Sunday, February 25, 2007

I GET ME MEDICIDE FROM THE NATIONAL ELF...

The inner debate still rages on with me about the amount of records I order these days from labels with such names as No Way and Painkiller. Is this a mid-life crisis or just a rethink of roots? Hmm... One thing's for sure, no matter how many spins I give that Wasted Time 7", I still got plenty of couch and grass time for anything revolving around the London based Morphogenesis troupe. The subtle creep and sweep of their ways has made many a late night seem like a pit of lush silver to me and that 'Stromatolites' jam from the late 90's still sounds pretty keen-o. Morphogenesis' Adam Bohman (pictured above) did up a solo joint sometime in '99 or 2000 entitled 'Music and Words' that I thought was a real crack-up. Lots of bed springs scraping and whatnot while Adam kept turning the handheld tape recorder on and off to tell you what he had for Boxing Day dinner at the folks' house and other such important facts. Repeated listenings to the disc proves the fact that the more mundane an object is, the more fascinating it becomes. So when I found out that another solo thing of Bohmans' had just come out on the Paradigm label (a racket owned and operated by fellow Morphogenesis member Clive Graham) entitled 'Bunhill Row', I snapped the sucker up real quick like at a local spooge shack and ran like hell back home to bust out the sweet green and lissen to it. When I got home and started to check out the cover, I gots alittle confused. The amount of song titles on the back rivaled the first D.R.I. LP or any Inca Eyeball release for that matter. Nothing went over the three minute mark. Something was fishy. Are these....like...ACTUAL SONGS?!?! Turns out the LP is a collection of bedroom recordings done by Bohman in the early 80's when everybodys' head in London was fulla demented homespun dreams. The gush of short, playful and downright juvenile improvised songs this LP shoots off is a real groin scratcher. Is this really a member of Morphogenesis? Not to stereotype, but I'd figure a member of this band in his late teens/early twenties would be practicing puffing on a pipe and saying 'Rather', not creating skewed pop tunes about old women and their vibrator collections. If you're a sucker for anything British, primitive and catchy, you need this like a Israeli rock star needs a cigarette in the eye and a good shove. If this came out at the time it was recorded, you know Chuck Warner would be re-issuing it and some hipster doofus would be trotting Adam around NYC introducing him like he was his new pornstar girlfriend. For now, it sits in the distinguished company of other forgotten artists re-discovered by Paradigm, like Brast Burn and Daphne Oram, which ain't no nothin' to sneeze at. Done up in a numbered edition of 500 and the whole bit...go grab it before those Paradigm snewts find out some Cro-Mags fan told you about it...

http://www.fusetronsound.com/label.php?whomart=BOHMAN,ADAM

Sunday, February 18, 2007

WHAT'S ITALIAN FOR 'DUH'?
I know to all the youngsters who still scour the pages of Maximum Rock 'N' Roll, Italy's Out With A Bang are old, old hat. So all you P.Y.T.s' out there can go back to downloading Swedish Hardcore demos and Swedish Hardcore Porn while I provide my service here to those (kinda) oldsters who are in a rut with their record buying and need some numbskull Punk Rock in their lives. I mean, you know more noise records are just gonna make you feel crappier about your lot in life. Are you buying these records for further listening pleasure or just to have a bunch of squares to line your shelves so's you can keep up with the jerk off Joneses? You could start really getting into collecting Black Metal I guess, but if you're gonna do that, why not just move to Williamsburg and buy a poodle? Don't get me started on all the cookie cutter floppy hatted juanny-come-latelys on the new weird circuit. I am a firm believer that the world will not return to being a garden of light until Vetiver die a slow, painful death right in front of my eyes. So I say the only way to get out of this rut on both a personal and spiritual level is to buy more records with song titles such as 'Do What My Cock Says' and 'Hurt Yourself'. Only then will you feel better about yourself and the world around you.

So, Out With A Bang released this one sided 12" on their own last year entitled 'I'm Against It' that set the Punker underground on it's ear with a ton of buzz. By the time I caught wind of it (wudda stench) the thing was long gone, snapped up by the whipper snappers on their skateboards and unicycles. Good for me that those repellent little bastards at the Fashionable Idiots label out there in Minnesota did up a domestic re-do of the thing, this time on a two sided seven inch. The grainy ass picture on the lyric sheet of this thing makes these guys look like Killroy ('member them?) or Circle of Shit, a real bunch of dirtbags full of leather, bristles, studs and booze. But their jams ain't real limey influenced at all. As I spin the disc more and more, all I can think of is a looser limbed Adolescents recorded in a friggin' toilet, which is a pretty sweet thought I think you'll agree. I know my rather lazy description of this disc doesn't really make it sound anymore unique than a million other Punker records out there, but it really holds something special in it's determined retardation. Since I've gotten hold of it, I have a spring in my step and a flutter in my heart. Turns out I just caught that peanut butter salmonella...

O.W.A.B. are coming to America in a few months, so go crush up your sisters' diet pills into a snortable form for them NOW. Go to the Fashionable Idiots website and mark the days until they come to your town. I guess you should order the seven inch while you're there too. I mean...if you wanna...

http://www.fashionableidiots.com/

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

BLITZ BUMMER ...Sorta ironic that my last post had some veiled reference to a Blitz lyric, as I have just found out that Nidge, founder of said band has recently passed. Turns out he was taking some scab laden line-up of his band across the U.S. when he was struck by a vehicle somewhere in Texas and died instantly. The fact the guy was hauling around America in the late '00's is strange enough. For his life to end on some barren strip of highway so far from his home is even stranger. He most likely was wearing some sorta lame ass Punk get-up when he died too. It's something straight out of 'Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains'. All they would of needed was The Magik Markers as their opening band and it would be perfect. Nonetheless, I know the dude's passing might mean nothing to your smarty pants self. To be honest, it really doesn't mean that much to me, except that the dude's music set me on fire as a kid. Still does. All I have to hear is those opening rings of 'Someones' Gonna Die' and that's it. It's on. I know, not as cool as saying some obscure Pysch jam inspired me to be a total asshole, but I'm tryin'...I really am.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

THE RECORD IS STILL BROKEN AND I STILL DON'T CARE (JUST LIKE THE KIDS ON THE STREET) Above -- Me showin' off my new tat. Wait'll ya see my Skullhead back piece. You'll shit five ways 'til Sunday!


Alotta the bigwigs out there in the chronic cocktail party they call 'the scene' keep axin' me 'Where's the updates? Where's the info? What's your opinion on the latest vacuum cleaner noises put onto a disc so's some grown man or woman doesn't have to go out and get a real job?' Believe it or not, I try to be diplomatic with these gentle souls when I tell them (in the nicest way possible) I could really give a shit about most of the crap they ask me about. At this point in the game, I feel no need to listen to anything that's going on in this cock licking competition for people who (I guess) missed out on being popular in High School. It all makes me ill. We all know you liked Indie Rock in High School, so please remove that brand new obscure early 80's Foreign HC shirt at once. Where did you buy that shit? Hot Topic? You are aware you're an adult, right? Jeeze. It all reminds me of that Lester Bangs quote from the year before he died that went something like 'Wanting to listen to Hank Williams or The Velvet Underground over The Go-Go's or Squeeze isn't a matter of nostalgia for me, it's just a matter of good taste'. I hear the man on that one. Why the fuck would I want to familarize myself with the latest hollow whack-off from Matthew Bower or John Olson when I could listen to The Byrds or Cressida or Grand Funk or (even better) complete utter silence. Besides the hordes who try to be something that they're not, the other thing that really makes me sick are older people who say it's 'important' to 'keep up' with what's going on. They sniff around whatever The Wire deems 'relevent' and ask what DubStep twelves are 'essential'. It's like fucking corpses fighting off the maggots. They think if they actually sit back and enjoy something for a moment that they'll fade away into the wallpaper of life. Shit man...that's what I dream for! When I'm 50 years old, the last thing I want to be doing is hanging out with the 2023 equivilent of Lambsbread or Loefah or whatever. I hope I have enough sense by then to be either retired or dead. Here's to hopin'...

BITTER OLD MAN PLAYLIST

Step Forward - '10 Song e.p' 7" (Painkiller)
Homostupids - 'The Intern LP' CD (Parts Unknown)
Al Stewart - 'Orange' lp (CBS)
Richard Lerman - 'Music of Richard Lerman 1964-97 ' 2 CD (EM)
Tony Hazzard - 'Tony Hazzard Sings Tony Hazzard' CD (Rev-Ola)
Eric Matthews - 'It's Heavy In Here' CD (Sub Pop)
Catherine Howe - 'What a Beautiful Place' CD (Numero Group)
The Ray Pacino Ensemble - 'Be My Lonely Night' tape (LalLalLal)
Bob Dylan - 'Modern Times' CD (CBS)
Dry Rot - 'Permission' 7" (Cold Vomit)