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...

Spiritualized

The other night I pulled out a copy of the Spiritualized album Lazer Guided Melodies for the first time in a long while. I found it just as good as ever. I started thinking about J. Spaceman's reputation and wondered how a strung-out junkie could have such a methodical approach to his music with such attention to detail. When I hear Chinese Rocks I don't doubt that Johnny Thunders was living from one fix to the next but Spiritualized has always sounded like the work of someone who is more together than his image suggests. In this interview, Jason Pierce shines a light on his current state.

Astronomy Domine - December 2nd

Thoughts on How the Music Business Sucks

The Wall Street Journal ran an article today about a PlayStation game called Guitar Hero. The game is sort of a karaoke approach to guitar playing where the player presses buttons on a little guitar to hit the notes of a song. The WSJ piece talks about how musicians such as Korn, My Chemical Romance, Incubus and other crappy bands play the game so much that they miss recording sessions and sound checks. If these guys were really into music, if they were really musicians and not manufactured celebrities, they'd spend their time furthering their craft, not playing a PlayStation game.

Also speaking of the music business, The Register ran an interesting interview with Peter Jenner, former manager of the Clash and Pink Floyd, where he talks about the stupidity of the current major labels and his ideas for new ways to make money making music in the new era.

And in this interview Ian Mackaye (Minor Threat, Fugazi, The Evens) share some interesting thoughts on the business of establishing ticket prices for shows and why playing shows in bars (or seeing shows in bars) is such a drag.

Jason Diemilio of Azusa Plane, R.I.P.

What if you were a musician and you lost your hearing? Jason Diemilio experienced this and made a sad choice. Michael Chaiken remembers him:

There are a few people in my life whose existence alone protects me somehow. Jason Diemilio was one of them. In the last years of his life he had become subsumed by underground, electronic, dance music. He traveled the world--visiting clubs in London, Spain and Ibiza. We spent several delirious nights together at a now defunct afterhours spot in the Tribeca section of New York City called Arc. Totally consumed by this music, Jason had envisioned carrying on the Azusa Plane--but in a totally new direction. He had begun teaching himself how to mix and produce, but his ensuing health problems forced him to stop, which was absolutely devastating for him. Not only was he unable to make music, but was also eventually deprived of his greatest single pleasure--simply listening to music. Jason suffered from a chronic and seemingly incurable pain. He had a seriously debilitating condition known as tinnitus and hypercusis that was brought about by extreme sound exposure; a result of playing in bands most of his life without protection for his ears. The nerve damage was severe and irreversible. Recently it had become even more acute. He held out for as long as he could and lived as he died. With grace and indefatigable courage. Jason was open to the simplest beauties of the world and never could stop being enraged at what fouled it. I loved him to the very core of my being. He will be missed. By many.

R.I.P. (listen to today's Drug Music set of his work)

And Climbing the Charts at Number 35 is...

me!

free103point9 Online Radio
August 2006 Top 40

1. Scanner with MCs from the New Horizon Youth Centre, Night Jam (Bette)
2. Edmund Mooney, The Eight Nerve (self)
3. Shawn Onsgard, Pachyderm (self)
4. Lycaon Pictus, Personal Disaster (Avant-God)
5. Various artists, Montreal Sound Matter/Montreal matiere sonore (Pogus)
With Chantal Dumas, Tomas Phillips, Francisco Lopez, and others.
6. Fluorescent Grey, Lying on the floor mingling with god in a tijuana motel room next door to a veterinary supply store (Isolate Records)
7. Fortner Anderson, Six Silk Purses
With Chantal Dumas, Christof Migone, and others.
8. Anla Courtis, Tape Works (Pogus Productions)
9. Sabir Mateen's Shapes, Textures, and Sound Ensemble, Prophecies Comes to Pass (577)
10. Judy Dunaway, Mother of Balloon Music (innova)
With Damian Catera, Flux Quartet, Ryuko Mizutani, and others.
11. John Blum Astrogeny Quartet, John Blum Astrogeny Quartet (Eremite)
With William Parker, Denis Charles, and Antonio Grippi.
12. Dan Joseph, Archae (mutablemusic)
13. The Khan Jamal Creative Arts Ensemble, Drumdance to the Motherland (Eremite)
14. Carnival Skin, Carnival Skin (Nemu Records)
With Bruce Eisenbeil, Klaus Kugel, Perry Robinson, Peter Evans, Hilliard Greene.
15. Bitrate, NF3 (db Recording)
16. Bhob Rainey, Two Bites of a Bitter Sweet 7" (Evolving Ear)
17. Matt Rogalsky, Memory Like Water (XI Records)
18. Prana Trio, After Dark (Circavision)
19. Insects with Tits, Insects with Tits (804noise)
20. Lily Gottlieb-McHale, Car Harp '05-'06 (self)
21. Kidd Jordan + Hamid Drake + William Parker, Palm of Soul (Aum Fidelity)
22. Dual, Pyroclastics (Quodibet Recordings)
23. Michael Evans + Jeff Arnal, MEJA (C3R)
24. dreamSTATE, Between Realities (espace)
25. Peeesseye, commuting between the surface & the underworld (Evolving Ear)
26. Andy McWain + Albey Balgochian + Laurence Cook, Vigil (Fuller Street Music)
27. Rothkamm, Astronaut of Inner Space (Flux Records)
28. The Moglass, Sparrow Juice (Nexsound)
29. My Fun, The Quality of Something Audible (thelandof.org)
30. Pee in My Face with Surgery, Damnation Road (Chocolate Monk)
31. Various artists, Electricity is Your Friend (3pinrecordings)
DisinVectant, Sara Ayers, and others.
32. Laura Ortman, Tens of Thousands (self)
33. Ground Monkeys/Mouthus/Dosdedos/Tan as Fuck 7" (Heat Retention #7)
34. a.m. salad, toporific cd-r (Sloth Jinni)
35. Leafy Green, Leafy Green (self)
36. George Steeltoe Ensemble, Church of Yuh (Heat Retention)
With Michael Barker, Daniel Carter, Thomas Clark, Jay Dunbar, Lathan Hardy, Trevor Healy, Brian Osborne, Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut, and Marc Zajack.
37. Jeff Arnal + Seth Misterka + Reuben Radding + Nate Wooley, Transit (Clean Feed)
38. The Sky Drops, Clouds of People (Fridabear)
39. Various artists, 8 Sound Works (New York Society for Acoustic Ecology)
Works from free103point9's "Tune (Out)))side" show July 4, 2005 at Wave Farm from EA, Andy Graydon, mpld, Michelle Nagai + Mike Hallenbeck, Ben Owen, Andrea Polli, Vatic, and Edmund Mooney.
40. Negativland, It's All in Your Head FM (Seeland)