Showing posts with label Iggy Pop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iggy Pop. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

War & It's Side Effects

We'll be paying as a country for lil' Bush's ill-timed folly turned endless bloodbath in Iraq for a long time.

Not only are the bills going to be financial & political weights around the necks of future generations, but the unintentional socio-emotional prices will be high as well.

Look at this sad, likely leftover human detritus from our war in Vietnam.

Meet Lam Luong, he's a 37 year old immigrant from Vietnam whose been here since 1984.


A quick glance at his features though, and my bet is that his daddy was a G.I drafted and serving in Vietnam circa 1971 at the time he was conceived. I'm guessing that this messed up multi-cultural moron possibly never met his G.I Joe daddy...he certainly didn't get rights to his Pop's last name.

If our bloated bully nation had never spent so much time while shedding so much blood in Vietnam, this guy never would have been conceived.

Which in turn means he also never would


  • a.) have ended up in the U.S working for low wages as a shrimper,

  • b.) become a loser crackhead

    or best of all possible worlds:
  • c.) never thrown his own kids off a bridge in Alabama.

It's as easy as A - B - C my friends:





Anyhow...

The American dream has been pretty much a nightmare for many years ...

Growing up in the post Vietnam , Cold War Era shaped my warped perspectives...

And I became a nasty lil' psychedelicized punk rock rebel dropout... which seemed like a fitting idea at the time...

Not so great for the ol' bank account, credit rating or your slick social standing... but at least ya save money on all those golf lessons & country club memberships...

Plus the perks are plentiful... no job to waste your time at, and plenty shows & substances to keep ya spinnin' for years until ya realize ya only have a fraction of yer hearing & liver left.

Here's some of that good ol' rebel music that got me through the sickening haze of watching my country turn fat, stupid & lazy...

These are simple songs that say more in their attitude than they do in their production value...

We'll start with one of my all time fave political pranksters...

He levitated the Pentagon, created a panic on Wall Street when he threw money on the trading floor, riled up Daley's pigs in Chicago, fled the Feds & lived on the lam, grabbed protest headlines with former first daughter Amy Carter and is now 20 years gone after dying in a far too sad fashion for such a feisty figure...



Abbie Hoffman - God Bless America



I was of course a big fan of DEVO, and a lot of folks of my generation were duly impressed with their approach.

Formed in the wake of Kent State in the industrially f*cked environs of the once pastoral rubber city of Akron Ohio, these guys ascended to an unlikely artistic greatness, and are really not to be ignored. They were a near perfect execution of a late 20th century pop cultural statement. Everything from the quirky tunes, to the costumes, production, merchandising, videos and the whole shebang were amazingly well constructed purposeful parodies in an age that was beyond my teenage comprehension...

(They are still chiseling away at the youth culture, with Mark Mothersbaugh working behind the scenes on children's music projects for clients like Nickelodeon & Disney.)


My pals in Lagwagon were apparently also in the same camp, and along with our mutual love for the ponderous pomp & satanic sword play of vintage Iron Maiden, they also had time for Devo...

You can look up Devo in yer own time I suppose...


Here are Lagwagon doing the title cut from a 1981 Devo LP

Lagwagon - Freedom Of Choice

I saw an interview with our next draft dodging contestant, who mentioned how important it was for his bandmates to avoid the draft. Imagine if the Stooges hadn't perfected their 4F status and the world was forced to endure another decade of crap like The Association and Dino, Desi & Billy.

Thank gawd that this peanut butter & blood smearing freak lived through Vietnam, and can continue to entertain us all today...

Gawd forbid, he had gone to 'Nam and started making babies...

Where would aging boomer targeted companies like Cadillac and Carnival Cruiselines get music for their wack tv commercial ad campaigns ?

Iggy Pop and The Stooges - Cock In My Pocket

Metallic K.O. - The Original 1976 AlbumIggy And The Stooges
"Cock In My Pocket" (mp3)
from "Metallic K.O. - The Original 1976 Album"
(Jungle Records)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody
More On This Album







In the wake of Vietnam, with the petrol addicted 1st world empires in repose, we ended up with Britain huffing a whiff of the Stooges & NY Dolls. Soon bands like The Clash, Ian Dury & the Blockheads and Eddie & The Hot Rods arose out of the pubs & shook up the scene.

Ian Dury wrote an enduring punky 70's sort of anthem, that still holds plenty resonance today with a certain fringe devout following...

Ian Dury - Sex & Drugs & Rock n Roll

Here's a midwestern U.S based band known as Soul Asylum doing a live Eddie & the Hot Rods cover a decade or two later, showing that the wasted U.K pub pop scene had legs, if not a legacy. (At the end you can hear Dan Murphy dedicate the track to Articles of Faith singer Vic Bondi, a fixture on the 80's hardcore scene in Chicago and featured in the documentary "American Hardcore".)

Soul Asylum - Do Anything You Wanna do( Eddie & The Hot Rods Cover)

In the late 70's UK trend spotter Malcolm McLaren smelled blood & lots of bloody money, and suddenly we had the Sex Pistols, and even solo Sid Vicious attempting his best Eddie Cochran impersonation before stabbing the shit out of some whiny junkie broad from New Jersey.
Sid LivesSid Vicious
"Something Else" ( recorded live Sept 28th '78 )
from the recent dbl CD release "Sid Lives".

Incidentally, this track was recorded live with with itinerant scenster Steve Dior on guitar backed by Jerry Nolan and Arthur "Killer" Kane of the NY Dolls as the rhythm section upstairs at Max's Kansas City.

On 9/28/1978 these junkie bashers in NYC banged away two sets ruthlessly in oblivion, while their 70's contemporaries like prog rockers Yes performed in the round at the Checkerdome in St.Louis. Hee Haw banjo man Roy Clark guested on the Muppet Show, and in Austin TX, at Armadillo World HQ, future American Idol judge Randy Jackson played jazz fusion as part of Billy Cobham's band, the same venue where months earlier an ill-fated Sex Pistols performance had been held.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in the Vatican, it was announced that Pope John Paul the 1st died mysteriously 33 days after he was named Pope. It was also just 2 weeks before Sid would reportedly find himself covered in blood at the Chelsea hotel and be charged with Nancy Spungen's murder.

(Jungle Records)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody
More On This Album





Eventually, like in any good war, the Canadians get involved and one of the greatest hardcore punk bands of all time would have to be Vancouver's D.O.A, whose War on 45 record is amongst the best punk releases ever...

Joey Shithead & Co.'s take on Edwin Starr's hit War written by Norman Whitfield is the definitive version if ya ask me...

Here's a couple more from that classic, and links to get it yer bad self...

D.O.A - War In The East



D.O.A - America The Beautiful

War On 45

War On 45

D.O.A

Sudden Death Records



Anyhow

gotta go pay some bills here... and plan my happy hour.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Success + Soul + Uncle Sam

Seems like lotsa stuff going on in my life lately, which means less time to blog...

and it seems a lot these distractions from the web seem to take place uh...

anywhere...



in bars & clubs...







hotels


in the garden...




at the pool...

or even the golf course...

or just about anywhere


cuz it's summer y'all

hope yer having fun too...

Tony King - Summer Scene


Anyhow, I wanted to annoint some folks with the most successful cover tune of the week...

It's a fine little number that appears on the new Kelly Willis Cd that came out on Rykodisc this week, a record company that was acquired last year by Warner Music Group.



Kelly has been woodshedding, and raising kids for the past four years, but spent some time in Nashville recently with producer/song writing collaborator Chuck Prophet laying down tracks.

Here's my fave cut on the disk...

Kelly Willis - Success (Iggy Pop cover recorded w/ Chuck Prophet & Jules Shear )

The whole shebang is available as a CD here for about $13 and as downloads at I Tunes by the individual track...

Kelly Willis - Translated from Love


I guess the I Tunes capable I-Phone is another supposed success...

I assumed fat , out of shape geeky losers would be waiting in line for days,(and there were plenty) but couldn't believe that the actual mayor of a major North American city called Philadelphia had time to stand around all day to get a f*cking new toy...

John F. Street, the actual mayor of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, waited in line on and off for 15 hours to get a cellphone...

Your Tax Dollars At Work...

The Associated press reported more:

He wore large Bose headphones hooked up to an iPod Nano - one of three iPods he owns - around his neck while seated on a lawn chair.

... a 22-year-old man sporting a mohawk asked him, “How can you sit here with 200 murders in the city already?”

The mayor replied: “I’m doing my job.”


here's actual footage of this consumed idiot :




To my folks in PA, y'all better recall that confused & blithering assbone of a mayor or at least make him live on the Jersey side...

At least our pretty boy mayor Gavin Newsom here in Frisco prolly got his I Phone delivered by a stalker or loyal minion or something...

The dude in Philly actually told the media how he had cleared his calendar to wait in a fucking line... don't ya know our mayor is just sitting back & chopping lines!

With your wife!!!

Here's a report from our local Bay Area news that rave about the marketing blitz & PR prowess of Apple... but no mention of our political leaders waiting around in lines...




Here's some slightly more positive things Philly used to have going for it...

Namely it's classic soul sounds...

Here's from a compilation called Philly Soul Girls... which is sadly a still relevant topic... as a young girl pleads for uncle sam to return her boyfriend from military service...

seemed appropo as we celebrate the Etas Unidos B-Day this week and those that continue to pay the price for our leader's far off folly...

The Sherwoods Uncle Sam

This compilation of Philly Soul Girls from the mysterious Distortions Funkadelphia label has 26 total tracks, including the first CD transfer from the actual master tapes of Patti & The Emblems classic "Mixed up, Shook Up Girl"...which I'll dedicate to all my Hollywood gal pals Britney, Lindsay, Nicole & Paris ...

don't forget to write me from rehab you beeotches...

I want to also dedicate it to the crazy mumbling fat chick named Jessica Rodriguez on Nightline last night who was shown sitting in front of a Manhattan Apple store most of last week just to be first to buy a couple new phones...

Not only is she out a grand...but actual days of her life... and apparently was suffering from sleep deprivation, mental exhaustion & an odd nervous tic during her post phone purchase interviews in which reporters toyed with & preyed on her mousy confusion like mean old cats...

Jessica, an out of shape & fragile lil' freak, has became some sort of consumer celebrity just for buying new tech crap made in some likely horrific asian mercurry filled sweatshop. Her newly appointed highness of product hype hysteria told the BBC that she...
"... got no sleep with the rain and the dump trucks going back and forth. I'm going to go home and sleep and play with my phone a little bit."


One can only hope she has some numbers to put in it, or calls from any actual friends to screen...

She was definitely lookin' like a "Mixed Up Shook Up Girl"...

The song itself is a true classic of the era, that being circa 1964, and an early hit by Leon Huff, who later had so much more sweet success in the early 70's with his PIR empire and his co-productions with partner Kenny Gamble.

The female Patti here on the track is actually the late Camden NJ girl named Patty Pussell... and no, I do not know why she is sometimes refferred to as Patty & also as Patti... as seen here on this 45 label on the Kapp label...






Here's an original, slightly shorter & scratchier version of that Patti & The Emblems doing Mixed Up, Shook Up Girl , not the one on the above mentioned Philly Soul Girls comp, but a slightly tinnier & shoddier transferred reproduction from vinyl...


Here's
Patti & The Emblems - Mixed Up, Shook Up Girl


If you wanna hear the contrast with new mastering & higher fidelity... get a copy of the Philly Soul Girls comp... it's available through yer better online sites like Light In The Attic for less than $12, and even digitally for way less than half that via eMusic...


I-Tunes...which is always flogging crap like Avril Lavigne, Hannah Montana & Kelly Clarkson to me at a buck a track does not have this killer Philly Soul Girls comp yet has but one "Patty" & The Emblems compilation available if you must have it from the great Jobs...

it's here...

Patty & The Emblems - Mixed up Shook Up Girl (singles compilation)
Patty & The Emblems - Mixed-Up, Shook-Up Girl - Mixed-Up, Shook-Up Girl


Not much new to report on the avant rock front, but it appears I'm likely going to see Pat Benatar next week... go figger...

It's summer... and she's playing the local fair...



p.s

for all you retro rockers who dig whiny poser grunge from Chicago... there's a new Smashing Pumpkins release apparently headed our way next month...

Here's something they did awhile back as part of a Depeche Mode Tribute disc...

The Smashing Pumpkins - Never Let Me Down Again ( Depeche Mode cover)



Anyhow, those curious for more can click below to pre order the new Corgan & co. release for y'all for less than $15 when it hits on July 10th...



Thursday, May 17, 2007

Liberate The Music - Amazon & MTrak offer DRM FREE tunes - SpiralFrog Imprisons Users

Thursday, believe it or not was Dennis "Easy Rider" Hopper's 71st freaking birthday






here's what it would sound like if he was the guy doing the voice of your car's navigation system

Dennis Hopper - Nav Tones

Other reason's to celebrate ...creepy Paul "da wolfman" Wolfowitz at least had the good sense to resign from the World Bank only aftermost of the freaking planet demanded it... (of course he's no doubt giving himself a month and a half to clean out his desk and hire a few "qualified" chicks he knows...)

In other news you can use... love the idea that some Congressmen are trying to survive on $21 worth of FoodStamps week...

maybe someone should tell 'em yer supposed to trade em for beer, crack & cash... not actually buy food with em...

Didja hear that Elijah Wood, aka Frodo from Lord of The Rings, is signed to play Iggy Pop in a new bio pic in production called "The Passenger". The fantasy film vet thinks he's got the balls to play the Stooge and I can't wait til the Cincinatti Pop Fest scene, when he'll have to smear that gov't surplus peanut butter all over himself and makes a few congessmen hungry...


anyhow...

Here's a lil party pumpin' pre release track love from an upcoming Rondo Bros CD coming out officially on the streets in June.

Liberate it yerselves...

The Rondos make the rounds occasionally as Dan The Automator's live band, so hopefully that means something to ya and you can understand where they are coming from. I guess geographically that would be Berzerkely California...

Hence the hyphy shout to "Go Dumb"... at yer own risk of course...


Rondo Bros - Liberation

Seven Minutes To Midnight


from "Seven Minutes To Midnight"
by Rondo Brothers
Fortune Records/Citrus 2 Citrus




Amazon.com has announced a DRM mp3 store is in it's future, while a new start up has launched called MTraks.com.


Mtraks based in San Diego, is online already, but they don't have major label material of course. The mp3s are unprotected 192kbps VBR and are sourced through 6,000 indie labels, with a subscription model very similar to Emusic.com. There's currently about 750,000 songs online and the site encourages more bands to sign up at http://www.mtraks.com/

Artists can add their own customized 'mini web page' including bio, pictures and original music. Users can create 'Listener' profiles, and enjoy social networking features. The founders claim
"We believe that we now offer a better
consumer solution to that of EMUSIC.COM(TM)."


In the works: bands and labels will soon be able to sell direct on mTraks. Features will include sales reporting through secure profile management system, booking and administration tools that M-Trak claims are "very slick". Much like Emusics parent company The Orchard, M Traks wants to distribute music via other digital retailers including iTunes(TM) through partners Naked Jain Records and Cafeteria Records. ( Uh, Now that's music industry cachet... Cafeteria Records ! oh and did you say Naked Jain, mooma would be so proud... Ahmet Ertegun, quit rolling around in your grave buddy... )

Another service gathering press momentum currently is called PassAlong Networks who do have partnerships inplace with artists, labels, concert promotors, and have announced that they will be offering EMI's catalog of millions of songs including material from top tier acts like Frank Sinatra James Brown, Coldplay, Norah Jones, Joss Stone etc without DRM-restrictions.


"We already offer around two million tracks in MP3 format to the stores that we power. I predict that it will be up to three million tracks by the end of the year. It is all moving in the direction of an open MP3 format"
, said CEO/Founder Dave Jaworski, to Digital Media Wire.

Meanwhile in the hopelessly chasing their own long tail void of the DRM world...

Seattle's RealNetworks, in it's perpetual battle to lose money and marketshare, has bought out Sony's mobile downloading service in Europe for $9 million bucks. One look at this photo of Dieter Daum of Sony shaking hands with RealNetworks lackey John Giamatteo and you can tell that the Japanese electronics giant couldn't be happier to ditch the money losing unit. Of course the losing end of cash stick fits right in with Real Networks plan of world non-domination. More corporate hype here

Just read about a crappy new "legal" downloading service called SpiralFrog that's not a leap forward.

Apparently it's a bitch to install, only works with Microsloth's IE browser, ain't dishing out royalties to artists, and is Canadian only. Needless to say it's already dead in my humble opinion...

If you must read more ...go here

Few more tracks for y'all...keep it real and DRM FREE my G's...

Here's a track from the upcoming release from San Diego's reigning acid metal kings Earthless... The band is on the Tee Pee label who brought us stoner rockers Witch last year featuring J Mascis...

so get yer lighters up...

Earthless - Godspeed (Edit)



Earthless - "Godspeed"
(mp3)

from "Earthless - Godspeed (Edit)"
by Earthless
Tee Pee Records




They are having a record release party Tonight at the Casbah down there in SD that will no doubt smoke...





They are a 3 Piece, and will be in SF on May 26th at Rickshaw Stop

Isaiah Mitchell-AcidGuitar
Image hosting by Photobucket


Mike Eginton - Bass Spew
Image hosting by Photobucket


Mario Rubalcaba-Drum Bruising
Image hosting by Photobucket


and just a few last things for ya...

I had dinner & margaritas with the editor once in Palo Alto, and now that he's as targeting the same demographic, Tweedy is apparently reading it too...

Wilco - Magazine Called Sunset

Sad but true tales from da City Streets

Dirt Bacharach vs RIAA - Magic Moments In The Ghetto

Here's some of that groovy music from yer fave Scientologist

Beck - Salt In The Wounds

here's a tune Macon GA's Otis once owned, then posthumously Aretha switched up and then took higher... and here's the unimitable Ann Peebles taking it down a notch into her Memphis blues territory...


Ann Peebles - Respect