Jean-Yves Labat:
Orbit
Little Drummer Boy

from the album Under Water Electronic Orchestra

MC5: The Human Being Lawnmower

There is a lot packed into this two minutes and twenty-three seconds.

Buckingham Nicks: Long Distance Winner

Number One Ensemble: Sky Blue

Written by M. Salerno - M. Logan. Poduced by Massimo Salerno. Recorded at Regson Studio in Milan. Mixed with Aphex Aural Exciter System.

The Replacements: Swinging Party [1985]

Psychic TV: Papal Breakdance

Cilibrinas Do Eden: Bad Trip

Continuing on now with this evocative little number from the recently excavated sessions by Rita Lee (of Os Mutantes fame) and her buddy Lucia Turnbull.

Santana: Open Invitation

Cheers to ib for another week of highs. Great shite!

WHAT TO WEAR FOR THAT SPECIAL OCCASION ?



Bespoke sartorial elegance: the Tuxedo Cat.

When it comes to grooming, tuxedo cats - an American expression, I believe - have it down pat. Naturally dressed to impress, a hand-me-down coat of the sleekest disposition will never let you down.

When my son was born, Biff - our elderly tuxedo - was like a surrogate sibling. As a younger, prouder night-stalker he would sally forth from our flat to forage under pub tables for party favours and return in the wee small hours of the morning smelling faintly of cigar smoke. I often wondered if he somehow held a secret hankering to hit the bigger casinos in Vegas.

He was a handsome cat, and in a certain light looked a little like Elvis.

Thanks again to Mike, Big B and Sheridan for allowing me to share centre-stage. And - as always - an especially big Thank You to Emmett for proferring a kindred hand of friendship. This time, at least, I think I was able to make the production duties a little simpler.

If I've sounded a little prickly these last few weeks you wouldn't be far wrong. Doing this stint has helped screw my head back on straight. Thanks, too, to everyone who left a comment.

To Fusion 45, moreover, for making it cool to lay it on the line. And to Brendan, over on The Rising Storm for walking it too.

Before I get too maudlin, let me explain this bottle is almost done. There are always too many toasts to make when you get right down to it. If the songs that follow strike you as overly cheesy, you're a better man than I.

download: JOHNNY CASH: I WALK THE LINE from "I Walk The Line" 45 (Sun) 1962 (US)

download: CAT STEVENS: FATHER & SON from "Tea For The Tillerman" LP (A&M) 1970 (UK; US)

download: CAT STEVENS: WILD WORLD from "Tea For The Tillerman" LP (A&M) 1970 (UK; US)

and, just because this 45 of impeccable genius came out a year too late to include it the other day:
download: THE ARCHIES: SUGAR, SUGAR from "Sugar, Sugar" 45 [Kirshner] 1969 (US)

posted by ib

SURF'S UP! SPRING HAS SPRUNG. SUMMER HAS ARRIVED.



I first heard this album just the other day, and like the saying goes: it blew me away. Like a welcome breeze on a muggy day when the sky is a tight sealed lid.

I was questioning my decision to hang onto old soundtracks while clearing the decks on my Hard Drive when I gave up entirely and threw in the towel. What started out as a spring-clean soon escalated into an ill-considered pogrom on my Music Library, and a sweeping away of folders with reckless abandon.

Tearing at the cellophane on a fresh pack of smuggled Jin-Ling filter tips and ignoring the hungry pleas of my barefoot offspring, I savagely keyed in a search for more Riz Ortolani and stumbled on this. Ah! The fleeting bliss of the momentary fix...

These old CDs make for excellent coasters. The vinyl has all been sold or melted down to use for barter as the fuel crisis looms. Distractedly, I allow one tearful urchin to spirit away the remaining antique 78 to lob as a makeshift frisbee down in the park. My eyes are fried and weeping through plumes of contraband smoke, yet I refuse to don the reading glasses so recently prescribed. They can tear down my building and kick me out on the street, but I will not go quietly; the sounds of old movies waft exultantly and can not be silenced.

Hallelujah! It all adds up to a declaration of war, even if i'm not entirely sure which side I'm on.

download: RIZ ORTOLANI: IL RICORDO DI SERENA from "Confessione di un Commissario di Polizia..." LP (RCA) 1971 (Italy)

download: RIZ ORTOLANI: SERENA E LOMUNO from "Confessione di un Commissario di Polizia..." LP (RCA) 1971 (Italy)

posted by ib

GOOD MORNING. COME & SMOKE SOME TEA WITH ME.



Photographs by Richard Calmes, Vietnam 1968.

Okay. Repetition is possibly the order of the day, since I previously touched base here the last time I guested on AD with a brief celebration of Paint it Black. Like a Coppola junkie - as opposed to a genuine seasoned veteran, the "real McCoy" - I can't seem to avoid going back up country for another tour. The jeep is stuck in gear. The Hueys hover like brooding crows against the late afternoon sun, and the fields are awash with puddles on fire and ungathered rice.

There is something about this dark era and how it infected music well into the next generation which won't go away. Like a snake sleeping in a hole, it might appear lifeless - but stir a blade of grass, or carelessly uproot a stone, and the string hums back to life.

Agitate it, and it perhaps may bite. There is venom in its song but it turns the blood over even as stings. More so than Flanders Fields, wild poppies are its claim. Sweating ripely with dewy cobwebbed bloom.

Keep away from anything 'manufactured' in Afghanistan, boys; that shit will kill you!



"This is a public service announcement..." Klick>Klick>Klick.

And so... There is a deep seam of gold here to mine. Steering clear of the overtly political, the best of it is unabashedly bubblegum. Trippy yes, but quite often callow and bristling charm. The students stayed at home and inked out placards. Most of those who were drafted dreamt of waxed garaged automobiles as much as vulnerable distant girlfriends or wives.

You know by now I am prone to ramble.

I'd like to dedicate this post to my younger sister, Victoria, whose birthday it is today. The Tommy James & the Shondells selection is especially for you.

download: TOMMY JAMES & THE SHONDELLS: CRIMSON & CLOVER from "Crimson & Clover" LP (Roulette) 1968 (US)

download: THE TEA COMPANY: COME & HAVE SOME TEA WITH ME from "Come & Have Some Tea With the Tea Company" LP (Smash) 1968 (US)

download: ERIC BURDON & THE ANIMALS: SKY PILOT (PART I) (Mono) from "Sky Pilot" 45 (MGM) 1968 (US)

download: ERIC BURDON & THE ANIMALS: SKY PILOT (PART II) (Mono) from "Sky Pilot" 45 (MGM) 1968 (US)

download: THE BOX TOPS: YOU JUST KEEP ME HANGING ON from "Cry Like A Baby" LP (Bell) 1968 (US)

posted by ib

BLUE RIDGE BARBED WIRE HASSLE AND DEEP-FRIED SOUTHERN CHICKEN.



Hasil Adkins (pronounced "Hassle," not "Haysil"): April 29, 1936 - April 25, 2005.

Anybody out there fond of the Cramps? Remember Lux Interior's crazed psychobilly b-side to 1981's "Goo Goo Muck" on I.R.S., "She Said" ? Well, the original One-Man-Band version by Hasil Adkins was just as manic and a whole lot more interesting.

Born and raised in Boone County, West Virginia - where he lived out his entire life - the young Adkins fashioned his first guitar from barbed wire and tin pails, beating out accompanying rhythms on milk cans and lard churns. Glued to his parents' radio beaming in an evening diet of Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams Sr, the star-struck boy could only conceive that these ghostly visitors must play all their intstruments themselves.

From Wiki:

'He was the youngest of 10 children, and was both severely depressive and hyperactive. Growing up in a tarpaper shack on property rented from the local coal company, Hasil attended 6 days of school total and never really worked at anything other than being a musician.'

Apparently, he didn't receive his first pair of shoes until he was five years old. Later on, he would often cite in interviews that his principal hero was Col. Harlan Sanders, the inventor of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sounds familiar ? Fuck the Waltons, this was unadulterated rawk 'n' roll from the very start.

'Nicknamed "The Haze", Adkins claimed a repertoire of over 9,000 songs including over 7,000 original compositions, recorded scores of small, micro-label 45s, and is responsible for the birth of Norton Records, Psychobilly, and a dance called "The Hunch".'



Hasil Adkins was intentionally run down in his own back yard by a teenager on an ATV on April 16, 2005. He recovered sufficiently to identify the youth from a police mugshot, bud died from his injuries just ten days later. The photograph above of the teenage Adkins in Boone County bears an uncanny resemblance to an old snapshot of my father taken at much the same age. My dad died in 1982 of a massive cardiac arrest. I would like to think he would have appreciated the comparison.

download: HASIL ADKINS: SHE SAID from "She Said/Is This The End ?" 45 (Jody Records) 1966 (US)

download: HASIL ADKINS: CHICKEN WALK from "She's Mine/Chicken Walk" 45 (Air Records) 1962 (US)

download: HASIL ADKINS: WE GOT A DATE from "Out To Hunch (West Virginia Recordings)" CD (Norton Records) 1986 (US)

download: HASIL ADKINS: NO MORE HOT DOGS from "Out To Hunch (West Virginia Recordings)" CD (Norton Records) 1986 (US)

posted by ib

AFTER THE LOVE HAS ALL BUT GONE...



Arthur Lee, 1974: Be Thankful For What You've Got.

It would be stretching the truth a tad to suggest that the summer of love shone bravely on until December 1969 when a Hell's Angel stuck it straight through the heart at Altamont, Northern California, but so far as Arthur Lee's Love was concerned the gig was up as early as 1968 with c0-writer, Bryan MacLean first bowing out as a result of his heroin addiction and Ken Forssi and John Echols leaving soon after to serve time in San Quentin for armed robbery.

As early as 1966 - when the group drew chart success with their cover of Bacharach/David's "My Little Red Book" - Love were serious contenders live on the Sunset Strip in LA, well before Da Capo and Forever Changes, so it's perhaps hardly surprising that Lee refused to relinquish the name. Love was the word on the tip of everyone's tongue. Not Arthur Lee.

Sheridan Dupre X has previously highlighted Arthur's 1969 release Out Here after Elektra ignominiously dropped him, so I won't dwell on it here. And I must confess I haven't even heard 1970's False Start, despite the fact it apparently features one Jimi Hendrix on guitar.

You will recall that Emmett recently posted DJ Day's edit of William DeVaughn's 1980 reworking of his gorgeous 1974 smash 45. Big B posted the original way back. By 1974, of course, the psychedelic sound of Love was dead in the water; a bit like Jimi's "A Merman I Should Turn ToBe". Junk was still king, but funk was the new kid in town and Arthur Lee was nobody's fool. The cinemas had been jumping to Isaac Hayes and Richard Rowndtree's private dick since 1971. Dumped by Blue Thumb like Elektra before it, Arthur astutely shaved his head and signed to Robert stigwood's RSO Records. Turning back on to Rhythm and Blues he was once again back in the game with an ace up his sleeve. Just look at the pic. Sharp as a razor and cool as a nose full of coke.

Nobody could possibly be as surprised as Arthur when Reel to Real sank without a trace.

download: LOVE: BE THANKFUL FOR WHAT YOU'VE GOT from "Reel to Real" LP (RSO) 1974 (US)

download: LOVE: TIME IS LIKE A RIVER from "Reel to Real" LP (RSO) 1974 (US)

download: LOVE: WHICH WITCH IS WHICH from "Reel to Real" LP (RSO) 1974 (US)

posted by ib

RIZ ORTOLANI AND SOME ESSENTIAL DEEP RED THEMES.



Video Nasties which have lost their bite, while their scores continue to make the cut.

Continuing in the Italian vein, the hysteria surrounding many of the independent movies marketed on the back of the burgeoning video boom in the early 1980s led to legislation in the UK effectively outlawing a long list of titles in 1984. A good many of these low-budget films were produced in Italy and lacked the financial backing to secure mainstream cinema distribution.

With the benefit of a quarter of a century's hindsight, most of these titles - however sensational the subject matter - have paled considerably in their ability to shock, but the soundtracks commissioned from a tiny group of euro composers still delivers as favourably as commercial giants like Ennio Morricone or Lalo Schifrin. While German progressives, Popol Vuh benefited hugely from their perceived intellectual alliance with director Werner Herzog, the same could not be said of Goblin in their longstanding relationships with George Romero and Dario Argento. Like pulp fiction before Tarantino bought it credibility, those associated closely with the video nasty suffered a distinct downturn in kudos.

While these artists may have struggled just to survive in the music business, the rewards afforded them through their work in the realm of schlock undoubtably allowed them not just to pay the rent but to keep one foot firmly in the recording studio.

Goblin have weathered the lean times fairly well, but spare an ear for Riz Ortolani whose soundtrack for possibly one of the most controversial exploitation movies ever made, Ruggero Deodato's brutal "Cannibal Holocaust", remains a thing of rare and haunting beauty ; at once both complementing and at odds with the film's crudely painted descent into depravity. I can almost see Ortolani grabbing onto the cheque lest it float away, thinking: "Here's one I prepared earlier..."

"Cannibal Holocaust", I might add, was one of the first retail videos I ever watched, back in the day when you could rent something just waiting to be banned from any indiscriminate cornershop vendor and purchase a packet of cigarettes into the bargain.

Thanks to the suitably deranged Inferno Music Crypt for putting up the rip and fleshing out the memory.

download: RIZ ORTOLANI: CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (MAIN THEME) from "Cannibal Holocaust" CD (Red Stream Inc.) 1979, 2005 (US)

download: FABIO FRIZZI: ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS (MAIN TITLE) from "Cannibal Ferox/Zombie" CD (Blackest Heart Media) 1979, 1998 (US)

download: GOBLIN: MARKOS (ALTERNATIVE VERSION) from "SUSPIRIA" CD (Cinevox/Anchor Bay) 1977, 2001 (US)

posted by ib

HEY, YO! MOVE OUT OF THE WAY...



Tullio De Piscopo: born, February 24, 1946 in Naples, Italy.

bajón (m)
n. bassoon, large woodwind instrument
bajón = falling-off, slump, downswing.

At the risk of encroaching a little on the Balearic territories on which Emmett regularly feeds, I thought i'd kick-off the week in good tempo with a slice of Euro-Disco possessing so pronounced a latin backbone it audibly struts. This Neopolitan concoction was served up by veteran drummer, Tullio De Piscopo in 1984, with writer Pino Daniele blending the raw ingredients in a cocksure arrangement which took continental europe by storm.

The facts, such as they are known to me, are sketchy. De Piscopo moved to Turin from the Neopolitan ghetto in 1969 and served his time as percussionist for a number of popular artists including Gerry Mulligan, Gato Barbieri, Lucio Dalla and Manu Chao. Lately, over the past few weeks, Fusion 45 has dredged up some amazing historical collaborations between session drummer Hal Blaine and a diverse range of top-flight U.S. acts from the mid to late 60s, so it seems somehow fitting to shed a little light at least on a european counterpart.

Coming as it did almost midway through the arid Death Valley of the 1980s, this gem took me completely by surprise. Bizarrely enough, I didn't hear this for the first time while holidaying on the Mediterranean coasts like so many others. The setting was much more prosaic. I was aiming down the barrel of a pool cue looking to sink the black ball in a bar in Glasgow. The music kicked-in and i paused to lay down some chalk while the Algerian foreign exchange students on the other table slammed in the coins to begin a new game.

Suspicious of everybody else as they were, we were all at least on nodding terms. For a moment I felt like "Fast Eddie" Felson in a Hawaiian shirt. Primavera!

Needless to say, I fluffed the shot.

Barman, fetch me a daiquiri!

download: TULLIO DE PISCOPO: STOP BAJON (PRIMAVERA) from 12" (blanco y negro/ZYX) 1984 (Spain)

posted by ib

COMING NEXT WEEK...

Makonde: Soseme Makonde b/w Manzara

Both tracks written by Taso Stefanou. Ripped from this, on blue vinyl no less!

Billy Ocean: Caribbean Queen

Why? Why God? Why is this song so good?

Ed Askew: Oh, All The Gold And Green Eyes

Today's selection comes to us from Stamford, Connecticut native Ed Askew. This is from his second album, entitled Little Eyes. Love the chord changes on this.

ULTIMATE ALBUM SIDE

Estrak Lancios: Cosmopolitan Wave

This is the complete first side of an album entitled Cosmopolitan Wave, by Estrak Lancios (which is apparently a pseudonym for Bernard Estardy). This side is comprised of the following "tracks": Red Wave, Violet Wave, Yellow Wave, Green Wave, Black Wave.

My favorite passage is probably the stretch from 8:50 to 11:53... would that be "Yellow Wave"?

Produced by France Etoile

Fleetwood Mac: Over & Over

You really have to savor the chorus on this one because you only get to hear it twice in the whole song. Christine Mac on vocals sounding like finest Waterford crystal, as always.

Vangelis: Blade Runner (End Titles)

Two bonus tracks from the 'music inspired by...' set on the 25th anniversary release:
No Expectation Boulevard
Perfume Exotico

Vince Guaraldi:
Joe Cool (instrumental)
Motocross

The Pool: Bisa Blues

From the album 333... which I am waiting for in the mail. Grateful thanx to sorcerer for the heads-up and the mp3.

Do you believe in progress?

John Frizzell (composer):
The Unit in Beavis' Pants
Dallas and Muddy

FROM THE ARCHIVES
original air date: 12/18/06

Robert Palmer: I Dream of Wires

One of the first songs I posted on Art Decade.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Guy Pedersen: Kermesse Non Heroique

original air date: 1/17/07

Found on the CD accompanying this book, which I picked up at a nice shop called L'Oeil du Silence in Paris [91 Rue des Martyrs; 33-1/42-64-45-40] back in spring 2006.

Must have been a fun day in the studio for Guy and his colleagues.

"Punk used to say 'fuck you.' Sooner or later someone had to invent a way for it to say 'I'm fucked' and that was Joy Division." - Tony Wilson

Insight [1979]

"Manchester, so much to answer for..."

Rare Pleasure: Let Me Down Easy

Epic melancholy New York disco. The vocalist sounds like Diana and absolutely crushes this, especially on the word "string". Nice proto-house piano as well.

Bill Fay Group: Strange Stairway

Braid: Trompe Le Monde

I heard this over the airwaves at my local furniture store the other day. True story.

Harry Nilsson: Turn On Your Radio [1972]

"I don't know how it happened, now that I'm gone..."

Quiet Village: Utopia

Annette Denvil: So Nice

This is off the latest release from Numero Group. As with about 75% of their releases, it is worth owning.

Caress: Love Spell

Written, arranged, produced, and engineered by child piano prodigy and Soviet-defector Boris Midney.

Many thanks to Fraid for turning me on to this one... I might never have heard it otherwise, which is scary.

Love the dramatic shift at 2:02.

Jerry Garcia:
Run for the Roses
Fennario

Fennario is a re-broadcast, of sorts.

Chet Baker: It Never Entered My Mind [1959]

Recorded in NYC in 1959. Kenny Burrell, guitar; Paul Chambers, bass; Connie Kay, drums. Rodgers-Hart composer.

Curt Boettcher: California Music

Neil Young: Walk On
Bruce Springsteen: New York City Serenade

Sometimes, you just gotta walk on.