcause it came encased in a plastic er daydream. Strummed guitars clamshell longbox turned yellow and woodwinds by time, wobbling above everything suggest parlor else on the shelf. music, half-reIt was a CD reismembered folk ditties, but also sue of music from 1982 made digital turn-of-the-cenin 1989, washing tury jazz. Sung up at my most resongs emerge and then swirl back liable record shop down the bathtub twenty years on drain. after that. One Just don’t think listen to Whichof the Ives as ever Way You Are shut-ins. Theirs Going, You Are Gois a rich interiing Wrong and It’s Cosy Inside and or realm. For all Lin-Zhu time was out of the times when joint. a Woo album simply denotes the Ives brothers’ little world, ItHoL Read Woo’s Discogs bio and that opens up its doors to collaboradislocation in time serves as their raison d’être: “In 1972, sequestered tion. Woozy (or is that woo-zy?) in a small row house in Wimbleinstrumentals clarify and gently-sung songs appear, the words don in South London, Mark and courtesy of their friends Sue Clive Ives effectively shut out the world and created a musical Amor, Davy Booth, and Muhamworld of their own.” Woo seemed to mad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi. emerge fully-formed yet well outOne day, a student named Trish Trickey came by their home from side any sort of UK scene, though across the way at a secretarial there are traces of the country’s college with a poem called ‘It’s musical lineage everywhere in Love.’ A winsome instrumental this wholly DIY document: pastoversion of it made the initial reral folk, post-punk experiments, dub, noise, skiffle, jazz, and ambilease, while the most recent and ent. If Brian Eno deemed ambient complete double album reissue music to be “another green world,” features the full song. Lines come up about heartbreak, not being the Ives realized it might also be free, being there, but in the end, an English garden. If Grey Garit all slips away, the whispered dens’ Ediths were sisters instead refrain of “It’s love” becoming a of mother-daughter and they conmantra. It lingers long after, just jured their own musical world at the periphery of time. among the dusty boxes and cobFor most of the 21st century, Andy Beta has been an adventurous music writer and an omnivorous listener.

He has been writing about music, art & culture since 2002.

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Sundowners Cassette Digital | Cassette

Live at at The The Mercury MercuryPaw Paw Live Digital Digital

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PIERCE JORDAN

SUBJECTIVE CURRENCY OF RECOGNITION A LOVE LET TER S

creamo is fuwnny to me. The genre thrives on self-deprecation in a way that reminds me of an ouroboros, simultaneously signaling its fatal flaw and key strength.

People who play this kind of hardcore punk which is vocally devoid of melody, structurally linear, and oftentimes (a)rhythmically superhuman are some of the most technically meticulous musicians I’ve encountered in my 15 years of experience. There’s a level of self-awareness that playing the music almost requires because punk rockers and hardcore kids alike often prefer to be insular, treating the scene as the center of their social universe. Screamo artists and fans specifically cringe at the thought of mainstream recognition as it immediately recalls the time that recognition did come and ushered in a stylistic shift that they would rather pretend never happened.

There’s a certain ego death that comes with that self-awareness, a sense of futility in those kinds of aspirations, leaving room only for the passion of the craft. There is also a prevailing belief that the more popular an underground artist is, the less legitimate their message is. A passion that begs a relatively private existence; it’s almost paradoxical. I’ve walked a difficult path concerning this mentality myself; living under capitalism in a hyper-individualist society, it’s difficult not to be obsessively critical of your impact. Despite all the practice playing in any kind of ensemble requires, the people who play this type of music make peace with and even embrace obscurity.

It’s not meant to be for everyone.

This attitude and the motivations that drive it have kept the genre effectively in its place for the past 15 years or so. It’s also the answer to the question that drives this piece, “Why is my favorite album from this band not on any of their profiles on the streaming services I use?” The band, of course, is Loma

Loma Prieta Dark Mountain LABEL DISCOS HUELGA 2009

Pierce Jordan's tattoo, by Mars Bisset Prieta, the album being their 2009 self-published effort Dark Mountain. When planning this record’s discussion, I knew I needed to start with that question. Fortunately, Loma Prieta’s guitarist and vocalist Sean Leary was more than willing to discuss the band and the record with me.

“It’s our 2nd album and our only record that was fully self-released, so that’s why it’s not streaming.

We’re just not savvy enough to have put it on Spotify etc. and kinda figure it’s on YouTube if anyone wants to hear it.”

Boom. A comedically simple response to a question I and other individuals across the internet questioned the ether with each listen.

These four musicians, technically skilled on their instruments with 20+ years spent tinkering and experimenting with the art of digitally capturing sound, remain uninitiated in the ways of DistroKid. Still, this choice shapes the reality of the record for me. As the album exists on YouTube, the songs play together as one piece of music, one body of work, in a way that might not be possible on Spotify or Apple Music

and certainly wouldn’t be on Bandcamp, no shade.

“If anyone wants to hear it.”

When I listen to Dark Mountain, it’s difficult to know where one song ends and another begins. The acoustic guitar outro of ‘Carelessness’ and soft electric intro of ‘Ghost Shadow’ plainly and intentionally blend into each other in a way that is nearly indiscernible without repeat listens.

The way Leary’s and guitarist/ bassist Brian Kanagaki’s vocals are buried in the album’s mix and the way they repeat certain lyrical phrases in both the same and different songs (the phrase “cloistered children” appears in both the songs ‘Exit Here’ and ‘King Xing’) draw me into the albums imagery (which in my mind exactly resembles the album artwork) with ease. Most importantly, each song features Leary’s and second guitarist Derrick Chao’s most emotive and impassioned chord structures and leads of any of their discography. The screaming guitar progressions in the beginning of the frequently performed ‘Vermillion River’ and at the end of ‘King Xing’ undoubtedly have to feature some of the same chords, (and I suspect one or two of these chords are present at the fist-pumping beginning of ‘Arc’) and both sit atop drum patterns that groove so hard I end up doing the dance Yung Joc did in the ‘It’s Goin Down’ video.

Aside from their album Life/Less, Dark Mountain features their least distorted tones. Though the band repeats no musical phrase on any song, pummeling through each track the way bebop musicians do, the devotion to melody directs the movement of the work from start to finish the way that classical music does. Dark Mountain is more focused on melody than any of Loma Prieta’s other albums, though a survey of their chronology shows a generally vested interest in harsher tones and a more “hardcore” sound.

Upon release, Loma Prieta’s 2012 LP I.V. was noted by listeners en masse

Pierce Jordan is an artist and writer in Philadelphia. He is in a band called Soul Glo, graduated after a gap year from Temple University with a Bachelor’s in English, has no pets but is an uncle to several & loves to smoke marijuana.

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as one of their noisiest, featuring distorted vocals, ear-scratching guitars, and drums with perhaps the highest amount of gain that screamo has ever heard. The band dialed back the distortion with their following release, a split with genre-defining Italian group Raein, and all releases onward, but Loma Prieta has yet to set aside the noisy edge that these releases possess and revisit the melancholy and melodic style that is more akin to a group like Sweden’s Suis La Lune.

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it and we were all like ‘Damn these songs are kind of not fun to play live.’ Like every part was at the very edge of our abilities.” says Leary.

“We practiced so much that year.

And I think Derrick and I just hung out and played guitars all the time, we were roommates kinda right around then.”

Lyrically, Leary says that Dark Mountain was much more personal of an undertaking than what he was used to. The themes of people living as mere shadows, perhaps inactive

“It was probably our most ambitious album song-writing / playing wise. And I remember touring on it and we were all

al. He ended up bailing and moved to London, so I sang on Last City, though Corey did play bass on some songs and had tracked some vox we didn’t end up using.

“Some of the lyrics from Last City got carried over to Dark Mountain. It felt like Dark Mountain was the first time I wrote lyrics that were really vulnerable, though reading them back they seem so vague. I fall into that style though [it] feels boring to be conversational [and] obvious as a lyricist; and I think my thoughts are kind of abstract as a person, I’m not succinct when I talk either.”

Leary’s humility and awareness of himself and his work ring out in all that he says about Dark Mountain and Loma Prieta. No artist believes that they aren’t capable of connecting with the world through their art. Leary knows that Loma Prieta speaks to people and is deeply meaningful to the genre though, of course, he doesn’t act like it. He’s forthcoming regarding anything I want to ask about, telling me “It’s cool taking time to reflect on this record cause I never seem to do that,” and that he “hadn’t listened to it in years.”

Still though, it feels a lot like the social culture of screamo artists, (as well as punk and hardcore artists) generally encourages specific efforts in order to curate the way that connection happens, maybe sometimes at the artist’s expense. You have to be as meticulous in the intimacy of the approach as you are in songcraft itself. You need to make sure the people who get it, truly get it. Is that possible to control? It’s certainly up to the artist alone to make the choice to try.

I suppose what I personally want is for this album that I think is beautiful to be more easily available than it is. I suppose I would like for anyone who doesn’t know to search “loma prieta dark mountain full album” in the YouTube search bar to be able to find it through whatever service that they use that coughs up fractions of a cent for artists. I suppose that I also recognize that it’s up to me to make more people aware of it, and maybe Loma Prieta would rather that I do the work than a Spotify algorithm. I suppose it’s okay that I’m a part of that curated effort by being in love with this music. I suppose that’s what a fan would do.

like ‘Damn these songs are kind of not fun to play live.’ Like every part was at the very edge of our abilities.”

“Our other guitar player, Derrick Chao, quit the band shortly after Dark Mountain came out, and we played as a 3 piece for a couple years after that and started writing way noisier heavier stuff, I think just because of the 3 piece format,” Leary told me, “Derrick and I play in another band called Mare Island now, that sounds probably more like Dark Mountain era Loma than anything [we’ve] done since.”

It’s worth noting that one of Loma Prieta’s strengths is their largely unceasing performance. Live, their breaks are measured and neutralized by improvisation and feedback from drummer Val Saucedo and guitarist Brian Kanagaki, the latter having joined the band on bass at the time Dark Mountain was being written. They often will play through multiple tracks seamlessly. Both live and on record, each album has an urgency and intensity that matches that of Loma Prieta’s namesake.

“It was probably our most ambitious album song-writing/playing wise. And I remember touring on

and uninspired with none of the intrinsic passion that something like playing screamo requires, surface in the lyrics of multiple songs like ‘Ghost Shadow,’ ‘Punxx’nUp,’ and ‘Surrounding.’ Meanwhile, these same existential analyses of mortality also manifest in lyrics referencing bodies rising up from and sinking back down into the earth and sea in ‘Punxx’nUp,’ ‘Surrounding,’ as well as ‘Exit Here.’

“When we recorded our first LP, Last City, our friend Corey Reid was supposed to be the singer. He’d played in Sailboats with Derrick and Val, that band played with my band at the time and that’s how I met them and how Loma started. When Loma Prieta started I didn’t want to be the singer, since I was in another band, Archeopteryx, and was lead yeller guy and kinda hated having to sing and play guitar. Still do.

“So anyway, Loma had Davy Fung singing for the first couple EPs, he quit, and we got Corey to sign on to sing. I was writing the lyrics though, and when I was bringing him ideas he said they were too emo and liter-

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MEREDITH BROSNAN

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he movie poster (which looks equal parts disaster movie & Sound of Music knockoff) states the problem: Have you ever dreamed of a place far away from the raging fury of a world in turmoil?

Hal David, Burt Bacharach Lost Horizon A&M / COLUMBIA PICTURES 1973

“Hello, I’m Ross Hunter and I want to welcome you to Shangri-La…” “THE MUSICAL ADVENTURE THAT WILL LIVE FOREVER” boasts the trailer. Fifty years on, it’s still remembered as one of the last century’s great cinematic disasters, a remarkably complete critical and commercial failure: Columbia Pictures lost around eight million dollars on the movie (which was a lot of money back in 1973. Industry wits were quick to dub it “Lost Investment”).

It was the last Hollywood feature producer Ross Hunter was allowed to touch. After Lost Horizon, the powerful player was publicly stripped of his powder blue denim leisure suit, branded a fiscal LOSER and run out of Tinsel Town. On the spiritual plane, this actually happened; in everyday terms, Hunter’s fall from grace really was that swift and brutal.* In 1969, Larry Kramer’s screenplay for Ken Russell’s Women in Love was nominated for an Academy Award. Towards the end of his life, Kramer said, re his writing career, that the only thing he was truly ashamed of was the fact that, after a long struggle, he caved to temptation and agreed to write the Lost Horizon script. (“I didn’t want to do it, and the more I said, ‘No,’ the more they offered me.”)

Adding to the film’s reputation as A Cursed Thing: Burt Bacharach would later claim the movie near*Universally shunned by the money people, Ross fled to TV-land, where he spent the last five years of his working life cranking out made-for-TV movies and mini-series; his glory days were over but fortunately he didn’t starve.

Brad Neely ly destroyed his career. It certainly marked the demise, in acrimony and legal filings, of his long and remarkably successful collaboration with lyricist Hal David.

But go back to before the sky fell, before the clouds of schadenfreude rolled in, back to happier days: Ross Hunter was born Martin Fuss in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1920. By the end of the 1950s, the former so-so actor and decent dialogue coach had cemented a reputation as a shrewd, level-headed, budget-conscious producer, someone with a great flair

for assembling audience-friendly products and shepherding them to completion. Ross was a reliable generator of serious revenue for his bosses, Universal, working hard and smart across the genres; melodrama, comedy, action adventure, musicals, westerns. He had a long list of box office hits, including Magnificent Obsession, Imitation of Life, Pillow Talk, Captain Lightfoot, There’s Always Tomorrow, All That Heaven Allows, Taza, Son of Cochise, Madame X, the Tammy franchise, Flower Drum Song, Thoroughly Mod-

ern Millie, &c, &c. Fast forward to 1970: Mr. Bankable scores again; this time with a star-studded, big-budget adaptation of Arthur Hailey’s Airport. The movie does exceptionally well at the box office and is even nominated for Best Picture. Meanwhile Ross has a serious falling out with his longtime employers—of course about money.

Universal won’t budge; the hitmaker walks. Columbia Pictures welcome him with open arms. Hunter announces that his first project for Columbia will be a musical remake of Lost Horizon. The picture, he insists, isn’t a musical per se and it isn’t a drama; no, it’s something fresh and rare, “a musical drama.”

The idea of a new Lost Horizon must have struck the savvy, battle-hardened movie mogul as an interesting (i.e., potentially money-spinning) idea with respectable roots: James Hilton’s prizewinning 1933 novel was a bestseller; Frank Capra’s 1937 adaptation, starring Ronald Coleman and Jane Wyatt, had done quite well at the box office (though it failed to win any of that year’s important Oscars). The tinsel wheels begin to turn: Meetings, lunches, phone calls, late night discussions with set designer Jacques Mapes, driving in the Hollywood hills, working out money problems. Hunter’s sacred mantra is ADDED VALUE; he genuinely wants us to have a wonderful time at the movies: Presenting the Lost Horizon Team—what a team! Screenplay: Larry Kramer. (“Ross, he still says no.” “Offer him another ten grand.”) Music: Bacharach & David. Choreography: Hermes Pan. (A world-class talent, Astaire’s righthand man—what could possibly go wrong? ) Cinematography: the venerable Robert Surtees (Ben Hur, The Graduate, Doctor Dolittle, Sweet Charity, The Last Picture Show, The Sting, etc.) Art Director: E. Preston Ames (Gigi, An American in Paris, The Band Wagon, Brigadoon) Director: Charles Jarrott, a

Meredith Brosnan was born in Dublin, Ireland. He lived in New York City for many years, where some of his plays were produced by the Tribeca Lab theatre group. He published a novel in 2004 and relocated to Northern California in 2021.

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bearded Brit in a Stetson hat.

Known for two big-budget costume dramas, Anne of a Thousand Days, and Mary, Queen of Scots. Pauline Kael called him a “traffic manager.”

The Stars: Peter Finch and Michael York: Two Classy Brits… Actually there’s a third, John Gielgud. (Sir John is memorable, for all the wrong reasons, as Chang, the major-domo of the dubious lamasery; he pontificates drolly to Finch’s character in a charming Himalayan-Oxford brogue while modeling a series of increasingly silly outfits.) Who else? Olivia Hussey (Zeffirelli’s Juliet), Sally Kellerman (a bundle of interesting nerves), Liv Ullmann (bewildered, smiling refugee from Bergmanland), Bobby Van (a joke, a song, some of that old soft shoe), George Kennedy (tough teddy bear on the run), James Shigeta (portrait of stoic professionalism in a sea of burning shit), and last but not least—just when the viewer has decided to accept Gielgud’s Chang as the unassailable summit, the Mount Everest of camp—Finch’s Richard Conway is ushered into the presence of the previously disembodied High Lama only to find himself face to face with… a very old Charles Boyer!

A summary of the set-up may be in order: Five white people—four men and a woman, three Americans, two Brits —are forced to flee a vaguely delineated Middle Eastern country in the grip of revolution. The airfield is about to be overrun by the rebels; a large crowd of westerners is waiting for the rescue planes to arrive.* Fighting their way through a crush of panicked, turban-wearing natives, the frantic five climb aboard a DC3. They’re an odd assortment: Two journalists (Kellerman and York), a businessman on the run from his creditors (Kennedy), a sad sack bad comedian on a USO tour (Van), a famous UN peace negotiator (Finch). Apart from them, the plane is empty; the stern command has come down from Above: No natives allowed! The plane is supposed to carry this last batch of foreigners to safety but instead they find they’ve been skyjacked. The air*The very first hint that something’s not quite right: the fact that Jarrott (or someone) instructed the crowd of extras in the airport scenes to ALL shake their fists at the taxi-ing rescue plane.

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It would be nice to report Lost Horizon is plain sailing, a giddy-gorgeous musical lovefest, gladdening the heart & raising our cosmic consciousness. The reality is far bumpier, weirder… craft, we now see, is pointed EAST, towards some really tall, mysterious, snow-tipped mountains. Long story short, the thing crashes. Everyone survives except the skyjacker pilot. Outside, a blizzard is raging. The group is rescued by a fur-clad, torch-carrying party led by good old Chang. After a grueling trek across the frozen Himalayan wastes—actually Oregon’s Mt. Hood —they wind up in the Valley of the Blue Moon, an enchanting place, warm and sunny, protected by a ring of magic mountains, where the weather is always beautiful and no one ever gets sick. A guy or gal down on their luck and/or on the run and/ or in the grip of a 1970s-style professional-existential crisis might, you know, put down roots and live happily if not quite “ever after” then at least for a really long time, maybe centuries. The fortunate five are invited to stay at Shangri-La, which Chang describes, quite disingenuously, as a lamasery.* The first forty minutes of the film is chiefly concerned with getting our heroes to this earthly paradise and—one of Lost Horizon’s striking peculiarities—this long set-up has no singing at all. (Ross: “That’s because it’s a musical DRAMA, dummy!”)

Shower, shave, put on your colorful kaftans; after a refreshing aprèsskyjack-arctic-death-march nap, Chang’s guests drift down to dinner.

(Sally Kellerman’s journalist-onthe-verge character is a no-show.

Not a surprise; Chang and Brother To-Len [Shigeta] have just talked her out of throwing herself off the balcony of her room.) Bang on the forty minute mark, the genre shifts: Olivia Hussey appears in a floorlength mustard yellow poncho and starts to sing, inviting the diners

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and us to ‘Share the Joy.’ The dance performance that follows would have earned a solid B+ on any performing arts high school choreography test. (Keep watching, kids, because Hermes Pan has more tricks up his sleeve!) It would be nice to report that from here on in Lost Horizon is plain sailing, a giddy-gorgeous musical lovefest, gladdening the heart and raising our cosmic consciousness. The reality (alas and hurrah) is far bumpier, weirder…

But rather than subject you to a sarky scene-by-scene, let me turn to the Columbia Pictures DVD (2011).

The disc version restores songs and scenes deleted after roadshow feedback, most notably the extraordinary dance interlude from ‘Living Together, Growing Together’: this sappy celebration of the mid-20th century western nuclear family (projected onto a good-looking Bhutanese peasant couple and their prop baby) plods along until the drums suddenly quicken and the screen explodes with male bodies; now young men in orange loincloths are everywhere, running and leaping, oiled torsos gleaming! The lads gyrate madly for a bit and then surround Olivia Hussey—a tiny, delicate Fertility Goddess—and carry her off; it’s Rites of Spring reimagined as a Las Vegas floorshow, on *A lamasery is, by definition, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. But solemnly walking around in a long red gown does not a lama make; it’s quickly apparent that Shangri-La has nothing to do with Buddhism. Why then? What then? The big reveal at the halfway mark—this place is run by a 250-year-old French priest with a wooden leg!—should come as no surprise. (Spoiler Alert)

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the roof of the world! In addition, the DVD has Burt’s original song demos. Maybe best of all, there’s a trailer starring Ross himself.

On the backlot at Columbia, with the lamasery set as backdrop, the mogul whose luck is about to run out proudly introduces his new creation: “In many ways, I consider it the finest of the forty-six films I’ve produced.”

Today, it’s almost too easy to poke fun at Hunter’s Lost Horizon. On one level, the movie is plainly offensive; a ridiculous Orientalist fantasy, throbbing with white presumption and privilege. Back in ’73, most American critics tore it to shreds.

Pauline Kael’s scathing review is typically witty and insightful; thinking back to Capra’s 1937 film: “There’s probably no way to rethink this material without throwing it all away.” True, true, but what gets short shrift in this analysis are the songs—well, some of them. There’s no ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’ here, no ‘Alfie,’ but, when lifted out of their silly context, Burt and Hal’s more upbeat tunes—‘The World Is A Circle,’ ‘The Things I Will Not Miss,’ ‘Reflections,’ ‘Question Me An Answer,’ yes, even the mawkish ‘Living Together, Growing Together’—all possess an undeniable goofy charm.

Mind you, this is a musical where a lot of the stars don’t sing or can’t sing: Finch, Ullmann and Hussey’s performances were all dubbed. In this context, I’d like to nominate the late Sally Kellerman for the Fuck-It-I’mAll-In-Super-Trouper-Belter Award.

No dubbing for Sal: along with Bobby Van and James Shigeta she does it her way. ‘The Things I Will Not Miss’ is a high-energy duet with Hussey (the latter voiced by Andra Willis).

Had you heard it in the context of some Broadway show circa 1970, my guess is you’d remember it as a very catchy show tune. (Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye did a good cover of it on their duets album, Diane & Marvin.)

We live in a time when a great many third-and-fourth-rate movies are described as having achieved “cult movie status,”; yet, mysteriously, Lost Horizon isn’t much watched (let alone celebrated), despite its soaring ambitions and wonderful badness. As someone wrote in the comments under the Ross-Hunter-helmed trailer on Y-Tube, “Most people despise this movie but I love it!” And so too—against the odds— might you.

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WILLIAM PYM

JAMMING 197 1 GINZA NIGHTLIFE GOLDEN AGE OF THE JUNK P

eople make fun of jazz music because no one ever volunteered it to them. Without a reason to listen, jazz remains broad and shapeless in the imagination of many and stays, thus, a large target.

For example: it sounds so different all the time and is doesn’t appear to have any rules; it’s unpleasant or unrewarding compared to more immediate popular music forms; it doesn’t jump out of the static on the radio dial and make sense in five seconds; it can seemingly be Kid Ory, and Pharoah Sanders, and Grover Washington, Jr., all at the same time, which is hard information to square; it’s boring and people who are super into it are boring. These are the common complaints. And even if you are a music nerd, it’s possible you might not bother with jazz in your life altogether. I didn’t. Jazz was volunteered to me in the middle of the night at an art college in Århus, Denmark, aged 21, in bed with a tall man named Luke. He explained to me that the thing to enjoy is the performers listening to each other and trying to complement each other and improve the performance, and while there’s a give and take in who leads or where the emphasis lies—and that’s where the individual musicianship and story is—the fundamental joint enterprise remains. To enjoy jazz records is to listen to people listening to each other. The record that showed this phenomenon to me that night was the 1963 LP Duke Ellington & John Coltrane, specifically the Ellington composition ‘Angelica’ on side two, in which the call and response between the elder statesman on piano and the young flame on saxophone, with them teasing and acknowledging and correcting each other, is as audible as speech. Coltrane’s rhythm section is fleet, rapt, following it all with the same wonder as the listener, unable to believe what

Takeru Muraoka, Takao Uematsu Ride and Tie EXPRESS JAZZ SERIES 2023

Ian Holman they’re hearing.

In the spring of 2023, Express records of Japan — once an imprint of the Toshiba company, now niche inventory to a global concern — reissued their own Ride and Tie, a live record from 1971 by the tenor saxophonists Takeru Muraoka and Takao Uematsu, both in their mid 20s. Following a CD with a paper sleeve and a baby obi in 1991 on Think! Records, Ride and Tie has appeared on LP, audibly remastered, for the first time in 52 years. I found

out about the new release due to a habit of checking for copies of the original under $250; I had heard it once and wanted to own it. Suddenly it was available to me. And it was a surprise that this beautiful reissue was something that might exist. Ride and Tie is not documented as particularly important, interesting or cult in the way that many obscure jazz records have become in the internet era of vinyl digging.

There is no narrative aura around it; it isn’t Khan Jamal’s Drum Dance to

the Motherland. There were no messageboard threads calling for this record to be reissued. The only player on the session well known outside of Japan is the superlative drummer Motohiko Hino, who moved to New York in 1978 and played around but is by no means a jazz household name. Nevertheless, I offer it as a recording of singular value.

Ride and Tie documents a quintet setting in a small club known either as Junk or The Junk, in the Ginza neighborhood of Tokyo, with a very close-packed crowd. There is an uncorrectable flub at the beginning of the recording where the levels are getting sorted, neatly affirming real-time energy and stakes. The recording is not hi-fi by any means but it is clean and pleasant, no distortion, with all the instruments balanced, but man is it warm and wet. The audience and the room comes through just as strong as the band through the entire set. In the opening seconds, a voice from the crowd hollers “Right on baby!” and then, shortly thereafter, “Somebody sock it to you!” Hiromasa Suzuki’s Rhodes piano is cosy, a muffled twinkle. Yoshio Suzuki’s bass is highly unusual, blown out and fat like it’s being played through a guitar amp, sounding at times like an upright and at others like an electric. It is impossible to picture what the bass arrangement looks like. Hino plays with a very loose nut on his high-hat and hits light and splashy. He’s aided and thickened by additional impromptu percussion of countless different things getting bashed, bottles or ashtrays, lots of clapping along and lots of hollering. Lots. I cannot overstate how totally jacked up the crowd is.

The opening tune is ‘C. C. Rider’, a malleable 12-bar blues standard first recorded by Ma Rainey in 1924 that’s an instant easy groove. The saxophones announce themselves quickly then really take their time

William Pym is a writer, mostly about contemporary art, living in Kent, England.

That Way, a 20-year anthology of his critical writing, was published by At Last Books, Copenhagen, in 2019.

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playing around each other. They don’t so much as trade off leads as drop in on each other at will, sharing the trip through the conventions of the riff. Ride and Tie is billed on the front cover as a “tenor battle” but the saxophonists’ interplay is entirely benevolent, two people telling the same story at the same time. It builds over its 12 minutes, and there’s squawking at its peak, long trills and rhythmic

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Adderley numbers such as ‘Walk Tall,’ energetic compositions with a tone and a message jumping off the record. “The storm really doesn’t matter, until the storm starts to get you down,” said Jesse Jackson introducing an Adderley performance at a Chicago concert a few months before Ride and Tie was recorded, “so my advice to you is to walk tall! Walk tall! Walk tall!”

A melody and the way it’s played

Ride and Tie is not documented as particularly important, interesting or cult. punctuated blasts, but the performance stays within bounds, never pushing into aggression or atonality. The crowd goes nuts when it’s all over, and the wild man comes back to insist again that somebody sock it to you.

‘Hot Sunday’, an Uematsu original, starts in a conventional mode belonging to the 1950s, a clearly written ensemble riff with a tight turnaround that everyone plays on a dime. Despite the throwback head on the composition, everyone opens up after the first goround. Here the sax solos go into sheets of sound and high-pitched cries, the adventurous signatures of free play that had emerged in the past five years, but only briefly.

They aren’t here to go particularly far out. The rhythm section also moves around, with Hino playing thick, energetic full-kit pulses reminiscent of Ed Blackwell and Suzuki going all over and fast. The rendition ends, appropriately, with a tumbling drum solo and a coda of the riff one more time.

As the set’s only gesture toward the contemporary avant-garde, this number gets an enthusiastic if polite response. It isn’t exactly what they came for. The opening bars of ‘Happy Birth’, however, with a sweet organ figure, are accompanied by gasps. Hino deftly brings the audience in until the majority are clapping along and tapping their feet. The horns open with a shared melody that slices through space like a beam of light, and the energy doesn’t drop from there. Happy Birth has a purity of intent reminiscent of Cannonball

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can turn into a statement of purpose, and it can galvanize. ‘Happy Birth’ has the naturally infectious quality that leads the players to unify and propagate unity in the room. There’s a euphoria in ‘Happy Birth,’ the kind you generate together, reflecting each other.

‘Listen Here,’ the fourth and final track, is an increasingly loose workout. The crowd start clattering on impromptu ashtray percussion again and the whole thing gets a little wobbly. It’s a closing jam and the band is flying downhill at this point, no need to pedal, free to enjoy themselves. It is also a club, and people are probably a little drunker than they were 40 minutes earlier. The band surrenders to the crowd with honking call-and-responses that trickle off beat. Hooting starts to catch on with the audience members. It is a fitting end.

The American titan Joe Henderson would play in the same room a few months later to record the date that would become 1974’s well known Joe Henderson in Japan, also with Motohiko Hino on drums, and the same transcendence occurs on ‘Blue Bossa’ as it does on ‘Happy Birth,’ a palpable euphoria in the knowledge that liftoff is achievable if we all really listen to each other. How lucky we are to have other people. How lucky we are to feel the exponential yield of a shared enterprise, and for everyone to be able to afford each other our ears, and our joy. It should be available to you whenever we want it and, if you’re short on faith or mojo, start here.

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LUXURY : AMAZING & THANK YOU / THE �TEST & THE GREATEST

Issued on double 180g colored vinyl for the first time. “Punk rock is mischievous and confrontational by nature, but so rarely does the music bewilder. Luxury nestled into an unexplored nexus of dreamy chaos and coifed dandyism, charged with a pretty-boy trickster spirit and Southern Gothic mystery. In these shimmering and shattered songs full of youthful rage, confusion and melancholy, there is also a pearl of the divine, waiting to be uncovered.” – Lars Gotrich, NPR Music

UFO ÖVER �PP�ND SPÖKRAKETER Psych/Kraut-rock instrumental band hailing from Umeå, Sweden.

“As debut albums go, it’s one of the finest in the genre that I’ve heard, highly recommended.” – Andrew Young, Ptolemaic Terrascope “Terrific spacerock jams set to Krautrockish motorik rhythms.” – Psychedelic Waves “This music is incredible” – Bob Weston, Chicago Mastering Service

ROADSIDE MONUMENT I AM THE DAY OF CURRENT TASTE This 1998 math rock classic, mixed and produced by J. Robbins is available for the first time on vinyl.

“it is a hulking rock-and-roll motorcycle apocalypse.. and that’s just the first minute and a half… the kind of opening blitzkrieg that thins out the herd; only the deepest listeners survive.” – Lars Gotrich, NPR Music

HUNTINGTONS BACK TO RAMONIA 15 Ramones classics In Honor of the 25th Anniversary of Burnt Toast Vinyl and their long out-of-print Rocket to Ramonia covers album.

“Hey, let’s hear it for the Huntingtons!” – Joey Ramone “They play Ramones better than the Ramones.” – Hilly Kristal/CBGBs “If you ain’t heard it, you gotta get it, my buddies the Huntingtons nailed these Ramones classics” – CJ Ramone

MOVIES WITH HEROES BRING ON THE NIGHT After 15 years, Lancaster, PA’s Movies with Heroes return with a new album. The band was an early part of the BTV roster and we’re excited to support this release. Bring on the Night's unapologetically grandiose synth-rock hymns and anthems dare the unfolding apocalypse to get on with it and do its worst.

BURNT TOAST VINYL P.O. BOX 42188 PHILADELPHIA, PA 19101 BURNTTOASTVINYL.COM

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GABE SORIA

HOW DOES THAT OL’ SONG GO...

Being the first chapter of a longer piece of fiction that aims to channel the ineffable mood of Deserter’s Songs—Mercury Rev’s widescreen epic of mythic upstate New York romanticism and melancholic, burning-leaf wistfulness—on the 25th anniversary of its release. It’s a spell of sorts, this fragment, not meant to explicate or analyze the record, or provide any answers in the manner of the “this is what this means” school of retrospective music journalism. Instead, think of the following as a spirit board-like tool written to evoke Deserter’s Songs’ atmosphere of orchestral autumnal grandeur and occult mysticism, and perhaps inspire a closed-eyes listen to the record at dawn, twilight, or midnight.

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he woman in the suit, the color of a storm-cloud sky reached the edge of the woods at dawn, just as the light began to tip the balance from the last leftovers of night to the scattered beginnings of day. It was linen, the suit, three-pieces, slate gray all over with bone ivory vertical stripes, slightly threadbare in spots with grass stains here and there on the seat, knees, elbows and cuffs of the pants, a spot of wine or dried blood or both on the lapel of the jacket, and a bit of rough hand-stitching (done sometime during the weekend’s festivities) on the part of the vest that covered her heart, the thread of the repair shaped into something vaguely arcane and protective. If one was moved to give the suit’s tailoring style a name, it might be called “ragged-but-right.”1 She stopped where the trees ended, and looked out upon the meadow that sloped slightly upward towards her destination. The sun was threatening to actually rise now,2 so she dipped her hand into the inner-pockets of her jacket, fishing for her morning things. She found her sunglasses first and slipped them on,3 and they were cheap, effective, and made her feel human.

Then she reached into another pocket, took out a slim silver case and clicked it open, removing one of the hand-rolled cigarettes within. She let it hang on her lips while she searched and patted more of her pockets, hoping to find a light; inside one pocket was her personal copy of her family’s unique playing card deck, the shared totem that all

Mercury Rev Deserter’s Songs V2 RECORDS 1998

favorite lighter had been lost sometime during the night, misplaced somewhere…5 She looked back, back into the shadows of the black forest that she had spent the previous night in.

The dawn probably hadn’t touched the floor of those ink-dark, autumnal woods in hundreds of years. ...somewhere back in there. The lighter was a loss, then, and she knew better than to try to find it by attempting to retrace her steps and following the paths she had walked the night before. Those paths probably weren’t even there anymore, or if they were, had shifted and gone crooked and would take her to other places. It was a shame, for she had loved that brushed metal lighter, which she had obtained years ago from an antique dealer in Mexico City, who had jokingly told her it was cursed.

Or was it enchanted? Her Spanish was only serviceable at best, so she was unsure, but either way, the sales pitch had worked, and the lighter was purchased (perhaps “purchased” was too commonplace of a word, for the transaction was actually completed after the an³ “If th' armies of her soul/Take you by surprise an' flee/Leaving you again endlessly/An th' darkships of her eyes/ Surrender t' you suddenly/Leading you again endlessly”—‘Endlessly’

Jordan Crane

Deserter’s Songs, track 3 ⁴ The infamous “Toverkill Oracular

of them carried or had within easy reach at all times4, but that wasn’t what she was looking for. Inside another pocket she found a handkerchief with a faded pattern, which

she used to wipe her nose before putting it into a different, formerly empty, pocket. She patted every possible hiding place on her body and sighed, realizing that yes, her

& faded signs/Of all those blinking

¹ ‘The Happy End (The Drunk Room)’

² “Slidin’ away in a washed-out Delta sun”

hollow little thing/Like a wave along

lights/You had t’ pick th’ one tonight” —

— Mercury Rev, Deserter’s Songs,

—‘Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp’

the coast/I’ve come to love the highs &

‘Holes’ Deserter’s Songs, track 1: radio

track 7: a mourning-waltz, but a

Deserter’s Songs, track 11: finale, chan-

lows”—‘The Funny Bird’

transmission from a decaying ball-

shambling, celebratory one danced

neling a sort of ramshackle, valedictory

Deserter’s Songs, track 9: saying good-

room & roller rink, with mirrorball's

to salute the end of a flask or maybe a

triumph, like a marching band stacking

bye to all the swell things & painful

hypnotic light on everything.

love affair or maybe both.

up on a waterslide.

things, & becoming all the bigger for it.

* “Oh, th’ two white lines/Distant gods

Deck,” which are all the same, yet completely one-of-a-kind. An enigma, & when the time is right & signs are good they shall be explained. ⁵ “& farewell, golden ring/Oh, you

Gabe Soria is a New Orleans-based author whose work includes the music-noir graphic novel Murder Ballads, all-ages occult adventure comic MegaGhost, & the liner notes for Dr. John’s Grammy Award-winning album Locked Down. In 1998, his friend Wade played Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs for him for the first time just after its release. So hypnotized by its beauty with his last twenty dollars he immediately bought his own copy & used the change to buy a beer.

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tique dealer, in a feat of sleightof-hand, made it seem as if they had made various denominations of strange coinage emerge from her ears).6 And then, in a fit of humorous pride, she had had the dealer roughly stamp her initials into the bottom of the lighter.

Sighing, and with the unlit cigarette still in her mouth, she turned her back to the ancient trees of the Catskills and resumed walking across the landscaped expanse of the meadow just beyond the woods, making her way through the maze of the ersatz village of tents raised on the sloping lawn to accommodate the dozens of guests who had traveled to attend that weekend’s wedding celebration, the tents’ roofs weighted down by the morning dew. She called out, saying her cousin’s name, thinking that perhaps he would be ensconced within one of the tents, happily snoring away, but there was no response.7 It was early, still, so only a few people were up and those that were stumbled around in dazes, fumbling with camp stoves and morning campfires, feeling the hazy after-effects of the events of the past few days that had culminated in the wild bacchanalia the night before.8 She knelt next to a dying campfire and withdrew a half-burned stick from its smoldering remnants, then touched its still-hot end to her cigarette.9 She exhaled a great plume of fragrant smoke (the tobacco was her family’s personal blend, made at the oldest tobacconist in the city), tossed the stick back into the fire, and then stood and gazed

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home. The creek, the village and the estate all shared a name: they were all called Toverkill.12 The house had grown over generations, added to helter-skelter and built on ramble-tamble, and it had served as the stage upon which her forebears played out their comedies and tragedies alike for over two centuries. They had loved and hated within the house’s walls, dueled and died upon its grounds, and walked and worked in the surrounding woods.

Flicking her cigarette aside, Rachel Van Zwartboek turned the elaborately etched brass knob on its front door (she didn’t need a key, for the knob was fashioned in such a clever manner that it would always turn at the touch of any member in good standing of her family), and crossed the threshold of that old house of secrets and mysteries, entering its familiar and welcoming darkness and being enveloped by its aromas of myrrh and damp and dust and firewood and eldritch books, its atmosphere of old curses and generational grudges and epic loves and murderous hates. It was time for breakfast, and the family would be waiting on her so they could begin the morning séance.¹³

It was an ominous yet glorious panorama, the type of terrible beauty that felt full of portents & signs, that could drive one to their knees in awe & fear & rapture.

⁶ ‘I Collect Coins’—Deserter’s Songs, track 4: locked in a haunted hotel with a lonely phantom, playing endless games of gin rummy.

for a moment at a mountain in the distance, its peak just beginning to loom through the morning mist.

Then, she smoothed the wrinkles on her suit as well as she could and continued on her way beyond the wedding camp, towards the rambling structure beyond, towards the three stories and maze-like wings of the grand and ramshackle mansion sitting in the mountain’s shadow.10 Her name was Rachel Van Zwartboek, and this was her family’s ancestral home.

She climbed the mansion’s front steps, crossed the covered porch that wrapped around the house like a winding path through a dark and haunted wood, and stood before the front doorway, pausing for a moment to breathe it all in, to absorb the house’s familiar sense of peace and familiarity, to feel the comforting weight of memory that sometimes comes when a prodigal returns to the scene of their childhood misadventures. She was on the verge of entering when she felt the hair stand up on the back

⁷ ‘Pick Up If You’re There’ Deserter’s

⁹ “Th’ way we were/Th’ day we met/

Songs, track 10: an answering ma-

Th’ way I lit your cigarette/Th’ way it

chine message from an old friend,

changed/Into a strange/Cole Porter

long dead but fondly remembered.

phrase”—‘Tonite It Shows’ Deserter’s

⁸ “& I know it ain’t gonna last/& I know

first few moments when you enter a

it ain’t gonna last/& I know it ain’t gonna last/& I know it ain’t gonna

Songs, track 2: an elegy during those dimly-lit bar after trekking through

of her neck. Something was in the air, and she paused and turned to take in the early morning view.

The dawn mists still sat low in the hollows and above the golden and blue-green trees, and the sun struggled to break through the heavy clouds that hung over the mountains. It was an ominous yet glorious panorama, the type of terrible beauty that felt full of portents and signs, that could drive one to their knees in awe and fear and rapture.

Generations of her family had gazed upon what she now looked at, and they had all probably felt the same emotions as she was feeling; the Van Zwartboeks had settled in this haunted corner of the Hudson Valley11 almost three hundred years previous, after being exiled from New Amsterdam. (She came from a long and crooked line of sorcerers, charlatans, diabolists, witches, and occultists.) Upon their arrival, her ancestors had founded a village upon the banks of the creek running through the land and christened it anew. At the base of a mountain that loomed over the village and the creek, they carved out an estate and built what would become their ancestral

¹² Toverkill: a name which the mountain old timers will tell you, in their hushed & ominous way, translates to “Magician’s Creek,” derived from a bit of New World Dutch that referenced the tovenaars—the magicians—who made the area their home. ¹³ “As we gather ‘round this table to take our daily bread/We call upon the spirits of our beloved dead/ Rise up! Come hither! From where e’er ye may be/Curdle up the butter, upset the morning tea.” Where some families say grace or a blessing before a meal, the Van Zwartboeks’ tradition was to join hands & conduct a short séance using the invocation above, originally written by an unidentified ancestor c. the late 18th century. After recit-

¹¹ “Gonna leave th’ city, gonna hop

ing the short verse, those assembled

a train tonite/Got a one-way ticket,

would sit in silence for one minute,

an’ th’ moon is shinin’ bright/Gonna

waiting politely for a response from

leave th’ city, gonna catch th’ Hudson

the spirit world before tucking in;

storm that ain’t ending anytime soon.

Line/’Cos y’know I love th’ city, but I

usually, nothing occurred & the diners

haven’t got th’ time”—‘The Hudson

would proceed as normal, but occa-

monly clear night & the stars are

¹⁰ “Catskill mansions/ buried

Line’ Deserter’s Songs, track 6: a

sionally a spirit would make their

brighter than you’ve ever seen, &

dreams/‘I’m alive!’ she cried/But I don’t

dream of an old animated movie that

presence known by rattling a sugar

last”—‘Goddess on a Hiway’ Deserter’s Songs, track 8: an uncom-

the mounting drifts of snow from a

everything seems possible even

know what it means”—‘Opus 40’

you think you might have seen when

bowl, levitating a pancake, or, in rare

though you know the morning will

Deserter’s Songs, track 5: A forest

you were a kid but that you also might

instances, speaking with the mouth of

come eventually.

hymn, sung under a full moon.

have imagined from whole cloth.

a family member.

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ERIC DE JESUS

AGAINST THE WALL , MOTHERFUCKERS! T

his really was when I started breaking down the walls of heartache.

The famed Summer Of Beads, which was the summer of 1988, came to an end with an eviction for my entire group house on 43rd & Baltimore in West Philadelphia, and I found myself on an escape plane to London, to a flat in Notting Hill, to the hash dealers all around Portobello Road, and to a school year at Temple University’s London program to completely screw up and fail. Me and Paul David of HIVE fame found ourselves totally broke and freezing in that country’s shit weather.

We’d spend our days wandering around, cooking hash on hot knives (the method taught us by a couple London kids we’d met at a Dinosaur show – one of whom looked anachronisticaly just like a Billy Idol doll 10 years past due). In the evenings we’d gobble codeine-filled cold medicine down at the notorious Paul Decolator (RIP) of Pleased Youth fame’s flat in Earls Court (He was with us on the Temple London program); and walk back up Kennsington Church Road to Notting Hill at 2 or 3 AM completely falling out but pushing ahead on waterlogged legs; only to wake up at 2PM having slept through every single class. It was bad. It was a kind of depression in my brain because I was so broke, I was so lonely, school was lame, and I was missing terribly the summer of just a few months prior; which was basically a breezy, leafy, funny West Philly existence, with priceless days full of Americanisms, full of frisbees, full of bike rides, full of You’re Living All Over Me, and a nightly soundtrack of bong hits and Spacemen 3 Perfect Prescription well into the late nights of summer.

I didn’t care about evictions or anything other than girls or true loves lost or romance, and my own extreme lack thereof.

That summer especially felt like forever while it was being lived— until it ended and I was suddenly sat in a crappy flat in Notting Hill. I never really went to class. But I did

V/A Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache HEARTACHE 1988

Uncredited tape cover art detail. go to record shop after record shop, even without any money. There was a Royal Post strike that fall and bank draft after bank draft was stuck somewhere undeliverable and uncashed between my Dad’s office and my fucking mailbox. It was all pretty sour—but I was alive and wide open and living and laughing regardless in another country (and isn’t that the best foundation for a revival of the spirit?)

I’d shaved off my lengthening post HC hair just as the Summer Of Beads ended. With my once long inky black and seaweedy Dinosaur hair all gone to crew, I’d taken to wearing long sleeve Polo and Fred Perry shirts. I was pretty sharp and

clean, but still psychedelic for this new London landscape in which I’d found myself living. And it was just past London’s ‘Second Summer Of Love’ so called.

I remember moping into Rough Trade near my flat on a cold Fall day. I hadn’t even known they had a shop up west. I looked at some records. I didn’t know any of this shit —‘grebos’, acid house, etc. I hardly had any cash anyway. But there was a display full of tape releases in sunlight in the window. I spied this tape with its cool, moddish, DIY cover and picked it up. I saw Spacemen 3 listed so I just bought it. At like 1 pound 50 it was something I could actually afford. But that cov-

er, man!—the mod-looking dude sucking a fag in extreme xerox contrast, the press-on lettering, and the title Breaking Down The Walls Of Heartache. How could I not?

Back at the flat I opened the cassette and was floored; the thing’s J card wasn’t really a J card but a huge piece of paper folded up a million times and stuffed into the case, each band getting a tape case sized panel. I was instantly into it; it was like cracking open Flex Yr Head 6 years prior in my bedroom and unfolding the poster sized insert inside that (life-changing) record. A whole new way to present and package music by hand flashed across my brain. It totally blew my mind. I have to say that this Heartache tape (along with the Teenbeat tapes I’d gotten to that point, and the B.C.T tape label comps from my high school years) was the original inspiration I needed to start EASY Tapes. And the EASY logo, another super-high-contrast xerox of a skinhead slouch-standing with attitude, was chosen with the moddish guy on the Heartache cover in mind. (It’s from a pic in London Time Out that fall—I think it was a pic of Chubby Chris from Combat 84 and one of his skinnier skinhead friends.)

I’d never heard of any of the bands on the tape before that day, save for Spacemen 3. It was so home-made and so lovingly constructed (panels taped together, an orange highlighter for color, assembled I sussed in some squalid, cigarette butt filled bed sit in Rugby, the scent of Silk Cut cigarettes and cold bathwater hovering over the tableau, but full of love for the scene and friends and their bands—pretty perfect.

The Heartache label was run by Chris and Andy Gillson, 2 Rugby brothers who unwittingly changed my life I guess. I assumed that they got permissions from all the bands to stick their songs on this tape but who knows. To me the tape seemed like some high school bootleg endeavor—and that was more than fine with me. The Inspirals were still suitably 8Ts6Ts with almost

Eric de Jesus is an author & scenester, in XPOEMSX, The Easy Subcult, the LV, Kutztown & Brooklyn.

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no hint of their smiley faced baggy bandwagon jumping to come. The Revolving Unseen were groovy and cool and VUish to my American ears. The Darkside were gnarly tripped out and heavy Funhouse style Stooges psych at this point, the point from which I have loved them to this day, a point betraying nothing of their prettier pastoral mellow psych that was to come in a year or so. And Spacemen’s version of the old gospel blues number ‘May the Circle Be Unbroken’ was

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hash off some Irish dudes in Notting Hill and squirrel it home for the holidays. I was so wigged out by my weird luck that I spent the next few months pondering over it and eating mushrooms to really figure out how happenstance and coincidence work in the world. Spacemen 3’s rendition of ‘Circle Be Unbroken’ on the Heartache tape became heavenly succor to my puzzled head for the entirety of this period, as if the universe had suspected on that fateful day I wandered into

Are your dreams of the future 3 sizes too big?

So were mine, and so they are still.

It’s all still a weird puzzle. the icing on the cake made out of Rugby 8Ts6Ts. A few years later, in the different surroundings of Philadelphia, with my own EASY Tapes label blazing (yeah right), and after a few years of corresponding with Rosco James / Rosco Spacemen / Sterling Roswell (whatever he was calling himself then), who would send me tapes and scene reports from Rugby, I ended up releasing or bootlegging my own version of the Heartache tape with a few bands added from another Heartache comp called A Few Sandwiches Short of a Picnic, and with proper homage to the graphic awesomeness and fold out aesthetic of the original tape. But even while I as living in England I never did get to make a pilgrimage to Rugby. So if anybody reading this has any extra copies of Outer Limits the Rugby zine I will buy them off of you.

Right now.

All of this almost never came to pass. I was supposed to be on Pan Am flight 103 (the flight that got blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland) on the way home for Christmas break, with the Heartache tape stuffed deep in my backpack.

Luckily Paul David had gotten his Dad to change our flights to 2 days later so we could buy a bunch of

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Rough Trade, that their version would in a few short months, be essential and provide me with needed comfort or solace from heaven, and that was why I felt compelled to buy it. Are your dreams of the future 3 sizes too big? So were mine, and so they are still. It’s all still a weird puzzle. It still seems impossible, how my life was randomly saved by the mundane exercise of changing a flight in order to score some hash; how things flow along and work out, or don’t, or come into significance months or years later, like paths along which auspicious coincidences lead you to choose various directions at forks in the road. But if you think about it, when during any moment of your life do you know what is indeed truly possible.

And just like with Flex Yr Head 6 years earlier, 6 years that felt like 6 centuries now that I’d just turned 21, I vowed that I would have to get to Rugby this time and not DC, to see some shows, make the scene, and see what was up with that cool little psychedelic town. And hang around with Sonic and Jason and smoke out and stare at paintings of Jesus in a room full of Afghan rugs, warm orange sunlight flowing in the windows naturally.

But that’s how my walls of heartache finally started to crumble.

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CARLOS ACEVEDO

DEL SHANNON IN THE L ATE SIX TIES INTO NOWHERE A

uthenticity in rock ‘n’ roll, as in Existentialism, has long been a central and debated concept.

What then to make of Del Shannon, whose improbable shift into psychedelic pop in 1968 produced The Further Adventures of Charles Westover, now a cult artifact but for years a curious sidebar to a brief but spectacular career? Less than a decade after Westover bombed, Shannon admitted his freakout efforts had been misguided. “When I try to do something I’m not, then it’s just insane,” he told writer Bruce McColm. “About ten years ago, I actually tried to go psychedelic with an album called The Further Adventures of Charles Westover. That was just silly.”

Only a few years into his career, Shannon had already clinched his spot in posterity. 'Runaway' is on permanent rotation for early-Sixties rock, and his distinction as the first American artist to chart a Beatles song (“From Me to You, Sir” in 1963) gives him historical significance. But Shannon also underwent the makeover process that had developed the insipid teen idol army of the late 1950s. When 'Runaway' became a smash hit—#1 on Billboard for a month—the PR division at Big Top Records went to work, as fast as a NASCAR pitstop crew. They shaved four years off of Shannon; he went from a twentyfive-year-old carpet salesman to a twenty-one-year-old naïf. His wife, Shirley, became his sister in public, thereby preserving the all-important illusion of romantic eligibility. And then? And then came the sweaters—argyle, cable-knit, cardigans, and pullovers. Like Dion, who often faced his adoring bobby soxers with a half-smile, halfsneer, Shannon was not exactly teen idol material. First, he was older than most of his peers (nearly twenty-six when he first topped Billboard), and second, he had not been manufactured from thin air

Del Shannon The Further Adventures of Charles Westover LIBERTY 1968

Paul Rodriguez (like Fabian). Indeed, Shannon had spent years playing gigs in Michigan, and he was a member of the house band at the Hi-Lo Club, where it was not uncommon for a rowdy audience to pelt the stage with beer cups.

By 1966, however, Shannon was living in Van Nuys, soaking in the California sound and cashing monthly checks from the (overly) optimistic executives at Liberty Records. His run as an unlikely teen idol had ended, and a grow-

ing dependence on alcohol darkened his already bleak outlook.

Liberty, eager to re-create the hitmaker of just a few years earlier, insisted that Shannon record mostly covers for his first two LPs for them, This is My Bag and Total Commitment (both 1966). Neither album met sales expectations, and Shannon began worrying about his viability in an ever-changing music landscape. When Liberty shockingly shelved his follow-up outing, Home & Away (produced by

Andrew Loog Oldham), Shannon must have thought his fears were justified. He last scored a top twenty hit in November 1964, hardly making him the hardy survivor of a pop culture extinction event (the British Invasion) as the conventional narrative stresses. After all, not only did other teen idols such as Dion, Ricky Nelson, and Bobby Darin manage to reinvent themselves, but even Lou Christie, Brian Hyland, and Bobby Vee charted in the mid-to-late Sixties, when Shannon was already hurtling to obsolescence.

Despite breaking the corporate piggy bank for the deep-sixed Home & Away, Liberty encouraged Shannon to join the experimental zeitgeist for his next album. By 1968, psychedelic shadings could be heard in everything from Petula Clark and The Everly Brothers to Tommy Roe and The Young Rascals. Apparently, between Home & Away and Westover, the A&R men at Liberty had traded their suits and Pall Malls for Nehru shirts and doobies. With only a fraction of the budget allotted to the lavish Home & Away sessions, Shannon entered Liberty Studio in late 1967 ready to expand his avant-garde horizons.

In a self-reflexive move that was fairly common then, Shannon announced his re-invention by revealing his real name—Charles Westover—in the title of his latest LP. Other fading teen idols would employ this gimmick in the late 1960s, including Bobby Darin, Lou Christie, and Bobby Vee. (Now a longstanding tradition, the “real name” gambit eventually carried into the hip-hop era, with everyone from Jay-Z and Eminem to Sticky Fingaz and Gucci Mane using it.)

While The Further Adventures of Charlie Westover is indebted to Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper, it also reflects the influence of the musicians and producers Shannon had

Carlos Acevedo is the author of The Devil Inside: The Dark Legacy of the Exorcist, Sporting Blood: Tales From the Dark Side of Boxing, The Duke: The Life and Lies of Tommy Morrison, & the forthcoming American Hellfire: Cults, Killings, Possessions, and Hoaxes of the Satanic Age.

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been working with since joining Liberty. These included his friend Tommy Boyce (along with Bobby Hart, part of The Monkees package in their early days) and the talented Billy Nicholls, an in-house songwriter for Immediate Records.

One seemingly underestimated influence is Brian Hyland, the teen heartthrob who had a Number One hit in 1960, driving adults mad for the better part of a summer with the insipid novelty smash ‘Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini.’ At times, Shannon—who was close friends with Hyland and eventually produced his 1970 self-titled LP, which included the hit “Gypsy Woman”—seems to be channeling Hyland.

Produced by Dugg Brown and Dan Bourgoise and released in March 1968, The Further Adventures of Charles Westover is a patchwork of assorted pop styles en vogue since Shannon had last released an album nearly a year and a half earlier. This magpie strategy is reflected in the musicians featured on the LP. Session players on Westover included Southwind, The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, Dr. John, and future Earth, Wind, and Fire members Charles Wright and Al McKay. Other notables involved in Westover are Stephen Monohan, Madeline Bell, and Hyland (who co-wrote “Been So Long”).

Where Andrew Loog Oldham had applied “Wall of Sound” principles to Home & Away, Brown and Bourgoise use the baroque pop template as a framework for Shannon to apply his songcraft. As a result, Westover never succumbs to the excesses of Eric Burdon, the eccentricities of Chad and Jeremy, or the excrescences of Vanilla Fudge (whose Beat Goes On somehow, mind-bogglingly peaked at #17 on Billboard). At the same time, however, Shannon would also never reach the heights of Love, Spirit, or The Zombies. Apart from the melo-

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dramatic 'Magical Musical Box,' 'Colour Flashing Eyes,' 'Silver Birch,' and 'I Think I love You,' Shannon sidesteps psychedelic tropes on most of the album, giving Westover an in-between feel that might have limited its appeal. The psychedelic feature Shannon (and his producers Brown and Bourgoise) uses most is studio manipulation. Along with double-tracked vocals and guitar effects, Westover features a musique concrete section on 'Silver Birch,' which imitates the sound of tape reels disintegrating, and sound effects on both 'Magical Musical Box' and 'New Orleans (Mardi Gras).'

From the bouncy opener 'Think It Over' to the funky 'New Orleans (Mardi Gras),' Westover covers plenty of contemporary ground while underscoring, between highs and lows, what made Shannon unique: his gloomy themes matched with somber melodies, and, like Dion, an ability to master several vocal idioms, including country (Hank Williams was his childhood hero), rockabilly, the newer California sounds, MOR, and pop-rock crooning. There are hints of the 'Good Time' spirit of The Lovin’ Spoonful on 'Thinkin’ It Over' and 'River Cool,' which features organ backing and a country feel. As the first single released from the LP, 'Thinkin’ It Over' also suggests 'Care of Cell 44,' which is no surprise since Shannon not only played with The Zombies on a package tour in 1965 but would also release an inspired cover of 'Tell Her No' in 1975. On the propulsive 'I Think I love You,' the Eastern-tinged guitar lines that run through the track (probably created by a Vox pedal) are concessions to the current sitar craze, and the sawing cello riff that drives the verses evokes 'Good Vi-

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While 'Magical Musical Box' owes its title to The Beatles, this baroque chamber piece— harpsichord, cellos, & violins at the forefront—is dark & morbid, with Shannon adding strained theatrical phrasing that augments the melancholy atmospherics. brations.' While 'Magical Musical Box' owes its title to The Beatles, this baroque chamber piece—electric harpsichord, cellos, and violins at the forefront—is dark and morbid, with Shannon adding strained theatrical phrasing that augments the melancholy atmospherics.

Released as a follow-up single in May 1968, 'Gemini' is airy enough to suggest both Chris Love and, more likely, Sagittarius, the Gary Usher studio project that released the single 'My World Fell Down' a year earlier. 'Gemini,' with its smooth chorus and 4/4 beat, was possibly too mellow for chart success, but Shannon closes out the LP with a funky piano-driven (Dr. John) romp. Written (and eventually recorded) by Southwind, 'New Orleans (Mardi Gras)' leaves you wondering what direction Shannon might have taken in the future—a future that would be delayed by more than a decade.

Throughout the album, Shannon also references Sunshine pop— except without the sunshine. In Westover, Shannon continues his anguished lyrical ways, particularly on the 'Eleanor Rigby'-influenced vignettes 'Silver Birch' and 'Magical Musical Box,' which are gothic glimpses at loneliness and abandonment (with madness just beneath the surface.) Indeed, the lack of (healthy) love and peace proclamations on Westover and an absence of acid-tinged surrealism may have helped keep the LP from succeeding. Unsurprisingly, given the far-out competition in 1968, Westover bombed, leaving Shannon at loose ends. Before the release of Westover, Shannon had already sensed his relevance diminishing; when Westover flopped, he successfully transitioned into production.

It would be thirteen years before Shannon released another studio album, when Tom Petty pulled him out of mothballs for Drop Down and Get Me. For Shannon, his exotic detour would ultimately leave him face-to-face with a giant NO EXIT sign. In a 1989 interview with Bob Costas, Shannon summed up the psychedelic trend that so many of his contemporaries pursued: “We were following each other into nowhere.”

Then again, nowhere also has its pleasures.

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ANNE ISHII

THE COOL BLISS OF ESOTERICISM AND MY TIME IN DRUM CORPS

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t’s so cliche as not to bear articulating but seeming cool was of the utmost importance to me as a teenager. I suppose my reluctance to state the obvious is an indication I am still a teenager at heart. And so, talking about music continues to confuse me. While music, and especially pop music, is an important part of one’s identity-formation, the culture of music appreciation in suburban Los Angeles during the 1980s and 1990s was not defined so much by obscurity as I believe it is today, but by depth of knowledge and early adoption.

Hip hop was an epoch being made in real time and our obsession with grunge and flannel cannot be overstated. Both of these worlds were highly accessible--again, not obscure. They were also deep with neighborhood folklores that ranged from legendary (Snoop Dogg bought a house near our high school), to pointless (Disneyland employed a lot of ska musicians during the summer). I made mixtapes full of top 40 and R&B like the best of us, and I understood the importance of disruptive songwriting, but what I often upheld as godly was the esoteric instrumentalist. I really was about that band nerd life. I postured that lyricists were wildly overrated (even if I secretly obsessed over liner notes to new wave albums). I over-enunciated Darius Milhaud in the faces of Korean kids who flaunted wins at piano competitions I pretended not wanting to enter. I Anne-splained cabarets and Voltaire to fans of the English group. I was unnervingly, embarrassingly pretentious.

I was fifteen when my parents were splitting up, which devastated me in ways I still can’t process.

I spent every waking moment not spent in the classroom, playing in any musical context I could. Somewhere in the midst of piano lessons, the drum line, orchestra, and cham-

Chick Corea My Spanish Heart POLYDOR VERVE 1976

Micky Zacchilli ber ensembles I became a drum and bugle corps nerd because it was a perfect synthesis of instrumental athleticism, intellectualism and the opportunity to disrupt a giant boy’s club. I destroyed my body playing a snare drum on a harness, but it was going to be worth it to stand out. I played with a threateningly

immature mass of boys who’d only evolve to toxic manhood later in life. Notably, not one but two drum instructors were later arrested for sex with minors. I share this tawdry bit not to shock you, but to claim victory. Living through this world unscathed and untouched remains one of my greatest forms of grace. I

have no idea how bad it looked but thank god it was before social media and bless those boys who knew better than to bully me.

The horn instructor of the drum corps was a middle-aged eccentric named Dale and I assume he was gay, which probably doesn’t matter except in that I thought he was ineffably cool. One summer he introduced us to an album we’d hear for the next twelve weeks and changed my life.

It was My Spanish Heart by Chick Corea.

The name Chick Corea evokes odd reactions today. When I shared with friends that I wanted to write a tribute to this album, a fairly successful jazz guitarist practically spit on the imaginary grave next to him and said “fuck that guy.”

I believe the most problematic thing Corea did was be a Scientologist but what do I know? I guess I don’t care.

But this was obviously an extreme reaction. Most people hear that I was a Chick Corea fan as a kid and give me a quizzical look. More like “Hmph.

Of all the jazz pianists to name drop, you’re choosing Chick Corea...” It didn’t matter so much to me that he was indoctrinated in a cult or that his music struck no one as transgressive. I still listen to My Spanish Heart and think of the first time Dale played the album on CD through a PA in the rehearsal room. It was so weird and rad to me. It sounded like a soundtrack to a Japanese video game about flamenco dancers. It was in far too perfect a tempo and came so close to being sexy. I felt seen. By the 2000s we’d happily forget that style of synthetic melody. And let me tell you, through a brassy wall of raunchy teenage boys marching in wool uniforms? The album didn’t necessarily sound much

Anne Ishii is a writer & musician based in Philadelphia+New York and the executive director of Asian Arts Initiative.

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better. But it was unforgettable.

Like I said, I was someone who pored over liner notes.. Remember, this is before Google. It may have even preceded search engines altogether. Liner notes led me to Chick Corea’s appearance on Bitches Brew, led me to AACM, led me to Stanley Clarke who wrote for John Singleton’s Higher

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this universe still blows my mind.

I enjoy thinking about this palimpsest of Chick Corea and Tori Amos albums. Sadly I got rid of most of my CDs with the advent of MP3s, but it’s like my body just couldn’t give up these two artists.

I’ve kept Tori Amos’ first three albums and a sundry collection of live B-sides, and just this one

It was so weird & rad to me. It sounded like a soundtrack to a Japanese video game about flamenco dancers. It was in far too perfect a tempo & came so close to being sexy.

I felt seen.

Learning, on which our marching band improbably played the massive “college band” extra in an opening scene, leading the chamber ensemble the opportunity to perform Clarke’s facsimile of an alma mater. I had no right playing this incredible music but I did. So now I had just one degree of separation from the pianist. Corea was a touchpoint to many cooler pathways in music than friggin’ Darius Milhaud.

It’s important I tell you about another amazing confluence at this juncture. The soundtrack of Higher Learning also featured the other pianist with whom I would become obsessed—Tori Amos. She didn’t just contribute a track, but wrote music for the film. May God hold John Singleton’s soul in the highest, for eternity. The idea that Tori Amos and Stanley Clarke met in

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album by Chick Corea. They’re sleeping in a box insulated with meticulously kept journals that feel sacrilege to move to digital media.

I’m happy to report I never learned more about Chick Corea. It was enough to listen to the music he made, and it meant the world to me that most people did not care for his part in the early workshops of free music. There was a forced esotericism around him. And as for Tori Amos, I won’t forget how men disdained her for representing such an overdetermined kind of “female angst” and that will always be enough for me to continue holding a torch. Thinking about them in tandem today, I am just so incredibly grateful for the selfhood that the piano gave me, even if it wasn’t actually cool. Even if I never play it again.

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BACK IN THE GARAGE WITH MY BULL SHIT DETECTOR B

omp/ Voxx Records’ Greg Shaw (1949-2004) should need no detailed introduction for the reader of these pages, but in case one is necessary, let it be from Mr Shaw himself: “I’d most like Bomp to be remembered as a label utterly dedicated to the people who care most about music: the fans and collectors. I think it comes down to the fact that Bomp is an outgrowth of my love for music.” Then, it may be added, Voxx Records is specifically an outgrowth of Shaw’s love for garage rock music, which he almost single-handedly made popular to this day.

Releasing over 150 records since Voxx was born in 1979, the roster of the Bomp offshoot includes essential luminaries such as the preLyres DMZ and The Miracle Workers; pioneers like Bobby Fuller; and four incredible compilations of contemporary bands called Battle of the Garages, the last of which was dedicated to bands who were touched by Greg Shaw’s vision on the other side of the Atlantic.

Timothy Gassen, who fronted his own garage / psych band The Marshmallow Overcoat from his hometown of Tucson, AZ and thoroughly documented this scene in The Knights of Fuzz: The Garage and Psychedelic Music Explosion, 19801995, has no doubts about the role played by the first Battle of the Garages album: “This was the record that gave birth to what would become the widespread 1980s garage scene. It was the loudspeaker to kids that something was happening, and the message was received and passed on well past the remainder of the decade.”

And so, a new scene is about to happen—see how, band by band and song by song...

The United States of Existence opens side 1 with a command for listeners to ‘Return to the Psychedelic,’ slightly referencing the Blues Magoos’ ‘We Ain’t Got Nothin’ Yet’

Various Artists Battle of the Garages VOXX RECORDS 1981

Jacy Webster in the opening and closing guitar riff. This fast-paced, organ-driven song has a certain American garage punk flavor that sets it apart from the more pop-psych flavor in their very recommended only album. It was released in 1986 by the übercool Bam Caruso, a British label whose catalog must be collected at all costs, including their Rubble series, a mostly UK-focused homage to Pebbles and Boulders.

Next, The Vertebrats up the ante with ‘Left in the Dark,’ a basement

Stones / power pop crossover number, bringing to mind Paul Westerberg’s raw sense of melody. This is one of the album’s highlights on account of its ability to stand firmly in the present while looking backwards and forwards at once. Their songs and legacy are documented in the Parasol anthology LP Screaming Like a Mad Choir (2011), very much worth exploring in order to see how a tiny yet hugely talented band can be influential enough to make an independent

music scene happen in their home of Champaign, IL. Coming up, So. Cal.’s The Stepmothers’ presence helps value the scope of Shaw’s vision in retrospect, in that the inclusion of a Posh Boy Records band makes for a more comprehensive representation of what was happening around him at the time. The band contributes a punkified cover of The Bobby Fuller Four’s ‘Let Her Dance,’ apt in its nod to the Sixties, but not as representative of their trademark blend of strong vocal melodies and buzzsaw guitar as say ‘Where is the Dream,’ amphetamine Cheap Trick appearing on Rodney on the ROQ Vol. 2.

Building up from there, ‘Look Out Below’ by Boise, ID’s Pete Holly & The Looks might feel more at home somewhere in a Killed by Death compilation. It had already appeared both in their only solo release, a three-song EP on Bomp called Baby Please Believe Me, and in the 1980 Experiments in Destiny compilation – a test rehearsal of the more focused four Battle of the Garages compilations, in that three of the bands featured here on Volume 1 were included, plus one of the more puzzling absences in the Battle series in my opinion: LA’s The Last, a seminal band, the history and ramifications of which should very much be explored (for one, keyboard player Vitus Mataré’s work producing the not sufficiently vindicated Savage Republic).

The very obscure Eddy Best does the Sloan-Barri number ‘Things I Should Have Said’ from the second album by The Grass Roots (1967).

Again, a more power pop oriented track, hand claps and all, that is more fitting to the series’ personality in spirit than in sound.

Hailing from Logansport, Indiana, Brad Long’s Rolling Stones cover ‘Tell Me’ superbly captures the Sixties flavor, adding a distinct American garage/ folk rock edge to it that

Luis Mayo was born & raised in Gijón, Spain, moved to the US to play in bands but got a PhD instead.

Now he reluctantly teaches high school in his hometown while raising a family, collecting records & guitars which continue to be played poorly.

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bridges originators (The Byrds) and revivalists (The Optic Nerve). It was not included in his only published record, a self-released two-song 45 from 1978 no less, featuring him on the cover like it’s 1967 – bowl haircut and a 12-string Vox Teardrop.

His isolation in time and space brings to mind another band whose tremendous output and career are as huge as the neglect they have endured for many decades: Skooshny, which should have been featured in this comp, and will receive further attention from me on these or other pages.

The name of Turkish-American guitarist Deniz Tek probably sounded familiar to many of those who picked up this album at the time of its release, but by now almost everyone reasonably versed in rock and roll lore should recognize the man holding an Epìphone Crestwood Custom on the cover of Radio Birdman’s classic debut Radios Appear. An Ann Arbor-area native, he took his Stooges/ MC5 / Blue Oyster Cult roots to Australia when he moved there in the early Seventies. The track included here is an interesting take on ‘R.P.M.’ (1963) by The Four Speeds, a Gary Usher and Dennis Wilson recording project, in which Tek blends Motor City edginess with the light-heartedness of The Ramones in an altogether charming period piece.

Closing side 1 comes a very obscure Maryland band called The Dark Side, whose ‘In The Dark’ is one of the most lo-fi recordings here. Again, not strictly a garage song (in spite of the barely audible organ), but rather a blend of punk rock energy, power pop hooks and Sixties influences.

Side 2 opens with Lawrence, Kansas critics’ darlings The Embarrassment (who had a documentary about them released in 2022 called We Were Famous, You Don’t Remember: The Embarrassment by Daniel Fetherston & Danny Szlauderbach) covering ‘Pushin’ Too Hard,’ the hit single by The Seeds included in Lenny Kaye’s essential Nuggets double album, which no doubt contributed to the band’s influence in the Seventies and onwards. Certainly a surprise to find them in this compilation, their take on the song is particularly fresh, and I reached out to Bill Goffrier, whose later band Big Dipper I also like a great deal, with a few questions about it: “The simplicity and raw energy was not unlike new punk

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and post punk records we were buying. ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’ in particular was almost uniquely minimalist in its two chord relentlessness. Our original songs were always meant to be direct and concise, and a song like ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’ was a lesson to us.” And so they fit in really well, I think (the band at the time was not so sure, Bill says) on account of their choice of material and also of the energy and musicianship they mustered.

While it is not even necessary to prove why Cleveland, Ohio is a rock and roll mecca, local band The Wombats’ will tell you ‘The Reason Why’ anyway. This song was and still is one of my favorites here. With its wonderful glitchy false start, the song comes off as a piece of insane

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tery Machine, and The Gravedigger V. ‘You’re Gonna Need My Love Someday’ has a certain gritty early Sixties flavor that makes it stand out from the other songs featured here. I contacted Mike Stax in this regard: “The Crawdaddys were more influenced by ‘50s blues and ‘60s British R&B bands like the early Rolling Stones, the Pretty Things, Them and the Downliners Sect. We were obsessed with Pebbles Vol. 6, the British R&B volume.”

According to Stax, at the time he joined The Crawdaddys, LA’s The Unclaimed—whose ‘Run From Home’ comes next—was the only other band they were aware of who was into that kind of music. Fronted by the charismatic Shelly Ganz, at the time they also included Sid

dubs added) of a track included in the band’s debut EP on Moxie Records. In their case, as it happened with other bands featured here as well, their presence in the album was due to a personal connection and shared musical interests: “Greg was a friend of mine and I believe Shelley and Barry Shank knew him too. He was always supportive of garage band rock & roll. Greg’s heart and soul were happiest in 1966, no question.”

This certainly brings to mind a certain fellow 1966 enthusiast – Rochester, NY native Greg Prevost, who by then had already spent several years spreading the word from his job at the legendary House of Guitars, through his fanzines, and as early as 1978, through his own

Releasing over 150 records since Voxx was born in 1979, the roster of the Bomp offshoot includes essential luminaries such as the pre-Lyres DMZ & The Miracle Workers, pioneers like Bobby Fuller & four incredible compilations of contemporary bands called Battle of the Garages asylum Merseybeat, with a catchiness that can at certain points also be found on some of their output on Voxx Records (their 1980 45 track ‘What can I do,’ also included on the 1984 Zontar Must Die! LP, and ‘Fine Line’ on the Mudpuddles 12” EP are very much worth listening to).

The Crawdaddys are probably one of the reasons San Diego, CA became one of the American cities with a most solid and permanent garage scene. Their trailblazing releases made Mike Stax move there from the UK to join them, and then help start The Tell-Tale Hearts, Hoods, Loons and so on, as well as publish Ugly Things. Several other SD area bands appeared in Volume 3 in this same series, like the above-mentioned Tell-Tale hearts, The Mys-

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Griffin and Barry Shank who soon were to start their own project, The Long Ryders. They were replaced by a veritable who-is-who of the So. Cal. garage scene, such as members of Yard Trauma and my very dear Thee Fourgiven, and in spite of their brief output, their impact was felt in the local music scene, as Sid Griffin wrote to me: “Later on in interviews I was pleased to read the Bangles, Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate, and the Rain Parade were all influenced, or perhaps inspired is a better word, by the Unclaimed as all of these Paisley Underground acts came and saw us.”

According to him also, their song here, a relentless, organ-driven two-chord garage number, was an updated version (with some over-

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music as well. Before starting The Chesterfield Kings (whose amazing rendition of the unimpeachable Chocolate Watch Band’s hit ‘Are You Gonna Be There’ is one of this comp’s highlights) with fellow House of Guitars employee Andy Babiuk, his first project to put out a record was called Distorted Levels.

They just did one 45, in 1978, on the back cover of which Prevost offers a list of his heroes, “such as Ray Davies + The Kinks, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Phil May, Sky Saxon, Chocolate Watch Band, Iggy, Roky Erickson, Gerry Roslie + The Sonics, Willie Loco, Mayo Thompson, and thousands more.” The liner notes

by Greg Shaw also vindicate forgotten and unsung musical misfits, “the kind of roots that can only re-

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sult in music of honest and lasting value. The greater the influences, the greater the music, I always say.” This type of clues paved the way in the pre-internet days for hungry people like myself – for instance, I remember reading in some fanzine back in the 80’s how Madrid garage band Sex Museum covered a song called “Psycho” by a band called The Sonics, thinking

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had the vocals been lower in the mix and the fuzz louder. Incidentally, they are the only band to be featured twice in the four different Battle albums, appearing on volume 2 with a very strong, almost post-punk track called ‘Sipping the Bitterness.’

To put my love for this album in context, I should need to explain how I discovered it sometime in

“the kind of roots that can only result in music of honest & lasting value. The greater the influences, the greater the music, I always say.”

‘captivating’ -this song slaps ‘spellbinding’ -edm tunes

lawrence lui 8 songs the album + remixes

how awesome that must be, and if only I could hear it one day…

The Slickee Boys were a DC band that already in the late 70’s were bringing together garage and surf influences into their take on punk rock. They are featured here doing ‘Glendora,’ the often covered 1950’s Ray Stanley song, blended with ‘Going All The Way,’ by The Squires.

The latter, now hailed as a quintessential garage track, perfectly shows how an appearance in the first volume of the Pebbles comps took a Connecticut obscurity to classic status (it appeared on Vol. 1, while its B-side, the also often-covered ‘Go Ahead,’ was included on Vol. 2), much like it happened to dozens of other tiny bands.

Harrisburg, PA’s Billy Synth & The Turn-Ups self-released their quite collectible Go Off The Deep End debut album in 1980, plus Disorderly Conduct in 1983. Only featured in this comp, ‘I Dig Your Mind’ has a raw synth-punk approach which, as one of the many astute reviewers on the always informative website Rate Your Music mentions, can be seen as an embryonic version of the Lost Sounds.

Closing the album comes Milwaukee, WI’s Plasticland, one of the earliest American bands to vindicate psychedelia in the New Wave years, who had already released a Syd Barrett-influenced 45 entitled Mink Dress as early as 1980. Their track here, ‘Office Skills,’ could almost pass for a Spacemen 3 song

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the mid ‘80s through a radio show in Asturias, my region in NW Spain. Every Tuesday night, Vinilo de Colores offered an eclectic yet cohesive mix of everything my 13-year-old self found instantly awesome back in 1982: Au Pairs, Bauhaus, Buzzcocks, and so many others. Soon I realized I had no choice but to record the whole show.

In 1985 it became Reacción Psicótica, The Count Five’s hit song title a clear sign of how the garage revival scene was quickly taking over the global underground. Rico, the show’s host, was very receptive to the 60’s bands resurfacing through reissues and compilations, thus spinning tracks by The Seeds and the 13th Floor Elevators along The Go Betweens, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and hundreds more.

Being an intense teenage fanboy, I soon became friends with Rico, and the first time I visited his place I borrowed a stack of records, including the Battle of the Garages —a huge influence on me as a fan, DJ, and musician. Recent listens made me aware of how The Unclaimed’s ‘Run from Home’ is channeled in not one but two songs that my own garage punk band, The Screamin’ Pijas, recorded in the very early ‘90s in our isolated NW Spanish region, after which I moved to the US to experience it all straight from the source. So you can see how successful Greg Shaw indeed was.

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K E N D R A G A E TA

TIME TRAVELING WITH WILL OLDHAM T

he Palace Songs, Palace Brothers, Palace Music era is my favorite of Will Oldham’s music. My heart follows these simple tunes to a perfect mise en scene: the lonesome cowboy’s campfire, where the night splendidly turns complex feelings of love, loss, or longing into songs, relatable and more perfectly hung up than any other way I know how to share. They are songs worth being happy or sad to— whether alone in one’s feelings or as an emotional photograph you can just hand to someone else and say, “Here. Like this,” even when the song is actually about being a cinematographer. Even— and more specifically NOT about cowboys in general or my experience in particular— when a song is about a cinematographer who walked away from New York City.

My mind can’t separate the quietish howls alongside acoustic guitar we can all hear in the music from the place that only I can see. There is landscape, weather, and wind.

My imagination saw Montana, decades before I’d eventually move here. The songs are sung at the end of a day, and it is bold to sing with such feeling. Do you see what I see?

Because not to belabor the cinematographer point, but it’s also clear to me I impose this vision of cowboys and the West, but it fits, even when it doesn’t. Doesn’t it?

The song 'West Palm Beach' was released in 1994 by Palace, on the Palace Records label, as a 7” with 'Gulf Shores' on the B Side. In it, I was surprised to find another, totally different, non-cowboy, landscape unfold completely and fully, cinematically. Here, in 'West Palm Beach' the song, the scenes play out in an era before my time, in a place I’ve never been, but a place where the climate is connected to the feeling of my storyteller. Further, all of this within just a few lines of songwriting. As in a few lines I cherry pick from the whole song.

In the thirty years since the record came out I’ve made people sit and listen to the whole song next to me, for confirmation this story

PALACE West Palm Beach PALACE RECORDS 1994

Diane Barcelowsky exists. It does not. Unsurprisingly, attempts to write it out my dangself fail, much because the beauty of a song is in its broad strokes, and a story requires detail I cannot divine from the source itself. And why bother writing just sketches when this song is clearly the right form for what Oldham is saying?

Newsflash: the pastiche I’ve imposed on this song likely has no bearing on anything Oldham was thinking. But here, sharing what I see and feel is my attempt at musical review.

The song begins: I can't get the sand out of my shoes / Being in Florida has done a number on my blues / Just the way the wom-

en walk round here / It's plain to see the way the sand and sea have done a number on me I know this man. And the moment we are given with him here at the edge of the sea in a blinding morning light, on a bench with his shoes off, where he’s wiping the bottoms of his feet off on each other include all that came before it. It’s the 1970’s. This bleary moment is routine for this person. Lyrics continue and reference a tumultuous Florida sky, which at this moment is tumultuously-blindingly-bright and an emotional juxtaposition of inside (the black and gray) and outside (just so goddam sunny it hurts).

Get it?

A second story begins at this point in the song. The first thread is our guy we met watching the sea, and now there is one of a younger kid, fresh home from Vietnam and physically broken, living with his grandmother who isn’t in good shape to take care of him. Lyrically there are a few snapshots of what life in this home is like throughout the song, but all you need to know here is: So breakfast again, delayed, postponed, I won't be fed This young boy (young man, really) is forgotten and a burden, and knows exactly what it’s like to feel that way. Bring with you to this moment the times in your life when you also knew what it was like to feel that way.

Grandma lives just down the road, she’s making supper for me tonight She’s been nice to me since ‘73 when her son lost his lights The two stories converge. We realize there is connection. Grandma knows our broken man by the sea and she treats him as the hero she believed her son to be. Neither is or was deserving. It’s important to know that the loss of her son (the boy’s Uncle? Father?)— and I’m going to blame some kind of addiction here. Uncertain. Doesn’t have to matter— just know— this loss broke Grandma and she checked out, which is why she can’t deal with this grandkid, of sound mind and broken body. She just can’t bear her reality. None of these people can.

The song anchors the relationship between characters, but it is mostly implied. Like, “You know these guys, how do you think they relate?”

It is exactly so. You have been given the tools within this song of place and people and feeling. Get into it.

It is information in situ, free from narrative conventions like plot, journey, or any kind of character transformation, but deep, deep, deep on what you need to know for 'West Palm Beach' to hit hard. This is a feeling you can have from this song, I think. Or an imagination you can read along a listen-to and maybe see what I see.

Kendra Gaeta wants to know: Am I the only person this has happened to? Did it happen to you, and if so, will you tell me about it?

Email imaginarysongstories@gmail.com

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BIOGRAPHY OF A PHANTOM L

ou Adler put California’s counterculture into America’s living room. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly for two decades. Surfing, go-go dancing, folk-rock, hippie rock—hippies, period—plus the rock festival, the rock concert film, rock and roll comedy, the rock club, the rock musical. Yet Lou Adler: A Musical History, a compilation from Ace Records’ Producers Series from 2014, featuring twenty-five songs spanning 1958 to 1974, is the biography of a phantom. You can spend months looking for the man in the archives and come up with hints galore, yet you won’t find him whole. This is clearly on purpose.

Adler was a businessman before he was an artist—instead of an artist, one might be tempted to lob back when considering the amount of schlock his offices emanated—and in business, circumspection pays off in the long run.

This isn’t to say Adler hasn’t been forthcoming—in fact, he tends to be a game interview. But when he does talk, he tends to only give away so much. Sometimes he gives a lot, as in the liner notes of A Musical History, where he offers more detail than usual about his early collaboration with Herb Alpert, begun in their early twenties—“in 1957 or so,” Adler recollects—up through the success of The Rocky Horror Show, the stage musical by Richard O’Brien that Adler imported from London to a glam-besotted L.A. in 1974, where he put it on at the Roxy, a 500-seat club Adler and three other L.A. rock impresarios had opened the year before.

Adler turns ninety in December—but that’s not the only way in which he cuts an old-school, oldworld figure, even as he shows up for his courtside Lakers seats—and all manner of other public occasion in L.A., particularly when he’s involved—in the cleanest, newest sports gear. Adler doesn’t just come out of rock & roll when it was a music very few people over twenty— never mind thirty—took seriously,

Lou Adler Lou Adler: A Musical History ACE RECORDS 2014

Collages by Branko Jakominich Jr. he came out of it right around the time some major labels continued to refuse to sign rock & roll artists outright, instead simply picking up big-selling indie labels for distribution. Adler benefited from that—he is widely credited as rock & roll’s first independent producer on the West Coast. (Producers selling their hits to labels by the bidding was already established on the East Coast

by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller.)

Adler did more than simply produce records (as if that were simple, especially then). He’d been a manager first, then a songwriter. Two of

his Hot 100 co-writes are on A Musical History: Sam Cooke’s ‘(What A) Wonderful World,’ number twelve in 1960, and Jan & Dean’s ‘Honolulu Lulu,’ Top 60 in 1963. (Though not the third and biggest: Johnny Rivers’ ‘Poor Side of Town,’ number one in 1966: utter slush and utter magic.) He worked for Aldon Music, the publishing house of many of the so-called “Brill Building” writers of the early sixties—it’s where Adler first encountered Carole King, then a teenage hit-writer with her husband Gerry Goffin; Adler would produce King’s Tapestry in 1971, the

bestselling LP in American history until Saturday Night Fever came along.

During the sixties and seventies, Adler would be the key architect of Los Angeles rock—from the birth of soul to surf music to rock festivals and rock films and rock clubs, few had Adler’s reach or his success. He was the West Coast’s first independent rock producer. In addition to Sam Cooke and Jan & Dean (both represented twice on A Musical History), Adler discovered the crooner Johnny Rivers, whose mid-sixties hits were the first conscious attempt at selling rock to adults. (He’s MIA from AMH, its only misstep.) Late in 1965, Adler signed the Mamas and the Papas, and the high sixties come into view. Under Adler’s tutelage, the Mamas and the Papas made hippiedom safe for Middle America, and with ‘California Dreamin’,’ helped made the West Coast the destination for a new generation of rockers. And when Adler and the group’s leader, John Phillips, took over the booking and promotion of the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967, they ushered in a new era, inventing both the rock festival and, with D.A. Pennebaker’s Adler and Phillips-produced 1968 documentary, Monterey Pop, the rock-concert film.

Adler was as derided as he was celebrated during the high sixties—Rolling Stone called him a “fad-master,” in large part due to two of his most notorious (and biggest) records. In 1965, Adler produced Barry McGuire’s ‘Eve of Destruction,’ a bold-faced Bob Dylan rip-off.

Two years later, to coincide with Monterey Pop, Adler and Phillips produced Scott McKenzie’s ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),’ its lyrics about “meet[ing] some gentle people there” sounded like a sell job, the opposite of how the S.F. rock scene did business then.

But Adler’s way would be the way rock did business from the seven-

Michaelangelo Matos is the author of Sign ‘O’ the Times (Bloomsbury, 2004), Can’t Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop’s Blockbuster Year (Hachette, 2020) & The Underground Is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America (Dey Street, 2015). He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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ties on. Adler began the decade on a high: Carole King’s Tapestry, in 1971, which he produced as well as issuing on his Ode label; it remains an all-time bestseller and a pop-feminist landmark. The same year, Adler discovered Cheech & Chong, and produced the stoner comedy duo’s first five albums—as well as directing their first film, 1978’s Up in Smoke. And in 1973, Adler co-founded the Roxy, the Sunset Strip club that began as an alternative to the Troubadour—right as the L.A. singer-songwriter movement crystallized by Tapestry was becoming America’s rock establishment.

Over the next decades, the Roxy became a crucible for the emerging punk, new wave, and heavy metal scenes that dominated the Strip.

The club was also the on-ramp to Adler’s most successful film venture. Starting with Monterey Pop, Adler was as busy making movies as he was overseeing music. Not as successfully, though: In 1970, he and Phillips co-produced Brewster McCloud, Robert Altman’s experimental follow-up to M*A*S*H, and in 1980, Adler directed the classic punk film Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains. Both became cult classics, not hits. But the Adler-produced Rocky Horror Picture Show, from 1975—which had premiered at the Roxy a year earlier as The Rocky Horror Show—would become a touchstone for rock and film culture and the biggest cult movie of all time.

No wonder The Wire’s Joseph Stannard likened Lou Adler: A Musical History to a very well-made documentary.1 It kicks off with ‘Wonderful World,’ released in May 1960 but recorded in 1958, close to the beginning of Adler’s career. It was a demo; it got put away by Keen Records until Sam jumped to RCA, whereupon two consecutive singles flopped, and Keen dived into the tapes and unearthed it—Cooke’s biggest hit since ‘You Send Me’ three years earlier. There’s something fitting about this—a label hustling to make the next dollar, turning a two-year-old tune into a hit for another hustler, Adler, who along with his business will gain prestige and then, along with his generation, became culturally obsolescent—and, true to form, will then try to cash in on that in turn with Ladies and Gentlemen, the ¹ Joseph Stannard, review of Lou Adler: A Musical History, The Wire, August 2014.

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Fabulous Stains, a film containing a scene where a character openly derides her mother’s copy of Tapestry.

Some manager-producer-impresario types play to the press—Phil Spector, Andrew Loog Oldham, Malcolm McLaren, Trevor Horn, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Teddy Riley, Sean Combs, Timbaland, and the Neptunes have all done this in their various ways. Alder didn’t. Yet few musical impresarios had their fingers on the pulse of America’s

adjustment: his way, the L.A. way, had become rock’s industry standard.

Yet Adler always did business in a kind of throwback manner. By the seventies, his second and longest-lasting label, Ode Records, typically had no more than a half-dozen staffers at a time. Adler had learned at the feet of Bumps Blackwell, who’d discovered and produced both Fats Domino and Little Richard for Specialty in L.A. before founding Keen Records in 1958, where he took on

center like Adler in these years.

Unlike his early songwriting partner Herb Alpert, Adler seems to not have had any performing aspirations, per se. Alpert became an impresario to fulfill his ambitions as a performer, co-founding A&M Records to issue ‘The Lonely Bull,’ his first single with the Tijuana Brass.

Adler, by contrast, was all impresario.

That’s one reason he raised the San Francisco hippies’ ire over the Monterey International Pop Festival— Adler and John Phillips had hijacked it from local promoters and reset the agenda. (Tapestry was return fire, a totally L.A. album even more hippie-cozy than any S.F. band had managed, and a mass hit—the mass hit— to boot.) By the mid-seventies, that ire was long gone, thanks to time and

Adler and Alpert as protégés. Blackwell had done it all, and so would Adler. Ode’s president and founder also did A&R, also produced the records, also managed the acts, also wrote the ad copy—positively Dad-like, as with a January 1972 full-pager in Billboard for Carole King’s ‘Sweet Seasons’ b/w ‘Pocket Money 45, headlined: “For the single minded!”2 or the July one for Cheech & Chong’s Big Bambu, which finishes simply, “At your local dealer.”3 That’s the guy we see on the cover of A Musical History—wearing a

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comforting beard and comfortable turtleneck, manning the controls with Carole King to his right (and engineer Hank Cicalo to hers), black-and-white, the seventies in full flight, the origin point for your warm hearth of musical memories.

Six-foot seven, handsome in every setting, the big daddy, the papa bear—watchful, careful, shepherding tender geniuses to light—this is the Lou that Adler wants us to see. Others differ—fifty years after Monterey, Billboard published an oral history of the event in which David Crosby referred to Adler as a “dishonest hustler” and Al Kooper called him a “prick.”4 Los Angeles is a land of contrasts, and nobody is more Los Angeles than Lou Adler.

Adler was in his teens when he began to take rock & roll seriously. He took it seriously as a business. What he did for most of his first decade in that business was to create packages—either jumping on new hits to hopefully cash in, which on A Musical History takes the form of Dante & the Evergreens’ ‘Alley-Oop’ (1960), a fast-buck cover of the Hollywood Argyles hit from the same year, done with as much insouciance as the original.

Adler also identified trends to jump on—and those paid dividends, from encouraging Jan & Dean to sing about surfing (‘Honolulu Lulu’ was part of it), to jumping aboard the post-Byrds “folk-rock” train, first with Barry McGuire’s ‘Eve of Destruction’ and then with the Mamas & the Papas, to the infamous ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair’ by Scott McKenzie, the first smash for Ode Records and a record despised by the Bay Area hippies it purported to speak for.

Adler didn’t write the latter songs—‘Eve’ was penned by staffer P. F. Sloan, ‘San Francisco’ by Papa John Phillips—but Adler’s breezy salesmanship suffused them. It didn’t help that when Billboard announced Ode’s formation, it noted that the new imprint, to be distributed by Columbia, would be “featuring new acts created by Adler” (emphasis mine), who’d be receiving “a seven-figure amount between $2$3 million” to do so.5 Particularly in S.F., where the rising crop of rock

⁴ Rob Tannenbaum, “‘We Saw the ² Carole King ad, Billboard, January 29, 1972.

Future,’” Billboard, June 3, 2017. ⁵ “Columbia Taking on Ode in

³ Cheech & Chong ad, Billboard,

Precedential Distrib Move,”

July 1, 1972.

Billboard, March 11, 1967.

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It’s no coincidence that Tapestry... was the work of a longtime bizzer letting her hair down, so to speak. bands were largely self-determining and grounded in folkie purity, this sort of thing rang sourly.

The trials and tussles of either the Monterey International Pop Festival and the subsequent film Monterey Pop (dir. D. A. Pennebaker, 1968) have been hashed over many times, and in any case nothing from the festival made it onto Ace’s compilation. (It could have: Adler produced the festival’s recordings, and a split LP by Otis Redding and the Jimi Hendrix Experience from Monterey appeared on Reprise in 1970.) Monterey split rock & roll in half—that’s the moment it becomes “rock”—and in the festival’s aftermath, Adler would backtrack lightly: “I’ve been making records since ’58 and I made a lot of those so-called bad records, you know, unhip records. Bubblegum music is really what it is: Jan and Dean records, which were strictly commercial records,” he said as 1968 began.6 But Adler adjusted in his own fashion and on his own timeline.

It’s no coincidence that Tapestry—which, let us note, followed John Lennon’s similar declaration of lived reality, Plastic Ono Band, by a mere two months— was the work of a longtime bizzer letting her hair down, so to speak. Nor is it that, thanks to Monterey Pop, Adler would informally exit the record biz for the movies—particularly once he’d pushed The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the 1975 movie he executive-produced, onto the burgeoning midnight-movie circuit.

By April 1976, it had, Billboard would report, “gross $166,594 at a record-breaking six-month West⁶ John Gilliland, “Pop Chronicles Interviews #3—Lou Adler,” audio recording, January 1, 1968, University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library: digital.library.unt.edu crediting UNT Music Library, accessed October 2023.

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wood run.”7 What’s surprising about Lou Adler: A Musical History is just how neatly it manages to encapsulates all of this—even without any Johnny Rivers, even including the aforementioned schlock. In fact, the latter is what makes this thing go, as a decade of listening—the CD remains a go-to, and I’ve made a Spotify version that adds Rivers’ ‘Secret Agent Man’ and ‘Poor Side of Town’ to help make up for the six missing cuts—has shown. ‘Eve of Destruction,’ ‘San Francisco,’ the deeply awkward version of ‘Gimme Shelter’ (1970) by Merry Clayton— who, of course, had sliced through the Rolling Stones’ original like a razor, and is here stuck with an arrangement so ersatz it sounds like it came from a game show—show Adler’s production line at its cheapest and yet most effective, or maybe just the most imperturbable.

Yet they’re enlightening—in fact, they’re key to what made Adler successful. Lou Alder: A Musical History tells a story—one that I quickly realized I had not heard or read before, but one was deeply familiar.

Not because I had been around for any of it: A Musical History’s final selection, Tim Curry & the Original Roxy Cast’s ‘Sweet Transvestite,’ from the stage version of The Rocky Horror Show, was released in 1974, the year before I was born. It wasn’t because everything on it was familiar, either—a lot of it wasn’t. It’s because everything on it, familiar and not, masterpiece or schlock, recalled its time uncannily. This compilation presents a compelling thesis—that Adler, who had often been criticized for being a fad-chasing music-biz figurehead, had been as central to the story of American pop as nearly anybody, precisely because he was a fad-chasing music-biz figurehead.

He wouldn’t be the last. ⁷ “Inside Track,” Billboard, April 17, 1976.

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KURT HEASLEY

ASTRAL PL ANES AND THEIR PILOT A

surprise visitor energizes a home in illuminating ways. Its presence could feel the urgency of your thirst. Flowers & herbs are essential & what’s needed now. How then spinning on a heel, set on delivering cups of infused hibiscus, witnessing wildly cresting over both rims in a living salmon-pinkish-berry hue, leaving its wave pattern to dominate a large portion of real estate across the front facing portion of a cream coloured linen jacket, vest & trouser leg. The cravat, miraculously, remained unmolested by the tea’s unexplainably vibrant red frequency. Got the message, skipping to the learning opportunity & dropping these meekly carried shackles & rusty ball now. They weren’t just carried along, unaware of your indifference to its service. It has come to serve. They can dream backwards. You can expand or expire.

If one hand holds, then one directs.

This balance of the two, as both hands full are not just twice the challenge of one full. Something must be dropped to the ground. Hold or direct, choose.

What’s the rush? Why the great migration? Like the persistent legend of B. Jere Whiting that attributes his advent at Harvard to the curiosity of Abbott Lawrence Lowell on a motoring vacation in Maine: in one version the President is supposed to have called from his car to a boy intently reading under a tree: “What are you reading, lad?” “Aristophanes, sir.” “In Greek?” “Why yes, sir.” “Get in this car, my boy. You are going to Cambridge with me.” because you’re the center of the universe & sing as our sun rises.

Learning that your equation uses its own values, willfully producing from these environmental extractions our law. A solution available only in unisons & 5ths.

From this, we split into a different direction, taking the steepest rocky path up. Further from the valley mother & all the classically indentured born of academic lineage. The educated in atmospheric attendance. Media engineers generating eat, spawn, die drones. Giving any & everything to shelter their elite’s love of being the light of lights.

Gainfully employed in the pursuit of clarifying “how’s the great spir-

Daniel Lentz Missa Umbrarum NEW ALBION RECORDS 1985

Rob Carmichael it working out for me” or while expounding on a shared Atlantean ancestry, to-recount the adventures of that brother & sisters lifetime. Any celebrated & fortunate client who came for the Center of the Wheel (& stayed for the Rules) will do. They got them. They made them. Reasons for everything & constantly adjusting its price.

So where does true north’s magnet draw us? Not there yet. Carrying for us equations from the Elysian Fields.

The seconds, sevenths & ninths, your intervals rubbed from the annual beats, honoring an ever fermenting Dionysus, nice-a-born. Lifting out not to the West but North. Full of Thrace.

Through Macedonia & Empires. Passing up Byzantine court orthodoxy.

Counting 7 over 8, 9 over 8, counting 11 over 8 until we get there. They did enjoy having a unique moment with the algebra (& steel) of Baghdad’s marketplace bazaars. Flashing like the imperishable, its sense of humor in “the moment” that gives & takes.

Come hear, over this landbridge

that carried much more than horses & families. This carried one string lengths, the tonality of the Altai. Greeted by the greatest Bears on the other side. Many may seek, few may Enter. Know that continuing will demand only your collective commitment, strength & flexibility. Complete your crossing under tonight’s eclipse, for there is no more auspicious darkness.

Complex harmony, dissonant resolutions, an embodiment that turns the binary secular into an infinitely evolving sacred totality. It always is and always isn’t as it is always everything in between.

Can the celebrated enlightened seen at high noon differ so greatly from the giants of midnights? What are we to make of our travels? If we can’t see them, maybe they can’t see us? Who can see it? Our astral cultural navigators.

Now we are here. It’s a miracle that we’ve found each other & we can ask how we got here using only a telescope on the center of the dance

floor. An innocent can ask “where does the night go?” & “how can we follow it?” There is much we do not know, yet are secure in operating under the evidence that nature rushes in to fill a vacuum. Truly, & so made Daniel Lentz, for the voices, the drums & the wine glasses. Fully commit, there is no such thing as half a rebirth. If you are suffering from any nervous disorder you should not play Missa Umbrarum. Instead, focus on your posture & breathe until a calmed “beginners mind” or equivalent state can be easily achieved.

If you are not yet ill you should not play 'Postludium' or any production that includes generous usage of hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica techniques excessively. If you are feeling melancholy you should not play 'O-Ke-Wa.' Perhaps, instead, it’s a moment to reacquaint yourself with the recorded works of Pharoah Sanders or some other uplifting pieces.

There have been those who claim that opening oneself to the entirety of Missa Umbrarum caused both the listeners & their immediate surroundings to go mad. It is a matter of conjecture how pervasive that belief is; all the commonly cited examples of this rumor seem to be German, if not confined entirely to Vienna.

There was one who shared that after listening, they could no longer seek the shelter of dismissing negative emotions & responding to distress with false reassurances. There are claims that after fully processing Missa Umbrarum, a genuine acceptance of all things emerged from within them. That everything that is, is right.

It was directly experienced once, umbrellaed by Madison Square Garden above, as an image so 'Rites Of Spring,' in that hibiscus tea splash pink of Easter attire, right down to the tiniest tiny one, all being each waved in through the door of a nearly departed train. It was being held open by one of its conductors, who chose to demonstrate direct action ancestor veneration by grasping the arrow of time & pausing, just for a moment. Making a space long enough for all to enter and get to where they were going.

Kurt Heasley is a multimedium musician, vocalist, and the founding co-creative director of indi-acid-pop group lilys in 1988..

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JESSE PEARSON

8-TRACK MEMORIES The Velvet Underground 1969: The Velvet Underground Live MERCURY 1974

Lynyrd Skynyrd (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd) MCA 1973

Gil Scott-Heron Small Talk at 125th and Lenox FLYING DUTCHMAN RECORDS 1970

Linda Ronstadt Greatest Hits ASYLUM 1976

New Riders of the Purple Sage The Adventures of Panama Red COLUMBIA 1973

tape down there in the pile. 'Small Talk at 125th and Lenox.' Black revolutionary poetry accompanied only by percussion.

Now let’s switch the music. Another favorite 8-track in the little cosmos that is the Mustang. (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd) by Lynyrd Skynyrd. 'Gimme Three Steps' is the son’s favorite. He sings: “Hey there fella with the hair colored yella / whatcha tryin’ to prove?”

This is most of what I remember.

I’m the son, and I recently talked with my mother about those times and those 8-tracks. I wanted to know how reliable my memories are. I wanted to recall more. I wanted to know what she recalled.

Jesse: Do you remember your 8-tracks?

Pure Prairie League Bustin’ Out RCA 1972

ran over my friend Keith in front of the same house. I saw that happen.

That’s him. My sister Amy had a 1948 Dodge truck parked in front of the house as well. And Dirtbag came down the street, hit my car, hit her car, and kept going. He's dead now, of course. He died not long after that. But anyway, that was when I bought the red ‘66 Mustang. You must remember that one.

I remember the Mustang, definitely.

As soon as I got it, the first thing I did was have my boyfriend, Steve, put the 8-track player in it. Same one from the Maverick.

So, between the Maverick and the Mustang, we're talking about 1976 to 1981, right?

Correct.

Did you keep accumulating 8-tracks all that time, or did you have a collection that you didn't really add to?

Grease Original Soundtrack RSO 1978

A

red 1966 Ford Mustang moves through Levittown, Pennsylvania. It’s 1980. A mother drives, her son is the passenger. He’s 5, she’s 22.

8-track tapes are scattered on the floor at the son’s feet. Right now, the one that’s filling the Mustang with sound is 1969: The Velvet Underground Live. 'Heroin,' specifically.

The mother and son sing along.

Levittown sucks is the consensus among anyone with a brain who lives there. The son knows this even at 5. The mother knows it very well.

A working-class suburb of Philadelphia, it’s a company town for the nearby U.S. Steel mill—especially the part where the mother and son live: Fairless Hills. What a name, and it’s shared with the mill, Fairless Works. “We gotta get out of this place,” the mother sings one time when that Animals song comes on the radio, and she tells the son the song is about them.

There’s a father. He’s not around.

But he is the reason there’s a VU eight-track in the car. He’s also the reason there’s a Gil Scott-Heron

Lisa: I remember all my old 8-tracks.

I remember the feel of them and the sound of them. First, I got an 8-track player for my room. My mom got me one before you were born, when I was 15 years old. And then the first car that I bought myself, I got it the week we came back from Ohio in 1976, when we tried to live with your father in Columbus and it only lasted three months. So, we were back in Levittown and I was starting college in Philly. I got a blue 1970 Maverick, and I remember it was like $850. My friend John Greigas, he installed my 8-track player in the car.

And I had that car until… do you remember what happened to that car?

No. I got it in September 1976, and on New Year's Eve, turning 1978, Dirtbag crashed into it in front of the house. Do you remember Dirtbag?

Oh, yeah. Uncle John’s friend. He also

I didn't really add to it after ‘78.

8-tracks were a pain in the ass because you had to press buttons to go between the different bands, but you couldn't get to the start of a song. You’d get dropped into the middle of a song.

I never found that to be a problem.

When they came out, the technology was so new, and I was just amazed by it. Remember the first VCR camera that your uncle Jeff had in like 1982? He came to Christmas at Grandma’s with a giant suitcase.

The thing was huge and bulky. But we didn't think of it as a pain in the ass. We just thought it was amazing.

So, I was never bothered. And you developed a sense for your tapes.

You knew at what point to switch over between different songs. I got used to the pattern of when to hit

another track. I don't think there were any of them that I loved listening to all the way through. Maybe the Linda Ronstadt one.

I remember the Linda Ronstadt. I can remember looking at it. It had a picture of her inside a circle on the cover, right?

Yes. It was dark maroon, almost brown, with a thin white circle. I was going to say it was 'Heart Like a Wheel,' but that was earlier. I think it was her greatest hits.

And it had some old Motown covers on it, right?

Yeah, and… oh, you know what I've gotten recently? In the past year, I've gotten heavily into Buddy Holly and The Crickets. I'm digging them.

They’re great. Ronstadt covered 'It's So Easy' by Buddy Holly. It was on that 8-track.

She did. And now I'm reflecting on how horribly she covered Buddy Holly.

It was white bread. The song by her that I really remember hearing in the car is 'You’re No Good.' That’s a great one. That was a Dee Dee Warwick song first.

I'll tell you what that 8-track didn't have on it that I really like is 'Silver Threads and Gold Needles.' That was one of my favorite Linda Ronstadt songs.

That was on her debut album, I think. The self-titled one. That’s a very country-influenced song. You liked a lot of country rock back then.

That was the time. But it was also the thick of disco then, which I did not listen to at all.

Did you disdain it?

I was ambivalent. I didn't care enough to disdain it. But I really liked what was then called southern rock or country rock.

You saw Skynyrd live back then, didn’t you?

I saw them in June of ’77, and the plane crash happened in October ‘77.

Wow. Cutting it close.

Yeah, and they opened for Peter Frampton when I saw them.

Which is weird.

It was at the outdoor JFK stadium in Philly. I went with John Greigas and Karen, your godmother, and I think it was just the three of us. It

Jesse Pearson is a writer based in Los Angeles. He makes a podcast & magazine, both called Apology.

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was funny because, Philly being Philly, people were throwing shit on stage when Skynyrd first came out. And Skynyrd went, “Fuck you, Philly. We're going.” But then they were coaxed to stay.

I love Philadelphia.

And in retrospect, Skynyrd were such fucking assholes. All that redneck misogyny and racist shit.

I can't fucking stand it. But that's what I enjoyed at the time.

‘Gimme Three Steps’ is one that I remember specifically, because I remember you explaining the story of the song to me.

I probably did that with everything. Probably sometimes inappropriately.

You pretty much explained everything to me. Not a lot of censorship.

There was no reason not to explain things to you, you know?

What were some other southern rock 8-tracks you had?

The Adventures of Panama Red by New Riders of the Purple Sage, Bustin’ Out by Pure Prairie League…

Were you aware of the New Riders being kind of a Grateful Dead offshoot?

Oh, yeah. From the first time I was aware of them. I remember it was Christmas, 1973, and your father was very excited waiting for Panama Red to drop. He knew a lot about music, and he connected all the dots about the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia and all that jazz.

So when you were listening to Panama Red in the car with me, it wasn't a new record.

Oh, no. That was a few years after it came out. And then there was Pure Prairie League.

But Pure Prairie League was kind of soft. Like, I think of New Riders as more authentic.

I loved my Pure Prairie League tape. But a couple years later, they were pure pop, purely commercial, awful. Couldn’t listen to it.

I look back at that southern-rock moment, and it looks kind of like a drag show. Were these guys really as redneck and cowboy as they all acted?

Fuck no. Of course not. It was just the latest thing. Their image was very constructed. “We're rebels.”

Bullshit. But my taste in music, Jesse, was pretty eclectic.

So what else was there on 8-track?

I have to say that hanging out with your father was part of this, like turning me on to the Velvet Underground and Lou Reed. The live one

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with 'Heroin' and 'Lisa Says' on it.

My friend John always sang that to me since my name is Lisa.

Do you remember the cover art?

It was an ass, like a chick’s sexy ass.

But I remember my friend always said that was actually Lou Reed's ass.

Yeah, that’s definitely not Lou Reed's ass.

I remember it had a ten-minute version of ‘Heroin’ on it.

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goddamn if there wasn’t some kind of divine intervention. I kind of shook it overnight, like “I can't do this anymore.”

Did that have something to do with me being born?

It had to do with me being pregnant. I had to decide. I could have done this path or that path, but they couldn't blend. I couldn't do both. Although I did keep a foot in both for a little bit. But ultimately, I

It was an ass, like a chick’s sexy ass. But I remember my friend always said that was actually Lou Reed's ass.

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I vividly remember listening to that in the car. I even remember having a little bit of an understanding of what heroin meant. I knew it was an illicit thing.

Oh, yeah. It's clear from the lyrics and from the tone of the music.

“When I put a spike into my vein.”

It’s very explicit.

Was I aware at that point that my father was an addict? Or was I too young to be conscious of that?

You weren't conscious of it. We didn't really discuss it yet. But I think you got it soon after that.

What about Lou Reed and the VU turned you on? That they were kind of dark?

It was a time when I was struggling with a lot, and it kind of resonated.

What were you struggling with?

Just life, drugs, identity. My whole identity up to my adolescence was being this fiercely intelligent girl that was also a leader. I was a leader in every class, and I had goals. I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to be all that. And then when I hit adolescence, there was Watergate. There was Timothy Leary. There was all this information coming at me and I wanted to explore other things. And then I quickly went down another path. I was a big risktaker.

How would you describe that path you went down?

Fucking dark? I remember thinking, “I don't ever want to have one day of my life where I'm not high as hell. Never a single day.”

Relatable.

But in the scheme of things, it was relatively brief. I'm an atheist, but

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chose another path. I was very successful in college, very successful at work. So, yeah, it was all good.

When did you graduate from high school?

1976.

What do you remember being the popular music with the cannon fodder of your high school? The general population, what were they into?

I didn't spend a lot of time in high school. I really didn't go to school in 10th and 11th grade. And then in 12th grade, because you were born between 11th and 12th grade, I didn't have to stay all day. I’d leave at lunchtime. But, yeah, in 11th grade, I would go to school just to sell drugs on the field, and then I'd go home.

What drugs did you sell?

At that point? I was selling PCP and powdered THC. You snorted it.

I wonder if people ever shot it up.

But anyway, in 12th grade, since you had a kid, they let you have a special course of study so you could finish high school?

I told them I had to go home early.

I was nursing a baby. And this is a whole other thing, Jesse. I had to advocate for myself. I didn't have one fucking adult advocating for me. I took the bull by the horns, and I advocated for myself to get everything I wanted, and I got it. I would go in and I would go to all my classes, and I would go home by 12.

So you weren't exactly in touch with what the bulk of the student body cared about.

I really wasn't. I never was, though.

I mean, from the time I was 13, I

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never had a boyfriend that was less than five years older than me. I never had a boyfriend who was in my school.

What about just friends your age?

My female friends outside of school were older too.

Do you remember which albums or songs I was really responsive to as a little kid?

Well, in 1978 I bought you the Grease soundtrack. Do you remember that?

Hell yes.

You loved Grease. You also loved the New Riders song ‘Panama Red’.

So, ‘76 to ‘81 in Levittown.

What was it like then?

Oh, God. It was redneck. Racist and misogynist. It was very working class, and it was starting to deteriorate after ‘80. It went fast because the steel mill was closing. And that was the foundation of the town. Most people, you got out of high school, and you went to work at the steel mill if you were a man. If you were a woman, you got out of high school and you got married to a man—a kid, really—who was working at the steel mill. But the town was degenerating, and I could smell it in the air. I don't know if anyone else did. I knew what was coming. I'm just going to say, being female in that kind of milieu, you had to be really tough if you didn't sign up for that ride of steel mill and marriage. People never questioned the culture where I was born, never questioned the fucking culture.

I remember when I was five years old, seeing John F. Kennedy, before he was shot, and I said, “I want to be president.” And people saying, “You can't. You're a girl.” So, I said, “Well, then I'm going to be a lawyer like him.” “You can't. You're a girl.” What the fuck are you talking about? I didn't buy it. It never registered.

How old were you when you realized you didn't want to stay in Levittown?

That was probably always. I mean, I felt comfortable there and I always had affection for the people. But I also knew that I wanted something different.

Do you think all the music you listened to was about escaping or thinking about the world as a larger place than just Levittown?

It took me away at the moment, when I’d be listening. I guess that's the definition of escape, right?

Even when it's a dark song, there's something uplifting about music for me. There's something hopeful, even when things are shit.

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THE SHEPHERD OF A CRACKED WORLD

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t is hard to explain to people that writing right now is an act of knowingly putting myself through pain at times. People are baffled even as I explain how much thought I put into the aftercare required to write words down. And how music plays a part in the beginning of the process.

Sinead O’Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got lately has become my main go to at my desk. I think because she, like the acrobat in Ferlinghetti’s poem 'Constantly Risking Absurdity,' made a career by telling dangerous truths at the risk of multiple public falls. And we are still learning what she taught us from that.

This record also feels parallel to writing in how it thinks about order. The first track, 'Feel So Different', is such a CHOICE to begin with. In large part because of how it opens with the 'Serenity Prayer,' which if not is THE light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel for many, this call to accept, its definitely its own portal of future folding into the uncertain.

O’Connor is taking us through what the journey looks like when you get on the other side of accepting that the only way real change can happen is by starting with ourselves.

And that’s one hell of a fists up, no gloves kind of a gesture to start an album on considering so few of us have the courage to even attempt that.

When I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got came out, I was 13 years old.

On the surface, I was like any other preteen girl living in the suburbs but much of my life I was hiding and mostly out of confusion and shame, I was deeply disassociated from all of it. The depths of self Sinead O’Connor was articulating then were a light in a very dark room that I still had to learn how to navigate on my own.

Something I have come to learn is that as much as art can be an outlet for trauma, it also cannot ever be the panacea, so it just made more sense to come to my own place of understanding and acceptance about it all before offering these thoughts to the world in my art.

Sinead O’Connor I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got ENSIGN/CHRYSALIS RECORDS 1990

Emily Flake Then, Sinead O’Connor died this summer.

This is the same summer that Greta Gerwig’s film Barbie happens to our culture as a study of projection, a phenomena that anyone who identifies as a woman can identify with to some degree, and I think about what a strange parallel these two iconic women share as emblems projected on versions of failures of femininity, albeit for completely different reasons.

When I grew up in the 80’s / 90’s, Barbie represented this idea that a woman could be whatever she set her mind to be, which is the baseline of the ire within conversations around white feminism that really deems who can be whatever they want depending on how many other

privileges they also hold. Someone like Sinead showed us the hypocrisy in real time as she played Joan Of Arc to a generation because the only socially acceptable woman, still was/ maybe is, a tall and leggy blonde made out of plastic and not the ones with the shaved heads like Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie.

In some ways, I think the film acts as a long naming of every key point of radical feminist thought (some getting more unpacking than others, for sure) with a consistent baseline of how the act of projection of any type of ideal on one another turns us against ourselves, inherently, forever turning ourselves against each other.

In the same way for Barbie, what made Sinead O’Connor iconic was

not just her shaved head and combat boots but the fact that she never relented to be seen so that others could be seen wholly as they are too. There is something to this idea of wholeness that really threatens people. Within ourselves, and with each other, and I find myself thinking about that more and more. But this also points to the most important and obvious difference, which was, Barbie can only dream of being, and Sinead O’Connor was very much real, which for me is what makes 'Feel So Different' feel more anthemic. This song has a lifetime of layers within it. In many ways, a love song, for another with the complication of power dynamics: I should have hatred for you / But I do not have any / I have always loved you / You have taught me plenty Most importantly, she sings about a love for self which in part comes from this other loving one as a whole person to show them what their capacity is: The whole time / I had never seen / All you had spread before me / The whole time / I had never seen / That all I needed was inside me This level of complexity astounds me in a similar way that the Barbie film does in speaking to an act of mirroring as care.

When she sings, “I have not seen freedom before / And I did not expect to / Don’t let me forget / I’m here,” it quantifies the entirety of feminist disappointment and how it reflects back within community when she spits out, “I started off with many friends / And we spent a long time……..

Talking / I thought they meant every word they said / But like everyone else they were stalling” which speaks so much to a sort of grasping in the the dark around the unnecessary weight of projection and always coming to a point that all one can do sometimes is walk away to remain true.

When Sinead closes by howling "I feel so different" over and over, I feel a portal opening to another side of life, to a core knowing, in itself a source of strength that we all deserve the right to know and give back so we all can get to a place of whole.

Cat Tyc is an interdisciplinary writer/artist who has multiple chapbooks. Her most recent work is published in Maggot Brain, The Recluse & FENCE.

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E T H A N SWA N

THEIR TIME WAS THEN, THEIR TIME IS NOW “[Huggy Bear] were the most ill-behaved guests we have ever had on the show. One member of their entourage bit the face of a member of our production team, who had to be treated by the studio nurse.”—Unidentified spokesperson for The Word

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ack from commercial break, a woman in a red beret stands in front of dozens of young, breathheld bodies. Before she opens her mouth to introduce the next segment, a twisting wail displaces all other sound. “We’re going over to Huggy Bear,” she tries, as the tone hits that enveloping ring of a concussion, “and we’re going to hear 'Her Jazz.'”

Opening a song with feedback wasn’t unusual at that time—Rage Against the Machine did the same thing on the same program just one week earlier. Rage’s squawk ends right when the riff comes in, but for Huggy Bear, the feedback just never ends. Steady as a banshee or a hungry baby, it rends and nags through the entire song. The drums march in, the guitar and bass lock together in this swaggering, brash 1-2 3-4-5.

It’s upright and bold, an anthem, shining in the petulance of that high-pitched whine.

There are little platforms for the band members—Karen on drums, Jon on bass, Jo on guitar, and Niki singing—but the space isn’t theirs alone. So many people spin and hop in between the band members, behind them, in their faces. Niki makes eye contact with the camera and then breaks it so definitively it becomes rebuke. The song builds to chorus, and suddenly there are two more people on their own raised circle: Huggy singer Chris and Heavenly singer Amelia, fresh lungs howling “BOY GIRL REVOLUTION TEASE,” their bodies bent in half with the force of getting the words out.

“Her Jazz” is Huggy Bear’s most indelible song, endlessly mix-taped, endlessly anthologized (most recently on 2023’s Guerrilla Girls! ShePunks and Beyond, 1975-2016). It is a capsule, coy and forceful and crisp: “BOREDOM/RAGE/FIERCE INTENTION/THIS IS THE SOUND OF A REVOLUTION.” Now thirty years old, this arc, this blueprint, remains profoundly relatable. Were you 17

Huggy Bear Her Jazz PERFORMED LIVE ON THE WORD FEBRUARY 14, 1993

Video-frame from The Word in 1993? Maybe you are 17 now and are really used to boredom and rage. It feels like a pit, right? Huggy Bear knows it, but they also know the next step, and have articulated it for you: “Her Jazz equals our time NOW.” The version on the single, the one put on all the compilations and shared between friends, is stellar. A friend told me she’d always leave ten seconds of silence after it on mixtapes because it required that space. But the version on The Word is better.

The song descends after the cho-

rus. The bass shudders with a horror movie menace, and the spotlight points toward Niki, whose voice is all condemnation: “Men-tal/ Men-torn/You had your way/You/ had/your say.” The gloom almost unbearable, she pulls a deep breath and yells “face it you’re old and out of touch/OUT OF TOUCH!” The chorus returns, but Chris and Niki both abandon it to dance. Guest vocalist Amelia, by default the most professional performer on the stage, keeps singing on her own. But I always imagined the space was left

for the audience, for the listener at home. As if Huggy Bear presented their chorus the first time around, and left it to everyone else to raise their voices on the second.

Huggy Bear’s songs are full of secret/invented language: “dissthentic” and “campfire punk” and “warming rails.” None of this is ever defined by the band, but everyone who likes these records knows what they mean. I’m reminded of Guy Debord’s Comments on the Society of the Spectacle where he says half of the 60 people interested in the book were his comrades in the war on capitalism, and the other half were his enemies, reading to figure out how much he knew about their plans. And so he’d tangle his words, crisscross meanings to ensure only his friends would understand.

To hear the phrase TEEN GIRL HEART repeated in the lyrics of 'Teen Tighterns' or 'Sizzlemeet' and ask what it means simply marks you as someone not possessing one, not aligned with Huggy Bear. A skinbag, to use another Huggy term. But just as 'Her Jazz' is the band’s most indelible song, it’s also their most immediate one. Every line signifies, there is nothing to decipher.

You will know from your first listen what side you’re on. It’s not my favorite song of theirs (oh hi 'Local Arrogance 1994'), but it is the one I’d play first for someone who’d never heard the band before. This was intentional, the band knew what they were doing. In Jo’s words: “It wasn’t anthemic by accident.” Niki remembers the writing process, how they wanted to stitch 'Her Jazz' into a legacy of song: “I remember we were wondering, questioning what is a protest song? A punk song? A feminist song? What is ours going to sound like? What could we add to these things?”

For everyone who didn’t grow up in 1990s UK (me included): The Word was Channel 4’s late-night television program aimed at young people. It relied on England’s 1964

Ethan Swan lives in Rochester New York and is the editor of the forthcoming book Killed (of Kids) about the band Huggy Bear.

A collection of his essays, Fix the Mirrors, was published in 2019 by The Grass Is Green In The Fields For You, Glasgow.

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Television Act, which held that programming aimed toward mature audiences could be broadcast between the hours of 9 PM and 5:30 AM. Notable performances on The Word include 1) The very first time Nirvana played on television, with Cobain introducing 'Teen Spirit' by saying “I want everyone in this room to know that Courtney Love, the lead singer of the sensational pop group Hole, is the best fuck in the world.” 2) Donita Sparks of L7 playing the second half of 'Pretend We’re Dead' with her jeans and underwear pulled down to her knees.

3) Also making their television debut, Rage Against the Machine concluding their performance of 'Killing in the Name' with just sev-

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pier without the hoo-har over The Word. It was the moment when I started to fall out of love with being in the band… It was the moment that the hounding started.”

Confronted with Karen’s memory, Chris replied, “The ‘Word’, it didn’t make things hard for me, but I know what Karen means. I think it was out of control, and I think I relished initially what that out of control could mean or insinuate.”

I keep thinking about this, about relishing in that out of control.

About the relentless feedback, Niki’s condemnation of the camera’s lens, the force of Karen’s blows on the drum kit. A bite on the face.

About the intention of 'Her Jazz' and the complete lack of intention

'Her Jazz' is Huggy Bear’s most indelible song—you will know from your first listen what side you’re on. en repetitions of “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me!” before the audience engulfed the stage, scooping up microphones and continuing to chant, the band lost in the swarm. The Word loved breaking bands, The Word loved controversy.

Huggy Bear’s music isn’t on streaming services, and the records are out of print. If you look for them online, the clip of The Word is one of the first two things you’ll find. But if you search for Huggy Bear + The Word you’ll find instead a key moment in the culture wars of the era. Huggy Bear were thrown out of the studio following their performance. During this expulsion, a security guard singled Jo out and struck her. The following weeks saw every dumb pundit in the UK weigh in on Huggy Bear, with a consensus that the band’s appearance was evidence of unchecked feminism. That rock and roll was dead. That homophobia was justified. The issue of Melody Maker with the HUGGY BEAR LIVE ON ‘THE WORD’ cover story is rumored to be the tabloid’s best-selling of all time.

According to Karen, the band “would’ve lasted longer and hap-

or consideration in the moment Chris throws the microphone and its stand to the floor. All visceral action, all energy in search of an outlet, all out of control. How did Huggy Bear say yes to The Word, a program focused on sex jokes, dating games, and major label bands?

Niki recalls, “The thinking then was do it once and make it count.”

To momentarily break with their press blackout, their refusal to engage. To be intentional. Huggy Bear was a band so unprepared for this act, they didn’t even have the gear for it. “It wasn’t until we were on The Word that I realised I had to get a drum kit,” Karen said. “Literally a few days before [the performance] I bought the main bit from Record and Tape Exchange, plus two shitty cymbals. I kept the £3 label on the split crash cymbal because it felt punk.” An intentional song mobilized into an intentional decision. And yet you watch and hear Huggy Bear on The Word and they are undoubtedly out of control. I am wary of contradiction, of imagining conflict as fuel, but in this case the static and squall led to the best version of 'Her Jazz' the band ever made.

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ALEX LEWIS

A HOME FOR RADIO EXPERIMENTALISM Various Artists Release: The Falling Tree Archives FALLING TREE PRODUCTIONS 1993-PRESENT

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town; Falling Tree’s Co-Director Elalling Tree Productions is a eanor McDowall’s visceral and physLondon-based audio production ical piece A Dancer Dies Twice (2016), company founded by Alan Hall in a meditation on what happens to 1993. They’re well known in audio documentary circles for their imdancers bodies as they age; Phil Smith’s A Very Different Time (2017), pressionistic and wide-open apa reverie on time and borders that proach to feature making. Much of masterfully weaves together poettheir work is crafted as radio montage (American producers call this ry, music, and field recordings in an style “non-narrated”), letting interemotionally resonant tapestry; and views, music, and field recordings Alan Hall’s Knoxville: Summer of 1995 speak for themselves in a vérité-es(1995), where a seemingly disparate que presentation. assemblage comes Falling Tree’s work to form a beautiful portrait of the Tentends to be patient and textured, an nessee city.

English-language Like all conshowcase for the temporary audio European radio producers in the documentary aespast decade, Fallthetic (think: more ing Tree has also Agnes Varda and shifted to creating podcasts.

Their Jean-Luc Godard, less Ira Glass and long-running BBC Roman Mars). And Radio 4 series Short over the past three Cuts is a haven for decades they’ve exciting shortD. C. Lamothe produced a galaxy form audio work of pieces, primarily presented on running the gamut from audio esthe BBC, that have expanded the says and found sound, to sound art idea of what long form audio storyand more typical audio features.

And Sophie Townsend’s gorgeously telling can—and should—be. crafted Goodbye To All This (2020) On the occasion of their 30th was a standout hit of the medium, birthday this year, Falling Tree has a 12-part audio memoir written put a handy and stunning, archive and produced in the aftermath of of all their published work (www. the untimely death of Townsend’s fallingtree.co.uk/our-archive) on the husband. I also highly recommend redesigned website. It’s categorized seeking out the work of Hannah chronologically and the vast majorDean, Axel Kacoutié, and Nanna ity of the pieces are linked for free Hauge Kristensen. (mostly via SoundCloud). If not, most of the work is findable elsewhere Not everything in Falling Tree’s online. There’s also a tab to navigate archive is a masterwork, but each their archive by producer, which is piece certainly provides interesting essentially a who’s-who list of the food-for-thought about audio craft most significant radiomakers of the and radio aesthetics. Their work past few decades alongside blossomasks us to grow our imagination for what documentary audio making ing new talents and one-off creators. can do, to explode preconceived noA few touchstones to check out are: tions about the boundaries of the Poetry Texas (2012), Danish producer medium, and, most importantly, to Pejk Malinovski’s layered sonic travlisten adventurously and deeply. el journal of the whimsically named Alex Lewis is a Philadelphia-based author, independent radio producer, musician & co-founder of Rowhome Productions.

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CALLING ALL HEADS with a taste for true adventure and desire to scintillate the deep soul within. All ears are beckoned to apply now – no sizes or shapes rejected. aumfidelity.com

PAPERNIKS Hamell On Trial ‘Bring The Kids’ The stunning new album from an old soldier that required us to coin a new genre: anarchist Adult Alternative (aAA). He’s bad! he’s bold! he’s bald! he’s beautiful. Limited color vinyl in an edition of 500. Order online at: saustexrecords.bandcamp.com Distribution by Burnside.

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who the fuck is Oxygen Tank Flipper? new PAPERNIKS coming in February on MARKET SQUARE

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Audio for audio’s sake Audioflux.org

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A sonic movement for this noisy moment.

We gots knobs. ALL ANALOG KNOBS. High voltage tube powered knobs. You twist ‘em: we scream. Like a battle-damaged martian saucer in rapid, smoking, death-spiral descent.

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Gort bailing. That’s what we do. That’s what we do for you.

Should you need us to. Call on us any time. We might pick up: Trogotronic.com but if we put a period here it might look like part of the address so here. Ask around. Champions of tabletop whackamole know. Video game / Movie composers know.

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The Particles

Kenny Drew and

1980s Bubblegum

Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen

CHAPTER MUSIC 2023 DANA KATHARINE

T

he Particles first formed in Sydney, Australia in the mid-’70s

by Peter Williams and Mick Smith, spurred on by the nascent punk movement, though their eventual releases had little to do sonically with bands such as The Saints or Radio Birdman. I first came across them several decades later on Can’t Stop It, Chapter Music’s excellent 2001 compilation of largely forgotten early ‘80s Australian post-punk.

The Particles’ song 'Apricot’s Dream' stood out from the rest of the pack - a small, delicate number, Astrid Spielman’s vocals murmured more so than sung, as if trying not to wake someone up. And while the handful of UK groups that operated in the same minimalist DIY pop sphere (Dolly Mixture, Marine Girls, Young Marble Giants) received their own reissues and a certain level of posthumous acclaim, The Particles remained relatively unknown. This 2023 archival release (also from Chapter Music) is a welcome attempt to correct the historical record. It compiles the entirety of The Particles’ recorded output: the three EPs they released between 1980 and 1984, plus a small handful of unreleased studio tracks and radio sessions. While apparently a reference to a specific interview with the band, 1980s Bubblegum is a bit of a misnomer - this

Duo

is all certainly pop, certainly sweet, but there’s a melancholic thread woven throughout, particularly in the aforementioned 'Apricot’s Dream' and the wistful 'Driving Me' (my own personal anthem whenever I have a secret crush on someone), both of which were released on Colour-In, their first EP. Where there isn’t melancholy there’s jangly post-punk energy, such as on the propulsive '(Bits of) Wood' and 'Zig Zag.' The tracks off of their final EP, I Luv Trumpet, show the direction the band could have gone in had they stuck around, aided by more mature production and the addition of (unsurprisingly) a trumpet, a trumpet that brings to mind what Manchester’s Dislocation Dance were doing at that time.

It feels almost hyperbolic to say, but it’s surprising how effortlessly great every single song on this compilation is, which is to say that there is not a weak spot to be found. The legacy of The Particles can be heard in bands like The Cannanes (formed by ex-Particle Stephen O’Neil), and in more modern Aussie acts such as The Stroppies, Terry, and Parsnip.

The Particles were indie pop years before the term was ever widely in use, but they were never cloying, always charming. Props to Chapter Music for finally bringing their music to a wider audience.

STEEPLECHASE 1973 FRED CISTERNA

N

ew York City native Kenny Drew spent much of his career in Europe, living in Paris for three years before settling in Copenhagen in 1964. The underrated post-bop pianist and composer was a strong presence on the city’s jazz scene, and he recorded several duo and trio albums with the acclaimed Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen.

1973’s Duo is marked by intimate exchange and judicious restraint.

The album opens with ‘Det Var En Lørdag Aften,’ a Danish traditional.

The performance is both spare and moving, with each tone felt and considered. Pedersen’s rendering of the melody has weight and grace, and when Drew steps forward, there is zero flash, only delicacy of touch.

Drew’s unaccompanied take on his composition ‘Come Summer’ displays a sense of drama but never pushes too hard; instead, you lean close to catch every detail.

On Pedersen’s ‘Kristine,’ the bassist uses both arco and pizzicato, balancing the two techniques to create contrast that rhymes. Like elsewhere on the album, Pedersen and Drew take turns in the spotlight. The way they move back

and forth between the roles of accompanist and soloist is seamless.

Drew’s introduction on ‘Serenity’ has the shape and logic of storytelling. When Pedersen first enters, the misty mood is maintained, but then the pair pick up the tempo as Drew unfurls some wonderful lines. “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans,” taken from a 1947 film (where Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong performed the song), stands out from Duo’s often lyrical vibe. Abetted by guest Ole Molin’s up-tempo, old-school rhythm guitar, the track is a feel-good nod to the past.

By contrast, ‘Duo Trip’ looks ahead a few decades; the Drew original features a striking angular theme and charged playing in tight sync.

A version of the lullaby ‘Hush-abye’ is the longest piece here. Pedersen’s opening statement recalls the searching, folk-like melancholy emblematic of Charlie Haden’s work. Later, Drew’s electric piano is particularly tangy during a bluesy section propelled by Pedersen’s walking bass. When Pedersen winds things up with another solo, Drew sprinkles on a little magic dust, bringing Duo to a pleasing close.

Karli Bresler

low note.

While Glare has found some small fame on social media, it’s through a genuine appeal to younger fans of shoegaze who are looking out past the established acts, rather than a social-media-friendly sound. Glare avoid chasing the algorithm-grabbing sound that can be parsed into perfect, repeatable 30-second reels, which is refreshing for a band with an online presence currently.

Glare has already put out a few more singles and EPs since this release, including a remastering of Into You earlier this year, but I wanted to highlight this introduction because it has so much promise and got me excited for what new shoegaze looks like beyond the chaos of Philadelphia basements.

Glare Into You SUNDAY DRIVE 2017 CHLOE MELLO

T

he alt-rock / shoegaze group Glare debuted in 2017 on Sunday Drive records with the two-track single Into You, opening with 'Into Me.' The long intro has a dreamy echo, cool tones, and conjures a feeling something like swimming in the dark or wading through a crowd of bodies in a gymnasium show. It’s sweeping and oceanic. A sharp drum brings us into the surprisingly sweet and audibly young voice which chooses to introduce the band’s first lyrics with the line “And I am,” starting us in the middle of a thought, unsure of what may have come before, and what comes next. The end of 'Into Me' leaves us certain of Glare’s influences, think

Whirr, the Drop Nineteens, Nothing, and They Are Gutting A Body of Water.

'Blank' departs slightly from the melancholy of the previous track and plays more into a doomful, angsty feeling, both in sound and lyric. There’s a stronger drum, and the voice is singular in its calls of "Eternal Sadness" and "Bodily Rotting," abandoning some of the dreamlike layering that brought a bit more sweetness to Into You. But 'Blank' is the perfect follow-up, approaching but avoiding melodrama by not putting all the focus and balance into the vocals, and leading us out with a slow,

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Maria BC Spike Field SACRED BONES 2023 BEVERLY BRYAN

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ne of the most startling elements of Maria BC’s ambient folk music is their bright mezzo soprano. Their vocal instrument functions as a beacon, guiding the listener through the rumbling gloom of their lo-fi recordings. It can manifest as a cold, ghostly light or spill like the sun over a stream.

On their second album, it’s most often a glowing lantern, illuminating otherwise dark corners.

Their debut full-length Hyaline was acclaimed for its clinging melancholy and air of mystery. For their return and first release with gothic flame-tender Sacred Bones, the artist has sacrificed some of that album’s fairytale prettiness to edge closer to the sonic sublime. Spike Field opens with 'Amber,' a brambly love song where they allow their voice to flicker like firelight over reverberating guitar. Delicate glitches and hairline pick scrapes scar the track every few bars, making the already spare arrangement sound even barer.

'Amber' dissolves into 'Watcher,' a

bittersweet aubade and the difficult other face of the coin first seen glittering on 'Amber.' Next, Mount Eerie style drone '[A Backlit Door]' marks a clear transition before a new, expansive cycle begins with the windswept melody of 'Haruspex. Post-'Haruspex,' varied tracks charged with intense emotions follow on quickly.

'Mercury' is an epic standout that portrays the work of self-destruction as a kind of alchemical process.

As spectral as Maria BC’s work can be, this record has an earthy side, a sense of place, its many ideas grounded and developed into a legible topography. Thematically, Spike Field is a reckoning with the past and so this landscape is a personal one, populated with former selves.

The slicks of noise from the first track return throughout the album, seeming to reflect the way our memories decay and attenuate— the progressively corrupt files that constitute our identities.

Maria matches the hilly emotional terrain with ambitious musical

Kara Jackson Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?

SEPTEMBER RECORDINGS 2023 LOGAN CRYER

H

ave you noticed the cover of Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? kinda like SZA’s ctrl album cover?

Kara Jackson is definitely a SZA fan, if her tweets are anything to go by—i feel like people are denying sza’s very real position as an actual writer. it’s art. vulnerability doesn’t require any less attention to craft. Both debut records contain similar themes: mourning for the woman-self , the plight of those punished by prejudice, and the celebration of boundless desire, patience and optimism.

The earnest struggle to reconcile these disparate themes can be heard on Jackson’s third track, ‘dickhead blues.’ The slow-sauntering guitar ballad begins with Jackson lamenting, Damn, the dickhead blues/When your time becomes somebody else’s refuge. The song blooms into a bouquet of layered vocals, waltzing drums and backing strings but Jackson’s climatic refrain is still ruminating from a

place of lack: If I had a heart/I’d know where to start. The noise and sentiment settle in tandem as Jackson closes with a note of self-assurance: I’m not as worthless as I once thought/I am pretty top-notch/I’m useful.

As an indie folk artist, Kara Jackson resides at a captivating intersection of genre naiveté and progression. The songwriting, at its core, is simple. An acoustic guitar carries nearly every track and Jackson strums uncomplicated chord progressions as delivers equally straightforward vocals.

She sings without great flourish and her words march out steadily, one foot in front of other. It takes nearly 20 seconds for Jackson to sing, The rolling credits in my mind/ make me so aware of time, on “brain,” a song hovering around 50 bpm.

This structural simplicity is punctuated by instrumental quirks. In addition to Jackson, musicians KAINA, NNAMADÏ, and Sen Mori-

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exploration. Experimental overture 'Tied' comes off like post-In Rainbows Radiohead doing Sondheim while the beat driven 'Lacuna’ could be a remix of something recorded by a SETI radio telescope. The title track, which closes the album, is an extended minimalist meditation for guitar and piano. It provides needed space to process the rest of Spike Field.

That title, Spike Field, is a reference to the thorn-like granite monuments proposed as markers for buried radioactive waste sites. The choice of name frames the past as a dangerous place, dotted with the graves of things we hope will stay buried, however, far from being polluted wasteland, Spike Field itself is fertile ground and evidence only of growth. The album might seethe with the pain of discovery and disillusionment and connections made and lost, but it’s the work of someone who has lived through it all.

The lyrics for 'Mercury' describe “memory’s long stare,” which is presumably the nasty kind that tends to follow you like a curse. In every song on the album, the artist returns that stare with an even gaze. In that look is peace and self-acceptance, which is the only thing that ever makes it possible to release the past.

moto are given writing and production credits on nearly every track.

The foursome implement cinematic orchestration, eclectic backing vocals, and soulful percussion throughout the release. At times their work invokes the friskiness of The Microphones and the feminine gloss of Joanna Newsom’s arrangements. The overall effect creates a palette most similar to Solange’s latest records; sonic tendrils that extend into jazzy space.

In 2019, Kara Jackson was named the National Youth Poet Laureate and achieved a level of prestige that is unobtainable for 99% of creatives. This status is not something Jackson sings about directly, though songs like “recognize” and “curtains” do address the pitfalls of fame and admiration. Though, it is easy to view these tracks as the warranted anxiety of any young adult living in a society that increasingly equates popularity with success and security.

Lyrically, Jackson is veiled and suggestive, but her emotions are not. Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? is the revelatory gasp that succeeds the aching wail.

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Big Blood

Q-Tip

First Aid Kit

Amplified

DONTTRUSTTHERUIN 2023 LARIS KRESLINS

RASHID ZAKAT

M

aybe it was right place right time. Would it be a different feeling now? If the place or circumstances were different. My perception of the world changes daily. Maybe it’s my overly optimistic, perhaps misplaced, faith in the future and the progeny that will take over. Maybe I just want the kids to take over right now.

Maybe it’s the undercurrent of sadness and perseverance of this album. Elements that battle each other for prominence. We watch.

As we watch a civil war. Maybe it’s the fact that my friend’s 13-yearold daughter said, “Dude, it’s Lesley Gore.” Maybe it’s true. Maybe

Arista

vocalizer Quinnisa Rose Kinsella Mulkerin is a Goth Leslie Gore, directing her parents, Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin (formerly of the genre-bending Cerberus Shoal.) Quinnisa is the controller.

It's her show. Maybe nothing matters. Maybe this is too good of a full album, perfect length, perfect sequence, perfect roller coaster ride of shitkicking overcomeness. Maybe it’s me being jealous that at this age I wasn’t releasing flawless realized creative visions.

Maybe it’s the grit. Maybe it’s the pain. Maybe it’s just knowing life if fucking hard. Maybe we still try no matter what. Right?

Ed Kuepper Electrical Storm HOT LABEL 1985 EVERETT TRUE

S

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hortly after we emigrated to Brisbane in 2008, I found myself sitting in the offices of Trade QLD in the CBD with a dozen government officials, espousing the idea for a hi-falutin’ arts and music magazine that could promote Queensland culture while retaining its critical and aesthetic faculties. The gent who used to be Anna Bligh’s right-hand man had announced himself keen on the idea, and so everyone else was, and so I found myself free-styling various ideas across the table. I had no idea what was expected of me, but I didn’t want to second-guess anyone. The only thing I was sure of was the title, Electrical Storm.

Ed Kuepper’s first solo album from 1985 sums up much of what is exciting and enticing and cloying about Brisbane to me. The very studio air around Kuepper crackles with electricity as he attacks his guitar’s fretboard, the drums a welter of anticipation, the storm clouds building overhead. Having moved to The Gap a few months earlier – and been caught out driving right through the heart of the area’s worst storm in decades (Kevin Rudd later likened our battered suburb to a “war zone”)—my young family was well-familiar

with our neighbours’ chosen pastime of sitting out on the deck in the early evening with a few tinnies. We would watch, hour after hour, as the skies flashed with mind-stretching displays of lightning and thunder.

Often, it wouldn’t even rain.

Brisbane exerts an odd fascination for its inhabitants. Generations of musicians and artists have sooner or later thought that to make any sort of a dent in the outside world they need to leave behind the comforting foliage and endless rolling suburbs for the promised land of Sydney or Melbourne... perhaps even further abroad. All that’s left behind is the stubborn and the surly, the glorious sunshine and countless playgrounds. Yet they all come back eventually. It must be something about the weather, about the easy-going nature of the city and its lack of demands upon the individual.

As Kuepper sings, “Well I had my reservation booked On the first bus out of town I thought that it would take forever Just to leave this one-story town And I didn’t think of leaving No, I’m still here in this house Watchin’ this electrical storm”.

He’s been reworking the song ever since.

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bought Q-Tip’s solo debut album, Amplified on its release day November 30 1999. I had no prior loyalty to A Tribe Called Quest, the legendary rap group Q-Tip had released five studio albums with until their breakup in 1998 (they would later re-unite for a final album in 2016), I was drawn in by the album cover artwork. Little did I know how much this imperfect gem of an album would kickstart my deep love of hiphop and blow my 15 year-old mind.

I wouldn’t exactly call the lyrics on Amplified poetry. Q-Tip’s lyrics feel more freestyled than written and can be better appreciated like a jazz saxophonist soloing with an incredible band. Q-Tips lyrics are catchy and playful but what captivated me on a near spiritual level was the production, mostly provided the now legendary producer J Dilla. While most of the production is credited to “THE UMMAH”, a collective including Q-Tip, Ali Shaeed Muhammad and J DIlla, J Dilla’s outsized contribution to this album are what made it so impactful.

Amplified is a product of it’s time and a glimpse into the future.

While it is a product of the “Shiny Suit Era” of hip-hip with tracks that are primed for the club, Amplified also pushed the boundaries of what hip-hop could become. 'Wait Up' channels the playful spirit of A Tribe Called Quest but the synthetic bass and crisp, clean drum samples were signals Q-Tip’s sound had evolved from the smooth jazz loops and raw drum of songs like 'Bonita Applebum.' That isn’t to say that evolution was an abandonment of jazz influences. 'Higher' the albums second track skillfully chops and loops Roy Haynes’ 'Wonderin,' creating a mesmerizing loop that could easily pass for a live band. In contrast, 'Breathe and Stop,' one of the albums three singles, featured a chopped drum sample from Kool & The Gang’s 'N.T.' combined Dilla’s signature drum bounce with a techno-inspired loop, showcasing a shift towards a more futuristic, Matrix-era sound.

'Move With U' might be the albums weakest track. It hints at a desire to explore a cleaner, more electronic sound but falls short of the innovation artists like The Neptunes

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would later perfect. 'Let’s Ride' is an undisputed hip-hop classic, boasting Q-Tips most coherent verses over a smooth timeless beat.

The track begins with a an iconic chopped and looped drum sample from The Vibrettes’ 'Humty Dumpty.' Joe Pass’ guitar interpretation of 'Giant Steps' fills the higher frequencies, allowing Q-Tip’s vocals to take center stage. A subtle but effective bassline rounds out the loop providing just the right amount of depth.

'Things We Do' highlights both the strengths and potential wasted on Amplified. It features one of the funkier, boundary-pushing beats on the album, but Q-Tips laid-back verses leave something to be desired. While Q-Tip has been known to strike a perfect balance between playfulness and lyrical precision, this and the next track 'All In' feel more like freestyles than carefully composed tracks. 'Go Hard' and 'Do It' represent what I think was Q-Tip’s take on the mandatory "Southern" and "Spanish" tracks needed for commercial appeal in the Shiny Suit Era. Even with Tip and Dilla’s touch, these tracks serve as forgettable filler.

'Vivrant Thing' stands out as one of the albums most enduring tracks for good reason. It opens with a guitar riff from Love Unlimited Orchestra’s 'I Wanna Stay,' slowed down and chopped to somehow make Barry White’s composition more danceable. 'N.T.' and 'End of Time' make the most of their collaborators, as Busta Rhymes and Korn’s Jonathan Davis (also Q-Tip's birth name) inject a much needed edge to counterbalance Q-Tips laidback style.

The album concludes with 'Do It, See It, Be It,' showcasing Q-Tip at his most lyrically adept. It serves as a fitting end to his debut, reflecting on his journey from childhood to rap stardom with some encouragement to his audience. It’s worth noting how seamlessly 'Do It, Be It, See It' leads into the opening tack of Q-Tip’s next project, the unfortunately shelved classic Kamaal the Abstract.

This transition underscores Q-Tip’s ongoing evolution as an artist, leaving a sense of anticipation for what he would deliver next.

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Laufey / Doja Cat / The Smile / Skrillex & Boys Noize Gen Z vs. Gen X single reviews FATHER & DAUGHTER REVIEW SOME OF THE MOST HYPED SONGS OF 2023 LAWRENCE LUI (GEN X) & FIONA LUI MARTIN (GEN Z)

Laufey 'From The Start' X DAD: Not bad. This is nice, pleasant, inoffensive, also very retro, like crazy retro, ‘Leave It To Beaver’ Eisenhower-era retro. Did Laufey write this, how old is she? This sounds like a standard that you’d hear in a jazz bar or hotel lobby.

It’s also got a breezy Brazilian bossa nova vibe, and there’s an innocence to it that’s kind of refreshing in this day and age. Is this what’s considered ‘bedroom pop’? Are kids into this these days? I’m looking at her Spotify streams and the numbers are so big I can’t even read them properly…is that a billion or a 100 million? Wait, is a 100 million the same thing as a billion? I’m so confused.

Z DAUGHTER: Yeah, Laufey is one of the biggest new artists to come out of the TikTok generation (she’s 24), and it’s amazing that she built her following completely independently. To her fans, she’s as much an online personality as she is a musician. Her warm and fuzzy music feeds our cohort’s love of nostalgia and need for, well, warmth and fuzziness. She is also able to bridge genres and generations, her new album has the quaintness of cottagecore, the cool smoothness of dark academia, and the pep and dynamics of jazz.

Laufey also comes off as a likable, normal person who also happens to be cool, humorous, successful, and talented. She’s Mitski without the trauma.

The Smile 'Bending Hectic' Z DAUGHTER: This song is relaxing. Something I’d listen to on a long road trip. Not at the beginning of the trip, when everyone’s hyped and singing along, but towards the end when everyone, except for the driver and I, has drifted off to sleep, and I’m looking out the window at the darkness rushing by. With my forehead pressed against the cool glass, I’m feeling a bit contemplative, melancholic, vulnerable...that shadowy breed of emotions that creep out at nightfall. My brain feels like it’s being massaged by the bent guitar line, which evokes a soporific ASMRlike sensation. Even the bass is

sliding a bit! Then, wow, suddenly, halfway through, a string orchestra goes up, eliciting a visceral feeling of rising, like an engine revving or a roller coaster’s excruciating climb up its vertical track right before the drop. This song is quite the journey, and goes to unexpected places!

X DAD: Yeah, this is actually one of my favorite tracks of the year, and I love the way it takes a complete gonzo left turn in the middle and goes from ambient to avant rock in one swoosh. The Smile are basically a Radiohead side-project starring Thom Yorke, Johnny Greenwood and one of Greenwood’s mates on drums. They started the band during Covid and they seem to explore the same dark themes of isolation and alienation as Radiohead. The swooning strings in the middle seem lifted from 20th century classical composers like Penderecki or Xenakis or guitarist Greenwood’s own soundtrack work.

Doja Cat 'Paint The Town Red' GEN X DAD: Okay, so this is the #1 song in the USA today. I’ve listened to it a few times and, honestly, I don’t get it. It’s just a super-obvious sample of Dionne Warwick’s biggest hit from the 1960s (‘Walk On By’, the mega-famous Burt Bacharach chestnut) with a tired 808 trap beat that sounds like it took 5 minutes to loop. I read an interview with the producer and he didn’t even mention the gigantic sample he based 90% of the song on, as if that wasn’t an important aspect of the track. The chorus is kind of interesting, but what are the words about? Partying, being a rebel? I’m over my partying rebel days. These days, I’m just sitting around, paying my taxes and waiting to die. Maybe I’m missing something….aka ‘get off my lawn!’

GEN Z DAUGHTER: I like this song, it’s catchy. The 'Walk On By' loop gives the song a dreamy, atmospheric quality while providing a contrast to the rap’s sharptongued lyrics. Doja Cat has a very “any press is good press” approach to marketing, which seems to

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have worked out for her thus far.

Before the release of 'Paint The Town Red,' she made a bunch of tweets telling fans that she doesn’t even know, let alone love, them. She wrote that her fans should delete their fan accounts, get off their phones, and “help [their] parents with the house.”

Hence, the lyrics: “bitch, I said what I said” & “my happiness is all of your misery.” She has also been accused of Satanism due to her eccentric sense of style (think her all-red Schiaparelli look for Paris fashion week that turned heads and involved 30,000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals). Never one to miss a chance to poke fun at her critics, Doja Cat leans into the demonic aesthetic in her 'Paint The Town Red' music video in which she rips her own eyeball out while dripping in blood, dances around a cart piled high with slabs of meat, and flys atop a giant, horned monster.

Skrillex & Boys Noize 'Fine Day Anthem' X DAD: 2023 was a big year for Skrillex creatively with two album releases and splashy events at Madison Square Garden, Times Square and Coachella. This track is more of a back-to-basics dancefloor-oriented number and it fits in more with the current vogue of four-tothe-floor house music that’s all the rage these days. As expected from Skrillex, the production is exceptional, and I believe this was co-produced by Fred Again, who’s the man of the moment in dance music right now.

Z DAUGHTER: Well, I think it’s interesting, and honestly, kind of a bad look, for the singer not to be credited at all on this record. I think the vocalist is Kirsty Hawkshaw of Opus III from her EDM hit in the 1990s 'It’s A Fine Day,' or it could’ve been sampled from the original indie song from the 1980s that Hawkshaw covered. It’s silly that I have to sift through Reddit threads to figure all that out. Either way, this pretty much does nothing to improve upon the original. It just puts new beats on it.

Disappointing!

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From Oscilloscope Laboratories, purveyor of some of From Oscilloscope Laboratories, purveyor of some of Earth’s best independent cinema, comes a collection Earth’s best independent cinema, comes a collection of film soundtracks on limited-edition collectible vinyl. of film soundtracks on limited-edition collectible vinyl.

Available direct to consumers via the Oscilloscope Store, Available direct to at consumers the codes Oscilloscope or to record stores wholesale.via Scan for moreStore, info. or to record stores at wholesale. Scan codes for more info.

oscilloscope.net • @oscopelabs

oscilloscope.net • @oscopelabs

New Music For You! The Whips’ Debut LP, “How To Hold A Grudge” Is Pop/Funk Joy, Start to Finish!

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