Ugly Things focus is Down Under

The amazing Ugly Things magazine due out in mid-August will focus on The Who and the Small Faces tour of Australia. Hopefully, a review of the Klondike's North 40 album will make the cut.

Stooges get robbed, send S.O.S.

Iggy and the Stooges need your help.

A rented 15-foot truck was ripped off from outside the Embassy Suite Hotel in Montreal, Canda, on August 4 with a fair chunk of the band's stage gear inside it. Bassist Mike Watt is posting an APB worldwide with a list of stolen equipment here. The band was in town for a couple of Canadian dates.

While we fans might hope the thief will drive the stolen truck into a too-low railway bridge (a la Rock Action back in Ann Arbor back the hazy '70s) that might damage the equipment, so let's settle for a swift apprehension and return of the gear.

Much to Love about this on DVD

I used to think the enigmatic Love were an over-rated West Coast band from the Summer of Love, a footnote to the '60s Los Angeles scene with a few OK tunes. That was years ago and "Forever Changes" in particular is now a fixture on the I-94 Bar sound system.

Caputuring a band coming apart at the seams and propped up by session players, it's simply a mind-blowing opus whose cinematic scope puts the like of the Beatles et al to shame. What a pity Love were so averse to touring. The late Arthur Lee preferred moping in his mansion in the Hollywood Hills, gorging himself on drugs. They should have been worldbeaters.

It seems there's a comprehensive documentary on the band looming on DVD and the review at Pop Matters makes it seem well worth tracking down.

Emo People Have Feelings Too

Shit like this feels so good, though...

Classic Album Covers Part 245

Psst...free Ed Kuepper b**tleg

Courtesy of Prince Melon Records and hot on the heels of the spiffing "Ed Kuepper Live" CD selling at his Australian shows, here's a 2007 show for you to grab.

The lowdown from the Prince Melon Records myspace:

Well, in between the lavish cocaine parties with wild women in his jaucuzi, typical of the major label excesses we office juniors envy and aspire to [ luckily all of which are fully recoupable against artist royalties], Sir Alfonso [Prince Melon Records Head of In House Production] finally got around to applying his patented 'Hands Off Mastering Technique' to this live bootleg of Ed Kuepper and the Kowalski Collective. Recorded at the Judith wright Centre for the Arts, in November 2007 at the Brisbane launch of Ed's last studio album 'Jean Lee and the Yellow Dog' . The show started with a specially commisioned short film about Jean Lee done by Judi Dransfield Kuepper and Louise Bennet, which was followed by two sets of Ed and the Kowalski's doing the entire 'Jean Lee..' album as well as a number of older songs .

Last word on Tom Verlaine

Touring with his solo band and with an album of Jimi Hendrix covers in the wings, Richard Lloyd cast one more revealing comment into Cyberpace this week with this interview with a Kansas City blogger. Commenting on leaving Television:

Of course. We kept talking about recording for 12 years but nothing ever came of it and that's all Tom's fault. All he cared about was money. He wouldn't tour and lose money to build an audience. I have a great relationship with him personally, but he's only in it for himself, so, good luck to him.

Nothing Remotely To Do With Rock and Roll

But it's one helluva image.

Why Lloyd tuned out of Television

From Connect Savanah Online magazine comes a fascinating interview with ex-Television guitarist Richard Lloyd who left the band in May 2007 after 34 years (off-and-on) and on the verge of TV recording a new album. Here's Lloyd's quote on his relief at not having to work with Tom Verlaine anymore:

"... I’m free! I’m free from it and free from Tom. It hasn’t really been a band for many, many years.

"I feel like a group is something where you view the other people’s dreams and hopes as just as important as your own. But you know, Tom’s just not like that. I hate to put it in terms like that. You know, I really do love the guy. But working with him is like going to the dentist! He’s what’s called 'the crazy maker' for me, and after 34 years, I just can’t stand it anymore."

Stern to re-make Ramones classic

News from Variety magazine is that NY shock jock Howard Stern is planning a remake of the classic "Rock and Roll High School" movie. My question is: Why?

This is one of the best "worst" films ever made, a genuinely funny, uniquely awkward classic. Who can forget Dee Dee's well-honed speaking part ("Hey...pizza!") and the fantastic live sequence by Our Heroes? A movie good enough to inspire the Exploding White Mice to name their band. And didn't Ron Howard's bro (Clint) go on to finer things?

No sense in fucking with something if it's not broke. Who would play the Ramones part? If you're lucky, you can pick up the DVD re-release of this gem for 10 bucks. I still haven't summoned up the courage to see the "Get Smart" re-make but I can't see how either can be an improvement on the original.

"Full Pipe" by The Last of the Bad Men

Douglas Kerr's film clip cobbled together from various bits of live footage. If you don't already know, this is the band that includes the Godoy twins and Deniz Tek.

Learning To Love The Doors Again

Jim Morrison died - probably of a smack overdose, maybe of verbosity - in 1971. The Doors died for me in 1992 after three viewings of Oliver Stone’s movie.

I hate hype. I’m not so silly as to claim total immunity but pragmatic enough to know that when most of it washes over or passes me by, it makes me very happy. So I only ever partially bought into the ‘90s re-birth of the Doors, driven in equal parts by fanboy-turned-posthumous manager Danny Sugerman and ebullient but calculating keyboards man Ray Manzarek. The “No-one Here Gets Out Alive” bio was a great read, even if parts were fabricated to paper over gaps in memories or missing pieces.

In marketing it’s said that all brands have a limited life. When one is re-birthed or revitalized it’s called it a “line extension”. You don’t have to read the late Mr Sugerman’s vastly entertaining autobiography “Wonderland Avenue” to know he knew lots and lots about lines. But back to the subject…

I used to love the music of the Doors even if I found Jimbo’s poetic bent over-rated at times and guitarist Robby Krieger a bit of a one-trick pony. I had all their catalogue on vinyl. One of my housemates in the itinerant ‘80s share accommodation phase had a Jimbo fixation, playing the shit out of those LPs and tripping on whatever was at hand while quoting lyrics ad nauseum. A visit to Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris (Morrison’s resting place) was a must on an overseas trip where the prostrated, sobbing/stoned fans, graffiti and gifts confirmed how crazy the more extreme Doors fans really were.

The ‘90s rolled around and so did the movie. Band members dissed it for what it was – Hollywood fucking a dead rock star - but it opened the floodgates for all manner of cross-promotion, re-issues and re-invention. We had band member re-mixes, hand-picked and re-mastered best ofs, a band member hand-picked box set (one disc each) and of course a stream of books, with most of them not saying much. The Jim Morrison McHappy Meal never transpired (“nod off in the bath with a burger”) but I’m sure it was not through lack of trying.

The constant hype just got to me. I switched off. In the ‘00s, I avoided the tour by the remaining members. (Drummer John Densmore eventually did too – probably after he read Manzarek’s less than flattering comments about him in his own autobiography.) “Alive, She Cried” got some turntable time but I eventually shut the door on the Doors.

The door recently re-opened. A re-mastered version “LA Woman” that was a sonic upgrade gave it initial impetus. The bluesy rawness of this one meant it never entirely faded from view. The “Live in Hollywood” disc – culled from post-Miami shows at the Aquarius in LA – helped, even if Sugerman’s liner notes comparing Morrison to Nijinsky is compelling evidence that too many drugs really do fuck your brain. (I never speak ill of the dead but the word “necrophiliac” is somehow appropriate.)

A couple of months ago, I stumbled across the entire studio back catalogue on Rhino (this line extension is Bruce Botnick’s re-mixes from the master tapes) in a chain store for the bargain basement price of 10 bucks each. Digital slut that I am, I took the plunge.

Some of the re-mixes are superfluous and the bonus tracks on the first couple are dubious (outtakes of truncated versions or studio chatter are usually exactly that – outtakes) but I’m warming to some of the tweaks. A few specific observations:

- The mid-period “Morrison Hotel” is right up there with the band’s best. Can any band complain about having its first, last and middle albums rated as “excellent”. Thought not.

- As ravaged as his voice was by then, “LA Woman” is stronger for that fact. That the band says it had run out of songs by then and was making things up in the studio is not necessarily a negative either.

- Even with years of distance, the term “mute nostril agony” has never improved as a lyric.

- The penny has dropped: The reason for the “I see the bathroom is clear” line is because “LA Woman” was recorded in the band’s office with the shithouse set up as a vocal booth. D'oh.

- Did the flawed “The Soft Parade” really take nearly a year to make? Why?