Holiday Leftovers

When it comes to posting blogs a small surplus of pictures and other supplemental material begins collecting like a crowded garage. Sometimes you toss out the extra material and other times you let it sit around on the oft-chance it might get used again in some capacity. For your entertainment I offer you assorted leftovers from blogs I've posted in the past six months.

In my blog "Rock & Roll Confidential Part 7" I posted a mail-out flyer from The Screamers celebrating the Christmas season, but that wasn't the only artifact I had in my vast punk rock collection. In addition to other Screamers goodies I owned was this terrific Screamers Fan Club entry blank. To the best of my knowledge nothing ever got sent out to their fans, but what an easy way to get $2 out of people.

While we're on the subject of Christmas, I always found it ironic that the band the symbolized fun in the summertime, The Beach Boys, had such a great Christmas-y sound during the later days of their Capitol Records career. "Pet Sounds" up until "20/20" had so many pretty choral arrangements that verged on the spiritual it's uncanny: "You Still Believe In Me", "Cabinessence", "I Know There's An Answer", and many more tracks sound so seasonal. In fact, I strongly urge you to listen to any Beach Boys circa 1966-1969, five albums in all, while sipping spiked egg nog and signing your holiday cards and dressing up your Xmas tree or any other weird religious arboretum.

When I was a teenager I used to get the Los Angeles Free Press regularly, and one of the highlights was reading "Notes of A Dirty Old Man", Charles Bukowski's weekly column. It wasn't really thought of as high art back then; to be perfectly honest Buk was considered a bit of a crank back in the day, which probably suited him well. Nevertheless, I still followed him avidly, even catching him at a reading at The Troubadour in 1976. Memories are made of this. (Click on image to enlarge)

Another weekly column I followed loyally in the Los Angeles Free Press was The Glass Teat written by the irrespressible Harlan Ellison. I had the pleasure to expereience the sci-fi legend in the flesh at The Silent Theatre (aka The Cinefamily). The Silent Theatre was a very tiny and intimate place to see this dynamo of speculative fiction. Mister Ellison spent the beginning of the show hanging out with the fans waiting in line to see him, channeling Don Rickles and Shelley Winters with his extremely extrovert exhortations to one and all. Just writing about him makes you write like him. Crazy, baby!

Harlan talked about his career writing for television, with brief video clips showing past works, including a great "Burke's Law" segment written for Buster Keaton that completely honored and respected Mr. Keaton's comedy schtick, even for a silly cop show. Ellison related a tale of scamming Gloria Swanson out of retirement to do a "Burke's Law" segment, no small feat as she had no intention of returning to movies or TV at all. He was also humiliated by a "Flying Nun" credit which he couldn't run away from, and finally confessed he only wrote it in the hopes of getting into Sally Field's pants. Who could blame him?

A great time was had by everyone, even Harlan. The only criticism I had of the show was that questions about the current explosion in sci-fi/fantasy/horror in popular culture was never breached, because everyone thought it was more ntertaining listening to Harlan talk about his past crazy antics. A little more writer and a lot less personality wouldn't have hurt.

In my blog post on "Christopher Milk" I mentioned John Mendelsohn's band The Pits playing The Starwood and actually doing the freakbeat/heavy metal hybrid before Cheap Trick. Well, here's the handout set list (programme?) handed out at the show. It was a night to remember.

Before I go I'll leave you with yet another great yodelling performance from the fabulous DeZurik Sisters from my "American Yodeling" blog. Here they are singing "Hillbilly Bill". Enjoy!

The DeZurik Sisters performing "Hillbilly Bill".

"American Yodeling"

Everybody likes to brag about the great deal they got from downloading music, but there has never been a deal as amazing as the one I got early this summer. For a mere $11.98 I downloaded a 100-song, 2-disc set of incredible sounds called “American Yodeling”. You will never find a deal as truly phenomenal as this.

“American Yodeling”, as you can assume is a compilation of songs featuring singers yodeling their hearts out, but the compilation itself is so sprawling and sweeping in its scope that it covers an endless panorama of genres. The first assumption is made that you’re going to hear nothing but country music, but alas, you’re wrong. Sure, there’s tons of cowboy music, great stuff, too, but there’s also Cajun music, cowgirls singing, folk, bluegrass, polka, blues, western swing, Swiss mountaineer jive, and even Black hot twenties jazz yodeling. Everybody’s covered and get to twirl their tonsils out.

There’s something bizarrely athletic in the way these crooners go into their yodeling pyrotechnics. Tracks like “She Taught Me How To Yodel” by Kenny Roberts are almost surreal in the way he can make his voice bend at supersonic speed that has to be heard to be believed. Legendary faves like Bill Monroe’s badass “Muleskinner Blues” get represented here, too. Some guys really tear it up with several tracks on here like Yodeling Slim Clark with his “I Miss My Swiss” who has a classic Swiss mountaineer tone to his yodeling. Elton Britt’s pretty awesome with “Chime Bells”.

The cowgirls like to put a nature slant in their yodeling, making wild bird noises, purring like kittens and scatting in their vocals. My favorites include Carolina Cotton with “Mockingbird Yodel” and the demented Dezurik Sisters with their insanely bitchen “The Arizona Yodeler”. Their harmonies are so perfectly synchronized it would put an army of talent show losers to shame. Other range fillies include Patsy Montana, Girls of the Golden West, Rosalie Allen, and Texas Kitty Prins, to name a few.

A lot of the perennials are on here, too, like Rex Allen, Gene Autry, Patti Page (!), Hank Snow, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry, who all sound incredible here. But the obscure names are the real finds, like a rail-riding hobo named Goebel Reeves who really swings his dirty panhandling pie-hole. Sweet!

When the crooning’s not about riding the range there’s a whole lotta jive about romance in the Swiss Alps: songs with titles like Visit Me In My Swiss Chalet, Swiss Echo Yodel, My Swiss Moonlight Baby. The girls have some pretty sexy songs, too, with titles like Salt Bush Sue and I’m Gonna Straddle My Saddle. Woof!

If you want the Cajun stuff there’s Paul Brunelle’s “Le Boogie Woogie De Prairies”, The Guidry Brothers’ “La Valse De Marriage” and a couple of other crazies.

“American Yodeling” never gets boring and almost sounds quaint in its depiction of a world that’s virtually vanished from the American landscape. It sounds like radio broadcasts from a parallel planet that’s saner and happier than anything we’ve ever created. And what’s better, it makes everyone smile real wide whenever they hear it.