When it starts to get close Christmas takes on an otherworldly, nightmarish quality, especially when you’re going in and out of stores searching for that “perfect” gift.  One thing I hate is getting requests for Christmas – in other words, “if you are gonna get me a gift, get me this …”  Hey do I look like friggin’ Santa Claus?

I was in a store the other day and went into a “Twin Peaks” -like dream state.  Hoo, I was afraid that little dancing dwarf guy was gonna come out as Santa Claus!  Scary.  Let’s cut through the crap and haze and dissolve this nightmare with some rockin’ holiday tunes.

MP3: “Christmastime” by Smashing Pumpkins

MP3: “White Christmas” by Otis Redding

MP3: Seasons Greetings from Tito Jackson

MP3: “Up On The Housetop” by the Jackson Five

MP3: “Someday At Christmas” by Pearl Jam

MP3: WMMS Christmas Message From Bruce Springsteen (1974)

MP3: “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Bruce Springsteen & Friends

MP3: “River” by Joni Mitchell

MP3: “Good King Wenceslas” by Butthole Surfers

MP3: “O Holy Night Cha Cha Cha” by Brave Combo

MP3: “I Believe In Father Christmas” by Emerson, Lake & Palmer

MP3: “Presents For Christmas” by Solomon Burke

MP3: “Rockabilly Christmas Ball” by Dwight Twilley

MP3: “Come All Ye Faithful Surfer Girls” by the Chevelles

MP3: “Little Saint Nick (alternate version)” by the Beach Boys

It’s raining outside, so….

1. Hole (grunge, 1989)

2. Butthole Surfers (alternative, SUA)

3. Revolting Cocks (industrial, SUA)

4. Armageddon Dildos (EBM, Germania)

5. Bif Naked (indie punk, Canada)

I KNOW I make it seem effortless, but pulling this shit together isn’t half as easy as it looks, y’know.

Yes, I could easily spend a couple of lazy days on the internet, max out the credit cards, order a mountain of vinyl and probably just about manage to get hold of every dusty old record that I’ve somehow conned myself into believing I need to buy again.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a bottomless bank account, and in any case buying music online doesn’t really float my boat. Compared to the thrills and spills of buying vinyl in the real world it’s a clinical, sanitised, altogether less satisfying experience. Where is the thrill of the chase?

There is no journey, no endeavour, no striving. No fun.

Having said all that, the journey, the endeavour and the striving can become tedious. Especially when you find yourself yet again looking through endless racks of punk, rock, psychedelia and US alternative tunes in search of the elusive category in which that particular shop has chosen to file the resolutely uncategorisable Butthole Surfers.

If Buttholes records do ever come into shops like Vinyl Exchange and King Bee, they seem to go out again very quickly.

I’ve been trying to get hold of some of the stuff I write about here for decades and okay, I’ll admit it, sometimes I waver in my bloody-minded if more or less entirely pointless off-line fundamentalism (well, pointless apart from keeping the people who work in record shops in employment that is).

It’s a mixture of fixation and compulsion and naked desire versus an abstract point of principle. And unfortunately, sometimes there’s a gap in your life that only a Buttholes Surfers record can fill. Maybe even two Butthole Surfers records. But you have to do it now. Immediately.

I had just such a moment a couple of weeks ago and the only way to sort it out right there and then was to do it online. Bingo. Instant gratification, supposedly, at a cost of £45.31 including P&P. I’m not proud of myself. I am a very bad vinyl nerd. And while you might think I have more money than sense, I don’t actually have that much money either.

Either way, for good or ill, copies of the Buttholes’ debut album, Psychic .. Powerless .. Another Man’s Sac, and the Cream Corn From The Socket Of Davis EP are now winging their way to me, courtesy of Black Light Records in Aarhus, Denmark, via netsoundsmusic. Entirely justified national postal strike notwithstanding.

I first came across the Buttholes in 1985, when staying at the house of Noel and Jayne from northern noiseniks AC Temple in Sheffield’s Abbeydale Road student enclave. They’d been kind enough to offer me a bed after some gig somewhere or other.

I know this because I actually wrote in my fanzine a short while afterwards:

“Someone once described the essence of the Butthole Surfers as ‘DIRTY SEX’, well, add to that ‘AND DRUGS’ and you’re getting there.

“The first time I encountered the Butthole Surfers was through a sickly drug-haze in a feelthy northern sex and drugs hovel, surrounded by various members of a feelthy northern sex and drugs combo ..”

Could be wrong, but I think when the zine this was in came out was more or less the same time the AC Temple guys fell out with me. Well, they stopped getting in touch. Then again, I stopped getting in touch with them as well.

I was just messing about really, trying to find interesting ways to write, experimenting with different styles and all that. I was saying stuff for effect, essentially, playing with form because I didn’t have much in the way of content.

Noel and Jayne didn’t have a ‘feelthy’, dirty house at all, so you can see why they might have taken offence.

Then again, I could have done something I’m not even aware of. What’s the line? There are things we know we don’t know but there are also things we don’t even know that we don’t know. That’s about right. I think I might have been quite irritating in general at the time.

I was pretty drunk by the time we got to their place and we smoked about a million spliffs before Noel stuck on what turned out to be the Buttholes’ debut album, Psychic .. Powerless .. Another Man’s Sac. Up to that point, I’d heard of the Buttholes – well, I’d read about them in fanzines and the music press – but not actually heard their music.

The album completely changed my head.

Unhinged, dissonant and ever-changing, the Buttholes created a big, beautiful noise that drew as much from hardcore punk as it did stadium rock, as much from the blues as from psychedelia, but with occasional flashes of honest-to-goodness accessibility even at this early stage in their career – in fact the track that initially caught my addled attention wasn’t one of the album’s many mind-bending extended psyche-jams but the mellow, melodic pop of Negro Observer.

I actually asked someone, ‘is this the Cure?’ and was virtually laughed out of the room.

Later, and even more hilariously, my inhaler ran out of juice and what with all the excitement and the pot smoking and the jumping up and down and acting daft, I had a massive asthma attack in the middle of the night. Apparently medical students used to simulate the effect by sticking plastic bags over their heads. Well, it makes me feel better.

Noel, bless him, took me down to the local surgery to get a replacement Ventolin first thing next morning. It’s always just great having to make a big song and dance about that kind of stuff. The upside is that finally getting a hit of Ventolin after an asthma attack is the best high EVER.

You’d have to ask the Buttholes themselves whether they’re still searching for the ultimate high, but they’ve certainly put the research in over the years.

Gibson J Haynes (pictured) and Paul Leary met at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Haynes, an accountancy major, was captain of the school basketball team and, incredibly, president of a fraternity (the attraction was that he had a working cannon at his disposal), while Leary, a veteran of Tex-Mex metal bands like the Crowd Pleasers, planned to become a stockbroker.

“It’s a liberal arts institution,” Haynes told Forced Exposure in 1986. “Shitload of queers there. Shitload of drugs. Shitload of loose bitches. A lotta fellatio and cunnilingus. It’s a pretty hip place to sex down for a couple of years. Study up, sex down. Get some drinkin’ done, play a little ball, smoke a little pot, spend a little money, eat a little bad food.”

Although they formed the band that would become the Butthole Surfers in 1981, it was the bizarre fanzine Haynes and Leary put together which gave them their first break. Strange VD was made up of photos of strange and terrible medical conditions, accompanied by unrelated descriptions of utterly fictitious diseases put together by the deeply twisted pair.

A copy of Strange VD fell into the hands of Dead Kennedys singer and Alternative Tentacles label boss Jello Biafra. He remembers Strange VD as “still one of the weirdest homemade zines I’ve ever seen in my life” – and you have to imagine that Jello Biafra is a man who has seen an awful lot of weird homemade zines in his time.

Impressed by the Buttholes’ extraordinary live show – which was to grow into a full-on multi-media spectacle complete with strippers, back-projected full-colour footage of penis reconstruction surgery and a ton of strobe lights, but which at this stage consisted of handfuls of photocopied roaches, clothes pegs in Haynes’s hair and just a couple of strobe lights – Biafra offered them a deal.

Alternative Tentacles released two well-received EPs, A Brown Reason To Live and The Live PCPEP, but failed to pick up the long player the Buttholes – which now also included fake sister and brother drumming duo King Coffey and Teresa ‘Nervosa’ Taylor, and bassist Bill Jolly – had recorded. Psychic .. Powerless .. Another Man’s Sac was eventually released by Detroit’s Touch & Go Records at the end of 1984.

A few months later, their follow-up album Rembrandt Pussyhorse was recorded but Alternative Tentacles would sit on the album for a year before deciding to pass on it.

Frustrated by this delay, and by apparent problems with royalty payments for their first two releases, the Buttholes took the exhilarating To Parter and Tornadoes from the unreleased album, added the simply insane Moving To Florida and Comb and came up with the Cream Corn From The Socket Of Davis EP (named in ‘honour’ of Sammy Davis Jnr, who lost an eye in a car crash in the Fifties). It was eventually released by Touch & Go a year after Psychic .. Powerless.

Jello Biafra says now of his time working with the Buttholes: “They’ve definitely got the Texas wildcatter mentality down.”

I bought Psychic .. Powerless a couple of weeks after I’d first heard it and the Cream Corn From The Socket Of Davis EP (both released on Fundamental in the UK) pretty much as soon as it came out. The Buttholes were my new favourite band. While I’d dabbled before, I  became an enthusiastic and avid trip-head (picking the liberty caps that put the fun into fungi on my one-time school’s field, poetically enough) while listening to their music very loud indeed.

A couple of months after I’d bought Cream Corn From The Socket Of Davis – and while I was still in the first flush of musical obsession – shroomed up and a little giggly, I went round to see a guy I’d just been introduced to, who still lived with his mum and dad in the village.

Rez’s mum, who I’d never met before, answered the door and fuck me if she wasn’t the spitting image of the woman on the EP’s cover. It was uncanny. And deeply disconcerting. I barely kept it together – especially when she insisted on me and Rez checking a video that someone had returned to the Spar where she worked with the addition of five minutes of hardcore porn taped over the end of the film. Surreal doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Luckily, I have a metal head. But I swear to God I very nearly lost it when she opened that door.

With Rembrandt Pussyhorse and their later albums Hairway To Steven and Locust Abortion Technician, the Buttholes got better and better and more and more popular. They toured the UK a few more times and I interviewed them in 1987, although by the time they recorded Independent Worm Saloon with Led Zep bassist John Paul Jones a few years later, I’d been distracted by something equally intense and trippy but a million times more danceable in the shape of acid house.

They even had a real life US top 40 hit with Pepper in the mid-Nineties. Somehow, thanks to Beavis & Butthead and Lollapalooza and our dark Lord Beelzebub, the Buttholes almost became mainstream for a while. For instance, KLM’s in-flight magazine had this to say about them:

“Obscenities, perverse humour, chaos and bad taste are the ingredients for a live performance by this Texas band. Be sure to see them while in Amsterdam!”

Meanwhile, Haynes has commented: “We don’t know what the fuck we’re doing. I guaran-fucking-tee it”.

The rest of the Buttholes story will keep for another time. Their career trajectory may be haphazard and slightly random but somehow the Buttholes always seem to do the right thing, one way or the other. They have integrity. They seem to be honest about what they do. And more importantly, they produce the goods.

Suffice to say, a couple of weeks ago, while onstage in Austin playing the final date of their last tour, Haynes said, “We played our first show as the Butthole Surfers in Austin. And this may be our last.”

I’m glad I managed to see them when they toured the UK last year, that’s all I’m saying. Thank you Eddie.

My records finally arrived from Denmark last week. I’m delighted to find that both have the same cover designs as the copies I bought all those years ago. Rez’s mum is impassively staring back at you through those thick bi-focals once again while the out-of-focus doll heads on the cover of the Buttholes’ debut album continue to recall your worst nightmares.

Which one do I play first?

The familiar wobbly dual guitars which open the two-part To Parter weave their mentalist magic once more before the song moves up a gear, slams into a prog-rock anthem about “the white man who sold Quaaludes to the monkeys” and I’m fully immersed in the Buttholes’ own very particular kind of anarchy and chaos. It’s good to be back.

The other tracks on the EP – the frantic rock’n’roll of Tornadoes, the blues-gone-wrong of Moving To Florida, the musical gila monster that is Comb -  make me feel like I’m coming up on a trip. It’s not actually happening yet but it’s definitely in the post. No shit. Is this an almost-flashback to all those sports field mushrooms? It kinda feels like it. Blimey. More please soon.

Listening to the album reveals a disorientating maelstrom of fuzz pedal overload, feedback, distortion and insane guitar solos, unsteady, off-kilter drums, gigantic, predatory basslines and a seemingly non-stop stream of consciousness from Haynes as he recounts a series of strange and disturbing visions, often with the aid of a bullhorn.

Firing off jumbo licks like a man possessed, Paul Leary’s ability to wring out the very last drops of wonderment from a ridiculously long, freeform solo – extending it way beyond what would be sensible in the hands of any other guitarist, and still making it work, marvellously – remains unsurpassed today. The man is a latter day Hendrix.

Psychic .. Powerless .. Another’s Man’s Sac is an extraordinarily inventive and relentlessly weird album, a bit wrong and fucked-up but utterly compelling. It’s woozy throb invokes the intricate, precise jazz chaos of Frank Zappa, the relentless sonic attack of Hawkwind, the absorbing repetition of Can and the Fall, the irony-free bombast of Black Sabbath and Led Zep – it makes me dizzy.

Negro Observer still sounds a bit like the Cure, but I never realised just how much Gibby Haynes sounds like Bryan Ferry before. The mutant blues of Lady Sniff is every bit as deranged as it ever was, the drum and bass repetition of Cherub still as deliciously hypnotic. Psychic .. Powerless is packed with really odd but simply fucking amazing tunes.

Hearing both records again after so long is a big rush. I want to play them again, immediately, even louder.

It feels like I’ve just had a long overdue hit of Ventolin.

But now I need to hear Rembrandt Pussyhorse again. Soon.

[Invaluable help with this piece came from the brilliant Negro Observer Buttholes fansite as well as the band’s own official online organ. Thank you please.]

See also: How not to interview the Butthole Surfers parts One & Two

Leah commissioned me to make a “dark (balding) clown” wig for Next Halloween (I happened to finish a year early)…
and it turned out pretty GOO-OOd!  Now accepting pre-orders…

Instead of making a Dia de los Muertos altar, I just managed to finish my beerbox mask in time for the Butthole Surfers show.  I wanted to get it on to the stage so that they would accept it as a gift, but it ended up just on the ground on the side of the stage.  <:-/
Who knows where it ended up?

IN OTHER NEWS!

what?  Well, there’s a new show at Po’Boys, which I would like to post pics of, and Side Sauce (new compilation CD by Night Viking & Friends) is allllmost done, and the puppet theater needs to be documented, completed (with help!), and used.

That’s some news!

Este António Sérgio que não volta a fazer rádio foi tão importante para a minha geração como o outro António Sérgio, que escrevia livros, o foi para a sua.

Sei que isto para muitos será uma heresia. Mas quem o seguiu, desde os tempos da Rotação na RR, gravando programas inteiros nas velhas k7’s, única forma de ouvir a música que só ele passava em Portugal, e quem entenda que a música para nós ocupou o espaço dos ensaios, a comparação pode ser parva mas faz sentido.

António Sérgio abriu uma estrada de Lisboa a Londres e a Nova York que não existia, uma estrada com ligação directa às ruas de má fama, desviada de outros caminhos com passadeiras, os das todo poderosas editoras que moldavam o consumo da música moderna à maneira do negócio e da tacanhez, repetindo infindáveis Baby I Love You. Trazia canções que nos falavam de jovens urbanos chateados com o mundo, e era isso que nós também queríamos ter o direito a ser. Há uma revolução escondida nessas esquinas, obrigado por nos teres trazido decibéis dela.

Resta-me a consolação de saber que quando chegar ao inferno ele já lá estará a passar música. Pobre Diabo, a sua vida nunca vai ser a mesma.

Soltas:

• Martin Rev – Whisper (excerto);
• The The – Perfect 12”;
• The Creatures – Miss the Girl;
• Passions – Skin Deep 12”;
• Art of Noise – Beat Box (excerto);
• Theatre of Hate – Do You Believe In the West World;
• Virgin Prunes – Baby Turns Blue;
• Beatnigs – Television (The Drug of the Nation);
• World Domination Enterprises – Jah Jah Call You;
• Big Audio Dynamite – Much Worse 12”;
• XTC – Nearly Africa;
• Butthole Surfers – John E Smoke;
• The Fall – Strychnine;
• Dead Kennedys – Kill the Poor;
• Shriekback – This Big Hush.

O conhecimento da música que fez este Endrominus foi obra do António Sérgio. Muitos dos seus achados deixámo-los por descobrir. Mas, é o que importa, ficou-nos o olfacto. Em grande parte a ele o devemos.

Texto e sua leitura – João José Cardoso (originariamente no Aventar)

Voz e selecção – Pedro Lemos

1h01m33s – 56Mb

Download Endrominus 065

Attention all you Nerfherders, Chumbawumbas, and Puddles of Mudd: take heart. Tuesday was an important day for every clumsily-named rock band yearning to escape self-imposed exile on the silly rack.  NME’s Butthole Surfers retrospective, “Gnarly Stoned Surf,” marks the 2,000th time the Texas-bred altsters have been taken seriously in print, without any glib preemptive consideration of the words “Butthole” and/or “Surfers.”

“It’s not only the quantity of our articles that address them as an actual band, but the sheer consistency of them,” reports NME Editor-in-Chief Brad Michaels, who has never once thought to laugh at the title of the band’s 1985 release, Rembrandt Pussyhorse. “96% of the articles we’ve printed on the Surfers in question are concerned with their use of pretaped recordings, their breakthrough single “Pepper,” or their ever-undulating line-up.  Only 4% of our articles have smugly pondered whether “Butthole Surfers” might refer to surfers who steer their surfboards with their asses, or anthropomorphic buttholes who happen to be adept surfers, or very tiny surfers navigating some theoretical tidal system encircling a human anus.  It’s a remarkable record for both the Buttholes and for this publication.”

“They could have made things a lot easier for themselves, and they didn’t,” adds not-kidding rock journalist Ken Bloom.  “I mean, a PG-13 reference to the human asshole? Really? How do you know you won’t wake up one day and find yourself opening for some Wierd Al impersonator in Minnessota/St. Paul?  Short answer is, you don’t.  The aesthetic line between Oingo Boingo and They Might Be Giants is not as thick as some might hope. It’s half a trumpet; a redheaded bass player; appearing to enjoy yourself. Then suddenly you’re out on your ass covering Smash Mouth songs for your kids or someone elses.  Dubbing oneself a “Butthole Surfer” is the nomenclature equivalent to recording Metal Machine Music and then releasing it in slow motion. It took genius fucking balls, man.”

“It hasn’t always been easy to resist making the occasional mid-sentence throwaway punchline,” admits Michaels. “Unfortunately for all of us, the imagery that their name evokes goes far beyond the literal.  I say “Butthole Surfers” aloud, and, literally, in my mind right now, is an image of a guy in a sportcoat and nylon shorts holding a Twinkie snack cake against his ass, and then pretending that he’s shitting out that same Twinkie snack cake.  But do I mention that in a back page biopic for The Village Voice? No, I do not. These guys revolutionized the use of tape looping in American music, they’ve managed to stay relevant since 1981 while doing so. We’re not just riffing on Hoobastank here.  I’m pretty sure these guys have done heroin.”

“What’s really remarkable is that they held on to their “Butts,” and the journalistic press rewarded them as such.  In the late 80s, they could’ve easily abbreviated their name to “B.H. Surfers” for that instant oblivious-dad sales bump.  And they stayed strong on into the early 90s, resisting the obvious switch to “Asshole Surfers” even as their Gen-X fanbase was becoming increasingly enamored with HBO-magnitude swearing.  It goes without saying that a quiet 1996 edit to “Bunghole Surfers” could have launched any number of Beavis and Butthead Do America cross-promotionals.  Now “Butthole Surfers” is a name that can evokes credibility and even timelessness, not just a van of teens farting into a Carls Jr. drive-thru window. Are you listening, the “artists” formerly known as Rainbow Butt Monkeys?”

“Put quotation marks around ‘artists,’” Michaels added, leaning deep into his first smile of our time together.

But how are the Buttholes themselves responding to the news?  Characteristically aloof.  I caught up with them in a parking lot next to the Arizona turnpike.

“That’s the shit, I guess” slurs vocalist Gibby Haynes, lying motionless in a children’s swimming pool slowly leaking absinthe and kool-aid.  “Fuck angels that look like humans,” he adds, putting on a third pair of sunglasses.

Well yeah actually they did play Dallas within the last year; but that was on a Wednesday night. I had to work the next day, no getting around it. But this time was on a Friday night and when my friend Tom calls and says Let’s Go I am game. They put on simply the Greatest Show On Earth. Movies, strobes, and smoke machines; it’s never boring to say the least. We ride on that gleaming blur of lights and concrete known as I-30 and cruise east towards Dallas, detouring to pick up his brother James, who is married and has kids now. Oh boy a for-real guys night out. About a half hour later we are pulling into the parking lot of the Granada Theater in Dallas.
There is a small crowd hanging around out on the sidewalk in front of the box office. We see several people we know and stop and talk before going in. Many people are already wearing their Halloween costumes. What better time to see a show than on Halloween? I remember seeing King Crimson on Halloween back in 1995 and the image of the guy in front of me wearing the cow costume silhouetted against the band is forever imprinted in my brain.

The Granada is a very old movie theater; Tom and I used to drive to it in the late 70’s/early 80’s and watch double bills like ERASERHEAD and FREAKS. A few years ago they ripped out the seats and turned it into a live venue. I hadn’t bothered to check it out yet but then again since I find the majority of rock acts these days to be slightly redundant and tiresome. But when the Butthole Surfers are touring I will get off the couch.

Thirty bucks at the door got us in. We missed the first act but the second opener Peaches was interesting. Think of a punk Madonna ( who actually plays a number of instruments) with a frequent number of onstage costume changes and with a big emphasis on Gary Numan-ish electronic noise and you pretty much get the drift.

The highlight of the set was probably when two audience members in Halloween costumes (Elvis and Santa!) climbed up onstage and danced as the audience cheered. The Granada has installed additional screens to both sides of the stage and it looks like digital projection equipment now sits side by side with the audio soundboard so this is perfect for the Butthole Surfers multi-media assault on its audience sensibilities. I first saw them in 1986 and back then they had movie projectors (the old-fashioned kind with film reels) set up to show movies behind them. Now they had three screens behind them and one on each side of the stage, all with digital projected imagery being broadcast at once while they played. To the uninitiated the Surfers might sound like just random noise, but what amazes me is how well they reproduce that noise every time I see them. I get the same feeling listening to them I got the first time I ever saw a MAD comic book. Not the black and white magazine we know today but the color ones with that insane Bill Elder artwork. I get the same feeling listening to the Butthole Surfers I got the first time I ever read a National Lampoon or ZAP Comics. The feeling that it’s okay to draw/write/ paint/or play a musical instrument any way you wanted. Coloring outside of the lines if you will; that to me is a wonderful level of artistic freedom. When I listen to tunes like “100 Million Dead” or “Jimi” I smile.
Can’t really offer a you a detailed review of the show because I didn’t really take notes but I did take about a hundred photos. And good thing I took them when I did because during their final chaotic number, they turned on the fog machines and despite the two industrial-sized fans I saw mounted on the rear of the balcony reduced visibility in the theater to near-zero.
Security was almost not needed at this show; the Surfers audience is aging and it showed more than a little Friday night. In fact Gibby Haynes even said something to the crowd between songs about “look at how many people here are wearing glasses” (which included Yours Truly and three fourths of the Surfers) I saw no one moshing (thank Gawd) no fights and no one really visibly drinking to excess. Compared to some of their shows I have attended in the past, the contrast was as startling to me as the loops of exploding heads shown behind them as they played would have been to Tipper Gore.
Toms brother James ( who is a few years younger that us) was laughing at Tom and I while we were walking back to the car because we were both moaning and groaning like two old men after having to stand up for four or five hours (“Oy…for a couple of Naproxens!”)
“Is this what I have to look forward to when I turn fifty?” he wanted to know.
“Yeah and it’ll happen faster than you think  too.” I think to myself. The next day I awake with a slight headache and ringing ears; how’d that happen? I am talking to “K” on the phone long-distance when I hear the mailman at the door. Mentally chambering a round, I head for the door thinking: “this better not be another goddam bill” when I find a box on the porch wrapped in red and white tape. Someone has sent me a CARE package from Canada. Oh…boy!!!
After carefully opening it with a box cutter the first layer reveals two bags of Old Dutch dill-pickle flavored potato chips: manna from the Gods? No just obviously from their placement the first thing “K” wanted me to see when I opened it. I became totally addicted to these during my ten-day visit to Canada. While walking through the Vancouver airport on my way out, I walked past kiosk after kiosk that visibly had Old Dutch chips on their shelves but not a single one of them had the dill flavored ones. I didn’t fret about it too much at the time because I was already lugging a Canadian coffee cup, a beautiful but delicate-as-dinnerware oyster shell and an even more delicate sand dollar “K” found while we were sharing coffee on the beach at Tofino one heavenly morning. So sacrificing potato chips was a deliberate choice; I figured carrying three delicate objects 4000 miles was challenging enough.
Another souvenir I brought back from Tofino was a handful of Tazo tea bags I snagged from a shelf in the lobby of the hotel, specifically “Wild Sweet Orange” flavor. Hey two hundred bucks a night of my hard-earned cash for a room; I figured a few cups of tea would be an okay souvenir.
It wasn’t until I got back to the US that I bothered boiling some water and trying some. After taking the first sip I think I felt my pupils dilate; this stuff is like liquid candy. The pleasure sensors in my brain went into overdrive: “I want more of this stuff…” Now I was wishing I had snagged all the bags on the shelf back in Tofino instead of the half dozen or so I did take.

A quick inspection of the tea bag wrapper reveals (surprise!) “Made In Canada” Upon visiting their website ( which resembles a video poker game) it lists two local grocery stores that allegedly carry their teas. After driving to both of them I discover neither of them have the Wild Sweet Orange, only teas with weird names like “Tranquility” and “Bliss” etc. Dammit!
Bigelow makes an orange-flavored tea that tastes okay but the only way they could make this box any gay-er would be to have two Raggedy Andys smooching on the front of it:
“K” has thoughfully included a few precious packages of Tazo Wild Sweet Orange tea as well as three other flavors so I can quit trying to squeeze any more flavor out of the Tofino bags (“Come on, baby!”) She has also tossed in an assortment of three of my favorite Canadian candy bars: Coffee Crisps and my two favorite varities of Aero bars: peppermint and “milk lait” and two packages of chewing gum that have Maple leaves printed on them. Besides two packages of dill chips, she has included one of the ketchup flavored variety. These are really tasty with cheeseburgers. Since they don’t last forever I can’t really horde them; must eat them soon. I will make chicken salad sandwiches to eat with the dill chips; Sunday I will get a burger for lunch to eat with the ketchup chips. I love my CARE packages; will have to assemble one to return her way. A certain someone I know in Canada who used to live here in the States has told me she misses little things. Things like Almond Joys she can’t find in Canada…So okay so it’s Sunday and Halloween is over. Happy Halloween to you anyway !
This has been a memorable Halloweekend for me…

Happy Halloween weekend!  Do you have something music-related to do yet?  Well, if not, check out my picks for this weekend…there are plenty of great shows happening in Austin, costuming optional.

Friday, October 30th

Wolfmother

Wolfmother will play a FREE show at Waterloo today at 5 pm!  Don’t miss it.

Wolfmother, Heartless Bastards, The New No. 2

This show is going to kick ass.  They’ll be at Stubb’s tonight at 8 pm.  Tickets are a very reasonable $25 and you can pick them up here.

The Band Of Heathens, Michael Fracass

This will be a great show at Threadgill’s World HQ and the tickets are only $15 if you get them now.

Widespread Panic

The hugely popular jam band is playing two nights at the Austin Music Hall starting tonight.  Sorry kids, it’s all sold out, but if you really want to be there, you can check out Craigslist for tickets.

Find out what’s going on for Halloween night, plus find out where I’ll be on Sunday!

Saturday, October 31st

Bob Schneider Halloween Party, Love at War

I’m not sure how spooky it’ll be, but spending Halloween night at Antone’s should be a good time.  Tickets are $15 and you can buy them here.

Butthole Surfers, Peaches

Alternative rock legends and Texas natives the Butthole Surfers play a Halloween show at Stubb’s tomorrow night.  Tickets are $30-$35 and you can buy them here.

Sunday, November 1st

Gogol Bordello, Apostle of Hustle

Yes, I am VERY excited to be headed to this show at Stubb’s!  If you want to be there too, doors are at 6 pm and tickets are $26.50.  You can buy them here.

No intro this week, just music. Enjoy.

Monday

Why?- January Twenty Something

Ever notice how much these guys sound like They Might Be Giants?

Tuesday

Sea Wolf- The Violet Hour

Ladies and Gentlemen, yet another song from the New Moon soundtrack.

Wednesday

Islands- Switch On

Be Your Own Pet- Becky

Fun Jemima Pearl story, back in the summer of ‘07 I was living in Houston, and working as a cook in a restaurant, when one of the older guys there (I was 22, he was 23) decided he would pop my strip club cherry by taking me to happy hour. Well after a few hours of feeling like a slimeball, my friend and I talked my coworker into blowing out of the club, and scoring some blow. Realizing that we were less then three blocks from a local club we walked over to discover Be Your Own Pet was headlining, in between key bumps we managed to pay our 5 bucks. make our way upstairs, find a booth, and get a tab open. My co-worker being completely out of his element, and high out of his mind decide to flow with the night, which lead to him dancing around to “Becky” with a Corona and asking girls “Hey are you into Zep?” Needless to say I haven’t done coke since.

Drive By Truckers- The Day John Henry Died

Telegraph Canyon- Welcome to the Night

Thursday

Leon Russell- I’m so lonesome, I could cry

Wolfmother- Cosmic Egg

R Kelly- Ignition (Remix)

What is there left to say about R Kelly?

Friday

Peaches- Fuck The Pain Away

Fun story #2 I attended a party back in the spring where I watched two affliction clad bro dudes exchange verses of “Fuck The Pain  Away” while doing keg stands. I blame Mean Girls for this.

Butthole Surfers- Alcohol

The Pogues- The Sick Bed of Cuchuliann

Saturday

White Denim- Sex Prayer

Au Reviour Simone- Another Likely Story ( Neon Indian Remix)

I believe this excellent remix was the sole work of Alan Polamo, not sure why the Neon Indian moniker was attached, but it’s a hell of a remix.

I went to Navy basic training on May 12, 1994. The details and reasoning behind why I decided to join the Navy could take up an entire book if I took the time. The Reader’s Digest-condensed version is this: I was 21-years-old, married with a 1-year-old daughter, living in a piece of shit apartment, didn’t have a real job, and was failing out of college. Basically, I needed to do something drastic to take care of my family and, personally, I needed a swift kick in the ass. Joining the Navy wasn’t an easy decision for my wife and I, but it was the right decision. There were good times and bad times, but I don’t regret the decision. As the Butthole Surfers so eloquently said in the song “Sweet Loaf”, “It’s better to regret something you did, than something you didn’t do.” Rarely have truer words been spoken, although, later in the same song, they did say, “And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend, be sure to tell her Satan Satan Satan!!”. I can’t quite figure out if that cancels out the good advice about regret.

I left for basic training from Albany and flew to Chicago. A group of us sat in the USO Lounge at O’Hare Airport for hours, waiting for the bus to come and pick us up. We partook in some mindless chatter, flipped through magazines, watched TV, and played checkers. The longer we waited, the more my nerves started to go and you know it’s bad when you start playing checkers. The most boring game of all time, in my opinion. I’d rather guess how many fingers someone is holding behind their back than play checkers.

The real game was being played on us, yet we didn’t know we were playing. It was called the Waiting Game. They don’t want you to arrive in the middle of the afternoon. No, no, that wouldn’t be any fun. Let’s let the newbies sit in the USO Lounge for a few hours, get nervous, sweat a little, pace around, and question why the hell they ever did this. They picked us up from the airport around 9 PM for the hour-long drive to the Navy base. It was dark outside, I had never been to the Chicago area before, I was on a bus to boot camp, and I had just left my beautiful wife and daughter at home for the next 9 weeks. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do and, yet, as we pulled into the main gate, I knew it was going to get a lot worse before it got any better.

The other 80 or so recruits and I walked off the bus shortly after 10 PM. Like arriving at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan, we were pleasantly and cordially escorted into the main building. “Welcome to Naval Recruit Training Center, nice of you to join us. Please let us know of anything that will make your stay with us more comfortable”. But when the nice folks from the Navy said it, for some reason it sounded more like, “Get in a fucking straight line. No, I said a straight line, dumbass, not a semi-circle. Everyone shut the fuck up until we say you can speak. Is that clear, you fucking maggots? Goddamn, you are some of the ugliest pieces of shit I’ve even seen in my life.”

This went on all night long, and I mean, all night. There was no let up. In other services, these guys are called drill instructors. In the Navy, they’re called Company Commanders, or CCs. At least, they used to be called CCs, I think the title has changed. They were enlisted Sailors, late 20’s to early 40’s, who willingly chose to create a living hell for others, 9 weeks at a time. They clearly relished the role, and no event in that 9 weeks was more fun than breaking down recruits that first night.

These guys also liked to play games, but not the Waiting Game. Instead, they played the I Dare You Not to Laugh Game with their fellow CCs. The objective of the game was to see if they can make their peers laugh while they absolutely lay into an unsuspecting, clueless, 19-year-old punk who had the audacity to wear a ballcap in the building. How dare he wear a hat in the building? That’s disrespectful to them, the other people in the building, the rest of the people on the base, the entire United States Navy, the President, their families… You’d be amazed at how these guys take something like that and make the poor sap damn near suicidal. For the person getting screamed at, it’s the worst feeling ever.  For everyone else, it’s a matter of controlling your fear and laughter, all at the same time, because they say some of the funniest shit you’ll ever hear.  Part of me would love to try this job, but only on the nights when recruits arrive.

Meanwhile, I had my “attention” knob turned to 11. Nothing quite prepares you for this moment. You can hear all sorts of stories and get yourself mentally psyched up, but when you first walk off that bus late at night and line up to walk in the first building, all that preparation gets blown away by the stark reality of your surroundings. I was in my own personal battlefield and I needed to stay sharp and keep my senses about me. As soon as I walked in that building, all of the sadness, loneliness, nervousness, thoughts of my family, everything, instantly disappeared.

Like Forrest Gump before me, my sole purpose in life was to do exactly what the CCs told me to do and nothing else. If they said get in a straight line, I got in a straight line. If they said don’t breathe, then I wasn’t going to breathe. If they said, everyone had 30 seconds to get a drink of water, I took exactly 30 seconds. I didn’t want to take 15 seconds and get back in line because then I would be drawing attention to myself. I didn’t want to take 60 seconds either, because, well, you know. I focused every fiber of my being on remaining inconspicuous.

The first night was filled with an endless combination of filling out paperwork, standing in line, and drug tests, all while having someone constantly screaming in your face. The paperwork was enough to drive us crazy just by itself. I don’t even remember what we were signing. For all I knew, I was signing up to wear meat underwear in a room full of hungry Rottweilers. I could give two shits what I was signing at the time. I was intent on doing anything I could to avoid drawing attention to myself. If the CCs thought the paperwork was filled out the slightest bit wrong by anyone, they’d rip up everyone’s paper and make us start again. This would be a theme throughout my time there.

The drug tests on the first night were an early test of one’s humility. They would bring 5 or 6 guys into an empty bathroom with no stalls or curtains and have us all piss into a cup while they sat and watched the urine come out of our special purposes. No hiding, no Whizzinators, just a bunch of guys rocking out with their cocks out. If you were shy or had stage fright, too bad, better deal with it. There was no privacy here, or anywhere else for that matter, so if you weren’t comfortable being nude around others guys, you had to learn real quick.

It was also opportunity for the CCs to play another game with us. While we were waiting in line to go to the bathroom for the piss test, two CCs walked by us. One was holding a full urine specimen cup. He stopped right in front of us, took the top off the cup, and drank it like a shot of liquor. Never once did he crack while doing this and his partner just played right along. It was called the Make the Recruits Pretend It’s Urine While You Drink Apple Juice Game.

We finally finished our initial admission around 2 AM and headed to our temporary barracks for the rest of the night. The CCs made us march in a line, knowing full well we had no fucking clue how to march yet. That didn’t stop them from verbally assaulting us at every step. It was like trying to teach a bunch of 3-year-olds how to drive a stick shift. It looked absolutely atrocious, yet it got us to where we needed to go. They hurried us into the barracks and made us choose a bed. Then, in shifts, we were all forced to take a shower. The problem was, the showers had no cold water. To this day, it was the only shower I’ve even been in that only had hot water. It was excruciating, but we all kept our mouths shut and cleaned ourselves in water a degree below boiling. With our irritated scalps and wide eyes, it was finally time for lights out at 3:15 AM.

Sleep was an impossibility. You know those nights when you try to go to sleep, but you have a ton of stuff on your mind. How will you finish your proposal at work? How will you get the kids to their game on time? What are you going to buy for your spouse for his/her birthday? Times that by a million, in this case. And you have no book or TV to help your mind slow down. I just lay on my bed as my mind was racing a thousand miles an hour.  I remember thinking, “What the fuck had I gotten myself into? Play it cool. You can do this. Millions of people before you have gone through this, there’s no reason you can’t do it either. I miss my family so much.” I would say this went on all night, but it really only lasted about 30 minutes. The CCs had the lights on and were pounding on steel garbage cans with broom handles by 3:45 AM. One night down, 8+ weeks to go.

I have to keep reminding myself that Halloween has not jumped the shark just because I’m having trouble getting a good scary costume together. Not a sexy costume, not a current events costume – a scary costume. Because Halloween is supposed to be about Scary.

Every year I have trouble thinking of a good costume, and I fret and get anxious and grumpy, and then suddenly it all comes together. Only it’s not coming together this year. I can’t even be a monster this year, because this year’s monster is just some cute neurotic hairy dude with a striped shirt thanks to Spike Jonze. Spike, allow me this observation: Where The Wild Things Are = The Butthole Surfers. Where The Wild Things Are ≠ The Cure.

Okay, I need to stop ranting and start concentrating. Halloween. Scary. Scary. Scary.

Don’t interrupt. I’m almost there…

Photo by stevechasmar on Flickr

monday, september 28th, 2009.
so, as mentioned in the previous post about dc, i missed my initial greyhound bus and had to catch the latter, which put me in baltimore pretty late.

baltimore greyhound station rating: AMAZING.

i took a taxi to my hostel, and the taxi driver was totally a weirdo, in a good way. he was hilarious and kept doing all these weird voices and saying that he scared people, but he was really funny and goofy! i enjoyed it! the hostel was pretty nice, i think, shit, it’s all kind of a blur. the guy at the front desk was telling me he was glad i showed up because he’d been dialing the number from that one song… that ’80s song with the phone number in it (i forget the godamn song name and number). but basically, he would dial different area codes and then the phone number. i actually didn’t believe him until he dialed this one number and then had me listen to it, and the message was just some random guy rambling about how people needed to stop calling him on this number — he was trying to be sarcastically funny, really — and it went on FOREVER. at least a five minute message; i didn’t stick around to listen to the whole thing cause it was way too long. kinda amusing, though, he must get called that a lot. someone was telling me that the (former?) new york mayor’s phone number was that number, but i have no idea if that’s true.

anyway, then i walked to the venue where psychic ills were playing, called sonar, but there was a motherfucking guestlist snafu, and i totally missed their fucking set, even though i could hear them playing from outside. it really sucked. as i was waiting around calling whomever and doing whatever, some guy started talking to me, and he worked on some yacht as a captain? and he was just in town for the night checking out some music. he was kinda weird and drunk and anxious. he suggested i just walk in the back door of the venue where the bands were loading out, and i was like nah, and he’s like, “hell, i’d do it! i don’t live here so i’ll do whatever i want!” or something ridiculous. i also didn’t think particularly highly of him — and this is perhaps judgmental — because he didn’t appreciate psychic ills’ music (and their music is rad) but moreso because he said that he wouldn’t like them unless he was “tripping on acid” or something ridiculous. finally, i was like, “i’m just going to wait until they come out and talk to them,” and he stepped away for a sec when the psychic ills guys came out so i went to talk to them about getting me in. they were super sweaty! but yeah, i got in. but only for butthole surfers… who i really didn’t care for. so it was really kind of a waste. ah, well.

there were some kids next to me at the butthole surfers show who were really loud and young and crazy and one guy started talking to me, and mentioned he was in a band, so i gave him a business card. he actually texted me later that night, which was kiiiiiinda weird. and the next day, too.

later, as i was leaving the venue, creepy yacht guy caught up to me and was like, “did you get in? i told the psychic ills guys to come talk to you,” and i was like, “i talked to them before you did.” and he was like, oh, because i think he was completely full of shit. freak! and i left in a jiffy.

when i got back to the hostel, i had the wrong fucking door code, so i had to wait until this kinda drunken old dude came up to let me in. at first i wasn’t sure if he lived at the hostel or if he was a crazy bum, but yeah.

tuesday, september 29th, 2009.
walked around and explored, basically. it was cool — i enjoyed baltimore.

woke up, left, and headed over to the cute little lexington market thing and got early morning udon. totally black part of town — i was like the only non-black person around for days (except for inside the actual market itself).

took my udon for breakfast and headed downtown to the waterfront to eat it.

lotta cool random art along the way. this group was doing essentially what the free sheep foundation does in seattle — that is, take spaces that are about to be demolished and put up impromptu galleries in there. particularly easy in baltimore, i feel like, because baltimore is just chock full of buildings that are slated to be demolished, really. similar to detroit. in fact, i forget who, but someone was telling me about these awesome parties in detroit where artists just kind of hole up in giant warehouses and have art openings that are totally underground… probably in spaces where people aren’t even supposed to live, but because no one really checks, these people are just making beautiful awesome art out in the middle of nowhere. i’ve heard really great things about detroit’s art scene, and really hope i get to see some of it sometime. i didn’t get a chance to talk to locals in detroit about much because it was such an impromptu trip, but maybe next time.

people find it hard to believe i like baltimore and detroit so much, but then i tell them i like shitty buildings and things, and they’re like, “ah, that makes sense.”

more art.

finally got to the waterfront and chowed down on my fucking food!

barnes and noble and hard rock cafe inside of an old power plant? alrighty, then!

these awesome things along the ground that say “river walk” in various languages. every other one is english and in between are different languages. i really loved the idea.

flag house, where the first american flag was made

it was right near little italy.

a most enjoyable storefront.

mmmm, urban decay.

locals totally thought i was a weirdo for taking pics of shit like this, but god, look how awesome (if you can even see how awesome).

why wouldn’t you use free parking (left) more often, people who are paying for parking (right)?!!!

tonza jews up in dis bitch.

shot tower. whatever.

there was a hilarious marriage campaign with signs similar to this everywhere. haha.

24oz grape ade? hell yeah.

in case you weren’t aware, or too soused to realise, this week is alcohol awareness week.  now for a semi-retired bukowski like m’self i have been and always am aware of booze but apparently this week i’ve to be ever more vigilant of its wily ways and means.  and in typical patronising public sector politicking the health at work team here (yes there are a group of people dedicated to ensuring i stay healthy) proffered up this entirely unironic little intellectual nugget:

a small or large measure of fruit juice or soft drink has 0 units of alcohol.

you heard it hear first folks.  at long last those science boffins have come up with booze free fruit juice.  i hear they’re working on water next….  and note the differentiation betwixt large and small incase you monkeys thought there was more non-existent alcohol in a large fruit juice than a small ‘un.

lord have mercy…

as mitch hedberg said: alcoholism is a disease, but it’s the only disease that you can get yelled at for having.

and as george carlin once said: the very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, ‘you know, i want to set those people over there on fire, but i’m just not close enough to get the job done.’

i know how that guy feels.  or as i say: mind yr own fucking business.

either way here’s some liquor songs…

• silkworm: drunk
• three aces & a joker: booze party
• sodajerk: drinking in the key of c
• butthole surfers: alcohol
• replacements: red red wine

There Is No Enemy [2009] <-Download

O sétimo álbum do Built To Spill será lançado nos próximos dias pela Universal. Sua sonoridade dá sequência à do viajado You In Reverse, de 2006. There Is No Enemy é a primeira experiência do BTS com gravação digital, o que proporcionou à banda uma liberdade de experimentação inédita. É impressionante como Doug Martsch consegue transformar camadas sobrepostas de guitarras em canções grudentas. Por outro lado, o novo método também atrasou o lançamento — Martsch preferiu remixar tudo em equipamentos analógicos, sentindo certa frieza no som. Sam Coomes (Quasi), Paul Leary (Butthole Surfers) e Roger Manning, entre outros amigos, participaram do disco. A atual turnê, que começou em agosto, inclui shows com o Dinosaur Jr neste mês.

Built To Spill - Hidsight

And there is nothing eternal about it. Thank goodness.

I’m writing a song for a girl I know. No, it’s not a love song. It’s about doing the right thing… and failing. The University bar that I’ve mentioned before is rife with flies, the kind that tip, and the bartenders are kind enough to offer a supportive ear. There is an intrinsic ethical dilemma with their employment however. When you realize that the friend you’re serving another pint to was here yesterday and the day before, and when you know he’ll be here again tomorrow, how do you continue enabling. After all, a client is a client.

There’s no real way to get around it, I suppose. The bartender can’t just refuse a customer; only after it is very clear that the client is well past the stage of inebriation that he can refuse to serve another glass. They can even have the client removed from the premises. It’s within their rights and it is just; a way to protect the owners and the other patrons. I was pondering this issue all day, as I sat there, drinking gin & tonics. The beer from the night before had left a bad taste in my mouth, as Molson products usually do. And I was kicking myself for even having bought one. I thought I could be stronger than this. I thought I could go a day without the drink. I was wrong.

I think it’s high time I put away the stuff for good. My comrades think that I’m crazy. They believe that moderation is the key. I know that once a hedonist, always a hedonist. The only way to beat this is with discipline and determination, two things that are in short supply around campus. So what is a boy to do? I write. Others play music. Some even jog. Still, the problem persists. I always thought my drinking wasn’t a problem, that it was a solution. My mind changed this week without me even noticing it. I pity myself now when a tall cold glass of brew sits before me. It has become a symbol of my weakness, and for this, I am ashamed.

Being headstrong when you are in a situation where control is not within your grasp, is a sad display of pride. I should try and fight the urge, and make it my ambition to quit the drink, but then I would become the thing that I hate so much; an activist. A friend named Greg told me the other day something that ran very deep within my mind, and struck a chord I had not realized was there. He said that the powers that be have so much free time to meddle and manipulate that the very idea of our existence – of living as a commoner – was such a grotesque charade, that the truly enlightened people were the ones who opted not to participate in society at all. Life is a cruel joke, and there are no winners. You can’t take gold to heaven. This is why I cannot be active. I hate this life more than I hate myself. Greg and I smoked the ganj together.

Like the hippies who tried to free themselves of social restrictions, I came to realize that there was no real way out… except perhaps death. Self-termination is the only valid way to opt out of this life. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I am a coward. One would have to be incredibly courageous to do it. It is the ultimate crossing into the unknown. This is why Kurt is a god to us social rejects… He did what we all dream of doing, deep down. The hippies eventually gave up and joined the rest of the money-grabbing elite. They never found Nirvana in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood. They did find reality however, and it told them to get jobs. Thankfully, the money-grabbers will never find Nirvana either.

The song I’m writing is for that familiar feeling that we’ve all shared at one point or another, when we come to realize that we are enabling someone’s problem and there’s nothing we can do to stop it, except perhaps reach out. But even that will fail in the bitter end. There are few people left who have the ability to listen, I mean truly listen, and they rarely take up the advice. I had one drink, told the bartender I wouldn’t return. I returned, and drank another. Then I found another bar and drank four more. What the bartender didn’t understand was that, when it is that much of a problem, you don’t need anyone to enable for you. You can do it all by yourself.

Luckily, my conscience still rapes me everyday. And tomorrow the battle will begin anew, as it should.

Gawd, please allow a bus to hit me going sixty…. after the Butthole Surfers concert, of course.

This is what rockn’roll could and should sound like!

Damn, but this is fine stuff!! And you’ll never hear it on any radio station in North America because in playing it, the corporate brass who own the media complex realize it would render their choices as pap and not worth whatever material CDs are made from.

I got in tonight to find electronic shit in my YouTube inbox!! And European danceteria shit yet!!! Blasphemy. Ah-hah! But I’ve got saved up ammunition like the above, so I’m fine ….for now.

Here, watch this – Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey

Movies…..,now that you mention, here’s one I’d like to see. “Fuck Keith Richards! Fuck all those guys that survived the 60’s” says some guy who opens up this clip. Exactly.

Gotta’ have some of ‘dis! This one cooks! And they’re coming back to the Toronto area, actually Hamilton …..in November. M-m-m-m-m, that’ll be another good show!

Change of pace:
Stroker Ace – whoever they are….but they remind me of ….can’t place it….oh well

But they do remind me of the Butthole Surfers and I did have a clip here….but it went missing….and I don’t know for sure ….but I think I my (mine, mine, mine. all mine!) Web Goddess who doubles sometimes as the Web Lioness, might have been stating her opinion…

woodshock2, originally uploaded by Jerry Milton Photography.

Headed down Houston way to join Lola and company…..to catch the first date of the BHS fall tour yo…then gonna catch them on the bookend….this Halloween w/ Peaches at Stubbs. SATAN SATAN SATAN

With all that’s happened since 2002 seems like a HELL of a long time ago. I’m not going to go into the reasons the world was different then, but I will say this: Things were a bit more innocent, a bit more … hopeful.

Come to think of it, I was a bit more innocent and hopeful then, too. I didn’t know The Walkmen from Adam either; thank god I finally discovered them or my life might have taken a different course.

Their split with Calla is a two-tracks-each affair, and The Walkmen come out swinging with “Look Out the Window,” a swingin’, sassy cut that foreshadows “Louisiana” and contains just a flutter of a genre I can’t quite identify. Tropicalia? That might just be it.

“Here Comes Another Day” is to the rest of the Walkmen catalogue what “Pepper” was to the rest of the Butthole Surfers‘: Totally out of place, yet fucking exhilarating in a low-key sorta way, like a Nick Cave finger-snapper (“Red Right Hand” comes to mind), a Devastations confessional or a Mystic Chords Of Memory/Beachwood Sparks ballad.

“I made a mistake / I made a mistake” pleads Hamilton Leithauser, but it sounds as if his urgency is too late; most of The Walkmen’s songs do.

Calla’s “Dont Hold Your Breath” matches the dim-lit-basement motif of Side A, ringing in Side B with an eerie little clean riff that strangely comes off like a Pinback/Systems Officer bass line. Then the seas get a little rougher as a lilting keyboard push flattens the composition out, or at least levels it off.

A cover of Can’s “Mother Sky” follows, and though it breaks the lull I’d been enjoying the groove is too tambourine-slappin’, too prog-eyed to deny (plus they got in on the prog boom fairly early). This is actually how I’d envision Can playing the song if they were covering themselves, or maybe how Oneida would handle the task if so charged.

This four-track split 12″ LP is still available for less than $10 online … who knows how long that’ll last, so snatch one up, mang.

5 things Stretch know

1. Stretch lacks discipline and feeling

2. Stretch lacks a voice and a purpose

3. Stretch lacks vinyl and old cassettes

4. Stretch lacks solubility and dissolvabilililililility

5. Stretch lacks guns and junk

but Stretch has soul and the head of Trent Reznor on my desk as a paperweight…you push the top of his head and he goes, “Wahh” and moans on for at least 8 albums. Then moans in every audio format known to humans, while moaning about the inability to get his moans out there. We have a lot in common, me’n'Trent, although my voice box and nasal cavity remain separate.

Surf Surf

SOULSAVERS
Sunrise

Mark Lanegan seems like one of those guys who can’t stay still for too long. WIth a music career that began in the 80’s when he formed Screaming Trees to his work with Queens of the Stone Age, Lanegan has collaborated on side projects along the way that have always caught my ear. He’s worked with artists such as Melissa Auf der Maur, Martina Topley Bird, Belle and Sebastian singer and cellist Isobel Campbell, the electronic outfit, Bomb the Bass, and his new group, The Gutter Twins, but recently he’s been mixing it up with the English knob-twiddlers Rich Machin and Ian Glover, also known as Soulsavers. The atmospheric sounds they weave incorporate influences of rock, gospel, soul, and country, and they’ve taken Lanegan’s song ‘Sunrise’…which was first heard on his 1994 album Whiskey For The Holy Ghost…but instead of having Mark sing it, handed it over to featured vocalist Will Oldham, whose bluesy baritone pays homage to Lanegan while sounding a bit like a theatrical revival preacher. That dirty harmonica, along with the plodding bass and marching-drum back beat, create a dark, moody vibe…I can almost feel the heat from the Sun. ‘Sunrise’ came out as a non-album single just before ‘Broken’ was released a back in August. Besides Lanegan, the album features guest vocals from Gibby Haynes (Butthole Surfers), Mike Patton (Faith No More), Jason Pierce (Spiritualized) and Richard Hawley (Longpigs, Pulp). You can hear more from Soulsavers on their MySpace page