Who Doesn't Want to Be a Timelord? Not Me!

Okay, just drop all you're doing, put on your space helmet, hop in the TARDIS, beam out, whatever you do when you do that thing you do - but go right here, right now!

This is the fan-release of the year, kids! The new and improved Have You Got It Yet? Ver. 2.0. You love Syd and you need to hear this even if you've heard it before. For some reason (which I didn't understand perfectly well at the time but do now), old hippie types kept trying to make me listen to Syd Barrett when I was a teenager. Made me tapes of obscure bootlegs and everything, so that I eventually went and bought the reasonably-priced two-fer LP set then available of his albums. Fell in love, deeply in love, head-over-ass in love forever and ever and ever. Now, all you gotta do is click a couple of buttons. You bastards!

[I'm just seeing this now - but wouldn't Syd have been an awesome Timelord? Throw a scarf on him and he'd out-cool Tom Baker in a heartbeat. Ya know, though I fell in love with the Tom Baker version of Dr. Who as a kid, I'm even more thrilled by the new episodes. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that what's happened to the Dr. Who franchise is like what's happened to the Bond franchise. Lifelong fans have grown up and gotten their hands on that thing they love, that excited and thrilled them, and are helping to turn it back into what it should be. That's just a guess, of course.]

Enjoy! (And go buy the legit shit, too, of course).

Our Founding Fathers, Second in a Series

Television - Live in Hartsdale, NY (8/31/77) Part 1
Television - Live in Hartsdale, NY (8/31/77) Part 2
Television - Live in Hartsdale, NY (8/31/77) Part 3
Television - Live in Hartsdale, NY (8/31/77) Part 4

* Check comments for links to a couple of missing tracks. I'll re-up the second half shortly with all tracks.

My brother had an incredible stereo system in the 70s. Big speakers, powerful receiver and a high-end tapedeck. (With the windows open in the summer, all the cows in a five-mile radius could sing along!) Therefore, I was the lucky recipient of much taped music. Christmas of 1979 I remember getting tapes of The Beatles, The Clash and the Knack. (In fact, I remember hearing "My Sharona" on the radio on our way home from Christmas Eve services.)

Much to my good fortune, my brother used this stereo for purposes of good and not evil, making me tapes of albums he hoped would influence my budding musical tastes. After those mentioned above, I remember most vividly getting a tape of the oddly-named band Television, with an album on each side of the TDK-C90 that was his tape of preference. Twenty-seven years later I still have that tape. I don't need to say anything more about how important that music became to me, though one of my greatest pleasures in life is introducing the hitherto un-Televised to the soaring pleasures of Mssrs. Verlaine, Lloyd, Ficca & Smith (also one helluva law-firm!).

Whether you are an old-hand or a fledgling listener, you'll love this show. And I've got a request, a plea for you all. I just found out that I only have half of this show. Always thought this was the entire gig, but it's not, it's sadly not. If anyone out there can supply the second half (ripped at 320, please), I would happily post it here with all due credit. And......wait for it.....here it comes.....SHIT!

HUZZAH! Mr. stevee wins the First Annual Tennessee Williams' Kindness of Strangers Award from The New Disease for providing the second half of this show. I haven't even had time to grab it and listen myself - I wanted to get it up for everyone right away. Thank ye, stevee, thank ye!

Doo-Doo-Doo - Lookin' Out My Back Door!

Or, "Everything Always Comes in Threes?"

The Winter Crazies are setting strongly in. No amount of likker in the world can wash them away. Just find yerself a nice strong warm robot to love and hold and hope for the best.

Need a cover for that new CD your band is putting out? Need a poster for your upcoming cross-country/world mega-tour? Give me a jingle and we'll see what we can do.

New Day Rising, Indeed!

Hüsker Dü - Live at the First Avenue Club, Minneapolis, MN (8/28/85) Part 1
Hüsker Dü - Live at the First Avenue Club, Minneapolis, MN (8/28/85) Part 2

This could devolve rapidly into what I already see as another in an endless series of "Where I was and what I was doing when I first heard [blank]" posts. So I won't tell you about how I was painting an apartment as part of my "Maintenance Engineer" career - ie, janitor - and I'd been lucky enough to score the radio because all the other guys were elsewhere in the complex (they liked to leave me alone because I was the newbie and this was part of the hazing period) and a sound like the opening of the Gates of Heaven came out of that poor little machine, nearly killing it. Before the first three notes were done, I knew what I was hearing - the new Hüsker Dü single! I about crapped myself. Enough to loosen one's bowels from bliss is what I mean, sheer uncontrollability!

"New Day Rising" is the perfect song to play today, still basking in the glow of last night's victories for Obama and looking forward to the fight to come and the eventual new day rising for America.

Crank this one up - wake your neighbors, wake your neighborhood!

And definitely buy some shit.

On Wisconsin!

I've rarely ever called myself a "Badger" or "Cheesehead" but tonight I'm pretty pleased to say I'm from Wisconsin. We learned about "Fighting Bob" La Follette and Wisconsin's progressive political traditions in grade school back in the early 1970s and I hope they are still teaching the children of Wisconsin about them today. "Fighting Bob" would be very pleased with his State and his people tonight, I think. I certainly am. The voters of Wisconsin showed the nation that they are deeply concerned about the future of this country and unwilling to be cowed by negative campaign tactics and imagined inevitability. I lift my beer and brandy to you, my sweet drunken friends, family and neighbors! You did good today, very good.

The other side of the coin tonight was the McCrazy "Straight to Hell" Express and the unveiling of what will probably be his one and only campaign meme from now on: BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID! McCain went completely over the top, trying to out-fear even Bush and Cheney, casually throwing out the word "apocalyptic" even! (And if that's not code to the Christian Right, I don't know what is, kids.) It's hard for me to believe that I once thought very highly of this man, considered him a real political maverick, willing to stake his political life upon his actual beliefs. And now all of that has been tossed out the back of the bus for his fevered pipe-dream of presidency. It's sickening to see a real American hero do this to himself and his country, absolutely sickening.

Last political thought of the night: Kudos to Michelle Obama. She's gonna be blasted left, right and center for it, but when she said that "for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country" I knew exactly what she was saying. A lifetime of bitter cynicism about politics had left me scarred and hateful for decades, but in the last year I've felt those scars begin to heal and new, proud flesh emerge. It's a helluva feeling, folks. I've always cared about my country, but my cynicism has always stood in the way of acting upon my concerns. That's changing, that has changed. And change is what we have to do and where we have to go from now on.

Say it with me: Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!

Feel the Sun

When I'm not listening to music, obsessing about music, driving my family crazy about music, I'm often to be found making weird little images on the computer...about music.

Well, this peculiar hobby has developed into something almost like a business (pronounced "bidness" of course). And something I'm extremely proud to be associated with is the brand new CD release by The Squires of the Subterrain, Feel the Sun. I lucked into working on this, thanks to my pal Valis' work as producer on the album. He told me that he was putting together this great album of psychedelic pop for The Squire and would I want to make the artwork. Of course I would! One thing led to another and eventually we ended up handing over to The Squire a full-blown package of psychedelic weirdness. (If you think the cover is a trip, you need to buy the CD and see the interior art!) Fortunately, The Squire is a great guy with superb taste (!) and he loved it.

Musically, this is a beautifully played and produced album of 60s influenced pop-psychedelia, shades of The Beatles, Beach Boys, Kinks and more melted like a sweet kaleidoscopic glaze over astonishingly strong original songs. I'm blown away by this record. It's absolute ear-candy of the finest kind. You'll love it. (The guitar at the end of "Alexander Mannequin" is a royally beautiful thing you need to hear to believe, just lovely!)

Now, all you need to do is head on over to The Squire's webpage and buy this groovy shit! (And check out all the other cool stuff available while you're there).

Here Comes That Feeling Again!

The Long Ryders - Live at The Keystone, Berkeley, CA (1/13/84) Part 1
The Long Ryders - Live at The Keystone, Berkeley, CA (1/13/84) Part 2

"Looking for Lewis & Clark" changed my life. It was a nasty, hot, humid, silvery-gray overcast Wisconsin summer afternoon and I was sitting in the passenger seat of my brother's typically filthy car in the parking lot of an auto mechanic on Madison's far east side waiting while my brother did something work-related inside. I did not want to be there and why I was there I cannot remember at all. Maybe we were going to the record stores downtown. But at least I had the radio. Madison had good radio: WORT - Listener Sponsored 89.9 FM! And it was a Friday afternoon, second best slot of the week after Harry Rag's Saturday afternoon show of legend. The guy called himself Mike Rock and he lived up to the name. I remember my brother just climbing back into the car when Mike Rock played...the song!

Shit. The shivers still come over me, the insane thrill of That Song screaming out of the dashboard - like hearing the Beatles for the first time! We were both yelling, hooting, hollering - indeed! - by the last note and I wanted to reach through the airwaves and make the DJ play it again and again and again. I wanted to hear it until I died. Still do.

Okay, I've composed myself now.

Besides this, The Long Ryders were my "Get Up & Go!" music for much of 1985. Stagger groggy from my futon on the floor to the stereo in my brother's room of the apartment we shared, put in the tape of State of Our Union and crank it up before I ever hit the shower. I didn't do coffee back then, so it was music or nothing. (These days I need both). By the time "WDIA" came on I was singing along at the top of my lungs, air-guitaring, flinging suds and water all over the place (literally, because we had an old clawfoot tub and a wrap-around shower curtain that couldn't keep the dirty debris in entirely). I'd be ready for work by the end of the album, after I'd had my traditional Kraft mac 'n' cheese (25 cents a box!) with salsa or 99-cent Totino's pizza breakfast.

Final Note: Tom Stevens was kind enough to write me up some liner notes for this, his very first show with the Ryders. He contacted me about eight years ago when he saw it on my bootleg trading list because he needed a copy for his archives. I begged him and he wrote an awesome bit on the show and the band and it's now on the back of the artwork I made, included for your pleasure.

Shit!

Addendum: I'm being unfair to my brother above. His car was filthy, but so too was my own at that time. Both were traveling trash cans. I'm not going to say if they still are. I'll let you believe we've evolved.

See My Friends

The incredible Hagbard has an equally incredible blog I invite you to check out at your earliest convenience. Trip Inside This House is that rarity of music blogs - it has real content! If you love psychedelic music, you owe it to see what Hagbard's doing. My fave is The Wayback Machine...wonder why?

And while on the subject of sending you away from my Disease, you may want to check out some other blogs devoted to live recordings. Hagbard recommends the very cool The Drugs Are Working blog (and I second his recommendation!) and a personal favorite of mine is NargoTheBort's Deviant Subculture site.

After recommending the above, I think maybe I should mention my personal bootleg aesthetics. For me, it's completely about the performance, because nothing is better than live music played by live musicians. Sound quality is a (sometimes distant) second for me when I'm picking shows to share with you all. I'd rather put up a blazingly performed but kinda muddy audience boot over an OK but perfect sounding soundboard. In fact, I prefer audience recordings, so that one can get, even distantly, a sense of the performance space and the real sound of the performance as the audience heard it. These are boots, after all, recording by amateurs for love and not multi-track professional live recordings made for money.

The Long Weekend Comes Again!

I had this great post all ready to share with you of Danny & Dusty live at the Music Machine...but I don't need to now! You can not only hear but see this incredible show because it's a bonus DVD on the BRAND FREAKIN' NEW Danny & Dusty album. Wow. Shit. (Of course, I don't know if the DVD format is right for the US because I don't understand that stuff, so maybe only our friends across the sea can see it).

The Chimes of Freedom!

The Barracudas - Live at the West Side Club, Lyon, France (2/1/83) Part 1
The Barracudas - Live at the West Side Club, Lyon, France (2/1/83) Part 2

I like The Barracudas because for a brief time in the early 70s my friends and I used to say "That's 'cuda, man!" which was short for "That's barracuda, man!" which was, I guess, shorthand for "That's so cool!" I also vaguely recollect a movie about killer barracudas that was a playground discussion sensation for a while and may been the genesis of this phrase. Anyway, I wouldn't recommend trying to resurrect this particular and very obscure catchphrase, kids. "Where's the Beef?" has a better chance.

As far as music goes, to return from Neverland, this is a fierce live show that forever stomps the notion that these guys couldn't rock, a bizarre notion I've heard expressed too often over the years. Great originals, great covers (love the Donovan!) and the sound is very good for the time. Guitars chime, snarl, burn and explode here, kids! Yeah!!!

Like The Barracudas, there were a lot of bands in the early 80s rediscovering the primal joy of the guitar and the beauty of melody coupled with a rockin' garage beat and I'd like to thank them all, wherever they are, because they made my life better then, inspiring me, rocking me, and they still keep me searching for the next musical fix today.

Go Bomp-shit crazy and buy some 'Cudas, man!