laramee gatekeeper

BEST RECORDS OF 2009

2009-12-30T23:56:00.000-08:00

BLACK LIPS
200 MILLION THOUSAND
vice records

a band I previously dismissed as Troggs copyists, narc fiends and chancers happened to put a joyous and slop-infused drone pop wonder, blowing away the garage tag and inviting everyone to the party.

TIM HECKER
AN IMAGINARY COUNTRY
kranky

the eternal hand smacking the thigh of the Lord, or somewhere thereabouts. a hundred god-damned Hammond organs blaring from the Pacific ocean, wolves devouring new flesh, and a boatload of reverb. this man marks some new territory out with a powerful scent. God kills w/ new tools. and then some.

NEIL YOUNG
EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE
reprise (reissue)

nuff said. hard jams, all action . makes you wish Kings Of Leon quit music forever, Lennon would be reborn, dope's legal and the last 45 odd years never happened. most bands should quit playing forever after digesting this one. I mean this all w/ love.

FRED NEIL SESSIONS CAPITOL RECORDS 1968

2009-10-22T00:33:00.000-07:00

one thing that could safely be said about Fred Neil is that a more disguised, inscrutable shadow figure floating 'round the nether regions of the 60's folk boom you'd be hard pressed to find. best known for penning "EVERYBODY'S TALKING", made famous by Nilsson's version in John Schleshinger's Midnight Cowboy film, the publishing from this and many other covers of the song insured his escape from performing, recording or any other entanglement with the music industry for pretty well the rest of his life. sporadic shows or recording dates aside, Neil indulged his love for heroin and hanging out with the dolphins near his home in South Florida until his death in July of 2001 from skin cancer. "THE DOLPHINS", his other most well known song, is ample proof of his affinity with the sea faring mammals over most any of the people he encountered during his tenure in the music biz.

which brings us to SESSIONS. recorded shortly before his withdrawal from the work-a-day world (interrupted only by 71's lackluster THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS LIFE), this record is seven songs culled from four days of sessions in october of 67. as the title implies, everything is live, straight-to-tape audio verite, warts and all. along with Neil on vocals and 12 string acoustic, Dylan cohort Bruce Langhorn is credited on acoustic, as are Eric Glen Hord, Cyrus Faryar, Peter O. Childs,along with one James E. Bond on stand-up bass. rather than being a pile-up of inappropriate, busy jamz, the first impression one takes away from even a cursory listen to these songs is the sense of space. gorgeous widescreen spaces opened up by the gently intertwining guitar lines and bass pulse give way to the record's secret weapon, Neil's voice. and for a man who claimed to be the unholy spawn of a brief liason between Jimmie Rodgers and Bessie Smith, well, one listen to his bottomless baritone and just-woke-up-this-mornin' lazed out drawl gets me to thinking that just maybe it's true.

the one thing 'bout this album that always gets me is its otherness, the way it stands apart from a thousand other records of its sort released around the same time. there's a looseness, no doubt inspired by the open party in the studio that Fred actively encouraged, plenty of singing but also a lot of drinkin and druggin going on, a fact bore out by the between song banter left on the record. "fly united" indeed. that said, a song like LOOK OVER YONDER seems to arrive out of a fevered dream, Fred forlornly moaning elemental blues to a setting sun, random guitar lines mimicing birds in flight. and when he sings " mama, mama, ain't you sorry that you bore me, can't you see what I've become?", the curtain is lifted for a second on this intensely private man, an admission of sorts shared, briefly, but he's already gone. that line about how a real showman knows how to disappear in the spotlight? here's how it's done.

check out ROLL ON ROSIE for it's freewheeling raga-drone and spirited vocalese. it's a real gas as well. MERRY GO ROUND deserves a good listen for it's Mary-Janed-to- fuck waltz time stroll, Fred freely interjecting lines from Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" into his own inner circular narrative, pitching a tent in the cosmos. in closing, I gotta say it's a real soulful night-time listen, open, warm, pitch-perfect.

www.fredneil.com

FLIPPER BLOW'N CHUNKS ROIR CD 1984/2001

2009-10-13T22:15:00.000-07:00

despite being consistently labelled a "hardcore" band by dint of association of the scene they grew out of and the bands they played with around the San Francisco area in the late 70's/early 80's, Flipper were one of those one-off anomalies the universe likes to throw up every once in awhile.

when I first encountered the band years ago on a Henry Rollins compiled retrospective on his short lived Infinite Zero imprint, my first reaction was balls out laughter. "they can't be serious" I giggled to myself as I scanned through the cd. zig-zagging atonal guitar lines smashing head long into a wildly careening rythym section, topped off with a particularily vicious vocal spew concerning liquor, drugs, bubble gum sex, the status quo, more drugs and nihilism, nihilism, nihilism. fun, eh? I filed the disc away, only occasionally pulling it out to hear my favorite Flipper jam, SACRIFICE, a song I always gravitated towards for its unholy dirge tempo, akin to a collapsing galaxy, the whipping-a-slave Bruce Lose vocal decrying war as society's validation of itself, an animalistic self hatred turned outwards. if I had to offer a starting point for the Flipper experience, this would be it.
but anyways, flash forward a few years later, I spy a used copy of this disc and seeing that it had a live version of SACRIFICE on it, decided to pick it up, and, hey, it was only 5 bucks to boot. and now I get it. big time. like the donkey laughter of a drunken idiot god raining down on a stupified, dumbed down world, Flipper honestly reflect everything, the pathos, love, stupidity, humour, hopelessness, hope of this insignificant little spinning acorn we call home. yeah, tall words, I know, but the coat fits in this case. check the track IF I CAN'T BE DRUNK for confirmation. this sort of retard roar is surely some kind of bastard genious, naysayers be damned. any groop that can pull off a Wagnerian swoop of molasses stomp like this deserves a lifetime achievement forever award. "falling apart" doesn't do justice to what goes down here. this is Bukowski at his drunkest jammin with The Who on downers, someone randomly firing a rifle into nothing, nothing shoots back, nobody wins. one could posit this song as a endgame of sorts for ROCK in general, if one were willing. I'm not.
so I could go on and on, such is my love for this warm beast.just check it out.oh, and there's also a whole lotta LOVE going on with Flipper. they have love, laughter,ICE COLD BEER and so much more.
P.S.
Flipper is still a going concern these days, minus Will Shatter, who dies of a heroin od some time ago.Ted Falconi, Steve De Pace and Bruce Lose are touring and releasing new stuff, tho it's not my cup. BLOW'N CHUNKS was recorded at CBGB'S in 84, originally issued on cassette by the ROIR corp, reissued by same label on disc w/ 4 bounus tracks in 01. the disc is the one worth finding for the bonus tracks alone.
www.myspace.com/flipper

PHAROAH OVERLORD #1 ektro records FINLAND Released 2000

2009-10-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

truly one of the GREAT LOST PSYCH RECORDS OF ALL TIME. nominally an offshoot of Finnish legends CIRCLE, this one answers the question of what the sound of Ted Nugent, Can and Spacemen 3 jamming together on Saturn would sound like.the band are active intermittently, doing few gigs and maintaining an almost non-existent web presence. their 4 studio albums(simply entitled '1' thru'4') maintain an almost obsessive fascination with motorik inspired rythym patterns, Judas Priest derived riffage and sky-splitting harmonized guitar solos. one could be tempted to slap the old " jazz rock" tag on this, if for no other reason than what they do is so alien to most bands, psych, metal or otherwise, that it could seem appropriate. key tracks are ALCOHOL (BLUE FLAME) and MYSTERY SHOPPER. if you say you like heavy music you NEED this album. period. (also recommended are THE BATTLE OF AXEHAMMER and LIVE IN SUOMI FINLAND, two live albums, the latter featuring Hans Joachim Irmler of German legends Faust on mixing and keyboard(?) duties. recording/production afficianados should check out AXEHAMMER for the mix alone, in which it sounds like all the amplifiers are on fire, flying into the sun.)