This (pink) record came with the second issue of the Patty Duke Fanzine, a loving, if slightly camp, tribute to the actress who starred in The Miracle Worker, Valley of the Dolls and, of course, The Patty Duke Show, compiled by one Mike D (NOT the Beastie Boy).
The magazine reproduces vintage pieces on how to be Patty's best friend and pleas to her to stop saying 'no' to the boys (both unintentionally lesboerotic), not to mention a comparison/contrast of the two Dolls movies (the second, Beyond The Valley of the Dolls, does not include Patty), helpful makeup tips, and information about recordings both by Patty and varying degrees of tribute by assorted artists. A fun read, if occasionally plagued by bad photocopying.
The record has covers of four songs that Patty recorded in the 1960s, including the only track I
know of by buck that has Sherri Solinger on drums, the rocking 'Sure Gonna Miss Him' (ed. note
- evidently, of late, Ms Solinger is back with the band, so, if it records again, there's the chance
of more...); gaze's soft and fuzzy 'Whenever She Holds You'; International House of Karen's
catchy 'Tell Me Mama'; and Rose Melberg's sweet and lovely take on 'I Love How You Love
Me'. Since I don't know what the originals sound like, I really can't compare - but it was a really
fun slab of vinyl, and worth multiple spins when you're in a bad mood to cheer you up.
Imagine if Fred, Cindy and Kate from the B52s bopped Joey Ramone over the head (with a baseball bat, perhaps) and took his place fronting Ramones on some of their thrashiest material (though still with a hint of pop).
That's what this predominantly female band (with a male singer (ed. note - whom they have subsequently dropped)) sounds like to my ear. Like the B52s, they have a certain campy love of trash culture, though theirs seems to derive more from the world of 70s and 80s after-school specials than 50s science fiction films. Like the Ramones, they rock hard and simply, with a limited but charming singer.
As befits a band with a song entitled 'I Want To Be Your Maitre'D' (the other selections are 'Riff
Randells Theme', 'After School Special' and 'Sweet Sixteen), they actually played a restaurant,
Ida's Kitchen, in my town on June 8, 2000...I think I'll have to be there (ed. note - I was), if only
to hear more of these hard-edged but tongue-in-cheek anthems...they're Riff Randells...Riff, Riff
Randells...
Gary Floyd, big ol' snugglebear of Dicks/Sister Double Happiness fame, is back with a new band and his most rocking material in a long time (he has done some work in a country-blues context recently - goodness knows he has a voice as big as all outdoors to do it with) (ed. note - saw him at the Folsom Street Fair in September, 2000, outdoors - sigh, and woof... :) ).
Some of the lyrics here reflect his interests and faith in mysticism - but not in a preachy or tiresome way. The music is pretty much straight-ahead Southern-flavoured boogie-rock, as befits a man originally from Texas.
Selections like 'Angel Face' (about how a culture of violence begets violence), 'Remain Awesome' (about masculinity and its insidious imposing of closetry) and 'Moving On' (among other things, about Matthew Shepard) are topical, while 'Evil Clowns' and 'Price We Pay' are more generally about the dehumanizing effects of a consumer society. Therefore, while the music allows you to boogie and mosh and jump up and down, the lyrics make you think - which is as it should be.
Rock on, Gary!
Chris Horne (guitar/vocals) and her crew of grrrl-garage 60s revivalists (Betsy Mitchell on bass; Crystal Light on percussion; and Asch Gregory on organ and vocals) are back with a new album at last, just as I had begun to give up hope.
As has become standard, there are 16 songs in 39 minutes, about half of which are originals (the covers are usually obscure or arranged cleverly enough to make little difference).
Packaging-wise, this is one of their most sophisticated extended jokes, since it's all around a fictitious movie entitled 'Beyond The Valley of the Brood' (with predictable Russ-Meyerish ad copy and drawings).
Sonically, the vocals are a bit further forward, perhaps because Chris has taken a hand in the mixing at last, which, given this record's murky mastering, is essentially the production.
The one instrumental, 'Pink Pussycat', doesn't go much of anywhere, and the lyrics are a little
more 'I'm broken hearted' than I usually expect or like from Chris, but it's a welcome return to
growly, fuzzy-toned, organ-swirling 60s garage-rock style, and it rocks out in a most excellent
way...so I recommend it highly.
The appealingly raspy-voiced Mr. Cohen is back with his second album, which is leaps and bounds ahead of the debut (also wonderful, in case that sounds like a putdown).
Adding organ and occasional horn parts to his basic piano-guitar-bass-drums-vocals sound has really opened up the palette, and his singing is much warmer and more flexible too (of course, I happen to love a guy with a throaty voice (in the general and the specific), so I'm biased... ;o) ).
It is perhaps a slightly less 'gay' record than the debut - it's more welcoming and 'inclusive', or so some of my straight colleagues have said.
Like Elton John, who he somewhat vocally and musically resembles, his material has the potential for broad appeal, especially the title track, which made me cry, and 'Dyke's Lumber', which has Dr. Demento possibilities.
This disc definitely rocks more than its predecessor, and even the ballads are more energetic and
edgy, so I am admiring this new, more flashy direction and wish the record much success.
Marianne returns with an elegant, polished but still edgy and darkly humorous record, her first 'pop' release in five years. We are finally given her rendition of Leonard Cohen's 'Tower of Song', which would seem a perfect choice, though she actually sings it quite sweetly (if not with the 'golden voice' sarcastically referenced in the song). It has a gentle, vaguely reggae lope to it, and some sparkling slide guitar parts, as well as a swirling organ accompaniment (though I find it interesting she jettisoned the lyrics about 'the rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor' and the subsequent 'mighty judgement' - perhaps she thought them too heavy-handed, or too troubling, given her class position by birth...).
This is not really a 'rock' record, however, despite the hype on the front cover, though it is a return to the collaborator of her heyday, guitarist Barry Reynolds. Everything is fairly low-key, and Marianne's harmonies (she backs herself with surprisingly beautiful results) are more rooted in the sort of work she has done lately with Kurt Weill material - jazzy, classical and sometimes startling. The percussion is tuned to a looser thump, as opposed to the sharp snap of a snare and the solid smack of a bass drum. The only song with harsh guitar is 'Wilder Shore of Love', and, even there, it has a sort of muted fuzz-tone and is kept down during Marianne's singing.
Even the one big production number, Roger Waters' "Incarceration of a Flower Child", only features occasional outbursts of the howling Marianne some still hope for who ignore the trends in her work and insist on listening only to Broken English.
Lyrically, her own 'Vagabond Ways' seems like a cross between 'Sister Morphine' and 'The Ballad of Lucy Jordan', in which the fate-blown main character finally dies of her excesses and demons. Elton John's 'For Wanting You' is a lovely funeral lament for dead and obsessive love (I actually signed a book about him out of the library to try and track down this song, but I think it is either an original for Marianne (though the co-writing credit with the neglected Bernie Taupin makes this less likely) or a catalog number he did not do himself), while her 'File It Under Fun From The Past' shows the wicked wit not enough people give her credit for.
A lovely, gentle experience - and a suitably troubling one at moments. A brilliant return to form,
though I had wished there would be more than five originals among the ten songs...still, one can't
have everything...
This is the quirky band's second release, though I haven't heard the first (so, to me, this is the first - but I digress...).
Clearly, these folks (Gideon sings and occasionally plays bass; Andrew plays guitar and keyboards and harmonizes; James plays bass and some keys and harmonizes; Marc drums and harmonizes; Julie M. guested on some keyboards) have listened to some material as twisted as Zappa, They Might Be Giants and maybe even Devo, since, both musically and lyrically, they can be just out there.
Their, er, theme song features highly distorted vocals and the rather disturbing news that they are
'coming in your ear', while 'Sub-sublime' has some interesting synth work (any electronic
intervention that causes me to say 'What the HELL is that ugly noise?' qualifies as intriguing in
my book...).
This was originally issued on LP way back in 1973, in a run of 1000 copies, and was thus all but impossible for me to find, though I had heard of it. Finally, it appeared on CD!!
The band consisted of Michael Carr on keyboards; Eve Morris on violin, guitar and vocals; Robert Hammerstrom on guitar and dobro; and Patrick Haggerty on guitar and vocals. Patrick, in particular, has been a long-time queer activist, and his lyrics here, in addition to being wonderful to a Red fag like me, are a historical document of radical queer movements/thought at the time.
The music is billed as traditional country, so it is mainly acoustic, with no drums, and sounds more like folk or severely mutated rockabilly.
I am particularly enamoured of 'Waltzing Will Trilogy', about an institutionalized and electro-shocked fag; the sweet and tender 'Gypsy John'; the joyous 'Come Out Singin''; and the rewrite of the Gene Autry classic into 'Back In the Closet Again'.
If Pansy Division were a country band, this might be what they'd do...
Canadian prog/electronic rock veteran returns with a new CD (and, might I add, quite an entertaining multi-media stage act, with slides, films and such interesting props as a sander).
It's one-man, fairly apocalyptic, dark stuff, perhaps best exemplified by 'Tension' and 'Give Me The Creeps' (though the tribute to a deceased grandmother by Dr. K. Syinide, Nash's occasional lyricist, 'I'll Wait For You', was rather touching), delivered in Nash's somewhat harsh voice.
The pointed 'Guns and Sandwiches', about events in the former Yugoslavia, is a highlight too.
While this is not a CD I would ever listen to if I were feeling demoralized, it is a very strong
mood piece...and, if you must have identity politics, I guess I could point out Nash, who
performs in a white dress coat and a bandaged face, is a 'team member'...
After the somewhat low-key Hot Rock, Carrie (guitar/vocals), Corin (guitar/vocals) and Janet (drums/vocals) return to form and catchy tunes here.
Whether it be the ultra-hooky 'You're No Rock and Roll Fun' or the tremelo-guitar masterpiece 'The Swimmer', they have not forgotten to write very strong music to match the pointed, personal-politics lyrics, and have also taken some vocal chances (Corin has learned new tricks that take her beyond that troubling Belinda Carlisle fixation).
'The Ballad of A Ladyman' and 'Male Model' are two of their strongest critiques of expectations on women in some time. One would not necessarily expect political broadsides at this point in their evolution - but these are pretty good, subtle subversions.
All hands on this one, in short...
This band has been known to perform naked, and have been arrested for it, and also have an actual dominatrix for a manager. They also pose on the back of their CD with their mouths duct-taped. None of these things have much to do with the music, but hey! it all got my attention...
As to the music - it's stoooopid, in a good way (I mean, once you've covered Billy Squier's 'Everybody Wants You', it would be difficult not to be seen as stoooopid...). It rocks in a really sloppy way, though I was enamoured of the one mildly painful ballad 'Cocaine Whore' as well, about as much as I was of the slamming 'Geez Louise'.
There is a song on this disc entitled 'Drink and Rock'. That title should give you a big hint what this is like...I kind of dug this record, if only as a voyeur...
This tape arrived just in time for me to include it - and I'm glad.
It's sort of like an American Fall meets Richard Hell and Captain Beefheart backstage at a Half Japanese concert. In other words, quirky but catchy - wordy but smart - and rhythmically compulsive.
The only person in the band whose name I know is C. Underwood, who wrote all the songs and presumably sings-recites them.
All of the songs have a jangly guitar sound, fairly simple drums and elementary bass (except on
'A Sour Well', whose bass and drums take a few more chances), while 'Choke' has some low-tech synth noises added. 'Blotted Heart' was very Jad Fair, while 'Sartorial Toilette' was Byrds
from Pluto. Neat, odd stuff...
Actress was the band which would, with a few changes, become the New York Dolls in 1971/2. It consisted of Johnny Thunders (guitar/vocals); Arthur Kane (bass); Billy Murcia (drums) (soon to be dead); and Rick Rivets (guitar).
This LP is a rehearsal tape, whose vocals particularly suffer in quality, though Arthur, credited as producer, seems to have done the best he could with the source materials.
'That's Poison', the first song, would become 'Subway Train' in the Dolls' repertoire - here, while the guitar parts and the melody are more or less the same, the rhythmic shifts and the lyrics are a bit clumsy still.
'It's Too Late' was clearly completed by David Johansen when he became the singer - the rendition here is knocked around while not quite done.
'Oh Dot!' has strong possibilities, and a really catchy tune, but the band cannot get it together on either of two takes, since they were admittedly not too sober.
Of the songs that did not make it to the Dolls, the only ones that really leap out as a terrible shame for their omission are 'Take Me To Your Party', a Chuck-Berry-style rave-up that Johansen could have done wonders with, and the similar 'Coconut Grove'.
Another vital historical document that isn't necessarily the most entertaining listen - but it's still
interesting and tantalizing for what could have been...
The Ghoulies, with a few line-up changes, have been doing fun, slightly horror-movie-influenced punk-pop for quite a number of years now.
Their current line-up (Kepi (boy) on vocals; Roach (girl) on guitar; Amy on drums; and B-Face (boy) on bass) does sloppy, catchy, fuzzy punk-pop together, with a lot of enthusiasm, if occasionally not really tight chops to the playing.
My personal faves here include the cover of the Modern Lovers song 'Dancing Late At Night),
'Leprechaun Rock' and 'Criswell Predicts', but I kind of liked the whole messy, monster-obsessed thing, right down to its clear pumpkin-orange vinyl!
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