RIP RAY MANZAREK

You know what I loved about Ray apart from his skills on the organ, piano, bass and even marimba was that he stayed enthusiastic about the Doors right through his life. He really believed in them and knew they were great. He never dismissed them as juvenalia like many artists would. He knew they were the best musical days of his life and they would never be repeated. He was still inspired in the sleeve notes of those last reissues from like 2007.

Dead Blogs

Norm Chambers AKA Panabrite once ran one of my favourite blogs Lunar Atrium. This was a great place to find the weird and wonderful. I got to listen to many library and obscure electronic records that will never see a re-release. I don't know what happened but he started blogging less frequently and then bang all his files and critical comments were gone. Now it's like a ghost town blog with just it's header and zero content. Thanks Norm for the heads up on a lot of records I would never have known if it wasn't for your old/dead blog. Where else was I gonna hear Claudio Rocchi's classic Suoni Di Frontiera along with many others?

Another excellent blog on the more funky tip of library records, Funky Frolic, has called it quits too. This could possibly be the source of where I first heard Alan Hawkshaw's legendary Oddball! Another one bites the dust.

I could go on about many others who are disappearing by the minute. Then there's others who have slowed to a crawl like Pontone & Exp Etc. and the great Mutant Sounds. Many file sharing blogs are still online but in spectral form with most links no longer alive. Is the well drying up? Or are the authorities taking control? A golden era of obscure record sharing seems to be coming to an end and that's a shame.

eggheads

Barry enjoys Adolescent Sex

CJ used to be my favourite egghead. Man of many great shirts. He admitted though the other day that he doesn't listen to or buy music thus becoming the villain egghead. Some of the other dudes know their stuff though. Pat got a question about Black Flag the other night and Barry answered correctly a question on Japan and even named an LP Adolescent Sex as one his particular favourites. There was even a question about who was the lead singer/songwriter/guitarist behind The Mighty Wah! & Wah! Heat. The answer of Pete Wylie however was not forthcoming. Once a question was asked "What Beatles LP is actually called The Beatles?" The challengers were given 3 choices of which they replied Sgt. Pepper & not you know, the right answer. There's obviously a music freak in the question research department. It definitely keeps me watching to see what weird music question is next and leaves me slightly disappointed when the music category does not appear in an episode.

Pat gets the Hardcore questions.

This parallels Gilmore Girls which I used to watch. The writers must have been big music fans and in the end I think I was just watching to see what kind of music esoterica they could smuggle into such a mainstream show. Slint once got a mention and I thought wow how are they gonna top that? One of the main 2 characters was named Lorelei. This would always put me in mind of the great Cocteau Twins track from the classic Treasure LP.  Surely she was named after that.

One More Time

Beaches - Granite Snake

I is Ignoramus!

"You know Mick one day you will play on an LP by an Aussie
band called Beaches and even you will shine amongst these
Godesses!"

Michael Rother of Neu fame actually plays on, aforementioned in previous post, song by Beaches Granite Snake. I is not up withe me Pitchforks and Mess & Noises.

NEU - NEGATIVLAND

The embryo for just about everything that followed in rock that was good!

The Greatest Track Ever?

I'm confused!

Doris Hays

I know the Internet is full of bullshit but I  was always under the impression Doris Hays was a pseudonym for Delia Derbyshire. It turns out this is not true! Is that true? Who should I trust?

Is this the above lady's LP or is it Derbyshire's?

Robin Crutchfield

Here's a great podcast from Minimal Wave featuring Robin Crutchield of DNA and Dark Day fame discussing his history and playing tracks of his and his influences with Veronica Vasicka from East Village Radio. So this is for all you No Wave/Post-punk/electro and acid folk...Fans. I can't find the track list but whatever.

Research Rock

*Research Rock I guess is the new Record Collection Rock. A continuation if you like. This time time though it's not based so much on music weeklies, magazines, fanzines, fusty second hand shops, eighth generation tapes, word of mouth, cool record collections and knowing taste makers but on your ability to connect threads from blogs, Web magazines, music history books/magazines (these aren't totally necessary as all research can be done online) and knowing the coolest virtual places to go for your info. Then collecting the correct files through your expertise of cool web navigation. Later you pick and choose from your downloads/files in your virtual record collection. Now you can do it overnight instead of years of gathering tid bits of esoterica to build the perfect record collection which your band can cut & paste into an amalgam of seemingly new soundz etc. (er...still thinking this through. I'll expand this another day when my brain is functioning in a less tired manner)

**This is a work/thought in progress.

Beaches - She Beats

When I write about an artist I usually try to evoke the sounds, ideas and feelings through words and not list influences. This is getting harder by the second particularly as we are now very late in the (rock) epoch.  I'm only a couple of listens in but I'm really diggin' She Beats. It's a guitar record. It's not really breaking any new ground but who is? My ears just love hearing those guitars and the melodies. They've definitely done stellar research*. Beaches belong the lineage of The Velvets/Stooges/Kraut/Hawkwind axis, the Paisley Underground, 80s Sydney Rock (The Church, Died Pretty) 80s into early 90s Flying Nun, Proto-Shoegaze (ie. Loop et al.) Shoegaze, 90s Kranky and  instrumental groups from the USA like Pell Mell & Cul-De-Sac and the more recent Yawning Man/Ten East. I have to say though with Beaches It feels more organic than that. This musical melting pot  has been brewing in their DNA for some time and can't help but ooze out of them when they plug in and play. As opposed to a group like Savages who seem to be mixing and matching influences like trying on clothes. IE. 'Does my Wire match my Siouxsie? Does my Banshee look big in this?'

Beaches still haven't captured the immensity of their live sound on tape and one wonders if they ever will. Someone should give them hundreds of thousands of dollars so they can create their very own Tusk or Starfish. They must be special if I'm willing to let a track like Granite Snake get past me as I swore a couple of years ago that if I heard another band being influenced by Neu (Neu are one of my all time favourite bands but does that mean every 2nd band should rip em off) I would smash the radio in. But Granite Snake blows my fucking mind, it's incredible  Who'd have thought we'd be listening to a band in 2013 that reminded us of Opal, The Pale Saints or the 3Ds? Possibly the best record of its ilk since Yawning Man's excellent Vista Point from 2007 (yeah yeah I know Vista Point is a compilation of records made in 2005, whatever).

Now I don't think this is real.

These guys seem to have taken the blogosphere by storm. Everywhere I look people are pointing me in their direction. More art man.