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RIP - GLEN CAMPBELL

WE NEED TO HEAR THIS!

Dave Alvin responded to yesterday's facebook post.

"The Ronnie Rocket sessions were a whole different thing. It was me along with Stephen Hodges on drums/percussion and Don Falzone on bass. Those tracks were wild!!! As I've said before, that stuff sounds like Miles Davis Bitches Brew sessions as played by a Chicago blues band on LSD. Some of my best guitar playing up to that time."

Someone out there can find these tapes and have David Lynch release them, right?

Get to it!

SPORADIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

You know how a lot of Europe shuts down in August? There’s a bit of that going on here only my attention is diverted and it’s all sort of unconscious. Truth be told is that I’m trying to spend less time in front of a screen. This includes TV too with the exclusion of watching the Twin Peaks parts multiple times.

I spend all day every day fannying about on a computer. Don’t be thinking that I’ve got a life or anything like that. That would be entirely the wrong end of the stick. Right now I’m in the middle of trying to figure out the SESENTAFEST monster. That needs all my attention. If it seems like I know what I’m doing then that is entirely an illusion. The road to hell is paved with positive intention but on the other hand, it’s the thought that counts. And my head is exploding with the constant barrage of what needs to be done. And how there doesn’t seem to be time to explore them all.

Somehow or other, with the help of a crack team of helpers – I'll figure it out.

Or die trying.

AS RECOMMENDED BY PETER HOLSAPPLE

PONY DEATH RIDE!

AFTER A FOUR DAY ABSENCE, I WAS DOING SO WELL...

I like what I like.

Sometimes this causes me problems because there’s stuff that friends and associates like that they can't conceive of me not liking. It’s often mistaken for contrariness but in fact it’s straight out ‘dislike’. I meet people whose music I dislike who I like and there’s also music I like made by individuals that I have no time for.

This is an ongoing problem that I attribute to nothing more than not wishing to waste whatever time is left on anything resembling the emperor or his missus's new wardrobe. The more huge something is, the more horrible it tends to be but I blame such popularity on the idiots that follow it or them or whatever.

There are exceptions of course and people have to make a living. I read something earlier about an existential threat to the music business. That last word there is the culprit. As soon as something becomes a business then the goalposts move. When I started out, music in general wasn’t so much a business as a place for malingerers and ne’er do wells. My granny constantly nagged me not to have anything to do with it. I now thank her for driving me toward that dark side.

That was the charm and since then it’s become possible to learn how to be part of the music business at school and college. Again, I have friends that indulge in this dilution of the art. They too must make their way just like that shit act that was never any good but they drag their arses on to the circuit anyway.

*Shakes heid*. One shouldn't get this wound up of a Saturday morning.

Normal service...

... what the heck is that? I was doing well with it but I've hit a period of thinker's block.

I couldn't even call it writing. Anyway, perhaps it's temporary. Perhaps it'll last longer than that.

Thanks for dropping by. The stats say that more than a million hits have been made here since it all kicked off. I know that's a drop in a bucket to the interweb but it seems like a lot. So gracias if you're someone that has assisted with massaging these numbers.

FLASHBACK!

HAMELL'S BACK... AS HEARD ON PURE

Ms Jackpots!

Not sure the video adds anything but this is a great wee song!

From PART 10...

Not sure about the length of this but when she sings in Spanish... woah nelly!

OS COURETTES - THEY THROB, YOU"LL OOZE!!

It was an honour to be asked to scribble a couple of paragraphs for the back of the OS COURETTES 10 inch field recording "It's Alive from Tambourine Studios" (in Malmö, Sweden) on Chaputa! Records of Portugal.

As you’re likely aware, this two person force of nature is one of my favourite acts currently doing the rounds and they pack more punch than many groups twice their number. Primitive is where they live and when you catch them in person you’ll find out exactly why.

Meanwhile, you can practice for just such an occasion if you grab a copy of this and play it several times daily at a volume that makes the foundations of your cave rattle in addition to shaking and rolling at the appropriate junctures.

SCREAMING THE TRUTH FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION!

“Hey, the fools made the rules. It’s all German engineered”. 

That Alan Vega always had a way with words and the roll call of discontent that makes up “DTM” is charged to the gunnels with all the bile and distrust that the man always had with convention. It’s delivered over a crackling, electronic pulse that packs the ideal undertow. First time I came into contact with IT was during the Punk Mass that celebrated Suicide’s rise from the gutters of the long-gone New York at The Barbican. Always a sound born of decay and destitution, it took a while for the world to catch on. It’s still catching on and the body of work that both Alan and Marty have wrought will confound and delight future generations in equal measure. Forty laps of the sun down the line, Alan has come up with one hell of a death rattle.

“Hey – how about the anti-christ. Celebrate the pain!” That’s something that was always prevalent in his work. It was an often unfettered celebration of pain with a telescopic depth and groove. No matter how unconstructed it may have seemed when it first hit your ears, you could never listen the same way twice. “Fade to black. Fade to Hispanic”. There are parallels here with what Lynch has done with the resuscitation of Twin Peaks. Uncompromising and unfiltered, however long Trent Reznor chips away at the seam he’ll never come close to any of this. Take it as you find it or get off the fucking bus. In what must have been a difficult time for Liz and Dante, IT has come together as what may well be Vega’s best work, a disjointed industrial urban symphony that reflects how I’m sure that Alan saw where this world was going. A year down the road since his passing, there is so much more to rail against.

To attempt to describe the majesty of IT in words is pointless, a large swathe of the populace won’t get it. It’s a real gift to those of us who do. And who were lucky enough to watch it gestate. These pieces are something to be experienced and the louder the better. Undoubtedly this is a crucified soundtrack to what is looking increasingly like a wrong century. Vega is unfettered and visceral in death as he ever was in life. You can get it in whatever format you favour (apart from cassette or eight track) on FADER LABEL.

In “Prophecy”, he declares that he’ll go “on and on”. That goes without saying.

“It’s war baby”. Too fucking right and Alan Vega is still leading the charge.

Never cared for Death Cab but this is is good...

NEVER KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS...

NEARLY A YEAR SINCE THIS GUY LEFT US ALREADY!

THE FT INDEX

It's Tuesday... time for WELD

NIKKI CORVETTE IS HEADED BACK TO THIS SIDE OF THE BIG PUDDLE!