I've been doing a few guest posts at The Perfect American
which to the uninitiated, is a roiling vortex of lust for the illness
called Rock n' Roll. It's a journey, and for me, it's been kinda
liberating, and thanks to MrJyn for asked me to plug in some stuff.
There's a post about Spade Cooley stomping his wife to death, one about Jim Carroll & those who worship and/or study his Basketball Diaries, one about singer Billie Davis, with a broken jaw, pulling Jet Harris from the Shadows out of a wrecked limo and lastly I'll mention the one that led to this post; the one about Dino Valente
Quicksilver
Messenger Service was my first concert. It was right after their second
album featuring Dino, and it was all we were listening to at the time.
Eric Burdon and War opened and my eyeballs almost fell outta my head
when I realized that the Boss of the Animals was up there singing "Spill
the Wine" It was cooler than anything, and why in hell did my parents
let me go?!?!?! But yay!
But Dino - kind of an interesting guy as explained in this exact transcription from my 1st edition of Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia (1969)
DINO VALENTI (Chester Powers)/Dino
Valenti is one of those living legends. He worked in a carnival for
seventeen years, was a trapeze artist for three of them, sang around the
clubs of Los Angeles for years, but never made a record because he
wanted it to be perfect when he did. (The story was that he kept making
them, refusing to have them released, dropping them and making more.) He
spent nearly a year in jail for possession of amphetamine and sold his
rights to his most successful song, Let's Get Together, to get money to
get out of jail. It's one of the most recorded songs ever (the song's
composer is listed as Chester Powers)—the Youngbloods, Jefferson
Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service have all done it. He also
co-wrote Hey Joe. But his album, finally out in 1968, has none of
this—just strange, mysterious, intimate songs that sneak up behind you.
"An underground Bob Dylan," said critic Ralph Gleason. Well, he has that
curly Dylan look anyway. "A five-year-dead Orphan Annie," said Emmet
Lake of the East Village Other. Yes, he's a songwriting legend, and a
one-year-in-gaol-for-amphetamine legend, and a macrobiotics-solar-energy
legend, but mainly he's a ladies' man legend. It was San Francisco
radio personality Tom Donahue who said simply: "If every chick Dino's
ever known buys the record, it will be number one." Album/DINO
(October 1968): Time; Something New; My Friend; Listen To Me; Me And My
Uncle; Tomorrow; Children Of The Sun; New Wind; Everything Is Gonna Be
OK; Test.
“It does not surprise me that an unrepentant homosexual [Elton John],
who is legally married to another man, would refer to Christians as
“Jesus freaks.” The underlying power to all occult practices, is
Satanism, i.e., the worship of Satan (or Lucifer) in opposition to the
worship of God. It is the worship of Satan which has been the driving
force behind the handful of men who have perpetuated the Illuminati
conspiracy. Through its various incarnations, the spread of the occult
has enabled the Illuminati to create a social climate that has welcomed
the advent of the New World Order, and the one-world government that
accompanies it.”
My programmer is trying to convince me to move to . net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the expenses. But he’s nondrying none the less. I’ve been using Movable-type on several websites for about a year and am nervous about switching to another platform. I have heard excellent things about blogengine.net. Is there a way I can transfer all my wordpress posts into it? Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated!
Nice post. I learn something new and challenging on websites I stumble upon on a daily basis. It will always be interesting to read content from other authors and use something from their sites.
The firmware will include the option to unlock 30 exclusive levels of the Angry Birds Space game if the game is unlocked in the first three months after the update released. Though it may seem like what we do online is private, there are actually many ways in which we lose privacy online. It’s not unusual to leave the computer in sleep mode for hours and see very little change in battery status.
Hiya this is kinda of off topic but I was wondering if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding
know-how so I wanted to get guidance from someone with experience. Any
help would be enormously appreciated!
CRUD CRUD is a tour through the stacks of records,
demo tapes, etc. that surround me. No recycled MP3s, CD tracks, or
reissues here. Average price paid for the records below is $3. Very few
I have spent more than $5 on. I present to you some of my favorites.
It keeps the guilt of hording this crud distant.
6.20.2012
The Ethics of This Stuff
I've
been doing this blog for years and it has provided many of you with
much good music. It is also something that I have enjoyed doing. When I
started doing it, I struggled with the issue of posting music without
compensating the artist. I rationalized my actions by not posting full
releases, by (mostly) sticking with obscure and very difficult to find
releases, by not running ads, by hosting the music myself and not
through some scumbags like Megaupload, etc. But the fact is, these were
rationalizations. Oh, sure there is the little disclaimer at the side
stating all music is up here for educational purposes and that it will
be removed by request - but, while not dishonest, that statement is born
out of an urge to cover one's ass rather than any felt obligation to
educate. And, while I have never had a complaint about Crud Crud from an
artist or artist representative (in fact, I've gotten fan letters from
artists I've posted), I have always felt a bit uncomfortable doing this.
Besides
doing this blog, I also run a couple small record labels. Over the
years, sales have gone from pretty damn good to not very damn good,
almost pretty damn bad. Meanwhile, the music I put out has gotten more
and more popular. Many people listen to it, but they don't pay for it.
One of the Nothing People found a torrent site that tracked the number
of times a file had been downloaded. He looked up their (then) most
recent album Soft Crash and found that it had been downloaded
40,000 times. How many of those people listened to it is unknown,
perhaps half of the downloaders are hoarders. But let's say half of the
people who downloaded it listened to it, that an audience of 20,000 got
the album for free. Now consider how many copies of Soft Crash my
label sold. I pressed 1000 copies on vinyl. The band was compensated
with 200 copies. About 50 copies were sent out as promos to radio
stations, magazines, and blogs. Of the 750 remaining copy, I have sold
650. I will assume that the Nothing People held on to 50 copies and sold
the rest. So that is a grand total of 800 copies of Soft Crash sold vs at least 20,000 downloaded off one
torrent site and listened to. The 800 copies that the Nothing People
and I sold were paid for. The 20,000 "copies" off of that torrent site
were not. I've know about this for a few years and it still bugs the
shit out of me. However, I have still done this blog. About
a week ago a young intern at NPR wrote a piece stating that she had
11,000 songs in her computer but only had bought 15 cds ever. She felt a
little guilty but what she was doing was to convenient to change.
David Lowery of the bands Cracker & Camper Van Beethoven wrote a
very passionate, well-thought-out and informative response, which I urge you to read.
It is long but you will learn a lot about how music and the internet
works these days and what "artists" like myself are up against. (The
link to the initial NPR piece is in the first paragraph of Lowery's
letter).
Knowing
that since the beginning of this blog, I've danced around the issues
addressed by Lowery, that I've complained about regarding the Soft Crash
album, I can no longer continue doing Crud Crud as I have been doing
it. I mean, technically I could, but to do so would make me more of a
hypocrite than I already am and that is something I do not want to be.
So, until I can figure how to do Crud Crud in a way that I find is
honest and ethical (such as getting permission to post things, recording
music/sounds out in the wild, using music which I own the rights to,
etc.), this thing will be on hiatus (hiatus not retirement).
The Perfect American DIY 7"
Our Favorite Band! s/t 7" (Praxis, 1981) Here
is another one I bought blind. I'm in a thrift store for battered
women, digging through the records and checking out the chicks (no no no
no no give me a god damn break. It was just too horrible of a joke to
pass up). I find this little thing in a tattered cover. Look at the
cover and see two guys sitting in a car. Look at the back, two guys are
still sitting in a car, and they have kinda long hair, and there is a
little state of Louisiana circled below. Label says 1982. Record is beat
to shit. Awww what the hell. At the very worst it will be a bad spend
of a buck. I walk to the counter, lay my dollar down and tell the girl,
"There's more where that came from..." and slither out the door. I
go home and slap this puppy on the turntable. Oh my god! Distorted
guitar and stand up bass, no drums and it is a raw, smoking rockabilly
tune worthy of Cramps/Hasil worship. Second song is a slow one and damn
it if this couldn't be the Gibson Brothers. Look at the label again.
1982. Shit, this predates the Gibs by five or so years. Flip it over and
weirdness crawls out of the groove. Some kinda reverb flooded, bell
soaked creepiness about the Atlanta Child Murders oozes out of the
speakers! Now I am really excited. Really really excited. And the ep
ends with some kinda Modern Lovers meets the Only Ones meets Alex "Flies
on Sherbert" Chilton power popper. Baton Rouge's Our Favorite
Band! made the perfect American DIY 7"! There is not a god damn thing
wrong with it and the only reason it is an unknown is because of the
heavy Killed By Death bias among punk collectors, which is doubly dumb
because one of these guys was in Toxin III!
thanks for the great review, scott. don and i really loved
reading it. hope you can find the album on big time next. although not
as quirky, still kinda weird in that craunchy way.
Because we believe that an artist should
have say-so in how his or her work is used and whether or not it should
be given away without their compensation, we attempt to contact every
artist to obtain their permission to post their music. This is much
simpler than you'd assume it is. Once we have their permission, we post
their music. However, there are a couple exceptions: If the artist is
dead and the work is out of print, we feel that asking permission from a
corpse is a waste of time. In fact, we'd be frightened if we got an
answer. Second, if we cannot track down an artist or a label, and have
good reason to think that they are not among us, we will post something.
There are also countries in which records were made that no longer
exist. This makes it near impossible to track anyone down responsible
for that kind of record. Records that were produced anonymously or
without crediting the artist are also free game, as far as we are
concern. But, please, note that in all cases we have attempted to
contact the artist, not because we feel we are legally obligated to do
so, but we feel that it is the ethical and respectful way of going about
things. Do unto others....
The Greek Fountains were Danny Cohen, Tommie Miceli, Don
Chesson, Duke Bardwell and Cyril Vetter. Formed in 1962, the Baton Rouge,
Louisiana-based quintet were a popular attraction, and over a five year career
the band supported visiting acts including The Animals, The Dave Clark Five,
Paul Revere and The Raiders and Sonny and Cher.
The Greek Fountains issued at least half a dozen 45s
including Countin’ the Steps/Blue
Jean (with the odd credit of ‘vocal
producer Shelby Singleton Jr’) on Philips in 1966. They also put out a
fuzz-drenched version of the Monkees classic (I’m Not Your) Stepping
Stone, a rocking cover of Donovan’s Hey
Gyp (as Buy You A Chevrolet), and a reasonably faithful copy of The Who’s I’m
A Boy - although they clearly did not have
access to a copy of the lyrics at the time.
Failing to score a hit, they acquired a couple of new
members – Luther Leonard (a.k.a. Luther Kent, a.k.a. Duke Royal) and Butch
Swann – and changed their name to The Greek Fountain River Front Band in 1967,
releasing the album The Greek Fountain River Front Band Takes Requests. Unfortunately this would be the band’s last hurrah.
Drummer Cyril Vetter, who wrote the hit Double Shot of My Baby's Love, went
off to serve in Vietnam. Since his return he has enjoyed a varied career as an
attorney, a TV executive, a record producer and an author. Miceli went on to
become a well-known ER doctor in Baton Rouge, and for some time Chesson was
involved in aviation.
Danny Cohen (who, along with Vetter, wrote most of the
band’s original material) moved to New York City, changed his name to Casey
Kelly and kept working, often alongside Duke Bardwell. Bardwell is probably the
band’s best-remembered musician, having toured with Elvis Presley’s band,
written for Jose Feliciano, opened for Loggins & Messina (with
Cohen/Kelly), toured with the Byrds’ Gene Clark and recorded with Emmylou
Harris. Named, like every other member of his family, after a university
(seriously, he had a brother name Harvard!) he still plays and records today.
Cohen/Kelly moved to Nashville where he has written for Kenny Rogers (he was
Grammy nominated for the country number one Anyone Who Isn’t Me Tonight), Helen Reddy, George Strait and Tanya Tucker
amongst others.
The Greek Fountains were a respectable garage/r’n’b act, but
the perverse b-side An Experimented Terror
- the flip of their Hollies-inspired single I Can’t Get Away and named after the 1962 movie Experiment in
Terror - has to rank alongside Lieutenant Pigeon’s Opus 300, the Turtles’ Umbassa and the Dragon and the Beatles’ Revolution Nine as one of the most willfully ridiculous pieces of
music ever to be placed on a pop record. Sampled by Quasimoto for the song Shroom
Music, here are both sides of this highly
collectable, and rather expensive, 45. I wonder why Bardwell is the only member of the group not to receive a writer credit?
maury