RIP - George Russell

Last couple of days, I've woken up and largely crashed feeling like my napper is stuck in a vice. Things like trying to sort out car insurance and other life-sucking activities aren't helping but I'm not really complaining. Just offering reasons why I can't seem to kick myself into any real blogging effort. Tonight I purposely didn't switch this on within minutes of getting home and attended to something that I've been procastinating with for weeks. Plus it wasn't raining so I had no excuse.

Me 'ave become somewhat obsessed with not wishing to burn valuable time whilst at the same time torching great bales of the stuff. It always helps to be able to spend some time with cool people that you don't get to see too often. I'm fortunate to have a few bouts of just that coming up over the next few weeks too.

With regard to getting e-mails with links and mp3's, etc. I know that addresses just end up on lists and that in the main, these things are just sent out in the hope that someone will care. More often than not, I don't. Unless I recognise something to do with a message or the fact that it comes from someone I know then it'll be deleted straight away. In conjunction with the time thing stated before, life is too short. Maybe I'll miss something huge but that's my lookout because really it's gotten to the point where I'm inundated. A lot of it is simply material that doesn't fit the bill here. We do convene over a broad canvas but really, no names - no pack drill, some of the songs suck so bad that they'll probably go on to be very popular indeed. Not with the blessing of this parish however. Whilst on the subject of time, I'm thinking about dumping the Twitter thing. Facebook is useful and as long as you don't put anything on there that might come back on you like a cucumber sandwich. Myspace I check but seldom use other than to quickly hear stuff. When I add all that to the dozen or so blogs I check regularly then that tends to take some kind of toll on the ol' peepers.

The ettiquette of not pissing people off is an important factor here. There are a lot of daily visitors here hence the need to update at least once every 24 hours. Sometimes it's possible to do more but not often these days. And anyway, with what frequency can each person process the information? It's not cool to just assault people and I hope that doesn't happen here. For the next wee while, I'm going to try and just blog short reviews and information. This will address the backlog of material. I'd also like to expand the Rock's Backpages aspect too but we'll see.

So in closing, Mr Spence has chimed in with the latest Brutes sighting at The Halt on Friday. A peculiar trailer for what appears to be a Roky Biopic was flagged up on The Blank Generation mailer today and I thought this BLR link about music magazines was worth looking at. Maybe you will too?

Always Been Here Before

I think we’re among friends here right? If there’s anybody who doesn’t miss the fact that The Ramones aren’t around to make life worth living then you possibly won’t care for The Riverdales.

"Invasion USA" is the long-awaited follow up to "Phase 3" and in terms of a phat-frat- proper punk rock experience then it doesn’t come any better. This is perhaps a more worthy successor to "Rocket To Russia" than "Road To Ruin" was. Ben even manages to sound like Joey sometimes. It’s quite a lot like “Subterranean Jungle” and I bet you could use a dose of that right about now. 14 songs flash by in what seems to be an instant, high octane hanna barbera-esque jingles every one. The way it segues from pounding pulsating anthem to anthem is an artform in itself with not a jot of slack.

“Agent for H.A.R.M.” does the pop and kicks the door down. From there it’s hell for leather (jackets). I read stuff about records and movies and stuff that goes along the lines of this. “If you don’t like this then you must be dead” which is almost always bullshit. However there is generally an exception to that rule so to resuscitate that cliché, “Heart Out Of Season” is the perfect Rubinooriffic bubblegum hymn. This isn’t pastiche, this is doused in love for the form and set alight with outright passion for the craft.

Whatever the laboratory conditions this was created were, I’m all for this type of cloning. If "I-USA" doesn’t get the adrenalin pumping then back to those Primal Scream or whatever records with you. No need for explanation or thesis, at this point The Riverdales are arguably better than the real thing.

Check it out here if that all seems a bit far-fetched, I almost don’t believe it either.

It's been an odd couple or three weeks around these here parts. Definitely not enough hours in the day and in the scrambling to at least try and cover many bases, it's be'd a tad scattergun. For instance, I still have to list the issues of Mojo so that you folks can score the one's that you want. Travolta - shut it!

I also asked somebody else who is looking to unload too so all of that info is coming soon. Something else that's been coming along is the PDFing of NBT back issues. Not an easy task and somewhat uncomfortable because I didn't half gibber some pish back then. You think it's bad now? Whoa Nelly and all of her tribe. Not entirely sure how I got away with it, some of it is off the scale ridiculous. To what's left of my mind, it doesn't travel well to my mind at least some of you might get a laugh out of it. In the interests of balance, there was a time when articles on bands I actively dislike were included too.

The events of recent times have also resulted in a backlog of stuff that'll be brought to your attention in due course. It's always a consideration just to list'n' link but I figure it's always an idea to give you at least an inkling as to what you might find prior to the click.

So there he goes, Mr Lindqvist is on his way back to Stockholm and the authorities are working hard to restore whisky supplies to Glasgow. Ha ha. It went very well and it was good to raise a glass (or was it two?) to absent friends.

Not only that but he brought with him the biggest surprise that I ever got. A "guldskiva" for "More Modern Short Stories" which was a gift from my esteemed homies at Razzia. As an honour goes, I am shocked and stunned and pretty bloody chuffed as you'd expect. I never saw that one coming.

Tha album is just about to to be released in Germany via Universal too so watch out for that. It will have the addtion of "The Quiz" and "Long Lost Penpal". So as the gravity of this accolade sinks in, the next question is - where to display it!? Got to catch up on this and that now. It's shaping up to be a busy August and this time next weekend we'll already have pulled into that eighth month. How exactly did that happen?

THIS WEEKEND - INDIETRACKS - (Delia?) DERBYSHIRE...

Roy, Cyril and them A-Bones at Maxwells, Hoboken last night.

Thanks to Doreen Davidson for facebooking this...

RIP - John Dawson (New Riders of the Purple Sage)

Link via message on facebook from Craig Leon

Good to see a decent turnout at Cabaret Voltaire in Edinburgh last night for The Joyriders first show in the capital in forever, ahead of their junket to Japan but enough of these j's already.

The Tango Rhums opened and I only saw a song and a bit or it might have been two. The Messthetics ethic is alive and well and gestating in Glenrothes. Investigate and encourage them because they're doing it for the right reasons.

The Bum Clocks are collecting a bit of an audience but what looks reasonable in theory and sounds a little like Alex Harvey reciting Burns with an appropriation of Detroit sounding software is alarmingly art-rock. The sound of young Scotland always kind of irrritated me and the sound of the middle-aged version ain’t thrilling me either. These guys were all there at The Big Bang but this is theatre and not rock'n'roll. It could run for weeks at the ICA. I've scratched the itch of wanting to see them in a club and don't want the wound to become infected. Their set seemed to last for a very long time and a minority of us were impervious to this Irvine Welsh intoned underside of the mither tongue. “Lust for Life” lost all its vital signs when it was used in “Trainspotting” and there’s a strange correlation between this and that in my opinion.

I don't recall ever seeing The Joyriders although I must have. Their entire recording history has just been put together as an omnibus edition “Others caught on but never caught up” on the “Fixing A Hole” imprint and they're playng out there in a couple of weeks. There's not a contrived bone in the box and their Lemonheads via Bob Mould fuzzpop sounds remarkably current. It also helps that they look like they're having some kind of fun up there. The reports from their opening stint for The Dolls were all good so this added to the expectation. And let's face it when was the last time you saw a band that reminded you of The Eastern Dark?

Exactly. Good solid pre-grunge, post buzzsaw pop in a dressing of nice tempo changes, these guys can segue. No faffing between songs other than to indulge in a bit of banter before they spiral off into another short sharp jolt. I hope that they keep at it this time because there are a lot of "hotly tipped" acts that are trading on way, way less. So mission accomplished with the beat ready to bring it on in the land of the rising sun come early August.

In just a matter of hours, Mr U will be arriving from Stockholm and we're gonna raise a couple or three to the immortal memory of a real bard, the late, very great Lennart Persson. Hopefully he'll be able to join us.

And finally for this instalment, I'd like to wish my good friends The Ledinsky's all the best for their sabbatical down under. Have a ball kids, there's a lot of GREAT music and people out yonder!

Oh to be able to get along to one of these...

but don't let geographical constraints deter you!

I won't be attending tonight's New York Dolls show in Glasgow. There are a number of reasons, none particularly watertight other than the fact that I swore that you'd never get me to cross the threshold of that venue again. So there's a certain amount of cutting off one's nose about this but really, my abiding memory of the last time I saw them was great so I don't want to futz with that. Anyway, I ain't going so I hope it turns out to be the show of the decade for all those who do drag their 'arris's along. As promised, here are the Morells tracklists. If they were playing then I would attend said venue so the rules are there to be stretched. I'm in no immediate danger of having to fold though. Short and sweet tonight folks, I'm out of here....

RIP - Julius Shulman

Any of you looking for issues of Mojo? I’ve got a couple of large piles (no oitment quips, thanks!) of the blighters and if there are no takers then they’re going to the recycle-toir. The attempt I made to offload them on the message board of that very mag garnered exactly no response so this is my final attempt. I don’t want anything for ‘em other than maybe postage but even that is negotiable. I’d much rather they went to a good home. Next for the high jump is a box of issues of The List that I simply don’t require any more. The trick would of course have been to realise this prior to their stacking up but those who know me realise that I can be really slow on the uptake sometimes.

And as the UK slowly winds down ahead of being towed out to the middle of at the Atlantic to be sunk, the latest bullshit activity to affect the lowly citizens of this backwater is a postal strike. At a time when we're all getting rogered to some degree on the monetary front, this is just the latest in a long line of aggravating activities. Not for the greater good because I quite honestly believe that the fuckers whose attention they're trying to get couldn't care less. They’re looking for excuses to ixnay the life support. That includes any so-called government because they've proven time and again that they can't find their collective bahookie orifice with a funnel.

Still, that’s not getting things done on this end is it? I’m off to do my ironing to the strains of North Fork Sound then I’ll be raising the rafters with the new Riverdales and looking at these NBT scans to see what, if anything, can be done with them.

Facebook is often maligned but it is good for something. In this case, getting reaquainted with my old mucker Paul Gorman, Did you ever see his blog? Great stuff that I know some of you folks will have many hours of fun poking about in. Here 'tis.

Nothing like them up here before or since. Thanks to Joe Foster for finding this...

Link via Bill Gibson facebook message...

I've no idea why this keeps coming out so small but hopefully I'll have some more artwork soon. Available now, only 6 of the songs are duplicated between the two discs. More info soon.

e-mail: tomtaber_14411@yahoo.com

Link courtesy of Duglas via facebook.

RIP - Walter Cronkite