The Deniz Tek-inclusive punk band The Last Of The Bad Men has a new album out. A review is pending at the I-94 Bar. Sharp observers will note the inclusion of a Deniz Tek Group song and Radio Birdman's "Hit 'Em Again". Meanwhile, here's an online write-up with which Bar staff concur. And if you want to lay your hands on a copy, go here. Day To Ride!
That's haberdasherers to the punk rock stars, Tish and Snooky (aka the Sic Fucks), paying tribute at the Joey Ramone Birthday Bash in NYC in May. Cheetah Chrome is on guitar. Andy Shernoff and J.P. Patterson of the Dictators were the house band engine room and played a set with Manitoba's Wild Kingdom too.
Wacky Phil Spector finally gets a re-trial on September 29. The jury was locked 10-2 (that's most in favour of a guilty verdict) when the murder trial judge decided to call the whole thing off a few months ago. It's been five years since Phil had to be tazered and locked up by California cops following the shooting model and actress Lana Clarkson in Spector's L.A. mansion. Who's holding their breath?
Anyone from anywhere outside the USA who's spent any time in the States will be familiar with the Denny's chain of 24-hour diners. They also might cringe at the quality, if not quantity, of what's served up there.
It seems Denny's is not seen as a hip and happening place anymore.
USA Todayreports: "From 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., alternative rock will replace the middle-of-the-road music now piped in. Instead of black pants and collared shirts, wait staff will wear jeans and T-shirts during these hours.
"The chain also is launching two late-night-only menus. One is a value menu with items such as nacho cheese fries for $3.99. The other is a "shareable" menu, with seasoned kettle chips, mini-burgers and $7 Sweet Ride Nachos — tortilla chips in cinnamon sugar, fruit, hot fudge and whipped cream. It's even hired alternative-rock bands to help create late-night items".
Tortilla chips in cinnamon sugar, hot fudge and whipped cream, FFS?
Exactly what 'alternative-rock band' with severe munchies created that one?
Ever since the Dictators hooked into White Castle burgers, Mama Cass made an art form of ham sandwiches and Elvis fried up his first peanut butter sandwiches, clogged arteries have been so rock and roll.
Makes the Australian road band meal of choice ("It's a long way to the shop/If you want a Chiko roll") seem positively healthy by comparison:
There's a mini-Bobfest happening at the I-94 Bar right now so the thought of Dylan, Chuck Berry and Iggy & The Stooges on the one festival bill is not as silly as it sounds. Oh to live in Baltimore.
He and his band have their fans and the adoration tends to lean towards fanatical. I can't confess to being a Motorhead freak but I some of their early stuff is great ("Ace of Spades".) I can appreciate both the intent of Motorhead and the impact that mainman Lemmy's high-decibel assault has had on sensibilities around the world.
There's now a movie in the pipeline and you can view the trailer here.
Graphic designer, lighting operator and merchandise man Arturo Vega (pictured centre) was crucial to the Ramones’ visual presentation and legacy, devising the band logo plastering it across hundreds of thousands of T-shirts down the years. Plenty of bands fail to keep a handle on their merch licensing but the Ramones are the exception to the rule. Vega even played nursemaid to the dysfunctional duo of Joey and Dee Dee, giving them a place to live in his Bowery loft. So he deserves much respect.
Australia's Masters Apprentices in their heavy days. These one's for bass player Glenn Wheatley to watch now he's out of prison on tax charges. That's Doug Ford on lead guitar.
A copy of the first musical outing for members of these bands has gone up at eBay and dates from their schooldays at Sydney's Patrican Brothers Fairfield High. It's said to include gems like "House of the Rising Sun" and "Jesus Christ Superstar". Ex-The Eastern Dark member Bill Gibson furiously denies its right to exist, of course, and claims a former I-94 Bar contributor has a similarly artefact of Nick Cave in a school choir.
What's next? Tapes of the (post-jail) Wayne Kramer Band playing late-'70s cabaret standards? I've never heard them but have it on very good authority (from a jilted band member, no less) that they do exist.
The Internerd throws up the strangest people. Some of them are seriously mentally unwell, I'm sure. But to more important questions: Did Jim Morrison have a son? And does he front a band called Lizard Sun King?
If you haven't heard it before, the story begins with a bloke named Cliff Morrison/Marston. You can see him and his band Lizard Sun King below:
There's a startling physical resemblance between Cliff and The Lizard King in his declining years, sure, and his pitch and tone are similar. But why doesn't the guy go and get a DNA test and grab a chunk of the (ever-expanding) Morrison estate? Or get himself a decent lawyer and stay out of jail if this posting from the John Densmore forum is true.
Here's the San Diego TV news story that announced this whole thing in 1993:
That was 16 years ago and Cliff looks like he's broken through to the other side a few times since then. A confirmed Doors progeny, guitarist Waylon Kreiger, has played with him or has been overdubbed onto one of his recordings, depending on what story you believe.
Cliff sure gets around. According to this, he was married to a member of Marlon Brando's family. He's one of the star attractions at a Las Vegas (where else?) festival to apparently raise funds for research into diabetes here.
If someone tells me that Cliff's CD being flogged on some website called doors.com is irrefutable evidence that the guy sprang from the loins of Jimbo four decades ago, excuse me for guffawing. If that is a legit Doors Pty Ltd website you just know they'd sell the coke-denuded nasal cartilage of the late Danny Sugerman to make a buck.
I doubt the authenticity of this exchange of letters ("legal council"?) in The Lizard King Lounge and what looks like a badly Photoshopped picture of Cliff's band being given star billing at L.A.'s Whisky-a-Go-Go.
Anyway, back to the mentally unwell and there are minutes of entertainment in this gem of a thread from some message board with Jim's daughter solemnly weighing in and the not unexpected contemporary sightings of Mr Mojo Rising keeping things real.
Will the real Morrison offspring please stand up? Given Jim's inability to keep his own lizard in his leather pants, I have a feeling there are plenty of them out there.
They seem to be missing one about not missing your shout (translation for readers outside Australia: Your turn for buying a compulsory round of drinks.) Read the rest of them here.
Pop Idol creator Simon Fuller is the most successful British music manager of all time, according Billboard, with his acts selling 116 million units in the US alone. He’s managed The Spice Girls and Annie Lennox, has been responsible for more than 500 number-one singles globally, and more than 240 number-one albums.
According to Billboard, that makes him more important than Peter Grant (Led Zeppelin, Bad Company) and Beatles manager Brian Epstein. I suppose you could throw in Andrew Loog-Oldham (who managed the Stones in their formative years as well as Wham!) and Malcolm McLaren. They certainly had a strong and lasting impact on popular culture, even if they didn't accumulate massive fortunes.
The fact that Fuller created the Pop Idol franchise is NOT good, peoples. It homogenizes music and stifles creativity, just continuing the downward spiral of rock and roll. For this alone he deserves to have his fingernails ripped out with pliers while being bombarded with a loop of Barry Manilow music.
Audio engineer Larry Levine - the power behind nutty Phil Spector's throne and the man who put the vision of the Wall of Sound into reality - has died. Obit here.
It's been around for a while but Sleeveface, the website that solicits people doing inventive things with LP covers, is still providing minutes of amusement. Cop a faceful here.
This looks suspiciously like the Australian Government's latest salvo in its campaign to ban binge drinking. It's also one of the trippiest Shockwave animations staff at the I-94 Bar have ever seen. Knock yourself out here.
Torrentfreak.com says that Micheal Jackson and several other artists plan to take on BitTorrent file-sharing website The Pirate Bay. The king of pop hired the infamous ‘Web Sheriff’ to protect his rights. “Hey Michael - do you want us to pay you in small kids maybe?” was the first response of Pirate Bay admin Brokep. More here.
We at the I-94 Bar admit to sampling the odd bit of shared fileage at The Pirate Bay, but usually just to check out something we plan to buy. It's tempting to roll out a line about Jacko cutting off his nose to spite his face but that's occurred already.
We all see 'em, hanging out at gigs or more likely in record stores. Some of you may be one of 'em. Now someone's written a book about hipsters. As if they need any encouragement.
Hey working musicians - you only need a fanbase of 1000 people to make a viable living from your music these days according to blogger/Wired contributor Kevin Kelly.
STOP PRESS: I note from Don Craine's regular column in Ugly Things magazine that the Downliners Sect (ancient Pommy beat band that wears deerstalker hats) used this very method to fund their newest album.
Memo to the nerdy Australian rock historian and (snigger) ex-Ol'55 manager: It seems you have some of supreme music svengali Kim Fowley's property and need to return it.
Rock and roll has everything else. Why not a theme park? That’s the thinking of the people behind Hard Rock Park in South Carolina, where you can ride the “Eagles Life in the Fast Lane” rollercoaster or “Led Zeppelin – The Ride” (mudshark optional, ladies.)
"Today is truly a momentous day in the evolution of rock and family vacations," said Steven Goodwin, CEO of Hard Rock Park. "Just like the music itself, Hard Rock Park is all about the experience and every visitor that walks through these gates from today on will walk out a rock star in their own right."
(As Hendrix would have said: “’scuse me while I kill this guy”.)
The celebration will conclude with the Hard Rock Park Grand Opening Extravaganza on June 2nd and 3rd. Kicking off the final weekend will be the Eagles on June 2 and then on June 3 renowned British rock band, The Moody Blues, will commemorate the official opening of the park's psychedelic, Moody Blues-inspired dark ride, “Nights in White Satin − The Trip”, followed by an exclusive live performance.
And you thought theme park rides were meant to be vomit-inducing, not the concept itself. Take a ride on the wild side here.
Speaking of band riders...those wacky guys from the Sydney Daily Smellegraph's favourite band, the Food Fighters (close enough), have leaked their own hilarious list of backstage requirements for when they're on the road and it's been posted by The Smoking Gun. Read it and an earlier model here.
I don't especially like their music but I has to gives them props for trying. Still, it's not a patch on the effort by the Stooges.
I'm not into synth music. So the fact he wrote the Windows start-up theme only slightly offsets his working with David Bowie and the especially loathsome U2 as far as birthday boy and ex-Poxy Music keyboardist Brian Eno goes. But no. It would have been much cooler if he'd written the start-up chimes for Apple.
Always good to cop a new and worthy podcast, and Steve Lipincott's Earcandy fits the bill. Go listen to Ed Kuepper performing cuts from his "Honey Steels Gold" album at Sydney's Enmore Theatre earlier this year as part of the "Don't Look Back" festival here.
You thought G.G. Allin was a self-mutilating, misogynistic, junk-abusing, shit-eating punk with a small dick who met a premature death in 1993? The Myspace phenomenon frequently lays bare a truth that's way stranger than fiction.
In G.G.'s case, Myspace and the photographic evidence reproduced here shows him to have been a close relative of Haweye Pearce from 4077 M*A*S*H*
From the YouTube treasure trove being assembled by Rockstralia, here's something most people won't have seen before or even knew existed: The film clip for Johnny Dole and The Scabs' "Aggro".
Johnny Dole and The Scabs were occasional Oxford Funhouse attractions and later became denizens of the Sydney punk scene around The Grand Hotel near Central Railway Station. They even scored column space in the old Daily Mirror, I seem to recall. Tabloid poster boys for punk. Abbrerant Records compiled some of their stuff posthumously and Brain Salad Surgery went a step further and did a compilation CD.
Wacky Phil Spector finally gets a re-trial on September 29. The jury was locked 10-2 (that's most in favour of a guilty verdict) when the murder trial judge decided to call the whole thing off a few months ago. It's been five years since Phil had to be tazered and locked up by California cops following the shooting model and actress Lana Clarkson in Spector's L.A. mansion. Who's holding their breath?
Happy premature birthday wishes to Ol' Helium Vocal and ex-Dead Kennedy, Jello Biafra, whose having a party in June to celebrate.
Anyone from anywhere outside the USA who's spent any time in the States will be familiar with the Denny's chain of 24-hour diners. They also might cringe at the quality, if not quantity, of what's served up there. 
Memo to the nerdy Australian rock historian and (snigger) ex-Ol'55 manager: It seems you have some of supreme music svengali Kim Fowley's property and need to return it.
