HARMONY IN MY HEAD

BROADCAST #40
AIR DATE: 10-03-06

Thanks for listening to the show tonight dear Fanatics. I am angry today. I have been mad all day about the spin that’s coming out around Mark Foley. He’s a pedophile, he’s got problems and I wish him the best luck and I hope he never actually touched any kids. If that wasn’t bad enough, there are some neo-conservative douche bags trying to compare Mark Foley to President Clinton. Clinton’s the one who had the affair with the consenting adult woman, Mark Foley is the one sending the fucked up e-mail and instant messages to the sixteen year-old boy. Tony Snow characterized those dispatches as “overly friendly,” that’s all, just overly friendly. Oh. Matt Drudge said that the kid wasn’t new to the game and he was working Foley for all he was worth. Huh? Rush Limbaugh “just thinking out loud” postulated that perhaps that the page was put up to this by the Democrats. Please. Don’t the conservatives get it? They always get caught. They got nailed on the Iraq disaster and they don’t know what to do about it. Dr. Rice is getting caught in lies left and right. Foley admitted he was gay, said he was molested and then checked himself into alcohol re-hob. None of this has anything to do with pedophilia. No one’s fooled. If you can insult my intelligence, you must be awful.
     Thankfully, we are saved by all the wonderful music we have for you tonight. Some new releases on the Dischord label, some out there stuff that I think you’ll like. I sure hope you do.
     Next week, I will be in France for some press and IFC stuff so Engineer X and I put together a real cool show for next week which I think you’re going to like. Please check it out if you can. Thanks for listening to the show and please please please, STAY FANATIC!
--Henry

     For you Europeans, Australians and New Zealand Fanatics, there is a re-broadcast time of Friday mornings, 0200 – 0400 hrs. West coast time so you all can check out the show and not have to set your alarms to too rude an hour.

Fontaine Toups – Shoegazer: I haven’t played anything from this record for awhile so I figured I better do it again. What did the President say? “In my line of work you gotta keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kinda catapult the propaganda.” Yes! So I’m kinda catapulting that propaganda on Fontaine’s album. It’s on Teenbeat and it’s a good album of music that makes it good to still have some semblance of hearing. I hope she makes another record soon. You may have heard her in the band Versus and/or Containe. If you listen to this show now and then, you probably heard her here. http://www.teenbeatrecords.com/

Einsturzende Neubauten – Seele Brent: From Neubauten’s Halber Mensch album. I had not heard this song in awhile and the other night when I was at the office concocting this show, I walked by all their CDs I have and stopped, realizing exactly what was needed. I think the title translates into burnt or scorched soul. I always thought the instrumentation on this was great. I used to have this on cassette in 1985 or thereabouts and play is as loud as my always about to break Walkman would go. In those days, we were really broke and I think I got this from some guy who was selling them out of a box that “fell off the back of a truck.” The first three EN albums are the ones I play the most. Kollaps, Drawings Of Outpatient OT and this one. There’s also a compilation of early stuff that’s really good. They are always great but as their records kept coming out, they seemed more into the studio thing and less about beating on stuff with pipes and using found objects to make music and it wasn’t as interesting for me. Still, they are amazing nonetheless.

The Fall – Cary Grant’s Wedding: Have we ever rocked a live Fall track? I don’t know but tonight, we are. This is from the Totale’s Turns (It’s Now Or Never) album released in 1980. It’s all live and it’s all good. There’s no studio version of this song. There’s one more live version on the Live In London 1980 album, best known to Fall Fanatics as The Legendary Chaos Tape, which is on CD and really good. You’re probably wondering, “Where the hell does he get all that information on this band?! He must have the memory of an Elephant!” Well, no, but I do have the address of the Unofficial Fall Website that has all this information and more on The Fall: http://www.visi.com/fall/index.html

Hanoi Rocks – Taxi Driver: One of my favorite Hanoi Rocks songs. I am so glad I got to see this band live. Recently, when the New York Dolls came to the studio to play on my IFC show, I asked their bass player Sami Yaffa, who was Hanoi’s bass player if he remembered that summer 1984 show at London’s Electric Ballroom. He did. That was a great venue. My favorite Hanoi record is Back To Mystery City and the live one, All Those Wasted Years. This song is from the Self Destruction Blues album. Hanoi Rocks were from Finland and my manager used to manage them a long time ago. I just went to their website and it looks like they have a new-ish (2005) album called Another Hostile Takeover and shows booked for November in Finland. I liked their 2003 album Twelve Shots On The Rocks. I didn’t know there’s a new record. Another excuse to go to the record store!

Funkadelic – America Eats Its Young: We’ve been playing a lot of Funkadelic lately. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. From the album of the same name and one of my favorite Funkadelic albums. This band had some of America’s most ridiculous talent. I never got these records the first time around. I was too young for the early ones and no one I knew had them when I was growing up. Some people at school had Parliament records but no Funkadelic. On the last Black Flag tour and with the Rollins Band, there was a lot of George Clinton music in the air and that’s how I got in touch with these albums. I’ll show up for anything with Eddie Hazel playing guitar. All the Funkadelic albums are in print and the early ones have been remastered with extra tracks. These records used to be very hard to get a hold of and thankfully, that’s over with. George Clinton is a mad genius and I am very glad that I got a chance to work with the man. That was a high point.

Half Japanese – I’m Going To The Zoo: Jad and David Fair are Half Japanese, or at this point, maybe it’s just Jad. In 1980, I saw them open for the Dead Kennedys in DC. I stood with Ian and Jello right at the front of the stage. They were amazing. They killed. So did the DK’s. It was a great night. I have some Half Japanese records, not the whole catalog. This track is from 1/2 Gentlemen Not Beasts which seems to be out of print for now. It’s my favorite one of their records that I have. It’s much more raw and crazy than the later records. They are from the DC area I believe.

Ahmad Jamal – Daahoud: From the Chicago Revisited: Live at Joe Siegal’s Jazz Showcase album. Of the many Ahmad albums I have, this one is a favorite because I saw this line-up play in LA many years ago and they were amazing. Along with Ahmad on piano was John Heard on bass and Yuron Israel on drums. They were amazing. I have seen AJ play two times and both times it was phenomenal, especially the ballads. I forget where I read it, perhaps in a Miles Davis biography, that Miles really liked Ahmad’s playing and often did tunes that Ahmad was playing. I think it’s where he got the idea to play Bye Bye Blackbird from. I do remember reading that when advising his piano player who at the time was Red Garland how he wanted it, he said to, “Play it like Ahmad.” That couldn’t have felt all that good. Ahmad Jamal has a very light touch and at one point got some heat from the critics for being too lounge. I have a lot of his records and they are just beautiful. He’s a master musician. I remember one of the times I went to see him, I was sitting with Flea. Between tunes Flea was so into it, he yelled out something, I forget what it was and the whole place, band included turned and looked at our table and Flea’s electric blue hair. I remember wanting to be very small at that moment. It was a great night.

Edward Hazleton – Hard Rock Is My Pillow: There’s a CD called One String Blues on Takoma out of the UK. The CD features Eddie “One String” Jones for 9 tracks and Edward Hazleton on voice and harmonica for 6 tracks. In 2004, a fellow Fanatic wrote in and strongly urged that I check out this record. It wasn’t easy to find but I finally did find one and it was worth it. At some point soon, we’ll check out One String but tonight, it’s Edward Hazleton. This was recorded in 1960 in LA’s Skid Row. There’s no information on Hazleton in the CD’s liner notes but the performance is straightforward enough, just a man and a harmonica. Downtown LA is like another world. I am down there now and again for a film shoot or when I take surface streets back from where we shoot bands for the IFC show. The streets are packed with homeless people. At night it’s like a scene out of Blade Runner. Twenty minutes later you’re back in Hollywood.

Gun Club – Flowing: From the Pastoral Hide And Seek album. I remember many years ago, I was at Club Lingerie at the very front, slightly stage left, watching the Gun Club play one of the best shows I ever saw them do. It was right before this album came out and they played a good part of it for the set and this was the stand out song. I was there with one of the people who worked at my company and we looked at each other after this song was over just amazed. We ended up putting that record out in America years after it came out in Europe. The band’s leader, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, is one of one of LA’s greatest exports. Later in his life, he spent a good deal of time out of America. He was like a modern day ex-pat, living in Holland, England and wherever else. He came by the office one day to work on his lyric book Go Tell The Mountain we did with him many years ago and he had all these pictures of Vietnam: men in rice paddies, oxen, jungle, etc. I asked him where he found these pictures and he said, “I took them! I’ve been living in Vietnam. It’s really cheap and you can get by with a little French.” That was Jeffrey. He was one amazing songwriter. He passed away in 1996. He was never appreciated in America but did well in Europe. I used to do talking shows with him now and then and if you look in my lyric book Unwelcomed Songs, you’ll see him in one of the shots backstage in London in 1987 along with Joe Strummer. I used give him pep talks when I’d see him in Europe. He’d tell me that he was staying clean and sober and I’d encourage him to keep it up because it really worked for him. When he was taking care of himself, he looked great and his playing was top notch. I saw the Gun Club play a lot in Europe around the time they released Mother Juno in the mid-eighties and he was ripping it up. Jeffrey had some bad habits and they got the better of him. If you go to this site and look to your right, you’ll see a tab that says “obituary.” Click on it and it will take you to a nice bit of writing Pleasant did about Jeffrey. http://www.thegunclub.net/

Rollins Band – Also Ran: This is a song I wrote with Jeffrey in mind. He passed away when we were writing the Come In And Burn album. We were in the process of bringing out some records of the Gun Club for their first ever release in America and he passed away a few days before they came out and he never got to see them I don’t think. He called the office a couple of days before he died and was very excited about some new music he was working on and he seemed to be in good spirits. We played this song a few times on the tour we went out on this year. We played it in LA and I explained to the audience who he was. It was too bad I had to.

PJ Harvey – Goodnight: Who doesn’t like Polly Jean Harvey? I was in Australia a few months ago and she was on television, playing on some show, cursing away, being great. I think the guitar player had a t-shirt The Fall’s Extricate album cover on it, what’s there not to like? One of my favorite records of hers is To Bring You My Love. If you can find the French version of the CD, there’s a 2nd disc that has all the b-sides from the singles off the album. I don’t know if it’s that way in other territories but that’s the way they did it there. I think I bought it on a night off when we were there in 1997. That might have been the same night we saw the Bad Seeds play. The Bad Seeds in Paris, that was incredible. Boatman’s Call tour I believe. Anyway, this track is from the 2nd CD. I don’t know what the single was that this song was on the back of but I think it’s a great one and perfect for our show. I’ve never seen her play live, I know I’m blowing it as I bet it’s an amazing show. Even after all her records and success, she’s still fuckin’ raw and real.

The Cravats – The Land Of The Giants: Cause to celebrate! After literally years of tortured toiling in the fetid bowels of the music industry, The Cravats have managed to extract their songs from the evil overlords that held their recordings and kept them out of print for all these years. This is one of those small but great bands and for some reason, the labels who have their records wouldn’t put the records out but wouldn’t let the band do it either. It’s a wonder why more people at record companies aren’t killed by artists who have reached the end of their patience. A couple of weeks ago, I got letters from both John Esplen of Overground Records and Cravats frontman The Shend telling me that the 2CD Cravats collection is done and on the way. What a great band, completely nuts. I hope you check them out. I will be playing tracks from this record often. Overground: http://www.overgroundrecords.co.uk/
Cravats: http://www.thecravats.com/

The Aquarium – White House: I don’t know anything about this band. Ian gave me all the new Dischord releases and this was one of them. I played and liked it. The Aquarium seems to have two members: Jason Hutto on piano, keyboards and vocal and Laura Harris. They have been around since 2002 and since it is the two person band with the female drummer, some people may make some quick conclusions but that’s a little close minded. This is an innovative and interesting record and I liked it from start to finish.
The Aquarium: http://aquariummusic.com/
Dischord: http://www.dischord.com/main.shtml

Channels – Unreal Estates: Another Dischord record. I don’t mean it like it’s a burden but it is another in this stack of new Dischord releases. This is a great year for Dischord. I think some of the most interesting records the label has ever had are found in this year’s releases. Joe Lally’s record is great, the Evens album, which I can’t wait to play for you is a great one and all these other releases: The Aquarium, Soccer Team, & Channels. The Channels are able to blend good and edgy pop melody with crushing and twisted guitar riffs, sometimes inside the same song. It has the energy of some of the early Helmet stuff, that combination of melody and crunch.

Les Baxter – Cask Of Amontillado: In 1983, Byron Coley gave me a Les Baxter album with a painting of Vincent Price with a raven that had Cry Of The Banshee and the Edgar Allen Poe Suite. I had never heard of Baxter but since Byron gave me the record, I knew it was worth a listen. I checked out the record and thought it was great. Years later, I found it on CD with the same cover. Les Baxter did a lot of soundtrack music and what would be called Exotica. This one website I checked out said that in 1948, he used the Theremin on his Music Out Of The Moon album. He was a prolific innovator. Writing about Les Baxter brings up something that I’ve noticed happening quite a bit as I put these shows together and that is many CDs are out of print. That’s so strange to me that CDs could be rare. I can understand promo copies with extra tracks or bootlegs, sure but just record records, that’s lame. The Les Baxter records I bought a few years ago are selling for ridiculous prices. I am finding this with too many CDs. Since I don’t always play every new and happening record there is, (I leave that to all the movers and shakers at the station) I have found that some of the music I am into has been somewhat silenced by the fact that the damned CD is out of print. I understand why CDs go out of print though. Some of the CDs that I have put out, we barely got through the press run of even a thousand. If we pressed up another run, we would be sitting on them forever. It’s a bind. My hope is that some of this stuff can go online where someone can download it and at least hear the music and that it doesn’t go away altogether.

Art Ensemble Of Chicago – Theme De Celine: From Mick Geyer’s hand to mine. Friend has always been a strange word to me. I have met a lot of people in my life, it comes with my line of work. You can have a lot of acquaintances in your life and they can be great people in your life but a friend, for me at least, is a hard thing to come by. I have not had many. A couple of years ago, three of the only people I would the brakes on for all passed away in a period of a few weeks. It was hard to deal with. One of them was the great Mick Geyer of Australia. Mick taught me more about film, music and literature than I can explain here. You’ll see him thanked on a lot of Nick Cave albums. Nick considers him a mentor and Mick left his considerable library of books to Nick. I got to see them all shelved in Mick’s room before they were boxed up and sent to Nick and it was great to see Mick’s intellectual source. I pulled many of the books off the shelves, Ovid, Ellroy, Nabokov, and all of them had his writing all over the pages. We started a conversation in the late 80’s and it continued until he passed away a few years ago. I would book days off on the Australian tours just so he and I would have time to sit down and compare notes of all the things we had been reading, listening to and viewing since last we sat down. The conversations would start in the late morning and go until the early morning the next day. I have written about him in a lo of my books and some day I plan on writing a whole lot about my good friend Mick Geyer, who I was so lucky to know. The last time we hung out, we went to see a film called The Russian Ark and then took the conversation to the restaurant under my hotel. In the middle of the conversation that was pulling in everything from Rainer Fassbinder to Hubert Selby to Sun Ra, Mick told me he had cancer and would I please not say anything to anyone. Then he started talking about something else. Typical Australian; wry, flinty, straight ahead. I love that place. Awhile later we parted. He drove off and I took a long walk down Fitzroy St. and thought about what Mick had told me. That was the last time I saw him. He was gone a few months later. He gave me this Art Ensemble CD. I hosted part of a NPR special done in honor of Mick in Australia months ago and played hours of music that Mick had introduced me to. This was one of the CDs that I used. The AE of C, what a fertile brain trust this unit is. Besides their own unique and relentlessly forward moving brand of Jazz, two of the members have had quite the solo careers, namely Lester Bowie and Roscoe Mitchell. This was the first record of the band I ever had. As always, thanks again Mick. http://artensembleofchicago.com/

Kraftwerk – Die Roboter: Whenever I listen to Kraftwerk, I find myself choosing the versions of the albums done in the band’s native language of German. Kraftwerk did many of their albums in German and English and some of their songs in even more languages, like Japanese and French. Anyway, tonight we listen to The Robots, or as we heard it tonight, Die Roboter. This is from the Die Mensch-Maschine album. Another thing that’s interesting about the different versions of the albums is that often the mixes are different as are some edits. If you are a Kraftwerk fan and have not checked out the German versions of their albums, there’s a lot of Kraftwerk you need to check out.

Soccer Team – Here’s Why Dancers Smoke: From the '"Volunteered" Civility & Professionalism album. I already wrote the band a fan letter, so I’m in, a Soccer Team Fanatic. The band is Melissa Quinley and Ryan Nelson and they both work at Dischord so they have the inside track but if they weren’t good the label wouldn’t have put the record out. Sharp people making cool music, I’m in. http://www.dischord.com/main.shtml

Sham 69 - I Don’t Wanna / Ulster / Red London: Sham’s first record! Our EP of the week. Listen to the tone on that guitar. I heard this record after I heard the first album and some the other singles, This one wasn’t easy to find at first. It was interesting to hear this one after hearing some of the more polished Sham 69 anthems. This is so raw. Sham 69 became a lightning rod for controversy because of their confrontational music, outspoken frontman Jimmy Pursey and their audience, who could be very hard to deal with. I have never been able to make my mind up about Pursey. I don’t know exactly if he was the real deal or a egomaniac. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle. He had something, a lot of those songs are great no matter how many years pass but Jimmy Pursey has to be one of the more hard to pin down characters in Punk Rock. He’s still at it and still has a following. I was into it for their first three albums and all the singles up to then. Tell Us The Truth, That’s Life and Hersham Boys are great albums. I got some of the singles issued after these albums came out and I still have them but kind of fell off of the whole thing. There was something very pained about Hersham Boys, like Pursey were searching for the next thing musically and kind of got caught between where they were and where they wanted to be because I don’t think they had the destination. There’s some strange instrumentation on Hersham, some interesting choices in arrangements, not to mention some really good songs and performances but it’s like they were searching for a moment that had passed or something. I don’t know. I play these records now and then and try to figure them out. I have talked to Jimmy in a very long time and it would be interesting to check in with him again before it’s all over.

Xe Chi Loun Kim - Spinning Song: This is from the Music Of Vietnam box set on Celestial Harmonies. I think I played something from their Music Of Cambodia box recently. I love this label. This is the label that released the 19 CD Music Of Islam box set which is worth every penny and totally mind-blowing. I buy stuff on this label because it’s on this label. Like stuff on the Blood & Fire label. I like music from different places because more often than not, it takes me on a trip and forces me to reconfigure the way I hear music. It’s too easy for me to fall into music ruts. I have a lot of different music on the shelves but if I’m not careful, I’ll easily play the same handful of records because they are like comfort food. There are tonal qualities to music from Vietnam, Cambodia, Java and other places in this region that I have never heard anywhere else. About ten years ago, I bought a sampler of Javanese gamelan music in Holland because it looked interesting and like I said, I feel the need to keep exploring music. I played it on the bus that evening and that was it, I was hooked. I have a lot of music from Vietnam but this is my favorite collection so far. It’s very comprehensive, documenting the basic styles of Vietnamese musics which seem to break down into traditional, religious, court and theater. On some of the tracks you’ll hear a slight western influence, which sounds really strange. I was tempted to play one of those tracks tonight but without any context, it sounds more confused than anything. Perhaps I’ll pull one of those tracks later in the year. This CD set is in print and easy to find on Amazon.com.

Ronnie Allen - Juvenile Delinquent: Rhino puts out some serious box sets that interest me greatly. We’ve had some good listens from their Loud Fast And Out Of Control box set of great 50’s stuff. There’s another collection of great old Rock And Roll and Rockabilly tracks called Rockin’ Bones. Remember weeks ago, we listened to Ronnie Dawkins and The Cramps doing Rockin’ Bones? I didn’t have the set back then but that song is on there as is Sunglasses After Dark by Dwight Pullen, The Cramps version we’ve played on this show.