Do People Still Write on WebLogs Such as This?

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Films Seen in 2013 Round-Up: #125-130

top 10. for life.

Cinema Enthusiast

#125. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973, Yates)

Relentlessly melancholic film where chess pieces are moved through quiet back-dealings and dialogue exchanges infused with ever-maneuvering fatalism. Peter Yates’ camera gets deep into the grubby everydayness parts of Boston and its surrounding towns. Having lived in Boston during graduate school, seeing and recognizing the location work here was a high point. The camera acts as eavesdropper, always cautiously close to the proceedings. We see all relevant players and how they connect to each other and we’re never given a true access point. Because of this the film took a while to get into. But as it progressed, I found myself engaged. Robert Mitchum does some of his best work but my personal favorite was Steven Keats as gunrunner Jackie Brown (obviously Tarantino is a fan), with his neon green ride and considerable street instinct.

#126. The Driver (1978, Hill)

Walter Hill…

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207 Bond Noms

Please!!!!! Please? What do you like/dislike/wanna veto? Be BROOTAL JUICE. BE BROOTAL TRUTH.

1    Nite Vibe

2    Bad Spills
    3    Sequin Twins
    4    New Tints
    5    Loose Grease
    6    Loose Teeth
    7    Loose Dirt
    8    Loose Blood
    9    Gloves
    10    Easy Free
    11    Pastor Pastel
    12    Muddy Chives
    13    Red Gas
    14    Wet Gas
    15    Spilled Silt
    16    Breeze and Brush
    17    Proud Glad
    18    Wet Lettuce
    19    Oaths
    20    Wet Bags
    21    Bad Booth
    22    Brown Bubbles
    23    New Brine
    24    Church Brine
    25    Red Lobby
    26    Red Wedge
    27    Brunette Pen
    28    Bland Pen
    29    Blonde Pen
    30    Brunette Pen
    31    Birth Death Pen
    32    End Pen
    33    Burst Grease
    34    Tinted Lobby
    35    Red Median
    36    Church Red
    37    Median Mode
    38    Red Crest
    39    Red Booth
    40    Medium Booth
    41    Boat Brush
    42    Bent Pen
    43    Bent Breeze
    44    Fountain Bend
    45    Fountain Band
    46    Red Code
    47    Sequin Series
    48    Burst Church
    49    Bent Church
    50    Tinted Church
    51    Church Pen
    52    Kneeler
    53    Church Gloves
    54    Slit Screen
    55    Scream Slit
    56    Slit Church
    57    Slit Bags
    58    Bent Slits
    59    Split Crest
    60    Medium Mode
    61    Church Mode
    62    Shady Red
    63    Dented Mode
    64    Tinted Bed
    65    Tinted Bet
    66    Old Stilts
    67    Marina Mode
    68    Breeze Bag
    69    Breeze Bags
    70    Marina Breeze
    71    Tinted Foam
    72    Red Phones
    73    Foam Phone
    74    Phone Mode
    75    Tinted Dented
    76    Dented Tinted
    77    Dented Slit
    78    Rinsed Cans
    79    Bag of Cans
    80    Wet Cans
    81    Marina Cans
    82    Booth Cans
    83    Nite Cans
    84    Placeholder Boats
    85    Fresh Tines
    86    Dented Cans
    87    Men’s Studies
    88    Men’s Studies Group
    89    Fenced Cans
    90    Dented Fenced
    91    Fountain Fence
    92    Church Fence
    93    Lattice Fence
    94    Tinted Fence
    95    Panic Fence
    96    Fence Rinse
    97    Burst Fence
    98    Loose Fence
    99    Fence Risk
    100    Slat Wash
    101    Church Slats
    102    Chuch Slits
    103    Slit Slats
    104    Slats
    105    Wet Slats
    106    Fountain Slats
    107    Tinted Slats
    108    Taunted Slats
    109    Tainted Slates
    110    Risky Slats
    111    Brunette Slats
    112    Sib Rise
    113    Sin Men
    114    Slit Splits
    115    Red Wash
    116    Breeze Wah
    117    Foam Wash
    118    Brine Wash
    119    Phone Rinse
    120    Red Rinse
    121    Loose Ritz
    122    Red Ritz
    123    Medium Ritz
    124    Medium Foam
    125    Glass Rinse
    126    Night Rinse
    127    Dusk Rinse
    128    Musk Rinse
    129    Slit Rash
    130    Slit Salt
    131    Silt Rash
    132    Risk Rash
    133    Marina Risk
    134    Boat Wash
    135    Risk Watch
    136    Panic Breeze
    137    Panic Risk
    138    Foam Panic
    139    Slit Risk
    140    Risk Slit
    141    Sin Risk
    142    Fist Slit
    143    Bent Risk
    144    Risk Church
    145    Dusk Risk
    146    Panic Foam
    147    Tinted Bran
    148    Bent Bran
    149    Dim Mode
    150    Risk Wash
    151    Panic Wash
    152    Rash Wash
    153    Lesion Legion
    154    Slit League
    155    Risk Legion
    156    Risk League
    157    Panic League
    158    Medium Legion
    159    Wash Squad
    160    Lattice League
    161    Silt Stage
    162    Green-Grey Risk
    163    Dice Risk
    164    Sunset List
    165    Sunset Wash
    166    Sunset Crest
    167    Nite Risk
    168    Moonliit Risk
    169    Lite Wish
    170    Light Wish
    171    Slit Mist
    172    Lite Wash
    173    Red Wish
    174    Aqua Panic
    175    Aqua Risk
    176    Mystery Risk
    177    Mist Rinse
    178    Fizz Fence
    179    Fizz Crest
    180    Bent Fizz
    181    Fizz Muck
    182    Muck Mist
    183    Silt Crest
    184    Fizz Wash
    185    Muck Crest
    186    Fizz Watch
    187    Mist Fence
    188    Missed Fence
    189    Burst Fizz
    190    Burnt Fizz
    191    Dirty Fizz
    192    Icky Derby
    193    Loose Derby
    194    Fizz League
    195    Missed Risk
    196    Tinted Fizz
    197    Fizz Tints
    198    Fence Tent
    199    Fizz Tent
    200    Missed Tense
    201    Wash Tense
    202    Medium Tense
    203    Bent Tense
    204    Burst Tense
    205    Aqua Tense
    206    Sequined Fizz
    207    Sequined Silt

In my case it has proven to be true that the only way out of a Major Depressive Episode (sic) is through a wind tunnel of panic and anxiety.  Cognitive Behavioralists tell us that acute anxiety is best confronted through immersion, which means, ironically, that one must un-ironically endure increasing, intentional confrontations with whatever’s making one go whatever over blah-blah-blah because of fuck-all. Everyday. No breaks for Pat Travers Band shows, even!

 

What does this mean for tumblr? Not even a sucked orange’s weight in aquarium gravel.

 

But it means that the truism “things will get worse before they get better” is worsening in direct proportion to bullishness about expectations and results.  Turner has reassembled his guitar and hired on with a wage-paying shame-station.  But busying one’s idle hands can actually unleash suicidal ideas if you are “far enough gone” that reintroducing oneself to scary everyday things doesn’t scare one “straight.” (That’s right, Satan: if you need something done, ask a busy person!) 

 

At the very least, all the hard-earned “structure” cements nothing so much as certainty that one will end the day running away, assured of a looming expiration agreed upon backstage but unknown to our protagonist.   One thinks of that old gun show mantra, “Sniper: You Can Run, But You’ll Only Die Tired.”

 

Tired, yes.  Tired of sleeping resembling a mugging. Terrified by the absence of comfort, oblivion, negativity and nothingness.  Getting better. One hand clapping a mesh hand.

 

We are old enough to know better.   But tomorrow even drowning could seem boring and disappointing, do you know?  Or maybe the coercive immersion arc’s back will break and we’ll buy somebody’s baby a fucking ice cream cone and surf saltines on the fucking volvo nintendo. 

Turner was voted “Replicant Least Likely To Succeed” by area Future Business Leaders and was sold for scrap by the Mondale campaign. 

Nobody knows how he knew about Tumblr.  When he mentioned it in conversation nobody knew what he was saying or thought much about it.  A lot of chaps were taking tumbling classes back then, if you know what I mean. I don’t know.

The Comeback Bid

I got like 3 compliments yesterday: my friend said I asked a good question, my wife said I asked a good question, and my friend was impressed by my having a certain lp. 

I cannot remember which record or what questions, but I am reminded of this parable from the book of GG:

Disciple: Hey GG, why are you squirting fecal semen on your penis?

GG:  It’s easy to turkey-baste semen on your penes when you know you’re never gonna get laid. [GG then maced the inquisitor, legend has it.]

Dynasty-Dynasty-TV-series-007.jpg (JPEG Image, 581 × 390 pixels)

(source)  Linda Evans is 70 today!  How old are you, now? What a spectrum of styles of looking at the camera.  They are both “in character”-seeming but also “revealing”-seeming.  You suspend disbelief and and recuse yourself to a world lived “as if.”  You subject yourself to gazing and when your subjects (don’t) gaze back it hits you like sunlight kabooming down on a migraine.

Details Make Things Elegant

Elegant disappointment: by the time we landed, checked in, farted around and made the requisite bad decisions of bad mood-ed travelers taken up in uncharacteristic sniping… we made it to the venue and Codeine was five songs in already.

Worst disappointment of my rock-life ever, only one other (unmentionable amidst this self-hate-heat and death-fire) even comes close. I was blown away by three sublime cuts (‘Loss Leader’ was unreal) before my new-found temper slithered up my spine and out my nostrils just to spit-piss in my fucking face. All. My. Fault.

Good three songs.  They were great.  I keep thinking, “it’s good the Numero Codeine Box is still sealed.”  I can sell it! But it was a gift, really.  But I want to take Codeine away from me. I had a plane ticket to an airport 30 minutes from the venue, and 3 hours later they started playing while I whatever-the-fucked. 

In my life and in capitalist society the details that matter most and burn you most consistently are money matters.  Agents and institutions will mock and moralize when you drop this or that cash-ball, and it only gets worse from there (i.e., jail or bankruptcy or poverty or insecurity.)  However, if you’re mentally ill or disposed towards art, it’s the details of production, reproduction, distribution and reception that I invest with moral, libidinal and mortal weight.  I’ve told before how I can’t sing or write or think like I used to, how my extremities swell and I “lose time” to blank stares and cyclical hate monologues.  I remembered tonight, and I won’t forget or repress again, that I can’t carry the weight of my own wants.  I’m too sick to constitute a proper audience, too fragmented to practice deliberate appreciation. 

Next goes criticism.  My wonk and my wank have watched anthropology, politics, guitars and bands and exercise and intimacy get intruded upon and carried away by fears, hatreds, self-fist-fucking and significantly the birth of an inner urge to bawl. Stifled, this drive demands attention in mostly childish or violent ways, both of which elicit laughs from intimates that make you think you know the sound of a miscarried could’ve-been’s skull.  [In a far more slapstick way, it reminds me of nothing so much as an hour spent sprinting through Dublin desperate for a toilet.]  Framing this story as funny or petty or nothing special to my in-laws in a couple of days is going to be like masturbating to post-Manson Sharon Tate pics.

I wanna throw my Codeine box in the street, or trade it in for exclusively far worse records.  Really I’m just glad to be carrying enough physical pain (in my back and my knee) that I can’t and won’t act out further.  It’s still the same old story: losers lose, and if they maintain enough composure to keep from blaming somebody else, they’ll at least succumb to forcing you into an autopsy of their failures large and small. 

All I did was miss a show tonight. All I do is fail myself, most days. All my friends, wife, family get in return is a drawn out binary code of silences and rants, gagging and mourning, which cannot help but push them towards the shelter of proportionality, humor, relativity and clarity that protects them and alienates me. Dis-embedded, diffuse and longing for earthy release among my remaining thoughts and the machine-gun judgments of others, I see how everyone gets to be alone together.  I see how it’s raining suggestions and expectations, but I can’t see the band from here. 

I can’t make distinctions that enliven signification and bind me safely away from certain Siren songs.  It makes me so angry that I force more failures.  This is one way among others to drop off and out the self-regard you require like you need a name.  When you’ve missed enough chances through accidents and incompetence, eventually you’ll die for more chances to spoil.  Eventually you’ll spoil yourself.  You’ll soil yourself, resting assured of future errors ahead: favorite art flying faster and further away.  You can buy a fucking ticket but you won’t see the show.  You can buy the records but the platters won’t play.  You can make a trade and lose on the deal, and with the subsequent ignominy ingested you can call it a day. Maybe you can writhe all night, fail and groan away the day.  Hell, you flew all this way…

33, $25, 33+1/3, part 1: 33

Since day uno, or at least since I came to care about what I wrote and how it was written, friends and foes alike have made plain that my writing ticks them off or even angers them.  Mostly they’re dead-on: over-long sentences, both intentional and plain lazy grammar-belches, unconsummated metaphors and unfair extra-textual allusions make for pissed off and bored readers.  These qualities make for readers who stop reading.

It’s bad enough to churn this kind of shit, friends and foes have offered, but it’s worser to do so adorned with the weighty proposition that doing so makes you “who you are.”  You’d think that I, somebody who believes that practices and not essences produce identities, would pay attention to making my own favored practice, my pr-prose, both leaner and meaner. You’d think I wouldn’t meander so, that I could say what I mean without needing to spear, stuff and hang generic questions of meaning in advance.

My form peeves all sorts of smarties, and I take their points as surely as I don’t change.  But it’s my content, packaged “expertly” in that form like a mail order LP between two stray cardboard scraps, that escalates the objections and bars the door between myself and potential comrades.  Sometimes it seems there’s not content at all.  Sometimes there’s writing about writing or the aforementioned referential cruelty (Leon Trotsky + William Friedkin + GG Allin = ?), and sometimes my point can be gleaned but it seems either hollow or overinflated.

So all told, I’m not worth the wait (and without any weight) as a writer. Pretentious!  Twice I had a particular friend-to-be from the labor movement and labor blogosphere apologize in advance: despite our many mutual acquaintances and common struggle for unions, he had to tell me in advance of small-talk that he hated my writing.  Another even closer brother constantly lampoons my writing and my politicking as predicated on a kind of antagonistic meaninglessness that corners my adversaries merely by confusing them.  Wonk-smoke and marx-mirrors: pretentious!

An actual writer of stuff would’ve mentioned their reasons for bringing all this up by now, huh? Well, not yet:

1. But it’s safe to say that a person who needs writing to help themselves through the world is squarely fucked if they’re not thought to be much of a writer, eh?
2. And if their writing falters, fades and otherwise shrivels in their own eyes, well are they much of anything at all?

First question first, two examples. As will be familiar to some of you who read regularly, I had a hate-hate love affair with a punk msg board that became quite hostile and absorbed some of an unprecedented anger that various medical professionals  “succeeded” in surfacing.  As hostilities became more rampant and duller, and as I watched myself enter skirmishes elsewhere with this same mint condition rage, I called the whole thing off.  There were plenty of supportive members of the msg board.  (One guy compared my writing to Joe Carducci.)  Nobody would defend me in public: either I was indefensible or their given profile, low or high, was too precious to be risked.  But these allies offered, as did a dozen people “who thought I was a bit of a cunt,” several potential explanations for my splashy entrance and “wimpy” exit in “defeat.”  Mostly they told me I either a) wrote too much, b) asserted my opinions despite “newbie” standing c) asked pointless questions in meaningless threads of my own design, or d) wrote too much. [Also, Slint/Bastro/Tortoise/90s indie rock, etc.,  are not for mentioning there unless you’re buying somebody else’s copies on discogs. In that case, well, that’s just punk rock, babe.]

Too much writing, too much identity, too much talk that goes nowhere.   As I exited the msg board, I tried to explain to them that _I agreed_, and I’d appreciated their giving me a spot to a) observe the “cool kids” and capitalists of punk jock and roll, and b) their giving me a spot to take a crap.  But I made a bad mistake leaving, same I made when I entered the building: I revealed that I struggled daily (losing mostly) with mental illness.  I meant to say, “smart fucks and dumb fucks: you can’t hurt me.” I instead said, “nobody hurts me like I hate myself.”

I was a bad writer, worse than the “windbag” loathed by whoever they were.  While they probably thought I was fishing for sympathy, really I was trying to masturbate with a cross like in _The Exorcist_ or shit the floor like GG Allin (RIP).  I had substituted a biomedical designation for myself and for words.  It wasn’t a meek bid for sympathy or mere silence, it was a power play.  I invited myself and a bunch of folks who weren’t in the mood to fuck, fuck with and otherwise defile a dead man walking.  You can’t respond to “you’re an asshole” by asserting “I am not a person.”  But that’s exactly the logic nobody dug in my previous writing, which I’ve managed to seduce into my extremities, libido, internal monologue, cognitive mapping, motor function…into my very materiality. But what if you really aren’t a person?

Psychomotor retardation (also known as “psychomotor impairment” or “motormental retardation”) involves a slowing-down of thought and a reduction of physical movements in an individual. Psychomotor retardation can cause a visible slowing of physical and emotional reactions, including speech and affect.

Examples of psychomotor retardation include the following:

• Unaccountable difficulty in carrying out what are usually considered “automatic” or “mundane” self-care tasks for healthy people (i.e., without depressive illness) such as taking a shower, dressing, self-grooming, cooking, brushing one’s teeth and exercising.
• Physical difficulty performing activities which normally would require little thought or effort such as walking up a flight of stairs, getting out of bed, preparing meals and clearing dishes from the table, household chores or returning phone calls.
• Tasks requiring mobility suddenly (or gradually) and inexplicably seem to be “impossible”. Activities such as shopping, getting groceries, caring for the daily needs of one’s children and meeting the demands of employment or school are commonly affected. Individuals experiencing these symptoms typically sense that something is wrong, and may be confused about their inability to perform these tasks.
• Activities usually requiring little mental effort can become challenging. Balancing one’s checkbook, making a shopping list or making decisions about mundane tasks (such as deciding what errands need to be done) are often difficult.

Pretentious! A pioneer. You occupy a space where practices great and small seem further and further away, as impossible as being seems. You can’t sing, play guitar or read a book.  Fuck watching tv.  You can’t read a book! There’s a Ph.D. candidate with your name who since a wee teen wanted only to be a “real intellectual.”  There’s a walking corpse with your name who has always been only a pedant.  Things happen in your body, things happen in your house. There is very real failure, real failing happening and real failings piling up.

You’re still angry, and you almost confuse it with being alive.  A shitty record store in Dearborn, MI called “Dearborn Musique” mistreats you like your insides yearn to deserve.  It takes a day or three, but you realize you’ve been rolled.  You email them once, twice.  You escalate.  Finally you get a telephone call.  You’re offered a full refund, but only after being told by the thug-clerk that your emails didn’t make any sense. Some things don’t change.  But some do. Luckily you’re quick to forget them these days.  But you remember writing in at least one of those emails how you’d felt traumatized by the treatment “Dearborn Music” bestowed, how your condition worsened it, and how some other customers might be similarly vulnerable.

And there it is again!  This time it’s hard not to wonder if you weren’t dropping hints that it was a sick person, if not a disabled one, who had been wronged: that special privileges and special recompense should be dispensed to these some and not those others.  Isn’t this the identity politics that Fox News and marxists alike decry as either a) an unfair sense of fairness or b) as the misplaced denunciation of an injustice that is unjust but nonessential?  I believe that all kinds of marginal groups deserve individual and group rights they have been historically denied. But do thirty-something dirty white-boy failures with illnesses that transfix them like Medusa?   Haven’t I been misplacing my identity by bearing quiet witness to an essential and unstoppable illness rather than digging things I do and people I know?

Well, don’t forget, it’s harder to _do things_ than it was yesterday. It’s harder than the month before.  And there are tests and specialists and far worse scenarios splayed out in my middle-future like a sickening deli tray.

But I do do records still, with all the boyish wonder and grown-up fear inside of me.  ‘Last I looked they were still making fun of me on that msg board, in particular for  mentioning the illness that I also earlier mocked but then went ahead and wrote this entire blog about. Pretentious!

I’m sure they’re still stacking merch and talking shit and elevating meanness to an art form at “Dearborn Music and Tapes, Inc.,” too.  You know what? I’m all kinds of messed up and my prospects are shriveled and I’ll never even get to work in a bookstore or record store, probably…but at least I suplexed that genius over the telephone before I’d even broken a sweat.  I had to do it, because just like with the record-collecting record merchants at the cool kid msg board,  I had to keep _records themselves_ from getting soiled from abuse, opportunism, elitism or idiocy.  Can records stay records as capitalism ascends like a monstrous erection and powerful punk wankers pick and choose their opponents and their audience from marketplace dregs?  Can I recognize records in myself, myself in records, and records as records?  Really? Can I do this while I try to neutralize douche-dicks and money-vipers by hating myself more than they’d ever dream of or bother to? Can self-contempt un-swell my fucking hands?

End of Part 1

Coming in Part 2: That’s right, we’re going to be talking about records (and tapes.)

 

Forced Exposure #11, Winter 1987: record reviews, annotated (!!!)

Forced Exposure was a Boston-based fanzine published by Jimmy Johnson and Byron Coley. It ran for more than a decade. The last issue (Forced Exposure #18) appeared in 1993.

The Whole Earth Catalog once described Forced Exposure as “Rolling Stone for people who’d rather read the Journal of Trauma Medicine than watch MTV,” and many rock critics were directly influenced by its acerbic style of writing.

Originally a fanzine devoted to hardcore-punk, beginning in 1985 Forced Exposure began to shift its focus to noise rock and the East Village art-punk scene. Subsequent issues featured writings by prominent No Wave bands like the Swans and Sonic Youth; interviews with filmmaker Nick Zedd, photographer Richard Kern, and post-modern painter Robert Williams; and a long lost interview with the Velvet Underground. The highlight of issue 7/8 (Summer 1985) is a fight between Byron Coley and the singer Nick Cave.

Over the next eight years, Forced Exposure would continue to document the musical underground, with a Big Black tour diary (as well as regular columns by Steve Albini); an interview with nihilistic monochromatic artist Raymond Pettibon (Black Flag); profiles of counter-cultural figures like Charles Bukowski, Boyd Rice, Philip K. Dick, Lisa Suckdog (Lisa Carver), and William S. Burroughs; as well as continuing coverage of bands and musicians like Die Kreuzen, the Butthole Surfers, Diamanda Galas, Glenn Branca, and Spacemen 3.

Forced Exposure still exists as an independent record label. – ZineWiki

BAD BRAINS: “I Against I” LP (SST)

…I’ve been told these guys are the new Fishbone and praise Holy Fah, that may just be the case. — Jimmy [Johnson]

CONNELLS: “Darker days” LP (BLACK PARK)

….Carolina college pop by the virtual bk.  Just as pleasant & chipper as anything this side o’ yr doc tellin’ ya that the lungworm he just wrenched outta yr mouth is the last.  These guys’re serious about makin’ Fred Mills music. Alright! — Byron [Coley]

“GOD’S FAVORITE DOG” comp LP (TOUCH AND GO)

…to ask more from a sampler* would be inhuman.  Up to five of the bands included would place high on any smart person’s list of this nation’s ten or so best (the long forgotten Hose** being the sole entry lacking such esteem, and their contributions won’t make you cough either.) Opens with the Buttholes screwball instr. “Endhouse Chicken Margus” that’ll take you place you thought only drugs were able to lead you to before.  This is followed by a massive “Sweet Home Alabama” from the super-sludge sharp Killdozer.  Some other stuff: Scratch Acid (incl. a different take of “Holes”), Happy Flowers (America’s baby-faced noister-superstars w/ a typical anthem “All I Got for Christmas Was Clothes”) and, maybe wary of being overrun amongst all these giants, Big Black dump out their densest mud yet (incl. “Every Man For Himself” with its ringing chorus of “I wanna go to Australia/I wanna learn how to swim” — the first ever ode to our reviews section?) If you think you can go wrong here, you’d best keep going. — Jimmy

* [boatzone addendum: Dr Drunk can show you this sampler cuz he’s nice and wise.]

** [boatzone addendum: Everybody knows Rick Rubin was in Hose, tho whether or not he was active by the time of this comp is a question I cannot answer.]

GORE: “Hart Core” LP (Holland, Eskakt)

…here’s the hammed down rec of this issue.  Dutch trio who, if you’ve gotta have an inadequate comaprison, sorta sounds like Gone/Swans/Metallica thrown into the rign, and may the ugliest win.  This is all instrumental power-trio madness, mind you, yet the band do write words (a lyric sheet is enclosed); they just don’t refer to ’em, and believe me, you won’t care.  While these “lyrics” are of the violent/self-degrading persuasion, the tunes go way beyond any simple analysis.  The personification of power at its deadliest. — Jimmy

[Boatzone addendum: see Pileshifter and then Southern Lord: cds for $5, and the 2XLPs are goooooorgeous. The follow-up, Mean Man’s Dream is gonna get its own post.]

KILLDOZER: “Burl” mini-lp (TOUCH & GO)

…holy holy holy.  There’s like these real real ugly girls who’ve been campin’ out on Mr. Ives’ intestines.  ‘N every evenin’ they start these fires & roast weinies & have these hoots.  ‘N now all that noise  & cracklin’ & smoke has gotten old Frostie’s nerves.  He’s gonna fry those chickies up BUT GUD.  So here’s this & it don’t come at ya like a big drumstick the way SNAKEBOY did, but it’s sure like a strong mean goddamn bum, pinchin’ yr leg HARD and screamin’ “GIMME A QUARTER, MISTER! YOU AND ME’S OK! SEE?*”  This is easily more gruesome than any prior Killdozer rec & that’s sayin’ ten long inches, champ.  You got more. Whip it on out & watch ol’ Burl chew it off then vomit greasy stories onto your mom’s “porch.” Just bitchen. (* bum quotes were lifted from Wm. Burroughs Jr’s excellent bk, “Speed”.) — Byron

[Boatzone Addenda:

1. 
2. Burl Ives:
3. From the wonderful vinylmine’s essential post on the topic of Burl and Burl and the legacy of Killdozer:  “Ballad singing has been going on ever since people sang at all. It comes up like an underground stream and then goes back again. But it always exists.”
   – Burl Ives.“If America wasn’t a cesspool we couldn’t write songs. At least not the songs we write.”
   – Michael Gerald, Killdozer, 1994, Stumpy Fanzine

LIVE SKULL: “Cloud One” (Homestead)

…their densest, and most orgasmic disk yet, and i don’t know ifit was an attempt to live up to the title or what, but with this one, Live Skull have practivally created their own little world here; one where you better be willing to sink in and sponge off the elements or be left behind — as background music this is worthless.  So New Age Collegiate types, just STAY THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY, OK?  I don’t mean it’s difficult per se (no humming allowed tho’), but that effort is somewhat required and more than justifiably rewarded.  Maybe it’s just me, but I think a lot of people are missing the boat on these guys.  — Jimmy

[Boatzone Addendum: Live Skull records are absurdly available and affordable in the marketplace, showing up in record store discount bins almost as much as April Wine and the Loggins/Messina Experience. It’s kinda weird how at the same time I cannot get a Cows record, say, without a $40 buy-in or totally legal downloading. ‘Speaking of, do consult the grand phoenixhairpin’s blog for a listen-glimpse at this great band’s best record. Then buy the fucking vinyl.  I’ve got two copies for a reason.]

Mr. T EXPERIENCE: “Everybody’s Entitled to Their Own Opinion” LP (Disorder)

…bands like this (described in their press kit as “funnypunkers for the Chris Trela generation” really helped nail down SF’s spot in the worst scene category.  Just hope they don’t get excommunicated to a city near you. — Jimmy

The MODERN LOVERS LP (RHINO)

…this reish of the basic, essential, first Mod Lovers LP also includes “Government Center” (from the CHARTBUSTERS comp), the Warners version of “I’m Straight” and an ace new-to-this-ear this called “Dignified and Old”.  Its cumulative effect is like finding a quivering ninety pound adenoid that knows all about the Velvet Underground and y’oughta own it.  Sidenote — the original liner notations by Phil Milstein (a guy generally conceded to b the most “sensitive” FE contributor) we shelved in favor of sub-decent ones by some non-FE contrib.  Fuck a duck! — Byron

PUSSY GALORE: “Groovy Hate Fuck” mini-LP (SHOVE)

…simultaneously more rockin’ & more fruitily pseudo-gnarly than their debut, this takes a certain type of flake aggresion to its virtual lyrical limit.  I shit you not.  ‘N the instrumental hoke is what some Saturday mornin’ cartoon version of a NY noise-garage outfit might sound like.   As cute as pie & almost as knobby. — Byron

SLOVENLY: “Thinking of Empire” LP (SST)

…about thirty listens haven’t changed the opinion I grabbed after the first spin: Slovenly is one fucking great ton of a band.  Guitars that swim around your head like the righteous preaching of true believers, lyrics that touch the rare beauty that lurks in serious rumination, and an ingenious swaying sound that knows more than you do.  THINKING OF EMPIRE belongs in any collection you’d wanna consider calling your own. — Jimmy

SMACK: “Rattlesnake Bite” LP (PINK DUST)

…about four less Stooges poops on here than there were on Smack’s bracin’ US debut, but this still blows me up.   A song like “Weird in the Sun” strikes the sorta pose that many prime A. Cooper rip-offs useta & the old guitars rattle like twin cojones cut off a gigantic redwood drunkard.  Trash is apparently a concept that these cleanly Finns know their way around (at least theoretically).  Which means, natch, that there are pars o’ this that fall into a tripey kinda bad garbage pile as well (do I hear some Wishbone Ash damage?), but shit, the good stuff’s pretty damn scuzzy indeed. — Byron

[Boatzone Addendum: ]

VOLCANO SUNS: “All Night Lotus Party” (HOMESTEAD)

…these three rollickin’ non-fatsos bloot out what may be one of Boston’s best ever w/ this one. The hard-edged, clown-masked, wigglin’ worms that have always been the coin of the Suns’ best live shows are here made manifest on vinyl for even You to hear.  AND if those worms had bad lungs, they’d be coughin ’em out for the laughin’ godless joke of it all.  The Suns are fuckin’ king.  But you knew that, even if Kevin Riley does claim that parts o’ this’re “too much like hardcore”. Kevin. Kevin. Kevin. You don’t understand the basic premise: hardcore sucks, this does not. — Byron

[Boatzone Addendum: I couldn’t figure out who Kevin Riley is, unfortunately.  Helluva last sentence, sorta definitive of that 1987 moment, eh? A milieu which wasn’t yet indie rock but was neither hc nor college rock had cleared a space from which to criticize the latter two. I know a friend who’s given to bestowing “post-hardcore” upon all such fare, but I’m not sure it doesn’t obscure more than it illuminates with the V. Suns, say. Or Dinosaur ca. Bug? 

Were the links and annotations annoying? Lemme know, because the next couple issues have really great content I’d be appalled to disrupt or spill blather on. Happy Tuesday. I can’t find that Smack record for a reasonable price! If you can handle serious heaviness, btw, you gotta check out Gore.]

Forced Exposure: issue #15, Summer 1989

[cover image courtesy of the great Public Collectors.]

BASTRO: Rode Hard and Put Up Wet EP (HOMESTEAD)

…it’s not too sumpin’ to figure out where a guy like David Grubbs would get the idea for a growly, shouty drumbox combo.  This does have a whale more aggro than I’d expected though, and the “heralding” is quite nice.  But beyond that lies a large nothing. – Byron

LAUGHING HYENAS: You Can’t Pray a Lie LP (TOUCH + GO)

…some peers have peeped that these hemorrhage heavers don’t know how to write a tune.  And while many of the selections here may bear out the fact that the Hyenas choose to focus on a nontraditional mix of form & content, a track like “Lullaby & Goodnight” is as dynamic-packed and tunoid as any of Alice-Cooper’s-Detroit-era material.  Listen to the Buxtony guitar piping around the edges of yr brain and explain to me how it’s lacking – I don’t get it.  Now I do get what’s “wrong” with the volcanic gusts of not-easily-differentiated grist these cheeseheads toss up like so many half-et turkeys – it’s duhm (as is the pseudo-jass riff-vampery they pull off).  I can understand why you might not wanna kiss Mr. Brannon (all that sand and hair in his mouth, yuck,) but nobody’s asking you too.  Just blow him, ‘kay? – Byron [Coley]

MOTHER LOVE BONE: Shine EP (STARDOG)

….the advance word on these clowns (the other half of Green River that was stupid enough to not wanna be in Mudhoney) was that they “ate complete shit” in a lightweight Aerosmith shuckster manner.  “They” weren’t kidding.  – Jimmy [Johnson]

SOUNDGARDEN: Ultramega LP (SST)

…in the words of one famous Purple Wager, “Well, I can’t pronounce shibboleth, but I can say shit!” – Jimmy

JOHNNY WINTER: Birds Can’t Row Boats (RELIX)

…a great mix of various pre-Columbia recordings by Texas album blues king.  Coolest stuff is the mid 60s garage shit (like “Avocado Green”) but there’s great National Steelwork too and all sortsa other fine-sounding gunk.  Fuck Roy Buchanan. Fast. -Byron

NIRVANA: Love Buzz/Big Cheese (Sub Pop)

…little to no derogatory comment has been uttered from my mouth about the total Sub Pop output, but this 7″ gives me the feeling that something has gone amiss.  The production squeaks like loafers on a polished floor and if I want sub-Sabbath riffs, I want them buried in fuckin’ mud not prancing around in a goddamn tutu.  – Sean McDonnell