The New Order

No, not that New Order but the L.A. band Ron Asheton put together with Dennis Thompson and Jimmy Recca, post-Stooges and MC5. Machine Gun Thompson tells the whole story on his blog.

Preview of "Gloria" LP by the New Christs

Three tracks from the forthcoming long-player "Gloria" on Impedance are up at the band's MySpace. It's coming out on vynil and CD in Europe (May), Australia (June) and the USA (July).

Hydromatics on DVD

Sounds like the project is progressing well, according to Tony Slug's blog. It couldn't be in better hands than Joe Chonto, a NY cable TV music program host.

What I missed in Sydney last night

Marky Ramone wigging out with his cover band. To be brutal, I was ambivalent. His last spoken word tour (followed by a set with the Spazzys as backing band) was so-so.

The Mother Hen

Simpson the cat is ailing, advanced in years. Ron Asheton breaks off from his stories of heroin, macrobiotic rice and aluminium afros to attend to him gently, pouring a saucer of milk and checking on his medication. This is the man who similarly ministered to his fellow Stooges, cooking for them in the house in which we sit, working in the Pigments Of The Imagination head-shop to subsidise their meagre earnings, removing lit cigarettes when they’d nodded out. These days – 1995 – he simply ministers to their legend.

More of Paul Trynka's eloquent tribute here on his blog.

Rose Tattoo - Rock 'n' Roll Outlaw (1978)

Blast from the past.

OMG! CBGB 3D

From the Stashdauber: A 3D tour of CBGB.

Not much more can be said about this

The last five minutes of a particularly unhinged version of "Surfing Bird" by the Cramps:

Remembering New York's punk past

Nostalgia often sucks but so what? I wanna go on one of these walking tours of Manhattan's punk rock hot spots. This review in the London Daily Telegraph probably doesn't do them justice.

The photo is the women's toilet at CBGB, by the way. I have pix of me in the men's shitter but they don;t look as artily good as this one. More NYC photos hereand photographer Joseph O. Holmes blogs here.

Facebook Fun With The Clash

You know what I hate? Those shonky Facebook quizzes that ask silly questions to establish what punk rock figurehead you are. Ex-Clash member Mick Jones apparently took one:

Onetime Clash guitarist Mick Jones is publicly expressing doubts about the accuracy of the Facebook Quiz application after the results of the "Which Punk Rock Star Are You?" quiz revealed he is Joe Strummer.

You can ready all about it - and Paul Simonon's witty riposte - here. And as he's a Pommy, Simonon really should know that the Queen's English has the term as "arsewipe".

So can anyone tell me if the Shea Stadium live album is any good?

Switching the TV back on? Naaaahhh

Has Richard Lloyd re-joined Television and will their new album will be out on Matador Records on May 12? Of course there was no mention of this on Lloyd's website or that of the label - and the news was posted on a mailing list on April 1.

Surely the revelation that Green Day are producing a musical is from the same batch of jokes? Not when the dateline is March 31.

Stoogesongs will rise

There will be more contemporary Stoogemusic released and from what Iggy told a French press conference, it will be more primal and raw. There are five unreleased tracks, two of which Ig has worked on.

Presumably there are songs demo'd for "The Weirdness" but never committed to tape in the recording sessions proper. This gels with other information that I've heard around the Bar and has nothing to do with the soon-to-surface early '70s live stuff slated for two labels.

The rest of Iggy's press conference (to plug his forthcoming jazz/jizz album "The Preliminaries") is here (thanks Cathy) in which he leaves himself open to doing a string of Vegas dates and gives the forthcoming biopic of his life the big thumbs down. You can watch a video news release about Pop's new album here.