Oh Lon Chaney

'Lon Chaney'-Garland Jeffreys(Atlantic, 1973)

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)

The Real Thing-Russell Morris (1969)

Originally a bit-too-close facsmile of Status Quo's 'Pictures Of Matchstick Men' written by Johnny Young, it was transformed Midas-like by eccentric producer Ian "Molly" Meldrum, the kind of chap who went into a studio and asked the guitarist to "play cold stars on a black night sky" and could get a record company to hand over $2000, the amount it cost to make a whole LP back then, to get the results.
Meldrum stretched the play-time to an unfeasable 6.20 minutes with a delightfully self-indulgent 3-minute Walrus of an ending with some Lennon-ish Goon voice declaring somesuch about 'usability of the product' (in fact Organist Brian Cadd reading the back of the box of the master tape reel) mixed with a recording of the Hitler Youth singing "Die Jugend Marschiert" (Youth on the March) across splats of phased drums & electric string swirls.

On completion, 'The Real Thing' was the most expensive record production ever made in Australia. When the record execs flew into Melbourne to hear a studio playback of the completed golden egg, a ragingly drunk Meldrum panicked, stole the master tape and ran into a neighbouring golf course in the night with a bottle of bourbon to consider his next move. He knew there was no way they would get it. He was right. They thought it the biggest load of wasteful crap they had ever heard, and only distributed enough copies locally in the hopes of breaking even.

The times being what they were, the company couldn't bury it so easily. Morris himself drove copies up to Sydney, visited DJ's, and handed the platter over, asking them to play it. You could do crazy things like play what you liked on the radio in that time, so they did, and it became number one for 4 weeks in Australia in 1969, and became a decent international hit. Boss man knows best.



'TheReal Thing'-Russell Morris(Decca, 1969)



Above: The hateful record execs hand over the platimun disc to Russel Morris at the tail end of 1969.

Lynn Taitt-Sooooooooul Fooood

Just enough winter sunshine through the streaky windows to warrant a stinging tear from my sick eye & the first spin for 2010 of this rocksteady evergreen good-timer from recently gone on legend Lynn Taitt.


"...mix em up....like it?....Sooooouul Food!"



'Soul Food'-Lynn Taitt & The Jets(Pama Records, 1968)

Drinking my wine & digging my earth

The BBC have commisioned 8 pitiful series of Two Pints Of Lager & A Packet of Crisps in the last ten years.

Today it looks like a cert that 6Music & the Asian Network are hitting the bricks to "shrink overall services and focus more on quality over quantity." This sort of logic really makes me feel like drinking alone in the rain with visions of rusty blades.

My initial reaction was "Come on villagers, light your torches, we have to trudge down so foggy London Town and raise the devil out of BBC director general Mark Thompson with big sticks.". But i fear the villagers would amount to a dozen part time librarians in cagoules.

I'll sign the petition anyway, you never know, someone might even look at it.

Here's a song i learn't from someone on 6music, Maconie's Freakzone? Marc Riley? Don Letts? Not sure, could have been any of em...

'How Much Are They?'-Holger Czukay Jah Wobble & Jaki Liebezeit

Oh, hang on, Snog Marry Avoid is on in a bit...

"You can't learn nothin' whilst you're sleeping Joe..."

I bought a reissue of Dale Hawkins 'L.A., Memphis, & Tyler, Texas' on 19th January 2009 at 14.38 from The Rough Trade shop on Talbot Road, Portobello, London.

It was memorable. Not memorable enough to remember the date & time of purchase, thats on the receipt still in the case, but its one of those rare records that i got on first listen all the way through and kept coming back to to listen to as a full LP again & again.

Didn't know much beyond Susie Q until i read some attractive reviews for the reissue, and still don't to be honest, don't need to, this was enough.

Dale past last week, and i've been listening again. Every song on that LP can stand as his own epitaph, but i've gone for his advice to any old Joe Schmo down on himself. Maybe originally written as i soother to himself, but now seems like a decent farewell.

Class act.


Joe'-Dale Hawkins(from LA, Memphis & Tyler,1969)

Back From Seeing The Wizard

A slight sojourn there. A little falling out with BT can go a long way. Then i got a call from Alan Moore who asked me to write a 6-page 50 year history of Rock N Roll in Northampton for his new underground reader 'Dodgem Logic'. This task was not without some elbow grease, enough to nearly ended me. Not quite. No, actually very enjoyable. The second issue is out now, and is full o' sweet treats.

Yowzah yowzah yowzah! BUY BUY BUY!

DODGEM LOGIC ONLINE

Then there was a party to launch the thing which looked like this:

At which the boss actually unveiled some tunes he's been knocking up with "close personal friends of mine" The Retro Spankees & Downtown Joe Brown, here's a clip off youtube of the Greenbaum booming 'Johnny Fortunate':




Then i ate some turkey and got drunk for a month.

Then i sobered up whilst dj-ing for 5 strippers (they call it burlesque, but that seems to be just a case of frills) at this:

Then i wrote this blog & played this song for you:

We're Off To See The Wizard-People(from There Are People And There Are People,1970Paramount Records PAS 5013)

So there we go. Hope you're swell.