BROADCAST
#45
AIR DATE: 11-07-06
Hello Fanatics! I hope all you Americans all voted today. I don’t care
who you voted for, as long as you voted. May the voice of the people be heard.
As long as all the votes are counted, I will live with the results, no matter
who wins or loses. Past that, here’s all this great music. Tonight’s
show is the last bit of fun I’m going to have for some time as I have
to be downtown bright and early tomorrow morning for LA County jury duty.
Always wonderful. Below is tonight’s show notes and some information
on upcoming shows for Pere Ubu. I wish I could be at those Cleveland and Chicago
shows! I hope you all liked the show tonight. I think we put together a good
one. Next week is our all b-sides show. I have been working on this one for
weeks, please check it out. Until next week, 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.
Here’s some upcoming Pere Ubu shows:
November
2006
Wed. 22: NYC NY @ The Knitting Factory
Fri. 24: Cleveland OH @ The Beachland Ballroom
Sat. 25: Chicago IL at Abbey Pub in
Sun. 26: Minneapolis MN @ The 400 Bar
Iggy
Pop – 96 Tears: Two ways to get this track that I know of for sure.
There’s a lot of Iggy releases out there of varying legitimacy. I have
this track on The Legendary Breaking Point Tour 1983 CD and the much easier
to find and better sounding Nuggets 2CD set. It’s not perfect sound
quality but it’s plenty good and I love it when Iggy actually sings
because I think he can really do it. If the tour was 1983, that would be Zombie
Birdhouse era I guess. I didn’t see any shows of his on that tour but
I heard good and bad reports. In any case, he’s got more charisma than
is possible. If you listen closely at the end of the song, it sounds like
David Bowie doing backing vocals but if this really is from 1983, I don’t
think Bowie would be out with him, that was in 1977 I think.
Helios
Creed – Fire In The Head: I met HC briefly many years ago and at this
point, I don’t remember where it was the meeting took place but he was
really intense and it made me want to check out his music immediately. I don’t
know much about him or his previous band for which he is well known, Chrome.
I have their Half Machine Lip Moves record but have not played it in a long
time. Chrome and Helios Creed’s music are at this point, very unfamiliar
to me so I will have to work on that. I really like his guitar playing. I
only have two of his records, Planet X, which this track came from and The
Dark Side Of The Sun album. Curiosity gets me into a lot of music.
The Evens – No Money: The long wait is over. The Evens new album, Get Evens, was released yesterday. I have been waiting to play this CD. Ian asked me if I could hold off playing it until it was properly released. Well, now it is and here it is. This is my favorite song on the album so far. In the time between the two albums, the band have done a lot of touring and it shows on this record, especially in Amy’s drumming. She’s such a badass. This album was recorded for the most part, in the basement of Dischord House and the tapes were taken to Inner Ear, transferred to 24 track and a few overdubs were done and then the tracks were mixed. It has a much different feel and sound than the first album and I think this new one is a better effort all around. I had hoped this record would reflect the chops gained from all the shows they’ve been doing and it does. Get Evens is a great follow-up, can’t wait for what happens next.
Bo Diddley – Pills: I have a few different versions of this song. Many
of you Fanatics are familiar with the New York Dolls version and some of you
know of the Lurkers version but there is a possibility, although slight, that
you might not have heard Bo Diddley’s version of the song. You have
heard my story about how I saw Mr. D open for The Clash in 1979 so I don’t
need to roll that one out again. I have always been interested in his guitar
sound as he had his own thing going on. You get yourself a best-of from the
Chess Records era and you will get a listen to one of Rock And Roll’s
architects.
The Brides Of Funkenstein – Ride On: The Brides, Lynn Mabry and Dawn
Silva were at one point, Sly Stone’s back up singers. George Clinton
made them into a group and joined them into his entwined forest of Funk. I
am aware of two studio albums, Funk Or Walk and Never Buy Texas From A Cowboy
and a live one that we heard a track from tonight, Live At Howard Theater,
Washington DC recorded November 1st and 2nd, 1978. This is the only one of
their records I have. I looked it up and it seems to be out of print and selling
for way too much. This is happening way too often. I got all the above info
by typing their name into the search engine and reading up at different sites.
If you liked this track, the whole album is as good.
UK Subs – Tomorrows Girls / Scum Of The Earth / Telephone Numbers: This
whole EP of the week thing is working out really well for me because the UK
Subs put out a lot of EPs and it gives me a good excuse to play the band all
the time. The band released this in August of 1979. I think I prefer this
version of Tomorrows Girls more than the version found on the Another Kind
Of Blues album. On the 2nd verse, there’s a noticeable uitar or some
kind of noise happening in response to the vocal. The guitars are a little
chunkier. The album version is good but a little less noisy. One of the things
that I have always found interesting about this single is all the different
versions of release. These are the ones that I know of:
USA pressing on RCA
USA pressing on RCA DJ promo
UK pressing - blue vinyl
UK pressing - blue vinyl A-label promo
New Zealand pressing – black vinyl no sleeve
France pressing w/alt. sleeve
Holland pressing – sleeve is pretty much the same. Front has RCA logo
on bottom left and there’s addition writing on the back. Big hole center,
black vinyl, orange label.
Nico – One More Chance: Nico’s voice put a big hook into me the
first time I heard it. We used to listen to The Velvet Underground in Black
Flag a lot and I always thought her vocals on their first album were amazing,
especially I’ll Be Your Mirror. At some point, I read a book on The
Velvets and read about Nico’s solo work and became very curious. I had
no money to buy records with but luckily for me, SST Records worked with Byron
Coley, who very charitably gave me some Nico records, which I still have.
When I heard her albums The End, The Marble Index and Desertshore, I was flattened.
I had never heard anything like those records ever. Of those, it was The End
that really destroyed me. Nico+Cale=!!!! I forget what year it was, probably
early 1983 when I got a hold of Nico’s album The Drama Of Exile. Of
all her albums, this was the one that I found myself going back to more often.
It’s rock compared to her other albums. There’s guitars all over
it, and what great guitars they are. The player, Mahammad Hadi, I don’t
know anything about him but I have never heard anything like him. His playing
might be what I like best about the album. The drumming on the album is good
but basic, for all intents and purposes, it’s a Post-Punk album with
Nico singing on it. I looked around on the internet and there’s mixed
reactions to this album. Some people who like her early work say that The
End was the last good album. The Drama Of Exile, by the way, was her first
recording after she released The End seven years earlier and it was much different
and nowhere near as unique as the work she did with John Cale. Perhaps some
of her fans resented her “going rock” on them. Of all her records,
Drama is the one that’s most accessible to me. As much as I like the
earlier ones, they are so heavy, you have to be in the mood for them and this
Drama is more somber than anything else. Anyway, I played this album a lot
when I got it and it made me pay attention to her later recordings, which
were at that point, mostly live and I liked those as well. Two live ones,
Do Or Die! and En Personne En Europe I still listen to. I got this 4 track
12” of her many years ago. There’s a song on there called Procession
that’s as heavy as anything she ever did. I had not played it in awhile
and since it became evident that I was going to be writing about Nico for
awhile, I put it on. It’s playing now and again, I am knocked out by
her intensity. I never looked at the credits, Martin Hannett produced! Martin
Hannett as in Joy Division Unknown Pleasures producer Martin Hannett. There’s
also a Hannett-produced version of All Tomorrow’s Parties on this 12”
and it’s SO Hannett sounding. That’s so cool. Anyway, you Fanatics
don’t need me to write up a Nico bio for you, you know she liked heroin.
By the time she was working on Drama, she had quite a habit. Here’s
where things get interesting. The Drama Of Exile was material she had worked
up with a producer named Philippe Quilichini. It was 9 songs, 7 originals
and 2 covers: Bowie’s Heroes and Lou Reed’s I’m Waiting
For The Man. She signed a deal with Aura Records, took the advance and re-recorded
the album. I read that Nico either stole or tried to sell the original tapes.
Aaron Sixx, who owns the label intercepted the attempt and the whole thing
went to court and held up the release for about two years. Finally, it was
released on Aura and over the years, it was released on different labels.
The 2nd version of the album has been released as well. I first encountered
it was in 1996 when it was released on CD as Drama Of Exile: Version Originale.
From the title, I thought it was the original version of the album. If you
are a fan of the Drama album and have not heard this version, I think you’ll
find it interesting. It definitely has its merits as the band tries some different
things on their parts. Nico’s vocals are great on both versions but
it’s the 1st version where she really gives herself to it. The vocals
on the 2nd album sound like she’s singing material she has put behind
her. I really notice it my favorite song on the album, Sixty Forty. As far
as I can tell, both versions of this album are out of print. I see it here
and there on EBay and Amazon.com. If you are a Nico Fanatic and don’t
have this one, you should seek it out. Nico was a one-take, there’s
nothing like her. Check out the great Nico documentary Nico Icon, if you can
find it. I did some searching and found a lot of press on Nico from the Drama
album onwards and it’s all pretty bad. From album reviews to live reviews,
it’s all fairly mean. I have no doubt that she may have put in some
tired performances but some of the reviews of the Drama album go out of their
way to be nasty. It’s like they didn’t know what to do with the
record or compared it to her earlier work but made me wonder if they had even
really heard those records. It doesn’t matter at this point I guess
but she was very interesting and one of a kind. Check the versions of The
Drama Of Exile album if you get a chance, especially the first version.
Ludus – Mouth Piece: From Pickpocket. Damn. The more I listen to Ludus,
the more intrigued I become. Not only is the music strange and cool, there
and not there at the same time, the singer, the genre-unto-herself Sterling
Linder, is like nothing I have ever heard before. This will be our second
dip into the Ludus catalog. As I wrote in the previously, Sterling designed
the Orgasm Addict single cover for the Buzzcocks and the Ludus was signed
to New Hormones, the label that released the first Buzzcocks record, Spiral
Scratch. In the Wikipedia write up on the band, it says that Morrissey, my
favorite, is their biggest fan. I don’t have any of his records but
every time I’ve read an interview of his, he seems sharp beyond sharp
and very funny. I’m glad he’s still around. Anyway, Ludus, some
could probably write the band off as pretentious art school but they would
be way off the mark. Ludus has been one of the more if not the most interesting
musical discovery I have made this year. Here’s a great biography that
will hopefully interest you: http://home.wxs.nl/~frankbri/ludushis.html
Cath Carroll – I Remember The Sun: I don’t know much about CC.
I only know of her via the band Unrest as they did a song about her and put
a picture of her on their Perfect Teeth album. There’s a couple of songs
of hers on various Teenbeat compilation albums, which is where I got tonight’s
track from. I have heard three songs of hers so far and I am not completely
sold. I will have to check out some of her other stuff eventually though,
curiosity always gets the best of me. Here’s the address for her very
informative site: http://www.cathcarroll.com/
Malaria! – Dead: I don’t know how I got into Malaria!. It was
in the 80’s. When I was checking out The Birthday Party and Einsturzende
Neubauten, that lead me into checking out Die Haut and Malaria!. The band
were all female, which I thought was interesting. I found their records used
here and there and became a fan. Very heavy, very German. I was in Germany
in 1987 touring with the band and met some girls who were in a band called
Matador. We got to talking and I told them that I liked a German girl band
called Malaria! and they laughed and said that two of them had been in that
band. I told them what a Fanatic I was for the band. They gave me a copy of
their album A Touch Beyond Canned Love. I played it when I got back to USA
and it was really cool. Years later I contributed some vocals to a Matador
album. Some of their stuff is on CD. If you liked what you heard you can easily
find their Compiled 1981 – 1984 CD. This is where I got this track.
Has an almost Swans like feel.
The Fall – The Joke: Tonight’s Fall track comes from the band’s
1995 release Cerebral Caustic. I remember when this came out. I was at the
record store down the street from the office and went through The Fall section
to see if perhaps something had been released and there it was. I purchased
and walked back to my place and put it on. How happy I was and how happy I
am to play this record over and over. So many great songs on this one. The
recent re-issue is a 2CD affair with corresponding Peel session plus a bunch
of rough mixes. Weeks ago, we listened to a track from this record called
Bonkers In Phoenix. Hey, is it your first time listening to our show? Welcome,
Fanatic! Here’s a website to check out, it’s the Unofficial Fall
Site: http://www.visi.com/fall/index.html
Roy Orbison – Drifting Away: This is what Roy O sounded like in 1977.