Grahame Bent's frontline report detailing THE STOOGES assault on Glasgow Green's DOWNLOAD anti-bill for those of us who wouldn't stump up the 40+ quid.

Mr Vahlberg also observes that Sympathy are to release all the unavailable GUN CLUB action in October. Always down with providing the best in public service, you are urged to visit the SFTRI site as provided in the sidebar here.

Sylvain, Bill Nighy as Arthur Kane and "Buster" Johansen... Mr Vahlberg directed we to this set of Bob Gruen DOLLS snaps from their recent visit to London.

A missive from TS/BKS plc...

Sonic Reducer - Revenge Of The Mongoloids XVII ...

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Yus, indeedy, our beloved brethren ...

That sweetboy Teenslain and yer ever-lovin' BigKegShandy have found a new fortnightly, Friday nite, late-openin' home for Sonic Reducer, up the road in RayDaviesLand, London N6, cheek-by-jowl with Highgate tube.

Following an aborted push into the West End before Xmess, which saw The Beatings rock a packed house like four cheap alarm clocks (or even THE Alarm Clocks!) and yers trulies get a bollocking for daring to mix rekkids made before 1977 with those made afterwards (like, duh!), we've decided to return to our spiritual home ... Gerry O'Boyle's muchly licensed establishment, The Boogaloo, boasts possibly thee finest jukebox in the whole darn wurld (James Carr, The Stooges AND Wreckless Eric! Awwww! Yeah!), and many more sterling attributes ...

Since then, we've also had wickedly-fuelled fun spinning platters that may-or-not matter to packed houses at Shepherd's Bush Empire, The Forum and The Borderline for the seriously good-gawd (!) like Arthur Lee, who is one heavy, heavy dude (nice line in H Bar C shirts, also). Yeah, onna coupla occasions, we've even messed up the already melty minds of Sky Saxon & his actually really quite brill new versh of The Seeds, which was a blast and an 'alf! Or should that be arf, arf, arf?

All this and visits from the STILL seriously undervalued You Am I, a second New Year in Memphis grokking The Reigning Sound & The Cool Jerks, catchin' them Stooges boyz in Berlin, The New York Dolls swingin' by the Thames, and nabbing two copies of The Ideals' The Gorilla on 7"? Add in the just-released Prisoners best of(www.acerecords.co.uk/gotrt/may04/cdwikm241.html) and their blammo Modstock gig, the upcoming Jack & Greg Oblivian double-biscuit comp (Twins Of Evil), and some super special double secret projects, then you've got a recipe for ROCK'N'RRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLL! Ahem ...

BTW, The Sonic Reducer Tag Team is also unbelievably proud to announce that we're DJing at the MC5-DKT gig at the Londinium Astoria on August 25th ... Be there, or go boil yer 'eads ... Your belief in Messrs Davis, Kramer & Thompson will be MORE than justified, just wait!

Anyhoo, at The Boogaloo, youse can expect the same mess o'righteous sounds from the darin' '20s to these decidedly non-naughty noughties, including plenny o'sweaty funk, choice '60s garage, ravin' R&B, salacious soul, hemp-saturated jive, moon-hoppin' JA sounds, high energy rock'n'drool, and all'a the other shit that's fit to spin ... We kick off the first 8-til'-1 sesh on July 9th, then go fortnightly after, with special guest DJs, too ...

Warn your friends ...

Selah!

Brothers Manitoba, Volume and Kramer are ready to testify! Also don't forget STAR SPANGLES @ Sin-e this coming Saturday (3rd July) and ...

So wadda you gonna do with too much time on your hands?. Well, why not build the ultimate Flamin' Groovies resource...?.

Dunno of how much use this is for you foreigners, but I just located a on-line date base for the Dutch Top 40; Hitoverzicht 1965 - 2004, but it might just be the perfect tool to check if bands were really that "big in Holland" as they sometimes claim. As for me, I learned that it was indeed 1972 when I first heard both Prince Buster and Earl Bostic, tho' I still have no idea why they both had belated hits that year, and 'Rock 'n' Roll Highschool' apparently never got higher than the number 8 spot, even tho' I always remembered it as gettin' all the way up to #1, oh well... (Link c/o Dubbel Mono).

Been fast-forwarding throught the woeful TV coverage of GLASTONBURY. The only things of note on there were Arthur Lee, Toots and the Maytals, Hot Club of Cowtown and a trio of young 'uns called The Subways. The Von Bondies were OK too if a tad pedestrian. As for the wall-to-wall Macca, O*s*s, Keane (what the bloody hell are they about?) and Scissor Sisters... well no wonder the bloody music industry is in decline. John Peel hit the nail squarely on the head when he wondered why people would want to see artists perform songs of lesser quality than the recorded versions. Take a bow, Kings Of bloody Leon. It all seems like a Survivalist outing too far for me, mateys...

Go Silvio, the bargain of the century. See J's post for the bill. Now that's what I call a Curator!

"I've always wanted to do a rock and roll festival in the old style of Alan Freed, Shindig, Hullabaloo, and all of those early shows," said Van Zandt, whose other jobs include guitarist for Bruce Springsteen and consigliere Silvio Dante on "The Sopranos."

Tickets for the show, priced at $20, went on sale Friday. Van Zandt promised concertgoers "one giant B-movie beach party complete with monsters and aliens" — although he offered one caveat. "I am having a bit of trouble getting the monsters and aliens on board," he said. "It's their agents that kill you."

So, how far is it exactly from Thjis Van Leer to Van Lear Rose? A fair distance mayhap but a little bit of "Hocus Pocus" can't do you no harm. Or can it? This was sub-operatic speed metal before it's time surely?

Woo-hoo! (no this isn't a Blur karaoke page you galloot!)



The 5678's at The Liquid Rooms in Edinburgh on August 10th at part of "T on the Fringe".

How's this for a solid line-up: the Underground Garage Festival: with Iggy Pop and the Stooges, The New York Dolls, The Romantics, The Ravonettes, The Pretty Things, The Mooney Suzuki, The Electric Prunes, The Fondas, Bo Diddley, The Cynics, The Chains, The Troggs, The Singles, The Stems, The Woggles, The Chesterfield Kings, The Paybacks, Boss Martians, The Chains, The Forty-Fives, Reigning Sound, The Shazam, The Cocktail Slippers, The Killer Barbies, The Star Spangles, The Charms and The Fuzztones at Randalls Island, New York, NY Sat, Aug 14, 2004 11:30 AM

And in these peculiar times, as what's left of the NY Dolls are back on the boards, a combo by the name of THE MYSTERY GIRLS outta Green Bay, Wisconsin pops up on In The Red. Man, that Larry Hardy sure has a nose for the goods. He's got quite the cellar goin'. "Blues In G" sounds like an ubervintage Alice Cooper instro and the whole thing plays out with a peculiar contemporary form of garage rock'n'roll as opposed to just one or the other. If you're looking to reaffirm your faith in the form then stick this bugger in your craw and let it smoke out the wheat from the chaff. You'll wonder where they've been all your life and probably work yourself into a frenzy as to how you're gonna get to see them work it on out in some psycho-delic basement someplace. The segue from "Radio Planet Blues" into "Sliver and Gold" is nothing short of sick, this is some hairy-arsed rave up to be sure! Oh yeah, and they're not girls.

I dunno about you but there's nothing guaranteed to make me seeth like standing, waiting to cross the road and being ruffled by an in-car stereo booming out some "urban" pish. Then you look up and it's worse. It's a chinless, fuckwit "boy racer" all dressed like he's seen some black people once and put together a wardrobe of that ugly tracksuit variety and don't forget the skip bunnet. Someday the rain will come down and wash this scum off our sidewalks and roads but how long exactly do we have to bloody wait? And what would Larry David do in such a scenario? Anyways it's better now and I'm back indoors and consoling myself with a recording of The Stooges from the recent Download gig in Glasgow. Great stuff and exactly what car stereos were made to blast. "If it's not scotch tape, it's crap", reckons Jimmy O having a "Little Scottish Shop" moment. Exactamundo!

Finally, a light at the end of this dank tunnel...

"9 Years in the making! A few tense months of negotiations with the band and it's here! End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones is going to see a theatrical release in 16 cities in the U.S.A. in August 2004. It's going to be released by Magnolia Pictures (part of the Landmark Theater chain).

Check out our SITE for news on a specific release date.

So please spread the word. We need your support!

We hope you like it.

-Jim Fields, Michael Gramaglia and John Gramaglia,
the filmmakers"

Tomorrow night at DBs right here in Utrecht: Spooky Records recording artists Digger & the Pussycats, all the way from Melbourne, Australia.

If you're in Manhattan tomorrow night, then there's just the one place to be... Otto's on East 14th!

Aye. There seems to be some kinda divine intervention going down under the auspices of "poor ticket sales". The old ways of actually having to tour and maybe even struggle might be too much for many "artists" today though. People generally deserve the festival bills they're saddled with. Curate properly or die I say. And what about the Punkfest? There was never a chasm between Discharge and Black Lace anyway as far as I could hear. In fact, BL mighta been the more punk rock but you get my drift. 'oli-daay in the pissing rain anyone?

Just got word that the Lollapalooza festival tour is canceled due to poor ticket sales. With festivals here in Holland suffering from dramatic drops in attendees as well, this seems to be an international trend. Couple that with the ever declining record sales, and we just might see the day when the corporate honchos will drag their sorry asses over to another field for faster turnovers and leave this music stuff to livin' 'n breathin' human beings. I'll tell ya, this biz is fucked beyond belief, if they can't make money these days from discs that sell "only" 50.000 copies, while just about every small label would be overjoyed with such figures, they're obviously doing something wrong. And what about this festival stuff? You axe. Well just think about it; bands might tour again from town to town playing relatively small clubs and you won't have to fork over a weeks pay to spend two days in the desert or a mudfield to watch 60 bands while there's actually only two you really wanna see. Nutty as it may sound, but the future is in DIY, small specialized operations that are in direct contact with their, uh, "target audience". Look at Hightone, Yep Rock or even Soul Jazz for proof positive. And the same goes for this festival stuff, the smaller specialized ones are doin' fine, it's these something-for-everybody barf fests that are no longer pullin' in the numbers. Hey, you may say I'm a dreamer, but...

NO!, a thousand times NO!. Pretty sure ol' Lindsay doesn't need his below question answered, but I just wanted that clear... Who woulda thunk the punk rock thing ending up like this. The revolution will not be televised but can be seen havin' a nice day out at Butlins with the Cockney Rejects as the new Freddie & the Dreamers for entertainment!. To me it's friggin' hilarious tho', and proof positive that a lack of taste is timeless. A new generation of 40-something sea-side dwellin' families who just happen to prefer 'Dead Cities' over the 'Birdie Dance' and still take fashion tips from the singer in G.B.H.. Ugly music for ugly people!. Heck, you'd figure that with like 500 bands aboard something's gotta swing, but no way Jose; just one big round-up of no-talent losers (and that includes the one or two people involved who should know better!). The British take on p-rock was always shaky at best and this whole deal once again underlines my long held believe that Brits are best at appreciating good ol' Ameri-cun Music, and generally should stay clear of musical instruments 'emselves. There, I've said it!... Fanmail to the usual address please.