Street Hassle

Dupont Circle & 19th Street, Thursday 12:15 pm:

Lady Panhandler: Spare some change? I like you!
Me: Sorry, no change.
Lady Panhandler: I don't like you. Fuck you!

Two blocks further south...

Male Panhandler: Merry Christmas, spare some change?
Me: Sorry, no change.
Male Panhandler: Asshole!

Majick Community Radio Airplay

Sean at WRYR (97.5 FM in Annapolis -100 watts of power!) played track 4 off disc 3 of the CD-R set...an inspired choice! it's one of the most abstract tracks we've recorded...I love to think of our stuff floating in the airwaves over the "Eastern & Western Shores of the Mid-Chesapeake Bay Region".

Sean's show is every Friday night from 9 til 1.

Thanks Sean!

Cassette Culture

Just signed up for my second year of Tape Club, the Plastic Crimewave effort that puts a mix tape of psychedelic sixties unknowns in your mailbox every two months. I've written about this before but I wanted to plug it again because I'm a huge fan of Steve Krakow's stuff. His Galactic Zoo Dossier zine is totally awesome (here's an interview with the man).

I listen to my cassettes on a $25 boombox. This is the optimal playback mechanism for tapes. The Tape Club tapes sound great on a boombox. Most 60's music was recorded in mono, meant to be heard through the single speaker of a handheld transistor radio or a crappy AM car radio.

The Tape Club tapes got me to go back through my old tapes. I've heard a few where some drunken finger pressed "record" instead of "play", creating a few seconds of what is today called a "field recording". And even if you punch out those two little tabs, tapes degrade. So the tape you hear today won't sound the same years from now. Degeneration baby! It's cool.

Takoma Crime Map

View Larger Map
Stereogab created this very cool Google Map showing the latest wave of muggings in our neighborhood. It's cool that DC shares their data but if one concerned citizen can build an effective map using Google, why are we paying for stuff like this?

UPDATE 12.12: Found the MPDC Crime Incidents KML file and their Google map but they don't show many of the incidents mapped above. Is MPDC not adding every incident to their database?

Yeah!

Look out Takoma!

Punk Rock Memory Lane

Watching the Joe Strummer documentary the other night got me to thinking about the Clash and the mid-70's punk scene in England and how it is possible for Art to be both Political and Fun.

American Hardcore documents the American scene a few years later, during the "second wave" of punk, when bands like Black Flag and Bad Brains roamed the country, spawning scenes wherever they played.

Potluck Redux

my set
AUTOSALVAGE "PARAHIGHWAY"
DONOVAN "BARABAJANGLE"
WILLIAM PENN FYVE "SWAMI"
KAK "ELECTRIC SAILOR"
MOBY GRAPE "MURDER IN MY HEART FOR THE JUDGE"
ZZ TOP "OLD MAN"
BEATLES "NORWEGIAN WOOD"
CRAMPS "I CAN'T FIND MY MIND"
MONGO SANTAMARIA "FEELIN ALRIGHT"
THE JIMMY CASTOR BUNCH "YOU BETTER BE GOOD"
ROLLING STONES "2000 MAN"
BYRDS "BAD NIGHT AT THE WHISKEY"
BEVIS FROND "TERMINATION STATION GREY"
KINKS "I NEED YOU"
PINK FLOYD "VEGETABLE MAN"
CHOCOLATE WATCHBAND "EXPO 2000"
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA "THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS"
TAMRONS "WILD MAN"

hackmuth's set
stereogab's set

The Rebirth of Potluck
Originally uploaded by stereogab

Majick Mango Chutney

debuted our majick rainbow station at last night's Electric Possible. thank you to all who attended. enjoyed John Berndt and Tyler Wilcox intense Baltimore free-jazz sax scrawls, Aleasthete's tiny toy music, Field Shaman's ambient guitar and cello zone, Safe's bank of blinking lights and humming mics. thinking back I realized I was the only performer who stood up to play (this was not a conscious decision)...last night was also the debut of our "limited edition" (read: the stencil crapped out after 30 prints) 3 CD-R set, still smelly from paint and ink fumes (good for huffing before listening to the disc)....this will eventually make its way onto cyberpace somewhere.... Jason of Aleasthete compared our sound to the sensation when you first try mango chutney; you can't decide whether you like it or hate it.

Come Feel the Majick

We're debuting Majick Rainbow Station this Sunday at Electric Possible

$5--all money goes to the artists!
8:00 pm, Sunday, Nov 4, 2007
Phillips Hall, 801 22nd St, NW
Rm B 120 (in the basement)
(22nd and H Streets/GW Metro)

Happy Halloween!

(Photo by dronepop)

R.I.P. Stylus magazine.

Scene's from this year's Dupont Circle drag race.

My goodbye post to the library profession.

Clusterfuck Nation (via The Dust Congress)
"One of the stupidest assumptions made by the educated salient of adults these days is that we are guaranteed a smooth transition between the cancerous hypertrophy of our current economic environment and the harsher conditions that we are barreling toward. The university profs and the tech sector worker bees are still absolutely confident that some hypothetical 'they' will 'come up with'” magical rescue remedies for running the Happy Motoring system without gasoline. My main message to lecture audiences these days is '…quit putting all your mental energy into propping up car dependency and turn your attention to other tasks such as walkable communities and reviving passenger rail….' Inevitably, someone will then get up and propose that the transition to all-electric cars is nearly upon us, and we should stop worrying. As I said, these are the educated denizens of the colleges. Imagine what the nascar morons believe – that the ghost of Davey Crockett will leave a jug of liquefied 'dark matter' under everyone’s Christmas tree this year or next, guaranteed to keep the engines ringing until Elvis ushers in the Rapture."

It's Finally Getting Cold

Two
Originally uploaded by BarrettJ

A good NY Times article about Andy Warhol's films
MV+EE are on tour. Go see them if you can.

The Experience Hendrix Show Sucked

I'm an optimist. And I'm also a completist. So when the Experience Hendrix show was advertised awhile back, I bought tickets. The lineup looked promising: Billy Cox and Mitch Mitchell, these guys backed up Jimi in his heyday- Rainbow Bridge, Isle of Man- they were there, man! And Buddy Guy playing guitar. This was the man whose guitar playing Jimi copied! Like I say, I'm an optimist. Then Robby Krieger, guitarist for the Doors. What was he doing there? Well, good chance to see someone who stood in Jim Morrison's vomit. He was there, man! And Mick Taylor, who backed up Mick and Keef back in the day: Exile on Main Street, Sticky Fingers- he was there, man!

.....I spent last weekend cleaning out my stuff from my parent's attic. Old school papers, drawings, toys- all this stuff that I'd left behind, thinking, at the time, that it was valuable. And at the time, that A+ on my first grade math homework was important. But that was a long time ago. As I hauled boxes of stuff out to the trash I realized that you can't hold onto past, because the past keeps growing until it makes all those thoughts and artifacts meaningless....

...and that's what's happened to those guys. To be fair, they were fighting an uphill battle. They were playing D.A.R. Constitution Hall, a space whose musical mojo has been bad since they banned Marian Anderson . And the sound was a mess. The drums were drowned in the mix. Vocal mics didn't work. The stage monitors weren't mixed right. Between songs musicians were yelling at the sound man to turn up the drums, fix the mix in the monitors. It was clear they couldn't hear each other...

But these guys are pros, right? Hey, Mick Taylor kept it going at Altamont fer chrissakes. First of the legends to appear was Robby Krieger, still totin' the Gibson SG. Problem was, he still can't play in tune. There were other guitar players, guys who played like the guys you hear at Guitar Center. Then there was poor old Mitch Mitchell. He can't really do those rolls anymore. He really needed those drum mics turned up to help him along. Robert Randolph never made it to the stage. They announced him but then a stagehand came up and said something to Billy Cox (whose look said "uh-oh!") while he and Mick Taylor and Mitch Mitchell limped along through a 12-bar blues something (yeah but Hendrix played that song, right?).

...by this time the crowd was barely clapping. Hecklers shouted at the sound man. I got up and made my way out of the place. Out in the lobby, guys in baseball caps were standing around drinking beer and looking at each other under the bright chandeliers. I headed for the door. A block away, a homeless man sat on a steam grate. I gave him my ticket. Maybe that guy went in and had a blast.

music to my ears

playin' lately:

Yellow Swans (on tour with Mouthus!)

Ashtray Navigations

Vibracathedral Orchestra

Rasta!

Today as I was entering my office building one of the security guards smiled at me and said "You look like a rasta! You're a rasta, right?" This is at an institution with one of the tightest sphincters in DC...and I was in a suit and tie...I''m baffled...is this good or bad?

Horror

In chronological order, a list of horror movies I've seen in the past few years:

The Exorcist
Shivers
The Brood
Damien
The Fly (Cronenberg)
City of the Living Dead (Folci)
Possession
The Sentinel
Wicker Man
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
Rosemary's Baby
Cabin Fever
Deadly Spawn
Martin
Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
Edge of Sanity
The Beyond (Folci)
Blue Sunshine
House by the Cemetery
Natural Born Killers
Death Dream
Blood of the Virgins
The Thing (remake)
Shallow Grave
Curse of the Demon
Henry; Portrait of a Serial Killer

When 197 People Were Arrested for Protesting the War

music by M-R-S

Several Saucerfuls of Syd

Here is my report on the Piper at the Gates of Dawn box set.

First, a little background....back in the day, boys and girls, it took some searching to find this record. I found an Italian pressing (stereo) in a record store in Greenwich Village and for the next 20 years (count 'em!) that's the version I played until every nook and cranny of the record was imprinted on my brain....so when I put the mono mix in the stereo yesterday, it was one of those times when you're in a familiar place that's changed slightly...something is different, but is it you? is it the drugs? or both? the nicest part of the mono mix is how close everything sounds. everything is up front, immediate.

The reprints of Syd's notebook pages (why did he use a typewriter?) give a glimpse of someone playing mad riffs of images and words, already slipping off the reels, never to return. Poor Syd! while WE are still around let's blast our stereos in full psychedelic glory!

Sympathy for the Devil

"Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 examines the dynamic relationship between rock music and contemporary visual art, a relationship that crosses continents, generations, and cultures. Since the late 1950s this unlikely hybrid of rhythm-and-blues and country music has had an undeniable impact on society while drastically changing with the times. Artists from the 1960s to the present have maintained a strong connection to rock, beginning with Andy Warhol’s involvement with The Velvet Underground (who released their Warhol-produced landmark album The Velvet Underground and Nico in 1967 -- the same year the MCA opened its doors). More recently, artists such as Slater Bradley, Raymond Pettibon, and Mike Kelley have created album covers and music videos for rock bands, while many noted rock musicians such as John Lennon, Bryan Ferry, and Peter Townsend have emerged from art schools. " at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art

Death Valley 69

Straight outta Starbucks!

Hip gnosis

"Sun: I've always wondered why hipgnosis was spelled hipgnosis [and is pronounced hypnosis].

Thorgerson: ...It was actually scrolled on our door by some passing narcotic person in the middle of the night. It was scratched on the door of our apartment, and it appealed to us. It's a nice word, but it was spelled on the door like that." interview with Hipgnosis designer Storm Thorgerson, creator of many famous Pink Floyd album covers.

From this weekend's Nutstock 5:

Make Music, Not War

I donated this autoharp to Operation Happy Note, a program run by a music store in Minnesota that sends musical instruments to soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. I figure this instrument is easy to play and I hope it will bring some soldier happiness and perhaps a few moments of peace.

Kill Yer Idols

Hats off to Paul Addis, whose prank at Burning Man resulted in him being arrested for arson. Does anyone see the irony in this?

Back in the bad old nineties my downtown LA scenester friends would make the pilgrimage to Burning Man, returning with stories of psychedelic binges and artistic freakouts. I always passed on attending because I prefer my desert empty.

"....she sounds less like Public Enemy than the Spice Girls" Brent Burton reviews the latest M.I.A. record.

Dog Daze Update

Welcome back sun!

New book about The Source, the commune run by Father Yod.

Trailer for a new movie about the Brotherhood of Eternal Love (via Magpie)

The Foreign Press plays Mt. Pleasant tomorrow...Spectrum on Sunday!

Just Married

newlyweds
Originally uploaded by stereogab

August 9th we tied the knot at the courthouse in Rockville. A happy day indeed.

wave farm broadcasting system

wave farm broadcasting system
Originally uploaded by BarrettJ

Drove the 730 mile round trip to Campfire Sounds at free103point9's Wave Farm this past weekend. It's an idyllic setting with friendly people and a hippy vibe. Nothin' wrong with that...caught some video footage of Sunburned Hand of the Man, who cranked out a heavy psychedelic jam in the summer afternoon.

Happy Birthday Jerry

Gone but not forgotten...

Astronomical Dominoes

Thoughts While Driving the New Jersey Turnpike

When are cars getting colors again? Every one is silver. And most of them are SUVs. There are lots and lots of silver SUVs out there. Why is everyone driving a silver SUV? It is because everyone else is driving a silver SUV?......At the rest stop there is a rock band in line at the Starbucks. Each one of them is a different rock band dude stereotype. There is the surfer rock dude, the new wave rock dude, and the heavy metal rock dude. Gab asks who they are and I say "Bon Jovi". The woman behind me gets very excited. I don't have the heart to tell her that I was joking......Do people from Scagsville get teased about the name of their town? Girls especially, I would assume. Or has no one thought of that before me? ......Flipping through the radio stations near Fort Lee we come across a hyperactive organ solo. A few notes in I wager it's Deep Purple. After another 30 minutes of drum solos and a 5 minute ending "crescendo" I revise my guess to ELP. Wrong! It's Deep Purple, live. Never second guess on the Jersey Turnpike.

Help Todzilla

from my friend Pat:

If I had a nickel for everytime somebody told me what a good friend toddzilla is, well, I'd have already paid his huge medical bill and I'd probably be rich!!! However, that isn't the case. In fact, toddzilla was involved in a hit and run accident and was left with two broken hips and internal bleeding. His surgery is set for tomorrow morning and is quoted at $6,000, hopefully nothing goes wrong.

The reason for this email is to raise money for toddzilla and his surgery alone. Illus ideas, inc., has created a completely new t-shirt that we will be selling for $40 dollars. It is being offered to men and boys in all sizes and in these colors: black, navy blue and forest green. For women and girls we are offering t-shirts in all sizes and in two styles: low cut neck and a regular cut neck, colors: black, navy blue and forest green. Pull-over sweat-shirts are being sold for $60 and are being offered in all sizes and in these colors: black, navy blue and forest green.

Please understand that todd is my best friend and if my art doesn't sell then he can't get his hips fixed and that just isn't right especially because he did nothing wrong, and whoever it was didn't even stop to check on him...

The Doctor who will be operating on toddzilla has told me that toddzilla will be ready to come home wednesday or thursday, and at that time i have to pay the bill. Please, if not for the cool shirt you will be purchasing, donate $40 dollars to todd's hip surgery fund raiser and you'll recieve a free t-shirt with choice of color and size (paypal: illusclothing at yahoo dot com)

Tortoise

Caught a great Tortoise show at the Black Cat this past Saturday night. I heard echoes of 70's-era Miles and Faust in their jams. Two drummers are always a good thing.

After the show I tried to go backstage to say hello but Black Cat security wouldn't let me and wouldn't send word back to Dan either. I wasn't the only one; not even Ian Svenonius could get back there. I know bitching about the BC staff's bummer attitude is old news but I have to point it out because it does nothing for the scene. If dealing with drunken twentysomethings is making you miserable then maybe it's time to go back to school and get that degree.

Yes!

Negative
Originally uploaded by dronepop

Happy Birthday!

pinkflower
Originally uploaded by stereogab

Kwik-E-Mart, Bladensburg, MD 7.1.07

Kwik-E-Mart, Bladensburg, MD 7.1.07
Originally uploaded by warrenjabali

Unbelievable...

If You Be My Dixie Chicken I'll Be Your Tennessee Lamb

28 years after Lowell George left his mortal coil in the nearby Key Bridge Marriot, I journeyed out to the pastoral splendor of Wolf Trap to hear Little Feat. I happen to like 10 minute guitar solos so their shows are my cup of tea.

Stereogab is demanding that The Aliens come to DC. So am I. So should you.

PJ has set up a blog for his Shanghai - Helsinki - Moscow trip next month.

Blind Bim now has a porch with a house attached.

Irish Poets Selling Cars

Made the mistake of watching a few minutes of network television this evening. Made an even worse mistake not muting the commercials. So I got to hear The Pogues "Sunny Side of the Street" playing over an ad for a Cadillac SUV. Now I know that song's far from their best, and I know selling songs for ads is old news, but it still sucks. It sucks because Cadillac sucks and SUVs suck and the whole finely-tuned consumer culture corporate juggernaut sucks.

The last line in the song goes: As my mother wept it was then I swore / To take my life as I would a whore.

Guess old Shane is just living up to his word.

Harold Johnson, September 30, 1918 - June 15, 2007

My uncle Harold Johnson died this past Friday morning. He was one of a vanishing breed. He was a farmer, like his father before him and like his son is now. He never traveled by jet and never had a desk job. He lived his whole life in the house where he was born. He was easygoing, witty, and had a love for the land and his place on it.

West Central Tribune obituary
WILLMAR — Harold Alexander Johnson, 88, of Willmar, died Friday at Rice Memorial Hospital.
The service will be at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Svea Lutheran Church. Burial will be in the church cemetery.

He was born Sept. 30, 1918, on the family farm near Svea to Axel T. Johnson and Emily E. (Bouska). He grew up in rural Svea and attended the Sunnyside School. On Nov. 19, 1949, he married Millicent Forsberg in St. Paul. For many years he farmed on the family farm. He was a former member of the Sunnyside School Board, the Svea Coop Store Board and the church council.

He is survived by his wife; six children, Rebecca Johnson of Lake Lillian, Deborah Johnson of Willmar, David Johnson of Willmar, Jennifer Johnson of Willmar, Barbara (and Wayne) Stomberg of Renville and Douglas (and Teresa) Johnson of Willmar; three grandchildren; a sister, Barbara (and Wendell) Jones of Ridgefield, Conn.

He was preceded in death by a brother and three sisters.

New Song

A new Leafy Green song for summer.

Also have to commend film maker Esther Robinson for her poignant documentary about her uncle Danny Williams, a film maker in Warhol's Factory scene who got lost along the way. Interviews with Gerard Malanga, Brigid Polk (aka "The Duchess") and Billy Name, among others.

Donovan is blogging! And check out this Modern Lovers bootleg courtesy of Parabells.

Opel

Originally uploaded by tsogy

clever flickr people

iGasm

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/ipod/apple-gets-its-knickers-in-a-twist-over-the-igasm-263184.php

Kick Out the Jams

Just started reading Guitar Army by John Sinclair and I'm already lovin' the agitprop hippy revolutionary vibe. It's along the lines of Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book or Jerry Rubin's Do It

Sinclair and the MC5 all lived and worked together in a collective called Trans-Love Energies. Guitar Army reads like a police log; one bust after another. Being a long haired freak in Detroit was not an easy choice (and probably still not).

Six years into the creepy American police state mentality, the overseas killing machine, and the deepening cultural rut, it's fun to read about people taking risks, openly defying authority, and trying to figure out an alternative to the status quo.

What I'm Diggin Lately

The new Clientele album is already my summer soundtrack, and it's not even summer yet (look, they have a blog)

The Holy Mountain, a tripped-out movie by Alejandro Jodorowsky

Twitter

60 Minute IPA

Riding bikes with Stereogab

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Kink Stones New York Doll

Media Mavens

Wow, what a day! Stereogab's commentary gets published and this video promo for the Open House project is screened at a press conference in Congress. That jangley song on the soundtrack? Pure Leafy Green goodness! Yowza!

Family Photo

jonesclan
Originally uploaded by stereogab.

April 2007, New York City

Free Fall at 614 Miles per Hour

This cool video for the Boards of Canada song"Dayvan Cowboy" uses footage from a skydive by Joseph Kittinger who "made the final jump from the Excelsior III at 102,800 feet (31,330 m). He was in freefall for 4 minutes and 36 seconds reaching a maximum speed of 614 mph (988 km/h) before opening his parachute at 18,000 feet (5,500 m)."

Later in the video there is footage of Laird Hamilton, big wave surfer extrodinaire (profiled in the movie "Riding Giants")

The Soft Machine

Lord Fuzzy has a great 1971 Soft Machine concert recording that's been making my Metro ride better lately. And there's footage from the UFO Club in 1967. And then there's Gong

More Ways to Spend Your Time and Money

Other Music unveiled their digital store (with the same clunky design of their original web site). I prefer Anthology Recordings, with their uber-obscure sixties/seventies titles and well-written descriptions. Don't know much about Klicktrack but they're the only ones who have this Charlie and Edsor release that I want after reading this post on Great God Pan. Still, nothing beats flipping through the bins of musty vinyl at Joe's Record Paradise.

Youtube continues to provideth, here with two clips from the same film on the hippy scene in London circa 1967. Opening clip shows The Who, another clip shows a Pink Floyd freak out along with goofy crowd shots.

love

gabislove
Originally uploaded by BarrettJ.

Love is in the air this spring.

New York Squeeze

Up in New York City for a few days, some wet, some dry. Saw Roky Erickson play the Bowery Ballroom Sunday night. I've been a 13th Floor Elevators fan for a long time now and it was great to see one of the last psychedelic renegades going strong and loud. Roky keeps the Devil at bay with rock and roll. It can save your soul, you know.

Speaking of rock and roll salvation, we said hello to Jimmy when we stopped at Trash and Vaudeville. There's not much left of the New York I roamed 25 years ago. Coming up on Avenue A I started getting nervous, because that used to be the final frontier. Silly me.

Oh yeah, there was a wedding too.

Here's a new song called New York Squeeze.

Since We Last Talked

They say in Web 2.0 that full disclosure is now the norm, although the phrase nobody sane strips down naked in front of their peers has me a bit worried....


Went to the Dean and Britta show last week. My fandom for Dean Wareham has remained constant since his Galaxy 500 days. This latest show was weak but I think it's admirable that he's trying a new direction (The Post's review was too nice).


I continue to slurp groovy tracks from the Neglected Stairways blog. The latest post contains a couple of songs (well, one and half, actually) from a Nick Drake Peel Session.



39 years ago this city was burning. Does a Giant supermarket or a Target (ironic name) heal the wounds? Still, things are changing despite the rednecks with rifles.

Dream

at Copal
Originally uploaded by BarrettJ.

Our home for a week

Happy Birthday!

yokohatgab
Originally uploaded by BarrettJ.

Happy Birthday to my best friend companion partner-in-crime soulmate! I hope you have a wonderful day and that the coming year brings fun, positivity, enlightenment, and fulfillment. I am sure that it will.

The bliss that condo ownership brings

yoga
Originally uploaded by BarrettJ.

Part of an ad for a new condo development on Carroll Street in Takoma.

Drinking at the Hirshhorn

This past Friday night, yours truly accompaniedStereogab to the Hirsshorn's After Hours (scroll down, their web site sucks) shindig. There was some art somewhere but our main focus (besides getting beers) was to check out Ian Svenonius on the decks (has anyone read his new book?)

The music was kinda low and the lights were way too bright but it was cool to hang out in the museum at night. It felt like a hipster office party, with all the security guards and tuxedo'd bartenders.

Arthur is Dead

Word is that Arthur Magazine has bitten the dust. Like the Beatles, or my first marriage, it starts out fun and ends up in court. Awhile back I got into an online tussle with Arthur publisher Jay Babcock over a CD that had been included with a recent issue. The CD was one of those creepy hip advertising things, a Tylenol ad campaign promo disguised as a "freak folk" sampler featuring bands like White Magic. Babcock argued that more advertising money was good for the health of Arthur but I saw it as a bad sign that the same folks who put out the Golden Apples of the Sun comp (also featuring White Magic....hmmm) would stoop to allow their name to be used to promote corporate ibuprophin. I now wonder if Laris Kreslins had similar doubts. But a five year run is about average for a rock band, a restaurant, or a magazine. Still, I'm sad to see Arthur go.

UPDATE: Arthur came back and is now available in select stores everywhere...

Forty Years Ago Today

On March 6, 1967 my mother,my father and yours truly departed from Dulles airport outside Washington D.C. bound for Saudi Arabia. My dad had been assigned to the American embassy in Jeddah. We did not know when we would return to America.

We flew on Pan Am 2 to London, then Frankfurt, then Istanbul, then Beirut. We landed in Beirut in a heavy rainstorm after lightning hit one wing of the plane. It took us so long to get our things together we went into the airport on the crew bus. We arrived in darkness and rain at the Phoenicia Hotel where we were staying. The next day we woke up to the beautiful Mediterranean sunlight.

You Did It!

You persevered, you didn't lose hope,

and you made it happen. This is just the beginning. Doesn't it ROCK?!

New Rare Psych Music Blog - Neglected Stairways

My friend Gunnar has a record collection that I envy, to put it mildly. Original monophonic 13th Floor Elevators albums, Velvet Underground bootlegs, long out-of-print Krautrock pressings, everything to put a psychedelic music fan into a state of covetous glee. Gunnar was kind enough to burn a few choice recordings to CD a couple years ago for me but now he has a blog where he is posting links to digitized downloads of some of the finest gems from his collection.

Syd Barrett Plunderphonic Fun

I cut up some footage of Syd and spliced up a track from Piper at the Gates of Dawn and this is what happened.

Galactic Zoo Mix Tape Club

Last fall I joined the Galactic Zoo Mix Tape Club. As a club member, I get 6 mix tapes over the course of a year. Last week number 2 showed up and, like number 1, it was full of crazy unknown garage bands, wobbly pop folk wonders, lo-fi space jams and all kinds of crazy sounds from the 60's and 70's. On this recent tape I only recognized two songs: "Who Dat?" by The Jury (which I have on an obscure compilation) and "Ramblin Gamblin' Man" by the Bob Seger Sound System (yes, that Bob Seger).

Plastic Crimewave (also known as Steve Krakow) is the man behind the tapes. He of course has a band (Plastic Crimewave Sound), writes and illustrates an art/music zine called Galactic Zoo Dossier, and curated the Two Million Tongues festival in Chicago.

Another Galactic Zoo Mix Tape Club membership benefit is a copy of the club's Manifesto, which is a really cool musing on the culture and experience of the mix tape. Thurston Moore got some mileage from praising the mix tape in his book but why would you read a book about mix tapes when you could join the Galactic Zoo Mix Tape Club and get actual mix tapes. Six of them!

The Best of 2006

2006 is almost over. I have a lot of good memories from this year. I also have some bad ones. But you can't have the yin without the yang.

I haven't seen as many Top 10 lists this year. And the ones I've seen have all been different. I think our culture is fragmenting into little fifedoms of art. I blame the internet.

Here's what I liked this year:

I liked the Modern Containment series, especially Hush Arbors and Kinski

I liked Terrastock 6

I liked seeing MV + EE and the Bummer Road at Wave Farm

I liked The Life Pursuit by Belle and Sebastian and I liked Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain by Sparklehorse

I liked seeing Comets on Fire live, and I liked their new record

I liked seeing Six Organs of Admittance

I liked the Feathers record

I liked A Scanner Darkly

I liked the Konono No. 1 show

I liked the Ray Davies show and the Bob Dylan show

I liked The Foreign Press shows and The Plums shows

I'm sure there's more that I forgot...

I also liked the earth ships outside of Taos and of course the leanto on the mountain in Vermont. I liked making friends with the pastor and the dentist (a.k.a. The Magician) at the community garden. I'm glad for those friends who found love and I'm sorry for those friends who lost it. I'm glad they caught my mom's cancer in time. I'm glad Brendan met Susannah. Gab's new tattoo rocks. I'm grateful to Hannu for releasing my record. And I'm grateful for all the good things in my life. And the bad. See you next year.

Notes From The Psychedelic Underground

With The Radio On

Take a look at this long article on Joanna Newsom in Arthur.

And another nice, in-depth article on Powell St. John of the 13th Floor Elevators.

An amusing little interview with Andy Partridge (XTC)

Over the past few weeks I've become addicted to Radio Blog

Rest in Peace, James Brown

Winter Arrives Today at 7:22 P.M. Eastern Standard Time

Got Sun ?
Originally uploaded by sirchuckles.

Happy Solstice!

Power to the People

EXCERPT FROM FORMER BLACK FLAG BASSIST CHUCK DUKOWSKI INTERVIEW IN ARTHUR NO. 25:

"The people in power don’t want to have places where young people can get together easily in any numbers, to associate and trade ideas and have some community besides the schools where they’re super-segregated and super-repressed. I remember when Chief Davis, the former LAPD police chief, said in an interview, ‘What you need to do is bear down on them when they’re young. You break them like a horse and then you can ride them the rest of their lives.’
"I think it was Davis, maybe it was his predecessor, but I remember reading that in the damn paper! Motherfuck! It was something that I, on the outside of things, had been thinking was going on, and now I realized that that WAS what was going on. We’d go do our [Black Flag] concert, come outside and see the cops beating up all the people who came to hear us. They’d bust them all up, breaking legs and arms. Just beating the crap out of people. It was all about keeping people down and showing them who’s boss before they get a chance to feel like they can do something with their lives.

"About a year and a half ago, I went to a friend’s party where he had these Jarocho musicians playing. The music is from the Veracruz part of Mexico, it’s a kind of music that’s African and indigenous. These groups are made up of extended families. So the whole group, this extended family, is performing in different combinations and different groups, from the oldest people to the youngest: everybody’s getting their little cameos, everybody’s playing support to everybody else or taking a moment where they’re the ‘star,’ so to speak. What was interesting to me was the breakdown of the ageism. Everybody was participating in it. I started thinking that this is probably closer to where people are coming from, naturally.

"The division by age is probably on purpose. There’s always a desire to divide and pit various groups in the culture against one another, and thereby weaken any chance of people getting together and coming up with alternatives to the governmental infrastructure for holding things together, and the giant corporations and things that hire them. It’s like at school, where they line everybody up by age, and then have them line up by height, or make them learn to march in lines: all of this kind of programming and dividing people up, and ultimately pitting them against one another, is so that they’re easier to control. It’s so much easier to take advantage of somebody who is denied the insights of their forebears. It’s so much easier to take advantage of somebody if they are robbed of the energy of their offspring. I think you need to keep everybody engaged with each other, and then the culture is rich, and has the life and vitality of the whole human family that’s there."

Gone But Not Forgotten

(thanks Hackmuth)

Freaky Sounds from the United Kingdom and Beyond

I recently purchased a compilation entitled "Singing at the Moon" from a U.K. label called Singing Knives. I hadn't heard of any of the artists listed nor the label so it was a bit of a gamble but it came recommended and was the price of a couple of beers (my standard metric for buying music).

My favorite track is "Santa Flauta" by the Michael Flower Band, who appear to be influenced by Angus Maclise judging from the manic hand drumming, droning organ, and that most psychedelic of sounds: the flute played through a delay pedal (other practitioners of this technique include Bardo Pond and Meat Beat Manifesto)

There are a couple of tracks I skip through but overall there's an interesting mix of sounds on this disc.

The Harder They Come

Last week after work one day I listened to the Jimmy Cliff song "Sitting in Limbo", off the soundtrack "The Harder They Come". I hadn't listened to the album in several years but that day the song kept going through my head. Back in the day this album was an essential part of every record collection. I remember sitting on a sand bar in the middle of the Wisconsin River on a hot summer day with a bunch of friends, coolers of beer, and a tape player with one tape playing the soundtrack over and over again (and with our wasted group singing along to "Pressure Drop"). Fast forward to last week; the day after playing the album I saw the obituary for Perry Henzell, who created the film. Chalk it up to cosmic coincidence...