Life During Wartime

The excellent Punk show Life During Wartime – perhaps Portland’s longest-running Punk show and wonderful exemplar of the DIY wing of Punk – has a new podcast site, where you can listen to shows (it’s on a little late for this old, working wretch) again and read playlists, peruse archives, etc…

Life During Wartime started in 1995, and is on every Wednesday night
from 11 pm until 1 am (PDT), here on KBOO. We play DIY Punk And
Hardcore records, have live bands, and do a weekly local shows listing
for the Portland area (Wild Weekend).

GO THERE NOW.

KBOO page for Life During Wartime.

Joe Strummer Appreciation Day

For me anyway…

I just got around to watching The Future is Unwritten and remembered how much I appreciated Joe Strummer’s music and cultural/political outlook throughout the years. He was the person – via The Clash – that made me aware of the world at large and what was going on in it as a teenager. I probably wouldn’t have known anything about what was going on in Central America if I didn’t become obsessed with the album Sandinista! after my Mom bought it for me for Christmas one year (I begged her, thinking she’d take one look at the cover and buy something safer instead. Thanks, Mom!). I wanted to know what the songs and liner notes were about and it led me down the garden-path to leftist politics, at the tender age of sixteen or so. Take that, Tipper Gore!

It was a punch to the gut when he died. Even though I hadn’t followed his latest musical projects that closely, I became a fan of his radio stints, where he would offer these free-wheeling excursions into music from all over the world. It made it obvious that despite his aspirations to rock stardom in The Clash, he simply loved music and its ability to give voice to people and their struggles the world over. It made some of his global hodge-podges on Clash records and subsequent bands – some more successful than others – make much more sense. He saw music as a unifying force and the people’s megaphone for change.

Enough sermonizing…

Here’s an open dex of his BBC radio show London Calling, reprised in 2007 with intros and outros mentioning the five year anniversary of his passing. These shows are great. Joe plays music from all over the world and across timelines. They’re rather brief, but he talks about why the songs matter to us.

Here’s a guest slot he did on WFMU in 2001, not long before his untimely death.

Post-Mortem Cramps

“Hey I’m on my way, on a journey out of this world…”

~Lux Interior (10.21.46 – 2.4.09)

On Thursday the 12th, from 10pm to 12am Pacific Standard Time, we will be paying tribute to The Cramps and the recently departed Lux Interior (aka Erick Purkiser , Vip Vop, etc…):

Predating and never quite participating in
the early ’80s rockabilly revival, the Cramps used that genre’s primal
sound as a jumping-off point for a uniquely weird pastiche of
rock’n'roll, psychedelia and a monster movie/junk food/swamp-creature
aesthetic. Led by uninhibited vocalist Lux Interior (Ohio native Erick
Purkhiser, who was clearly a student of Cleveland television’s
Ghoulardi) and guitarist Poison Ivy Rorschach (California native Kirsty
Wallace), the band had its roots in Cleveland but was actually formed
in New York. (Drummer Miriam Linna, guitarist Bryan Gregory, drummer
Nick Knox and guitarist Kid Congo Powers are among the Cramps’
illustrious alumni, who all went on to spread the bad word far and wide
among the faithful.)

~Ira Robbins, Trouser Press

We’ll have many Cramps albums both rare and classic, as well as interviews and other surprises.

3-D glasses available at the concession stand.

That’s on KBOO, 90.7 FM in Portland and streaming on the web at www.kboo.fm/listen (iTunes, Winamp, WMP, VLC, etc…)

KBOO is Portland’s non-corporate, listener sponsored community radio.

Butthole Surfers

The Hole Truth.. And Nothing Butt
Totonka

Semi-legit bootleg comp that includes two very early demo versions of songs that appeared on their first EP and LP respectively.
Most of the live recordings occur around the mid-eighties and early nineties, the latest including tracks from around the time of Independent Worm Saloon. Sound quality on all are good to excellent. The real prize is the WNYU interview from 1987 wherein the Buttholes do an impromptu version of Gordon Lightfoot’s Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald. I dug this out today and noticed it still has a price tag of $25. No way did I pay that much – or did I? I found it years ago in a somewhat dubious market known for its bootlegs. It appeared to be some kind of radio promo with an actual air date posted on it, but I’ve since seen it in other places, so who knows?

Go get it.

Oblivion Seekers

Snake Eyes
Tim Kerr Records

This Portland Oregon band has been around for two decades and has been a virtual revolving door who’s who of P-town musicians from Napalm Beach, The Jackals and even a member or two from Poison Idea. They play a mix of rockabilly, sixties soul and most predominately, punk. If I had to describe them using other bands (a supposed rock-critic no-no), I’d describe them as X meets Roy Orbison. I realize that that sounds kind of horrifying, but this album is the one that the formula really works. I’ve owned more than a few Oblivion Seekers albums, but for many reasons, this one remains a favorite. This album (from 1994) was bassist/vocalist-and sole constant throughout the band’s long life- Mark Sten’s keyboard-driven, girl backup singer concept of the band. I saw this configuration open for The Cramps back in the mid-nineties and it was really great. I fell in love with the incredibly cute singers (and the girl that kept grinding her ass into my playground throughout the Cramps set) and the band was really hot despite the mellowness of the songs. That was one of the best bills I think I ever attended; The Oblivion Seekers, The Doo Rag (Yeah!) and The Cramps during their Flamejob tour. Ahhh.. Memories. Wish I coulda found that girl after the Cramps set.

Snake Eyes