Peter Hoflich

My band Supertzar has been around for a couple of years, and recently we’re playing live shows. Here are some of our concert video clips.

Supertzar live, Platinum Music Bar, Lucky Plaza, kicking off the new Soft Music Collective series, May 18th 2012

Supertzar live, Platinum Music Bar, Lucky Plaza, kicking off the new Soft Music Collective series, April 30th 2012

We even got a nice poster for the gig!!!

Supertzar live, Crazy Elephant, March 17th 2012
This was a pretty bad gig for Supertzar – we weren’t tight, the guitarist’s instrument went out of tune halfway through, and I wasn’t hitting many of the notes. Ooops. We can do much better. But here it is, for posterity, in all of its ugly unlisted glory.

I took a video of some funky little graffiti from the day:

Supertzar live, Orchard Cineleisure Plug and Play stage, February 25th 2012

Here are some pics:

 

 

Crazy Train

Iron Man

To Hell We Go (original)

Lord Of This World

Queen of the Night (original)

War Pigs

Never Say Die

Paranoid

Supertzar live, Crazy Elephant, December 25th 2011

Supertzar live, Actors Jamming Studio Bar, December 17th 2011

Crazy Train, NIB, Blood Horizon, Iron Man and Paranoid (26 minutes)

Supertzar live, To Hallowe’en We Go, October 29th 2011.

Black Sabbath

To Hell We Go (Supertzar original song)

Fairies Wear Boots

Iron Man

Crazy Train

NIB

Children of the Grave

Blood Horizon (Supertzar original)

War Pigs

Paranoid

Supertzar live, Orchard Cineleisure Street Jams stage, October 21st 2011.

We dedicated our version of “War Pigs” to Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, June 7th 1942 – October 20th 2011.

War Pigs

Blood Horizon (original song, debut)

Iron Man

Crazy Train (false start)

Crazy Train

Bassically and NIB

Embryo and Children of the Grave

To Hell We Go (original song, debut)

Paranoid

Supertzar live, Se7en 1nch, July 31st 2011

Crazy Train

NIB

Iron Man

Black Sabbath

Fairies Wear Boots

Supertzar live, Chocolate Bar, May 29th 2011

Crazy Train

Black Sabbath

Paranoid

War Pigs

Supertzar live, Chocolate Bar, April 16th 2011

Sweet Leaf

Iron Man

NIB

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Children of the Grave and Paranoid

Supertzar live, Chocolate Bar, March 26th 2011

 

Never Say Die

Bassically + NIB

Electric Funeral

Children of the Grave

Paranoid

Supertzar live, Crazy Elephant blues pub, Clark Quay, January 28th 2011

NIB

Iron Man

Electric Funeral

Paranoid

Supertzar live, Singapore Cineleisure, 8 Grange Road, January 28th 2011

Never Say Die!

Bassically + NIB

Iron Man

Electric Funeral

Paranoid

Supertzar live, Home Club, Singapore, December 24th 2010

Never Say Die

Iron Man

NIB

Black Sabbath

Sweet Leaf

Paranoid

Here’s a pic of Supertzar with our temporary drummer Marcus.

It’s honestly quite hard for me to talk about Spitz (スピッツ in Japanese) without gushing. Their songs are probably the catchiest, most well-written folk/pop/rock songs around, right up there with Taiwan’s Wu Bai, Japan’s Imawano Kiyoshiro, the Mekons and maybe also Weezer (name anyone else who knows how to craft a song – Brian Wilson, John Lennon…). Nearly every Spitz song, word and music, is composed by lead singer and rhythm guitarist Kusano Masamune, who is not only a gifted songwriter but has one of the best voices in J-pop – a distinctive sandy wheeze in a relatively high vocal range that wrings out the emotions and sounds great in rockin’ numbers, but even better in ballads. Happily, I’m not the only one outside of Japan who thinks so, but there are not many of us – you tend to find who has been turned on to Spitz only by reading the comments at Amazon.com for their releases; otherwise, the chances of running in to a non-Japanese who’s even heard of this marvellous band that sells out stadiums in Japan every time they tour there may be about a million to one.

The band has 15 full-length major label releases now (and two independent releases), with two EPs, and at my home in Singapore I have all of the major label releases. I will be reviewing them here.

Check out this site for an encyclopedic run-down of song titles from all of the albums, DVDs, singles and indie material from 1988-1990. Also see their fan club, Spitsbergen.

On the band’s 15 releases and 185 songs, I give 83 of them top marks (five stars) in my iTunes ranking.

とげまる - Togemaru, released October 27th 2010, Universal Music Japan – Spitz’s 13th album only has a few standout tracks and many of them sound like clones of previously releases songs, but it’s very pleasant nonetheless. Opening track “Beginner” is regular lumbering rock ‘n’ roll, while “Tankentai” is a bit jauntier, with groovy background vocals. “Shirokuma” (Polar bear) is a cute little number with near-perfect melodies in the verses and chorus, and flawless production, as must be expected from a tight, disciplined band that’s never sounded sloppy. “Koisuru Bonjin” hops and bops and has a nice rocky edge, while “Tsugumi” is a fun mid-paced rocker. “Shingetsu” is probably one of the best songs on the album, it is slow-ish and is dominated by a big catchy piano and semi-drone guitar riff that would make you think of Coldplay – except that Spitz is nowhere near as boring as Coldplay. The verses are wan and spooky, haunting and icy, but with great feeling, and they swell up to that catchy riff. “Hana no Shashin” is some good old country pop with a beautiful melody and chorus and good, drivin’ rhythm. “Maboroshi no Doragon” is a somewhat cheezy rocker, but it’s nice enough. Much MUCH better is “TRABANT”, a superb rocker that is right up there with the best that Spitz has ever done. This song will put you in a trance of joy with its obvious best-song-ever-written driving beat that out-punks punk. I love this song. By the way, for those who don’t know what a “trabant” is, this is East Germany’s two-cylinder answer to the Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes and Porsche. “Kikasete yo” is a pretty acoustic song that is utterly dominated by the awe-inspiring smokiness of the lead singer’s voice. Find me a prettier song that is sung as well as this one that soars into such a gorgeous chorus! “Enishi” is a bit louder than the rest of the songs on the album, but it’s still just another happy, lite Spitz rocker. “Wakaba” is a sort of frisky rocker that is rather nice, it is a beautiful slow song with a thrilling melody that somehow picks up a big drum beat (I think it would have sounded nicer as a simple song) but is really very very fun and gorgeous. The sleeper hit of the album. “Dondodon” is a bit of a rocker with distorted vocals, but it is ultimately pretty conventionals. “Kimi ha taiyou” is a very nice rock ‘n’ roll number.

さざなみＣＤ - Sazanami CD, released October 10th 2007, Universal Music Japan – Spitz’s 12th album starts off with an acoustic song that quickly shifts gears to become a rocker – this seems to be a favourite tactic of principal songwriter Kusano. The CD needed a few listenings until I got used to it, rather than any songs leaping out at me – most Spitz CDs will have standout tracks from the very first listening – and had a bit of a “generic Spitz” feel to it, almost as if Spitz has become as same-samey as the Ramones or AC/DC. This album seems to be a bit “rockier” than recent releases, without any real ballads, although opening track “watashi no gita” has some acoustic guitar. Every single song has great guitar sounds, and Kusano’s fantastic whiskey-smoked vocals. Spitz is the best guitar pop around, outclassing boring bands like Coldplay every step of the way. The guitarist has a Gibson Les Paul.

スーベニア - Souvenir, released January 12th 2005, Universal Music Japan – Spitz’s 11th release starts off strong with a rockin’ number “Natsu no uta” that’s busy with electric sounds, while “Arihureta jinsei” is a tender, fast-moving song that opens with ukelele, gets into a swing, adds strings, and builds up into a killer chorus. “Ama’tare Creature” is a monolithic, atonal rocker that needs to find a groove. “優しくなりたいな” is a tender ballad that is really just a bit TOO tender (sorry Kusano-san), and the “echoey room piano” accompaniment is a bit sappy. Never mind, though, it’s followed closely by the Okinawa rock of “ナンプラー日和”, one of the album’s standout tracks. “正夢” is a decent rocker and very catchy, “ほのほ” moves and rocks with great momentum, while “ワタリ” is even faster and pounding. “恋のはじまり” slows things down just a wee bit, ”Jidosha” is a pleasant reggae-inspired number, and “Tatum O’Neill” is a jaunty rocker – I’m just not quite sure what it has to do with Tatum O’Neill. “Kae ni Ikuyo” is a great ballad, despite the welling strings.

色色衣 - Iroiro Goromo, released March 21st 2004, Universal Music Japan – This 2004 release is another odds ‘n’ sods collection (the previous one, 花鳥風月 - Ka’chouhuugetsu, came out in 1999) is mainly B-sides from singles released since that compilation, i.e. between 1999 and 2004, with the three songs found on the “99ep” mini-album (one taken directly from it, and two re-mixed), along with a single previously unreleased track, which closes the album. The opening track is a typically well-written masterful guitar pop song, while “High Fi, Lo Fi” remixed from the 99ep for a cleaner sound is a jaunty rock number; ditto for the next song, while “Sakana”, taken directly from 99ep is sweet, sombre, ballady. “Masorite” starts off jazzy, but then becomes a typically jaunty rocker. Somewhat inexplicable, another version of the song “Memories” – which isn’t a great song to begin with, is here, since it was the B-Side of… “Memories.” “Seishun Ikinokori Game”, the third track from 99ep is a so-so rocker that is slightly longer – it differs from the original by repeating another verse at the end before the fade-out. “SUGINAMI MELODY” is a tuneful ballad that is a bit heavy on the strings, while “Songoku” is a reggae-influenced crunchy number that starts off mellow before picking up steam. “Omiya Sunset” is a pleasant acoustic ballad, while the previously unreleased track “Boku wa Jet” is a groovy, infectious rocker with a punk-like chorus; the song was recorded in 1989, so it’s ancient history for Spitz.

三日月ロック - Mikazuki Rock, released September 11th 2002, Universal Music Japan – Mikazuki Rock was released in 2002 with 13 songs, the band’s first for new label Universal Music Japan. The opening song on this album, “Yoru no kagetekuru”, basically shows how Spitz is roughly-speaking the Coldplay of Japan, but much… much… much… better. It’s probably their best album-opener. “Mizu iro no matchi” is a charming pop song that my wife has asked me to learn how to play, it’s good. “Mekans no thema” is a good, rockin’ song with nice riffs and a driving pace. “Babaroa” is another Coldplay-like slow-burner with cool basslines, haunting vocal sounds, and a bit of an electronic feel to it. “Low Tech Romantica” is a ho-hum so-so rocker, but it’s followed by another burner, “Hanemono,” which starts off sedately before building up into one of Spitz’s most infectious rockers – this is another fun song to play on the guitar. That’s followed by the sweet “Umi wo Mi ni iko”, which is all about going to the beach, also one of their better songs. “Escargot” starts off with bland-ish riffs, but improves greatly with a rollicking chorus. “Kaede” and “Gabera” are both smooth, sweet tunes, and the album-closers are relatively straight-forward numbers and somewhat unmemorable.

Check out this album’s wicked opening track!
夜を駆ける - “Yoru no kagetekuru”

ハヤブサ - Hayabusa, released July 26th 2000, Polydor Records – “Hayabusa”, Spitz’s ninth album starts of strongly: “Ima,” the first of 14 songs, is a decent rocker, but it only sets us up for the second song, definitely one of the band’s best ever, with its jarring opener and the fantastic drum attack and wild infectious choruses (although it’s broken up with a cheezy keyboard solo – nobody’s perfect). “Iruwa” is an atonal rocker, while “Saraba uniform” is a gorgeous ballad. “Amai te” is one of Spitz’s all-time best songs, starting off with simple chords, then going into goregous vocals, and then a heavy, power-ballady chorus. It mixes in slide guitar, and mysterious soundbites in Japanese and Russian (?) that make it a truly mysterious – in a similar way that the Scorpions’ “Born To Touch Your Feelings” is, with its refrain of sexy lady voices from Japanese and Russian and some other languages (check out the video below, from the 5:15 mark) – it’s truly an intriguing song. Enchanting. Having these two extraordinary songs on it probably makes this the best Spitz album to get, in my view – but, of course, they’re all great. The fun continues with “Holiday” (which has nothing to do with the Scorpions classic), and then the wonderful “8823″, a really tied-together all-in-one masterful genius pop song. I don’t know how Kusano does it – he writes almost all of their songs! “Uchu mushi” is a rare instrumental piece, “Heart ga kaeranai” is a gorgeous ballad (again) that makes wonderful use of some very discreet background vocals – lovely, one of this great band’s most beautiful songs. “Memories Custom” is a cheezy retread of one of their aging rockers, “Ore no akai boshi” is a great, dark, moody rocker that starts off with those gorgeous vocals before rocking out with a massive, unfolding riff. The album nears a close with one of Spitz’s best songs, “Je t’aime,” a simple ballad with Kusano singing and unaccompanied on guitar, with some sort of a Chinese er-hu solo. Check it out in the live link below. Final song “Akamu” is pretty good, but a little anticlimactic after “Je t’aime.”

花鳥風月 - Ka’chouhuugetsu, released March 25th 1999, Polydor Records – Compilation of B-sides and unreleased session outtakes, along with newly recorded material (the first two songs) and the re-release of two songs from Spitz’s independently released album “Hibari no kokoro” of 1990, this 1999 release (with songs presented in reverse chronological order) has something for everyone. The hard-cover version of the CD that I got has a booklet inside with lots of geisha pictures, and song credits, along with a loose 24cm x 36cm poster that has an interview with the band printed on the reverse side. The four characters of the cover mean fower-bird-wind-moon, I wonder if each is supposed to represent a member of the band (just like Sonic Youth’s “Experimental Jet Set Trash and No Star” represents each of their members).

Opening track “流れ星” is a very pretty, slow number that is sung in perfect, doleful manner by Kusano, showing off his wonderful voice, it’s a new recording for this CD that goes back to the band’s roots; originally it had a reggae arrangement, but for this re-recording the band decided that this did not sound sophisticated enough for modern tastes, so they re-did it to the current slow number. “Ai no Shirushi” is a well-known song that was written by Kusano for girl-rock band Puffy (i.e. Ami Yumi), the first time Kusano had done so for another band. Okuda Tamio, the Puffy producer (former Unicorn leader and a famous solo recording artist in his own right), had invited them to write for his Puffy project, so Kusano created a new song that also has lyrics that Spitz would have never sung on their own. It’s a bit strange hearing the Spitz version done raw with piano and horns instead of the slick, brash grrrrl-pop of Ami and Yumi. “Speaker”, the B-side for “Kaede”, is good fun, a very nice guitar number with a rousing chorus (a Spitz trademark) that you just want to hear over and over again… and would marvel over the sweet, simple songwriting. “旅人” (a song that was later covered by Cantopop singer Kelly Chan) and “俺のすべて” are decent pop numbers, although these relatively unmemorable B-sides for colossal blockbuster hits “Nagisa” and “Robinson” respectively are actually pretty run-of-the-mill in comparison to the A-side magnificence that preceded them on initial release (ironically, the band thought that “俺のすべて” was a stronger song than “Robinson”, which they thought was too poppy, especially since it uses the strong 俺, a more macho way of saying “I”; the band wonders what their career would have been like if they had made that the A-side instead of “Robinson”, since most people only took note of Spitz when “Robinson” became a monster hit as a single and in a famous TV drama of the time). “Neko ni naritai”, the B-side of the stellar “Aoi kuruma”, doesn’t start off all that promising but it quickly becomes a catchy, cheerful pop song. According to the band interview that comes with the CD, this is one of the favorite songs of long-time Spitz fans, and in song rankings it is often first place. Ditto for “Kokoro no Soko kara”, which has the added benefit of jaunty, cheezy whistling and horns. While the band nowadays finds this song the least remakable song of theirs on this album, Kusano at the time it was written felt that it would give the band their big break. “Mermaid” is a so-so tune, “Cosmos” has low-end keyboard burbling, a bit of percussion, and a big vocal fix. Apparently, “Cosmos”‘s original title was “Belmondo”, because Kusano had been inspired to write it after watching one of Jean-Paul Belmondo’s movies on TV. It’s a bit on the dull side, but sounds nice nonetheless. “Yasei no tulip”, a previously unreleased out-take from their second album, is probably one of the best songs on the album, a jaunty rocker that goes from one high to another with a jangly refrain and infectious verses and chorus, and a nice bridge too of course – he had it in him from the very start. “Tori ni nat’te” has that cheezy early production value, but it still sounds pretty sharp, it is the first song that the band ever wrote, one year after forming. The last two songs on the CD are the first two songs on the band’s independent CD release of 1990, “Hibari no Kokoro” of 1990, which includes six songs (the band had also put out two full cassette releases, as well as two cassette singles before the “Hibari no Kokoro” independent CD). “O’pai”, the first of two songs, is a great, simple, jangly little pop song with a fun, loud chorus (“o’pai” means breast, and the chorus sort of says “your breasts are the best in the world”). What a wonderful tune! “Toge Toge no ki” is just as funky, it’s hard to believe that these wonderful songs were released as far back as 1990! “Woo-oo-oo-oo genki de ne/ Woo-oo-oo-oo itsu demo.” (Other songs on the Hibari no Kokoro indie CD, not included here – or anywhere else so far as I know – are the title track, “353 Gousen no Uta”, “Koi no Uta” and “Shi nimo no Kurui no Kagerou o Miteita”, the latter of which is translated as “I saw the ephemera of insanity unto death”, which makes me wonder how close the hidden four are to the band’s punk roots; a re-recording of the title track appears on the band’s first album).

Check out the original Puffy release of “愛のしるし” of 1998, followed by the Spitz version of 1999.

99ep, released January 1st 1999, Polydor Records – Opening number “High Fi, Lo Fi” is a jaunty rock number. “Sakana” is a sweet, sombre, ballad. “Seishun Ikinokori Game”, the last track, is a pretty good rocker with a gorgeous, long solo that sounds technically innovative. The songs were also put on the 色色衣 - Iroiro Goromo compilation that was released on March 21st 2004, placed into the 2, 4 and 7 positions (instead of 1, 2, 3 on this one), but with new mixes for ハイファイ・ローファイ and 青春生き残りゲーム … meaning that the record company doesn’t really need to keep this EP in print.

フェイクファー - Fake Fur, released March 25th 1998, Polydor Records – Fake Fur… what a great album title. Spitz’s eighth release starts off with a… a lullaby! It then gets rockin’ with a bland-ish tune, before things get a bit more interesting with “Unmei no hito,” a tender ballad. The fifth and sixth songs are excellent, especially “Kaede,” once again a gorgeous ballad in the vein of “Robinson”. “Supernova” is a laid-back rocker, while “Tada Matsu wo matsu” has a summery feel to it. “Xie Xie” is a fun, jazzy number with horns that is fun to learn how to play on guitar (simple chords), and “Scarlet” is a very very very catchy jangly ballad – so easy to fall in love with this song. Album closer “Fake Fur” is an intense, plodding rocker that is definitely one of their best non-ballads on this album.

インディゴ地平線 - Indigo Chiheisen, released October 23rd 1996 – The opener of Spitz’s seventh release, “Hana Dorobo”, is a rocker that for some reason annoys me with its bland riff, but the follower “Hatsuren crazy” is probably one of their better numbers, a jaunty pop song that has everything it needs. “Indigo no Chiheisen”, also the name of the album, is another great pop song. Do these guys do anything else but write great, jangly, guitar pop songs? Fourth song “Nagisa” is probably one of their top five songs, with burbly keyboards like I’ve never heard before, a great buildup, drums that take on a life of their own, and a chorus that can’t be beat. “Hayate, which follows it, is not so bad for a simple pop song, but it doesn’t have the flourishes of “Nagisa”. “Bunnygirl” is another catchy song that won’t leave your brain, while “Houki sei” is gloomy and timeless. The last song on the disk is “Cherry,” probably the band’s biggest hit after the enduring hit “Robinson.”

By the way, if you don’t believe me about “Nagisa,” check out the song for yourself:

ハチミツ - Hachimitsu, released September 20th 1995, Polydor Records – Spitz’s sixth release is probably one of their best. Title track opener “ハチミツ” is a gorgeous folk rocker with funny lyrics “great lover, honey / strange lover, honey”. “涙がキラリ☆” is a little on the dull side, but it is a well-written song, ditto for “歩き出せ、クローバー”. “ルナルナ” is jaunty and moves along at a good clip, with nice, jazzy guitar work. “愛のことば” and “トンガリ’95″ are nice-enough songs, even if they are a bit uninteresting. “あじさい通り” is a fun pop song that uses strange keyboard sounds, new wave guitar chords and fluid bass, with a great chorus. “ロビンソン” is by far the band’s most famous song, and after all these years it’s still one of their best, with a very interesting riff, pleasant production values, and a soaring chorus – an anthem that can get an entire room of Japanese off their feet. “Y” is a very very beautiful ballad, that’s all I can say about it. “グラスホッパー” is a pretty regular rocker with a cheezy chorus, while “君と暮らせたら” is a so-so pop song.

空の飛び方 - Sora no Tobikata, released September 21st, 1994, Polydor Records – Spitz’s fifth release starts off strong with “Tamago”, and it’s followed by plenty of strong songs. This was the last album that Spitz was NOT a blockbuster band because they still had the smash hit “Robinson” from their sixth release “Hachimitsu” ahead of them. Nevertheless, it has fantastic tunes like “Sora mo toberuhazu,” which has a sweet opening riff that sounds like an early Beatles classic – stunning. Unfortunately, it’s followed immediately by a rare Spitz clunker, “迷子の兵隊”. The fifth song starts off with horns and is a lot of fun, full of Kusano’s sandy vocals and with great production values, so is rocker “Hushishin no penas”. “Raspberry” is good fun, with horns (and a few strings), it’s a jaunty full-on Spitz song, with nice fuzz guitar and clean breaks. “Hechima no Hana” has interesting baroque elements and groovy keyboards, it’s a gorgeous jazz number in some ways and quite inventive in terms of its production values. With some great background vocals, this song has really grown on me over the years, to the point that I’ve become totally enchanted with it (I think it’s the background vocals, they add just the right touch). Stunning.

Crispy! Released September 26th 1993, Polydor Records – Crispy! is the band’s fourth release, and it suffers from some of the rough early production values that they used to have, but on repeated listenings it’s certainly hard to find any songs that are filler. Only the second song, “Natsu ga owaru”, suffers from too many strings (as do a few others, like the welling orchestra that sneaks up on “Kimi dake wo”, and the surging choppy violins of “Kuroi Tsubasa”, which blend with nifty guitars and icky space vocals at the end!), but other songs are just wonderfully textured with the measured pace of lead singer Kusano Masamune’s sandy vocals. Album closer “Kuroi Tsubasa” is one of Spitz’s rare not-so-good songs (the band’s 5th, 7th, and 9th albums also have a few not-so-good songs).

惑星のかけら – Hoshi no Kakera, released September 26th 1992, Polydor Records - Spitz’s third release starts with the title track “惑星のかけら”, jumping right into a grinding heavy metal intro that kind of makes you scratch your head and say “this is Spitz? Yuck!” But the listener quickly realises that the song is gorgeous and catchy with a really killer chorus. “ハニーハニー” starts off with a lot of noise, but then goes into a sort of rocky quiet/loud tune that sounds rather old. “僕の天使マリ” is a jaunty rocker with a shuffle beat that kind of zips along, but is not all that memorable. “オーバードライブ” is a tight ’70s-style rocker with a lot of guitar flourishes. “アパート” nearly sounds like a Cure song, the way it starts off, but it quickly becomes a standard very well-written Spitz song that puts a great emphasis on arpeggios and guitar work. And now – considering that this CD so far has been the weakest of the first three releases – comes another one of their standout tracks, “シュラフ”, a haunting pop tune that has some wicked flutework at the beginning, and a really magical flute solo (yes, I’m surprised too). “白い炎” is an uninteresting rocker, while “波のり波のり” downright boring. “日なたの窓に憧れて” is a so-so pop/rock song that is heavy on the keyboards. “ローランダー、空へ” is gloomy and grungy, not very interesting; the production adds a lot of echo to the vocals, making it sound more dated than most of the early Spitz songs. The guitar solo is pure cheese, helping it to win the award for the weakest song on the album. The CD closes with “リコシェ号”, a short, interesting rocker with some bizarre electronic sounds in it. Funny – the kid shooting a bow and arrow on the cover looks just a little bit like my son Zen.

Aurora ni Narenakatta Hito no Tame ni EP – オーロラになれなかった人のために EP, released April 25th 1992, Polydor Records – The band released this five-song EP between their second and third albums, and in a way it’s their most experimental release, with a brass section, strings, and noise passages, while making very little use of the bass, drum and guitar – vocalist and songwriter Kusano is the main participant here. The first song, “魔法 Mahou”, (magic), is probably the best, starting out as a nice acoustic pop song, before flaring up with a big brass section, and then moving out with some pretty funky sound effects. “田舎の生活 Inaka no Seikatsu”, (country life), is a simple, pretty song with voice, acoustic guitar and xylophone, strings. “ナイフ Naihu”, (knife), is full of the Spitz trademark shimmering guitar, some bass and drum, but then the song dissolves into pure vocals, picking up again with slow drums, and eventually strings that builds into a heady, simmering swell. Not many of Spitz’s songs are so dominated by Kusano’s smoky voice. At nearly seven minutes, it’s also by far the longest song the band has ever done. “海ねこ Umi Neko”, (sea cat,) starts off with funky bass and keyboard and then busts out into a brass section-led funker. The song indulges in a weird section of dissonance, before getting back on track. “涙 Namida”, (tears), has voice, harpsicord and strings. Yes, it’s pretty weird.

名前をつけてやる - Namae wo Tsukete Yaru, released November 25th 1991, Polydor Records – The opening track of Spitz’s second album, “ウサギのバイク”, starts out with mellow la-la-la-la’s and doo-doo-doo-doo’s, a long instrumental intro, and then half way through the short three-minute song the lyrics begin. Perfect guitar pop. “日曜日” is a charming rocker, while title track “名前をつけてやる” is a bit more experimental, with odd sounds, but is ultimately true to guitar pop roots with a rousing chorus. “鈴虫を飼う” is one of the better songs on the album, starting out with a slight balalaika jangly sound, it’s got a gorgeous slightly-slower-than-you-expect feel to it throughout and a phenomenal, gorgeous chorus. One of the band’s first real standout tracks. “ミーコとギター” is a pretty standard rocker, nothing exciting, while “プール” is a pretty standard mellow tune, nothing exciting here either. “胸に咲いた黄色い花” is a punchy rocker with some pretty dodgy production standards – its tune is pretty enough, though. “待ちあわせ” rocks as well, but is a bit monotonal. “あわ” is an unusual tune for Spitz, it is sort of a jaunty boogie tune with a long intro, it’s a lot of fun and has very nice vocals. “恋のうた” is even more interesting – it has a quick vocal start, and then gets into some sort of a Carribean/carnival sounding song. The CD is capped by “魔女旅に出る”, a well-known and catchy pop song that is actually not all that remarkable.

スピッツ - Spitz, released March 25th, 1991, Polydor Records – Spitz’s first album. Although I didn’t really expect Spitz’s early albums to be any good, since some of the production values of the older songs I heard was pretty dated, I did want to get all of them for continuity. I was very pleasantly surprised to find very many very good songs on the first release (although I probably shouldn’t be – good songwriters are usually good from the start… you either have it or you don’t). “ニノウデの世界”, the first song of their major label career, is a rocker as good as any you’d hear on any of their later albums. The fully-formed Spitz sound is instantly recognizable: crunchy riffs, smooth and clear vocals, with great choruses. “海とピンク” is a bit on the dull side, but drives on and on nonetheless and is fine music. “ビー玉” seems to be a bit of an Everly Brothers throwback, real early ’60s sound and a pleasant song with fine vocals. “五千光年の夢” is a punchy, boppy guitar pop song with a simple opening riff and a long “la la la la la la la la” vocal bit that is a bit silly, but not unpleasant. “月に帰る” is not very interesting at the start, but it becomes a very nice vocal tune, before building up into something extraordinary. “テレビ” starts off with a hillbilly vibe that becomes a bit punkish, before changing on cue into a standard well-written, well-produced Spitz song. “タンポポ” starts out with moods sound effects, then majestic power chords, before the voice comes in, probably one of the mellowest song on the album (but not exactly a ballad either). “死神の岬へ” is another lovely mid-tempo rocker, as is “トンビ飛べなかった” (aren’t they all?). “夏の魔物” is a great rocker, followed by the plaintive “うめぼし”, a sweet vocal/acoustic guitar/cello ballad (there always has to be one, it seems). The closing song is the famous “ヒバリのこころ”, a jaunty, galloping number, which had been the title of the indie CD they had released in 1990 just before signing to Polydor and releasing “Spitz” in 1991. Not a stinker among the lot, this could have been an ABBA album. Interestingly, none of the songs on “Spitz” seem to appear on any of the band’s very early indie releases (which includes four cassettes, with 2-7 songs on them, and a 6-song CD) except for the last track, which had been the title of their sole indie CD release, although songs from the early days like “Tori ni natte”, “Oppai” and others did show up on the 1999 “花鳥風月” compilation.

Here’s the band themselves – you don’t see them on their album covers, but there are four guys in the band.

About My big bad Spitz page

I made this page as a tribute to Spitz after I realised that there is a dearth of information in English about the band out there and that, since I own probably all of their recorded material, I should do something about sharing this information.

If you wish to write to me with your comments and questions, please drop me a line at peter at hoflich dot com.

You may also wish to check out:

My big bad Boris page
My big bad Ultra Fuckers page

Yes, there is no Japanese band more infamous than the Ultra Fuckers (also known as UxFx, which uses an abbreviation/euphemism style along the lines set down by SxOxBx and other like-minded punk and scum bands). This website is a tribute to this legendary unit and offers:

• Band information
• Chronological CD and DVD reviews
• Photos
• Historical concert reviews
• Links to live videos
• Slackness

About the band:

This is how the band describes itself on its Lost Frog band page:

UF called “King of Scum” “Psychedelic Warrior” in Osaka. Their happy sound bridges from HC/Flexi-your-head style to German/Klaut rock. Fully retarded and naked in funny noise taste. Their produce event “Scum Nite” anytime, Faxed Head, Caroliner Rainbow, Zip Code Rapists, Half Japanese, UG Man, ENE, Monotract, Mr.Velocity Hopkins, etc. acted in past.

Note the creative use of misspellings (“Klaut rock”), intentional or otherwise. The band members are:

Kawai Kazuki Langley – Masked Vocal, Jaminator
Izumi Headache – Talentless Guitar
Tom Nagata – Non-breakable Drums
Past members: Irie Kazuma, Matsumoto Kamekichi Takuya, Ishikuma Manabu, Mob Norio (who won the Akutagawa Prize, the highest honor of the literary world in Japan, in 2004 for Introduction to Nursing Care (介護入門 Kaigo nyu-mon), which describes how a man takes care of his ailing, aging grandparent.

A bit of background. I lived in Taiwan in the mid-nineties, and while it was a nice experience I missed taking in the live music experience I only got a small taste of in my college town of Waterloo (memorable bands I got to see there were Nomeansno and Art Bergman, although Fugazi came through on their In On The Killtaker tour that brought them to Guelph… which I, quite stupidly, didn’t bother to go to).

In 1998 I moved to Osaka, Japan, and started looking into what the live scene there had to offer, not even realising that it was probably one of the best in the world at that time. One of the first shows I ever saw in Osaka had the Ultra Fuckers on the bill. Loving their name just as much as their anarchic show, I followed them through the years until I moved off to Singapore in 2003.

I’ve stayed in touch with Kawai Kazuki Langley, the band’s lead singer and main madman. Via mail from Singapore, I’d share with him my video recordings of Ultra Fuckers shows that I’d recorded, compiling three of them on a home-made DVD that I called “A Half Dozen Ulra Fuckers Fans Can’t B e Wrong”, with the credits calling it “Hangover in Death City.” The opening shot is the classic scene of Kawai jumping off his stepladder, somersaulting in the air, and landing on his shoulder (which resulted in a visit to the hospital). The scene is slowed down, and the musical accompaniment is Cat Power’s short cover of “Free Bird” (0:38 – just the right length). The DVD contains 27 tracks and is footage from three concerts the band played in 2002 and 2003, including one where they opened for Half Japanese. I sent it to Kawai in April, 2005.

In 2007 I got an email from him saying that he’d put it out as a DVD called Bone Crush Memory, and he sent me a copy of it for my very own. Popping it into the player, I saw that it is the exact DVD that I had made for him, not a thing changed! At the same time, he also sent me a few other Ultra Fuckers odds ‘n’ ends, including the King of Scum Ultra Fuckers at KB*CC 2003 CD, which is a sound rip of 12 tracks from the DVD! So Kawai got two products out of my little present to him and the band. Now, do I feel like I’ve been taken advantage of? Should I? Of course not!! This is the Ultra Fuckers we’re talking about here, it’s my honour to be a small part of this great thing!!!!! Thanks, Kawai!

I’ve put all of the clips from the DVD online for the public’s viewing pleasure:

I last heard from him this year in January when he was looking for ways to book his friend’s band, Ydestroyde, in the US. I’d love to bring them to Singapore, my band could open for them; let’s see how it goes.

Hey, some guy called Carlton Mellick III wrote a book called Ultra Fuckers!! It’s suburban horror!!! Groovy cover, man… Read my review of the book here.

Old Warrior’s Worship MP3 album, 2008, Lost Frog Productions – This is a rehash of the band’s Retail Karaokei EP, down to every last song. Download the full album and artwork here, read the review of Retail Karaokei below.

Radio Controlled Scum live CD, 2008, mimi records – The first song on this, “Mars Sky Girls” is sort of ambient, albeit with pretty heavy drums, and Kawai’s aggressive moaning, muttering and hollering on top of it all. The song builds and builds and builds, until it becomes quite mental, but other than that it is rather same-y (the way all ambient music is, of course). “Evening After Broke” has harmonica and weird shrill-and-googly electronics going up and along. It’s just a short song that doesn’t really try to go anywhere. “Radio Controlled Scum” has a disco beat with some muttering and stuttering. “In the Microwave (remix)” is keyboard doodling over light beats, while “Live 2006.04.09 (bonus)” is a short, one-minute sample of nifty beats and crowd yelling. Yay.

Ultra Fuckers “Bone Crush Memory” video archives 2002-2003 DVD, 2007, Central Scum – After I moved to Singapore in 2003, I stayed in touch with Kawai by email, and now Facebook. In 2005, I edited my old video cartridges with my new iMac and burned a DVD of my video recordings of Ultra Fuckers shows that I’d recorded, compiling three of them on a home-made DVD that I called “A Half Dozen Ulra Fuckers Fans Can’t B e Wrong”, with the credits calling it “Hangover in Death City.” The opening shot is the classic scene of Kawai jumping off his stepladder, somersaulting in the air, and landing on his shoulder (which resulted in a visit to the hospital). The scene is slowed down, and the music is Cat Power’s short cover of “Free Bird” (0:38 – just the right length). The DVD contains 27 tracks and is footage from three concerts the band played in 2002 and 2003, including one where they opened for Half Japanese. I sent it to Kawai in April, 2005.

In 2007 I got an email from him saying that he’d put it out as a DVD called “Bone Crush Memory”. He sent me a copy, and when I put it in I saw that the contents is the exact same DVD that I had made for him, not a thing changed! He also sent me a few other Ultra Fuckers odds ‘n’ ends, including the “King of Scum Ultra Fuckers at KB*CC 2003″ CD, which is a sound rip of 12 tracks from the DVD! So Kawai got two products out of my little present to him and the band. So, do I feel like I’ve been taken advantage of? Of course not!! This is the Ultra Fuckers we’re talking about here, it’s my honour to be a small part of this great thing!!!!!

The best thing about the DVD is the packaging, which says:

Special thanks to Matt Caufman (Exile osaka), Jad Fair and Half Japanese, Jason Willet, Fuck to hospital.
Recorded and Directed by Peter Brian Holfich.
Presented by Nerdby Pictures.

That’s me, Peter Brian Hoflich, and “Nerdby Pictures” is my iMac-based production house. So, hooray, I get my first real film credit! Matt Kaufmann’s name is misspelled too… oh well.

There’s also a cool line drawing illustrating Kawai’s famous stage jump, which I’ve managed to capture so awesomely (if I do say so myself) on the release, and which can be seen in the opening credits. The jump can be seen at the end of this clip:

This video, by the way has been seen 15,000 times!!!

The video shows the raucousness of the shows, as well as the people in the audience having a great time. I don’t need to review this, though, you can check it out for yourselves in a a YouTube playlist of all 27 tracks on the DVD:

Ultra Fuckers with Droppen G. in Nagoya 2006.Jan.28. DVD, 2006, Central Scum – Nearly forty minutes of live music, it opens up with the band setting up onstage, with the infamous stepladder on the left side, and then Kawai gets going with his nutty audience babble with the bag over his head. Yay. There is a drummer, two tables of electronic gear, a strange person with a fuzzy sheepskin hat like the one my mom had when I was a kid who mainly bobs around and stomps the stage in beat, and the show builds up weird noise and strangeness. After a while, Kawai puts on his toy guitar, but I don’t hear any of the usual sounds coming out of it. He groans and garbles and gnashes his teeth. The wooly hat person uses drumsticks on the stage itself for percussion, meanwhile the drummer is still not doing anything. Kawai’s voice becomes robotic. Pretty keyboards kick in, the drummer gets going at about the 10-minute mark, the lyrics become soothing and echo-y. The music becomes weird techno/disco, dominated by the stepladder-percussion that just gloms on and on and on and on. The noise starts to get really quite abrasive 25 minutes into the show, and Kawai is spazzing into the mic, his voice sounding like electric shocks. In the last five minutes, drummer Tom Nagata went crazy on the drums, while stepladder artist Tamon Sin climbed the ladder to tap it from the top.

According to the title menu, the tracks are: “Intro”, “Setting”, “Gate of Hyper Dimension”, “Fantasy”, “Call of time”, “Ride to microwave”, “Fall of fame”, “Finish of the end”. You’d never know that there are distinct songs, though, as there are no breaks in the show.

Frog Console – March 20th, 2005 DVD, 2005, SCUM NITE live – Being a DVD of live recordings of Ultra Fuckers, Suspiria, Surfers of Romantica (yay) and Atsushi Tsuyama. Wicked! Wish I had been there, but in 2005 I was already living in Singapore, where the Ultra Fuckers would not have been very welcome.

The Ultra Fuckers set starts off with Kawai picking up a real guitar (not a toy guitar), then fiddling with some electronics and a goofy keyboard. The drummer is drumming lightly. There’s the stepladder. Some crazy buzzsaw sounds kick in, furry bristling keyboard, then the usual blathering and yelling starts up, Kawai wails on the bluesy guitar (and this is something new for me to behold!). Electronics fade out, the guitar kicks in, the noise burbles back and forth, echo-y vocal, then more howling, wailing guitar on and on. Robot vocal, big drums, gnashing of teeth, Kawai loses the head bag. The music fades away, Kawai yells his head off, the music picks up, all echoes, Izumi Headache comes out wearing a backpack (or is it just some random audience member?) and grinds away at the guitar from the top of the stepladder, stumbles around the stage, screams into the mic, but nothing is amplified, Kawai is still yelling and screaming away. The freaky electronic programmed echo noise continues on and on, it sounds great. Izumi eventually finds a microphone that works and screams away, although the guitar never kicks in again… until later when Kawai picks it up and gets it going with the flick of a switch (so what was all that air guitar about then?). the guitar noise fades out and that’s it – show over. Some mellow tunes come over the PA and we get… crowd conversation. The whole thing was 38 fucking minutes long, man!!!

Suspiria is nearly 29 minutes of musical experimentation, with a cello providing the drone, ambient noise covers it, drumming, and piercing echoed and distorted screams full of feedback coming from a dancing dude in a Stone Roses-style floppy hat. The drummer is really going crazy, so are the electronics, so is the singer, so is the cellist. It forms a bizarre super slam bit of nuttiness. At some point it begins to sound like fluid Krautrock nuttiness. After ten minutes, the band launches into a series of shorter songs. The second song, which sounds bass-led (there seems to be a bass player in the wings somewhere, out of camera view), and the singer raps and screams on as the band pulses on in a heavy beat. The third tune is cello and voice cacophony, which becomes spanking prog rock. The fourth tune is cello-led and spooky with big doomy bass lines and screaming. “Thank you very ma-cho.” Spastic electronic noise, quickly becomes driving hardcore noise, which eventually drones out, then picks up as more Kraut-rock coloured nuttiness. By the end, it’s very Apocalyptica, as the cello, vocalist and drummer stomp in a glorious “For Whom The Bell Tolls”-style beat-driven grindout.

The Surfers of Romantica also have a very long jam set, with a bunch of hippies in hats onstage, and one lady in a long hippy dress there. The uptake is slow, building up a long, slinky, groovy keyboard and percussion-driven buildup with a bit of trumpet and bass thrown in, grooving and zooming for fun. The drone drones on and on and on and then… 18 minutes in… with 20 minutes left in the set… everything moves up a notch with frantic and furious noise slam, stopping and starting… on and on… after 26 minutes the noise peels away, revealing a funky guitar riff that has the crowd bopping, then the electronics pick up and there’s jumping onstage to the loud beats. Lots of dancing onstage and in the audience, good fun all around.

Finally, Atsushi Tsuyama, who’s played in such legenary bands as Omoide Hatoba and Acid Mothers Temple Paradiso UFO, comes on with his electric-acoustic guitar to play 17 minutes of virtuosic fretboard magic. It has a bit of noise and feedback at the beginning, but otherwise it’s a glistening semi-acoustic and psychedelic jam-out version of what you’d normally hear distorted beyond utter belief (and totally unlistenable except as a wave of raw noise) at an Omoide Hatoba show. The music is spooky, Middle Eastern-sounding, and very beautiful. At one point he pulls out a glass slide and wails away with that fore a while too. Great close-up footage of him playing away, we can clearly see the full guitar and both hands. At a certain point, he just stops playing, turns off the amp, says “arigatou”, and leaves the stage.

Video from the shows, with the exception of Atsushi Tsuyama’s, was taken from mid-club, and is basically blocked by the heads of the people in the crowd, we can mostly see the stage action through their heads (Tsuyama’s set was probably the first one, when the crowd was thinner). Don’t know why the cameraman settled for a bad angle – when I was shooting video at Namba Bears, I usually made sure I was right up in front with my camera, selfishly recording the events for posterity. Too bad.

Psychedelic Warrior, New Legend from Ultra Fuckers CD, 2004, Lost Frog Productions – This is sort of like the Ultra Fuckers greatest hits CD, if such a thing can ever be imagined. It’s also an odd creature, being mostly songs that sound fairly nice and clean and all recorded in the studio, a world away from the rough and tumble low-tech Ultra Fuckers live experience. The collection was released in 2004, shortly after one-time member Mob Norio won the prestigious Akutagawa literary prize, probably to capitalise on his new-found recognition, and he’s listed as a full member (this is the only Ultra Fuckers release he’s listed on; he’s otherwise been listed on the Petit U-fu CD that was released in 2000).

“Yakamarahine” is a bit of vocal theatre from Kawai, augmented here by a fair amount of electronics. “D.A.F.” starts off with electronics and drums, then guitar, it turns into a solid rock driver. “Bandee Jump” is a regular rocker, while “Mescaline Drive” kicks out the jams as a nut-busting punk track that growls and groans, and punky “Oooh oh-oh-oh”. “Ahhha Uwwww” starts off with weird electronic noises, then jumps into sharp spastic scum noise, with toy guitar samples galore. The main lyrics are simple “Ahhha Uwwww”. “Hanson” is a weird little cover of Hanson’s “MMMbop”, which starts off with some weird singing by Kawai before becoming, undeniably, a cover of the teeny one hit wonder band’s squeaky hit, except the Ultra Fuckers rip it apart with hellacious aplomb and shards of spiky guitar splatter (and a bit of scratching too, of course…). “Scene Death” is hard and fast hardcore with weird background vocals. “(Seena) Ringo” starts off with weird vocal beats, electronics and ultimately big guitar and screaming noise, big riffs and beats. Oof! “Opopo” is the same repetitive riff, beat and verse over and over again, until brainless barking takes over, then it goes back to riff-beat-verse mode, ha ha ha. “Prince of the Land of the Rising Sun” starts off with vocal sounds, then beat and light guitar with vocal growls, singing, and then bigger and bigger guitar, and ultimately to that huge rousing chorus and more smashout. “King of Heart” has squeaky guitar and sax and driving vocal scum, then a Suicidal Tendencies moment, as the song moves its game up a notch. Great drum break as it builds up to a “Human Cannonball” outro that just gets bigger and bigger. Kawai’s shredded voice cracks and cracks until he sounds ready to pass out. And with good reason – at over four minutes long, this is the longest on the album. “B.B.Gun” is full of gunshots and great loud scuzzy scummy guitar riffs and drums. Kawai screams “I want a B.B. gun” over and over again, it’s pure scum madness. “Progressive” is mixed-together noise and samples, with big Nine Inch Nails nastiness and the rest of the kitchen sink also thrown in for good measure. This is a “Party mix by ENE”. Very good wacky fun.

Izumi Headache’s guitar sound on this album is particularly repulsive and abrasive. In other words, it sounds fantastic!

Hyper Dimension: Demo CD, 2004, Central Scum – A great little bit of demented electronica from the Ultra Fuckers. All songs are structured similarly, with some sort of driving electro dreamed up by Mr Kawai Kazuki Langley himself, with some additional guitar sound effects thrown in and some funky old drumming. Second song “Hyper Dimension pt.1(short)” is the longest track on the album, and it contains some insane groaning from Kawai as well. Tracks 1, 3 and 5 were recorded live on my birthday in 2004, while the remaining two tracks were done in the studio the same month. Final track “Solar Expert” is only about two minutes long, it slows down and winds things down to a near stop.

King of Scum Ultra Fuckers at KB*CC 2003 live CD, 2003, Central Scum – This is the ultra Ultra Fuckers experience: the concert was recorded and released as part of the Bone Crush Memory DVD, the concert is reviewed below, and the full KB*CC 2003 concert, including 13 tracks by Ultra Fuckers, is available on YouTube. The concert is probably one of the band’s most energetic (other bands playing on the bill were Go Kitty, Love Beach, Love or Die, Ossan Alpha, Saboten Kyodai, Tripod Jimmy and Dave Wesson).

I love this concert, maybe because I was one of about 30 people there and my voice can be heard prominently whooping on the band, yelling out things like “BB Gun,” “Psychedelic Warrior”, etc. Kawai gives each song an intro, so there are really only six songs and six intro-bits. The opening track, like so many Ultra Fuckers shows, is Kawai talking to the audience, but he keeps it short and launches into “Take On Maria”, which is driving hardcore that becomes a scream-a-thon with weird guitar riffs and plenty of splashy drumming. “We want to FUCK” is introduces the band, stuff like “We are Ultra Fuckers, we want to fuck. This day is a good, fine days.” Kawai asks for more delay. “B.B.Gun” is weird rock-out. “Prince of the Rising Sun” is a prog-rock song that has vocal stuff, then weird gurgles and guitar and drum stuff to build up the intro, then the song goes into quasi-rap, some crowd interaction before ending up on thrash-of-sorts. The crowd sings “Ringo Ringo” to the tune of “Linda Linda”, Kawai shouts “I love Shiina Ringo”, but doesn’t play the “Shiina Ringo Song”. He ask the crowd “are you punk?”, then launches into “PUNK SONG”, a groovy punker with weirdly distorted vocals that make his voice sound like a robot. The song is happy and oi oi singalong. “Takara Deta” starts off with wicked hellstorm noise, then gurgles with rising vocals into a pumeling grunged-out buzzer wrought with danger. The song begins to soar, and it’s a beautiful thing that is also noisy and chaotic. “Thank you.” “Talk about love” is all like “I hate love, I hate love, you might be lonely, always lonely. I like the traveller of the desert. We hate love, we hate marriage,” to which I shouted out “we love money.” The band plays “Bandee Jump” (i.e. bungee jump), a fast rocker that drives and drives and drives.

This recording is the extracted audio of a concert video that I took of the band that I sent to Kawai in 2005 that contains footage from three concerts, including this one. On the CD inlay, Kawai writes “Dedicated to Peter Holfich, Thanx to Matt EXILE and KTO”. He spelled my name wrong, but this is scum – things are supposed to be spelled wrong.

Escape From Home Recording, CD EP, August 14th 2003 – Opening track “You Fuck!” has everything you’ve ever heard before in an Ultrafuckers song: froggy groaning, speedy arpeggios, grimy guitar, weird high BPM electronic beats, and general spasticness. “G.W.A.R.” starts of like a mid-speed standard rock tune with a bit of cracked dissonance (the guitars aren’t quite tuned), but Kawai brings it back to weirdness with his rough voice; still, the tune is oddly conventional. It almost sounds like a Killdozer song. “Mummy Tribe” is horrible Killdozer-like growling with weird electronics and someone screeching “Mummy!”

Download the album and its artwork here, or listen to it in the embedded player here:

2002.08.21 Live at Bears CD, 2002, Public Eyesore – The band comes out yelling like the German nihilists in the Big Lebowski, but also saying “nice to meet you… nice to meet you… and nice to meet you… welcome.” Craziness is “We’re ultra Fuckers, we need to fuck, we only think about fuck, we need only fuck. You want fuck? Chose one fuckless life, fuck for life, fuck all life, fuck bride. The world contains all fuck.” The “song” is called “Talk about fucking.” “I have a mouth… and I like mouth. And about to my mouth songs. My mouth, my mouth, my mouth is molasses. My mouth is my acid, my mouth is my acid.” The first song, “My Mouth Eat My Acid” is guitar, drum, and Kawai’s screaming the title over and over. The song eventually gets a good head on as the guitar solo picks up into great noise territory. “My Family Under The Wall” is a long, doomy grunge-out with some extra music – it sounds like the band is playing with a big, booming bass grooning out big glommy lines. “Living On The Edge” is more of the same, with big bass sounds and super drums, with plenty of screaming. The bass overpowers, you can hardly hear the guitar at all. “Yakamarahine” is mainly Kawai singing a nice little song, with a bit of accompanying noise, sort of like theatre performance art. “Fuck Soon” starts with low bass, goofy guitar, but builds up and up until Kawai is just screaming “I want to fuck!” The song repeats and drones on and on in this vein. At nearly seven minutes, it is their second-longest song after “Hyper Dimension Pt.1 (short)”, which is over 11 minutes of electronica. “Death Karaoke ’02″ sounds like Kawai singing along to canned music, some old Japanese pop song. The bass and the drum comes in near the end for big pummeling.

I wasn’t at this show. The CD comes with no arwork, but it has the flyer of the show, which had headline act Monoliner playing with Ono of Solmania (wow!), Ultra Fuckers, Aska Temple and Ydestroyde. I don’t know anything about Monoliner, but Aska Temple are great, and Ydestroyde even better! See my reviews of those bands here (where I mistakenly list Ydestroyde as “I Destroyed”.

Ultra Fuckers Box – Lost Frog Records. Limited Edition of 2, containing Humanity of UF, Ultra Fuckers/Prehensile Monkeytailed Skink “Bring My Eye”, Karaoke Bootleg 2, and A Tribute To Evangelion – Available at the Ultra Fuckers 10th anniversary/Scum Nite 10 at Bears February 11th , 2002. I bought one, Jeff Bell of Beauty Pear (see Exile Osaka 5) bought the other. His is splashed with sochu that I drunkenly spilled on it (sorry, Jeff), but mine still looks nice. The four tape releases in it are available outside of the box, though, so I don’t know if it was such a good deal. After I bought it the three members of the band came over to me and thanked me personally for buying it. I got them to sign it – Kawai drew a stick guy with a gun and wrote “BxBx Gun.” This is a sassy personal remark, since every time I see them I heckle them to play “B.B. Gun Song” until they finally do. I’m glad he remembered. Actually, the owner of Lost Frog Records, who was there playing with the Surfers of Romantica that night, came over to me and thanked me personally as well, I think he even gave me a deep bow!!

Humanity of UF is a lo-fi 20-minute tape that comes in a zip-lock bag with a color-photocopied insert. Very crappy, of course, but also very un-pretentious. Lo-fi sounds, radio samples, Kawai talking into a mic about nothing, bizarre fuzzy hardcore, distorted voice experiments, some crap ’80s pop that is clearly not UxFx, and that’s all she wrote. Bring My Eye is good fuzzy strange noisy UxFx, perhaps their best stuff. Prehensile Monkeytailed Skink is good too, especially the “Richard Nixon is innocent” stuff and “we’d like to thank the other bands for sucking so much.” (longer review below) Tribute To Evangelion is very strange music. Two 60-minute lo-fi tapes with a color photocopy insert in a bag, it’s music from the influential anime series Evangelion – that I haven’t seen. A memorable theme, then with the Sinatra classic “Fly Me To The Moon” done over a dozen different ways. Only one track by Ultra Fuckers, other collaborators are Tabata’s Human Insect, Fossil Fuel, Osaka SS, Ono Yasuhiko of Solmania, and 25 others I don’t know much about. Very odd noise/groove/sample/pop/punk/funk/satire music going crazy, not to mention dialogue samples that might be from the series itself? But I wouldn’t know, would I? Punch Head sings a strange, lewd version of “Fly Me To The Moon” called “Punch Me To Your Head”. Ultra Fuckers song “Sync-La” is a short muttered thing, hard to notice. Of the many versions of “Fly Me To The Moon”, AxTxFx/Z.T.T.’s torture speed version of the song is probably the best, although other odd versions are good too. Karaoke Bootleg 2 is a 1995 recording on a 90 minute tape, comes with a photocopied song list and a color-photocopied art insert in a zip-loc bag, and is basically 41 strange songs by 26 bands. Most bands only offer one song, but the Ultra Fuckers offer four! (Surfers of Romantica one, Mania Organ two, Coa also two). All songs great fuzzy lo-fi scum and odd sounds that may or may not be Hawkwind derived – mellow guitar, insane guitar, wild bass, shrieking, etc. Things like Bitch Bootleg are very strange and talky. The Coa tracks sound like an attack of horny dragons thowing huge boulders and toppling buildings – sheer terror. Zip Code Review sounds like Sonic Youth. O.A.C.’s “H.M.DNA (nature mix)” is probably the strangest/coolest thing I’ve ever heard – blistering hardcore with the sounds of birds twitting in nature, jets flying overhead. What is the message here? Cool surf rock from the Won Wons. Utopia’s songs are mainly drumsticks hitting together as to call out a song (but with no song), then strange burbling keyboards and riffs. Silly little numbers. The Ultra Fuckers songs are the same as are on the Retail Karaokei EP. Man, I didn’t need to buy that one then (I guess this means that they’ve recycled these songs at least three times, as they also appear on Old Warrior Worship)!! A funny hardcore song by the Surfers of Romantica, then bizarre novelty songs in English by the Rudy Schwartz Project like “Creation Science Polka” and “An Orange Is Nothing But A Juicy Pumpkin”. Sample lyric from the former: “Carbon dating makes us cringe, we’re the right wing lunatic fringe, Jesus died for our sins, creation science polka”. Silly and annoying.

Beyond the Fuckless CD, 2001, Central Scum – This must be a joke or something: despite having a listing of 13 tracks with typical Ultra Fucker names like “Bongo Roll”, “Holly Bible” and “Bandee Jump” (bungee jump), all that I can hear on this is Cambodian pop. Is this Dengue Fever?

This is what I wrote about it in 2002: “I got this at an Ultra Fuckers 10th Anniversary show by trading a Nina Hagen CD (Freud Euch, the German version of her 1995 release with Marky Ramone collaborating, a good one). ‘Beyond the Fuckless’ is a CD-R in a slipcase that comes with a cool little sticker. Wild band music, it almost sounds like 70s music or early Stooges. Lots of drums and grunting and lurid guitar. Some songs end abruptly. Nice guitar work here. Better than listening to Deep Purple!”

Petit U-fu, Dance with me, Rock with you: EP CD, 2000, Central Scum – This is an Ultra Fuckers spinoff called Petit U-fu (petit Ultra Fuckers) that consists of Kawai Kazuki Langley on “Vocal and Vox + Muff) and a blond-headed goofy-looking Mob Norio on ASR-X Pro and Vocal. Mob Norio is now well-known for having won the famous Akutagawa literary prize in 2004 for the book Introduction to Nursing Care (介護入門 Kaigo nyu-mon). While the CD has nine tracks, only the even-numbered tracks (1, 3, 5, 7 and 9) are real songs, tracks 2, 4, 6 and 8 are all only a few seconds long. Opening track “Dance With Me, Rock With you” is primitive guitar, fast beats, a bit of singing, and plenty of laughing, babbling and goofing around. “約束/(Can’t Finish your) Promise” is almost a normal rock song with real guitar chords, babbling “singing”, and idiotic drumming. “うそ/Don’t Tell A Lie” is even more of a real song, with someone (maybe Mob Norio) singing “うそ” as if this were a regular song. Nice. “点と線/Ambitious Bride” is keyboard and noise plinkings and plonkings with long periods of Merzbow-like noise and some quasi-singing (by the way, 点と線 does not mean “Ambitious Bride”, but “dots and lines”; it is also the name of a famous train mystery Points and Lines by Matsumoto Seicho). “Dance with me, Rock with you (karaoke)” is very similar to the opening track, but actually there’s nothing Karaoke about it.

Of the mini-tracks, track two, “Yo! Petti!”, is four seconds of squeaky guitar chords; track four, “& Boys pt. 1″ is four seconds of beep-beep-beep-beeeeeep” of keyboard; track six, “& Boys pt.2″, is nearly the same as track four and also runs for four seconds; track 8, “& Boys pt.3″ sort of combines all of the elements of the previous four-second songs into a six-second song of its own.

Retail Karaokei EP, 1994-97 Compilation Tracks Colletions CD, 2000, Lost Frog Productions – Track 1 starts off with some old Japanese movie soundtrack music, then goes into strange death metal that doesn’t sound one bit like the Ultra Fuckers, until the last three seconds when you hear an e’chi Kawai voice come in. A remix? The second track is fake singing over weird guitar plucking. The third track is whistling, it sounds like the Pixies song “Silver”. The fourth track is one minute of monitor feedback. The last track is the band chatting, with part of the conversation looped and manipulated. Nice sound stuff.

This is what I wrote about it in 2002: “Strange produced noise and screwing around. A remix album? Moody music that they could never lay live with a guitarist and drummer and Kawai yelling his head off. Mixed and matched. Dislocated voices, buzzing, feedback, strangeness. Funny track seven with manipulated crowd sounds. Still the best (or most representative of their live show) Ultra Fuckers songs are on compliations like Land of the Rising Noise (Charnel) and Tribute To Nippon (UMMO).” I think there’s a mistake here – there are only five songs on this recording!

Bring My Eye, cassette tape, 1996, Central Scum – A split 20-minute tape the Ultra Fuckers did with an American band called Prehensile Monkey Tailed Skink (perhaps?) that I know nothing about. Ten minutes for each band. I bought this one from Kawai on the stairway to Bears after they played a show there. It is funny and interesting, flattened-out lo-fi noise and sound and distorted ET vocals. The classic-riff-that-a-two-year-old-could-have-come-up-with from the Stooges “I Wanna Be Your Dog” is stolen, not for the first time I bet. Funny, wacky, strange, unnatural sounds, not quite like their live performances. PMTS are not too bad either. They have funny “lyrics”, like a news announcer saying “ladies and gentlemen, this just in – Richard Nixon is apparently innocent! ” Are they a ’90s scum version of the Monks? Or are they King Missile? At the end of the song they get snooty and give out their thanks (sounding more like “fuck you very much” than “thank you very much”) to the tune of music. Maybe this is old, but I haven’t heard it before so I will consider it original just this one time.

Photos!

Ultra Fuckers Live!

Here are my reviews of the concerts I saw in Japan with Ultra Fuckers on the bill:

April 18th , 2003 – Namba Bears: Half Japanese, Ultra Fuckers, and TEEM. My last night at Bears before the imminent move to Singapore in May. Went downtown early and bought 4 CDs at Alchemy Records: the new Masonna, Space Machine, and Acid Mothers Temple and Sekiri CDs. Talked to Masonna a bit, seems like he only sold one of my zines to Philhomena, whom I had told by email that they were available there. They aren’t displayed, I don’t see how he will ever sell any more. Got to Bears early so I could interview Jeff Bell and Nana like we’d been talking about for ages, but the interview didn’t happen because sound checks were taking place. Watched Half Japanese sound check, talked a bit to some of the guys. Later gave Jad Fair directions how to get to Den Den Town. Went for beers, and then Jeff and Nana and I finally did the interview backstage at Bears, Kawai from Ultra Fuckers sat in on it too. Got my seat near the front so I could do some filming – good thing too, it was warming up to be a full crowd. Ultra Fuckers were up first. Kawai came out and asked everybody to stand up, because although having people sitting on the floor for a punk show is lame it is what people at Bears always do anywya. The band blasted away at a few funky numbers, some new things that were silly and spare. Kawai apologized for sounding so bad, that they didn’t know their new songs so well. He spoke in English mostly through the set, but broke into Japanese when he wanted to make a point. Many foreigners in the crowd heckling him back in English, so the usual effect he has of babbling in English to a Japanese audience that doesn’t understand him was lost somewhat. “Do you like Shiina Ringo?” Cool toy guitar noise, funny air thump thump thump. Toward the end of the show he asked “Do you know the King of Hearts?” We said “no, we don’t know the king of hearts,” and he explained something about Gundam and anime, or something. Very funny. Rousing final number with the Butthole Surfers reprise, then he jumps from the stepladder and rolls through the air, landing on his shoulder. He takes a long time to get up, and looks like he’s in terrible pain. The band picks up and walks offstage. TEEM are up next. Nana starts it off with his bass blompings, Yamamoto taking it easy with some simple guitar themes, China keeping it going on drums, and Jeff Bell standing around wondering what to do – turn on his pocket radio, manipulate it with an old electric toothbrush, or twang away on his Vietnamese Jews harp. Nana’s bass is the most fluid element to it all, it is burbling like a mountain stream, and China’s slick drums keep it all together. Yamamoto is having a hard time picking up on a theme, and Jeff doesn’t have much to say. Actually, his mic doesn’t seem to be working very well either and we can’t quite make out what he’s saying. Maybe he meant it to be that way! Jeff is a pretty mellow guy. On the other hand, Yamamoto’s mic works and has a ferocious echo, but he doesn’t barely use it. This band is definitely not as fierce as they were the last time I saw them when they snarled “we are TEEM!” and “eat my pussies.” After a while Yamamoto walked offstage toward the sound deck, came back and stopped the jazz fusion experiment, then picked up with some funky numbers that had some steam to them, fierce punching and nutty energy. This was the band we had come to see!! From the backstage door I could see the happy faces of the Half Japanese guitarist poking his head in to see what was going on. After a few more minutes of loud, aggressive sounds, the band finished up and walked offstage. After some time to mellow out and get ready for the headliners, it was time for Half Japanese. The band came onstage, set up the equipment a bit, and launched into the first song – the guitarist pounding away on a mini-drumkit, the drummer banging away, and Jason Willett looking really cool puffing away at slim hand-rolled cigarettes and working strange electronic pads (he looks kind of like Gary Sinise, doesn’t he?). Jad went nuts singing strange ditties. They played three numbers, experimenting with the equipment, before they stopped it all and said they’d take a break to solve a few equipment problems. Okay. We sat back and waited, then promptly it picked up again. Lots of cool funky sounds and a great pulse, the song that stuck out the most for me was the Monster Island song and all the different monster roars – King Kong, Godzilla, Mothra, Gamera – R-RRROOOAHRRRR!!!!! Another song about Frankenstein, another song about this and that and, well I should really watch the video to refresh my memory. The band looked like it was having a lot of fun and there was lots of goofy grins back and forth between Jason and the drummer. Jad worked with a little microphone he held in his fist that made his voice sound extra sharp and freaky. After a while the guitarist walked off and we didn’t see him for a while. Later on the band took a short break, then came back in full rock and roll gear – the guitarist banging away at the sweet beautiful guitar sounds, Jason on a slinky bass, and the drummer still working away. Some songs were just Jad and the drummer, Jad sang two Calvin Johnston songs including “Caspar”, and then he did a babble-solo on the city of Chicago. Chris from Chicago was standing next to me. I don’t know how he felt about it, but Bob from Minnesota behind me got brave enough to heckle at that point. Don back in the middle of the room began to mosh around and went a little crazy – I worried a bit for the petite damsels crowding the front because, well, Don is a big, sweaty guy! The tape ran out in my camera, which meant that the band had been playing for over an hour, and I could just enjoy the show without bothering to film it. Jad did great versions of “Red Dress,” proving he wasn’t bothered by Bob’s heckling, and lots of great, tight, fast, loud, guitar rock numbers that were really solid. Everyone in the audience loved every song the band played and played and played. I can’t believe I have seen a band play a ninety minute set at Bears, where twenty minute sets are the norm (on a five band night anyway). The three bands tonight gave us one hell of a ride. Half Japanese finished up, went off, the lights came up and the recorded music came up, but they were back immediately for an encore with an incredible version of “Angel.” Amazing stuff!! I wish I had gotten that on video! After the show we hung around and Jad came out and talked to everybody. I gave him copies of my zine, took a pic with him, chatted about this and that. Jad signed books, CDs, and a copy of “The Band That Would Be King.” The guitarist and drummer came out too and talked to Don and Susan about Texas. We had a hard time saying goodbye and getting out the door to catch our last trains, I wish I could have stayed out late and partied with the bands afterwards, but it was not to be. I talked to Jeff Bell and found out that Kawai had actually broken his collar bone in that jump at the end of the Ultra Fuckers and was taken away to hospital. In an ambulance? Not sure. Thanks to Don and Susan and Bob and Chris and Philhomena and everyone else for coming out!

February 15th , 2003 – Tocca a Te: KTO’s Kansai Bangladesh Charity Concert 6 (KB*CC 6), featuring Dave Wesson, Ossan Alpha, Love Or Die, Ultra Fuckers, Saboten Kyodai, Go Kitty, Tripod Jimmy, and Love Beach. Got to Tocca a Te early and watched sound checks, ate, drank, hung out. I brought 20 kilos of books and magazines and tapes for people to take home free and was glad to dump it on a table under a “TAKE FREE” sign. Lots of little kids milling about and playing, including a chubby little one-year-old with a mohican! After some schedule and sound check confusion, Jeff Lee (formerly of Roy Tan) and his new outfit Ossan Alpha were ready to go on. At the last minute Dave Wesson walked in the door, he went on first instead. Can’t blame a guy for arriving late – his wife had just had a baby boy on Monday! Great acoustic finger picking with harmonica and vocals, his covers of Grateful Dead and Dylan songs were great and set the right tone to start the evening. After him were Ossan Alpha, a great stomping shredding dirty guitar and drum band. Fun howling tunes from a dynamo of energy, the strings on Jeff’s guitar were shredded after. Funny trio cover “Ja Ja Ja,” righteous original songs like “Snake Farm” were great too (it reminded me of “Whole Lotta Rosie” somehow), and a little bit of “Let There Be Rock”. Much better than the Doors with Ian Astbury singing any day! Jeff’s sweet 18 month old daughter Eliza was watching with her mom and seemed enthralled, so were the other kids who had come with their mommies and daddies. Priceless. Between sets, DJs like KTO’s Dominic and Aidan played album tracks, among them the peerless Gil Scot Heron classic “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Saboten Kyodai were next playing furious rock covers. A tight band with lots of onstage energy, the tall lead singer also wore a cowboy hat. Stylish!! I danced my ass off to their set and I think the band was amused. I yelled out “aniki” to them. When I met them after the set they were extra friendly to me as we danced around to the bands. I love making friends that way at shows. Love Or Die followed with their dirty screaming short freakout songs. Love Or Die have been scheduled to play KBCC events before, but always had to cancel for one reason or other. Finally our chance to see the legends, playing again after being on hiatus for five years! Tight fasty nasty rock just the way we like it. The kids loved it too, and mohican-boy was almost constantly being filmed by the squad of Osaka underground documentarians and archivists (myself included). Ultra Fuckers followed with their trademarked scum noise crap. Kawai seems to have a new vocal effect box since he was making his vocals sound particularly gnarly. No toy guitar to play or ladder to jump off of, but the “BB Gun song,” “Prince of the Rising Sun,” and a “we hate love, we hate marriage, we love money” rap similar to the one from the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band movie (?!). Plenty of English mumbling too! After Ultra Fuckers, Go Kitty launched into their set of short, fast, pop songs. Three very cute young girls playing the traditional instruments and singing sweet songs. They said a polite “thank you” after each song, we all said “you’re welcome.” Apparently they also did a Beach Boys cover. Next up were Tripod Jimmy trying out their new drummer for his first live shows. The guy lives in Shiga!! Came a long way to play without pay. Plenty of fast tight stompin’ songs from their new CD, plus a fun “Automated System.” What a great band. Last up was the wildly unpredictable Love Beach. They started their set near 1:00 (late!) by climbing onstage, casually, one by one, and tuned up. The lead singer leaned on the mic stand, lit up a cigarette, and babbled freeform garbage to the sounds of “the Song Remains The Same” and other songs coming from the DJs as the other guys sound checked and got ready. Finally they started up – wanky distorted guitar/solos over pulsing snakey bass and drum lines. The lead singer went into some kind of psychotic trance and glared at the audience, making eye contact and screaming. I got too close with a video camera and he made a grab for it. ET finger touches. Nutty. Beats thrown in too. Finished the set with a great cover of “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Seven bands, whew! Only complaint was that nobody tried a Black Sabbath cover, but I’m sure some day a KBCC band will do just that. After Love Beach finished, the DJs played a while, after which Dave Wesson came back to sing a few more Dylan songs. “(Take Me Home) Country Roads” failed to please the crowd, but a nice version of “Blackbird” was touching. Attempts to play “Desperado,” “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Out Of The Black, Into The Blue” failed, but “Lay Lady Lay” was fun, especially with guest vocalists like Shane and Don, who sang the Dylan classic the Ministry way. Things mellowed, the club shut down bit by bit, and we drank until 5 in the morning. Thanks to Torsten and Mami (congratulations on their engagement!), Don and Sue, Grant and friend, Steve, Philomena and Masayuki, Mitch, and all the others who showed up, not to mention the great bands that volunteered their time to the charity. Bravo.

June 16th, 2002 , Namba Bears: Ultra Fuckers , I Destroyed, Junk Headd, Doddodo and TEEM . Another perfect night at Bears. Ultra Fuckers play first this time, working through several songs, Kawai brings out the famous toy guitar out for two long-ish numbers, and they get off the stage. No jumping off the folding ladder, which is onstage but never used. Kawai asks the audience if they like “UFO or Die” and I yell out “NO!!” My request for the “BB Gun Song” is denied – rats! They get off and I Destroyed set up. While they are pulling out racks of keyboards and a huge Yamaha drum, some strange electro mix DJ weirdo music plays – twisted samples and bizarre sounds. I assume this is Junk Headd , although I have been taught never to assume. Oh, what the hell, just this once. Soon the electro dies down and a drone appears – this is I Destroyed. They come and space out, chanting like Buddhist monks, the dreadlocked-bearded lead singer/keyboardist comes out into the audience to groove, then the rest of the band explodes into noise. More drone, then the band explodes again, and a long jam starts. They work the bass, pound the drums, ring in digital beats, groove out with funky beats and yells, spacey effects, it was a mess. A drummer, a percussionist, drum, bass, keyboards, three of them doing vocals at various times, yeesh. They went on for over 50 minutes, which is pretty rare at Bears. A wild, fun, exciting band, that seems to incorporate moments from the entire Boredoms career, particularly Super Roots 5 and Vision Creation New Sun. Hey, if you can’t see the Boredoms play anymore, this and the Surfers of Romantica must be the next best thing. A surprise for most people in the audience too, who had never heard of them. Last up was fun monster TEEM , with their brash, loud orgy of huge supergroup sounds. Yamamoto Seiichi of the Boredoms (and about twenty other bands) on guitar; Nana of VooDooBrooYoo, Labcry, the Futures, Star Star and Star, and Grind Orchestra on bass; China of Music Start Against Young Assault, Jesus Fever, Rovo, Rashinban, and Shonen Knife on drums; and Canadian Jeff Bell of Empty Orchestra and Live Evil on vocals. Bombastic and near over-the top, the band assaulted the small room and the hundred people there with huge Fuji Rock Fest-level sounds and hyperkinetic energy as they tore through near-unrecognizable covers of songs by Soundgarden, Black Sabbath, White Zombie, and the Rollins Band as done by mid-career Butthole Surfers. At least that is what it sounded like to me. Live music and fun probably doesn’t get much better than this. Thanks to Chris and Thom and Anna and Philomena for coming out.

February 11th, 2002 at Namba Bears : Ultra Fuckers , the Surfers of Romantica , Vita Sexualis and Solmania. Scum Nite 10 and the Ultra Fuckers 10th anniversary (that’s what it says on the bill, but it also says that UxFx are from Texas on the bill). Ultra Fuckers were up first and sang their “I Hate Winter” and “Anti-Marriage Song,” both new apparently, and “Shiina Ringo Song” and “Silent Song.” Great stuff. No “Human Cannonball” or “Prince of the Land of the Rising Sun.” What a band. Kawaii kept his bag on his head for the whole show this time, playing shirtless and jumping around, drummer and guitarist filling in around the edges. I requested “B.B. Gun Song” and they played it!!! After the show I bought a few CDs and also got the limited editon (of two!!!) “Musical Mayhem” box set with 4 tapes, got it signed too. Glad to finally have a limited edition something of personal value to myself. Who cares about the limited edition Swatch anyway? Swapped a Nina Hagen CD (“Freud Euch”, with Dee Dee Ramone) with Kawaii for the “Beyond the Fuckless” CD so I saved 1000 yen there. That always feels pretty good. At this point we also discovered the free sochu that they had on the counter – yum. The Surfers of Romantica came out next – a drummer, guitarist, bass player, and vocalist. Guitarist wearing a black body suit like a Mexican wrestler, they jumped around and screamed. The guitarist had troubles with his pedals, he ripped off his mask and picked up a mic, and the band was a drummer and bass player making huge slabs of bad noise. The shirtless lead singer wearing the funny tights looks like he’s over fifty!! This is a completely different band than the one I saw last time . Next were Vita Sexualis, a goth rock band that owes a debt to the Velvet Underground. Playing pop songs for a while as the sunglass-wearing dandy lead singer dangled around the mic stand. Just okay, wonder if they’ll be better another time. Last up were Solmania . I’m glad I got a chance to see this group again from up close – one guy playing a Rickenbocker (?) and another guy playing a custom guitar with all sorts of strange things stuck to it. The floor was littered with pedals that they were always banging or bending down to adjust. Crazy noise. Turned out great on video too! Hung out with the musicians briefly afterwards and made some friends and finished off the sochu – feeling pretty good at this point. Roco from Helicoid 0222MB was there too, I joked with her that I liked her Gara Gara Hebi project much better than Helicoid 0222MB , I don’t think she was very happy I said that. Thanks to Matt and Thom and Jeff, Johnny and Amy (?) from Hamilton who I met there. No I just wonder who that angry-looking anti-social guy was.

July 29th, 2001 at Namba Bears : Ultra Fuckers , Bringer Of War, GaraGara Hebi , and Aska Temple. Scum Nite at Bears. The Ultra Fuckers were up first. Mellowing out a bit or what, with a kick-ass new drummer and bass/keyboardist, they were more of a blend of the Doors and a hardcore band than their weird usual selves. Even Kawai gave up the bag-over-the-head and kneepads thing. Everyone knows what he looks like now anyway. Kicking ass in more ways than one, their crunchy freaky numbers had real oomph to them. Starting off with their cool track from the UMMO Records Tribute To Japan compilation, they went into nuggets like “the Shiina Ringo Song,” and by special audience request also “B.B. Gun Song.” with Kawai diving out into the audience. I got it all on video too. Surprisingly, they now have a blues number in their set. Cool. Bringers of War followed with their Prong meets Deep Purple/E.L.P. insanity. A little heavy on the cheezy keyboards, their one long jam was still tight as hell in the rhythm section, particularly that incredible bass player! GaraGara Hebi were the surprise of the evening. Three women in wide skirts playing accordion, pianica (there’s that pianica again!), and guitar. Weird funky harmonics from a great sweet voice, singing funny nothing lyrics like “my favorite summer” over and over again. Switching instruments around, picking up the drums, a programmed disco beat, skull-shaped maracas, and who knows what else. Very sweet fun. The guitar player seems to be a member of Hellacoid 0.222 MB, I wonder how many groups she is in. Last up was the mind-blowing Aska Temple , playing with the lights off and the only light coming from the micro-biology film being shown against the strage. Their music can be best described as psychadelic feedback and was mind-poppingly unbelievable. I had a grin on my face from ear to ear for the whole set. Wonderful. Went out drinking with the musicians after the gig, always fun, but the boys and the girls sat divided at different tables and I was at the girls table for some reason! Hellacoid girl started talking about making a band with me as a vocalist! Possible name: the Emperors. I’m game. Sounds cool, but I wonder if anything will come of it…

July 7, 2000 at Club Water in Namba: Kansai Bangladesh Charity Concert 3 (KB*CC III) with Roi-Tan, C love R, Haco, UltraFuckers , Daimyo Gyoretsu – The third Kansai Bangladesh Charity Concert (KB*CC III) and perhaps the least attended gig… also the most radical and experimental, exciting nevertheless since it offered bands that had never played at the event before, as well as a rare appearance of the legendary Daimyo Groretsu. I got there after ROITAN ‘s set, but managed to catch all of C love R, a girl group that hit all of the marks of everyone’s image of what all Japanese girl bands must sound like. They were great, with lots of energy and likeable infectiousness and good stage presence, not to mention spunky songs. They had two tapes of their music for sale, 100 yen each (a steal), with two and four songs on them respectively. Haco was up next solo, playing her unique nutty operatic techno like a modern-day Yoko Ono. Unfortunately the crowd took a while to warm up to her act, with the people who talked through the set making more sound than she was at point; she rallied forth near the end with one of her strong songs, and then a lot of loud strumming on her electric mandolin (?), so that people were feeling good enough at the end of her set that they called for an encore which she graciously gave us. Permanent Voltage were on the bill, but couldn’t make it, so following Haco were the Ultra Fuckers , another Bears band just like Haco: they jumped into a set that sounded more hardcore than they ever had before. No unusual stage antics except for the obligatory muttering in English (“do you like Shiina Ringo?”), the foreign language irony/intimidation effect that works on Japanese audiences but was lost on the gaijin crowd due to the fact that many people were English-speaking anyway. They played the “BB Gun Song” and Kawai pulled out his trademark toy guitar, but didn’t show it off for more than a minute or two. Final song was an adapted cover of the Butthole Surfers’ “Human Cannonball”, and one encore was granted us after all. A further “AC/DC encore” was refused, though, unfortunately. Last up were Daimyo Gyoretsu , the Bar Noise band and motley crew of strangers who grunt and groan, masked and costumed. Full throat, guitar and drum madness going on and on as people cavorted on the stage colliding with each other, tripping over the guitar pedals, smog machine, wacky percussion and gongs, a skateboard with sharp deer horns on it, and who knows what else. A chainsaw trick didn’t work, but it didn’t matter because the insane sound that was going on was more than enough to make anyone go utterly loopy. Is this what Mr. Bungle and Slipknot and Insane Clown Posse are all about? Happily, I had the honor of being able to take part in this momentous occasion: I wrapped myself up in a sumo mawashi loincloth, put a pair of my wife’s panty-hose (with my socks stuffed into the toes) on my head, they bounced around as I did and the three of us had a lot of fun. I don’t know how it looked, and I am unsure of my actual musical contribution. I guess I’ll have to check out the video of the nite…

April 22, 2000 at Namba Bears: the Ultra Fuckers,NASCA Car, the Surfers of Romantica – My third time seeing the Ultra Fuckers was probably the best (last gig their set was plagued with technical problems), with bagged head, knee-pad wearing toy-sword slinging frontman Kawai Kazui wandering into the audience and yelling at them in English, handing out a b.b. gun and begging an audience member to shoot him. “This is a song about a b.b. gun. It is called b.b. gun song.” He also said “this is a silent song” to introduce a solo number. The “highlight” of an Ultra Fuckers show is always when Kawai pulls out the toy guitar with the programmed beats and jams along. Musically, these guys are probably the worst band in Japan, but the falling-apart feeling of their music is probably what they want and what makes them different. Self-conscious hardcore scum deconstruction. NASCA Car were up next, starting off slowly with distorted noise before picking up some drums, then programmed insanity and tight rapping. A theremin was also present, although it was quite low in the mix and konked out a few times. One good thing the NASCA Cars did was ask the audience to stand up – the problem with shows at bears Bears is that the audience seat themselves on the floor, forcing the late arrivals standing in the back to crowd together or stand on tip-toes. The Surfers of Romantica were up last and blew the place apart with their long loud long jam. Starting off with a DJ and a bongo drummer, the other members slowly drifted in and began piling on the instruments and the noise on top of each other taking the jam higher and higher until the song had to change – it changed once, and changed again, and again, all of the members in glorious sync with each other. Just after the first climax, the crowd surged and for a short while there was a small mosh pit happening in Bears, a club no bigger than a 3-car garage. Somehow it all reminded me of the Boredoms and what they were doing on Super Roots 5, great to see it live! After the show the NASCA Cars and Kawai were selling t-shirts – the Ultra Fuckers tee was an obnoxious small-sized thing with “Ultra Fuckers” on it and a butt-shot of a horny naked anime teen. I thought about buying one, but unfortunately I don’t know anyone brave enough to actually wear it in public.

February 24, 2000 at Fandango in Juso: Star Star Star, Helicoid 0222MB, Communication Brain Buster , Ultra Fuckers – Star Star Star have local superstar Nana on vocals with a guitarist and a drummer. Long, trippy songs that boom and yell, the jam twists and turns and defies description. Wow! That crazy guitarist, how did he produce so much noise with his guitar as he flailed around on his back? Helicoid have street cred, but they aren’t very interesting to listen to. They produce rock and psychadelia that is good enough, just not too adventurous or even very adept. Nice stage outfits, though. Communication Brain Buster remind me of a bunch of serious music school students – they rip away at their instruments with technical perfection that is exciting and frantic, but somehow soulless. Still get wow points. Ultra Fuckers’ set was marred with technical difficulties, to the point where even these famous deconstructionists appeared uncomfortable with the way that things were turning out. Considered by some a Bears band, Fandango may have been too big for them. I wonder if they will ever play there again.

August 20th, 1999 at Namba Bears: Ultra Fuckers, Jahangir, Jet Liners, We Are The World – We are the World did cool pop, Jet Liners did corny hardcore, and Ultra Fuckers did zombie spazz – it is their calculated ambition to be known as the worst band in Japan, but in fact they are one of the best… and one of the strangest. Confrontational lead singer Kawaii came out in knee-pads and with a bag over his head, talked English to the audience, and was generally incomprehensible in his language and his antics. Biggest surprise of the evening came from Jahangir , two guys playing ancient electronic equipment and singing nasty, edgy lyrics. They were as fun to watch as they were to listen to. Namba Bears rules.

About My big bad Ultra Fuckers page

I made this page as a tribute to Ultra Fuckers after I realised that there is a dearth of information about the band out there and that, since I own probably all of their recorded material, I should do something about sharing this information.

If you wish to write to me with your comments and questions, please drop me a line at peter at hoflich dot com.

You may also wish to check out:

My big bad Boris page
My big bad Spitz page

It was a pretty busy week. I listened to a lot of John Lennon (the Signature Box, twice) and some Richard Thompson. Monday and Tuesday I had to leave work quickly to run errands, and on Wednesday I went home to be with mum ‘m’ dad for their last night in Singapore this year. Thursday they flew off to New Zealand, and Thursday night I went downtown for another round of Christmas shopping and errands. I got nearly everything done, except for two items, but that will get taken care of soon enough.

Friday night I went out to Boat Quay’s Home Club to see some live bands with two office colleagues. It was a shoegazer festival! Goody. The first band, Under The Velvet Sky, was playing some crazy Frank Zappa-esque prog rock. They sounded pretty good, but since I only heard part of their last song I bought their CD, I’ll have to check it out. Stellarium was up next, they were pretty straight forward shoegazer, sounding a lot like My Bloody Valentine, although they did a cool cover of Sonic Youth’s “100%”. Got home, watched half of “Play Misty For Me” and then went to sleep.

Saturday was a busy day. Woke up, watched the rest of “Play Misty For Me”, then watched “Diva” and most of “The Phantom of Liberty.” Then I headed downtown, did some banking, bought another Christmas present, and went to the multimedia library to get some more movies. Got eight: “Death Note 2″, “Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea”, “M*A*S*H” (the Robert Altman film), The Beatles Anthology Parts 1 and 2, “Tears of the Black Tiger”, “Buena Vista Social Club”, “The Sargasso Manuscript”, and “Black Sabbath”. Great. Then I went off to the National Museum of Singapore to catch a screening of “Kurutta I’peiji”, a Japanese silent film from 1926 about madness and life inside an insane asylum. The performance included musical accompaniment by The Observatory, an art rock band from Singapore that I’m a big fan of. The music was atmospheric and interesting, and at times as chaotic as what was being shown onscreen. There were two crescendoes in the film and the band filled them with some great noise. After that, I headed home and watched “Death Note 2.” There had been a CD launch party from Lunarin, but I gave it a miss.

Today it looks like I have a lot of work to do – chores, housework, shopping, etc. Busy busy busy…

CD reviews

under the velvet sky, “the black sea sorcery” – Eccentric, crazy jazz-core with lots of found sounds (radio blurts) and tons of zaniness, with great odd and freaky garbage. I don’t know how to describe an album of four songs with lengths like 5 minutes, 4 minutes, 29 minutes, 2 minutes. Sheesh. But I’ll try…

One long jam, it was recorded live in the studio in October, 2008. First track “Mystique Morning” starts off with some trippy guitar sounds and other sound effects, then comes in with drums. Comes in with great psychedelic guitars, and blares out for a while. “A Girl Named Gaza” takes a while to get going, and the drum and bass build up for the guitar, which cranks out some psychedelia. Beautiful. Trippy narration there after a while, taking it into the next track. With “The Sorcerer’s Hat”, a song of nearly 30 minutes, there’s initially trippy echo guitar, and some horns coming in, some percussion. There is nearly 10 minutes of echo-ey guitar plonking, before the psychedelia heats up. The song chills out ten minutes later, and the dijeridoo kicks in, and the song gets quiet. What’s happening, man? The song trips back to a new song, groaning with some child’s nervous murmuring. It later builds up into a funky slam, with loud riffs, some distant crowd announcements and horns understated, before everything grows into a fever pitch. Fun! “Rain At The Break Of Dawn” is slow starting, with a cello vibe, then it becomes a bit like chilled out raga rock. Groovy, man!!

Stellarium, “Stellarium” – This Singapore band knows exactly what it’s doing when it comes to re-creating those beloved sounds from our favourite Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth albums, and it sounds great. The first song, “Any Day Is Fine” sounds like your standard Jesus And Mary Chain aggro feedback noise, right down to the weak vocal mix. Great noise and drones. “Chocolate And Strawberry” is bass-led, with some great fretwork and that droning vocal over feedback thing. “Harbinger” is more melodic, but it is also bass-led and feels very comfortable. Man are the vocals weak in the mix! “Vertigo” mumbles along with a fantastic wall of bass warblings. “Paddle Pop” starts off with sheer noise, then goes almost into a near-Godflesh negative banger, and then a bit of a dreamy song, before becoming a hive of evil feedback, harsh and abrasive. “The Grass Is Greener” is a big thick fat riff, with some horrid vocal sounds. “Tomorrow’s Monday” is sort of a boring track, ut stll very Jesus and Mary Chain-ish (they had boring songs too, right?), or maybe even a tad Love and Rockets-esque (ditto), but it picks up in the last few minutes as it grows in to a wicked maelstrom of noise. “Fader” starts off fast like a sqruonky Sonic Youth tune, then goes into some surf rock (?!?!), that is maybe a wee bit Cure-like, a wee bit Curve-like. Or maybe it is simply surf rock the way Sonic Youth would do it. Either way, it’s hard to get a bead on. The final track “Dead Nebula” seems 14 minutes long, but it is actually a feedback-marinated eight minute ditty, followed by 90 seconds of silence, then a true shoegazer ditty starts up, with jangling chorused guitars. Sweeeeeeet… The tune starts off strong with some great drum beats and a very nice electric groove, it builds up slowly, and then after four minutes all hell breaks loose. The “mystery track” has a very fast electronic beat, and totally washed out/layered vocals. The guitar is nearly impossible to identify as guitar, it’s so distorted.

Neil Young, “Archives Volume 1, 1963-1972″, 11DVD box – I don’t know what you’ve read about Neil Young’s Archives, but it’s probably the coolest thing you can spend your money on. Yes, we know it’s meticulous, and it’s been decades in the making, but the experience of owning a copy is really something unforgettable. First of all, when the 12 discs arrive (10 DVDs and 2 CDs), the box set is really huge. So big you wonder if it will fit on the shelf. The set won a grammy for best art direction on a box set, and it’s easy to see why.

The Box:

You open it from the top, and it has a strange little magnetic tug to it. At the top of the box set is a 236-page book that is tall and thin, it has a fake leather jacket that is really beautiful that shows some sort of forest-at-sunset scene. While the music covers the 1963-1972 period, the book starts in 1945, when Neil is born (actually, even before that, as it shows pictures of Neil’s parents). The book has no text, just lots of pictures, lyrics, doodles, coffee stains and newspaper clippings. It offers a beat-abstract journey through Neil’s life focusing on the substance without all of the vanities.

Next up is a slim poster that is presented like a filing cabinet that contains all of the songs in the set.

After that, there’s the crazy box of 10 discs numbered from zero to nine with neat little magnetic fasteners. The discs are gatefold CDs that generally have pics all over them, with no booklets. We pop the first one in and we see a nice title screen with the promise of “Play All”, “Song Selection”, “More” and “Set Up”. When you select any of the first one you get the songs, when you select the second one you get the filing cabinet, and depending on what you click on you may get various multi-media, you get into the songs, and you might get photo galleries. “Early Years” is a family album. Selecting a song will get you a title card, with all the vital statistics. When you click on the “play” triangle you get a picture of a turntable with the song playing. If you want, you can watch the turntable spin, there are interesting things nearby like sheet music. The rest of the songs on the first CD are like this, although they change a bit – sometimes they are turntables, but they may also be reel-to-reels of various sorts. All of the other CDs contain various multimedia presentations, it will take ages to explore them.

Here are some pics I took of the various discs and their covers:

Here’s what all the discs look like. Neil tried to get most of them to resemble vinyl somehow.

The final component is a black box/drawer, which contains three items: a notepad from the Whiskey A Go-Go that says “Speaking Pad”, which appears to have on it written in pencil the words:

“IF YOU ARE
A SPEAKING
PAD – WHY DON’T
YOU SAY SOMETHING
?!??!?”, followed by the words written in pen in what looks like Neil’s handwriting “(Uhh?”)”

The box also contains a CD and DVD version of “Sugar Mountain – Live at Canterbury House 1968″, part of the “Neil Young Archives Performance Series”. It also comes with a card that contains a code that is supposed to let you download all of the songs on the collection (since most of the music is on DVDs you can’t rip them to your iTunes), but my code is defective and wouldn’t download – could it be that they aren’t allowing downloads over the US Thanksgiving weekend? Maybe.

…well, sure enough, on the Tuesday after the weekend it worked. Downloadable are 125 songs only. The DVDs have easter eggs of a further 12 songs (hidden tracks), and if you own the Blu-ray version you get even more songs available for download when you want them.

There’s just so much here. The box itself is gorgeous, made to look like something that is classic, tattered, decaying, yet vibrant and defiant. There is even stuff printed on the bottom of the box. Neil’s image is everywhere, as are motifs of his name, down to the name wrapping around the box itself (I guess when there are four boxes you can arrange them together any side you want to form his whole name, giving you a $1,000 Neil Young wall) and the main material is old newspaper clippings. The box top sows a hand of eight cards with pictures of Neil through the years, from a young boy to the Neil Young and After The Gold Rush covers and beyond. Inside the lid is an early ad for a gig starring “Swinging Neil Young and the Squires”.

Slotted in the top of the box is space for the 236-page book, the poster, the 10-disc keeper, and the black box that contains the download card/code, the speaking pad and the Sugar Mountain CD+DVD.

The book:

The 236-page book is a great document: the first 181 pages are images, there are 34 pages of listings of Neil’s catalogued song archive, then 19 pages of credits for the songs, the images in the book, and the box set production. The images portion of the books is without text but full of reproductions of photos, lyrics sheets, newspaper clippings, letters and telexes, souvenirs and other stuff, all with maps of the local region as a background. The catalogue of archived songs is a coffee-stained sheet of all of the songs Neil wrote or recorded (with alternate versions, of course) that indicates which songs went into this project and which didn’t (for example, in addition to the six songs by The Squires that are on this release, there’s seven other songs listed, which were either not recorded or where the tape is lost). At the very end are the full credits of all the songs, full photo credits and explanation of the photos, box production credits, and all sorts of other groovy stuff. I’m glad that they made the decision to not have an essay running throughout, since these things are often just pap (the essays that accompany the otherwise-fantastic Robert Plant and John Lennon solo career retrospective boxes I bought recently are either nothing new or just a bit too sparkly).

Since there’s no essay, the pictures and lyrics sheets tell their own story, the former more than the latter. At the beginning we get a picture of Neil’s maternal grandfather taken in 1910 (notes at the end tell what’s going on in all of the images for interested parties; anyone else can just enjoy the images for what they looks like), then a portrait of his father as a young man in 1937, pictures of Neil’s birth mother, his birth parents’ wedding picture, and then four pages in the first pictures of Neil, four years old wearing a cowboy hat, or fishing in a river, or with his brother Bob. There’s also a clipping from a newspaper about his town in Ontario called Omemee, which is not too far from Peterborough, that shows him holding up a gigantic fish, a muskie, that is as long as he is tall. There’s a school picture that shows a kid with weird eyes and a toothy smile that is distinctly recognisable as the Neil Young we all know and love. There are pics of Neil in school, with his family, on the beach (ha ha), on a dock, fishing, with his dog, with his fellow high school yearbook staffers, or wearing his “Canadian Freeloaders Society” jacket. A picture of his dog by the porch screen door when he is ten years old is particularly compelling for me – my own son is nearly ten himself and the size of the kids is about the same. The first picture of Neil with a guitar is at the time of his junior high school graduation in 1961 when he was 15.

Soon we get music-related pictures, and there’s the first-known picture of Neil’s band The Squires, from December 1962 when Neil had just turned 17. Then there’s the label from their first single, “Aurora”, released in 1963, set lists, early reviews, set lists, cord charts, an audiotape cover, gig announcements that include the Squires along with acts like Judy Scott, Phil Sanchez, Chad Allen, Miss Mickey Allen, and Lenny Breau. There’s a rare photo of Neil with a girlfriend, Pam Smith, a picture of his famous hearse “Mort” from April, 1965 that The Squires toured in, and a great pic of a 20-year-old Neil standing next to a highway marquee that said “Neil Young to nite” in the summer of 1965. There’s a full letter to his mom when he was staying at “Bunny’s mother’s” in Toronto that includes a message in beautiful handwriting from Bunny herself. From page 42 onwards, Neil is in California, and there’s a picture with the Buffalo Springfield from June 1966, with the famous speaking pad and a ticket from the Whisky ‘A-Go-Go. On page 53 there’s a picture of a Buffalo Springfield guitar pick, which the end credits describe as “Buffalo Springfield guitar pick found by Ron Perfit many years ago in Richie Furay’s couch in Colorado.” There are lyrics for an unfinished Buffalo Springfield song “Scarborough High”, other snatches of unpublished lyrics “There’s a Girl I That I Knew”, clippings of a drug bust that nabbed Neil, Paul Furay, James Messina, as well as Eric Clapton, described as “a guitarist for another rock group known as ‘The Creams.’” There’s articles about the Buffalo Springfield’s breakup, then the solo era starts with a picture of his Topanga Canyon house, lyrics sheets for “Birds”, “Last Trip To Tulsa”, and lyrics and chords for a song called “Here We Are In The Years.” The rest of the book is newspaper articles, the odd photo, concert posters or sleeves for singles, and you see Neil’s hair getting real long. Then he’s in a group with Crosby, Stills and Nash with tons of pictures, sometimes with Joni Mitchell, there are concert programmes, and then the Crazy Horse era begins. Nice pictures of Neil playing with Danny Whitten, covers of Time and Life showing the Kent State murders. There is also a column from Neil’s dad Scott Young describing the feeling of seeing his son play Carnegie Hall, along with a concert poster, and an ad showing that season’s Carnegie Hall schedule (Neil Diamond played Carnegie Hall a few weeks before him, Pete Seeger and Judy Collins played separately the weeks after). Then there are also pictures from his new Broken Arrow Ranch, one of them together with Louie Grappi, his forman and the inspiration for the song “Old Man”. There is a series of photos taken in September 1971 when Neil was recording “Harvest” with the Stray Gators, including a particularly cool one of Neil sitting slumped in a wooden chair in a room with sunlight streaming through the windows, with his long scraggly hair and checked flannel shirt where he looks particularly insane, or like a young Kurt Cobain. There’s also a great picture of Neil in a Nashville junkyard on October 2nd 1971 standing next to a mountainous pile of flattened cars (at one point cars are stacked nine high in the cropped picture – don’t know how high up it went).

One complaint about the book – it’s kind of stinky! It has a weird chemical/onion stench to it. I hope it doesn’t give anyone headaches/allergies/cancer. I wonder what it’s coming from?

The music:

Musically, on the DVDs and the MP3 downloads, the story starts with Neil’s first band, the Squires, and two jaunty surf instrumentals that they do, “Aurora” and “The Sultan”. There’s nothing to suggest Neil Young is in this band, but the third song, “I Wonder”, has vocals, and it sounds like an early version of “Don’t Cry No Tears” from Zuma. The first disc warms up with six songs by the Squires, all of which are written by Neil Young (in fact, his first co-writing credit comes in 1966, “Kahuna Sunset”, which he wrote with Stephen Stills, which is a surf instrumental as well). That’s followed by three songs recorded with Comrie Smith (of whom little is known, except that after he played with Neil he also played in the mid-sixties with a Vancouver band called 3′s A Crowd), seven solo songs, and then a bit of the Buffalo Springfield era. The Squires songs sound very old, surf jingles, and the ones with vocals sound pleasant and naive. The Comrie Smith songs are a mixed bag: the first one is a blues rap, the second one is country, and the third one is the jangly guitar rock of the day. The set of songs performed by only Neil Young starts off with the first sign of the Neil we know, demos recorded in New York in December of 1965 of “Sugar Mountain” (when he played it at the Canterbury on November 9th and 10th, 1968 he claimed he’d written the song five years earlier but not played for four-and-a-half years) and “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” (which he recorded with The Buffalo Springfield) with just Neil on guitar and vocal. That’s followed by four previously unreleased songs. “Runaround Babe” sounds like a very typical Neil Young acoustic jangler, as is “The Ballad Of Peggy Grover”, which sounds not too different from “I Wonder”/”Don’t Cry No Tears” (it incorporates parts of each song). “The Rent Is Always Due” is “I Am A Child” with different lyrics, but has a bit of a Bob Dylan/protest song element to the lyrics and vocal presentation. “Extra, Extra” is a simple acoustic song that’s a bit dull. The entire box has about 16 previously unreleased songs that the public is hearing here for the first time.

Following the early years, there’s Buffalo Springfield songs, either in a Neil Young solo version (“Down, Down, Down” is an early version of “Broken Arrow” – the former was recorded in 1966 and the latter released in 1967). Songs from the Buffalo Springfield albums that are not on the archive are included as “hidden songs”, which means digging through the DVDs to find the clues and clicking on them. There’s a fantastic unreleased song called “Sell Out” that is like a Bob Dylan diss, but has the full-on Neil Young in Buffalo Springfield attack. Not all of Neil’s Buffalo Springfield songs are here from the original versions (he had five on the first album, three on the second, two on the third… we could see where that was going), but among the hidden tracks are plenty of Stephen Stills songs. Left off entirely is “It’s So Hard To Wait”, which he co-wrote with Richie Furay. There’s also an instrumental called “Slowly Burning”, recorded during the Buffalo Springfield years, but with other musicians. “One More Time” is a Neil Young solo song, mellow, played just on an acoustic guitar, but was included on a Buffalo Springfield box set.

The treatment of Neil Young’s proper solo career starts off with “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere”, a promotional single released in 1968 around the time of his first solo album that eventually became the title track of his second release. The promo version is recorded without Crazy Horse, who became his band with the second release – it is shorter and a bit thinner. The set contains three versions of the song – the promo single, the album version, and a live release from the Filmore. It also contains three versions of “Birds”, a song from “After The Gold Rush” that I never particularly liked because of all the yucky harmonizing. An early version is done with guitar and some busy drumming (so-so), there’s the slow B-side of a non-LP single of August, 1969, done as a band number, it is shorter than the eventual version from “After The Gold Rush” (it’s getting there); better yet is the solo acoustic version from Live at the Canterbury House, Ann Arbor, Michigan, November 9th and 10th, 1968, which has no annoying elements (harmonizing, busy drumming, etc).

The set contains four live concerts: the Canterbury House show, Live at the Riverboat, Toronto, recorded February 7-9 1969, Live at the Fillmore East in New York March 6-7, 1970 and Live at Massey Hall, Toronto, January 19th 1971. Each of the concerts comes on its own DVD (or in the case of the Canterbury show, on a CD and a DVD). There are a few “straggler” live songs added, such as Neil singing with Crosby, Stills and Nash at Woodstock, a blistering little number called “Sea of Madness”. There’s also a number that Neil learned in church that he claims he doesn’t know who wrote it, a hokey number called “It Might Have Been” that he played with Crazy Horse at the Music Hall in Cincinnati, February 25th, 1970. Then there are two more numbers with Crosby, Stills and Nash – “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”, which would be released on “After The Gold Rush” on August 31st 1970, performed at the Fillmore East in New York City on June 5th, 1970, and “Tell Me Why”, also from “After The Gold Rush”, performed exactly one month later at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago. There’s also Neil playing “See The Sky About To Rain” solo, with voice and piano, at The Cellar Door in Washington, DC, December 1-2, 1970, and “Heart of Gold” recorded solo with vocal, guitar and harmonica at UCLA on January 30th, 1971.

The concerts are all nice, with plenty of between-song banter. When Neil performs solo (Canterbury House, The Riverboat, Massey Hall) he tends to have spaced-out raps that are either self-pitying or just plain funny, while he tends to also groove with repartee with Crosby, Stills and Nash. With Crazy Horse, like the Fillmore East set, there is nearly no between-song banter at all. And less nonsense – the set is blistering, particularly 12 minutes of “Down By The River” and a 16-minute long concert closer “Cowgirl In The Sand” and (although when the band walks offstage you hear the first snatches of a very anticlimactic “Sweet Baby James” coming over the PA).

The DVDs:

There are 10 DVDs in this set, and opening each one of them is like opening up a birthday present. Most of them provide the same features: Play All, Song Selection, More, Set Up.

• Pressing “Play All” lets you “watch” the songs being played. If they are singles, you get to see the single spinning on a turntable; if they are album tracks, you get to see the LP, and if they are unreleased you get to see reel-to-reels. The hi fi equipment is of the era (i.e. looking vintage), and there are plenty of close-ups of the spinning vinyl for the vinyl fetishists. Surrounding the hi-fi equipment are pictures and news clippings that are relevant to the song.
• Pressing “Song Selection” opens up the filing cabinet and you see the songs that are on the disc. If you select one, it gives you the option of seeing Photos (if any are available), Documents (if any are available), Press (if any is available) and Memorabilia (if any is available).  You also see full albums, and if you click on that you get a simple card that describes all of the when, where, why and who. You also get TV spots (video), radio spots (audio), lyrics and some LP summaries.
• Pressing “More” gives you a sub-sub-menu that shows “Neil Young Biography” (giving the context of the disc and its timeframe), “Web Info” (a dead end; probably this is for Blu-Ray buyers), “Timeline” (an amazing interactive map that spans the wedding of Neil Young’s parents in 1945 to October 1973. Shows global events ((JFK assassination, etc) recording industry events (Les Paul’s first guitar), bands, shows, recordings and all sorts of other milestones.
• Pressing “Set Up” just gives you info about how to set up your speakers.

The discs tend to start with a menu that shows the image that is on the cover of the disc. Some discs, such as disc 3 and disc 8 (the latter offers to skip the intro, the former doesn’t), start with a short video montage before the menu appears.

Disc 0 – Early Years (1963-1965): “Aurora” and “The Sultan”, watching a vinyl 45 on a turntable, “I Wonder” seen as a reel-to-reel with pics and handwritten sheets. “Mustang” (also unreleased) reel-to-reel with sound reel mixing, pic, trim out, similar for “I’ll Love You Forever”, telegram from CN “(I’m a man and) I can’t Cry”, reel to real, board and three pics. “Hello Lonely Woman”, Neil and Comrie at Concord, Transitorized Stereophonic 550 reel-to-reel on the floor “Casting Me Away From You”, see reel-to-reel close-up with the words “Casting Me Away/ There Goes My Baby / Yesterday’s tomorrows / High heeled sneakers”. The “Sugar Mountain” clip just shows a weird suitcase reel to reel, no pics or clippings, also same for “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing.” To end. “The Rent is Always Due” sounds like “I Am A Child.”

Song selection – song by song, most have photos, documents, press, memorabilia, lyrics, song, it’s endless! Cover from a pic taken May 21^st 1965, live at the Westgate High School in Fort William, Ontario (now Thunder Bay, Ontario). Inane photos like the Comrie Smith family car, or Square photos attached of ACS song. Nothing for NYC session of “Sugar Mountain”.

Disc 1 – Early Years (1966-1968): “Flying on the Ground is Wrong” cassette tape. “Burned” a ’45 on a mini turntable. “Out of my Mind” shows LP on turntables, then focuses on Buffalo 25cent piece on needle head. “Down Down Down” unreleased, like “Broken Arrow.” Reel to reel set. “Kahua Sunset”, surf instrumental like the Squires, reel to real, unreleased “Mr Soul” single on turntable with super acetate as source.

Found excerpt from a radio interview. “Flying on the Ground is Wrong” came from Roy Orbison’s “Blue Boys”. 11/12/1969, Neil Young’s birthday, articles, William Morris Agency letter of signing. Radio clip on the similarity between “Mr Soul” and “Satisfaction.” “Mr Soul” on TV clip, Stephen Stills with cowboy hat, Hollywood Palace 4/8/67. Merry Clayton sings on “Expecting to Fly.” Two radio excerpts. Poster for “BS Again”. At your groovy record store now. “Slowly Burning” (it’s a slow instrumental, although the notes tell that some lyrics exist). “One More Sigh” is a beautiful ballad. The “This Is It” montage of three songs from the last concert, picture with weird floating green sound cloud that contorts with the sound levels. “The Buffalo Springfield will not perform unless you go back to your seats,” is repeated over and over. Country song becomes Ravel’s “Bolero”. First solo LP “Neil Young” really had cover as was used on “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.” “Birds rap.” “Wore himself out on overdubbing on the first album.” “Far out, man.” Sample of radio spots for first album. Merry Clayton on “The Old Laughing Lady.””I’m not tryin’ to go on another trip, y’know what I mean?” Groovy. Far out. It”s pretty hip. “Bush Baby” rap.

Disc 2 – Topanga 1 (1968-1969): Reel to reel, “I’ve Been Waiting For You” puts the reel to reel over his eyes from the first album. Candle light in front of reel to reel for “Sugar Mountain.” “Down By The River” close-up on needle, following “the river” of grooves. Different angles of vinyl fetishism. Beach turntable is literally “in the sand”, tea mugs to be seen.

Here are some shots I took of the DVD presentation of audio tracks:

Disc 3 – Live at the Riverboat 1969: Shows a short clip of the outside of the Riverboat, where the entrance shows David Wilcox’s name on marquee. Video clip included shows yearning for days of Riverboat show when he’d get raves over totally new songs. BB King, Janis Joplin and the Mothers of Invention played Toronto that February. Toronto Star February 5^th, 1965, Jack Batten. Other reviews from the Peterborough Examiner, The Ottawa Citizen, the Toronto Daily Star, the Toronto Globe and Mail. Nine raps – mentions Sam The Record Man, A and A, CHUM FM. “It was out of sight.” Met up with The Rockets at the Bitter End in New York City right after that. Robin Lane sings beautiful duet vocals with Neil on “Round and Round”. Photo shows original artwork for the “Oh Lonesome Me” LP. “Crosby, Stills, Nash and Berkowitz” rap.

Disc 4 – Topanga 2 (1969-1970): first video – “Sea of Madness”, 9/14/69 Big Sur Folk festival, Neil Young singing at keyboard, band played next to pool, naked hippy men dancing about. “Mr Soul” acoustic with CSNY, “Down By The River” on TV.

Disc 5 – Neil Young & Crazy Horse Live at the Fillmore East 1970: intro shows a street scene as it would have been in front of the Fillmore East on a rainy night before a show. Review mentions “Cinnamon Girl”, but it’s not available on this release. DVD runs through photos of the band from the show. Next best thing to having it on video.

Disc 6 – Topanga 3 (1970): Radio interviewer asks Neil his reaction to being named on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.” “Ohio” front and back cover, black and white song lyrics on black, bill of rights stuff (press and speech freedom) on white. Video of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young acoustic singing “Ohio”, became great clap-along ten months later (March 1971). “‘Till the Morning Comes” shows After The Gold Rush 8-track in deck.

Disc 7 – Live at Massey Hall 1971: nothing to see – this is a CD.

Disc 8 – North Country (1971-1972): Starts off wit a video of Neil driving around Broken Arrow ranch in a car, looks like that’s Graham Nash in the car with him. “Bad Fog of Loneliness” has James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt sharing vocals with Neil Young. Onstage raps show mic and shimmering green line. Radio raps show radio and shimmering green line. Three pics with Louie Avita (the “old man”) for “Old Man.” Ironic: 1971 single of “Old Man” shows Neil Young looking like the bearded old man he really is now (Italy single only). “Even When I’m happy it sounds like I’m not.” Eleven-minute video of Neil Young and the London Symphony Orchestra doing “A Man Needs a Maid” stuff. Jack Nietsche in his shades. Neil strums “Harvest.” At the end he looks up, realizes it’s done and gives a big smile of relief. Jammin’ in the barn to “Are you Ready For The Country” with Jack Nitzche on slide guitar. Neil Young in 1971 lookin’ like Kurt Cobain, in his flannel shirt. “Alabama” barn video with false starts, without Crosby and Stills backing vocals. Twelve-minute “Words” interview, Neil Young reclined on field drinking Coors and listening to the echo. Spinning golden LP for the “Heart of Gold” segment. “A Man Needs A Maid” shows reel to reel, with 1971-era black and white TV with images from the 12-minute video. A clip of Neil in a record shop finding bootlegs of his show, and confiscating them. Journey Through The Past

Disc 9 – Journey Through The Past A Film By Neil Young: Extra materials show movie listing at #44 in the Variety box office listings of May 15^th, 1974 with $20,000 earned in its first weak of release; other movies on the same list are The Sting, Blazing Saddles, The Great Gatsby, The Exorcist, The Last Detail, Papillon, Sleeper, The Conversation, Foxy Brown, Serpico, American Graffiti, The Lords of Flatbush, Deep Throat, The Way We Were, It’s Alive, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and The Poseidon Adventure! Lots of bio stuff. Starts with sombre music at the opening. Scenes include: driveway / elevator / intros / goofy kid acting like a manager / backstage halls / DJ booth / two Buffalo Springfield songs, “For What It’s Worth” and “Mr Soul” / man sitting on hood of rolling car / Neil Young rolling a joint and smoking it with Graham Nash and Carrie Snodgress / backstage poster pile / CSGN / Fillmore East “Ohio” / Cadillac in desert drops injured bearded graduate / CSNY “Southern Man” / Graduate on Vegas strip / old-timer with a flannel-shirted Neil and Carrie smoking a joint in the forest, eating fruit / Stray Gators jam in barn “Ready For The Country” / Graduate on driveway / lizards walking / card tricks / mouthy kid gambling / graduate at gas bar drinking Coors / Neil Young’s old-timer / Crosby with joint babbling / cow on sunset hill, listening to “Alabama” being played by Stray Gators in the barn / driving through town slowly / “The footprint of the American Chicken” sticker on door / Nixon sings “God Bless America” / Crosby mutters, “and they’re full of shit!” loudly / barge falling down slide into water / climbing car mountain (with Coors in hand) / Stills and Nash walk in field / talking with intense city folk / truck on beach / man walks on beach with car / clansmen rie on beach, through surf / truck drives around post / klansmen attack post / syringe inside Bible / sings “Soldier” / limo arrives / freeze mid-step. Neil Young was editor, executive producers were Ahmet Ertegun, David Gefen and Elliot Roberts. Film was intended to have same vibes as a Neil Young album, he edited it the way he would have edited an LP release.

The timelines of the DVDs tend to hide some interesting material, particularly videos. This is what they include:

Disc 0 - no videos or audio clips

Disc 1 - “Do I have To Come Right Out And Say It?” 3:04 – audio – single

- “For What It’s Worth” – 2:42 – audio – single

- “This Is It” last concert excerpt – 14:29

Disc 2 – No video or audio extras

Disc 3 - No video or audio extras

Disc 4 - Neil Young and Stephen Stills sing “Mr Soul” at Woodstock, August 18^th, 1969 – 5:04 – video

- CSNY, “Down By The River”, TV spot, 4:53 – video

- interview segment – 4:05 – Danny Whitten – Rusty old tractor vs well-oiled machine

Disc 5 - backstage bios of Crazy Horse and members, with two secret videos

Disc 6 - “The Loner” and “Cinnamon Girl” at the Cafe Freejon and the Filmore East, June 1970 acoustic solo, talking to hippies in Washington Square Park, tuning and teaching one guy to play “Cinnamon Girl”

- CSNY “On The Way Home” at Filmore East, June 2^nd, 1970 – 13:24

Disc 7 - CD

Disc 8 - Confronting bootleggers – 14:42

- On writing “The Needle and the Damage Done”

- “There’s A World” 3:48 – February 28^th, 1971

- “Gator Stomp” – 1:37, jeep on driveway, Jack Nitzche on slide guitar, drinkin’ Michelobs

Disc 9 - No extras

Extra DVD - No extras

Regarding easter eggs, someone’s compiled a directory of them here, but I haven’t had the time to investigate this yet. Someone else has provided the following advice:

When you get to the main menu page, toggle your remote around. Push the button to the up,down, east and west postions. This will cause something other then the usual, “song selection”, “more” etc to light up. When that does click that and it will bring up a hidden song or easter egg. On the timeline, click the gray or white pins and you will get information or a video.

Auntie Amazon delivered a generous early Christmas present, and so did Uncle Henry at 2.13.61. Help me, I’m drowning in new music/box sets!!

Robert Plant, “Raising Sand” – There’s something really stunning about Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on “Raising Sand,” another album of covers but the first true duets Plant has recorded since “The Battle of Evermore” with Sandy Denny. There’s a supreme focus on those two amazing voices, one of the unlikeliest pairings to produce the most magical surprises since Isobel Campbell hooked up with Mark Lanegan on “Ballad of the Broken Seas.” It’s supremely satisfying that this album slayed at the 2009 Grammy Awards, beating out Coldplay and Radiohead and several other not-as-good-as-Robert-Plant bands to win a bunch of awards. Funny – they won or “Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals” and “Best Country Collaboration with Vocals”. Only one song is not a cover, that’s “Please Read The Letter”, a song Plant wrote with Jimmy Page for their “Walking Into Clarkdale” release of 1998.

The album starts off with both voices singing the sombre “Rich Woman,” then there’s the stunning and majestic “Killing The Blues,” with its superb slide guitar and a very laid back country feel. That’s followed with “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us”, which is another first on a Robert Plant album – a song sung by someone else! (Plant shows up only for a few backing vocals. Things get reversed in the next song, “Polly Come Home”, which slows things down to near Low-levels (and, yes, Plant does cover two Low songs on his next album… sounds like he’d already been taking Low lessons). “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)” is an Everly Brothers song that sounds a bit out of place here (can Alison Krauss rock? Robert Plant sure can…). “Through The Morning, Through The Night” is a pure country song, mainly sung by Krauss, but Plant comes in regularly. “Please Read The Letter” is a nice enough song, but it is also just a bit mushy. There’s nothing traditional or classic about this song, although both vocalists do a great job giving it life. “Trampled Rose” is a Tom Waits song from the 2004 “Real Gone” CD, and it sounds like it, with its spooky bone-rattling rhythms, but then Alison Krauss’ sweet voice comes in. Plant gives the whole song to her, and he doesn’t sing on it at all. “Fortune Teller” is an upbeat and silly song that sounds a bit out of place on the album, Plant handles it by himself, although there are some Krauss backing vocals. A lot of bands have covered this song, including The Who, The Stones, The Hollies, etc. “Stick With Me Baby” is a beautiful country style song sung between Plant and Krauss. Stunning. “Nothin’” is a very heavy song, with grungy guitars zazzling it up, making it very different from the sombre Townes van Zandt original. Plant sings this one without Krauss in a mumbling high tone. Great spooky fiddle comes in, making this sound a bit like a Dirty Three song. Grrr!! “Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson” starts off like a Jimi Hendrix song, then it melds into a sassy Alison Krauss country number. Yee haw! “Your Long Journey” is a beautiful duet that closes the release.

Incidentally, I gathered the originals of these songs. They can be found here.

Robert Plant, “Band of Joy” – A difficult follow-up to the Grammy award-winning “Raising Sand” (and Plant and Krauss apparently did try to make “Raising Sand II”), this time around we see Plant releasing yet another covers album – he only has writing credits on one song, besides a few where he credits himself for “arrangement.” The album is somewhat uninspiring, although the two Low covers (“Silver Rider” and “Monkey”) are brilliant (and you wonder what they would have sounded with Krauss, although Patty Griffin does a great job.

“Angel Dance” is a fun rocker, while the Richard Thompson cover “House of Cards” slows things down somewhat, with sassy backing vocals. “Central Two-O-Nine” is a rustic ole banjo-pickin’ bluegrasser, with old man baritone keeping it warm on the porch of the ole shack on the hilltop. Yup. “Silver Rider” is the longest song on the album, and in many ways a standout. There is a loud, grungy riffage, and the song is a stunning duet that needs to be blasted. Plant was born to sing this song, one of his top 10 solo works. It’s slow and trudging, slower and more trudging perhaps than even the original song by Low, from “The Great Destroyer” release, as Plant’s is over one minute longer; the Low version also has louder vocal harmonies (which Plant replaces with crunchy guitars – nice). “You Can’t Buy My Love” is a spirited old rocker, and “Falling In Love Again” is a gloomy crooner. “The Only Sound That Matters” is a beautiful ballad with slide guitar, it sounds great and groovy. “Monkey” is a beautiful version of the Low song, with great swooning guitars. Low’s version goes for bombast, getting away from the mellower than death sound, while Plant’s version keeps it sombre.

Plant follows up the haunting “Monkey” with the hokey “Cindy, I’ll Marry You Someday”, a song that Nick Cave has also covered. Plant does it bluegrass, and it builds up slowly in intensity. Then there’s another Townes Van Zandt, his second in two albums, “Harm’s Swift Way”. This is reportedly the last song ol’ Townes ever wrote, and Plant gives it a jazzy rendition, a bit different than Townes probably would have done it. “Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down” is a traditional, done in a very spooky and swampy ole way, it is another of the album’s standout tracks. Groovy. Last song on the album is “Even This Shall Pass Away”, a spare tune that just has Plant’s voice with some percussion, and then, later, some weird bass groanings. Pretty fun and funky electronic moaning closer.

This page originally contained a review of the Rolling Stones’ Get Yer Ya-Yas Out box set. That review can now be read at My big bad Rolling Stones page.

20 Years of Dischord, 3CD set of songs from 1980 to 2000, both previously released and unreleased, with downloadable songs from 2001-2006, as well as six videos – This wonderful box set comes with a 134-page booklet full of information and photos (one page of text on a band, with a facing page of a photo/photo collage of the band, for 48 bands; at the end, pictures of the 132 releases of the first 20 years, a list of split-label releases, then staff photos), a compilation from the official releases, a compilation of unreleased tracks and other rarities, along with six video clips. The front cover shows Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson sitting in the Dischord office in 1980 then again in 2000 – it’s kind of like the Beatles in the 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 compilation albums; Jeff has lost more hair than Ian has, that’s for sure. There is also a code to download a batch of songs from the next 10 years of Dischord history (2001 to 2006, or so).

In the intro, Ian and Jef’s talk about the set itself and its difficulties in finding the material (i.e. tracking down devices that could play some of the obscure formats that the original tapes had been recorded onto, etc), while Henry Rollins’ intro sets the scene, from the late ’70s (Bad Brains, the Enzymes, the Extorts). DIY releases were unthinkable at the time, but then there was Skip Groff’s early support of young bands, along with Don Zientara’s Inner Ear studio (where the early Bad Brains shows had been recorded). First two bands, the Teen Idles, and the Untouchables, represent brothers Ian and Alex MacKaye respectively, and the bands playing on the first Dischord show (discs 01 and 07 respectively). The story of State of Alert – Henry taking the remains of the Extorts to form a band. Minor Threat and SOA debuted at the same gig with the Untouchables, Black Market Baby and Bad Brains (!!!!). Minor Threat – Lyle was new to guitar (formerly a vocalist with the Extorts), Ian was new to vocals (formerly a bassist from the Teen Idles). A five-pice from fall ’82-June ’83. Reunited, perhaps because they were so successful. Void first non-DC band. Youth brigade had a very different, near-industrial sound, bass-driven. Government Issue very funny, rock and roll bullshit, first Dischord band to release on a different label. Scream from Virginia, more advanced musically. Iron Cross primitive, early oi! band, few songs. Red C standard punk, first female member for a Dischord band. They only appear otherwise only on the Flex Your Head compilation. Brendon Canty debuts in Deadline. Skewbald/Grand Union sounds like Minor Threat, but not as good. Gray Matter jangly electro pop before it speeds up to punk. Rites of Spring “Drink Deep”: bass-led, Guy Piciotto vocal intense, liked slowed-down Suicidal Tendencies. Beefeater has a thin guitar sound, mixes funk and ska, Tomas from Switzerland (and in Red C), metal poser drummer, mixes in metal sounds, they also did “No More Apartheid.” The Snakes’ goofy “Snake Rap, released on “Discard Records,” Jeff had Adult Swim Records. Dag Nasty, Brian from Minor Threat (he was in a Samhain precursor). Embrace very dogmatic “Money”. Ian and Faith. Soulside, formerly Lünchmeat. “Egg Hunt” is Ian and Jeff trying it again, sounds like Fugazi, last time together on a recording. One Last Wish is Guy and Brendan, shoegazer-ish, 3 Rites of spring guys and 1 Embrace guy, gut-dominated, they only did six shows in four months before breaking up. Fire Party a girl band with Amy Pickering, first Dischord girl band, haunting like Siouxsie Sioux. Ignition like a weak Minor Threat. Three plays a great tune with snotty vocals, initially had Ian and Jeff, then Jeff left, but it has the Gray Matter guys. Shudder To Think plays with soft vocals. Happy Go-Licky does an instrumental, crazy stuff, like Sonic Youth, very minimal. Fugazi. Lungfish, which is Jane’s Addiction-like, ex-DC, Baltimore, 22 years old, rare concerts, repetition of playing the same song over and over again, Fidelity Jones has organ and funk. Nation of Ulysses has Brendan Canty’s brother Nathan on drums, playing fast, aggressive punk, but not tough or full loud. Holy Rollers – scratchy and groovy, groovy funk, lotsa changes. Jawbox groovy, bass-driven, grinding. Good ‘n’ melodic ‘n’ aggressive. Severin – melodic bagpipe and singalong sound. The High Back Chairs – Lush-like rocker, crunchy, bassy, REM vocals, good mix, Jeff Nelson’s last performance. Autoclave – sweet girl stuff. Was a DisKord (Dischord plus K! Records) release. Circus Lupus – roaring punk, Joan Jett produced (first time since The Germs). Branch Manager – funky Minutemen-like tight and roaring. Slant 6 – girly funky catchy. Hoover – dressed like The Band. Groaning and like Fugazi, but with horns. Funky, cool. Trust – crunchy, poppy, Little Rock AR band, la la la la las, poppy, catchy. Smart Went Crazy – weird Pavement-like, very un-hardcore, angular, cello! Ian versus Jeff again on releasing this, Jeff likes weird bands. Good groove on solo. Proggy Faith No More-ish. The Crownhate Ruin – Tool-like metallic complex structures, two Hoovers and one… The Warmers – Alex MacKaye five years after Ignition (1994), sparse and groovy intense. The Make-up – Cramps-like, Kingmen copy with Michelle from Olympia. “Gospel yeh-yeh.” Bluetip – sparse, angular, big chorus. Farquot – funky, goovy, stop-start, angular, roaring, plopping. Q And Not U – energetic alternative music, angular guitars and weird, crazy drumming. 20th anniversary Dischord Records dogmatic crisis, arrogant last line. Nice flipping through the gallery of album covers.

That was all what was on the first two disc, which are samples of 20 years of Dischord releases, with an accompanying booklet. Then there’s the third CD, which contains all the rare and unreleased stuff, which is what you’d be after if you’d been following the label for years. The songs are mainly very very good. The first track is The Teen Idles’ “Get Up and Go”, a much longer version than the one that kicks off the first CD, which was on the official release. “Deadhead” is a snooty anti-hippy song with a lot of energy (“I’ll be grateful when you’re dead”), that has a weird acoustic bit in the middle before it kicks off into the stratosphere. The Untouchables’ “Stepping Stone” is that band’s version of a song that everybody in DC covered in the day, this one sounds like it’s driven by the bass guitar. The State of Alert song “Draw Blank” is from an early session of the band, one that was abandoned for a stronger later session that the band funded themselves. These guys were in a hurry, the song is only 39 seconds long. They still manage to squeeze in a guitar solo. Nice. There are two Minor Threat songs, a live verson of “Straight Edge” from December 13th 1980, the first song that they ever played live, and “Understand”, the only unreleased Minor Threat song that came with lyrics. It’s rough, and the guitar sound is uncharacteristically weak, but it’s got all the catapulting energy you’d expect of a Minor Threat song. Government Issue’s “Snubbing” is a savage punk anthem with sharp guitars and sloppy vocals. “Asshole” is one of three versions of the song that the band recorded, but the one on this CD has Ian Mackaye singing. Great guitar, fantastic vocals. It sounds like a new Minor Threat song. That’s followed with another Minor Threat song, “Asshole Dub”, being a reggae version of Government Issue’s “Asshole”, it’s good fun. I mean, it’s really really good fun. You’ll love this song to pieces. The Rozzlyn Rangers song/anthem is a silly piece of work that has a sort of weird honky tonk feel to it. Void follows with “Black, Jewish and Poor”, a savage song just over one minute long, and “Authority”, two takes in nearly the same time! These guys really were in a hurry!! These songs are amazing, constant tromelling and screaming. The first version is 0:26, the second one is 0:48. Madness. Scream’s “Search For Employment” is pure energy. I can’t believe these guys played this well and stayed in tune. Beautiful. Deadline’s “No Revolution” is not that great, and Faith’s “No Choice” is snooty and sloppy, it’s good fun. Marginal Man’s “Manipulator” is sweet and moody, it builds nicely with great sounds and feeling, nearly Middle Eastern in some ways, before it builds into a real punk song; the lead-out is sweet and sexy and a bit proggy even, just a great song. You can’t listen to the song just once. Dag Nasty’s “All Ages Show” is sort of nearly like a Naked Raygun catchy tune, it’s great. There are two Fugazi tracks: “The Word”, an outtake from the Margin Walker EP, it was one of the first Fugazi songs, but it never went anywhere. Too bad, it’s a great song and sounds just like those early Fugazi songs that you remember that made you want to burst out of your dorm room and catapult through the sky. Real beauty, it’s just full of complex parts and full production. How could this song not been considered good enough to put on an official release? Astounding. It’s the only song on this CD that is over four minutes long. “Burning” is a live track and naturally it has to be sheer fun! Shudder To Think’s “Drop Dead, Don’t Blink” is a great hunk of burning pop punk, very catchy. Circus Lupus does “We Are The One”, an Avengers cover that was intended for a tribute album, it’s a good scratchy cover that is a bit cleaner than the original but with a bit less energy. Slant Six’s “Are You Human” is sweet and beautiful Grrl roque, very fun and sexy and funny, in a strange way. Rock ‘n’ roll! The final track is an “interview” of DC punks, with Ian’s voice standing out the whole way through, he talks about all the new and young bands… of course, now they’re old and old. Weird and stupid, but funny in retrospect, especially to hear the passion. “Gene Simmons, 24.” I listen to this and I just want to order about half the Dischord catalogue. Or all of it! “Hi, Ian… one of each, please!”

But wait, there’s more – the disc actually contains six live clips, and boy are they great! The Teen Idles were recorded on October 31st 1980 playing “Deadhead”, there’s a young Ian Mackaye on bass. Of course, it’s pure anarchy, more kids on the “stage” than in the audience, the clip is in primitive technicolor (1:48). S.O.A. plays “Draw Blank” at dc space on December 18th 1980, even at that young age Henry’s already got his trademark Rollins squat and pose. Half of the audience are wearing bit S.O.A. t-shirts as they pogo all the way to hell. The shot is grainy, smoggy ‘n’ black ‘n’ white, but hey – it’s history (0:42)! The Untouchables play “If The Kids Are United”, a Sham 69 cover, at the same gig, and a very young Alec Mackaye, brother of Ian, freaks right out (3:09). The Faith played “You’re X’d” on June 25th 1982, lots of intense yelling and screaming, the audience doesn’t seem to know what to make of them (1:15). At the same show, Deadline played “Outside The Law”, three guys in white shirts (yay). The song builds up slowly, but then tries to get pretty intense (Void plays “Who Are You” on July 1st 1983, is insanity, lead singer John Weiffenbach comes out in his green shorts, does three jumps where he touches his toes mid-air, and then the song kicks off. The show is utter chaos, with the kids in the audience jumping all over each other, and them singing the lyrics as often as John does. At the end, the guitarist does a little Jimmy Page-like thing, very un-punk… but that’s okay, they later became a metal band anyway (2:19). Most of these songs and more are available on YouTube, by the way…

But wait, there’s even more – since it’s Dischord, the value never ends, and you get a code to download the next ten years of Dischord stuff (they should call this “30 Years of Dischord”). It’s with these songs that you really hear how much the label has changed. El Guapo contains nary a guitar, it sounds like silly synth-pop, but it’s clean, it’s pure, and it’s good. “The Licensee” by the Channels sounds like Helmet at first, but you get thrown off later by the female backing vocals (Helmet meets the B-52s?). Black Eyes’ “Speaking In Tongues” is sheer madness, great insane vocals with funky drumming, really insane in an Insane Clown Posse sort of way, but very indie. The Aquarium’s “White House” has a sort of hockey arena anthem-feel to it, and is very keyboard/bass/vocal-driven. Unique. French Toast’s “Off Center” is a freaky bass-driven song with fun female vocals that grows in its craziness. “Reflector”, by Antelope, is another guitar-less bass and vocal-driven song, what’s up with this? The song is okay, but nothing very exciting. “Sissy Spacek” by Edie Sedgwick is a great song about Carrie and who-knows-what-else; again, it’s electronic beats, bass and vocal, but its wild and beautiful. “And that pig’s blood came down in a red flood.” I love it. The CD also offers “Me And You”, the other Egg Hung song (they only recorded two songs, and the other one is on another CD in this set). The song is atmospheric, super-produced, but with loving guitars and great beats an echoes. Supreme! “Around The Corner” by The Evens is a beautiful bass and drum and vocal-driven song, mostly sung by Amy Farina but with baritone guitarist Ian Mackaye providing backing vocals. Funky and smooth, a really fun number. “Solid Ring FIghers” by Soccer Team is a sweet and funky pop song with really great drumming and a strong woovering bass sound. Woooooo!!!!! Henry Rollins raves about The Soccer Team and The Evens in Fanatic 2. “It’s Good To Have Met You” by The Pupils is pretty dull and slow (one voice, one guitar and something that sounds like a rail crossing bleating on and on… interesting. The lyrics are sad, I wonder what the story behind them is). “Prison Song (A Love Song Called Will You Come Visit Me In Prison)” by Beauty Pill is a very nice, very beautiful love song that’s sweetly funny, nice acoustic guitar, pretty female vocal, very un-Dischord. By now, Dischord is totally un-Dischord, and it has been for a very long time. And why not? “Via Nomentana (version)” by Fugazi bassisst Joe Lally is a really fantastic, melodic, lyrical song, intense in its own way, with nice bass parts (of course). This song has a weird Velvet Underground feel to parts of it, I wonder how he did that. “The Perfect Target” by Medications is a sorta boring rocker that manages to get a bit angular and Naked Raygun-ish at times too. “Not Me Now” by the Capital City Dusters is a sweet little song that is full of pop energy and sneering SHeavy-like vocals. Love it!

Neil Young, “Le Noise” – Neil Young’s latest album is a collaboration with Daniel Lanois, and it arrives in a simple gatefold paper CD casing that contains a disc in one of its sleeves and a simple lyrics sheet, printed front and back and folded into quarters. The whole thing is in black and white, silver and brown, with the only splash of primary colour a tiny little Canadian flag on the CD itself. It’s a true solo album, with Neil the only one who gets credits (Guitar and vocal: Neil Young), although apparently Daniel Lanois added some noise and keyboard flourishes; there is not a single drum sound on the whole disc. Opening track “Walk With Me” opens with feedback-drenched guitar and the echoey vocals of Neil shouting “I feel your love, I feel your strong love”. “Sign of Love” is a droner, and “Someone’s Going to Rescue You” chills it out a bit, with Neil singing in his famous falsetto, letting it warble and break at times. It’s pretty raw and sounds like it was recorded in an afternoon, even if it probably wasn’t. Wait, did I just hear a bit of background vocals? Neil accompanying himself? “Love and War” is a beautiful, very mellow song with heartbreaking lyrics. “Seen a lot of young men go to war and leave a lot of young brides waiting/I’ve watched them try to explain it to their kids and seen a lot of them failing/They tried to tell them and they tried to explain why daddy won’t ever come home again.” It confesses about his feelings about approaching these tough themes, trying to sing about what is right. The best song on the CD is probably the sarcastic “It’s an Angry World”. “It’s an Angry World, and everything is going to be all right, yeah, it’s an angry world.” Great riff, cool noise. “The Hitchhiker” is storytelling, where Neil tells his life story, mainly his history of drug use (grass, hash, amphetamines, valium and cocaine), ending with the words “I don’t know how I’m standing here, living in my life/ I’m thankful for my children, and my faithful wife.” “Peaceful Valley Boulevard” is an odd little acoustic number about the killing of the buffalo that is somewhat reminiscent of Pocahontas. Disc closer “Rumblin’” is just that.

The 8-song CD runs nearly 38 minutes.

KMFDM, “Greatest Shit” -I don’t remember the last time I bought a CD based on the album cover alone, but you have to admit… this is a pretty cool album cover. It’s been several years since I’ve given KMFDM any attention, and it’s been too long – they’re an amazing band. Nearly every song on this compilation is raucous, and there several surprises and standouts (WWIII, DIY, Tohuvabohu, Hau Ruck, Dogma, Free YouR Hate, Terror, Adios, Trust, Attack/Reload, Sturm & Drang, Never Say Never), and some old favorites (Megalomaniac, Virus, Light, Godlike – especially Godlike – and A Drug Against War). Great, great, great stuff. Some of the songs lay it on a bit thick with the backing vocals, and not every singer can live up to the En Esch vocals (although Nicole Blackman does a good job on Dogma).

Besides the cover, there are really no other extras, and the booklet doesn’t contain too much – it has a two-page essay that is pretty flattering of the band, i.e. it reads like PR:

After more than 25 years, KMFDM remains a musical entity to be reckoned with. Through relentless musical exploration and reinvention, they have continued to top themselves. Sascha and his band of misfits have stood the test of time. As can plainly be seen, the self-proclaimed fathers of industrial rock show no signs of stopping.

Barf. But the song credits that contain some pretty funny little surprises if you read them all, and album cover art. The sense of humor is intact, they call the first CD of their greatest hits package “Würst”, which means “sausage”, but it sounds like “worst”. Get it – greatest hits, the best, and the worst? Even “Greatest Shit” is a play on “Greatest Hits.” Of course, it’s all good… but none of it beats that great cover.

David Bowie “Station to Station” 3CD set – I am a sucker for box sets. I didn’t need to get this so badly, since I am quite familiar with ever second song on this CD (“Golden Years”, “TVC 15″ and “Wild Is The Wind” would be on any Bowie compilation or greatest hits release; “Station To Station”, “Word On A Wing” and “Stay” are new songs to me). But the two-CD concert that is on this is stunning, and Bowie’s touring band is amazing! For the studio release, there are seven musicians (including three guitarists – Bowie himself is credited with “vocals, guitars, tenor and alto saxophone, Moog and mellotron”), whereas live he only sang, working instead with two guiarists, Carlos Alomar, who had been in the studio band, and new guitarist Stacey Heydon. They also toured without a piano player. The tour was called the Isolar Tour, but it was quickly referred to as the Station To Station Tour, or the White Light Tour. The booklet for the box is okay – a short opening essay by Cameron Crowe tries to paint a picture, but eventually confesses “The details of the recording remain enigmatic to this day. The artist himself has little to say about it. When pressed in a 2006 interview, he remembered few details from the sessions.” Great. What we do know is that this is a period in his life when he was using a lot of drugs, was getting paranoid, encountering “spiritual frenzy”, producing demos for Iggy Pop, filming “The Man Who Fell To Earth” for Nicholas Roeg, and preparing for a 64-date tour of Canada, the US, Central Europe and the UK that took him to 49 cities in four months. Wow.

While the booklet may be a bit skimpy on details of this difficult and creative period for Bowie, the outside source-referenced Wikipedia entry on the Station to Station does provide more details:

According to biographer David Buckley, the Los Angeles-based Bowie, fuelled by an “astronomic” cocaine habit and subsisting on a diet of peppers and milk, spent much of 1975-76 “in a state of psychic terror”.[3] Stories – mostly from one interview, pieces of which found their way into Playboy and Rolling Stone – circulated of the singer living in a house full of ancient-Egyptian artefacts, burning black candles, seeing bodies fall past his window, having his semen stolen by witches, receiving secret messages from The Rolling Stones, and living in morbid fear of fellow Aleister Crowley aficionado Jimmy Page.[1] Bowie would later say of L.A., “The fucking place should be wiped off the face of the earth”.

The CD set also includes some nice pictures in the booklet, and there’s a timeline of events from May 1975 to May 1976. It’s all Bowie all the time – the only picture of the back is an audience view from the drum riser that shows everyone’s backs (it’s a great shot, though, and is also used across the 2CD inner gatefold. No lyrics, but some nice big colour photos of Bowie on cards.

The opening track of the studio album, with its long 3:20 buildup (the whole song is 10:15) is mesmerizing, as are the opening lyrics “The return of the Thin White Duke…”, it foes on and on and is a lot of fun with its funky grooves, its piano, its touches of electronica, and a superb Bowie vibe. “Golden Years” is the good retro fun that we all know and love. “Word on a Wing” is glorious Bowie operatic vocalosity, while “TVC 15″ rocks and rolls, with its goofy six opening “oh-oh-oh-oh-oh”. Probably the funkiest song on the release is “Stay”, with its groovy percussion and its two minute-long closing guitar jam-out (and its lack of saxophone – thank you, David, for showing restraint here). “Wild Is The Wind”, the emotional Nina Simone cover that closes the studio release, needs no introduction.

The concert, like the album it supports, opens with “Station To Station”, the band wringing it out here to nearly 12 minutes long. It openings to blistering feedback guitar, before phasing into the long opener we’re familiar with, stretched now to 4:30. The song is a funk fest, with the last three minutes a nice jam-out. It’s the longest song in the concert. “Suffragette City”, “Fame”, the “Life on Mars” and “Five Years” medley, “Panic in Detroit”, a boring version of “Changes” with Bowie cutting up in the intro, Diamond Dogs”, a not-so-great “Rebel Rebel” and “The Jean Genie” are pretty conventional versions. “Panic in Detroit” (with its not-so-great drum solo, but a nice guitar solo and a bit of a bass solo) makes it the better version of the older songs, the end of which Bowie introduces the band, adding “a Canadian, but a guitarist nonetheless, Stacey Heydon”. Ha ha ha… “Stay”, with its wicked guitar funk is stupendous, and the long outro is a vision to behold. It’s also the closest David Bowie will get to writing a new theme song for Shaft. The Velvet Underground’s “Waiting For The Man” is a bit odd in a funkified version, but it’s good fun nonetheless, with a bit of lyrical improv to spice it up a bit. “TVC15″ is interesting with its party atmosphere in the intro, but that and the rest of the songs on the discs, “Diamond Dogs”, “Rebel Rebel” and “The Jean Genie” are all pretty straight forward.

Mastodon, “Crack the Skye” CD + DVD – “Oblivion” starts off like a Metallica song, then bursts out into Mastodon, not really going anywhere interesting. It’s a catchy song, though, and the guitar solo is very ice. “Divinations” starts off with some “country yokel” ukelele, but then gets moving quickly into the standard “100 riffs” formula that Mastodon has, going quickly into scary lyrics turf, but the song is not murderous. It is also the shortest on the CD, and has a zinging guitar solo. “Quintessence” has the killer opening riff that you’d expect from Mastodon, and it moves in, but doesn’t get fun. It is a boring pop song. “The Czar: I. Usurper II. Escape III. Martyr IV. Spiral” is a dirge of sorts, and it boils in the midst of kooky Russian imagery for what seems like a long time, but then it gets insanely good as the movement of the song shifts higher and higher. Great sound, great production, great riffs!!! The song grinds on and on, always pushing a hard course. “Ghosts of Karelia” opens with a great riff and thunderous drumming, and it just keeps up throughout. “Crack The Sky”, the title track, blasts open with those arpeggio riffs, grooving along, then going into a regular rock song (nothing too ferocious here, right?). Hearing space vocals – is this Mastodon or Daft Punk? Interesting, though! “The Last Baron” is a very long song of 13 glorious minutes, good stuff. But isn’t this band suddenly a bit too melodic, and a bit too un-scary? But the song is great in its insanity, which manifests itself deep into the last song, with its stunning moods. It’s the best song on the album.

The DVD shows the making of “Crack The Skye” and you get to find out a bit about what the band’s all about. Guitarist Bill Kelliher is a major Star Wars fan, has a room full of the figurines (still in their boxes) that he gives a brief tour of. He also often wears Star Wars t-shirts. The other guitarist Bent Hinds, who’s a bit goofy/loopy since his brain hemorrhage (he’s also the only potbellied rockstar that I can think of) is a major Creature From The Black Lagoon fan, and tours his Creature swag. They talk about the difference in the recording process – “Blood Mountain” had been recorded over two months of torture when the band was living in a hotel room in Seattle, “Crack The Skye” was recorded in their home town of Atlanta. Drummer Brann Dailor is a Cadillac fan, looks bored in sessions. Rehearsed album in their jam space before entering the studio, they were more prepared lyrically and vocally. They now have the money to invest in equipment, love old gear. Played a 1964 Stratocaster through a 1968 purple Marshall JMP 100 watt head. Brann has a cool black velvet Bruce Lee painting, also a black velvet sad clown. He talks seriously about Skye, his sister, who committed suicide when she was 14 and he was 15, the album is in a way named after her, but is not about her. In a stupid sequence, he starts to tell what the album is about, but then turns on a lawnmower and pushes it around, so of course you can’t hear a thing. “Oblivion” is about leaving your body, going out too far, getting burned, getting lost, a metaphor for leaving home, a metaphor for the band about leaving and letting the soul ascent as it goes near the sun. “Sometimes you just have to close your eyes, grab your balls, and think of the 1970s.” The band talks about how they wanted to make a prog rock album, and sure enough, some parts of it sound very Yes-like.

Talk Talk, “Asides Besides”, 2CD set -The two-disc set has a very clever title, as the first disc covers the A-sides of the band’s series of 12-inch singles and remixes of their well-known songs. They are mostly kind of silly, and don’t usually improve on the originals (exceptions are “My Foolish Friend”, the “It’s My Life” extended version that is just as luscious as the original, “Living In Another World”, the freakout that is “Pictures of Bernadette”, which was a B-side of the “The Colour Of Sprint” track “Give It Up”, and the long drone of “Happiness is Easy”). It is often quite jarring to hear these great songs dancing cheek to cheek with in-your-face Eurodisco beats. But what can you do? Those were the times, and that’s what people wanted to hear. At the same time, it’s interesting to note that they didn’t entertain extended remixes after their third album, which is when Hollis returned to his jazz/experimental roots (and when his record company gave him the money to do so).

The second disc is the B-sides and they start off a bit slowly, with demo versions of the songs we know from the first two albums, such as “Talk Talk”, “Mirror Man”, and “Candy”. They are not too different, except that the vocals are a bit different, the pace of “Talk Talk” is less frantic, and “Mirror Man” has cheezier new wave keyboards. The first real moment of interest comes with “Call In The Night Boy PIano Version)”, a dramatic reading of this song, accompanied by a spongy bass, with a lot of noodling; stellar vocal renderings in this one, really amazing, and a sign of things to come. That’s followed by some regular versions of songs from their early period, such as synth-popper “Striker Up The Band” and “Dum Dum Girl”, as well as oddities such as “Question”, with its “la la la la la” melodies, and a sweet piano version of “Call In The Night Boys”, as well as “Again A Game… Again”, which is a strong pop song and would have fit right in on any of the band’s first two albums. Eventually, we’re hit with the jackpot that anyone who buys this is waiting for – some of the post-rock magic that Talk Talk is infamous for, in the form of wonderful fragments of the experimental sessions of “The Colour of Spring” and “Spirit of Eden”. These do show up in the form of “It’s Getting Late In The Evening”, which was a B-side of the “Colour of Spring” single “Life Is What You Make It” of early 1986, and “For What It’s Worth”, the B-side of “Living In Another World”, a single from the same album that was released in March, 1986. “It’s Getting Late in the Evening” is a (nearly) drumless keyboard-a-thon, with piano and Mark Hollis’ hauned, floating voice that swells and sways into a burbling ocean of swirling organ sounds; the flood surges, but then eventually disappears. “For What It’s Worth” is the more appealing of the two songs, with attractive keyboard hooks melodies and Hollis’ patented laid back moan that quivers with emotion. “Pictures of Bernadette” is a pretty regular rocker, while “John Cope” is another moody, melancholic piece with the well-known shuffle beat, the groovy keyboards, and the Hollis moan. Superb.

Earth, “A Bureaucratic Desire For Extra-Capsular Extraction” – Love the title; just as our own planet was formed over a million millenia to become what it is today, the great band Earth did not emerge fully-formed to record their masterpiece Earth 2, they clearly had to have a first album. This, now, is the re-release of their first drone recordings, complete with an opening essay by mastermind Dylan Carlson, writing in May 2010 about the early pre-grunge days of the band in October 1990. Noting that the band started out with two bass players (one of whom was Melvins/Thrones/High on Fire bassist Joe Preston), a guitarist and a drum machine, Carlson mentions that the troupe contained “a certain singer of a soon to be well known pop band”, who was actually Kurt Cobain of Nirvana (making this probably the first time Nirvana has ever been referred to as a pop band – although, compared to Earth, maybe they are). The track listing is on the cover. There’s a freaky word-collage on four of the inside pages. The CD label is half in Chinese. Oh my God… how weird?!?!?!?!?!?!

The first two songs, “A Bureaucratic Desire For Revenge” parts one and two (the title comes from Bergman’s “Hour of the Wolf”) are dirge-like, but sound odd with a drummer. The second one even introduces horrible screams and odd chanting, some of it provided by lead dude Dylan. It sure is like nothing I’ve ever heard before. “Ourobos is Broken”, at 18:13 the longest song on the disc, is nearly Godflesh – like in parts, with its broad chords and mechanical drumming (both bands formed around the same time), although the drumming fades out after the first six minutes and it becomes sort of Earth 2-ish. Wow – long and boring and exciting! “Geometry of Murder” is even more Godflesh-like, with its blazing guitar riffs, but the drums are too subdued, not as crisp. But that’s okay!!! “German Dental Work” is slow and plodding, “Divine and Bright” (which is “a love song written to the H-bomb”) is poppy and plodding and features moans by Kurt and screams by Dylan. It’s a very short song, only 2:58. “Dissolution I” is your regular drone beauty. I love those cold, autumn days.

Blast it in your earphones, or through your expensive sound system – play this music LOUD!!!

Sandy Denny, Trevor Lucas and friends, “The Attic Tracks” – I was very happy to get this album, or at least I was happy right up until I realised that they have now released a 19-disc career retrospective of Sandy Denny. Holy smokes!!!!! But I guess if anyone deserves it, it’s Sandy. All of the Sandy Denny songs on this are also in the box (but none of the Trevor Duncan songs are).

This disc was issued in 1995 by Raven Records with the note that “royalties generated by the sale of this disc will be used by the Estate of Sandy Denny and Trevor Lucas to fund the education and/or welfare of their children and Trevor’s widow,” and that it was released with the co-operation of Island Records International and PolyGram Australia. Sandy and Trevor were in her post-Fairport Convention band Fotheringay together, and they were married from 1973 until Denny’s death in March 1978 after a fall down the stairs that left her with a brain haemorrhage. Lucas was a guitarist and singer/songwriter from Melbourne, Australia, who played with Fairport Convention on Unhalfbricking while he was dating Denny. He died in 1989 of a heart attack.

The disc comes with a booklet, lovingly written by John Penhallow, Fairport Convention’s first manager in 1967, in Sydney Australia, that talks about how he got to know Trevor and Sandy, how he collected the songs that are on the compilation, and other background stuff. It is one of the better liner notes I’ve seen, and there is excellent track-by-track notation. The source of the music is Trevor’s tape collection. The booklet hints at more tracks that aren’t here yet – nine tracks from Sandy’s first recordings of 1966/1967, and 15 tracks from what was probably Sandy’s last concert (three of the latter are on this disc). The disc also has great images – there is one of Sandy and Trevor on their wedding day, pictures of them performing, shots of record covers and singles, concert posters, and other rare stuff.

For me it was interesting hearing these Sandy Denny songs that I’m unfamiliar with. What a voice! Trevor Duncan I’m unfamiliar with, but he’s a great guitar player and has a nice Neil Diamond/Gordon Lightfoot kind of a voice, warm but maybe a bit boring.

The first track is “Moments”, an unreleased song that is the last studio track Sandy recorded, in May 1977. Great lyrics: “If I had my life again/ I would choose to be with you, my friend/ Time moves slowly and it goes so fast/ And who knows how long our days will last.” Sadly ironic words, and a really beautiful song that gets a lump in the throat. What a voice! “The Ballad of Ned Kelly” Trevor wrote for Fotheringay in 1970 and it sounds like something from The Band. “Ecoute, Ecoute” is a cool French version of Sandy’s solo “Listen Listen”, supported by Richard Thompson. “One More Chance” is Sandy’s voice and piano, the demo for a song she wrote for Fairport Convention in 1975. Ditto for the next song “Rising For The Moon,” which has more of a Gaellic twang to it and less oomph in it. Both tunes are stark and beautiful. A Fairport Convention B-side, “Tears” is a fantastic song, written and sung by Duncan in a doleful songwriting way, with great lyrics, and the tale told in each verse ending with the line “The tears that we shared simply dried.” “Easy To Slip” is a rockin’ Little Feat song, also sadly ironic considering the fall down the stairs that did Sandy in. “Losing Game” is a Flying Burrito Brothers track that has nice horns and a rockin’ Sandy Denny vocal. “Girls On The Avenue” is a pop song sung by Trevor that sounds a bit dated, sort of like a minor Neil Diamond song from the time, it was written by Richard Clayton and was a hit in Australia, Duncan hoped it would crack him globally but it never did and later got buried in his attic. Icky background vocals, even though they are by Sandy Denny and Linda Thompson (!!!). “Breakaway” is soundtrack music that has a shuffling train sound to it. “Still Waters Run Deep” sounds a lot like a Joni Mitchell song, and “The King And Queen Of England” sounds like one of those 10,000 Maniacs songs that Nathalie Merchant does on with piano accompaniment, this one is gorgeous. “No End” is also a song with voice and solo piano, a long meandering melancholy reflection on lost friendship and love, and it has great lyrics: “They said that it was snowing in astounded tones upon the news/ I wonder why they’re always so surprised – cos every year it snows.” Smartass. But this is one of the nicest songs I’ve heard in years. What a song. What a voice! Trevor Duncan then sings “The Town I Loved So Well”, which sounds like “And The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda.” He also does a great version of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young,” which I suppose is how we will always think of him and Sandy, it has a nice guitar solo. “Gold Dust” is, again, a song that sounds a lot like Joni Mitchell. “Stranger To Himself” is an old Fairport Convention song that Sandy sings, it grinds away moodily with Gaellic menace. “Who Knows Where The Time Goes” is the well-known Fairport Convention song, here represented in a long, slow version. The last three songs were from Sandy’s last concert performance, on November 27 1977.

Germs, “The Complete Anthology” – Every song that this seminal LA punk band recorded. Darby Crash crashed and burned brilliantly in the early 1980s. A total anarchist, he played a last gig with the band in order to afford a does of heroin to take him out. Brrrr… Crash is compared to Rimbaud, and his lyrics are highly literate, and the band that backs him up can be heard to improve a lot over the course of the recording; he also sounds a lot like Flipper lead guy Will Shatter, who also died of a heroin overdose. The liner notes are very good, and there are lots of pictures of the band in there. Pat Smear, who is now a superstar with Nirvana and Foo Fighters, got his start in the Germs. The first and last song on the release is “Forming”, and you can hear how different the band was at the start and end of their career by listening to this little punk ditty.

Husker Du, “Warehouse: Songs and Stories” – This has always been one of my favorite albums from one of my favorite old hardcore bands. The songs here are hardly punk, as each of them has that great songwriting, and Bob Mould and Grant Hart are in great form. “These Important Years” starts it all off with a blister and a blaze, and then it just gets better. “Standing In The Rain” is a catchy-as-hell song, as is nearly every song that follows – “Back From Nowhere”, “Ice Cold Ice”, “Friend You’ve Got To Fall” (despite its overly catchy chorus), “She Floated Away”, the punchy and irresistible “Turn It Around”, the crusty “Bed of Nails”, and fun rockers with catchy harmonics like “Up In The Air.” The double album closes off with the thunderous “You Can Live At Home.”

Typically, the songs that appeal to me more are by Bob Mould, but songs like the Irish canty-like “She Floated Away”, “Tell You Why Tomorrow”, the silly “She’s A Woman (And Now He’s A Man)” are good offerings from Grant Hart (although his Elvis-like “Actual Condition” is pretty weird). But at least it shows his willingness to experiment and get away from that drone drone thing.

Judge, “What it Meant – the Complete Discography” – A great discovery, Judge was a New York straight edge band that played from 1987 to 1991. They played angry, metallic hardcore that sounds a lot like Suicidal Tendencies from the” Join The Army” era. Practically all of the songs are very good, with the possible exception of the Led Zeppelin cover, “When The Levee Breaks”, which isn’t so great. Standouts are “The Storm”, “New York Crew”, “I’ve Lost”, the OI! band Blitz cover “Warriors”, and nearly every other song on this album. I only heard about this group when it came up on some sort of a search of Amazon for bands, and I’m glad that it did. Some great lyrics, mostly against drugs: on “Fed Up” it’s “Smoking that butt, it makes you mature/ A slave to sex and you tell me you’re pure/ You slam that beer, it makes you a man/ I’ll try to keep my cool but you better understand”; on “In My Way” it’s “Those drugs are gonna kill you if I don’t get to you first”; on “Bringin’ It Down” it’s “A beer, a joint like a gun at your head/ The price that you pay is the blood that you bled/ The needle, the track mark, youu’re scarred for life; You’re weak and you’re hurt and you’re gonna lose this fight/ You drink it and you smoke it and you say you feel fine/ And you snort it and you shoot it and now it’s melted your mind”. “Like You”, with its cool arpeggios intro, and the raw emotion of “I’ve Lost”. A song like the second version of “Take Me Away” is not so great, with its tinny drums failing to impress where others have been so strong. There are two versions of “Bringing It Down”, one with really bad drums. This CD represents every recording the band ever made. Some of the tracks appear twice, because they were re-recorded for an ultra-rare EP called “Chung King Can Suck It”, of which only 110 copies were made.

Check it out – Judge!

The Cure, “Disintegration” [Remastered] – “Disintegration” has been the only Cure studio release that I ever bought close to its release (I’ve only ever bought packages, such as the “Standing on the Beach”/”Staring at the Sea” compilation, and the Connect the Dots box set), so when this was released as a set with demos and the full “Entreat” live show I thought it would be a good one to get. The booklet has a short essay describing what the band went through in the recording, such as kicking the useless Lol Tolhurst out of the band, or allowing him to leave, or whatever happened; it also talks about how they saved the lyrics from a deadly fire, the band forming a human chain, wrapping wet towels around their heads and shoulders, and then groping around a smoke-filled room to retrieve the already-smouldering leather satchel with the only copy of the lyrics in it – whew! There are a bunch of pictures from the era – man, were those guys ugly. Vocals for the 12 studio songs (but none of the singles) are included.

The songs on the studio release are all as good as I remember, although somehow they are a bit shabby, pale, boring. Not quite what I remembered, exactly, although the later songs are a bit nicer than the earlier songs. I was quite surprised when I got to the live show, which was from a show at Wembley Stadium in July of 1989 that represents all 12 songs on Disintegration, that I actually liked it better than the studio version. I was surprised, because usually it’s the other way around, where the live recording bugs me for some reason or other, I nearly always prefer the studio album… just not this time.

The second disc doesn’t really excite that much either, although it has its moments. It includes three Robert Smith home demos, nine band demo instrumentals, two studio rough instrumentals, four studio roughs with guide vocals, one rough mix with vocals and one Robert Smith solo rough mix with vocals. Seems that the band went through two rounds of laying down the instrumentals, a process that lasted from about April to October. Taken together they chart the whole recording process of the album. Listening to the instrumentals can be a bit trying at times, but it also shows how interesting the music can be (even when it drones on and on) without the distraction – pleasant though it may be – or Robert Smith’s unique voice. It’s also fitting, since the album is known for its long instrumental sections anyway.

First off: the demos that Robert Smith did at home before he added the vocals, which are sort or like rough karaoke tracks. “Prayers For Rain” sounds like it’s been programmed into hell, and there are three such demos. “Fascination Street” sounds weird with a bit of slide guitar and keyboard thrown on top of the mix. There are also band rehearsals. The one for “Homesick” sounds just that – it’s awful. Other band rehearsals are “Closedown”, “Lovesong”, “The Same Deep Water As You”, and “Disintegration”. “Lovesong” has really weird bass sounds. There are also B-sides “Fear Of Ghosts”, which sounds like some sort of a weird early Cure icy poker repeating its tracks over and over, “Noheart”, which starts out with wicked drums and noise and then a creepy dirge with cheap keyboard sounds, “Esten”, which is jaunty and cheerful and a lot of fun, and “2 Late (alternate version)”, a gorgeous and textured number that has that “Monday I’m In Love” spring in its stride. “Babble” is a fun tune, bass-driven with prominent keyboards and drums, here in its instrumental version. Other studio roughs have vocals and sound a lot like the final album versions. “Out of Mind” is keyboard-led and it sort of grooves, it also has hard rock guitar (!?!) in it. It’s a lot less murky than the final B-side version, and it has great Robert Smith vocals. “Delirious Night” is jaunty and drum-led, it sort of grooves on and on and on and has really strange vocals. “Pirate Ships” is a Judy Collins cover that Robert Smith did for a planned 40th anniversary Elektra tribute album that never happened so it never got used, and appears here for the first time. It is a strange little ditty, with Robert Smith singing over accordion sounds, with the sound of surf to accompany it. I can’t find this song on YouTube, my ersatz jukebox; I wonder what the original sounded like.

Mark Hollis, “Mark Hollis” – Mark Hollis released his only solo album so far in 1998, seven years after the final Talk Talk album “Laughing Stock”, and it’s simply called “Mark Hollis.” On the cover is a strange picture of a pasty that has haunting, sad eyes – it looks alive. The black and white photo is framed in white, and the whole booklet is simply lyrics and very simple production details.

The first song is called “The Colour Of Spring”, which is of course also the name of their third release from 1986. After 18 seconds of silence, the song starts with simple piano chords and the gorgeous, pleading voice of Mark Hollis. “Watershed” is a beautiful song with the fractured accordions, percussion, light guitar and basswork, and (as always) very dominated by the vocals. “Inside Looking Out” is mainly guitar and voice, and is haunting. This is the only song on the album solely-written by Hollis. “The Gift” is a full band, and moves along more quickly, with faster drums, strange sounds, and that odd harmonica howl from time to time. It fades out abruptly with goofy bassoon work, and the next song, “A Life (1895-1915)” fades in with that all-over-the-place quasi-classical blurting stuff, which continues, then with voice, and percussion comes in finally after about three minutes, when the wind instruments fall away and the guitar starts to swell, Hollis turns the vocal duties over to half-murmuring half-singing children’s voices. Beautiful. This is the longest song on the release, 8:10, it is an extremely complex song that goes through several movements, and after the children’s voices you get keyboard and double bass, then weird windworks, then some sort of a strange fade-out. “Westward Bound” is only guitar and Hollis’ haunting voice. “The Daily Planet” is more like a full on song – it starts with bassoon doodling for a minute, but then picks up with a drum beat that moves the song along slowly, the voice comes in after 2.5 minutes with those haunting vocals, there’s some great harmonica work. “A New Jerusalem” moves right along, with piano chords, guitar and vocals, but near the middle it peters out and becomes a whispering, still, moody statement, Hollis’ last so far. The last 90 seconds of the song are silence.

Rollins Band, “Life Time” – The great first release from the Rollins Band is now available on Henry’s own 2.13.61 label. Rollins had done self-titled album with other musicians, as well as a joke album under the moniker Henrietty Collins and the Wife-Beating Child Haters called “Drive By Shooting” (which is a lot of fun – anyone should look it up), but he must have not enjoyed those bands because this is the unit that he had for many years, minus a bass player or two. The album was produced by Ian MacKaye (of Minor Threat/Fugazi/Dischord Records fame), and the songs don’t pull any punches. Opening track “Burned Beyond Recognition” is a fantastic screamathon that opens like Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf”, with Henry’s voice dominating the mix. “What Am I Doing Here?” screams and yells, and “One Thousand Times Blind” commands the listener “don’t love me, you’ll hate yourself.” Lots of wordplay like that. “Lonely” and “Wreck-Age” are pretty regular musically, and again they’re dominated by Rollins’ superb voice. Lyrically they’re all good. “Lonely” posits that “there’s nothing like finding someone when you’re lonely”, and “Wreck-age” talks about individuals that have been crushed by the world that they live in. “Gun In Mouth Blues” is probably the most intense Henry Rollins has ever recorded – and that’s saying something. It starts off slow, with drums, then a bit of bass, some guitar comes in, and it builds up to a slow, plodding, wallowing thump, and Henry’s voice comes in with a low voice, saying “you’ve got hard times… oooh… you’ve got blues… you’ve got, got, got, got, got…. YEAH!!!!!!!” It just shatters any stillness in life. They really don’t make music like this any more, not even Rollins himself. If you play this so anyone who owns a Coldplay album they will definitely run screaming from the room (i.e. how to lose friends and alienate people). The song winds down, the narrator has a gun in his hand, he ask himself “should I pull it? Should I pull it? Pull it? Pull it? PULL IT??!!??” Then all hell breaks loose with intense screaming and a long burnout jam.

The rest of the album is relatively anti-climatic now. How can it not be? But there are still some gems. “You Look At You” is a relatively straight-forward rocker, as is “If You’re Alive.” “I’ve Been Turned Out” has a bit of a rap in it, it’s slow in parts but has great lyrics. “You say that you’re my friend, but I don’t know you/ I’ll trust you just as far as I can throw you/ No I don’t know you, I know my enemy/ They’re the ones that look at me with honest eyes/ They hate my guts, but at least it’s the truth/ I’ll trust them just as far as I can throw them off the roof.” Naturally it ends with a pure jam, and some of that bungee bass and band wallop that we know and love from releases like “The End of Silence”. The release also comes with live versions of “What Am I Doing Here?” “Burned Beyond Recognition”, “Move Right In” (a Velvet Underground cover) and “Hot Animal Machine II” are pretty good, especially “Move Right In” with its short bass solo and the mini drum solo that busts out with the blazing “Inna Gadda da Vida” lick. Stellar. “Hot Animal Machine 2″ appeared on Henry’s solo album of two years earlier, but by now the version is much longer and full of craziness, with atmospheric beginnings and insane drum beats and full on screams and love dripping off the world. Love it all!!!

Rollins Band, “Weighting” – Here are extra songs from the “Weight” sessions, including three songs that ended up on soundtracks, four songs with New York saxophonist Charles Gayle, and five live songs. “Fall Guy” had appeared on the Demon Knight soundtrack (I didn’t watch it), it is a crazy burner with lots of anger. “I See Through” is heavy on the vocals, the band is kind of taking it easy; the song appeared on “Johnny Mnemonic”, a film that Rollins had a small role in (he gets murdered by a psychotic, animalistic Dolph Lundgren. “Right Here Too Much”, great title, but not an exciting song; still, Rollins is giving it all he’s got. I’m not sure which film soundtrack it appeared on.

“Miles Jam #3″ is the first song with Charles Gayle, which starts off with bass bopping and drum beating, Rollins doing some sort of an abstract speech about something that pisses him of, the sax comes in slowly after a minute and a half. It’s a loose jam and just sort of goes on and on, with Rollins taking his time in his delivery. It’s stream-of-consciousness, it seems like he doesn’t really have a plan for what he wants to say. “I just want to see what you would do if you were pushed. I mean REALLY pushed.” “Plague #3″ is a bit funkier, as it has some cool riffs, and is the most like a formal song among the Charles Gayle tracks. It’s a great song. “Night Sweat” sounds like just that, and it is tense and jagged, almost Velvet Underground-esque. Rollins moans like a crazy man. “Jam #1″ is a pretty good song, the longest on the set at over 14 minutes, starting off slow, building up to some cool guitar riffs and some very nice basswork. Badass!

The live songs are pretty okay, especially a very funky “Disconnect” with its wicked basslines, and some surreal ad-lib (and nasty hollering) on “Liar.” “Volume 4″ is a pretty good song, but sounds a bit muddy. “Divine Object of Hatred” is not a fantastic song, but it’s trippy hearing Rollins holler “divine” over and over again, and there is some nifty bass spazzing. “Civilised” is scary and intense with some great vocal delivery – crazy tonguetwisters like ” see what you do when you use what you got but what do you do when you do what you want” and “freedom, you ain’t no freedom, you want your freedom,
your freedom is killing you man, freedom, you can’t handle your freedom, hey! And now you’re dying for it.”

Rollins Band, “A Nicer Shade of Red” – A goofy recording with Rollins’ third band, the Mother Superior-backed Rollins Band, and these are extra songs that didn’t get onto the “Nice” album, along with some odds ‘n’ ends. “Too Much Rock ‘n’ Roll” is some great… rock ‘n’ roll, with funky-ass distortion on the Les Paul, and some funny backing vocals. Is that Slash or is that Jim Wilson? Jim who?!?!?! “Marcus Has The Evil In Him” is a washed-out grungy piece of work, thunderous. Love it. “Nowhere To Go But Inside” is a deep dark rusty nail of a muttering Rollins scary-tune. “10x” is good ole rock ‘n’ roll with a sorta Slash-like solo. “Always The Same” is near-punk, very repetitive and with a bit of blues. “Soul Implant” is a great old rocker, full of cool sounds, very unconventional. Probably the best song on the CD as it is understated, yet innovative. It’s grown on me. “Raped” starts off well, but it is, of course, an icky song. I wonder what point Henry’s trying to make being confrontational about someone who wants to rape him. Run! “Ain’t It Fun” is a great great Stooges cover, and “You Lost Me” is again washed out and droopy, with waves of feedback and distortion. “Stone Washed Clean” is a groovy jam-out, with some truly incredible guitar spazzes. Jim Wilson, HELP ME! “A Life Denied” is full of cool guitar sounds, and a snatch of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”, sinister vocals, great atmospherics, then it cuts off abruptly. Crazy. “Your Number Is One” has great great guitar effects and cool bass, the song is very good, and this long version has extended guitar bits, a very good drum solo, and a brief bass solo. Perfect! The last song on the release is “Such A Drag” and it is an indulgent spoken word with music thing. The song drifts out after eight minutes, but then comes back with the sound of wind, and Henry’s still talkin’ about stuff, but now over a piano. It sounds like a bit of an operetta now.

Various, “:30 Over D.C.~~” -

When you think of DC punk and indie music, you think of Dischord Records, right? Well, before Ian and Jeff started Dischord Records, there was Skip Groff and his Yesterday and Today record shop, with its Limp Records label attached to it. Ian and the other DC kids got a lot of support and early breaks from Skip, and memorialized him in the “Skip, we love you” crack in their version of “Stepping Stone” (the song that, of course, every DC band covered). This CD is a collection of pre-Dischord DC bands, and it is being kept in print by Skip; Henry Rollins is distributing it on his label, and I was smart enough to snag a copy. It’s great!

The CD comes with the original liner notes from the first edition, notes on the printings, and new liner notes from the 2004 re-release. The original notes are funny, talking about how there was once a scene in DC in the mid-60s, before the town became Vietnam war-era conservative and late night entertainment dried up, eventually giving itself over to either heavy metal or “John Revolta clones and that dreaded social disease, disco music.” The disc seems to champion “New Wave” music, which is a lot different in the 1978 version represented here than what we would associate it with a few years later. But it’s all good fun. In the 2004 liner notes, theyre sill calling it New Wave, making it sound very important like it was setting off a musical bonfire. And it was, even if it doesn’t sound very incendiary here. As such, then, it’s a really great musical document, one that every serious record collector should own. This was Skip’s label’s first release, but not its last.

The CD starts off with “The Break” by The Penetrators, which is pretty straight forward punk and very fun. “This shit is gonna break,” sounds kind of California but it’s DC. “Imagination [Live]“ by The Rudements is a bit Flipper-sounding, with thick bass lines and snotty spoken-vocal storytelling. “Thank You for Sending Me an Eno” by The Mock Turtles is weird squeaky scratchy instrumental that strums and is full of sampled talk. Strange, aimless and fun. “Attitude [Live]“ by Slickee Boys is a great piece of light punk with fantastic lyrics and a bit of a rockabilly beat to it, and fun crowd response. Classy. “Jet Lag Drag” by Chumps has that slow creep, with a bit of tooting horn (sax?), it’™s poorly recorded but has a lot of authentic attitude. “Every Time You Give Me a Call” by Billy Synth sounds like a famous song, with its familiar verse, but I can’t place it. It’s great strumming snottiness. “Get Up ‘N Dance” by Jeff Dahl is strumming pop, while “I Want Something New” by Half Japanese is screaming, shouting noise from Jad and David, hard to recognise from the current wonky Half Japanese that we know and love so well; same same but different, and mush hoarser. “I Hate” by White Boy, White Boy is either racists and misogynistic or totally taking the piss. It’s a bit too extreme, with its metallic raving in a Jello Biafra voice. “I hate shitty food and girls on the rag/ I hate straights and I hate fags.” Riot, man, riot!

“I Can Explain” by The Nurses is a sweet, twee song with great jangling riffs that has a tough chorus. “No Fun” by Mark Hoback makes you think of the Stooges song, but it’s self-penned. It’s a simple song with mild guitars, and a shaker keeping the beat, the singing is a bit Jerry Lee Lewis. “Tell my baby that my car wouldn’t run, tell my baby couldn’t have no fun, we end up what we barely begun, no fun.” And more in that vein. “Wouldn’t feel bad about having no fun, even the TV told me I should have fun / All of my friends are saying they had no fun too, tell me what’s there for me to do, no no no fun.” The lyrics are fun, I should type them all out – some day. “Getting tired of electrical toys, getting tired of the drug of my choice / Getting tired have to lower my voice, getting tired being one of the boys.” It is fun! And – dare I say it – I think I like it better than the Stooges song of the same name. Ha ha ha haaaaa…

“Martyr Me” by Judies Fixation is regular snotty punk, very fun too, with great bluesy -70s guitar solo breakdown thrown in, those DC punkers knew how to rock, the longest song on the album at 3:55, ha ha… “Knocking Down Guard Rails” by Tina Peel is a bit of B52s-like fluffy/weird pop with organ and female backup singers, the kids are goin’ crazy. “Murder One” by Young Turds is a simple, sax-based song, while “Mr. President [Live]“ by Da Moronics is a real punk song, with a Richard Hell yell and political lyrics that seem a bit dated now: “Mr President, Mr Carter, I think that I augha tell you what’s going on the ground, something ain’t right this time. Mr president, I may love you, I know that I voted for you, Mr President, Mr Carter, I think that I augta tell you that people out there they don’t even care about Washington DC, or New York City, or any place it seems.””I want you again in ’82, that is true.” “Don’t pull a JFK.” “I don’t tell lies, I’m Catholic y’know, and we gotta do everything right.” “You’re so lenient.” Crazy. “Stay Limp” by The Raisinets is jangly old rock ‘n’ roll with a great bassline, but rambling Half Japanese-like lyrics, “stay limp, avoid excitation, keep your trouser snake in traction.” Even more wild, weird craziness, very bass-driven with jangling guitars playing out repetitive chords. Love it, or leave it for those with class.

DVD Review:

Roxy Music, “The Thrill of it All” – Yeh, groovy, video of Roxy Music from 1972-1976 (hot, arty, weird, thrilling) and 1979-1982 (smoothy, sexy, stylish, mature, very ’80s). “Re-made/Re-model” from an u dated July 1972 session at the Royal College of Art in London shows the band in full swing. It’s the first tune from their debut album and it is the only real glimpse of a freaky Bryan Ferry, showing him with thick eye shadow and long hair. The song is frantic and zany, with images, glimpses and colour. The song is strange, but traditional in the sense that there is a break for every member to get a solo (even Brian Eno gets a “treatments” solo). “Ladytron”, from the Old Grey Whistle Test BBC show, starts out with green suit clarinet, then spacey jam, Eno in leopard print and sliver gloves, guitarist Phil Manzanera with bug sunglasses with embedded diamonds (they reappear in some 1982 footage). Eno gets crazy at the console. Bryan Ferry has shorter hair now and just a bit of eye shadow, and by the time of “Virginia Plain” for the Top of the Pops, he’s looking pretty much like how we know him forever after: the slimy, vamping sophisticate. “For Your Pleasure” is weird, sparse Space:1999 music. “Do The Strand” vamps in suits, Eno in a silver boa jacket, while “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” the band is Kraftwerk-like, all sling guitars but don’t play, robotic, only Eno plays gurgle, halfway through they rock out. Ferry like Elvis with Stratocaster as a prop, Ray Manzanarek on cherry red Les Paul, wailing. Eno with black feathers. “Editions of You”, Eno with gold puff jackew with epaulets. Watching Roxy Music at this point is as much as hearing the music as checking out what the boys are wearing… except for the drummer, of course, who is meaty, always wears singlet, and looks like a young Glenn Danzig. “Pyjamerama” shows Ferry in a white tux, something we’ll see much more of going forward, especially for the next three tracks, all recorded at Musikladen for German television, with the great SH IT sticker on the wall. By now, Brian Eno is out of the band, and the main eccentric is keyboardist and violinist Eddie Jobson (long-term brass and woodwindist Andy Mackay, with his mullet and green suits, doesn’t really qualify as eccentric). “Amazona” has Jobson’s great violin solo, and “Psalm” is a weird Nick Cve-like song, with Ferry buildup and sow-off vocals, cool funk vibe, Ferry looks like a young Harvey Heitel, and then someone trhwos him a tamborine. “All I Want Is You,” a greaser Ferry, rockin band. “Love is the Drug”, pre-recordef for Top of the Pops with a two-tier stage and backup singers, a real big-stage production for the first time – we’ll see more of that later too. Ferry looks great with his eye patch. In “Mother of Pearl” Ferry goes nuts, saxophone sweater, guitar crazy, cool rhythm section, great lady keyboardist (oh, that’s Eddie Jobson, actually). “Nightingale” is a bit of weird funk, while “Out of the BLue” is sharp and rockin’ with great clarinet, and a great Jobson violin solo. The second disc shows off the band’s 1979-1982 line-up, which is very big-sounding and suave stadium rock-ready, it also combines live footage with promotional videos. The first song is on the ABBA show, and Anni-Frid and Agnetha introduce them as one of their favourite bands (cool). The songs are good fun, and the musicianship is amazing. You get to see the evolution of the bass player, from a sluggish goon in the earlier songs to a full-on boppin’, dancin’ dude who’s a very big part of the sound. Phil Manzanera is mostly doodling away on his Gibson Firebird, although at times he’s on a Les Paul, and some other devices. Disc 2 is less interesting than the first, but it’s still good fun. Yay.

Book Review:

Fanatic, Volume 1, by Henry Rollins – From May to December 2004, Henry Rollins hosted a radio show called Harmony In My Head. These are the liner notes for the show and they provide a lot of information about a lot of bands. They also give a sense of the deep appreciation of all sorts of music that Rollins has, his knowledge of the bands he loves (or his lack of knowledge, in some cases, whether that information is hard to get or not), some anecdotes of the interesting people he’s met and the cool shows he’s seen; you also get a sense of just how much of a music fanatic Henry Rollins really is! He uses phrases like “What a man. What a song. What an album. What a band” a lot. The year 2004 seemed like a relatively quiet year for the man, but he did go off a few times for USO tours, speaking to the men in Afghanistan and at a camp in the Caribbean somewhere.

Some of the groups that he raves about (and seems to have a complete discography of, including extremely rare singles and EPs and foreign releases/alternate versions) are Suicide/Alan Vega, The Cramps, The Damned, UK Subs, The Buzzcocks and Buzzkunst, X Ray Specs, The Adverts, The Stains, The Fall, Trouble Funk, The Ramones (especially Johnny Ramone), Bad Brains, The Ruts, Sham 69, Richard Berry, Black Sabbath, Public Enemy, Devo, Iggy Pop and the Stooges (of course), Lou Reed, The Gun Club, John Lee Hooker, Lightin’ Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell, John Cale, Eater, Roy Orbison, Lee Scratch Perry, Roky Erickson, all of Scott “Wino” Weinreich’s bands (Saint Vitus, The Obsessed, etc) and all of the Dischord Records bands. The band he plays the most of is The Fall.

Some of the bands that he’s obsessive about that surprised me are Billy Idol and Generation X, Roxy Music, Nico, J Mascis and Dinosaur Jr, Alice In Chains, Captain Beefheart, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and some others.

He’s a major fan of jazz, and is a walking encyclopedia of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and all of the other greats (the former Henry Garfield did take his stage name from Sonny Rollins, by the way).

Among the goofy songs that he threw in just to be a sarcastic bastard are ABC “The Look Of Love”, Venom’s “The Chanting of the Priests”, Nena’s “99 Luftbalons” and Mercyful Fate “Black Funeral.”

Then there are also all the bands he’s been associated with, such as State of Alert, Black Flag, Bad Brains, The Misfits, The Birthday Party, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds.

He also tells strange anecdotes, like hanging out with the mother of Thin Lizzy singer/bassist Phil Lynott (?!?!), getting tapes of radio DJ chatter, the time they opened for Venon and got great between-song banter, the story of hanging out with violent bands like The Stains, chasing down hard-to-find Generation X songs, helping Bad Brains and Teen Idles distribute their early albums when no one had any money, checking out the tortured piano that Jerry Lee Lewis plays on in his home in Mississippi, the time that Beasts of Bourbon blew away Nirvana when they opened for them, talking about Captain Beefheart with Jeff Bridges (also a huge Beefheart fan), checking out Trouble Funk with a dangerous all-black audience, walking home through the snow after a Clash concert that had Bo Diddley opening for it, tying Pete Shelley’s shoelaces together as he played supe-serious (and then mentioning it to Shelley years later when they met), hanging out with a sick Johnny Ramone a week before he died, meeting the drummer of X-Ray Specs, a chance encounter with King Sunny Ade, helping Alan Vega re-master old recordings that he’s left lying around, watching the first Minor Threat show, live recordings from never-released bands like The Enzymes (his former guitarist Chris Haskett former band). Then there’s a sad tale about the Minutemen – he could only bring himself to play one Minutemen song, simply because of the torment he feels about the death of D Boon. He also talks about bands he DIDN’T see – The Germs and Rites Of Spring, for example, are bands he’d rave about but never got a chance to experience. Included in the book is the foreword to the autobiography of Eater singer Andy Blade, as well as his contribution to the liner notes of the Adverts’ “Cast of Thousands” re-release.

The book is full of interesting concert posters. I have barely heard any of these songs, and many of the bands are new to me. I need to spend some time on YouTube doing research. Missing from the book is Frank Zappa, and California hardcore groups like Suicidal Tendencies. I wonder if he has a low opinion of these acts, or if they are just left out for other reasons. I don’t know if he’s being ironic or mean, but he describes a guy “Thurston Moore, who’s in a band called Sonic Youth”; who hasn’t heard of Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth? Either way it’s all good, all interesting.

Fanatic, Volume 2, by Henry Rollins – Henry Rollins’ second Fanatic book is even thicker than the first one, with 417 pages of notes for the songs he played on 52 radio shows in 2006. The book also has playlists of all the shows he did in 2006, as well as a song index catalogued by band. It’s here that you get to see just how many songs he played by The Fall (49), the Buzzcocks (22), Public Enemy (5), Thor (4), Dio (1), etc.

You get to learn a few interesting things about Rollins, namely that he is a big fan of all sorts of doo wop music, and he totally loves Indonesian gamelan music. Who’da thunk? He’s also not a fan of rap or hip hop – the only band he plays here is Public Enemy (he’s got that right), and a Vanilla Ice track, just for fun. Of course he plays tons of UK punk, DC punk and SoCal punk, as well as blues and jazz and avant garde, as well as a bit of comedy (Coyle and Sharp, National Lampoon).

There are a few interesting anecdotes. In the set that he dedicated to the recently-deceased John Peel, Rollins writes “It was always a dream of mine to do a Peel Session. We asked at the BBC in the 80s around the time we had recorded the Life Time album and we got word back that he didn’t like our music and didn’t like me.” Oh well. When he played Public Image Limited we find out that John Lydon didn’t like him either, and when he played The Fall, we find out that Mark E. Smith had some sort of an attitude about Rollins as well – Rollins quotes him several times saying “I mean, I wouldn’t even shake hands with Sonic Youth, you know. And Henry Rollins is a bit of a lunatic. He gets up and gives a fucking lecture about how he wishes he was me.” Rollins mentions the quote at least three times, at one stage saying “I wish I was Mark E Smith!! I want to be a small of stature genius somewhat destroyed by my intellect and drug abuse. I want band members to quit left and right! That’s what I want! I want it now. I’m a lunatic and that’s what I want!!!!!!!!!!” Funny how Rollins mentions the unofficial Fall site at the end of every single entry on The Fall.

This book has fewer “pullout” stories than the first book, meaning special sections where he expands on a song entry with a long anecdote about the band (one of the longer ones in this book is a breakdown of his favorite Damned albums), but it’s full of tons of great information, photos and posters anyway. Rollins tells a weird story about how Gene Defcon asked him to draw a picture of a cop riding on the back of a unicorn that Defcon used on the inside of his album.

I have a feeling that Mr Defcon was making sport of me but I remain a fan nonetheless.” There’s a great story about the Descendents: “One night the band’s drummer and guitar player, Bill and Frank,walked into the venue right from their day job as commercial fishermen all covered in fish scales and fish blood. What a smell. They set up their gear and played at full bore in stench mode.

Rollins talks about his agony over never seeing certain DC bands play live since he was away too much touring with Black Flag so bands like Rites of Spring, formed, played, and broke up before he got a chance. But he did get to see One Last Wish, which included three of the four Rites of Spring members. I happen to be reading this at the same time as I listen to the “Twenty Years of Dischord” CD set, which is totally appropriate, great. He writes at great length about The Ruts and their doomed lead singer Malcolm Owen, there’s long pieces Suicide and Alan Vega told in a very personal, as well as pieces by The Buzzcock, John Coltraine, Nico, Brian Eno, John Cale, Tuvan throat singers Huun-Huur-Tu, Miles Davis, James Brown (and his band, the JBs, and some of his band’s solo efforts), Roky Erickson, The Snakes, Bad Brains, The Gun Club and Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Parliament/Funkadelic/George Clinton and the Ramones (nice bit of praise on the drumming of Tommy Ramone in one of the entries).

He devotes a whole show to The Misfits where he compares the unreleased 12 Hits From Hell version of the band’s songs with their alternate versions on other albums. He also has another chapter describing a show of all Hallowe’en related songs (scary) and another of a show of all Christmas-related songs (even scarier!) that starts off with a great drawing someone did of Tony Iommi wearing a santa hat, his left-handed Gibson SG garlanded with Christmas lights and Christmas tree ornaments and an angel sitting on the headstock. Awwwww!!! Oh yeah, and another one devoted to just b-sides (Ozzy Osborne’s “Party With The Animals” is played here, for example). On another show a week before Christmas on the 15th anniversary of Joe Cole’s murder he plays songs that were among Cole’s favorites. There is also stuff about the craziness of Sham 69 and the “good Skrewdriver” from before they became a racist white power act.

The book has fun, irreverent stuff like his mention of Ann Coulter, “she’s hard as a rock and anything rough that comes her way she can bounce off her adams apple effortlessly.” A great bit on Black Sabbath:

It’s hard to be one of the best bands in the world and invent a genre. A lot of people can’t handle it. It’s not surprising that music critics couldn’t handle it. They get it wrong all the time. Sabbath is proof that most music critics are not worth the food they’re fed. If you can’t get to Black Sabbath, if they’re not your cup of tea, you’re drinking herbal tea and the rest of us are done with you. Really. If you don’t like Sabbath, please stop listening to our show. You’re better off without us and we’re better off without you.

Lots of despair also about the SST back catalogue and how poorly it’s being maintained. Rollins doesn’t seem to be a Sonic Youth fan. Mentions Half Japanese opening up for the Dead Kennedys in 1980, that must have been quite a show. Then there’s funny stuff like:

That many records come out without my knowledge is nothing new. Bands come together, record several great albums, tour relentlessly and break up for one reason or another and I find out when their best-of comes out years later. A lot gets by me. Good thing I’m not the president.

I know the feeling well, and I’m sure you do too. He relates some interesting tales of prison recordings, such as Robert Pete Williams, who wrote “I’ve Grown So Ugly”, which is covered by Captain Beefheart.

John Lennon, Signature Box, 8CD box – I was never a huge John Lennon fan, but hey – how can any self-respecting music lover not be a John Lennon fan? And, since I didn’t have any of his solo CDs, the release of this gorgeous discography to commemorate what would have been his 70th birthday was the perfect excuse to catch up.

John Lennon was with us for 40 years, and we’ve lived without him for 30. And then this box comes along and reminds us of it all. The box itself is somewhat outsized, and much bigger than you need to hold 10 CDs. It is all white, with the word “LENNON” emblazoned in blue sky/cloud motif on top of all that white. When you slip slide the top of the box off (tight, the way an iPhone box would breathe open mid-pace), you see a greeting:

FROM
YOKO
JULIAN
SEAN

Personal messages from the three surviving Lennons. Below that is a hardcover book, white with the word “Yes” emblazoned on it in blue. The booklet has an essay and photos.

Below it are John Lennon’s eight CDs, and one singles and rarities collection:

- John Lennon, Plastic Ono Band
- John Lennon, Imagine
- John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band, Some Time in NYC
- John Lennon, Mind Games
- John Lennon, Walls and Bridges
- John Lennon, Rock ‘n’ Roll
- John Lennon, Double Fantasy
- John Lennon, Milk and Honey
- Singles and Home Tapes

Each of these (except the last) contains a thick and glorious booklet that include photos, essays and lyrics.

Once your fantasy has taken in all this glorious media, you can note the side of the inner box, which has a nice portrait of John and Yoko (full body) on one side, and an abstract concept of their faces on the other.

Finally, at the bottom, there’s a drawer that contains a gorgeous print of a drawing of John and Yoko sitting under a tree. Nice.

The square white book that comes with the set is a gorgeous little thing, with the word “yes” inlaid in blue in what seems to be John’s handwriting. It contains 60 pages of photos and writings on John Lennon, with some lyrics, doodles and artwork. Many of the photos are of John and Yoko together, and there are some of John before he met Yoko; there are no pictures of John’s two sons. John is in every picture in the book except a picture of a Ringo Starr album cover, inexplicably included here. There’s a great picture of the bed-in that is followed by a pen drawing of the scene. My favourite picture is of John and Yoko at Giza, with the pyramids in the background. The essay is not bad, as it gives saucy quotes from John pissed off about people’s expectations of him, or their poor opinions of Yoko (and, by extension then, of him too), but it also re-tells some of the stories that are in the individual album booklets. Some of the typography is screwy, as a few lines drift out of the left column. On pages 7, 11, 14, 15, 20, 44, 45, 48 and 56 this problem exists. Is this some sort of code? Sadly, there are no labels or credits for the pics and paintings. Neil Young Archives Volume 1 this ain’t, but it’s a work of art nonetheless.

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band - The booklet has a nice drawing in it depicting the album cover scene on page 2, and the picture from “Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band” on the back of the booklet. There’s also a nice pic of John in a kimono, and John and Yoko posing with large pictures of themselves as children, probably when they were each only four years old or so. The essay gives a short background to the recording of the album, as they all do, to set the scene.

The music, of course, is great. Opening track is “Mother”, probably the best song John ever did. The gloomy bell that makes you think out of something Black Sabbath would have done around the time, then that burst of music: a guitar, a piano, a drum and a voice all coming in at the same time. The song is so simple, so heart-wrenching, and even if it seems to come in with everything right off the bat, it just builds and builds. It’s hard to hit the skip button when this one comes on, for whatever reason, you just want to drop everything you’re doing and focus all of your attention. “Hold On” is a decent song, “I Found Out” is an early punk classic with minimalistic production and great lyrics.

“Working Class Hero” is, of course, the classic of anger that it is, covered as it has been by such great voices as Marianne Faithful and others. “Isolation” is a scary dirge that could have been written by Roger Waters. “Remember” is cool as cucumber rock ‘n’ roll, and “Love” is as quiet as quiet gets. “Well, Well, Well” kicks and grooves, it’s mean. “Look At Me” is a very boring ballad, or dirge, while “God” blisters with iconoclasm and a great repetitive groove. “I don’t believe in Elvis, I don’t believe in Zimmerman, I don’t believe in Beatles – I just believe in me, Yoko and me.” The final track, “My Mummy’s Dead” is a fragment, just like John liked to use for his own albums and Beatles albums. A brilliant album full of great tracks.

Imagine - The booklet has pictures of John at his white grand piano, lounging in his white deck chairs, wrestling a pig, or hanging out with Yoko or Phil Specter.

The title track opens the piece, and everyone’s heard it a million times – it’s been voted the greatest composition of all creation. “Crippled Inside” is an old-time country rocker with great piano, “Jealous Guy” is the greatest whistling song ever written, while “It’s So Hard” is more standard rock ‘n’ roll with some cool saxophone. “I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama” is some great swamp rock, love it. “Give Me Some Truth” is fast-moving anger rock, John spouting bile at critics. “I’m sick and tired of hearing things from uptight short-sighted narrow-minded hypocrites/ All I want is the truth, just give me the truth,” and it just goes on and on. Amazing. “Oh My Love” is a simple, beautiful ditty with just John’s voice and guitar, with some piano. “How Do You Sleep” is another anger song, this time against Paul McCartney, which starts off with those pretentious string sounds, then gets into some more swamp boogie. That is followed by the simple (and similarly-titled) “How?”, which is a bit of a schmaltzer with strings and everything. “Oh Yoko!” is a fun song to close the album.

Some Time In New York City - One disc of studio music and one disc of live recordings. The booklet opens up with a picture of John and Yoko and their band of the day, Elephant’s Memory, with a little map to name the individual – but no index to the map. Great, I guess someone screwed up there. There’s also a groovy picture of John and Yoko playing onstage with Frank Zappa, as they did for the scary final four songs on the live recording that covers Disc 2. The gatefold CD holder has three panes and shows John and Yoko posing in front of a smashed car, Yoko looking un-Asian and wearing a witch’s hat, there’s also a really atrocious photo of the band onstage. This is the first release ascribed to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and it is a highly politicised work.

Disc 1, which represents a studio recording, starts off with “Woman Is The Nigger Of The World”, sounding a lot like something Leonard Cohen might have put on “Death of a Ladies Man”, with a big, brash Saturday Night Live band sort of sound. “Sisters, O Sisters” is the first real Yoko Ono song in the John Lennon series, it starts off with Yoko’s voice saying “Male chauvinist pig engineer, nyeh heh”, and John saying “Right on, sister.” It’s like another world. The opening salvo has the feel of a theatre piece, it then becomes a bit of old school rock ‘n’ roll that is actually a great little song from Yoko. Love it, even if this form of music isn’t really what Yoko was about – I wonder if she was saddled into it somehow by John to win her greater acceptance from the music people he’d surrounded himself with from the Beatles days and carried over into his solo work. “Attica State” is more great anger rock from both John and Yoko, but somehow Yoko is more prominent in this (Ironically, David Chapman is housed here on his life sentence for murdering John). “Born in a Prison” sounds very much like something you’d hear from David Letterman’s band, but it’s a ballad from Yoko and is a bit maudlin high school. “New York City” is great rock ‘n’ roll from John, “Standing on a corner, just me and Yoko Ono”, love it! “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is a great piece of funk from John (“This is not a U2 song, this is a John and Yoko song.”) “The Luck Of The Irish” is a nice song, if a bit over-produced with the strings and the piano and all and Yoko affecting an opera singer-type of voice. I like the Shonen Knife version a bit more, but that may be because I heard it first (it also certainly doesn’t suffer from over-production). “John Sinclair”, despite the fantastic slide guitar, is the first flop of the series, probably because of the irritating “got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to…” that he does. I never want to hear the song again, unless I’m convinced otherwise. “Angela” is much better, a song that Yoko sings about Angela Davis, who was imprisoned for 18 months without trial. “We’re All Water” is a crazy old rocker sung by Yoko that has plenty of her freaky vocal noises on it.

Disc two represents two live recordings. The first was from a show done at the Lyceum Ballroom in London, England on December 15th 1969 for a UNICEF charity concert when John and Yoko were playing with Eric Clapton, Bonnie and Delaney, George Harrison, Keith Moon, Billy Preston, Klaus Voorman, and tons of other people. The two songs are an eight minute-long version of “Cold Turkey”, a song John had released as a single and is presented here as a relatively straight forward version, and “Don’t Worry Kyoko”, a 16 minute-long Yoko Ono noise freakout that presages anything that Hijo Kaidan ever did on the Japanese noise scene in the late 80s and 90s, and which starts with the wail “Johnnnnnnnnn I love you; repent, you killed Harati you murderer”, which is followed by jabs of great funk that is punctuated by those unholy wails. The best thing is the applause at the end – whatever people might have said about Yoko at the time, the crowd seemed into it, or at least blasted into some drop-jaw respect. The last four tracks were recorded with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention on June 6th 1971 and Frank is heard prominently speaking on some tracks, particularly “Scumbag”. “Well (Baby Please Don’t Go)” is an old school rock ‘n’ roll song done to precision by the Mothers, with Yoko’s insane wailing accompanying it, another unhinged moment. Great, great, great solo, which I can only guess was supplied by Zappa himself, and there is tons of applause. Yes!! This eventually drifts into “Jamrag”, which is less interesting, as it gets into the keyboard and Ono-wail thing and is quite experimental, it sounds a lot like prog rock. “Scumbag” starts on a note and is near-perfect, with John pitching in 35 seconds into the song with the only lyrics to the song: “Scumbag.” I have to wonder if this sense of humor is more Frank’s than John’s; it seems more Zappa-esque, but who really knows – John was the boss in those days. “Au” happens when the band leaves the stage, and then Yoko carries on with her voice and some feedback. It’s really fantastic, and she gets great applause.

Mind Games - Just a few things in the booklet, namely a press conference pic with John and Yoko, a wonky “Declaration of Nutopia” letter signed and caricatured by both John and Yoko, and a strange message about the three most important books John’s read recently; oh yeah, and a nice picture of a cat on top of it.

The eponymous opening song is probably already very well known for its atmospheric lyrics and gorgeous rhythms; it’s followed by “Tight A$”, which is good fun – some old blistering rock ‘n’ roll from John’s Reeperbahn era. “Aisumasen (I’m Sorry)” is something you’d hear from anyone, whether they’re Madonna or Lunarin, but it’s also a beautiful song that is well-written, nicely produced, and a real keeper. “One Day (At A Time)” sounds like a reject from Sgt Pepper’s. “Bring On The Lucie (Freda People)” is really great, envigorating rock ‘n’ roll with a rousing popular chorus and fantastic right-on lyrics. Fantastic! “Intuition” is sort of a boring folk song that sounds more like Paul than John; “Out of the Blue” sort of sounds like “Sexy Sadie” and something else, but more produced. “Only People” is more rousing groove and fun! “I Know (I Know)” sounds like more confession from John, it’s a nice acoustic ballad that becomes a woodsy rocker (“I’m sorry, yes I am”). It includes the line “Today I love you more than yesterday/ Right now I love you more right now.” Sounds like a less elegant version than something else I know (try Elvis’ Ku-u-i-po: “”Ku-u-i-po I love you more today, More today than yesterday / But I love you less today, Less than I will tomorrow”. Continuing (ironically), with the Hawaiian theme, “You Are Here” is a Honolulu rocker, that includes the line “East is east and west is west, the twain shall meet/ East is west, and west is east, Let it be complete”, disagreeing completely with Rudyard Kilping, who said “East is east and west is west, and never the twin shall meet”. Album closer “Meat City” is a really amazing rocker that includes some crazy voice-manipulated bits in the first part. Were it not for those, it would be one of John Lennon’s best bits of his solo career.

Walls and Bridge - some illustrations, and some pictures of John with long, long hair hanging out with Elton John, who played with him on “Whatever Gets You Thru The Night”. The cover is a collage of three drawings John made when he was 11, the booklet shows all three in their entirety. This album was recorded during John’s lost weekend in Los Angeles with May Pang when he also produced an album with Harry Nilsson, and at one point there was a mini Beatles reunion when Paul McCartney showed up at the studio to jam with John, Nilsson, Stevie Wonder and some other musicians. The recordings are available on YouTube, but they are a bit tough to listen to, with the sounds of bickering an coke snorting.

The album starts well, with the slinky “Going Down On Love”, which is followed closely by the honky tonk funk of “Whatever Gets You Thru The Night”, which features Elton John and his whole band and was Lennon’s first #1 single as a solo artist (and the last one he’d enjoy in his lifetime). “Old Dirt Road” is a boring dirge, at least compared to the ripping funk of the song that follows it, “What You Got.” “Bless You” is a sad song to Yoko that includes some nice horns, while “Scared” is a gloomy tune with a full brass band accompanying it that has some nice guitar work. It hits the spot, while” #9 Dream” is a very nice dreamy song with a gorgeous, memorable tune. “Surprise, Surprise (Sweet Bird of Paradox)” is a groovy rocker that’s punctuated with horns. “Steel and Glass” is an angry rip at Beatles manager Alan Klein, with some dark funk and ominous strings, each verse is another stab at the man. “Beef Jerky” is a cool and silly instrumental, with prominent guitar and cool horns, and an occasional crowd chant of “beef jerky, beef jerky, beef jerky.” “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down And Out)” feels sorry for itself, with bitter lyrics like “I’ll scratch your back and you’ll knife mine.” Last song is a knocked-off song called “Ya Ya“, a song that John was obliged to release in order to satisfy a settlement with music publisher Morris Levy who was able to establish in court that John and the Beatles ripped off Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me” (which he owned the rights to) in “Come Together” (hey – they do sound similar, and he really lifted one of the line – although not as baldly as the Beach Boys did to Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” in their “Surfin’ USA“; why was everybody ripping off Chuck Berry and treating him so disrespectfully?). An 11-year-old Julian Lennon plays drums. It’s fun, but a bit too short. Lennon would record it properly on his next album (and finally also satisfy his legal obligation to Levy, who had decided after hearing the crappy “Ya Ya” to take things into his own hands by mail-order releasing ROOTS: John Lennon Sings The Great Rock & Roll Hits against John and his record company’s wishes, a major rock ‘n’ roll cock-up… but a very interesting one at least).

Rock ‘N’ Roll - The title, written like that, seems like a typo, but that’s the way it’s spelled (just like Guns N’ Roses looks wrong). The booklet has four pictures of a young John Lennon from the Hamburg days, and no lyrics sheet. The three “ghosts” that are strolling by are the other Beatles (Stuart Sutcliffe, George Harrison and Paul McCartney – seems that Pete Best was absent from the photo shoot that day, or didn’t make it into the photo that was finally used).

The album opens with a faithful version of Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lula”, and is followed by that version of Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” that everybody knows. “Rip It Up” and “Ready Teddy”, both by Bumps Blackwell, are sexy rockers done as a medley, with the provocative lyrics “Gonna rip it up, gonna rock it up, gonna shake it up, gonna ball it up, gonna rick it up and ball tonight,” great rock with horns. “You Can’t Catch Me” is the offending Chuck Berry that John was nailed on for lifting ideas for “Come Together” that brought this whole album into existence – the publisher of “You Can’t Catch Me” agreed to a settlement if John would record some of his songs, and he finally did on this album. Lennon’s version of the song is loud and boisterous and a lot of fun. Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame”, a song that the Beatles must have played a lot in the early days, and can be heard on Part 1 of the Beatles Anthology DVD series, is given the slow, heavy Cheap Trick treatment. “Do You Want To Dance”, the old Bobby Freeman number, is given a kind of island vibe to it, even if John shouts the chorus. Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” is a slow, hornified rocker, while “Slippin’ And Slidin’” has a lot of insane energy. Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue” is given the full Buddy Holly treatment, with the rolling drums. Who could record anything but a faithful version of this unique classic? “Bring It On Home To Me/Send Me Some Lovin’” is pretty standard, while “Bony Moronie” really zooms, with fantastic fuzz guitar and long, grungy aggressive lyrics. At 2:18, this release’s version of “Ya Ya” is a bit more than twice as long as the version that closes “Walls and Bridges”, which John had done with his 12-year-old son Julian Lennon. It has long instrumental bits and seems more like a kids song than anything else. “Just Because” is a schmaltzy Lloyd Price song that John doesn’t really take seriously and drags out endlessly. It’s pretty boring and not a great album-closer (the sessions also produced another song, “Move Over, Ms. L”, which was the B-side to “Stand By Me”, the album’s only single. It’s in the set, but on another CD).

“Rock’N'Roll” was the last album John would release for five years. In the meantime, he reconciled with Yoko, they had a baby, John cleaned up, he became a devoted father and spent his whole day with his new boy, Sean. After a while, he felt the urge to make music again, and eventually he had enough for “Double Fantasy.”

Double Fantasy - The booklet has pics of John, John and Yoko, and John and Yoko and Sean. It also has a nice pen drawing of John being a dad to his little kid.

The album is a mix of songs by John and Yoko, meaning that approximately every other one is by one or the other. John has seven songs and so does Yoko. John and Yoko did the album by themselves, not under contract to a studio, so they had the luxury of shopping it around. David Geffen was the one who got the contract, and it launched his label. John starts it up with “(Just Like) Starting Over”, the dreamy tune with the angelic chorus backing it up, followed by Yoko’s very new wave “Kiss Kiss Kiss”, a very groovy tune with sampled sounds “da-te” and an orgasmic double climax over the final 30 seconds at the end of the song. This is the album with the greatest Yoko presence, and her first real contribution since her stellar contributions to “Some Time In New York City”, actually. “Cleanup Time” is groovy funky psychedelic slow and peaceful that incorporates nursery rhymes, horns, and some fantastic guitar work. Yoko’s “Give Me Something” is electronic New Wave and sounds a bit like Peter Schilling, very robotic. “Give me something that’s not cold cold cold.” John brings back the soul with the mournful “I’m Losing You”, a hard song to sing or listen to when you know what happened to him later, which Yoko blends into “I’m Moving On”, where she demonstrates the spite of a woman betrayed by her man – it has almost the same beat, but a different riff, it is more mechanical. “You didn’t have to tell a white lie/ you know you scarred me for life/ Don’t stick your finger in my pie/ You know I see through your jive/ I want the truth and nothing more.” Both songs are great, and they’re even better when heard together (which you usually wouldn’t, because radio DJs typically play the former and skip the latter… and so do compilers of John Lennon anthologies). Next is “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)”, a wonderful song for five-year-old Sean Lennon that brings the family back together. “Watching The Wheels” is a regular song and quite well known. “Yes, I’m Your Angel” by Yoko Ono is some sort of 1920s flapper song, not innovative in any way, but still fun. “Woman” by John is that fantastic love song with that great riff and the spacy vocals, hammed up a bit with backing vocalists. Yoko has her own version of a boy song with “Beautiful Boys”, which is gloomy and more like a Nico song than anything else. “Your tears are streaming even when you’re smiling.” “Dear Yoko” is a funky rocker (it starts off with “well-a-well-a-well-a”) with great vocals and terrific lyrics that is somewhat like “Oh Yoko!” from “Imagine”. The last two songs are by Yoko: “Every Man Has A Woman Who Loves Him” is a bit of a New Wave plodder that is a companion to John’s “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down And Out), and “Hard Times Are Over” is a kind of a warbly Broadway tune that comes off as somewhat overproduced.

Milk and Honey - The booklet has many pictures, mainly John with Sean or Yoko, with a few of him on his own. The final picture is Yoko in a kimono sitting alone, looking off to her right, seeming very lonely. It is the last statement of the set, as the last two CDs (“singles” and “home recordings” don’t have a booklet).

This album was released posthumously, and of the 12 songs odd-numbered songs are John’s, while even-numbered songs are Yoko’s. Some of the songs don’t have that big production, at least not for John’s songs, since Yoko still had a chance to at least see her songs completed. The release opens with “Steppin’ Out”, a fun song about a househusband going crazy after being cooped up with the family for too long and watching Sesame Street, it has a chunky, chugging feel to it. Yoko’s first number “Sleepless Night” is a funky, confused new wave/dub wander around soundscapes and strange grooves, the singing is pretty good. It has a very experimental sound and he Japanese accent seems to be gone. “I Don’t Want to Face It” starts off with John goofing around, saying “un, deux, eins, zwei hickle fickle.” The song is a pretty standard rocker. Yoko’s second number “Don’t Be Scared” is pretty much pure dub, with plenty of deep bass, scratchy guitars and a bit of percussion. It is a bit jazzy and has backing vocals and just sort of meanders aimlessly. “Everybody’s Talking” is that goofy rocker with the weird Thompson Twins percussion feel to it. “O’ Sanity” has an overproduced feel to it, but it is very short and has great, crazy lyrics: “It’s only sane to be insane/ Psychotic builds a castle and lives in it/ I don’t know what to do with my sanity/ When the world’s at the verge of calamity.” John’s “Borrowed Time”, with its ironic title (so many sadly ironic titles on that last album: “I Don’t Want To Face It”, “Nobody Told Me”, “Borrowed Time” and especially “Grow Old With Me”) is quite minimal and simple, also not a very exciting song. “Your Hands” is a sexy song of longing, sung partly in Japanese – she sounds like she’s singing a national anthem in these parts – with the translation of what she’s sung delivered in English in a semi-hurried speaking tone. She delivers one of the set’s strongest lyrics here: “In a day, no matter how many times we meet, it’s not enough/ In a lifetime, no matter how many times we meet, it’s not enough/ In a lifetime, no matter how many times we meet, it’s not enough/ In many lifetimes, no matter how many times we meet, it’s not enough.” The tone is militant, defiant. Oh man – brings a tear every time. “(Forgive Me) My Little Flower Princess” is sort of a Roxy Music crooner sung by an apologetic philanderer. “Let Me Count The Ways” is Yoko’s simple piano ditty for John, talking about how much she misses John, lots of memories. “Grow Old With Me” is a beautiful song, with John singing passionately a really sweet ditty, with piano and simple drum accompaniment. “God bless our love, God bless our love.” The final song, “You’re The One”, is by Yoko – it starts off with the sound of explosions, sampled voices, keyboards, and then erupts into a strange new wave tune that sounds like early Talk Talk. It’s pretty good, she performs a sort of strange vocal ballet that has drips of inspiration for Kate Bush and Bjork. Good stuff, Yoko!

The album cover for “Milk And Honey” is similar to the cover for “Double Fantasy”, just a close-up of John and Yoko showing their love for each other, Yoko looks great, and John looks happy, both of these photos came from the same session. It must be hard for Yoko to look at those pictures after her terrible loss.

It’s hard for me to take, and hard for me to believe, that John was 40 when he was murdered, nearly the same age as I am now. I’m very lucky to have made it this far, and have a beautiful family to share my life with, I wish John could have had the same.

The final two discs are the singles and the rarities. For the singles and B-sides which don’t appear on the albums, there’s the percussion-led and mightily aggressive sax-fuelled “Power To The People” (great!!), “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” (how can you complain? It’s one of the best Christmas songs ever), “Instant Karma” (sounds like a Beatles song), “Cold Turkey” (great bustin’ blues stomp), and “Give Peace A Chance” (one of the greatest group raps ever – stellar!). There’s also “Move Over Ms L”, the B-side to “Stand By Me” from “Rock’N'Roll”. The song is good fun, with its rollicking beat, and the horns keeping things hot.

The home recordings have four songs not found on any other CD in this set, and seven demos of well-known songs, most of which are for songs that appear on the first album. These include a version of “Mother” that sounds a lot like the original albeit without the 34 seconds of gloomy church bell toming at the beginning; similar for “Love” and “God”, which are presented in stripped-down acoustic versions. “Remember” is just the song without the intro, John singing and playing the piano. “I Don’t Want To Be A Soldier Mama” is John with guitar, piano and drum accompaniment, it is very folky with a bit of honky tonk while the final recording is full of electric sounds, intense vocals and is quite swampy and sinister. “I Found Out” is very familiar, while “Nobody Told Me” is even more stripped down, with a horrible recording quality. “Isolation” is just John’s voice with piano, he still sounds a lot like Roger Waters. “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” is a very stripped-down version, with just voice, guitar, and handclaps and different lyrics.

Then there are the original songs: “Honey Don’t” is not on other albums, it sounds like an old rocker. “One Of The Boys” is John and guitar, friendly and homey, as is “India, India,” which sounds almost like a James Taylor groove-out. “Serve Yourself” is a song mocking religious freaks that sort of parodies Bob Dylan’s “Serve Somebody”, quite righteously taking the piss out of old Bob.

As a bonus, here’s a clip of John and Bob bickering in a taxi in London:

Got to catch up on some of my reviews! First the CDs:

I got Boris and Ian Astbury’s BXI at this time. For the review of that CD, see My Big Bad Boris Page.

Carnation, “12.21.12″ -
Carnation is a band from Melbourne, Australia, they are a shoegazer/Britpop-type band that sounds a lot like early “Love”-era Cult, but perhaps with Michael Stipe singing instead of Ian Astbury. They recently did a tour of Singapore, they’ve got a funky account of it here. As far as I know, this is the only band that has come to tour Singapore, playing six shows here, each at a different place. Bravo, guys!

“12.21.12″ is quite an improvement on the opening EP, and nearly every song is a good one. The production values are hot, and it sounds like a big release from a major label. “Coming Down” has all the right drums and screaming guitar chorus, with the vocals soothing their way in. “Gone” is their really amazing song, for which they have a really cool video. The song is a killer winner that makes you want to get up and dance, the soaring guitar sounds can’t help but force you to take note. I hope this song helped turn them into superstars wherever they are from. “Judas” is a funky number with some slide guitar, “The Future” pulses with strange energy and quick barre chords, while “2012″ is all about the cool licks, earning the guys some bonus points in the groove department.

Carnation, “Carnation” EP – Carnation’s first release is an EP of five songs, all of them quite good. The band has a sound that is a bit like early Cult, they start the first song “Up All Night Long” off with some funky drumming, then a killer riff, and immediately the vocals kick in six bars (or 12 seconds) into the song. Start it off smart. Being the first album, the production is a bit hollow, and they have one fewer members than “12.21.12″, but the songwriting is fantastic. “Priestess” is all about big splashy riffs, and the band jumps up with a very good Cult-like tune. It has a very ’80s alternative rock sound, I guess you could already call this retro. The other songs on the EP are quite nice, and the last one hides a hidden track at the end. Oooohhh… aaaaaaahhh…

Cathedral, “The Ethereal Mirror” – This is Cathedral’s big label album, the one that they did after “Forest of Equilibrium”, which nearly invented doom metal. But already, on their second album, they sound completely different, with a more stoner sound that the doom fans derided as “disco doom.” Album opener “Velvet Vortex” is an instrumental number that is not bad, followed quickly by “Ride”, a nutty psychedelic thing, if a bit boring. “”Enter The Worms” is more my style, as it has that doom metal bite and plenty of growl. The band sounds great. As far as “disco doom” goes, “Magic Mountain” is a great number, with plenty of noise, groove, funk and all around heaviness, and a fantastic psychedelic solo! As Lee Dorrian himself says, “oooh… dy-no-mite!” Love this stuff. They have handclaps in the mix, but here it’s more ironic than over-produced, with Lee’s somewhat suicidal backlash at the macho grindcore/doom scene. Handclapping along to doom, ha ha ha… “Fountain of Innocence” is sort of pop-metal, sorta, but it is also very complex, and like “Magic Mountain” it has lots of parts – pop metal riff, heavy riff, psychedelic passage, and all sorts of fun. “Grim Luxuria” is a bit of horror metal, with lots of growling and frothing at the mouth and insane laughter from lead doomster Lee Dorrian, and a horrorshow guitar solo – great psychedelic blues. “Jaded Entity” is atonal and weird at first, but quickly becomes a nice grinder, also with growling and mincing of teeth aplenty. “Ashes You Leave” is a slow, boring droner. “Phantasmagoria” is true, plodding, head smashing on a tortoise shell sllllllloooooow-aaaaaassssss-mollllllllasssssses doom, a song that could have easily found a home on the first Cathedral album. It’s so beautiful. After 4.5 minutes of that, the song picks up for a few more minutes of mid-tempo rock. At the end the song just sort of grinds out into nothingness. Perfect. The album finishes with “Imprisoned In Flesh”, a strange near-acoustic number that seems pretty throwaway.

My version of the CD came with a great DVD, a documentary that is the companion to the version that is on the “Forest of Equilibrium” CD (clearly, it was filmed at the same time and released in two parts, i.e. there’s the pub interview scene that is the same across both DVDs).

Blokes sittin’ in pub, guys from the first two albums:

Lee Dorrian, vocals, sound effects (current member)
Garry Jennings (Gaz), guitars (current member)
Adam Lehan, guitars (past member)
Mark Griffiths (Griff), bass (past member)
Drummers Mike Smail (from Forest of Equilibriuim) and Mark Wharton (from the Ethereal Mirror) were absent.

There is a lot of discussion about the spirit of the times. The second album was a reaction to the people at the time of the first album shouting “faster, faster”, but then the second albums was a shock to the fans who had gotten used to the first album.

“Soul Sacrifice”, from the between-LPs release, was when they really changed. Lee only wanted to record slow. “Why can’t we write any slow songs like ‘Silent Rapture’, from the first album, he’d ask. Still says it for every album.

On this recording, the musicianship became very strong. “Gaz and Adam got better as guitar players, getter at songwriting as well.” On the DVD there is a great clip without sound of the band freaking out onstage in front of a sea of faces, and some great clips from Osaka castle, also toured Israel and went to the States to play CBGBs at a killer gig on Christmas 1992 with Napalm Death, Trouble, Cathedral The Obsessed and Crowbar – amazing!

Recording of album was not pleasurable, but they took the Sony/Columbia money;
Columbia sent him away to write lyrics, Lee stayed at a hotel next to a pub and got pissed, walking along the beach at night with a Dictaphone trying to write lyrics. Admirable because he was consciously trying to change styles and become a brilliant lyricist, which he did. Had supernatural experience with ghost in bedroom, then the pillow in staircase episode freaking him out. Reading esoteric literature, Nigel Fellows, psychadelic rock groups, progressive psychedelic influences came to front. Torturing himself by smoking lots of weed and reading lots of books by Leilel Wendel about death, the angel of death, reading magic books, having weird supernatural experiences to make the record vague and tripped out.

There was the experience of using the Sex Pistols studio. Talking to the groundsman about Paul Cook throwing the TV into the pool, eating totally deluxe vegan meals, nighttime action, producer got heavy, daunting studio, demos at Clive’s place, clear tone on guitar, Adam’s leads are cutting through and sounding nice, but it sounded like pop. “That’s what doom’s about.””No, you don’t want to be doing that.” Argued about the start of “Phantasagoria.”

- “We’ve compromised on some things, but this has got to stay.”

- “He said “Mick Jagger’s bass player wouldn’t play something like that.”

Lee: “what a cocksucker, what a nob.” “Please cut out ‘what a wanker’, because he produced the record – he might get the DVD.”

With the album artwork, the main focus was the wheel, the circular motion of life, the cruelty of religion, medieval cruelty, more abstract, Cathedral riding roughshod through all this madness; original title was “Ride through the Decay”, title changed two days before printing.

Drew only from the head and from visual cues, very naive stuff, which was difficult to do, very stylistic, no band photograph, incorporated the four musicians into the painting, the groups weren’t doing it any more, better than a posed photo, one of the group left, turned him into the grim reaper. Griff turned into Grim Reaper, Gaz played bass on album.

Dave Pratchett travelled to Nottingham with a little bag of art material to paint it at Earache office, he took a day to do it all. “Religion is very guilty of trying to smash the feminine, blaming Eve for all sin, which of course is nonsense, so we’ve made religion itself, and the apple itself is rotten here. Human society will be rotten as long as religion has a hold. It’s going to be a struggle.”

Mates broke up after a major label gig, it was tours that they didn’t want to do, they became the “ethereal two-piece”. Lee: “Maybe we compromised ourselves musically a bit, even though listening back it’s still quite a strong record. I think we did, in a way. I think in terms of production we did, at the time it felt like we were compromising. The songs are ours, the music was our music, he never did anything that drastic. He rearranged a few things, but he never wrote anything. All of the music was ours anyway.”

“There’s no denying that Dave Ecker is a fantastic producer, but we just were not ready to work with someone like that. We were underground kids recording in shitty studios, al of a sudden you’re in this deluxe luxury place owned by Richard Branson doing a record for Columbia, and it’s not what we were about.”

Photo shoots to look like the Black Crowes with a wardrobe assistant, Gaz wore lime green flares and a Black Sabbath Vol. 4 t-shirt to freak out the macho grindcore narrow-minded guys. Not pictures in Coventry with a hangover. $10,000 for photo session, rejected all pictures. Seven clips from “Magic Mountain” video, four clips from the “Ride” video.

Were fans of Mercyful Fate, but didn’t want to be on that tour, did meet and greet for winners of a competition. Got very disillusioned. Frustration got so far that the band was falling out with each other. Were inventing things in interviews dissing Columbia. “Ethereal Two-piece” joke. Something happened about merchandise and publishing and the band split in two, doing a tour with Fight.

Childish stuff going on, nobody was innocent except Scott. Close-knit group splitting up. Should have been fighting against what was tearing them apart, instead of each other. Lee went over the top with the fancy clothes to mess with the head of fans who were so macho, he went the other way. People talked about their clothes more than their music after a while, and it was called “disco doom.” The band went to disco clubs because they didn’t want to go to rock clubs.

Bootsy Collins was going to remix Magic Mountain. Columbia thought that they were taking the piss, and maybe they were because it was so close to the line. It would have alienated the audience even more. The band was too heavy for the mainstream yet too commercial for the underground.

Had their passports stolen, lost the photos with Rob Halford; Adam’s last gig, couldn’t communicate, didn’t want to leave. Within three years, two of the original members had left. Lack of money was a problem.

Band goes around the table talking about what they are doing now: Adam, a dogsbody for an electronics firm, an overblown office junior who is paid an extremely small amount of money; Lee loves running the record label, does it full time, most of the time, gets a buzz out of it even if there’s no wage, wants to do it for a long time. Collects expensive psychedelic records; Adam is an office worker for money, nothing exciting, doing no music except for a hobby. Is a father to two kids; Gaz still plays in Cathedral, part-owner of a major retail firm.

Lee: “I remember about 1992, walking from my flat in Illfields into town for a point somewhere, thinking ‘I don’t think it’s going to last much longer, give it a year or two and it’s all going to be over.’ But we didn’t expect, no way, to be here all these years later, absolutely no way. It’s almost 20 years.”

Gaz: Succeeded with everything they’ve done: done sound check with Trouble, played with Tony Iommi, toured with Black Sabbath, did things with Saint Vitus, met people from Witchfinder General and Angel Witch.

Old pictures of Griff. Lee could share lyrics ideas with Griff, now he’s on his own. Griff misses the times, Adam regrets leaving, doesn’t regret his life since leaving Cathedral. Misses it. Misses his mates more than touring.

Define doom: Griff says “It’s the feeling of power, the feeling of rain-soaked depression, when you’re feeling down – that’s doom. Doom is the end. The End.” Lee disagrees, says its indefinable.

Photographing Satan’s cock: It’s a metal statue, it’s Satan’s cock, it’s the most metal thing he’s ever seen.

Videos for :”Ride” and “Midnight Mountain”

“Ride” – mainly a performance of the band, lighting and psychedelic effects, including mirroring.

“Midnight Mountain” – a hodge-podge of crazy images.

Notes from sketch paper of album cover, by Dave Pratchett:

They play nice tunes on a harp fashioned from a cadaver, perhaps she’s taking twisted pleasure from a former lover

Pig-Monk sees it as his duty to destroy apples i.e. sex

The Black Angel looks superb in latex (god must be jealous) Bible in one hand he pulls down angel-cherubs with another and pushes the torture wheel with his third. Three hands symbolises supernatural power.

The ants form an arc of triumph. They alone will survive the holocaust.

Punch synonimous with cruelty and how to fascinate kids with the idea

The love birds have fallen out.

Three armed pig-monk takes the shape of wolf to sexually assult torture victim (shades of little red riding hood)

Once pretty girl about to be corrupted.

The artist, sickened by the cruelty of feudalism and his own imagination, revisits his own picture in the shape of a mythical monster to put it out of its misery with the aid of the C20 homage to man, the nuclear bomb.

Commenting on Religious bigotry I can’t let Muslim Fundamentalism off the hook.

Victim with painted smile

Punch synonimous with cruelty and how to facinate kids with the idea

Gods instrument? No, God is mans instrument to destroy the less powerful masses

Filigee border gets too near the centre

Cathedral, “Carnival Bizarre” – A truly wonderful Cathedral release. “Vampire Sun” starts off with “Are you high?” just like Ozzy did in live shows with Black Sabbath. The song stomps and writhes with a great freakin’ riff pileage, but eventually just drones on without hitting its rock. “Hopkins (The Witchfinder General)” is a song inspired by the Vincent Price film and samples him (Cathedral also adores an older band, who took their name from the film, called Witchfinder General); it’s true stoner insanity and has great riff, great vocals, it’s just all-around amazing. The song is fun with lots of dynamic vocals as interesting as the guitars. Lee Dorrian uses his voice like an instrument in the same way that Mike Patton of Faith No More does, only in a less theatrical fashion. “Utopian Blaster” is a cool-o song with a great title that the band did with one of the real rock greats, Tony Iommi, on guitar. The song has supreme riffage and a good groove and powerful presence, great mini-solos, long solos, and strange vocal passages. “Night of the Seagulls” is menacing and scary and just builds on very broad riffs and scary thoughts and images, including spooky guitar sounds and weird groanings at the end that don’t come from seagulls! “Carnival Bizarre” is a great rocker full of slashing riffs that just go all over the place, and Lee Dorrian is full of spit and venom. The song has interesting prog rock passages – a phaser guitar/vocal section, and a hockey arena organ-like verse, then the obligatory guitar solo. Beauty way to go, eh?!? “Intertias Cave” is a good ole rocker that incorporated the riff from Moby Dick (wise-asses) that has some sweet singalong melodies. “Fangalacticus Supergoria” is a truly freaked out song with mighty vocals, on top of a really screaming metal song. The shrieking and wailing is quite unholy. Wow!

The CD is accompanied with a DVD that has eight promo videos (two of which, “Ride” and “Magic Mountain” are also on the “The Ethereal Mirror” DVD), and a concert video from 1992. In the concert video, Lee says “The lyrics are a bit negative, but in a positive way.” There’s a strange stoned interlude between the videos, and it’s all good fun to see the boys looking young and energetic and with full heads of hair. The band plays “Soul Sacrifice”, “Equilibrium”, “Autumn Twilight”, “Frozen Rapture” and “A Funeral Request.” Each song is a bonanza of lights and freakouts, and there’s hair flying everywhere. We don’t see any audience shots, but it was probably a sea of people in the dark. There are lots of coloured stage lights, so although there were a lot of lights there’s not a lot of brightness and it was a spooky stage.

The Promo videos are great:

“Ebony Tears” in a graveyard, the band wearing crosses, Motorhead t-shirt, spider, treetops, a burial and a wedding.”

“Autumn Twilight” is just the band playing the song, pretty straight. Gaz plays a Gibson SG now.

“Cosmic Funeral” shows the band as monks in robes. It’s ballad-like, but then Lee shouts “Disco supernova!” and it gets better, the video is full of strobe.

“Stained Glass HOrizon” shows a road warrior climbing dusty hills in some sort of post-apocalyptic world. THere’s a crap solo that turns psychedelic, then becomes murderously good and heavy.

“Black Sunday” shows clips from the band’s touring up until that point, with all the various members, there’s toking, they feed beer to a horse, they are in Sydney, and they play on Motorhead’s stage. Very good psychedelic passage, it’s a great song.

“Hopkins (Witchfinder General)” is a fun video, with clips of the “Witchfinder General” movie of 1968, starring Vincent Price interspersed throughout. The band is wearing disco clothes and Lee is cavorting with a shapely black model in lingerie and a pentagram painted on her forehead. The band plays through Orange stacks.

By the way, if you want to see the movie, here it is:

Cathedral, “Statik Magik” EP – This is an EP with three songs that came out after the second album, when the band went through its major label hell and lost two of its original members. Lead singer Lee Dorrian and guitarist Gary Jennings got a new drummer and bassist and tried them out on this, a strange little venture that features two conventional songs (“Hypnos 164″ 5:46 and “Cosmic Funeral”, 7:03) and a crazy Beefheart-esque musical voyage (“The Voyage Of The Homeless Sapien”, 22:42). “Hypnos 164″ starts off with a single chord wailout with wild bass, before going into a crazy guitar and vocal washout that has to be heard to be believed. The song kicks in and is sinister and evil, it warps into a ripoff of Black Sabbath’s “Johnny Blade”, with some funky cowbell, Huge fun. “Cosmic Funeral” is a sort of singalong punk/doom ballad, it’s pretty scary and it’s quite freaky too – there’s a weird breakdown in the middle with a guitar and bass solo back-and-forth before Lee finishes it off with the declaration of “Disco supernova!” It finishes with a mighty groove stomp. “The Voyage Of The Homeless Sapien” is such a long song, it goes through many phases, and starts off with a weird psychedelic gloom-out, with washed out vocals, then it becomes some standard doom muck, then there’s some strange pluckings, a full-out metal session, then it becomes a bit like Yes with some airy gloomings, the sound of an owl, and more full on metal. Yoiks! The band goes crazy, and Lee does some James Hetfield “Yeah-hay”s. Then there’s some real jazz ploinking and plonkings and crazy hooting, mixed in with real thrash, goofing-around orchestrated balladry and mocking crap Britpop stuff; later there’s a stoned bass pondering that includes the riff from Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man”, followed by more killer riffs (I’m sure these have been used in Cathedral songs before – the band overflows with killer riffs. Big rock riffs fade out to psychedelic guitar and vocal groanings that sound like they came from the “Zabriskie Point” soundtrack, and insane mutterings about boobies. Sick garbage. But I love it.

My version came with the CD/DVD version of “The Carnival Bizarre”.

Jandek, “New Town” – It’s hard to review Jandek. He doesn’t have any real songs. From the sounds of it, it is Thurston Moore mumbling over a warped guitar plonk with some banging and percussion and harmonica. The cover shows a picture of a drum kit. The song titles are “New Town” (strangely, this song has snatches of Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” in it), “Steal Away Home”, “Street Walk”, “You Standing There”, “Desert Voice”, “Let Me Hear THe Words You Say”, “The Real You”, “It WOuld ONly Be Action”, “Look At It”, “Time WIll Come” and “What You Are.” It sounds almost like traditional Japanese music – you know, the kind where a woman will pluck at a zither with a big wedge-shaped shingle and howl about something that you can’t understand. That’s what listening to Jandek is like. And it’s wonderful.

Lunarin, “duae” – Lunarin is a sort-of shoegazer band from Singapore that combines strong songwriting with very good studio production and playing to create songs with a sort of Tool/Evanesence feel to it. The CD starts out with a piano piece, “For Apollo.” There are three piano pieces on the album, each of them just over a minute in length, and none of them do much for me, but nearly all of the songs are good, with the exception of “Saturn”, which is mopey and has all sorts of “Sorry” lyrics. The songs are often dominated by the expressive and emotional wailing of lead singer and bassist Linda Ong. “Midas” is a hearty rocker with groovy beats and guitar licks, “Zero Point Red” is darker with groovy riffs that builds up to some hefty rock ‘n’ roll. “Red” is long, fast and dark. and has a vaguely industrial drive that dissolves into an Indian drone before picking up again into a moody rocker. “Coralline” is a pretty song with a rousing chorus. “Icarus Rising” is a lusty near-ballad, while “Serpentine” starts off with moody dissonance before becoming a Rush-like rumbler. “The Sky (Algiers)” starts off with groovy, quiet guitars and drums, then builds up and becomes a very pretty song with cool riffs and a great drive. The band has made this song available on their website for remixing as a Garageband track (a fan poll revealed that, of all the tracks on the album, this one was the right one for a remix project). They’ve also posted some of the results for a free download. The penultimate song, “The Inquisition”, is just over 10 minutes long and a very nice (near) closer (the actual closer is one of those not-so-great piano ditties.

The packaging of the CD is okay, with stylistic photos that have a very industrial feel to them. They also include a personal letter, that seems like it has been signed in pen by each member. The letter is a heartfelt outpouring that starts off “we would like to thank you for taking precious time and money to purchase this little of album of outs. It kills us to think that you are willing to spend time and effort to listen to what we have written and produced. We know you had a choice. We know that there is great music out there clamouring for your attention. So this is an honour, truly.” It’s a bit over the top – CD purchasing is a pretty casual experience, not something that requires a herculean effort, so this is a bit over the top, but it’s nice to see someone doing this sort of thing anyway.

Lunarin has already posted their remix project for “The Sky (Algiers)”, and they’ve got ten contributions available for download. Being remixes, many of them are quite boring, tech-heavy, droning, with sparkly ambient keyboards, perhaps stripped of drums with new ambient noises thrown into a bare soundscape that retains vocals, or maybe just wonking and plonking the elements of the song. But “Time of Apollo 2010″ by Ivan Chew uses elements from the song to create a whole new song, which incorporates interesting dialogue soundbites that sound like they come from a documentary on the Apollo moon launch, it’s definitely the best “remix” of the bunch. “The Sky (Cosmic Armchair Uplifting Sky Mix)” by Cosmic Armchair is also pretty good, as it has a dance floor feel to it that incorporates a lot of the catchier elements of the song. “The Sky (Shoegaze Mix)” by Kevin Mathews is also pretty good, with its washed-out guitars. It’s also generously long, at 7:40 the longest remix of the bunch (and maybe that’s a blessing…).

Book reviews:

Carlucci’s Edge, by Richard Paul Russo – I was given this book by my friend as one of three that he thought were better than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I don’t know what bone my friend had to pick with that book – I didn’t think it was perfect either, but I enjoyed it immensely anyway – but it must be pretty serious if he thinks this book is better than Stieg Larsson’s book.

The book is about Carlucci investigating a murder of a musician. The musician’s girlfriend is also investigating his murder. They travel around, they meet people who probably know why the murder was commissioned. The murderer is never caught, but the people behind the murder are exposed. It’s really hard to care, because the freakshow world that the people inhabit is not interesting or appealing, other than for the similarity it bears to to the New York of “Liquid Sky”.

To be fair, Carlucci is the character of several books, so this book might be more interesting to people who’ve read more than one of his adventures. But it is still very, very, very hard to care about any of the characters in the book, or to understand what they do except get caught, deer-like, in the headlights of an onrushing truck.

The Simple Truth, by David Baldacci – I was given this book by my friend as one of three that he thought were better than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I don’t know what bone my friend had to pick with that book – I didn’t think it was perfect either, but I enjoyed it immensely anyway – but it must be pretty serious if he thinks this book is better than Stieg Larsson’s book.

David Carlucci is a very talented writer, the author of the book Absolute Power, which I haven’t read, but admire the movie that Clint Eastwood made of it. Carlucci is adapt at describing people and events and knows how to turn a phrase, how to mould characters, and how to set up a plot. I wasn’t so sure at the beginning of “The Simple Truth”, when I came across some pretty clunky dialogue; I was less sure when his plot called for one of the main characters from the first half of the book, who was described as intelligent, making one of the dumbest moves in the book: a Supreme House clerk breaks rules and takes evidence on that nearly nobody knows about, drives out into a dangerous spot in the middle of nowhere just to get an answer to something that had been bothering him… yeah, right. Dumb, dumb, dumb; and of course he gets himself killed; and of course that launches the whole book. As you read the book you get a sense of certain Hollywood types who had been pegged to play the lead roles: Bill Pullman as John Fiske, Pete Gallagher as Michael Fiske, Rebecca De Mornay as Sara Evans, Gene Hackman as John Marshall, etc. There’s a fun/preposterous series of events, and plenty of carnage. And about five bad guys.

Unfortunately, when the crime is solved it hardly seems like a crime at all. And it brings down the Supreme Court. And the sky cracks in two. How dramatic. Barf.

Into the Fire, by David Wiltse – I was given this book by my friend as one of three that he thought were better than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I don’t know what bone my friend had to pick with that book – I didn’t think it was perfect either, but I enjoyed it immensely anyway – but it must be pretty serious if he thinks this book is better than Stieg Larsson’s book.

I hate serial killer stories real/fictional, so enjoying this one was a bit of a long shot anyway. But I was quite disappointed when I read the first 185 pages and barely learned anything that wasn’t on the back cover of the book. Characters that were half interesting were introduced and quickly abandoned. Trained FBI investigators overlook what is blatant/screamingly obvious. We get to meet an interesting scamp, her pastor and his middle-aged temptress. Then, unfortunately, we get to spend time with the most uninteresting/unsuccessful serial killer ever, and the demented creep who works for the FBI who is trained to hunt him down. This is the first book that I’ve read that gets wrapped up “satisfactorily” in the last five pages. It’s almost like the author had been padding his text so efficiently all along that, when he realised he’d passed his word count quota, he simply wrapped it up as quickly as possible. And that’s not a great proposition for a reader.

Wow – 51 Black Sabbath concerts, videos and bootlegs exist online, from 1970 all the way to 2009. ENJOY!!

Montreux. August 31st 1970 (audio bootleg)

Paranoid, NIB, Behind the Wall of Sleep, Iron Man, War Pigs, Fairies Wear Boots, Hand of Doom/Rat Salad
This came out before the “Paranoid” album, they played six of the eight tracks from that release but the lyrics to “Iron Man” and “War Pigs” are early drafts (“Iron Man, I love you” and “See them eating dead rats innards” are respective samples). Ditto for “Hand of Doom”, the encore. The band recorded the “Paranoid” album one month later on September 18th, released it January 7th 1971. Great quality recording!

San Francisco, Fillmore West, November 27th 1970 (audio bootleg)

NIB, War Pigs, Black Sabbath, Iron Man, Behind the Wall of Sleep, Hand of Doom, Rat Salad, Fairies Wear Boots, Wicked World, Paranoid
By now Paranoid has been recorded, but not released. However, the lyrics are the ones we know from the album, which is nice. The acoustic intro to Black Sabbath is very similar to the one heard on the Past Lives CD. The Wicked World solo is pretty funky and original, especially around the 54 minute mark (crazy!). Ozzy says that the new album will be released in February, but it really came out in January.

Live in Berlin 1970 (audio bootleg)

Paranoid, Iron man, Black sabbath, War pigs, Hand of doom/Rat salad, NIB
Ozzy introduces “Paranoid” as a new song from their second album, and a single. He doesn’t remember the lyrics very well, ditto for Iron Man. The lyrics on “Black Sabbath” are also from the extended four-verse version, and the “War Pigs” lyrics are the “eating dead rats’ innards” lyrics.

L’Olympia, Paris France , December 20,1970 (full video)

Toronto 1971 (audio bootleg)

NIB, War Pigs, Sweet Leaf, Black Sabbath, Iron Man, Children of the Grave, Wicked World, Paranoid, Fairies Wear Boots
Starts off with some very cool solo-ing before going into NIB (ie they skipped Bassically). Some corruption of source file during “Children of the Grave”. Other parts deleted, not a great recording basically…

New Jersey, 1971 (audio bootleg)

NIB, Black Sabbath, War Pigs, Iron Man, Into the Void, Fairies Wear Boots, Paranoid
Wanking for three minutes at the beginning, then a furious solo burst, and “NIB” (no “Bassically”).

Dallas, Texas March 26th 1971 (audio bootleg)

NIB, War Pigs, Black Sabbath, Iron Man, Wicked World, Tony Iommi Guitar Solo, Wicked World (Continued), Paranoid, Fairies Wear Boots
Groovy announcer: “You people are beautiful, thank you, man. You people, woooow. I’ve been in Wichita, man, since the first of October and made every concert, but tonight – whew, out of sight, man. Hey, Black Sabbath, man doesn’t like to be introduced, they’re the kind of people that just kind of storm onstage and start, they don’t want anybody eyeballing them. We have three emergency announcements - John Fitzgerald, Willie Jones and Angus Boyd had instructions. Far out. Ozzy asks the audience to keep it quiet at the beginning of ‘Black Sabbath’ as there’s a very quiet guitar solo. Solo for ‘Wicked World’ is kind of like folksy Jimmy Page stuff. For the encore, ‘Fairies Wear Boots’, Ozzy says ‘Okay, we’ll do another one for you because you’re so beautiful.”

Chicago, 1971 (audio bootleg)

Sweet Leaf, War Pigs, Iron Man, Fairies Wear Boots, Tomorrow’s Dream
Great version of “Sweet Leaf”!!

Copenhagen April 18th, 1971 (audio bootleg)

War Pigs, Iron Man, Into The Void
Very loud “War Pigs”. Great sound quality, especially on “Into The Void”, which sounds like its full might.

Academy Of Music, New York October 22nd 1971 (audio bootleg)

NIB, War Pigs, Sweet Leaf, Iron Man, Children Of The Grave, Wicked World, Guitar Solo/ Orchid, Jam 1/ Guitar Solo, Jam 2, Wicked World- reprise
Furious solo burst, and “NIB” (no “Bassically”), lots of crowd lead-up to “Iron Man”, which is very slow and grungy but speeds up tremendously by the end.

Newcastle 1972 (audio bootleg)

Tomorrow’s Dream, Snowblind, War Pigs, Black Sabbath, Iron Man, Children of the Grave, Paranoid
Long pause with no music near the end of the first half of this sample, and in some later parts as well.

Arizona, 1972 (audio bootleg)

NIB, Tomorrows dreams, War pigs, Sweet leaf, Iron man, Snowblind, Wicked world, Orchid/Guitar solo, Band jam, Drum solo, Band jam, Wicked world reprise, Children of the grave, Paranoid, Band jam, Fairies Wear Boots
Audience clapping and cheering like crazy during “Iron Man”, which speeds up and slows down all the time. Some of the lyrics in “Snowblind” different than what’s on the album. “I am so blind, but I can see, the way you guard beyond your fever, you can and you no longer care, but it’s not nearly complete.” Huh? Pretty jazzy solo happening in “Wicked World”. At the end of one blazing, shredding solo, you hear someone exclaim “Jesus!” Does a bit of call and response with the audience. Cool drum solo bit before a new song, called “Fairies Wear Boots”.

Dayton 1972 (audio bootleg)

Tomorrows dreams, Sweet Leaf, Snowblind, War Pigs, Under the Sun, Iron Man, Wicked World, Wheels of Confusion, Paranoid, Children of the Grave
Bad sound quality in “Sweet Leaf” and “Iron Man”, but there’s a great solo in the middle of “Wicked World”, Tony’s shredding!

Paris, March 3rd 1973 (audio bootleg)

San Bernardino, California, March 17th 1972 (audio bootleg)

Tony’s Opening Solo/ NIB, Tomorrow’s Dream, War Pigs, Sweet Leaf, Iron Man, Snowblind, Wicked World, Guitar Solo/ Wicked World (reprise), Children Of The Grave, Paranoid, Fairies Wear Boots

New Zealand 1973 (audio bootleg)

Intro, Tomorrow’s Dream, Sweet Leaf, War Pigs, Snowblind, Iron Man, Changes, Cornucopia, Wicked World, Guitar Solo, Children of the Grave, Paranoid

Civic Arena, Pittsburgh, February 1, 1974 (audio bootleg)

A National Acrobat, Cornucopia, Sabbra Cadabra, Stranglehold Jam, Sometimes I’m Happy, Drum Solo, Supernaut, Guitar Solo, Sabbra Cadabra (reprise)

Cal Jam Festival, Ontario Motor Speedway, California, April 6th 1974 (audio bootleg)

Tomorrow’s Dream, Sweet Leaf, Killing Yourself To Live, War Pigs, Snowblind, Sabra Cadabra, Jam, Drum Solo, Supernaut, Iron Man, Guitar Solo / Orchid / Sabra Cadabra (Coda), Paranoid, Embryo / Children Of The Grave
Cal Jam Festival, Ontario Motor Speedway, California, April 6th 1974 (TV boadcast)

War Pigs, Killing Yourself To Live, Paranoid
Black Sabbath, California Jam Festival, Ontario Motor Speedway, California, April 6th 1974.

This was taped from WABC-TV, New York, when ABC aired the California Jam segments as part of the “In Concert” series. California Jam was the most successful music festival until that time, attracting 250,000, featuring performances by Black Sabbath (which at one time had been called Earth), Rare Earth, Earth Wind and Fire, Eagles, Seals and Crofts, Black Oak Arkansas, Deep Purple and Emerson Lake and Palmer.

Gothenburg, Sweden 1/11/74 (audio bootleg)

Tomorrow’s Dream, Sweet Leaf, Killing Yourself To Live, Snowblind,
War Pigs, Cornucopia, Sabbra Cadabra, Guitar Solo, Drum Solo, Supernaut,
Drum Solo (Reprise), Guitar Solo, Sabbra Cadabra (Reprise), Embryo/ Children Of The Grave

Baltimore 1975 (audio bootleg)

Providence 03.08.75 (audio bootleg)

Asbury Park Convention Hall, Asbury Park, New Jersey (August 5th 1975) (audio bootleg)
Killing Yourself To Live, Hole In The Sky, Snowblind, Symptom Of The Universe, War Pigs, Meglomania, Sabra Cadabra, Tony Iommi’s Jam with Bill Ward and Geezer Butler, Ozzy’s freeform jam with Tony Iommi, Bill Ward drum solo, Supernaut, Iron Man, Embryo/Great Tony Iommi Instr. Jam, Black Sabbath, Spiral Architect, Embryo/Children Of The Grave, Paranoid

Bristol, UK 10/12/75 (audio bootleg)

Supertzar, Killing Yourself To Live, Hole In The Sky, Snow Blind, Symptom Of The Universe, War Pigs, When The Saints Go Marching In, Sabbra Cadabra, Jam I, Jam II, Sometimes I’m Happy, Drum Solo, Supernaut, Iron Man, Guitar Solo/ Orchid, Rock And Roll Doctor, Guitar Solo, Black Sabbath, Spiral Architect, Children Of The Grave

Pittsburgh, Pa 12/8/76 (audio bootleg)

Symptom Of The Universe, Snowblind, All Moving Parts (Stand Still), War Pigs, Gypsy, Black Sabbath, Dirty Women, Drum Solo/ Guitar Solo, Electric Funeral, Children Of The Grave

Live Lund 77 (audio bootleg)

Intro, Symptom of the universe, Snowblind, War pigs, Black sabbath, Dirty woman, Rock and roll doctor, Guitar solo, Band jam, Gypsy, Children of the grave, Paranoid

Live in Brisbane, Australia (audio bootleg)

Intro/Tomorrow’s Dream, Sweet Leaf, Killing Yourself to Live, War Pigs, Snowblind, Sabbra Cadabra, guitar solo/jam, guitar solo continued, What To Do, drum solo, Supernaut, Iron Man, Megalomania, Sabbra Cadabra reprise, Children of the Grave, Paranoid

Fresno, 1978 (audio bootleg)

Simpton of the Universe, Snowblind, War Pigs, Never Say Die, Black Sabbath, Shockwave, Dirty Woman, Rock and Roll Doctor, Electric Funeral, Iron Man, Children of the Grave, Paranoid

Pittsburgh 1978 (audio bootleg)

Snowblind, Black sabbath, Dirty women, ock and roll doctor, Drum solo, Guitar solo, Band jam, Electric funeral, I ron man, Fairies wear boots, Children of the grave, Paranoid

Glasgow 1978 (audio bootleg)

Supertzar, Symptom of the Universe, War Pigs, Snowblind, Never Say Die, Black Sabbath, Iron Man, Electric Funeral, Fairies Wear Boots, Hand of Doom, NIB, Children of the Grave, Paranoid

Long Island November 17th, 1980, Black and Blue (full video)

War pigs, Neon knights, NIB, Iron man, Paranoid, Heaven and Hell, Die Young

Hammersmith, 1981 (audio bootleg)

War Pigs, Neon Knights, N.I.B., Children of the Sea, Sweet Leaf, Lady Evil, Black Sabbath, Heaven and Hell, Iron Man, Guitar Solo, Die Young, Paranoid

Hammersmith Odeon, 1981 (audio release)

E5150, Neon Knights, NIB, Children of the Sea, Country Girl, Black Sabbath, War Pigs, Slipping Away, Iron Man, Mob Rules, Heaven and Hell, Paranoid

Worchester 1983 04. 11 (audio bootleg)

Children of the Grave, Hot Line, War Pigs, Iron Man, The Dark/Zero the Hero, Heaven and Hell, Iommi solo, Digital Bitch, Black Sabbath, Smoke on the Water, Paranoid
Very good quality capture of Born Again tour with Ian Gillan

August 23rd, 1983 Olympen, Lund (audio bootleg)

August 27th 1983, Reading Festival (audio bootleg)

August 28th 1983 The Kings Of Rock Festival, Dalymount Park, Dublin (audio bootleg)

September 13, 1983, Plaza De Toros Monumental, Barcelona (audio bootleg)

September 14th 1983 Pabellon Del Deportes Del Real, Madrid (audio bootleg)

Live in Montreal 1986

Montreal 1986 (video bootleg)

Vienna, 1989 (audio bootleg)

The Gates of Hell/Headless Cross, Neon Knights, Children of the Sea, Die Young, When Death Calls, War Pigs, The Shining, Mob Rules, Black Sabbath, Iron Man, Children of the Grave, Heaven and Hell (incl Guitar Solo), Paranoid/ Heaven and Hell Conclusion

Moscow 1989 (full video)

Italy, 1990 (audio bootleg)

1990 concert (full video)

Time Machine, Children of the Grave, I Witness, Mob Rules, Into the Void, Anno Mundi, Symptom of the Universe, Headless Cross, Paranoid, Feels good to me (music video from 1990)

Black Sabbath & Rob Halford – Costa Mesa 1992 (video bootleg)

Black Sabbath Argentina 1994 (full video)

Chicago, July 7th 1995 (audio bootleg)

Children Of The Grave, Neon Knights, The Shining, The Wizard, Get A Grip,
Headless Cross, Iommi Solo _ Rusty Angels, When Death Calls, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Can’t Get Close Enough, War Pigs, Mob Rules, Black Sabbath, Heaven And Hell, Iron Man – encore

The Last Supper (full video, 1999)

Heaven and Hell, Rockpalast 2009 (full video)

Undated audio bootleg

Great, I’ve discovered several full Rolling Stones movies, concerts and documentaries online!

’65-’67 radio broadcasts – L’Olympia Theatre – Paris

Everybody Needs Somebody To Love/Around And Around * Time Is on My Side * It’s All Over Now * 19th Nervous Breakdown * Get Off Of My Cloud * The Last Time * Paint It Black * Under My Thumb * Ruby Tuesday * Let’s Spend The Night Together * Satisfaction
Great version of “Paint It Black” on this recording!!

Paris, L’Olympia Theatre, April 18th, 1965 (audio bootleg)

Everybody Needs Somebody To Love/Around And Around * Off The Hook * Time Is On My Side * Carol * It’s All Over Now * Little Red Rooster * Route 66 * Everybody Needs Somebody To Love * The Last Time * I’m Alright * Hey Crawdaddy

Melbourne, Palais Theatre, St. Kilda, February 24th, 1966, 2nd show (audio bootleg)

Last Time * Mercy Mercy *She Said Yeah * Play With Fire * Not Fade Away * That’s How Strong My Love Is * Get Off Of My Cloud * Satisfaction
The announcer is a nutter – “Do you like Bill Wyman? Do you like Bill Wyman?!?! Do you like Charlie Watts? Do you like Keith Richard? Do you like Brian Jones, do you like Mick Jagger, DO YOU LIKE THE ROLLING STONES!?!?!?!?!?!?” Great version of “Not Fade Away” on this recording.

Honolulu, June 28th, 1966, K-POI Concert (audio bootleg)

“This, I think, is the most exciting moments that any of us will ever experience. On behalf of the Honolulu Police Department, we’d like to ask you to please remain seated throughout the next performance, if you will please, let’s make it fair for everyone so everyone can see a swinging show.”
Someone announces after “Paint It Black” that the next song will be “The Last Time”… which they already did. Mick jumps in and introduces “Lady Jane”.
Not Fade Away * The Last Time * Paint It Black * Lady Jane * Mothers Little Helper * Get Off Of My Cloud * 19th Nervous Breakdown * Satisfaction

Paris, L’Olympia Theatre, April 11th, 1967 (audio bootleg)

Paint It Black * 19th Nervous Breakdown * Lady Jane * Get Off Of My Cloud/Yesterday’s Papers * Under My Thumb * Ruby Tuesday * Let’s Spend The Night Together * Goin’ Home * Satisfaction
Great version of “Get Off My Cloud/Yesterday’s Papers”.

Livermore, California, Altamont Speedway, December 6th, 1969 (audio bootleg)

Jumping Jack Flash * Carol * Sympathy For The Devil * The Sun Is Shining * Stray Cat Blues * Love in Vain * Under My Thumb * Brown Sugar * Midnight Rambler * Live With Me * Gimme Shelter * Little Queenie * Satisfaction * Honky Tonk Women * Street Fighting Man
From the start you can hear the difficulties the organisers are having controlling the crowd, and several songs are interrupted by disturbances. “Aw shit, man.” You hear “Under My Thumb”, it gets interrupted, and then picks up, and you know that’s when Meredith Hunter gets killed, his dead body trampled.
“Jumping Jack Flash” starts off very slow, thin-sounding.

Los Angeles, The Forum, Inglewood, November 8th, 1969 (2nd show) (audio bootleg)

Jumping Jack Flash – Carol – Sympathy For The Devil – Stray Cat Blues – Prodigal Son – You Gotta Move – Love In Vain – I’m Free – Under My Thumb – Midnight Rambler – Live With Me – Little Queenie – Satisfaction – Honky Tonk Women – Street Fighting Man.

After “Stray Cat Blues”, long pause as Mick tells the crowd to sit down. Mick Jagger’s vocals and Charlie Watts’ drums are hard to hear, but we get plenty of Mick Taylor’s guitar.

Oakland, Oakland Coliseum, November 9th, 1969 (early show) (audio bootleg)

Jumping Jack Flash * Prodigal Son * You Gotta Move * Carol * Sympathy For The Devil * Stray Cat Blues * Love I n Vain * I’m Free * Under My Thumb * Midnight Rambler * Live With Me * Little Queenie * Satisfaction * Honky Tonk Women * Street Fighting Man

The announcer explains that they didn’t have cars at the airport when the plane arrived, but the band was coming. “We’re now here, we’re now ready, it’s time for rock ‘n’ roll, we’re pleased to be here, we want you all to get up and groove with us. The Rolling Stones!” Mick’s voice is the loudest in the mix of this bootleg, which fades in and out at times. They run into electrical problems, so they go into acoustic numbers. “Let’s have a look at you.” This sounds like the concert that was excerpted in the Gimme Shelter movie, especially before “Live With Me”.

Oakland, Oakland Coliseum, Nov 9th, 1969 (late show) (audio bootleg)

Jumping Jack Flash * Carol * Sympathy For The Devil * Stray Cat Blues * Prodigal Son * You Gotta Move * Love In Vain * I’m Free * Under My Thumb * Midnight Rambler * Live With Me * Gimme Shelter * Little Queenie * Satisfaction * Honky Tonk Women

Sound much better this time around, nicer sound, we jump right into Jumping Jack Flash, the intro is not recorded unfortunately. In the later set they left out “Street Fighting Man”, but they included “Gimme Shelter”.

San Diego, San Diego Sports Arena, November 10th, 1969 (audio bootleg)

Jumping Jack Flash * Carol * Sympathy For The Devil * Stray Cat Blues * Prodigal Son * You Gotta Move * Love In Vain * I’m Free * Under My Thumb * Midnight Rambler * Live With Me * Little Queenie * Satisfaction * Honky Tonk Women * Street Fighting Man

Full and proper intro on this one, the band rumbles and hums on in, playing the same set as the early Oakland gig (but in proper order). Sound drops out at times.

University of Illinois, Champaign, November 15th, 1969, first show (audio bootleg)

Jumping Jack Flash * Carol * Sympathy For The Devil * Stray Cat Blues * Love In Vain * Prodigal Son * You Gotta Move * Under My Thumb * Midnight Rambler * Little Queenie * Satisfaction * Honky Tonk Women * Street Fighting Man

Mick gives camp announcements. “Welcome to Champaign Illinois. We’re right pleased to be here. You know it’s not too often that us country folk can get to a big town like yours, so when we get to we really dig it,” in full-on thick American accent. Poor audio quality, deteriorated, sometimes drops out with tape stretch.

Baltimore, November 26th, 1969 (audio bootleg)

Jumping Jack Flash * Carol * Sympathy For The Devil * Stray Cat Blues * Love In Vain * You Gotta Move * Under My Thumb/I’m Free * Midnight Rambler * Live With Me * Satisfaction * Honky Tonk Women * Street Fighting Man

Cologne, Sporthalle, September 18th, 1970 (audio bootleg)

Jumping Jack Flash * Roll Over Beethoven * Sympathy For The Devil * Stray Cat Blues * Love In Vain * Dead Flowers * Midnight Rambler * Live With Me * Little Queenie * Brown Sugar * Honky Tonk Women * Street Fighting Man

Recorded the day Jimi Hendrix died, Mick dedicates “Brown Sugar” to Jimi at the 46:06 mark. Mick’s voice disappears for a while at the end of “Street Fighting Man”, it sounds rather karaoke at this point. But the crowd screams and claps along anyway. Was he doing a striptease?

Gimme Shelter, 1970

Leeds University, March 13th, 1971 (audio bootleg)

Dead Flowers * Stray Cat Blues * Love In Vain * Midnight Rambler * Bitch * Honky Tonk Women * Satisfaction * Little Queenie * Brown Sugar * Street Fighting Man * Let It Rock
Very nice sound quality, great Nicky Hopkins pianos on “Dead Flowers”, Great, slowed down, ultra bluesy version of “Love In Vain”, wild Mick Taylor guitar, sweet piano from Nicky Hopkins, and a few honkin’ horns, the whole band is in slow gargle here. Mick does a Prince-like wail at 11:07 (think the end of “Purple Rain”). “Midnight Rambler” sounds fantastically swampy, with whispers of “Go down on my baby” and some weird slurping bass sounds! Great hearing horns all over the show, such as in “Little Queenie” (not so great on “Street Fighting Man”, though).

London, England, Marquee Club, March 26th 1971 (full concert video)

Live With Me * Dead Flowers * I Got The Blues * Let It Rock * Midnight Rambler * Satisfaction * Bitch * Brown Sugar
See my review of this piece here.

Cocksucker Blues – the controversial unreleased film from 1972, shot and directed by Exile on Main St cover photographer Robert Frank (documentary and concert video)

See my review of this piece here.

Philadelphia Spectrum, July 20th/21st, 1972 (audio bootleg)

Brown Sugar * Bitch * Rocks Off * Gimme Shelter * Happy * Tumbling Dice * Love In Vain * Sweet Virginia * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * All Down The Line * Midnight Rambler * Bye Bye Johnny * Rip This Joint * Jumping Jack Flash * Street Fighting Man * Uptight/Satisfaction (Stevie Wonder singing “Uptight”) * Don’t Lie To Me (Houston June 24, 1972)

Great four-punch opener with “Brown Sugar”, “Bitch”, “Rocks Off” and “Gimme Shelter.” There are not a lot of live performances of “Rocks Off” out there, and this one lacks a bit of zip (the horns come in late, for example). Keith crackles on “Happy”, and “Tumblin’ Dice” tumbles, and “Down The Line” moves at about double speed. Funky intro of band members at the one hour mark between “Midnight Rambler” and “Bye Bye Johnny”, great crowd response to every name. Stevie Wonder carries the last songs “Uptight” with the Stones’ horn section and his own guys along as well, before the Stones cut back with “Satisfaction” and “Don’t Lie To Me” (video footage of “Uptight” and “Satisfaction” can be seen in “Cocksucker Blues”, see above).

Philadelphia – Ft Worth – Houston 1972 (audio bootleg)

Brown Sugar * Bitch * Rocks Off * Gimme Shelter * Dead Flowers *Happy * Tumbling Dice * Love In Vain * Sweet Virginia *You Can’t Always Get What You Want – All Down The Line * Midnight Rambler * Rip This Joint * Jumping Jack Flash * Street Fighting Man * Tumbling Dice 2 * Bitch 2

Sharp piano from Nicky Hopkins on “Brown Sugar”, nice breakdown in the middle of “Bitch”, a very jaunty version of “Dead Flowers”. “Happy” speeds along as fast as “Rip This Joint”, the band has more energy than ever! Things slow down a bit for “Tumbling Dice”. “Midnight Rambler” starts off with some thick blues snorting from Mick on his harmonica.

Say – did Bruce Springsteen rip off Keith’s “Happy” vocal delivery for “Born In The USA”?

Los Angeles, Nicaraguan Earthquake Benefit, The Forum, Inglewood, January 18th, 1973 (audio bootleg)

Brown Sugar * Bitch * Rocks Off * Gimme Shelter * Route 66 * It’s All Over Now * Happy * No Expectations * Tumbling Dice * Sweet Virginia * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Dead Flowers * Stray Cat Blues * Live With Me * All Down The Line * Rip This Joint * Jumping Jack Flash * Street Fighting Man

Bianca got the boys to help out on this one. Again, more of the Mick Taylor guitar cutting through than the horns or the piano or anything else. “All Over Now” is kind of weird honkey tonk, unlike the poppy original, full of slide guitar and saxophone. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is all lead guitar and sax, making it sound kind of avant garde.

Melbourne, Australia, Kooyong Tennis Court, February 17th, 1973

Brown Sugar * Bitch * Rocks Off * Gimme Shelter * Happy * Tumbling Dice * Love In Vain * Sweet Virginia * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Honky Tonk Women * All Down The Line * Midnight Rambler * Bye Bye Johnny * Jumping Jack Flash * Street Fighting Man
Very raw recording, the guitars sound like they’re piped through a shredded practice amp. Mick is positively snarling the lyrics, in particular on “Sweet Virginia” (although, ironically, a song like “Bitch”, earlier in the set, comes off as pretty tame). “Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Rolling Stones, they’re very tired. Thank you, good afternoon, and good evening.”

Melbourne, Australia, Kooyong Tennis Court, February 18th, 1973

Kooyong Tennis Court – February 18, 1973 – Brown Sugar * Bitch * Rocks Off * Gimme Shelter * Happy * Tumbling Dice * Love In Vain * Sweet Virginia * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Honky Tonk Women * All Down The Line * Midnight Rambler * Bye Bye Johnny * Jumping Jack Flash * Street Fighting Man

Perth, Western Australia Cricket Ground, February 24th, 1973

Western Australia Cricket Ground, February 24th 1973 : Brown Sugar * Bitch * Rocks Off * Gimme Shelter * Happy * Tumbling Dice * Honky Tonk Women * All Down The Line * Midnight Rambler * Little Queenie – the concert is on Nicky Hopkins’ birthday, and they briefly do a bit of “Happy Birthday to you”.

Sydney, Royal Randwick Racecourse, February 26th, 1973

Royal Randwick Racecourse, Sydney, February 26th 1973 : Brown Sugar * Bitch * Rocks Off * Gimme Shelter * Happy * Tumbling Dice * Love In Vain * Sweet Virginia * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Honky Tonk Women * All Down The Line * Midnight Rambler * Little Queenie * Rip This Joint * Jumping Jack Flash * Street Fighting Man. Mick snorting and screaming and hooting and hollering as he introduces the band. “On bass we’ve got BILL WYMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!” The crowd seems to be singing along to “Jumping Jack Flash.”

Vienna,Stadthalle, September 1st, 1973

Stadthalle, Vienna, September 1st 1973 : Brown Sugar * Bitch * Gimme Shelter * Happy * Tumbling Dice * 100 Hundred Years Ago * Star Star * Angie * Sweet Virginia * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Dancing With Mr D * Midnight Rambler * Silver Train * Honky Tonk Women * All Down The Kine * Rip This Joint * Jumping Jack Flash * Street Fighting Man. The announcer introduces the band as “die Rollende Steine”.

Birmingham, Odeon Theatre, September 19th, 1973

Odeon Theatre, September 19th 1973 : Brown Sugar * Gimme Shelter * Happy * Tumbling Dice * Star Star * Dancing With Mr D * Angie * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Midnight Rambler * Honky Tonk Women * All Down The Line * Rip This Joint * Jumping jack Flash * Street Fighting Man

Rotterdam, Ahoy Hall, October 13th & 14th, 1973

Ahoy Hall, Rotterdam, October 13 & 14, 1973 : Brown Sugar * Gimme Shelter * Tumbling Dice * Star Star * Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo * Dancing With Mr D * Angie * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Midnight Rambler * Honky Tonk Women * All Down The Line * Rip This Joint * Jumping Jack Flash * Street Fighting Man
Quite echo-ey sound here. Midnight Rambler shorter and more shambolic.

Rolling Stones 1973 Australian Tour Documentary

Focussing on a short-haired Mick Jagger, shows the band playing “Brown Sugar”, then gets into intros: Leslie Perrin, PR manager, Peter Rudge, tour manager, Nickie Hopkins, Keith Richards (“he won’t live to 70″), Bill Wyman (“perhaps he’ll be the first to leave the Stones”), Mick Jagger’s bodyguard Leroy Leonard, Mick Taylor (“Jagger treats him gently, he seems rather fragile”) and Charlie Watts. They note that there no screaming girls outside the hotel. Interviews with hot chick rock fans, “we don’t go out to the airport to see the band any more, we just listen to the music; that was a long time ago like with the Beatles.” Interview with Patrick Stansfield, production manager, with shots of roadies setting up. Clip of the band playing “Bitch” in the mid-afternoon sun. Cool interview with Keith: “I’ve always felt more sexual than political; I could never get very worked up about Edward Heath.” Media insists that there’s a rumour that someone tried to smuggle pot into the country. “Who? What kind?” In the press conference, talk of Australia joining Southeast Asia. They harp on the fact that there’s no really big news during this visit, other than Mick’s bedsheets being auctioned for A$400. Leslie Perrin interviewed, quite dull of course (he’s a PR man). The documentary appears to end 33 minutes into this 50 minute documentary. They then play “Love In Vain” to video from the Gimme Shelter movie. Looks like there was more footage at the end of the “documentary” showing what may be unreleased footage from the Madison Square Gardens concert that was shown in part in Gimme Shelter. At the end, there’s the band playing “Walk The Dog” on a TV broadcast, with Brian Jones, and a few other songs.

Brussels, Belgium, October 17th, 1973, 1st show

Brown Sugar / Gimme Shelter / Happy / Tumbling Dice / Dancing With Mr D / Angie / You Can’t Always Get What You Want / Midnight Rambler / Honky Tonk Women / All Down The Line / Rip This Joint / Jumping Jack Flash / Street Fighting Man

Los Angeles, The Forum, Inglewood, July 11th, 1975

Honky Tonk Women * All Down The Line * If You Can’t Rock Me/Get Off Of My Cloud * Star Star * Gimme Shelter * Ain’t Too Proud To Beg * You Gotta Move * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Happy * Tumbling Dice * It’s Only Rock n Roll * Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo * Fingerprint File * Angie * Wild Horses * That’s Life (Billy Preston) * Outta Space (Billy Preston) * Brown Sugar * Midnight Rambler * Rip This Joint * Street Fighting Man * Jumping Jack Flash * Sympathy For The Devil
Very long loooooong guitar jam on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. Keith’s “Happy” is a bit of a mess… but, since it was 1975, so was Keith. “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” is cool-cool and “Fingerprint File” are a very cool, very long-loooooooong disco jam, nice. The two songs with Billy Preston are pretty damn funky all right! “Midnight Rambler” is full of great horns, drums, and wild zooming instrumental parts. But, of course, slow down it does, but Mick doesn’t do his thing and it just takes off again into the stratosphere… before coming down again for Mick to do his thing. Wow! This is a long set, nearly 2.5 hours long!!

Detroit, Cobo Hall, Detroit, July 28th, 1975

CHonky Tonk Women * All Down The Line * If You Can’t Rock Me/Get Off Of My Cloud * Star Star * Gimme Shelter * Ain’t Too Proud To Beg * You Gotta Move * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Happy * Tumbling Dice * It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll * Fingerprint File * Wild Horses * That’s Life * Outta Space * Brown Sugar * Midnight Rambler(#) * Rip This Joint(#) * Street Fighting Man(#) * Jumping Jack Flash(#)
(#) = Audience recording
Great piano stomp on “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg”! “You’ve Got To Move” is a great steaming piece of blues swamp. Billy Preston jams on two songs, eight minutes of great funk – “That’s Life” and “Outta Space”. Great!
The “audience recordings”, however, sound terrible. As you’d expect…

London, Earl’s Court, May 22nd, 1976

If You Can’t Rock Me/Get Off Of My Cloud * Hand Of Fate * Hey Negrita * Ain’t Too Proud To Beg * Fool To Cry * Hot Stuff * Star Star * You Gotta Move * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Happy * Tumbling Dice * Midnight Rambler * It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll * Brown Sugar * Jumping Jack Flash
Billy Preston singing with Mick on “Get Off Of My Cloud”, but he doesn’t come out later. It’s a very ’70s set, with plenty of funk in the first half, old-school rock in the second half.

Paris, Les Abattoirs, June 7th, 1976

Honky Tonk Women * If You can’t rock Me/Get off Of my Cloud * Hand Of Fate * Hey Negrita * Ain’t Too Proud To Beg * Fool To Cry * Hot Stuff * Star Star * Cherry Oh Baby * Angie * You Gotta Move * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Happy * Tumbling Dice * Nothing From Nothing * Outta Space * Midnight Rambler * It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll * Brown Sugar * Jumping Jack Flash * Street Fighting Man
Very good quality recording, great great long jam in the middle of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. Mick speaks French to the audience, gets them to sing along with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, they do it! “Et maintenant, Keith Richards veut chanter pour vous.” Billy Preston’s “Nothing From Nothing” just sounds great (very high quality recording in this part)!

Lyon, Palais Des Sports, June 9th, 1976

If You Can;t Rock Me/Get Off Of My Cloud * Hand Of Fate * Hey Negrita * Ain’t Too Proud To Beg * Fool To Cry * Hot Stuff * Star Star * Angie * You Gotta Move * You Can;t Always Get What You Want * Happy * Tumbling Dice * Midnight Rambler * It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll * Brown Sugar

Passaic, New Jersey, Capitol Theatre, June 14th, 1978

Let It Rock * All Down The Line * Honky Tonk Women * Star Star * Lies * Miss You * When The Whip Comes Down * Beast Of Burden * Just My Imagination * Respectable * Far Away Eyes * Love In Vain * Shattered * Sweet Little Sixteen * Tumbling Dice * Happy * Brown Sugar * Jumping Jack Flash * Street Fighting Man (cuts out)
At 1:08:23 Mick Jagger says “We’ve got these Singapore fans not working here.” What does he mean by that? Keith is still singing “Happy”, rather than “Before They Make Me Run”.

Detroit, Masonic Hall, July 6th, 1978

Let It Rock * All Down The Line * Honky Tonk Women * Star Star * When The Whip Comes Down * Lies * Miss You * Beast Of Burden * Just My Imagination * Shattered * Love iN Vain * Tumbling Dice * Happy * Sweet Little 16 * Brown Sugar * Jumping Jack Flash

Ft Worth, Will Rogers Memorial Auditorium, July 18th, 1978

Let It Rock * All Down The Line * Honky Tonk Women * Star Star * When The Whip Comes Down * Beast Of Burden * Miss You Just My Imagination * Shattered * Respectable * Far Away Eyes * Love In Vain * Tumbling Dice * Happy * Sweet Little Sixteen * Brown Sugar * Jumping Jack Flash
After 49:00, after “Shattered”, Mick says “Are you feeling good? I always feel good in Texas. I’m afraid if the band’s slightly lacking in energy is because they spent all of last night fucking. But we do our best.”

Oshawa, Ontario, Benefit for the Canadian Institute For The Blind, Oshawa Civic Arena, April 22nd, 1979

This was the charity concert that the Stones were required to play as a result of Keith Richards’ drug conviction in Toronto in 1977
Prodigal Son * Let It Rock * Respectable * Star Star * Beast Of Burden * Just My Imagination * When The Whip Comes Down * Shattered * Miss You * Jumping Jack Flash
Big long intro to Star Star. Mick swearing a lot now. “Thank you, Toronto. Y’all make me feel so good. I said Y’ALL MAKE ME FEEL SO GOOD.”

Philadelphia, Opening night of Still Life Tour, JFK Stadium, September 25th, 1981 (1)

Under My Thumb * When The Whip Comes Down * Neighbors * Just My Imagination * Shattered * Let’s Spend The Night Together * Black Limousine * She’s So Cold * Time Is On My Side * Beast Of Burden * Waiting On A Friend * Let It Bleed * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Tops * Tumbling Dice * Hang Fire * Let Me Go * Little T&A * Start Me Up * Miss You * Honky Tonk Women * All Down The Line * Brown Sugar * Jumping Jack Flash * Street Fighting Man * Satisfaction
Before “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, Mick introduces the band: “On bass we’ve got Bill Wyman, after all these years, still there. On piano, we have Ian Stewart. Stand up Stewey. What a lovely pullover. He’s been with us 21 years already. Not quite as old as me.” A very nasal Keith Richards whining about throwing out his gold ring. “Hey Mick, Mick, I just threw my ring out. It’s a very nice gold ring, it went over there. If you don’t want to return it – don’t matter – but I’m going to get into terrible trouble.” Mick: “Any requests? Okay – we’ll play that one.” Keith: “Hey, did you know I got my ring back?” Near the end of the show, “Thanks for my ring.”

2nd show of Still Life Tour, JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, September 26, 1981

Under My Thumb * When The Whip Comes Down * Let’s Spend The Night Together * Just My Imagination * Shattered * Neighbors * Black Limousine * Down The Road Apiece * Mona * Twenty Flight Rock * She’s So Cold * Time Is On My Side * Beast Of Burden * Waiting On A Friend * Let It Bleed * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Tumbling Dice * Little T&A * Hang Fire * Start Me Up * Miss You * Honky Tonk Women * All Down The Line * Brown Sugar * Jumping Jack Flash * Street Fighting Man

Boulder, Colorado, Folson Field, October 4th, 1981

Under My Thumb * When The Whip Comes Down * Let’s Spend The Night Together * Shattered * Neighbors * Black Limousine * Just My Imagination * Twenty Flight Rock * Let Me Go * Time Is On My Side * Beast Of Burden * Waiting On A Friend * Let It Bleed * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Little T&A * Tumbling Dice * She’s So Cold * All Down The Line * Hang Fire * Miss You * Start Me Up * Honky Tonk Women * Brown Sugar * Jumping Jack Flash * Street Fighting Man

Atlanta, Fox Theater, October 26th, 1981

Fox Theater, Atlanta, October 26, 1981 : Under My Thumb * When The Whip Comes Down * Let’s Spend The Night Together * Shattered * Neighbors * Black Limousine * Just My Imagination * Twenty Flight Rock * Let Me Go * Time Is On My Side * Beast Of Burden * Waiting On A Friend * Let It Bleed * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Little T & A * Tumbling Dice * She’s So Cold * All Down The Line * Hang Fire * Miss You * Start Me Up * Honky Tonk Women * Brown Sugar * Street Fighting Man * Jumping Jack Flash
Jagger introduces “Twenty Flight Rock” as an old rock number, like the type that opening band Stray Cats do. Before “Waiting On A Friend”, Mick babbles on a bit – “Thank you. Party down – you ready to party down some? Speak to me only with thine eyes. All right-ah. Humbly mumbly.” Before “Let It Bleed”, “This is for all the girls who let their Tampaxes at home.”

St Paul, Minnesota, Civic Center, Nov 21st, 1981

Under My Thumb * When The Whip Comes Down * Let’s Spend The Night Together * Shattered * Neighbors * Black Limousine * Just My Imagination * Twenty Flight Rock * Going To A Go-Go * Let Me Go * Time Is on My Side * Beast Of Burden * Waiting On A Friend * Let It Bleed * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * Little t & A * Tumbling Dice * She’s So Cold * Hang Fire * Miss You (incomplete) * Honky Tonk Women (incomplete) * Brown Sugar * Start Me Up * Jumping Jack Flash * Satisfaction
Rare version of “Let Me Go”, sounds great. Wonderful sax on “Just My Imagination”.

Bridges to Babylon, 1998

Twickenham, 2003

All props to kg441.

Incidentally, here’s a list of songs that the Rolling Stones cover, as well as a list of Rolling Stones songs that are covered by others.