Dof

1 tab of acid + 1 Dr. Who marathon + 1 plastic bag = Dof's 1983 "hit" Codo.

"We do not neeeeeed any love on this plannnnnet."

You're the man now David Essex

... as though he wasn't at one time. Who isn't cool listening to "Rock On" and strutting in front of the mirror with a scarf and moon boots?

Midnight Son

One of my favorite odds and ends is Steve Miller's Midnight Son. I picked this up at a library sale in 1986. To call it a comic book would be misinterpreting it. It doesn't feel like a graphic novel either. It's something else entirely. With sequential panels of artwork - crafty B&W images of Pogo-like anthropomorphic animals - and short blocks of text in calligraphy, the Midnight Son tells the story of a visitor to an alien planet (that looks surprisingly like Steam-punk England lorded over by cute Wind in the Willows characters) who descends into its many-tunneled bowels. There he finds a monster and well, himself. The ending of the book has beguiled me since I was a kid - it's both religious and oddly unaffecting. I'm sure there's a story behind it. Or maybe there really never was one. For a long while I assumed I was the only person on Earth who had this book. That's not true, sadly.

Steve Miller's website says, "The Midnight Son tells the archetypal tale of the eternal child of light -- and his pursuit of that ultimate mystery, the source of life itself." There you have it. Jodorowsky eat your heart out.

Four Winds Press, New York, 1981.

The Flying Lizards

While best known for their cover of "Money", The Flying Lizards were one of the more outrageous experimental punk acts from the early '80s. With a catchy robotic post-modernist dada sound, The Flying Lizards built upon the stop-start jerk of Devo and moved from minimalist dub pop to trance-like ambient music. Irishman David Cunningham was the conceptualist behind the group - he played the instruments and formed the dada core - but what really made them memorable were the lead "singers" Deborah Evans, Patti Palladin and Sally Peterson.


Money


TV

Around only for the debut self titled LP, Deborah Evan's deadpan delivery gave the Lizards' an arty quality that rose above the dub and computer clap trap. Sure it's tongue in cheek and at worst it's like the most painful performance art but there's just something oddly lovable about Evan's droll despondence.

Palladin was next up. She'd moved to England with a friend, Judy Nylon, from the states in 1974. They formed a punk band, Snatch, and released a few singles in '76 and '77. (Their single "All I Want" charted at #54 and they collaborated with Brian Eno on the b-side of his King's Lead Hat single.) Patti joined the Lizards in 1981 and wrote/performed on five of the songs on "The Fourth Wall." Palladin delivers a deriding punk sneer where Evan's gave a mechanical monotone.


Dizzy Miss Lizzy

Cunningham finished The Flying Lizards project with the un-commercial modernist cover album, "Top Ten" (1984) with vocalist Sally Peterson (currently a successful DJ in Britain) from which "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" was taken. Peterson closely followed Evan's android vox.

Mark Allen's Flying Lizard's site is essential - http://www.markallencam.com/theflyinglizards.html

Rogue Taxidermists unite!

Good article on the Secret Science Club's Taxidermy Get-together in Brooklyn.

Damn those fans!

According to Fandeath.net fan death is the belief that if "someone is sleeping in a sealed room (windows and doors are closed) with an electric fan on, they could die."

And who believes this? Robin Prime, Fandeath.net's creator, says, "The only country to believe in fan death is South Korea. If you ask any Korean about fan death, they will almost certainly vehemently argue that it is indeed true. It seems Koreans of all ages, professions (including doctors) and education backgrounds believe it. Koreans use the media as proof. Newspapers and TV continually attribute deaths to fans.

"If you approach a Korean about this issue, their first instinct is to defend their culture to foreigners even though they may not agree with the belief themselves. I will commend anyone on their effort to convince a Korean that fan death may not be true, but I think it would be a very difficult task. Even if they did believe you, I still secretly believe they would turn off the fan, or make sure the window or door was open, when they went to bed."

Urgh! - Ain't This the Life

Elfman et crew perform one of their early classics. From Urgh! A Music War- which still awaits a DVD release.

Smokin' Aces

I've always been a sucker for the team movie. The outfit film. In these flicks a motley - or sometimes not so motley - group gets together for some, usually nefarious, reason and hijinks ensue. Sometimes the best outfit film isn't even about the outfit or outfits. The Warriors was best when it was sketching out the various gangs that inhabit a quasi-future New York - hastily detailing hundreds of surreal street thug societies. It's those brief glimpses of odd crews that fascinate me most. Rap videos are filled with them. All those posses - who knew that every rapper's posse (and I mean every freakin' one) had to have a three hundred pound bald dude with a gold chain as thick as my forearm - with a strange multitude of members. I like the oddest ones best: the white guy with spiky hair lounging on the divan, the Heroin-chic one with a giant gold eagle on his neck, the woman with cornrows and an eyepatch, the aforementioned fat guy and the Lurch-like giant who sways slowly (like a Sequoia in the wind) in the background.



Joe Carnahan's latest (following his gangbuster Narc (2002)) is Smokin' Aces and as the preview above shows, it's a balls to the wall outfit movie. Check out all these trippy hit man, bounty hunter and mobster teams - I like the post-Apocalyptic punk outfit the best, they're like LA's Kommunity FK with body armor and automatic weapons. That or the Dreadnoks.

Kommunity FK - Something Inside Me Has Died

L'Incal

Fans of Jodorowsky/Moebius have long awaited a film version of their successful "L'Incal" project. Seems we'll need to wait a bit longer. In the meantime, we have have these fleeting moments. From Popjellyfish who posted it on Youtube:

"Some footage I found of an animated film of The Incal, with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Jean 'Moebius' Giraud invovled. It was never finished. Following that is a trailer for an animated film of Moebius' Arzach."

Hypnotic.

More Eleanor

Just a reminder: visit Eleanor's site and then buy something. Her boyfriend Drew's stuff is pretty good too. (This - "Bug Bear" - is a collaborative work by the two of them.)

Sheena is a Parasite

The Horrors' punk meets surf in a graveyard rawk is burning across England, but it's Chris Cunningham's delirious Lovecraft at CBGBs video that has everyone gawking.

The Randies

So I'm in Salt Lake tonight at a conference. Nice town. Go out with M. L., MD to get a bite to eat. Not knowing the city we head to someplace called the Trolley Something-or-other and stop by the Hard Rock Cafe. I've been to a few Hard Rock Cafes. There's one in Denver (though I haven't been in that one) but we were surprised to find a live band performing. While there were maybe ten people in the whole place, The Randies jumped into their set with eagle claws. I saw a few confused older couples. One drunken family. But for the most part everyone enjoyed the show - part of a series of shows with the Hard Rock supporting Breast Cancer Research (which lead, of course, to some "randy" descriptions of self breast exams. And some not so self.)

The Randies were in good form. Laura Cataldo - vox, bass - has a great presence. She looks like she could read Whitman, eat fried chicken and kick you in the head at the same time. All with a sneery smile. Drummer Aaron Polk knows what he's doing but he just needs to temper himself. Just because all those drums are there doesn't mean you need to hit them. Maybe a marching beat would be nice. Sienna and Laurita layed down some really killer Sabbath riffs and knew how to make feedback sound like feedback. Dirty like.

The sound at the Hard Rock was pretty tinny. That made for some very muffled lyrics. I mainly heard, "Aye Aye Aye" at every chorus. They've got the cred. The exposure. A good look. The Randies don't need my help moving on up. If I had any advice it would be to listen to the first few Killing Joke albums and hear what The Fall was so entranced by and what Nirvana gushed over. There's still gold to be mined there ladies...

More never really found items...

In my previous post I lamented the albums that I had encountered in dreams and upon waking searched my room for in a pathetic kind of desperation. Here I list a few of the books - both fiction and non-fiction - that haunted my dreams but never gathered dust on any real bookshelf (but should have). How could I possibly remember these things? I write them down when I wake up of course.

Krazed Karnival by Dustin Boork
The dust jacket mentions "... a thrilling tale of wonder told by one of Canada's authorities on the occult."

The Dinosaurs of the Indiana Basin: A field Guide by Robert Krakow
Contains excellent pencil illustrations of rather unusual dinosaurs - including one that looks remarkably like a kangaroo with Milton Berle's face. Don't ask.

Chalk by Multiple
This was a bizarre art book that was actually a block of wood with several concrete poems carved into the sides. I encountered this in a library.

Lucid Shadows by Augustus Sterling
A Lovecraft pastiche novel. Terrible.

O-Zone Revisited by Paul Theroux
O-Zone is a real book. A fantastic dystopian sci-fi tale that's been unfairly neglected. It's one of the few books I've read three times. This was a follow up. Just wishful thinking really. The mushroom cloud cover was cool though.

Loose: The Poetry of Amy Yuen
Loose. No binding. This was sitting in a magazine rack and (at the time) I remember waking and thinking it must have been placed there by Amy herself.

Only the dead get off at Kymlinge Part 2

In my Geek Monthly "tunnel crawling" piece (Urban Exploration) I spoke with Monkey #1, a Swedish explorer and photographer. Here's a further excerpt - and brilliant quote - from our conversations:

Monkey: "I believe that people just see things differently. Some people take pictures of their children, others of their pets and their favourite rock and roll artist. And some people just chronicle their entire vacation with whole albums of every day screenshots. Me, I take pictures of empty hallways, pieces of shattered glass and rusted barbwire fences. When Joe Somebody looks down on what used to be a stray cat (now splattered on the asphalt) he sees roadkill. When I look down at the same thing I see a Kodak moment."

An Underworld by any other name...

Freur - Doot Doot (Pre-Underworld)

Never ceases to amaze me how many people assume that the early '90s groundbreaking electronica band Underworld just spontaneously generated with "Dubnobasswithmyheadman." Fact is Welshman Karl Hyde has been at this a long time. His first - hideously neglected and coifed - band was the art school damaged Freur ('83-'86). (The name is actually the "sound" of the squiggle that signifies the band. Long before Prince got jiggly with it, Freur had no name.) They released two albums, though the second one didn't see light outside of Germany and Holland.



Underneath the Radar - Underworld (Version 1)

After dismal sales (and one mild single "Doot Doot"), Freur broke up. Karl emerged in the later '80s with Underworld ('88-'90). It was a funk synth heart attack. He played up the bass and the cowboy image (Anton Corbijn recycled the look with Depeche Mode a few years later). They released two albums - the second drifting even further into traditional rock territory. Underworld was a commercial bust as well.

That changed of course with the release of "Dubnobasswithmyheadman" mixing Hyde's penchant for whispered surrealist lyrics with acid house electronica. What is most interesting is what didn't change. Listening to Freur now you can hear glimmers of Underworld's ambient soundscapes while the more traditional Underworld (version 1) hints at the driving bass the later version would use to propel tracks like the epic "Cowgirl".

Stump

Vid clip for "Buffalo" from Quirk Out. Believe it or not, Stump made me the man I am today. This bass freakout/music concrete business... It's like a taste for strong cheese.

Glowing in the Dark: Minimal Synth MP3 Series #1 - Cinema 90

Cinema 90 (a.k.a. Colin MacDonnel, keyboardist for the Seattle post-punk band 3 Swimmers) had one song on this compliation (Seattle Syndrome 2) released by Engram in 1983, "In Ultra-Violet." It's a haunting synth piece with a driving bass line. While there are some similarities structurally to Frank Tovey's early work (RIP), "In Ultra-Violet" is more melodic and less obscure lyrically. Excellent stuff all around and a very nice rip as well.
Here is the 7" version.

Grind House

Trailer for Tarantino/Rodriguez's throwback to ye olde 42nd street sleaze and slaughter. Brilliant.

The Sounds of Italian Cinematic Groove (MP3 Series) - Part 2: Armando Trovajoli

Fans of Euro-trash cinema have celebrated the work of Armando Trovajoli for decades. He's got a very funky signature sound and a broad range. Like most jack-of-all-trades Italian composers, Trovajoli's scored spaghetti westerns (I Lunghi Giorni Della Verdetta (which was sampled in Kill Bill Vol. 1)), cop films (Blazing Magnum) and skin flicks. His sound was best realized with I Marc 4, his Hammond/jazz-beat band. I Marc 4, playing (almost solely) compositions by Trovajoli, highlighted his worldly sound - Italo-bossa nova slithering around bass heavy grooves - and took his music from the screen to the stage.

"Il Profeta" is the title theme for the 1968 film of the same name. The movie's a thick slice of sex comedy by the prolific Dino Risi and starring Ann-Margret. This is one of Trovajoli's grooviest beat tracks. Two and a half minutes of heaven... Get it here.

Bill Nelson

You know all is right with the world when there's a resurgence of interest in the work of Bill Nelson. Trust me on this. "Do You Dream in Color" is not only a great song but this video, David Lynch in leaner times, is one of the best art-videos of the early '80s.