May-December Continuum

One summer night I was driving home in my car, not paying much attention to the other cars driving by me. In the lane next to me was a car of about four teenage girls, listening to music and having fun. The car started driving side by side with me, not slowing down or speeding up from me.

When we stopped by the light one of the girls leaned out of her window.
"HEY!" she smiled. "What's up! D'you wanna hang out?"
I just smiled back. If she knew how old I was she wouldn't have started up, or would she?
"Hey! C'MON!" she laughed. She was probably drunk or something, but when they realized I wasn't interested, they pulled away and drove off.

This made me think of when I was younger and it wasn't unusual to see a 16-year old girl date a 22-year old guy. It was a generally accepted thing in my high school; it didn't seem like a big deal.

Around the time this carload of cooze happened I read Pamela Des Barres' memoir I'm With The Band, where she writes page after page of dating older rock stars even though she was hovering 16 to 18 years of age. Her friends in The GTOs shared similar relationships, and Frank Zappa even responded with songs like Motherly Love ("...you know it doesn't bother me at all that you're only 18 years old..").

While the male is always characterized as being a lech it's always been a fact that many younger girls are attracted to older guys, sometimes much older guys. At what point did this become viewed as some sort of dirty, sinister thing?

Altogether now...THE INTERNET. That's right, ever since social networking as dictated to one and all what's acceptable and what's not acceptable, we now have to listen to bluenoses proclaim any man dating a young lady as filthy and that immortal Internet word, CREEPY. The Internet loves that word, that and "disturbing".

Listen, if a teenage girl wants to date a rich, old crone I couldn't care less. She's getting what she wants and you know he's getting what he wants and who the fuck is anybody to judge either of them? By the way, if an older woman with stacks of cash wanted to cruise me I'd definitely let her dock in my harbor. Why not?

I fucking hate the Internet. I now have to read how Kim Fowley, a great artist, is a "rapist" (nobody said shit when he was alive...interesting), Woody Allen, another devil, etc. Every man, thanks to the Internet is now a pervert. It's boring and I don't care.

It doesn't matter that Charlie Chaplin, Steve Cochran, and countless other stars married or dating far below their age group and their women didn't give a damn, either. When do you think this whole shame circus started? You guessed it, social networking.

Look, I'm not going to hang around some high school tomorrow looking for ladies to hustle, but I'm not going to flip out over their lack of maturity. And see the average American nightclub keep an underage girl from getting in...please, everything's permitted and it's a consensual thing. Just stay off Twitter and Facebook or they'll stone you like an Islamic tribunal.

The Long Gone Saturday Night

"There's nothing more rebellious than some ugly person dancing around thinking they're wonderful"
-Kim Fowley

Another one gone: no sooner did I write a eulogy for the great Jack Bruce do I find myself mourning the loss of the great Kim Fowley. Kim Fowley, legendary Hollywood songwriter, performer, producer and Whirling Dervish passed on ten days ago, January 15, 2015. What makes Fowley so unique from all Hollywood movers and shakers is that there isn't anyone in Hollywood who couldn't claim Fowley as a musical associate, and that was the key to his staying power as an artist.

Through the garage, psych, glam, punk and metal eras and beyond there wasn't a style or project he deemed too small or beneath him. His work transcended trends due to his absolute belief in everything he worked on.

Talking to Kim was not for the weak of heart: he fixed his steely gaze at you from that skull-like face and spoke with a directness that either frightened you or made you laugh. It was actually a pretty good acid test to see who was sincere and who was just another Sunset Boulevard huckster.

And Sunset Boulevard! How many songs did he write about Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard? Songs like Hollywood Nights, Terrors In Tinseltown, Hollywood USA, Canyon Woman, Hollywood Child, Mayor of the Sunset Strip, ad infinitum.

Whether seeing him at Canter's in 1966 or Rodney's English Disco in 1974 or a Weirdos/Nerves show he promoted in 1977, even seeing him at the screening of "New York Doll" at the Director's Guild Theater in 2005, Fowley was there, a permanent fixture on the local scene.

My favorite album by him was Good Clean Fun, followed by Outrageous, where he took his manic Sunset Blvd. energy and distilled it into wild, raw, savage tracks, treading a demented balance between Steppenwolf raunch and Frank Zappa-style freakazoid documentary.

And speaking of Zappa, Fowley was one of the craziest voices on "Freak Out", the first Mothers of Invention album, babbling all the way through sides 3 and 4 in an improvisational foreign language known only to himself. Fowley can also be heard laying down an unbelievable rap about Wild man Fischer on the legendary "An Evening With Wild man Fischer" album.

With the loss of Kim Fowley the world has lost a lot more color. Things look a lot paler than they used to.

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Captain Beefheart fans will have to postpone their mourning for a little while, because Rhino Records in association with Warner Bros. have just released an amazing four-disc box set of iconic Beefheart albums titled Sun Zoom Spark. The discs included are the long out of print Lick My Decals Off, Baby, The Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot, with a fourth disc comprised of unreleased outtakes and demos mostly recorded during The Spotlight Kid sessions.

Many Beefheart fans consider this period (1970-1972) to be his most fully realized (read freest) work ever, arguably better than his later Virgin Records output. I would advise many newbies to start with Safe As Milk, followed by Trout Mask Replica, and then this chunky monster of a box set.

But getting back to Sun Zoom Spark, the fourth disc is guaranteed to get even the most rabid fans to buy it. Beautifully packaged with tons of Don Van Vliet art, this is one of those box sets that's impossible to resist.

In addition to this treasure trove of newly released stuff is a download of the complete Spotlight Kid/Clear Spot outtakes, posted in its entirety on You Tube by Idiotska's Live Corner, seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCdwDSfsVFY. Clocking in at over three hours(!) this is even more phenomenal than the Sun Zoom Spark CD. An early version of "Ice Cream For Crow" titled Drink Paint Run Run starts the action, and it amply demonstrates Zoot Horn Rollo and Winged Eel Fingerling playing some of the most incendiary guitar you'll ever hear.

The three hour tapes reveal snippets, references and full-on previews of Low Yo Yo Stuff, Circumstances (played as a dirge), Sun Zoom Spark, Harry Irene, Suction Prints, Sheriff of Hong Kong, Ice Cream For Crow, Flavor Bud Living, Sue Egypt, Dirty Blue Gene, and even a hint of Up On The My-Oh-My.

I intend on getting the Sun Zoom Spark package because you get the great bonus disc as well as the very first official Warner Bros. release of Lick My Decals Off, Baby, which Rhino had in limited release for only two years, so seeing it back in print's pretty exciting. If you can get through a blistering thirty-minute version of Pompadour Swamp then your ship's come in. Forty years in the making and worth every minute waited.

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And speaking of Kim Fowley and Captain Beefheart, there's a great documentary on You Tube called "From Straight to Bizarre" about Zappa's legendary record labels: Straight and Bizarre Records and the artists that made it happen.

It's rich in rare footage of Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, featuring small capsule profiles on the artists run rampant on the labels: Alice Cooper, Wild Man Fischer, Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band, Essra Mohawk (Sandy Gurvitz), Jeff Simmons,and The GTOs. There's also a few bits about non-label artists like Vito and Mr. Ubiquitous, Kim Fowley.

There was a little too much GTOs for my liking and not enough Beefheart. A little background on the people behind the scenes like Cal Schenkel, responsible for the offbeat and provocative album covers would have been great to watch.

I was also disappointed to see Tim Buckley and Judy Henske cut out of the doc, which makes it not completely comprehensive in my opinion. They're quickly dismissed towards the end as simply being Herb Cohen's folkie clients. So what? They helped give the labels just as much personality as Alice and The GTOs. Nevertheless, this is essential viewing not just for Zappa fans, but for Sixties counterculture fans as well.

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Hello, world, I'm still trying to sell my Lydia Lunch records. If you want to bask in her ridiculously nihilistic oeuvre here's your big chance!

I'm selling her 1979 album Queen of Siam on Ze Records, the Eight Eyed Spy album released on Fetish Records in 1981, and an autographed 7" Teenage Jesus And The Jerks single baby Doll b/w Feud In Flop, all for the low price of $90. Robert Quine fans note that he played guitar all over the Queen of Siam album, so there's some major skronk going down for sale. Here's the link if you're interested: http://www.ebay.com/itm/171650590192?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Je Ne Sais Quoi

One of the bigger trends in internet culture of late is a style of writing called “flash fiction”. Just like flash mobs they are meant to be quick and annoying. Flash fiction, for those who haven’t experienced it yet, is a short story presented in a tightly-enforced limit of words, i.e. tell your story in 500 words or less.

Parameters this small hamper any chance of a story being told with any semblance of depth or perception. The effect is not unlike eavesdropping on half a conversation between two people above the roar of a truck growling nearby. Something’s going to get lost in translation and they’re already speaking fucking English.

I attribute the phenomenon of flash fiction on the public’s decreasing attention span via fast paced technology. As a result, people get their sensation immediately without any regard for the other elements that make a story so memorable, like location, mood, emotion, or even plot buildup. In a weird way there are no spoilers in flash fiction; the story IS the climax.

So, like a curious monkey who wanted to know just what these matches do when you scratch them I started hanging out at a crime flash fiction page called Shotgun Honey (www.shotgunhoney.net). Some of the writing was good, a lot of it was bad, predictable “Breaking Bad”/Tarantino rip-off shit, but the challenge was there: submissions had to be 700 words or less. Good luck.

I came up with a new story which I ended up posting myself, “The Pickpocket In The Slam Pit” (http://blackhairedboy.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-pickpocket-in-slam-pit.html). I would have loved to have it posted on Shotgun Honey, but the word count was double the amount allowed by the website. But I tried to make it work, how I tried:

When I saw the 1,340 word count I started thinking about what could be eliminated in order to keep the story intelligible after all the cuts. Since the count was nearly double the stringent 700 word limit I would need to cut out half the story!

For starters I would have to eliminate any extraneous characters from the story:
1. The bouncer – does Stew Rat, the main character, really need to be patted down at the punk club? Why don’t we just assume punks are allowed into a gig without being frisked. Umm, sure!
2. The first three guys that get their wallets lifted. We don’t need to know what they looked like or what their wallets looked like. Too much detail!
3. The band playing on stage (Crank Call) while Stew Rat slithers his way around the mosh pit. Does anyone really care what the names of their songs were? All punk bands sound alike!
4. The big bruiser who’s about to bust Stew Rat for his crimes. WTF? He’s not the main character, who gives a shit about him?

Okay, we’re now down to about 950 words. Only 250 words to go before my story can be published (IF they like it). I have to kill some more unimportant details:
1. Stew Rat’s spotty skin, freckles and mangy demeanor. How does that help the story? All punks look alike!
2. The name of the club, the town it’s in and general atmosphere of the evening. Gah! So much folderol. We want to get in on the action and WE WANT IT NOW!!!

Okay, so I killed the atmosphere, mood, characters, humor and half the plot of the story. All that’s left is the death of Stew Rat, and I’m still down to 800 words. Damn, double damn. My story’s still too long for Shotgun Honey. I suck, just like Herman Melville. Damn our words!

I don’t mean to pick on Shotgun Honey, in all fairness there are dozens of flash writing websites like them – ReadWave comes to mind - that require brevity for the attention challenged, but expecting any fiction that’s got a tale to tell in 700 words or less is going to be nothing less than awful.

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of early Seventies music, esp. from Europe where music became even more avant-garde than all the Mod and Psych experiments that preceded it. Here’s my ten favorite tracks from the past month:
1. Apache Drop Out – Edgar Broughton Band. The band that named this blog covered not one but two great songs in one fell swoop: Captain Beefheart’s “Drop Out Boogie” and Jorgen Ingemann’s “Apache”, both done really well. This was a big deal on FM radio when I was a kid.
2. Black Sheep Of The Family – Quatermass. Another great Harvest Records band (along with Broughton), this power trio minus guitar was very similar to The Nice. It’s a short, tight rocking song with great some great organ playing that alternates from atonal blasts with funky blues runs. And the pterodactyl album cover is a classic.
3. The Devil’s Answer- Atomic Rooster. Atomic Rooster featured the late Vincent Crane, the great keyboardist from The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Although they were a primarily metal sounding band this song has some great jazz-blues grooves going on.
4. Kill Your Sons – Lou Reed. Although “Sally Can’t Dance” sold millions for Lou the critics really laid into it. This track sounds pretty great, with even wilder lyrics about Reed’s early years committed to Creedmor Psychiatric Hospital. Genius.
5. Hamburger Breath Stinkfinger – Arthur Lee. From his post-Love album “Vindicator” dedicated to MackDonald’s, “The Home of the Golden Tombstone”. More than a few feminist feathers were ruffled with the refrain, “Oh what a dish, she smelled just like a fish”.
6. I Hate Everybody – Johnny Winter. From his great “Second Winter” album, this swing blues track some terrific guitar playing from the man and is further enhanced by his brother Edgar swinging amazingly wild on both organ and saxophone. Another track on the album has Johnny playing mandolin to Edgar’s harpsichord. Blues with an imagination.
7. Willie The Pimp – Juicy Lucy. Juicy Lucy, to be frank, was a pretty awful band – The Misunderstood, their predecessor, were brilliant – but they weren’t a follow up, they were more of a follow-down. On the other hand their cover of Frank Zappa’s Willie The Pimp may be the wildest cover of a Zappa song ever recorded. This was also a huge staple of FM radio back in the day and rightfully so. A whole album of Zappa covers would have melted skulls!
8. Mussolini- The God Bullies. Okay, so I’m throwing in some other decades in here. The God Bullies always made me laugh, sounding like a combination of a wicked goth guitar player with an insane drama student. This song ends with the tribal chant, “GEORGE BUSH, GEORGE BUSH, GEORGE BUSH”. From the Dope, Guns, and Golfing In The Streets album. One of the few Amphetamine Reptile bands I didn’t do a show with, and it’s too bad. They were great.
9. Night of The Hunter – Kim Fowley. Fowley spent so much time making fun of Steppenwolf he actually exceeded them in raunch with songs like Animal Man and this demented rocker. The lyrics are absolutely amazing: “It’s a rainy night in California, my boots are soaking wet…my guitar’s full of diamonds, my house is made of stone”…howling guitars and wailing organs with exploding drums. THAT’S how you make a rock & roll record.
10. The Blues Ain’t Nothin’ – The Charlatans. Although The Charlatans were the greatest American band that never was they’re definitely due some serious reexamining. This track would definitely fit in on Iggy Pop’s “Kill City” album with its spidery honky tonk piano and unleashed saxophones screeching the drug addict blues.

And that’s my Top 10 for this season. I’m sure I’ll find some more great buried treasures the next time I make a list. Happy listening>>>

Oh, by the way...for those of you who want to spy, I mean follow me on Twitter, here I am...https://twitter.com/AndyAndySeven. There are about a hundred guys on Facebook named Andy Seven. I'm not any of them so don't waste your time.