Merry Christmas From The Ramones

A Parting Gift Before Hiatus

January is down-time at the I-94 Bar. A couple of things will be up before year's end but this blog will be on va-ca. So whatever you're planning, have a good one.

Dave Laing from Savage Beat Records sent this trailer for the forthcoming Runaways movie. Looks pretty promising.

Public Image Limited

First report of the initial PiL gig on John Lydon's post-Pistols band's reformation tour is positive. This YouTubeage supports the opinion. Was it 1985 when PiL came to Australia? I heard it was with a line-up made up of session hacks so I kept away.

New Gurus

They've disabled embedding of the video so you'll just have to go here to see the new single.

Finally, a small justice

Continuing our Stooges theme and the pilloring of the Rock and Roll Hall of Lame at every opportunity. Overnight it was announced that The World's Forgotten Boys have been announced as 2010 inductees. Finally! Along with ABBA and The Hollies!

It's the eighth time the Stooges had been nominated and the greatest tragedy is that they're going to cross the line without Ron Asheton on-board, at least in the physical sense.

I know the Hall of Lame is a joke, presided over by turds who don't know their arse from their elbow, but if the elevation/descent/enshrinement of a band as perfectly fucked up as the Stooges occurs then maybe, just maybe, people will sit up and take notice, and realise that they don't have to consume bland, soul-less music they're spoon-fed.

You got a better idea?

House band for hire

Some guy named James Williamson turned 60 recently and look who he played with in the party band. That's host Scott Thurston on the far left, who turned over his Culver City, California, home for the event. You may know him from Tom Petty's band these days but many years ago he was in a more notorious outfit.

Continuing along the line that's Mike Watt on bass, Scott "Rock Action" Asheton behind the traps, Steve Mackay with his sax and (far right) Strait James.

Ring any bells?

Weddings and parties a speciality. Robert Mattheu took the photo.

Pass some Stones

Here. No, I don't have the faintest idea either. Something to do with people who have lots of time on their hands.

Norwegian families spread Turbonegro love in Indonesia

Here's a gem I found on the Turbonegro site. It's from reality show Den Store Reisen (The Big Journey) on Norwegian TV station NRK, in which families are shipped off to the jungles of Indonesia to live with the Mentawai tribe.

The song is "I Got Erection". I'm told by Queensland writer Andrew Stafford, who recently took a trip to Norway, that Tubonegro are quite mainstream up that way.

On a more serious note, TBNGR are playing a few shows in Europe with Euroboy declaring he's cancer-free after his recent run of treatment.

All I want for Xmas...

...is an air ticket. That's not too much to ask, is it?

I would like the band (Iggy and the Stooges, that is) to refrain from playing Ig's solo stuff. As much as Strait James had a hand in "New Values" as producer and all, this is a Stooges show and they should perform Stooges songs. The insertion of "The Passenger" et al into their set in Brazil last month just didn't fit, after listening to a shoddy MP3 audio download of the gig.

Niagara speaks, you listen

Brett Callwood has profiled the Detroit diva of Destroy All Monsters and Dark Carnival fame in the Metro Times, with a focus on her relationships with the late Ron Asheton and present minder/beau Colonel Galaxy.

Now, I dunno about the Hitmen being "hired hands" - more like co-offenders to my way of thinking - but the rest of the piece is a really good read. And if you haven't caught up with the Niagara & The Hitmen live album "St Valentine's Day Massacre" (out on Savage Beat/Shock in Australia and Steel Cage in the rest of ther world), you ought to be shot with a ball of your own shit, to put it bluntly.

R n R Hall of Lame (2) closes

The Rock and Roll Hall of Lame people in Cleveland opened a New York City "annex" about a year ago. It closed earlier this week. This columnist in Cleveland says he knows why. I like the cut of his jib.

In The Raw debuts

"In The Raw" was a song by mid-'80s Sydney noise terrorists Lubricated Goat. They played it on national TV in 1988 and created outrage because they performed...In The Raw.





I well remember the sceeening on a Thursday night on the Andrew Denton-hosted "Blah Blah Blah" show. The tabloid reaction was predictably over-the-top and I presume the media were given advance copies of the footage just to make it all the more easy to froth. Yes, there was a bit of schlong dangling but these days you'd see more Big Swinging Dicks at Sydney financial district bars like The Establishment on a Friday night.


The event itself and its fall-out is the subject of a documentary that's been a long time coming. It'll finally see the light of day after six years at this weekend's Meredith Festival outside Melbourne, says maker Cousin Creep.

Cousin Creep has spent a fair chunk of time documenting the music around the anarchic scene that was the Black Eye label, itself a noisy spin-off from the Red Eye imprint. You can find his blog here.


Red Eye was eventually swallowed up by a major label and vestiges of its origins remain in the form of the Sydney shop of the same name. As for Lubricated Goat, they were one leprosy-ridden limb of the Black Eye label, which celebrated aural experimentation and dissembling of rock and roll.


As an aside, Stu Spasm from the Goat ended up being married to riot grrrrl ,over and shaker Kat Bjelland (Babes In Toyland) for a while.


Public nudity for free beer and so-bad-they're-good cover songs played a big part in live shows by Black Eye bands. Personally, I thought a lot of the scene reeked of smack and unmusicality for the sake of it, but I can't deny the confrontational power and fuck-you attitude that it had. Key scenesters grew up to be merchant bankers, lawyers and creative directors - so you know it had to be one fucked up circle.

"It's Christmas Time Again"

That's a tune Chris Klondike Masuak committed to vinyl as his contribution to a charity LP called "Rockin' Bethlehem" back in the days when schooners of cheer were around two bucks. You can download a copy of the song to hang on your Myspace by clicking on that link or the title of this post.

DFFD has a blog

The Dictators have a blog happening. Thanks to LIndsay Hutton for the tip.

You can track them on Twitter, too, if that's your thing. Follow here.

While there's not much occurring on the live front, 'Tators members have all sorts of projects on the boil. Top of the heap is JP Patterson's new album "The LP{ Is Dead" which we'll be reviewing at the Bar very soon.

ZuelWatch: Sexy, jugs and just a hint of rock 'n' roll

An unremarkable couple of days on the Bernard Zuel front since we kicked off ZuelWatch. The Sydney Moaning Herald's chief music writer has penned a piece on AOR classical artist Katherine Jenkins headed "Sexy, drugs and just a hint of rock 'n' roll".

Bernie doesn't compose the headlines so we'll cut him some slack there, but why you'd actually write about someone who walks in the shadow of La Queen of Bland, Celine Dion, soul-sucking apparition Michael Buble (Bubblehead) and the Evil Dutch King himself, Andre Rear (pun intended), I'd not know.

Then again, Katherine Jenkins is headlining the annual Sydney Yuletide family fest Carols in the Domain. And she does have a nice rack. Caddy, pass me the five irony, please.