STUFFS & THINGS & THINGS & STUFF (STTS-027)
Broadcast, Brand Nubian, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, the Pixies, 80s Cassette Labels, Hip Hop Instrumentals, Agitation Free, B.O.C., Elizabeth Cotten, Frank Hutchison, John Fahey, Slapp Happy & Faust
HEADY SCI-FI LYRICS DEPT.: “I report there were once cities/open-air academies of venues and trees” as written and sung by Trish Keenan with Broadcast.
HUMOROUS SEX RHYMES DEPT.: One of the golden-era GOATs, Grand Puba having fun on Brand Nubian’s “Step to the Rear”: “Never in a scandal and I'm never caught schemin'/Knew Pu was dope ever since I was semen/Swimmin' in my daddy's big nuts/But now I'm scoopin' girls with the big ol' butts.”
PERCEIVED BALDFACED TRIBUTE/RIP-OFF DEPT.: Two (punk) rock bands that are fairly objectively great (or at least widely considered to be remarkably good) that I almost never listen to are the Pixies and Richard Hell & the Voidoids. I have heard my fair share of the former, mostly back when I discovered them via MTV News (thanks Kurt) on actual broadcast television in a college dorm room in April 1989 which is apparently almost 36 years ago. Bought Doolittle on cassette because of that and played it quite a bit (still think “Monkey Gone to Heaven” is their greatest song), but after a few years of increasingly capitulatory if not outright feigned excitement as albums like Bossanova and Trompe le Monde came along, I pretty much stopped listening to them completely 30 years ago, when the relative hate they were getting from Forced Exposure sealed a deal I had already wanted to make. As for Hell & the Voidoids, considering their crucial, legendary, and historic position in American punk rock, I’ve barely listened to them at all, ever. Never sat down with an album, only catching their main two or three classics osmotically, “Blank Generation” of course, and the superlative “Another World” which I’m listening to again right now, and I can’t even think of a third Hell classic off the top of my head. But, as for why I’m even talking about these two particular bands right now, I am starting to think “Bone Machine” by the Pixies might’ve been conceived as a baldfaced “Another World” stop/start louche/lurch tribute/rip-off. Maybe not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.
RECOMMENDATION OVERWHELMMENT DEPT.: Erick Bradshaw of NYC (Cyanide Tooth, Spin Age Blasters on WFMU) has been writing some good stuff on Bandcamp lately, such as a piece on Now Wave catalysts Couch (yes, I did just use the phrase “Now Wave catalysts” and it wasn’t a typo) and how those two goofballs have never really stopped being radical, a much-needed Vanity Records label profile (it still doesn’t make any sense), and this June 2024 story about a few independent/underground cassette labels founded during the 1980s, to name just three examples. Remember when I was talking about all these overwhelming/ongoing rabbit-holes everywhere on the internet, each representing just one single tiny-but-massive warren/pocket/scene/movement/subset out of all of the fascinating music released in just the last 130 years since people starting buying phonograph records in the 1890s? I mean come on, in this one June 2024 article there are like 15 different fascinating releases described, and they’re on at least 4 different notable 1980s labels I’ve barely or never heard of before, and I’m learning this when I’ve already got at least 100 and probably closer to 200 completely unrelated actual physical LPs and CDs and cassettes leaning on or crammed into various shelves and boxes and piles next to my desk, all theoretically “up next” on the stereo, and that’s just the physical “up next,” because there’s always my 785-hour “FULL ALBUMS ON DECK” Shitify playlist, so how soon if ever am I gonna give everything on this one single Bandcamp article a good listen? I haven’t even listened to the new Cure album yet!
HIP-HOP-AND-REGGAE-AS-A-SINGLE-TRANSATLANTIC-MUSICAL-MOVEMENT DEPT.: Been trying to think of American hip-hop and Jamaican deejay/dub reggae as a single musical movement, just with regional differences, same as how NYC hip-hop is different than L.A. hip-hop, which is different from Memphis hip-hop which is even different from Houston hip-hop, etc. I realize that if you take this thought experiment to one possible conclusion and say “therefore, hip-hop is just American reggae,” it kinda all falls apart because that’s just not true. Nonetheless, I’ve always dreamt of someone making a mix of 80s and 90s American hip-hop 12” B-side instrumentals/dubs and presenting them just like people present Jamaican instrumentals/dubs . . . and now someone has! Though by “now” I really mean “at some point within the last 20 years,” because I just now came across this file on an external hard drive of mine, and can’t remember when or from where I downloaded it, and it isn’t tagged properly enough to offer any clues. It is, however, a killer mix, and I thought I’d throw it on Google Drive for your edification, so here’s the link. Drop me a line if it doesn’t work, or if you made it and want me to take it down, or if you’re OK with it staying up as long as it’s properly credited, etc (larrydolman at gmail dot com or just comment below).
AGITATION FREE (SLIGHT RETURN) DEPT.: In a recent issue I wrote about listening to Agitation Free’s 2nd LP a few times, and a couple months later I’m still thinking about these German mugs and their lovely lukewarm rock music, now stuck on how the lead guitar solos, as played by Lutz "Lüül" Ulbrich, make me think of the rock concept I learned from Thin Lizzy called “throwing shapes.” This is when the rock musician, in order to communicate better from a stage, plays their instrument with a series of exaggerated poses, a more pronounced shape than the standard human posture. These “shapes” can change with developments in the music while being easily perceived from all sightlines, even in a large arena or coliseum. Listening to Lüül Ulbrich play, I can hear that he’s throwing shapes as well, patterns on the guitar neck that indeed make shapes, and could even be described by certain geometrical equations and proofs. The audio representation of these shapes is then “thrown” to thousands of listening people by guitar amplifiers or phonograph recordings on loud sound systems. This is an exciting prospect, and leads to excited shape-throwers everywhere who get so into the shapes that their music becomes mostly shapes and is no longer particularly musical. I think Ulbrich and Agitation Free very tastefully stand right on the precipice where holy music becomes mere shapes, and it turns out it’s still just a little too close to the edge. His playing is excellent, and even flawless, but it never really moves me, neither imaginationally or emotionally.
B.O.C. STUDIES DEPT.: In today’s climate of weaponized meaninglessness, the only conspiracy theories I still entertain are Blue Oyster Cult conspiracy theories. Here’s just one B.O.C. rabbithole from the folks over at Perfect Sound Forever online music magazine, a piece also notable for including the actual address of the creepy church on the cover of the On Your Feet or on Your Knees double live LP. The church apparently still stands, here in the 50th anniversary year of that album, and is even creepier if you look at it right now on Google Street View, with nary a satirically sinister cryptofascist symbol or rented prop limo in sight.
VESTAPOL DEPT.: This “Logan County Blues” instrumental by Frank Hutchison (1897-1945) has got me calling him the original John Fahey, but that might just be because they’re both white guys. Elizabeth Cotten (1893-1987) was a black woman born four years before Frank Hutchison, even if unlike Hutchison she lived long enough (age 94!) to have her beautiful folk/blues standard “Vastapol” aka “Vestapol” documented and demonstrated on video. This song had been covered by Fahey as “The Siege of Sevastopol,” recorded in 1964 but not officially released until 1999 as a bonus track on the CD reissue of his 1965 album The Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites. I was curious what “Vastapol”/“Vestapol” referred to — was it an actual place, perhaps in Cotten’s native North Carolina? — but Fahey’s title points us to the actual source, a 1856 parlor guitar composition by an Ohio-based British guitar teacher named Henry Worrall called “The Siege of Sebastopol,” inspired by early photojournalism reporting on the concurrent Crimean War. Now, this was not a blues tune, this was straight-up throwback wanna-be court music for the rich and gilded, as made clear by this recent-ish (2012) cosplay performance that sounds nothing like Cotten or Fahey to me. But, it was a very popular piece of sheet music in the 1850s, just as songs by rich and royal pop stars are very popular today. Because it was arranged for guitar in an open D tuning, open D subsequently became so popular that it was colloquially known as the “Sebastopol” tuning, a tuning that just may have launched the country blues style we know today when it became adopted by guitar players like Hutchison and Cotten in the rural agrarian South. Over the years people shortened the name of the tuning to “Vastapol” (an interesting reestablishment of the original Crimean spelling), which became the name of this Elizabeth Cotten standard, which I believe is named after the tuning, and not Worrall’s composition. Cotten is vague and brief about it in the video/interview previously linked; when asked “where does that song come from?,” she says “well it’s a song that was . . . played around . . . there . . . because I don’t play it like they do. I play it in my style.” Fahey doesn’t play it like “they do” either; even though he uses Worrall’s title, he’s playing Cotten’s song.
SONG THAT MAKES ME (SLAPP) HAPPY DEPT.: “Just a Conversation” by Slapp Happy is just so lovely and charming. It’s the first song on Slapp Happy’s 1972 debut LP Sort Of, which I hadn’t realized was such a full-on uncredited collaboration with Germany’s own Faust. Essentially, Slapp Happy supplied vocals (Dagmar Krause), guitar (Peter Blegvad), and keyboards (Anthony Moore) while Faust supplied bass (Jean-Herve Peron), drums (Werner “Zappi” Diermaier), engineering (Kurt Graupner), and studio/compound (Wümme). Man, Faust was on fire that year, also recording their massive second album So Far and Outside the Dream Syndicate with Tony Conrad. And hey, here’s Slapp Happy & Faust, fully credited, playing the song at London’s Cafe Oto in 2017!
Thank you for reading this latest edition of Stuffs & Things & Things & Stuff here at the Biweekly Blastitude BlastiStack Blastletter. Tune in every month or so for more stuffs, and more things.
…dude…appreciative of some unheard bangers for me in here…slapp happy indeed…
That Archie Shepp record pops into my head so often, always on the cusp of "Up Next"