The Stems in London last month

Playing at the Dirty Water Club:



Apr 25 - Annandale Hotel, Sydney
Apr 26 - The Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, Victoria
Apr 27 - Apollo Bay Festival, Apollo Bay, Victoria
May 2 - Settlers Tavern, Margaret River, Western Australia
May 3 - The Leopold Hotel, Perth, Western Australia
May 4 - The Indi Bar, Scarborough, Western Australia
Jun 28 - Primitive Festival, Rotterdam, Noord-Holland

But where do they stand on Japanese whaling?

Spotted by Ken Shimamoto of the Stashdauber blog and I-94 Bar editorial fame: Vision of French band The Holy Curse on their Japanese tour of a couple of years ago.

Another one of those Podcast things

Episode 12 is up and you can find it streaming via the player at right or get it here. Playlist as follows:

Gravybillies In The Sky - The Band Who Shot Liberty Valance (Outlaw Death Laser Drinkers From Hell - Turkeyneck Records)

Show Me Your Tits - Stinky Lou And The Goon Mad With Lord Benardo (12 Roots ‘n Boogie Blues Hits - Voodoo Rhythm Records)

4 Flights Up - Screamin’ Stevie And The Credit Union (Four Flights Up - Turkeyneck Records)

Cut You Loose - Digger & The Pussycats (Let’s Go To Hospital - Spooky Records)

Dick Shake - The Juke Joint Pimps (Boogie The House Down Juke Joint Style - Voodoo Rhythm Records)

Baby Jane - The Hydromatics (The Earth is Shaking - Suburban Records)

Frustrating Sound - Radio Moscow (Radio Moscow Blues - Alive Records)

The Colour Of Her Eyes - Laurie Wade’s Cavaliers Pretty Ugly - Incessant Noise Recording)

I’m a Liar, Play With Fire - Sonic Assassin (State is Enemy Forever! - Freakshow Records)

Red Glare -Brimstone Howl (Guts of Steel - Alive Records)

I Am The Light - Even (Even - Rubber Records)

The Sky Belongs to Us - Nunchukka Superfly (If Ya Not Careful With Electricity It Will Kill Ya - Chatterbox Records)

The Devil - The Hangmen (In The City - Acetate Records)

Statistical read-out on Meatloaf

Apologies to whoever I stole this from.

Visitors live 2008: Living World

From the revived Radio Birdman-outgrowth's recent support spot to the BellRays in Brisbane. Pity you can't hear Pip.

X: Mother

The (Australian) X's cover of John Lennon's "Mother" has long been a set highlight, a cathartic mid-set primal scream. Few people have seen the filmclip the band shot to go with it. Now you can.

It's not embeddable to go here to watch it on YouTube.

Another Drunk & Disorderly podcast

It's streamable from the interface at right or downloadable from here.

Onetime punk toilet is now truly disgusting

Thanks to NESB Hallucinate for the heads-up: NY Press drops by the former site of CBGB - now a home to $750 Cheap (sic) Trick T-shirts and Doobie Brothers (puke) clothing. Read it here. Weep.

The evils of MP3

MP3s make sharing music easier. They also make a commodity of music and cheapen its value. And they sound shittier than lossless music.

Think you can pick the difference between MP3s of differing compression? Try this quick test.

Bootleg DVD shows MC2 at the Finnish line

One piece of MC5 ephemera I won’t be buying is the Japanese bootleg DVD of the band’s Finnish TV appearance in its dying days. If you haven’t seen the brilliant rockumentary “The MC5: A True Testimonial” a segment of this desultory 1972 gig – which was a contract filler with the Five down to a rump of Sonic and Brother Wayne plus a hired engine room – was fairly central to the movie’s second half, which showed a once great band on its last legs.

By his own admission, Wayne Kramer was lost to his smack habit by that stage and if Fred Smith wasn’t also on that path, he was about to join him. Rob Tyner stayed home with his family, Dennis Thompson was out-of-order and Mike Davis too wasted to notice he’d been sacked. The set list was mostly covers and the survivors apparently ran foul of promoters for being the MC2 rather than the expected MC5.

Here’s a taste of the out-of-tune shambles. If you’re still really desperate despite seeing this, let Google be your friend.

Hall of Lame (2)

For the truly obsessive, here's the whole two-song performance by the Stooges. "Burning Up" is better than "Ray of Light" (thanks for the prompt on that title) but Ig singing someone else's song off-key isn't the same as him mangling his own tunes. Ron's solo is pretty cool though.

Hall of Lame

I don't object to the Stooges figuring in a tribute to Madonna on the occasion of her induction to the Rock and Roll (sic) Hall of Fame, just to the song and performance being so lame.

Just in - Ron Asheton's take on this as reported in the Detroit Free Pres:

Don’t be too worried, Stooges fans: They haven’t sold out to the other side.

So proclaims guitarist Ron Asheton, who Monday night joined band mates Iggy Pop, Scott Asheton and Steve MacKay as the Stooges to play a pair of Madonna songs — “Ray of Light” and “Burning Up” — during the latter’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Asheton was reacting to online reports that have described the band’s scheduled performance as a “tribute” to the dance-pop star, whose music is a far cry from the Stooges’ own gritty, primal Detroit rock.

“The Stooges represent everything that’s against what she is,” Asheton told the Free Press from his New York hotel Monday afternoon before the show. “I don’t wish her ill. I don’t hate her or anything. But I’d never even heard of these songs until I had to listen to a tape and figure out what’s going on with them.”

In reality, Asheton said, Madonna asked the Stooges to perform as an act of protest: The group, widely considered a linchpin of early punk, has yet to be inducted by the rock hall, despite six appearances on the nomination ballot. By inviting the group on stage, she sent a message, said Asheton.

Last year’s rock hall ceremony featured a similar demonstration, when the night’s inductees performed the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” during a jam session finale.

“Basically she was upset that we’ve been nominated so many times and never made it, so she asked us to play in protest. And it was under those auspices that I thought we were doing it,” Asheton said. “At first I went, ‘Whaaat?’ Then Iggy said, ‘Why don’t you think about it?’”

It came together quickly: Madonna reached out to Iggy Pop just two weeks ago, Asheton said. The band, which had not performed together since closing out its latest tour in December, worked on the songs long-distance, with the Ashetons in Ann Arbor and Iggy home in Florida.

“Iggy said, ‘We’re gonna rock them up — just play ‘em like Stooges songs,’” Asheton recounted. “They actually sound pretty cool. We just rock ‘em out. You wouldn’t even recognize them as Madonna songs. I never thought I’d say this, but I’ve actually enjoyed playing them.”

On Monday afternoon Asheton had yet to meet Madonna, who was an elementary school student in Rochester Hills when the Stooges started shaking up the Detroit rock scene in the late 1960s. He said if he encounters her during the rock hall’s afterparty action, he’d be sure to be polite.

But he can’t help feeling a little cynicism about the whole ordeal: He probably wouldn’t be in the Stooges without it. With Madonna’s entry into the hall of fame drawing criticism from some diehard rock corners — and with the star’s new album due in April — he figures she may have more than one motivation for handpicking his band.

“I thought that right off the top — that, gee, I just heard she’s got a record coming out, and she’s trying to get a little Stooge shine. She’s a savvy businesswoman,” he said. “I think she actually does like the band. She wouldn’t have asked for us if she didn’t. But she’s also using us for business purposes.”