The (New) Call Of The Freaks

Nick Cave once ranted, mid-interview, on MTV, about how such TV channels were killing the magic that made him fall in love with the whole road in the first place. All he had was a record, maybe some names on the back of a 12" sleeve, at best an odd photo of the band. At the time i thought what a grumpy old goat, but he had a bloody good point.

The mystique is all gone. You can get hint of it with someone like Jandek, but its rare as gold hen's teeth. Even the cool new underground stuff you hear on obscure blogs usually have a myspace link. Its necessary now of course, but all too real. Robert Johnson didn't come from the crossroads with a good internet service provider.

Its a fine thing to banish any elitism, but imagination is a lost magik. The full horror of who pre-packed pop-stars like Ke$ha really are is laid bare and repeated like water torture on cable TV interviews every 20 minutes.

When Elvis Presley was first aired in Great Britain, with just an odd name & a backing band of two, it may as well have been a martian invasian. With all the international press they could possibly get, i wouldn't recognise one of Vampire Weekend if they came to fix my server, so diluted & uninteresting things have become.

So for just that reason, and with these needs in mind, i do enjoy listening to older & older stuff.

I mean, what the hell is going on in this platter by Luis Russell & His Orchestra?
If you want, you can get some photos of Luis online, or a basic biography, but you will never know enough to kill the magic here.

This is an incantation. A whole exotic new world in its three minute existence, a graveyard dance, bosomy gingham silhouette on a full Chicago moon, spats grazed on the sidewalks on a hangover monday, green sick in a trash can, and then its gone, and thats it, no questionable opinions in a Rolling Stone interview to get in the way. Its anything i want it to be & mean.

Its Halloween every day in the mind of Luis. Who knows what depraved orgies were incited when his band played this in strange velveteen ballrooms.




'The (New) Call Of The Freaks'-Luis Russell & His Orchestra(Okeh, 1929)