The Mothers of Invention

‘Tis the Season to be Jelly
Foo Eee Records

I used to own a few of these Beat The Boots/Rhino Foo-Eee series of Zappa bootlegs, but parted with them because the sound was either putrid or simply not as entertaining as their studio album or legitimate live releases. I did hang on to this one as it’s rather good and is also a spotlight on my favorite configuration of The Mothers.
And this is a good example of what rock critics used to write about the Mothers; the wacky amalgam of Classical, jazz and 50’s hit parade crap. Also, it seems Zappa boots are all the rage, and I don’t see this one around yet. Here’s a much better review of it (from The Daily Vault) than I can muster:

But what sets this album – and, for that matter, The Mothers –apart from everything else is the mixture of music that they play onstage. From the shuffle-waltz tempo of “You Didn’t Try To Call Me,” Zappa leads the band into a portion of Stravinsky’s”Petroushka,” and instantly transforms a classical work into a catchy pop number. (Hardcore classical music fans would call this sacrilege; I call it introducing a form of music to a newaudience.) If this weren’t enough, the band segues from “Petroushka” to “Bristol Stomp,” then into “Baby Love”…finally into “Big Leg Emma,” all without skipping a measure or leaving a noticeable seam. This, my friends, is Talent.

The highlight of Tis The Season To Be Jelly is an early performance of The Mothers’ jazz-rock masterpiece “King Kong,” including a brief description of the song from Zappa. Admittedly, “King Kong” is the type of song you must show some patience to get through, but in the end, it’s well worth it, and may even open up some people’s minds and ears to the world of jazz.

Although, I disagree with his assessment of King Kong. I could listen to a whole album of versions of that song.

Track List:

1. You Didn’t Try to Call Me
2. Petroushka
3. Baby Love
4. Big Leg Emma
5. No Matter What You Do (Tchaikovsky’s 6th)
6. Blue Suede Shoes
7. Hound Dog
8. Gee
9. King Kong
10. It Can’t Happen Here

Get it here.

Updates and cool finds

Hi everyone.
How are you?
I’m feeling alright. Enjoying a very casual Saturday, eating hot Indian curry and posting.
Been doing some thinking about reorganizing the way I do posts and uploads. I noticed quite a lot of downloads but not a lot of comments, other than problems with unzipping. I don’t know what I can do about the latter, but the former makes me wonder about putting up a password. I just want you – my loyal readers – to be able to download my shares, rather than let folks sniff them out the back door. Let them suffer through my long-winding posts just like ‘yall.
What do you think?
I’m also not sure what to make of Rapidshare’s impending shortening of share shelflife. It might really change the whole Sharrity blogosphere considerably. Any thoughts or ideas on that?
Also, if you find that one of my shares has expired, be sure to say which one when commenting. I have blogger enabled to tell forward comments to my Email, but it doesn’t always tell me which post it comes from. So often I get an anonymous request to re-up, but don’t know which file. It speeds up the process for both of us. I will try to re-up as soon as I can, but will probably only do it on a request basis, unless it’s one I feel got lost in the shuffle and should be heard.

I just got through watching The Devil and Daniel Johnston, so may post some. It’s a very moving film which I recommend. I was always kind of on the fence about his music, but now find that I like it a lot.
GPOD has it as a bittorent, if you are so inclined.

Are Friends Electric has been posting some very cool late eighties/early nineties dance/industrial, including a band I’ve been looking for and – until now – not been able to find: Tackhead. He just put up one of my lost faves Friendly as a Handgrenade. I was looking for this stuff when I did my feature on bands like Consolidated, EBN and Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, as they’re very much in the same milieu. He’s got the goods here.

Mr. Lo-Fi Jr. has got another fantastic contender for the title of Ugly Atonal Eighties, with Madison Wisconsin’s Tar Babies. I used to play their awesome We Are the New Poor incessantly. He has two albums by them, as well as a swell write-up. Go check it out.

Stefan over at Moodswings Music has been on a World music spree, sharing lots of great stuff. He even put up soem Transylvanian Gypsy music, which I find really interesting, being on a Balkan, Eastern European kick lately.

I’m also on a Cabaret Voltaire kick, and One2zero is holding. He’s got their fantastic 2×45 album up, one of the last of the Chris Watson lineup. He saved me from having to rip my vinyl of it and for that I’m eternally grateful (‘cuz I’m a lazy bastard).

Our favorite Evil Doer has put up another band I plum forgot all about – but who nevertheless rock, The Nomads.
They are great in a way that so many modern psychobilly bands aren’t. Give ‘em a listen and tell me I’m wrong.

As the season changes while we slide into October, I dark plans for this site. I will repost some scarier music, will rerun last year’s Kill Ugly Radio Halloween podcast and finally put out a new one. Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I want to keep it dark and scary and not let the crazy X-tian conspiracy exorcize it of it’s darkness.
That’s right, the War On Halloween has begun. Do you know that some schools don’t let kids celebrate halloween? How will they ever find darkeness?
In that light (hehe) i was delighted to find that someone has posted Art Zoyd’s Nosferatu soundtrack.
NNW list devotees One of the Lists is Bending Up has got it here.

That’s it kids…
See ya real soon.

Flipper

Sex Bomb Baby
Infinite Zero

By popular demand, I bring you the 1995 posthumous compilation of odds n’ ends from the tragically short career of Flipper. It’s a crime against humanity that they are no more and so many lesser bands are still chugging away, collecting money, selling T-shirts, etc…
Kids these days.
Contained herein are various live bits, B-sides, compilation cuts, and -of course – an old lady who swallowed a fly. I guess she’ll die.

“Forget it, you wouldn’t understand anyway….”
(reupped 12/16/06)

Laibach

John Peel Sessions
Strange Fruit

In 1986 and 1987 Laibach recorded two sessions for the late John Peel’s radio show which weren’t released until 2002. With the exception of Krvava Gruda – which sounds indistinguishable from that available on Nova Akropola- all songs are vastly different than we’ve heard them performed before. Life is Life, which many would hear later on Opus Dei, sounds much slower – with a greater reliance on keyboards than in previous incarnations of this band – and Milan Fras’ voice is a hoarse croak. But the real shocker is Leben Tod, which rocks harder than anything that they’ve ever done before or since, with razor sharp guitars and gut-pounding bass.
For some reason Ti, Ki Izzivaš has become a song called Krvoprelitje. Who knows why? There’s even a track performed from Baptism Under Triglav.
An interesting document that catches Laibach in the crossroads between their Croation Slovene-sung, dark industrial music and their Germanic, pop song skewering phase.

Tracklist:

1. Krvava Gruda – Plodna Zemlja
2. Krst
3. Life Is Life
4. Leben-Tod
5. Trans-National
6. Krvoprelitje

Life is Life
(re-upped 12/25/06)

UGLY ATONAL EIGHTIES SERIES #7: Flipper

Blowin’ Chunks
ROIR

In all that I can’t believe that I forgot to post any Flipper, the band that may have spawned the genre in the first place. The Butthole Surfers have long stated this Bay Area band as a major influence. Poison 13’s fuzzed and out of tune guitars sound like Flipper on a good day.
I can’t really explain the oversight, or how I managed to ransack my CD shelf and skip over both this and Sex Bomb Baby, another great Flipper LP.
This one wins out because it’s live presentation is even more menacing and fucked up than anything else they’ve recorded and also contains my favorite song ‘Life‘ (“the only thing worth living for…”).
Snap it up, Chuck.

Get it?
Re-upped 10/12

Happy Sharetime Shoutouts

Hi ‘yall…
I have gotten a few unfortunate instances of people being unable to unzip some of my ups.
I’m not sure what to do at this point. I may switch to another method, but don’t really have the time to do simultaneous uploads (i.e.; having both Megaupload, Rapidshare in the same post.).
But what I need to know is if people are actually being able to unzip them at all. Not to whine, but the only feedback I seem to be getting is from those who are unable to unzip them. My stats say that lots of downloading is going on in any given share, but I can’t imaging that all of them are broken, eh?. Casual browsing of other sharrity blogs suggest that there is a certain margin of error where this is concerned. I’d like to do what I can to minimize it as much as is practically possible, but if no one’s able to enjoy the shares, I may as well fold up my little lemonade stand and pack it away.
Don’t make me write a feedback form….

UPDATE:
An anonymous visitor reports the following:

“I clicked “repair archive” function on WinRar and it worked for me, I was able to extract the files from the repaired .zip, yes as you might have guessed, on a pc…”

Hope that advice turns out to be handy for some of you…

Chu Ishikawa

Tetsuo – The Iron Man Soundtrack
Japan Overseas

Music from Shinya Tsukamoto’s synapse bursting Tetsuo movies. The bulk of the songs are from the second flick, The Body Hammer and most appear to be adaptations of themes and motifs from the movies themselves, rather than the songs actually used in the films, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Megatron is a grand reworking of The Iron Man’s theme, featuring Ishikawa’s precise industrial percussion and martial rhythms. The faux-Arabic keyboard sounds on Mausoleum are a lot more restrained here, but the song is expanded out to a regular length – something Tsukamoto’s unconventional cinematic narrative style and brain-fry editing don’t allow. Jerked out of their surreal celluloid context, it’s easier to scrutinize Ishikawa’s musical style, even if his sounds and his director’s images seem inextricably linked.
Nice. I’m really glad I found this.

“Sakoi!”
(re-upped 12-10)

Various Artists

Return of the Living Dead Soundtrack
Enigma/Restless 1985

Pretty hokey by today’s standards, but this punked out (1985-style) soundtrack to one of the first zombie movie revival flicks – and a pretty hot one to boot- was a really big deal at the time. Not only did some very cool acts on the Enigma label get some mainstream exposure, it was the first thing that we heard from The Cramps for at least a couple of years, after IRS stranded them in some contractual gulag. Their Surfin’ Dead was a taste of the madness to shortly come when they unleashed A Date With Elvis a year later. Another hot-shit track is The Flesheater’s Eyes Without a Face, where Chris D sounds like he’s gargling Liquid Plumber.
There’s a few pre-Goth horror punk staples; the Damned make an appearance, as well as the vastly overated TSOL. 45 Grave do a metal anthem that would make Quiet Riot proud. Sheesh, it’s hard to believe that this is the same band that did White Cross or I Got Fucked By the Devil! SSQ embarass everyone one with a few songs that were dated sounding (whomp-whack electronic drums) ten minutes after they were cut.
Another truly amazing track is Roky Erickson’s Burn the Flames, used to great effect in the film.
This soundtrack went out of print awhile back, and even cassettes of it fetched high prices for a spell. Mine is a little odd – not too surprising considering that I dredged it up from Russian sources – in that it includes the title music, not seen on any issues of the album. Hmmm.

Track list:
1.) Main Title — Matt Clifford
2.) Surfin’ Dead — The Cramps
3.) Partytime (Zombie version) — 45 Grave
4.) Nothing For You — TSOL
5.) Eyes Without A Face — The Flesheaters
6.) Burn the Flames — Rocky Erickson
7.) Deadbeat Dance — The Damned
8.) Take A Walk — Tall Boys
9.) Love Under Will — The Jet Black Berries
10.) Tonight (We’ll Make Love Until We Die) — SSQ
11.) Trash’s Theme — SSQ

I think it’s been picked up by Ryko, and may or may not be OoP again.

“BRAINS…”(rs)
re-upped on 10/12

Problems Unzipping?

I’ve gotten two or three meassages from folks who haven’t been able to unzip the last couple of downloads from me.
Is this happening to many people? I doubt it.
87 people downloaded the Butthole Surfers Rembrandt Pussyhorse, and two people replied, if only to say that they couldn’t get them unzipped. I don’t often download mine to see if they are OK, but when I do, they are alright and I end up having to wait an hour to download something else.
I have updated my zip utility – Stuffit, which has been prompting me to update for a week or so – but I don’t think that’s it.
Anybody hear of some Mac/Stuffit vs PC/Winzip incompatibilty issue?

If you’ve been successful at unzipping files from me recently, give me a shout-out.
If you continue to have problems, let me know.
Assuming that the majority isn’t having any problems, I’m not sure what I can do.
I am open to suggestions….

Cabaret Voltaire

Johnny Yesno Soundtrack
Mute

Cabaret Voltaire’s soundtrack to Peter Care’s film I’ve never seen about a junky. Chances are you’ve never seen it either. However, it’s a great all instrumental album, featuring the last of the Chris Watson lineup – if I’m not mistaken. Having Cab Volt work in the soundtrack genre lets them stretch out compositions and frees them from the constraints of rhythm and beats, although Taxi Music sounds like mutant jungle music. A nice diversion, and a last taste of weirdness before Watson left for a career in television and Mallinder and Kirk went into poppier (albiet still very weird) dance oriented music.

Johnny Yesno

BTW: The awesome one2zero has got the entire 2×45, two disc EP up for us to download. It’s probably one of the best of the early dance-era CV. Check it out, as well as his other top-notch shares.