Why I Taste

Earlier this evening I attempted to make a video because...One, I haven't actually written anything in weeks and Two, because people are on my nerves...



That's all I could salvage but surely y'all have picked up that the question here is...which one of these are straining to be rock stars....



or


If that second one doesn't look like an official video it's because it isn't...they never made one for Summer Babe. Of course, it ends with a big toothy smile...lovely and appropriate.

I'll try to get my act together shortly.

In Las Vegas?????

No more grey haired pictures now.

I think it was B.B. Kings 16 Greatest Hits...a cassette. It was my Daddy's. I appropriated it...and the family tape recorder and played it everywhere I went...which, at this point in my life, was limited to the front and back yard.

This is the song that did it to me...I wrecked that part of the tape. Play, Rewind, Play, Rewind, Play...until I had every hiss memorized. Which was good cause I'd shredded it by then.



King was my Daddy's favorite and I remember one night as a small child being baby-sat so him and my Momma could go see him. It seemed like magic to me...that they could go and see a person from the records. I tried to imagine what it would be like.



Two years ago we were able to take The Boy to see him. It was a rough night on a four year old but, he made it long enough to hear King sing You Are My Sunshine...and that was long enough. It was priceless watching his face.


Keep an eye on your computer for this one...the first few minutes might melt your screen.

As a rule, I am loath to join in with moments of mandatory mourning but, King's music was an integral part of my childhood. As a corporate loss it's crushing, even if not shocking...you can't replace Southerners like this.

All You Protest Kids!

Enough of the murder and mayhem...for the moment at least.

Right in the middle of all the nonsense we've been covering...the Velvet Underground, Venus in Furs, Heroin, White Light/White Heat, Sister Ray...that Velvet Underground, offered up one of the most precious songs ever recorded.



This final version puts Jack in the corset and Jane in the vest but it's still just a boy and a girl who want to get home to each other at night. The great anti-ideology...the anecdote to the murderous mass mind. The only place the individual can truly emerge...in genuine relation. Listen closely Protest Kids...as Jack emerges into his individuality with exuberance!

It's impossible to hear Sweet Jane without Chuck Berry's You Never Can Tell echoing in the background. They had a hi-fi phono...and they let it blast!



They call it domestic bliss for a reason.

It's Not All Pumpkin Spice Lattes

 

 

 

 

Leslie Van Houten...stabbed Rosemary LaBianca 12 times...at least.

 

 

 

"..might be one of the ladies I laid to make a communist." Jim Jones. 



Squeaky. That's What They Called Her.

This girl has just tried to assassinate the president of the United States...Gerald Ford. Of course, you might know her from her time with the Manson Family.

Squeaky was not directly involved in the infamous murders carried out by The Family. She never did any time for those but she doesn't seem to have regretted the association.

She was a piece of work in her own right. After the Manson murders and before her attempt on Ford, she was dragged in for the murder of a couple in Stockton, CA. Turned out everybody there was involved except the victims and Squeaky. A couple of years later she tried to kill Gerald.*



The story doesn't end there. In 1987, Squeaky got wind that Charles Manson had cancer in the balls. So she escaped from prison to be with him. This baffles me...more than the gruesome murders which, despite their grotesque nature, seem to have been about dope...bad dope deals.  What I don't get is the devotion of these girls.

 (Nancy Pittman, Sandra Good, Kitty Lutesinger, Catherine Gillies of the Manson Family) 

 

Them girls are outside the courthouse in a show of support for Manson and the others on trial for the brutal slaying of seven people. Squeaky's somewhere around there. She and others camped out on the grounds during the trial. Soon they'd all be bald with X's carved in their foreheads.

WTF? They are Baby Boomers...and that might be all the explanation we need but, still...
Just up the road Jim Jones' People's Temple is rockin', Ted Bundy is about to commit his first murder, John Wayne Gacey has just been granted parole for sexually assaulting a minor. There they sit...ice wouldn't melt in their mouths...in devotion to Charles Manson.



Despite the attempt on Ford and her escape, to help Charlie with his balls, Squeaky was eventually paroled y'all...God only knows what she's up to.

*Thirteen days later another woman tried to kill Ford...the most innocuous figure in the history of U.S. politics. For her part, Squeaky seems to have been chapped about the Red Woods...yes she was a confidante of Charles Manson, yes she was involved with dope dealing Aryan Nationers but, she loved the planet.

Without Correction

The second in a series of post concerning my favorite records.

 

Eggleston

Reviewing Alex Chilton's Like Flies on Sherbert for Allmusic, David Cleary tells us...

"...this release is a dreadful disappointment. Production values are among the worst this reviewer has ever heard: sound quality is terrible, instrumental balances are careless and haphazard, and some selections even begin with recording start-up sound."

Then, horror of horros...."Chilton's false-start vocal on "Boogie Shoes" is simply left in without correction".

"Without correction"? It wasn't left there on purpose for a purpose beyond Cleary's capacity or willingness to accept. There is a proper way to do things and this was not it...it was an error left uncorrected. I guess Jim Dickinson just didn't know what he was doing.

 

Cleary is well within his duties to point out the haphazard nature of the record. Let 'em know that if they're looking for The Ballad of El Goodo...it's not here. As for what's correct or incorrect Cleary can stick it above his collar...right up his butt.*

I wonder if he bothered with Bach's Bottom...surely his head would have exploded at Free Again (version 1)..."Put some kung fu on it this time"...or if he heard Chilton's sessions from 1970, before Big Star...



Throughout the sessions Dickinson would record players while they were warming up and use those takes. There's the oft reported anecdote that Chilton wanted Dickinson to play guitar because he still played like a teenager. The illusion created by crafting is removed. The false starts and uneven mixes...the overdubs to hide blank spots...it creates a level of uncertainty for the listener and when the whole thing comes off it is exhilarating.



I don't think there's any irony in the record...even the cover of Boogie Shoes sounds like earnest fun. How many songs have buried..."trampled" on even...by well crafted, precise production? Still, the potential for a meta reading can't be denied. They knew, Jim Dickinson certainly knew, what they were doing. Others got what they were doing too. It's impossible, at least for me, to see Slay Tracks hit with the impact it did and not think of Like Flies on Sherbert.**

Finally, one reviewer complained that they all sound drunk and high.

Playing rocknroll while drunk and high on the dope. Well...I swanny!

That's Memphis David...it may not play in Cincinnati, Oh-hyy-o but, nobody gives a damn.



*I've got the Trouser Press Record Guide from the 80's and the one they published in the 90's. In the 80's, Trouser's take on Bach's Bottom and Flies is as vitriolic as Cleary's...accusing the records of "trampling" on Chilton's songs. By 95, Bach's Bottom was an "intriguing stop/start" record.
** I think this is what they call foreshadowing.

Cover All The Rugs With Cheap Perfume

Over the weekend, Swiss Adam at Bagging Area , featured the excellent Wedding Present single Brassneck in a post. Just so happens that Brassneck was backed with a cover of Pavement's Box Elder. This somehow came up in the comment section...today he featured both the Wedding Present cover and a live version by Pavement.

Those of you who have followed the discussion will know that Singing Bear joined the rest of you miscreants in being banned...not because he doesn't like Pavement but, because he said he didn't "get" Pavement...obviously casting aspersions on your devoted author's efforts at getting the point across. Or did he? Maybe I haven't talked enough about Pavement. Maybe he was unfairly dealt with...maybe we haven't had enough Pavement on these pages...obviously we need more Pavement.

Bear...your ban has been officially rescinded but, we've still got a tight grip on the hammer...so, watch your step.

One thing we need to quickly get out of the way...and C brought this up the last time Pavement graced this site...and it's cryptically referenced at Bagging Area...in the States, Pavement is not the sidewalk. It is black top, asphalt...it's where you break your face open when learning to ride a bike. When Thurston Moore first picked up a copy of Slay Tracks he thought they must be an Industrial Band...."or something more nefarious." It has a very hard connotation here.

Anyway, before moving on let's have a few more covers...

I don't know who these shirtless idiots are...but man they got it. Kentucky Cocktail appears on early live sets and Pavemet's first Peel Session*. The riff is just balls out...in more earnest hands it might have been a hit on classic radio but...Ha. I love this cover...never more than a demo, these kids take the song and just destroy it. He mumbles most of the lines...even seeming to look up for help at one point...perfect. When they come to the break and he yells F**CK! and it crashes right back into the riff...brilliant...like a 5 year old with a flamethrower.



Cage the Elephant. Watch the rhythm guitarist and drummer...the song has nearly driven them out of their minds. Again...this is a b side. False Scorpion backed Rattled By the Rush from Wowee Zowee. They kill it...obliterate it. Awwwwesome indeed.



I don't know who these ladies are but, after a little investigating it saddens me to report that they are no longer a going concern...Good Story have split but, they got this one off before calling it quits...mason jar in hand. Zurich is Stained from Slanted and Enchanted.



Julie gets another appearance just because...and because it'll make it easier for me to pull it up on my phone.



How about a sing a long...get your lighters out. Built to Spill cover the sublime Here.



Even Dough Martsch can't keep from smiling...a couple of times.

Watch this space for more Pavement.

*Peel's love of Pavement owes a lot to that initial introduction by the Wedding Present.

Meet Me In The City

Junior

There are two towering figures in Mississippi Hill Country Blues. One is the irreplaceable R.L. Burnside...the other is the mighty Junior Kimbrough. Legends. As great as any of the players who left for Chicago or Detriot...greater in my estimation. Like all great players...Howlin' Wolf - Smokestack Lighting, Muddy Waters - Mannish Boy, etc...they both had a signature song...a song that was impossible, no matter how many times it was covered, to separate from its source. For Burnside it's Goin' Down South...for Kimbrough it's Meet Me In The City.



I wouldn't be surprised if one of you pops and says you've done a cover of it.

I love the North Mississippi Allstars. Some of their albums come off as too theoretical...to concerned with what they're trying to do but they've also been fantastic live. Luther and Cody are, of course, the sons of Jim Dickinson. They come by all this very honestly...this is their neighborhood.

Jon O'Spencer is gonna make "every-TING" so fine...best guitar take not played by Junior himself.



Gomez capture something different.



The Black Keys obviously have an affinity for the Hill Country...they got their start on Fat Possum so it's with some credibility and obvious tenderness that they take it on.



It's an untouchable song that deserves a place among the greatest expressions of the 20th century.

For Bear...Somethin' about Momma, Trains, Trucks, Prison, Gettin' Drunk...

David Allan Coe...



I have my issues with Coe. He's prickly, which is alright, and doesn't care about being misunderstood in his writing. That's admirable.



Some of his best work was obviously driven by resentment. He's a songwriting genius....just ask Tanya Tucker, Johnny Paycheck or David Allan Coe...but he's never been embraced by the country establishment. At this point, it's hard to tell who's to blame....put out a stunning record...follow it up with an album featuring your father's corpse on the cover. Maybe he's a genuine Outsider...somebody who wants desperately to be loved and accepted because he knows he never can be.

If That Ain't Country cuts right to it. It's a series of tropes...and a thinly veiled mocking but, it ends with a mini-medley of Country Classics..."I didn't grow up in a tobacco field but, it's not necessary, I really can do this."



Coe is not a Texan. He's not from Nashville...he's not a Southerner at all. He's from Ohio...Akron, f****** Ohio. He spent a lot of his childhood in Michigan juvies...but he wants to make sure you know he "can sing all them songs about Texas." It's also probably got something to do with why he drapes himself in Confederate battle flags and tours a kinda Dixie Minstrel show. Can't say I love that.

Man...he can be brilliant though.

No Constitutional Right to Smoke

This is what happens in an actual Democracy...which we are increasingly becoming...your daily activities are subject to the wants and desires of people named LaToya.

                                             LaToya Bans Smoking in New Orleans

According to this new Edict of the People, there is no Constitutional right to smoke. Far be it from me to question the Constitutional expertise of LaToya but, it's my understanding that the Constitution is not a set of permissions granted to subjects...a list of things the State will allow you to do. Instead, again with all due respect to LafuckingToya, it is a list of powers that the citizenry refuses to grant the State. It's a collection of Negative Rights...this is what the State cannot do.

This is the understanding of the Constitution that another community organizer, Barack Hussein Obama, finds so troubling. According to Barack, that's the great flaw of the Constitution...it's a collection of negative rights that says a lot about what the government can't do and nothing about what the State should do for people. In other words, the flaw of the U.S. Constitution, as Barack sees it, is its essence. This point, even as a bone of contention is, obviously and completely, lost on....dear God...LaToya.

Of course, I'm the fool...who cares about negative rights and the crucial role they play in protecting Liberty (Liberty? HA!)...who cares about the, small c, constitutional legitimacy of law. To the extent that legitimacy matters...desire is sufficient. Majority rules...authority is found in numbers.

That's how we get to the point where you do not have a right to allow smoking on your own property...but, you do have the right to seize the property of others so you can go to Junior College. The precious people, that seething mass of avarice and stupidity, want something and the vapid politicians are happy to provide it...fully justified because they are doing the bidding of that most sacred body..."the people." Amazing that we have laws at all...when the instincts of the people are so trustworthy and virtuous.

My concerns here are not only esoteric but, increasingly, nonsensical. So, let's come down out of the clouds...get down on the ground and have a closer look at the city for whose benefit this decree has been issued. New Orleans is a city...a real object. So comforting that we can measure it, touch it....smell it.

If you've never been to New Orleans and would like to experience it...you can do so in your own home. First, have a bloody piss in a carton of milk and leave it open to sour on the counter. Once the milk is ripe...two, empty your trashcan on the living room floor. Three, get blind drunk and pass out in the trash. Four, have your significant other...doesn't matter if it's a wife, girlfriend, husband, boyfriend or, even better, a stranger from the park...dress in an edible bikini and thigh high go-go boots. They should stand over you while barking for a strip club or hooking. Five, for a truly authentic experience, have some friends come by to vomit on you and urinate in the corner.

Whatever you do, however far you get carried away, for God's sake, do not let anybody fire up a square. We're not trying to get anybody killed here.

We've been down this road before....

No Smoking at Old Absinthe House

we've gotten so far down now that lighting up anywhere along it will get you a 100 dollar fine.
It should be fun watching the enforcement...expensive but, fun. Food and beverage people smoke...even in Quarter bars where it's already banned you can watch them early in the morning stumbling out into the daylight...cigarettes dangling from their squinting faces.

Never mind the droves of tourists who may or may not be aware of the Decree. A person standing on a sidewalk smoking is exactly the kind of mushy target that cops love. Good times...Good times...or Bon Temps I reckon.

I'll close with a question. Let's set aside the issue of legitimacy for such Decrees. What kind of people ban smoking in bars, jukes, taverns...we're talking about a bar...a BAR. What concept of a juke and the purpose it serves must those people have? I know many don't like to be around smoke...but that's hardly the issue. That market can be served without a total ban. What kind of human being would support a ban on smoking cigarettes in a juke...a honkey tonk? It's a bar...you get dunk, dance, fight and smoke cigarettes.



It's not really a place that figures into a program for adding a few years to your stank carcass.

Twinkle, Twinkle...Blah, Blah, Blah...EE. TEE. CEE.

Many of you have expressed your anxiousness to hear what else happened in Birmingham...and it makes me happy to know that y'all read. We will get to it, but first...

this.

There stands Jackson like a Stonewall

Every year around this time, for reasons known only to him, God abandons us and the atmosphere takes on a strange quality. I don't know how to describe it really...it's sharp and penetrating...kinda like when you reach for something in the ice box. The sky goes dirty grey. It goes on forever...like a month. Turrible.

This week was particularly bad. It got down to 14 degrees (-10c)...low enough to freeze water in pipes and blow the pressure valve on your hot water heater. I can't express how much I hate winter...hate the cold...hate coats, jackets, jumpers, sweat shirts...how I despise it busting in on my room in the garage.

Fortunately the previous owners left a big box of tiles under the heater...there were these fabulous high pitched accents to the crashing thud of dry wall.

So, that was fun.

Obviously it was very upsetting for The Boy and Herschel-Walker.

Speaking of upsetting...and I'm loath to even bring it up, but none of your Christmas presents to me have shown up. I know they're coming...I'm not brining this up to shame anybody. It's just I know y'all are anxious to hear what I think. Please know that I'm already appreciative but, I'm a little ashamed to say, it was with increasing anxiety that I've rushed to the mailbox every day the last few weeks...only to be disappointed. I know they're coming...I'm not complaining...my silence has not meant a lack of appreciation...they just haven't shown up yet.

While I'm complaining...that crap in France. It wasn't actually a distraction from blogging but, I'm so sick of these dickheads.

I've only gotten a glimpse of this nonsense once. It was at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. There was an American evangelist and a black fella that I think was British. As far as I can recall, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Yeah...somebody was going to hell but I don't remember it being anti-Muslim or anything. Just the usual turn-so-you-don't-burn stuff.

Whatever it was...was too much for the swarthy fella next to me. I could see him gritting his teeth and sorta swaying...like pacing from the waste up...until he couldn't take it anymore...

"What do you expect from an American and nigger!"

There was some verbal rustling at that...no intelligible boos or shut ups...but that was the audible gist. This poor American girl next to me, when he said nigger, she caught a case of the vapors. I thought she was gonna pass out.

Then he was completely incensed. He started that pacing thing again and then snapped. He lunged for the black dude...burst right through the crowd in a rage but the crowd was having non of it. He was literally thrown back on to a walkway and escorted out of the park by a few biguns.

He just couldn't tolerate hearing what he didn't want to hear. Dick.

...

 



The final distraction came this weekend when me and the Big Man got in to a discussion about the punk rock...which led to me spending two days downloading Minutemen songs instead of writing.



Throw you lighters up for D.




Alright...back to our regularly scheduled reading and writing then.

The Fall's Motown Era*

If I don't love the Fall like RL Burnside or Flannery O'Conner then grits ain't....

Still...not even I can find the sexy there. Grooves? Yes! Grooves that cut deeper than the Mariana Trench but...sesssy?

No...I don't think so. Soul? It's hard to have Soul when you're laying waste to every thing in your path.

That's where Jonathan Fire* Eater comes in...to give us a glimpse, five seconds maybe...and they flicker out.



"A girl had a seizure there.../she was putting on her make up in the club car/There's make up everywhere...You little Princess"



Is his brother a cross-dresser or a werewolf?



Killed by hype before anybody knew who they were...the hoopla was ridiculous. Matador scoffed...but, only after they'd failed to singed them. They signed to a major label...released a fantastic but unappreciated album and then disappeared.

In the aftermath we got the Walkmen...eh.




*Stax woulda signed 'em.

You've Been Complicated

The first in a series of post concerning my favorite records.

 

Chrome - Half Machine Lip Moves (1979)

Some of my favorite songs appear elsewhere...Slip it to the Android, Animal, Something Rhythmic...but this is my favorite collection of songs by Chrome and one of my favorite "albums".*

 

Dig it...after almost a minute of gurgled moans and scrapes...the lights come on and they rip the MC5 a brand new a**hole.



Just as suddenly, it descends back into the muck...evidently to murder those riffs because the song reemerges with their entrails laid over an mechanical beat. It's deconstruction...not as an intellectual exercise but as an act of pure malice. It is completely unnerving, disorienting...and it is glorious.



Half Machine is a companion piece to Alien Soundtracks...a tighter grip on the idea. Found sound collages and industrial beats...bludgeoning these scuzzy riffs with a wrench. It's the sound of The Stooges in the process of being assimilated by the Borg.

This isn't an album that I merely enjoy...it's one that was written specifically for me. It's a record that fits perfectly into a space in my brain. There aren't many of those...but, there's enough to make a list out of.

 __________________________________________

* I really don't like albums...or I hate the idea of The Album. I'll take as many good songs as I can get but, this standard of releasing 8 to 20 songs as a coherent artistic, Artistic, statement every year is nonsense and ruination. It's a ridiculous standard that has eventually embarrassed everybody...including Mark E Smith and Prince. 

 

We all know who's to blame for this bull s***!

The last truly great Pavement release was a throw-off maxi-single...songs that were intended for the Silver Jews. There's a reason singles and EPs are so much fun. They don't bear the burden of being an Album...no ponderous bits forced into the aural narrative...tedious filler...just songs.

That's not to say it never works...I mean we have started with an album here but there will also be EPs and maybe even compilations. I refuse to adhere to the standard.

A List of Incorrect Things

Half sung lyrics that are forced along by an irresistibly rough hewn rhythm...punctuated by demented melodic barbs. Hill Country Blues or....



Little Milton, Albert, B.B....we love you but, the Bossman's here now. Scatter!

Break your ears on this.



"Then One Night/I Was Doin' My Homework/My Woman/She Calls Out Yo' Name."



Those early Fall records are rocknroll in another dimension...a better one. One where Hill Country Blues, not Delta Blues, set the rules. Where they don't have a word for Rockabilly because Rockabilly just is. Where they don't have a word for Hippie because they've never seen one...and, internets forgive me, they've never heard a Boy Band sing Twist and Shout. I love the Fall...but, those records from Grotesque to Perverted By Language are transcendent.

We haven't even bothered with the fact that you have Ezra Pound, Christopher Logue, Mary Flannery and Eliot...ranting over the whole thing.

That's how a Cracker came to be obsessed with the FALL.*

How this clown became such a hater we'll probably never know.

 

Get The F*** Down Y'all!







*For the record...I am a Cracker...not a Redneck. My people were among those Britons who settled South Georgia

Highway 49 Revisited

The intersection of Highways 49 and 61, in Clarksdale, is where Robert Johnson is supposed to have sold his soul to Scratch.* Seems a little excessive really. He was good but them roads are littered with blue, and red, signs honoring people that were good...and who didn't get poisoned with lighter fluid or whatever.

Indianola

The obvious choice for Indianola is B.B. King...born and reared there, playing on Church St. He's not the only King born in Indianola though...



Actually BB is the only King from Indianola...Albert was a Nelson. So, from Indianola Mississippi seeds....one of my favorite snippets of recorded sound...ever.



Six miles down the road in Inverness...you know what happens next.

R.C. Cola...Inverness

 

 

Another 10 miles and you're in Isola.

 



Isola

 



We got red signs too...Isola is the hometown of Hank Cochran. He played under his own name eventually but what he really did was write songs...songs that have been recorded by everybody from Elvis Costello to Elvis Presley....Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard and...this one.



This is exactly the kinda pop song that made my Grandmother despise Patsy Cline...sell out. It's a pretty good way to sell out though.

Then you come to Belzoni...

The opposite side of town from where he was actually born?

 



Pinetop played the piano instead of the guitar...cause a girl in Arkansas cut his arm up.



Him and Robert Nighthawk.

BB King has a special place with me. He was a constant around our house because my Daddy loves him...and Albert...who don't like Little Milton? But that urban soul blues is not favorite...Nighthawk is closer to the mark. Elmore James, born in Holmes county**, but a regular on the streets of Belzoni...is as good a turn at country-Delta type Blues as they'll ever be.



BALLS!

After that you pass by Louise and Midnight...eventually coming to Yazoo City (used to be Manchester)...the end of The Delta. There's a few musicians but, we gon' hear from Jerry Clower. Y'all may not know him...but, he is a true Southern treasure and one of the funniest men to ever live.



"Sir what's wrong with you...NOT A THING IN THE WORLD."

Vicksburg and the grim Louisiana Delta today.

*There is, of course, controversy about this...some of the old players put the crossroad north of Clarksdale in Rosedale...I think.

**Holmes county could mean Lexington, Pickens...godforsaken Tchula...who knows.

Highway 49

I am packing now...and I'll be on Highway 49 in an hour headed to Indianola....right through Belzoni.

Then down 61 back from Greenville.



There's probably a song for every town I'll pass through...there's always plenty to report in The Delta.

"Me and BB King used to race tractors in Indianola...he was drivin' a John Deer. I was drivin' a Farmall."

Inverness...home of Little Milton...Little Milton Campbell.

The Greyist Thoughts

I've been trying to get my act together this week...and have been failing. So, you get more of my paintings and videos. Luuuucky.



What those albums could have been without the record company pestering them for more strings. You might need more cowbell but you never need more strings. De Feitas is almost completely washed out of the mix by 8,000 chellos...listen to this s***. The bit between him and Sergeant is a rocket ship.

This one's done I reckon.

 

This one I'm still workin' out...and taking great pleasure doing it. It's a portrait.

Again the contrast...



The lyrics are always silly...which is fine with me...the trench coat is not. Take that damn thing off. You're inside man.

Garden

 

 

Make a hole Mozzer...make a way...the boss man's coming through.

NHS Glasses. Do What?

There seems to be a consensus, among our readers, on the U2...that they're vile. These clowns, I'm guessing, are a more complicated proposition. Before we pick up this tar-baby I'd like to explain how it happened that I've posted a picture of The Smiths on this blog.

It's the fault of Swiss Adam at bagging area . Last week he had a series of posts featuring The Clash...the last one coming on Friday.* I spend most Friday's confined to my office with little to do. I watch a lot of videos and documentaries on Youtube. So, a week ago, after reading a post on Rock the Casbah...I found myself searching for Clash documentaries.

I have issues with The Clash that sometimes spoil a listen...these, I believe, are probably mine alone but, I am fascinated by their story and the disintegration of the band. It still boggles my mind that Mick Jones was told to get out. Splits happen but in what dimension is it a good idea to fire Mick Jones? I still don't understand exactly what happened...and then there's Strummer in the Medicine Show video...like what, months later?

Anyway, there are bands, like the Clash, whose story is as interesting to me as their music. I went through documentaries on early Who...then Quadraphenia and the Mod revival in the 70's.. a little bit about The Jam. One on Mods, Rockers and Beatniks in 60's England. On the sidebar...the Smiths kept popping up. I don't know how I feel about The Smiths as a band...I can't decide, but their story, the phenomenon, and the convoluted bits about their break up I knew made them perfect for that day's viewing...then the next and the next.

The more I heard the more confused I became.

Everybody kept talking about how they were unique for presenting themselves as average Northern, working class kids...so, your average Mancunian swags around with a fragrant bouquet in his britches?**
Of course, everything has it's context

 

Compared to the new wave acts they charted with...it's a fair assessment. Besides Marr and the other two do seem right off the road. Even Morrissey with his flowers and Mardi Gras beads doesn't seem that flamboyant. Them glasses. I didn't think anything of them. Then I heard they were a prop...and now I know they were NHS glasses. At the time I wouldn't have understood what that meant. If he had been swinging a block of government cheese...that would have translated. Well, there's no hiding your glasses so, now I can see it as a very decent, or maybe a very clever, gesture. These things we're completely lost on most of us.



A lot of this is hindsight from the late 80's early 90's. I was 9 in 1982 and only bought one Smiths record while they were still together...a 12" single for Panic. (A song that still tickles me). By 1986 I was practically living in a record store and I know how they were thought of generally.  Not only were they grouped in with The Cure...but also with New Order.

So, it made me laugh every time they would talk about The Smiths as a guitar band or when Marr would go on a tangent about New Order. Looking back it's easier to see just how different they were but, at the time, to half of the underground, indie, whatever, record buying public they were just another Depeche Mode.

I don't know how bands like the Smiths viewed their success in the States but, in that world, the college radio world or whatever, they were like superstars. They had catchy songs, videos, and they were used to presenting themselves to wider audiences. MTV did the rest...which actually lagged behind the life of the band.***

There was a level of resentment from certain quarters toward all these "English" bands. On More Fun in the New World, X complains with I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts...

"The facts we hate
You'll never hear us
I hear the radio is finally gonna play new music
You know, the British invasion
But what about The Minutemen, Fleasheaters, DOA, Big Boys and The Black Flag?
Will the last American band to get played on the radio please bring the flag?
Please bring the flag!
Glitter-disco-synthesizer night school"

The obnoxious kid from Salt Lake City Punk (set in 1985)...gives a very foul-mouthed taste.



The funniest and most childish outburst came from The Dead Milkmen...You'll Dance to Anything. If Marr was aware of the song I'm sure he was horrified to have The Smiths grouped in with Book of Love and the Communards. Ha. Yeah in comparison to Human League The Smiths were a back to basics guitar band...but, it didn't really translate and nobody confused them with Husker Du or Sonic Youth.

We still bought the records though. The Cure, The Smiths and Echo and The Bunnymen...Joy Dvsion via New Order were in the collection of every teenage record collector. We didn't share the older kids resentment. Most of us came up on New Wave. Duran Duran is the reason I started going to real record stores as a little kid. It was almost inevitable that the next round of American bands would be steeped in British post-punk or indie-pop. You could see it coming with the Pixies. Nirvana pimped the Vaselines and Raincoats...Pavement were obsessed with TV Personalities, Swell Maps and of course The Fall.

Still, Morrissey was a special case. Try for a moment, to imagine that he isn't in the music papers, that all you know of him is on the records. The public spats, the punch lines, the self references and...none of it translates. There was little nuance and humor for an audience so far out of the loop. He just seemed like a self-obsessed, melodramatic, bore (which I suppose he is everywhere to some extent). As far as I know, in the States, Marr is still held in the highest regard while Morrissey has no presence to speak of except among a small obsessive following. I was completely taken aback to hear that his most obsessed fans in Britain were male...that point kept coming up. I liked the Smiths alright and I knew other fellas that liked them but, the obsessives were always girls.

Anyway with some distance and reams of context...a lot the songs seem more clever and even funny.  I still can't listen to the songs that are driven by Morrissey meandering through a maudlin melody...or the songs where the band fades to background music but, I have developed a new appreciation for songs I hadn't thought about in years.



"the grease in the hair
of a speedway operator
is all a tremulous heart requires"

That's pretty good...I can't deny it.

That's also enough of this rambling mess.

__________________________

P.S. It was the sweet Southern husk of Mary Huff's voice that also made this post possible...she broke the noise lock that morning on the way to work...when this one slipped past the censors.



Not entirely inappropriate...if only Morrissey had actually been a girl. They may have been the perfect band.

* It's actually the week before last now.

**As a Southerner...Morrissey is obviously Truman Capote (don't be fooled by the exotic surname...he was born a Persons). Not in any way typical but, still a legitimate Southern character. If you're wondering Mark E Smith is Mary Flannery O'Conner.

*** See Perks of Being a Wallflower for an example of how The Smiths were still a living entity in the minds of U.S. high schoolers as late as the early 90's.

Cherubs...Cherub

Some of you may have noticed the increased volume and level of noise around here lately. I go through periods like this...where I don't want to hear anything that could comfortably be described as a song. Something with a lead bottom and lots of squealing feedback is what I want. I don't want yer verses...I don't want your choruses...and bridges?!  For the love of kittens...no bridges. Nothing, in these time, does my head in worse than a bridge. I want to blow yer bridge up worse than USNC Shears.



I don't even want to hear songs I like right now. So you can maybe imagine how pleased I was for these a***holes...

...to show up on my phone. The shit's just there...hit shuffle it's comin'. It takes a hot second to realize what it is...that manufactured, formulaic, market tested, ray-ban, phony cool bull**** they've been peddling for 30 years.

 

Smash yer face on it bonos...

 (Listen...but watch Molly while you do...OUTSTANDING! ha)

 

While trying to crack my skull open at the ears...I've been obsessing over Chagall. I found a little cheap paper back with probably 20 postcard sized reproductions of his works.

 



 

 The only approach I have to painting is to rip off paintings I like to produce more paintings I like...

 

 



 

Maybe a sleeping pill or two.