BROADCAST #23
AIR DATE: 06-05-07

Fanatics! So great to be back live with you tonight. As you know, I have been out here and there and to my great disappointment, thanks to bad luck with flight schedules, I had no chance to check out the great record stores of Scandinavia but I still managed to find a few things in London the other day that I will bring in for us in the upcoming weeks. I hope you enjoyed that very strange Iggy track and all the rest. Next week’s show is going to be a great one, please tune in if you can. Thanks for listening and as the summer heats up, STAY FANATIC!!! --Henry

For you Fanatics who can’t live without hearing this show again or if the original broadcast time is too hard on your sleep cycle here’s the re-broadcast schedule. USA: Fridays: 0200 – 0400 hrs. PST / UK: Fridays: 1000 hrs. – 1200 hrs./ Continental Europe: Fridays 1100 hrs. – 1300 hrs./ Australia: Fridays 2100 hrs. – 2300 hrs.

The Ramones – Teenage Lobotomy: From the classic and last recording the band made with drummer Tommy Ramone, It’s Alive. This one came out in 1979. I got it when I graduated highschool. The band recorded this at The Rainbow in England New Year’s Eve 12-31-77. I was in that venue a little under 4 years later. I still have scars from that show. I try and find any live recording with Tommy on drums, he really swung.

The Mark Of Cain – Wake Up: From the band’s first long player called Battlesick. When TMOC opened for us in Adelaide Australia in 1992, they gave me this album and I played once I got back to America and kicked my ass. I have been a fan ever since. I have seen them place many times in Australia and it’s crushing. The band is fronted by the Scott brothers, Kim bass and John on guitar / vocals. They have had a few drummers over the years but I think they have found a solid bandmate with John Stainer who you might remember from Helmet. John can really lay it down and the band as brutal as ever.

The Nymphs – Sad And Damned: From the band’s one and only album called The Nymphs. I saw them a few months ago and they were really good. I think they opened with this song. The Nymphs were pretty much an 80’s / early 90’s band but Inger has done the occasional solo release and I like those even more but this song is a good one.

Iggy Pop / Goran Bregovic - Get The Money: I don’t remember how I found this soundtrack CD, Arizona Dream. It features a few tracks where Iggy collaborates with someone named Goran Bregovic on a few tracks. Bregovic is a composer born in Sarajevo says the internet. I don’t know how he met up with Iggy but they did these songs together and I have never heard them before so I found the CD soundtrack on Amazon.com for a couple of bucks and brought it in for our show. It’s cool, not amazing but it’s some Iggy you might not have heard before so that’s a good thing, right?

XBXRX - Freezing Water: I think this is the first track we have played off the band’s new album, Wars. I think we damn near wore out plays from Sixth In Sixes so it’s time to move on to the new gear. The band played the other night at The Smell in LA and as much as I wanted to go, I got off the set late after a long day and had to start early the next day and just couldn’t go see them as were going on really late. I am mad that I couldn’t see them play but hopefully I will find one of their shows to go to later in the year. For those of you who don’t know, this band is one wild ass racket and I think they are amazing. I was first introduced to the band after Ian MacKaye worked with them on their Clear EP. Ian gave me a copy and I was knocked out. I will bring in some stuff from their harder to find releases soon.

Bark Bark Bark - You Could Swim: I don’t know anything about this guy. I just got the CD from Andy at Retard Disco and being a fan of his label I played this album called Haunts and liked it. The one-sheet that came with the CD says that the guy called himself Bark Bark Bark because he didn’t want to come off like a singer-songwriter by using his name, which he insists is “gay” in his self-penned bio. Also, he’s 20 and from Arizona. So far, the young man’s future looks bright and it could very well be that you’re hearing him here for the first time. Good luck, son!

Bratmobile - Pagan Baby: From the frisky Girls Get Busy CD. It’s Allison Wolfe time again! You’ve heard Allison in bands like Partyline and The Cold Cold Hearts. I see her now and then in DC and she’s always cool. I never saw her in Bratmobile, I just have this one record but I will be getting some other ones because I really like this one. I forget how I got this one, perhaps Allison gave it to me, charitable gal she is.

The Clash - London Calling: From the 25th anniversary edition of the London Calling CD. With this edition of the album you get a CD’s worth of demos called The Vanilla Tapes. I read that the original tapes were lost when a roadie who was supposed to deliver them to Guy Stevens, the album’s producer, left them on a train. They were thought gone for years until guitarist Mick Jones discovered he had a copy of the tapes and so does anyone else who’s interested. The tapes are cool, nothing all that mind-blowing but it’s more Clash to check out and that’s not a bad thing. One of the more interesting tracks on this CD is this version of London Calling we played tonight. It’s like a lot of demos you hear, it’s only a shell of powerhouse the song eventually became. If you are a serious Clash Fanatic, you probably already have this but if you’re just a casual listener, the demos might not be all that interesting to you.

Brian Eno - The True Wheel: From the Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy album released in 1974. This was Eno’s follow-up to Here Come The Warm Jets, my favorite Eno album. When I was listening to this song the other night, I noticed the lyric, “a certain ratio” and figured that’s where the band took their name and today, while writing this up, a site mentioned this, which is like when one of those douche bags on the news says, “sources say . . . “ but it very well could be the story. Anyway, not the army of players as on Warm Jets but it’s a great album still. I never read up on Eno or how these albums did when they came out. I only heard about Eno records from punks I knew in DC who had them. I checked out the records later when I taped them at Deirdre’s O’Donoghue’s apartment. She had every record on earth it seemed. She had a radio show on KCRW in Santa Monica. Everything I learned about radio, I learned from Deirdre and this show is basically a tribute to her. I wish her shows, at least her playlists were online. Her shows were amazing. Anyway, I had a lot of cassettes in those days, that’s all I could afford, so I made a lot of tapes of her albums and learned a lot about music that way.

John Cale - Venus In Furs: From Circus Live. I had seen this 2CD/1DVD set here and there for awhile and don’t know why I didn’t get it sooner. There are many John Cale Fanatics listening to this show, I know that. Of all the Velvet Underground members, it’s Cale and Nico that are most interesting to me and as far as making great and challenging albums every decade, it’s John Cale. As a player, writer and producer he’s peerless. I never miss a chance to see him live and have been lucky enough to see him many times. I think the first time I saw him was in the early 80’s with the Knitters opening. I was at the show with Deirdre actually. Cale had left a message on her machine that day and put her on the guest list and I was her guest, lucky me. I don’t have every record Cale every did, there’s some soundtrack stuff he’s done that I have never heard but I am fairly up on my Cale but it took me awhile to check this one out. It’s really cool. Old and new songs get a workout and the sound is stellar. I still have not checked out the DVD as yet. It’s hard for me to sit and watch music being played on a TV screen. Did you check out the complete heaviness of Cale’s voice on this track? He’s such a cultured beast. This is a very cool album. I was in Wales the other night and it was so cool to be able to talk about Cale and Dylan Thomas in one sentence and hear cheers.

Cab Calloway - The Scat Song: From the 1932-34 CD on the Jazz Classic label. I don’t know how legit this label is. They put out a ton of CDs that seem to go in and out of print. This is the only real series I have seen for Cab Calloway. Past these CDs, there only seems to be collections and best-ofs. For many years, the only song of his I had ever heard was Minnie The Moocher. At one point, Chuck Dukowski of Black Flag played me a Cab track called San Francisco Fan and the story of the song really grabbed me and so I started looking around for his records and managed to find the comp. LP that Dukowski had. The more I listened to him, the more interested I became. He’s an amazing singer and my favorite part of what he does is his scatting and that’s why we’re listening to this particular track tonight. I was given a photo from his last photo session many years ago and it’s framed an on my wall.

Camberwell Now - Green Lantern: This is the musical project that Charles Hayward went into after his previous band, This Heat broke up. All of their tracks are available on a CD called All’s Well. It’s interesting music. It’s not as intense as the This Heat material but it’s interesting nonetheless. I have played this once and like it ok but have to give it more of a chance.

The Other Half - Bad Day: Remember a few weeks ago we listened to this band doing Mr. Pharmacist along with The Fall’s version of the song? Tonight’s track is from the not to easy to find Mr. Pharmacist & Lost Singles CD. The Other Half was a San Francisco based rock band from the 1960’s. I can’t find much on the band because I don’t think there’s much information to be had. I have not had much time with this CD but I am liking it so far and thought I would follow up with another track of theirs.

Ahmad Jamal - Ahmad's Blues: from the Complete Trio Recordings: 1951-1956 2CD set. I first checked out Ahmad Jamal by reading about him in a Miles Davis biography. Miles was a fan of Ahmad’s playing and even told his piano player at the time, Red Garner to, “Play it like Ahmad!” which might have been a bit of a drag to Red’s ears but what the hell. I have seen Ahmad play twice and he was tremendous, I mean really amazing. This is some of his very early material and I picked this track out of the many that are included in this set as it’s mainly Ahmad and not the other two, the guitar playing on some of these tracks gets to me after awhile.

Mother Superior – Stealing My Shadow: From the brand new Three Headed Dog CD. The Mother Superior boys are having quite a good run at the moment, playing all over Europe, where they have found many new fans. This is a very densely packed album, with a ton of songs. Many weeks ago, the band brought all the songs to me and asked me to make my own sequence of how they think it should run and my version was a bit shorter than this one, perhaps they are a bit more generous than I am! In any case, you get a ton of songs and some of their best ever stuff. The last couple of Mother Superior albums have been really great and that’s saying a lot as all their albums are pretty damn cool.

The Fall – Impression Of J Temperance: I sometimes stay away from the earlier albums of The Fall like the one we heard a track from tonight, 1980’s Grotesque (After The Gramme) for our show because it’s too easy and perhaps you are tired of hearing these records at this point. Doesn’t mean it’s not great stuff, though. Grotesque, to me is one of the strongest albums the band ever made. When I started listening to the band a lot, this was one of my most frequent listens. It is the band’s 4th album and showcases perfectly the wired energy of the band’s early period. Here’s a website where you too can get all the Fall info you crave! http://www.visi.com/fall/

Buck Gooter – Martian (Ain’t That): From the out of print and debut album by Buck Gooter called What Da Hell?. Luckily, I managed to get a copy. It’s pretty cool, I must say. I am really liking this band. I got a letter from Billy, one of the band’s members and he told me there’s a new album being released in July, so we have that one to look forward to. Here’s a site to find the band: http://www.littlegrillcollective.com/bg/

The Lurkers – Out In The Dark: The Lurkers great follow up album to their debut, Fulham Fallout was called God’s Lonely Men and it’s as good or better than FF. Talk about no let down, this album shows that the band had real songwriting ability and were not so easily contained and confined by Punk Rock. As good as all the album tracks, the b-side tracks were great as well. As many of you Fanatics know, the band had a major line-up change when vocalist Howard Wall left the band. They got a new singer and carried on and it’s pretty good material but nowhere near as good as it was on the first two albums. Howard Wall had something special. To me, he had a real “punk rock” voice. He never yelled, he sometimes sounded like he wasn’t all that interested in singing at all, which really worked in a strange way. That attitude could have been very much the facts of the man as after he left The Lurkers, he never did anything musically again as far as I know. I have contacted the band’s old drummer and he says while he still hangs out with the other two members often, none of them see Howard. So, please check out these two albums and their BBC recordings, all are in print and easy to find. The CD versions of the albums are packed with singles, demos and other goodies. The song we played tonight was released as a single, I think, at the same time GLM came out in June of 1979. The album got quite a lot more push than FF, which was only pressed and released in the UK and Germany as far as I know. God’s Lonely Men distribution was a bit more ambitious, I know of pressings from the UK, Germany, Japan and Australia for sure. This single was released in June of 1979. I don’t know of any Lurkers acetates in existence, of course that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. I have seen a test pressing of the Fulham Fallout album though.

Unrest – June: From the Imperial F.F.R.R. album. That stands for Full Frequency Range Recording if you didn’t know. I can’t say enough good things about this band. Some of their albums I play more often than others but all of them are great in their own way. Unrest were a great Indie pop band that took a lot of chances with their music. You know, perhaps that’s not an accurate assessment of their ever changing music. I wonder if the band ever considered that doing what they did was taking chances or just doing what came naturally. Let’s go with that. In any case, Unrest is one of the most interesting bands of the 80’s – 90’s Indie scene. I listen to their albums all the time and still manage to find something on them I didn’t hear before and again and again I am amazed at how well they crafted songs that seem to be so different from each other. Perhaps the most well known member of the band is Mark Robinson, who many of you Fanatics know from some of his other bands like Olympic Death Squad, Flin Flon, Grenadine and his solo work. He also owns the very cool Teenbeat label, which as you know, is a major reserve from where we take a lot of selections. I think that Teenbeat is one of the great indie labels and I try to get all the releases because I want to support the label and also because they are usually right up my alley. As far as Unrest goes, my most listened to albums of theirs are Perfect Teeth, B.P.M. 1991-1994 and this one. I like them all though. Bet ya wanna go to the Teenbeat site! Here you go go go: http://www.teenbeatrecords.com/

Antelope – Wandering Ghost: Hey! Antelope have just released their first full album. It’s called Reflector and it’s on Dischord. It was recorded at Dischord House with Ian MacKaye. You know they have released two EPs, both we have played on our show. I was in DC the other day and Ian gave me a copy of the this new one. It’s really cool. The only member of the band I have met is Justin Moyer, from his time in El Guapo and Super/System. This is very cool music, very thoughtful and well put together stuff these guys make. http://www.dischord.com/

Frank Zappa – Charva: I borrowed this CD, Zappa’s Mystery Disc from Engineer X as I cannot find my copy. I had one and perhaps one day, it will re-surface. I know that every time we listen to Zappa, it’s one of his Doo Wop numbers. I don’t want you to get the wrong impression and think that I am trying to make a sport of Mr. Zappa’s considerable talents. I just really like it when he does the Doo Wop stuff. I have heard a lot of Zappa’s albums and like most of what I’ve heard. I used to have a few of them when I was younger and have a couple of them now. There were a few people I toured with over the years who had Zappa stuff on the road and that was the way I was able to check out a large amount of his work. I wish I could get myself a bit more into his trip as there a lot of Zappa records to check out, the output was fairly staggering, it’s as if he didn’t do much else than work. I remember reading his interviews, he was one fast, funny and very talented man.

The Melvins – The Hawk: The nice folks at Ipecac sent me this album since my shelf was a little Melvins-free, they took care of that for me. This track is from last year’s A Senile Animal album and it’s a sturdy, Melvonic thing, emanating much Melvinescence. I have most of the band’s records, not all of them. I lost a few somewhere years ago, I don’t know where they went, perhaps into the depths of the office. Well, I am all Mevined up now so I will have some more to bring in. To the credit of the Melvins Fanatics who listen to this show, that’s one of the most requested bands I get letters about.

The Pacific Ocean – There’s No One You Won’t Walk Past: From the So Beautiful & Cheap & Warm album. This band has had a lot of members / contributors. Connie Lovatt who formed Containe with Fontaine Toups of Versus and Edward Baluyut of Versus formed the band about ten years ago. Made a few records and all moved onto other things as far as I can tell. The Baluyut brothers, Edward and James seem to have a new release every few months it seems. I don’t know anything about this band but I like what they do. A couple of years ago, I started checking out bands like The Pacific Ocean and the like by checking out many bands on Teenbeat, that seems to have a lot of these people on many of their releases. I don’t know anyone who has these records so I am just kind of finding my way and it’s been pretty cool so far. I don’t know if any of this band’s stuff is in print at this point but you could probably find it online.