STUFFS & THINGS & THINGS & STUFF (STTS-030)

Alejandro Jodorowsky, Don Cherry, Ron Frangipane, Stephan Micus, DJ Screw, Upsetters, Bill Evans, David Bowie, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Edith Schloss, Steven Bishop, the gopher from Caddyshack, 30 Rock

Stills from THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973, d. Alejandro Jodorowsky)

Just rewatched The Holy Mountain (1973, d. Alejandro Jodorowsky) for the first time in at least 20 years, and it’s just as absurdly mind-blowing as ever, if not more so. I can’t even get into how crazy/horrifying/beautiful this film is and will always be, but shout-out to the book Cultographies: The Holy Mountain by Alessandra Santos (Wallflower Press, 2017), which I recently found down at Armadillo’s Pillow and gets well into it so I don’t have to, and naturally inspired me to pull out that good ole Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky DVD/CD box set that came out on the ABKCO label so long ago (now 18 years) and give this thing a rewatch. It’s honestly still the only Jodorowsky film I really like all the way through. Still haven’t made it all the way through El Topo (1970), which actually deserves a film-snob cliché like “pretentious slog,” though I do remember liking Fando y Lis (1968) better than I thought I would. Been meaning to give Sante Sangre (1989) another go, but . . . eh. Instead I’ll just appreciate his one true masterpiece and listen to the two soundtrack CDs that are also in the Jodorowsky box, The Holy Mountain and El Topo. It is pretty fascinating to hear the former without the extreme attention-demanding visuals. Crazy that the only credited musicians are Jodorowsky, Don Cherry himself, and Ronald Frangipane, which isn’t even remotely accurate because there are, like, straight-up string quartets on here, which I’m guessing were scored and arranged entirely by Frangipane (and played by uncredited orchestra musicians) because unlike Jodorowsky or Cherry, his career was indeed scoring and arranging music for theater, film, and television. He doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page, but he should, having also worked as a right-hand pianist for the songwriter/producer Jeff Barry, which meant playing on records by the Monkees, Sha Na Na, the (formerly Harlem) Globetrotters themselves, and the glorious “Baby I Love You” by Andy Kim, not to mention an even bigger bubblegum hit that Kim sang on, “Sugar Sugar” which was ostensibly by everyone’s favorite cartoon vocal group the Archies. He also played keyboards on the soundtracks to Barbarella (1968, d. Roger Vadim) and Midnight Cowboy (1969, d. John Schlesinger), and in 1971 arranged the strings (uncredited) on “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” by John Lennon & Yoko Ono & the Plastic Ono Band. He even worked on the (frankly way too orchestrated) Gene Simmons s/t solo album in 1978, but by 1997 Mr. Frangipane had settled down as a Professor of Music at Monmouth University, a gig that lasted until 2012 when he was injured by Hurricane Sandy and no longer able to teach (not sure what the story is there, but it sounds like a sad one). His family cared for him at home until his passing in 2020 from Covid-related pneumonia. Either way many of the tracks on The Holy Mountain soundtrack are clearly produced and arranged by Frangipane, but then there’s a sick track like “Cast Out and Pissed” that sounds like a couple low-bowed string instruments and a shuddering synth jamming hard improv like MEV or Alan Sondheim themselves. I mean, is that Don Cherry on viola and Alejandro Jodorowsky on electronics and someone else uncredited on drums, jamming in a room? I have no idea. I doubt it, but then who is it? One thing I’ll say is I don’t think Frangipane had anything to do with this track.

Combing through the entire ECM catalog as you do, learning about the German composer Stephan Micus, who has released a staggering 26 albums for the label, starting in 1977 with his second album Implosions, the most recent one being To the Rising Moon from 2024. This track “Borkenkind” comes from Implosions, on which Micus plays the zither in a way not unlike the way this internet magazine’s could-be patron saint Angus MacLise played his mythical cembalum on epic pieces like “The First Subtle Cabinet,” “Thunder Cut,” and “Chumlum” from the Cloud Doctrine 2CD.

SAMPLE OF THE MOMENT DEPT.: Marvin Gaye “awwww the way they do my life” slowed-down from “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” as heard on DJ Screw’s mix of “Welcome to the Ghetto” by Spice 1. I embedded the 14-minute version from Chapter 30: G. Love above, but PLEASE NOTE that I prefer the 9-minute version from the Chapter 155: Goin’ Fed 2CD. It should be noted that Goin’ Fed is my sentimental favorite Screw tape because it’s the first one I got my hands on, selected in person at the Screwed Up shop (Fuqua Street location) when I flipped through the legendary binder and saw it had both “Outstanding” by the Gap Band and “How to Survive in South Central” by Ice Cube on it. Now I also love it for its epic screwed & chopped “Big Poppa,” among lots of other tracks. It’s also sonically very sludgy, grimy, and murky, even by Screw standards, which you know is a good thing.

Screw himself shouts out Spice 1 in this essential 1990s video interview at the original Screwed Up Tapes shop. Seeing him sit in front of a wall of his tapes and say “I’m just like an underground radio station, know what I’m sayin’?” is a beautiful thing.

Our man Lee “Scratch” Perry just straight up saying “wash your penis” like three different times on “Bathroom Skank,” I mean come on . . . (the internet tells me he’s actually saying “wash your face” but I refuse to believe it)

Let’s take a nice Bill Evans break, shall we? This ^ and/or this:

Our man Lee “Scratch” Perry just straight up saying “wash your penis” like three different times on “Bathroom Skank,” I mean come on . . . (the internet tells me he’s actually saying “wash your face” but I refuse to believe it) . . .

Watching David Bowie on Musikladen in 1978 and goddamn the “D.A.M. Trio” is just a monster funk unit, especially Dennis (“D”) Davis on drums and George (“M”) Murray on bass. Add Carlos (“A”) Alomar’s omnipresent rhythm guitar understatement (and great background vocals) and any sort of rollicking avant-rock piano/synth combo (could be Rick Wakeman, Mike Garson, Michael Kamen, Tony Kaye . . . here it’s Roger Powell and Sean Mayes), Adrian Belew’s stunt guitar, and Eddie Jobson stand-in Simon House on violin and you’ve got one of the greatest weird-funk actual-steamroller bands of all time. Bowie knows they’re the baddest and just kind of awkwardly walks around with his arms literally crossed like he’s your shy uncle at a croquet tournament, occasionally stiffly clapping like he’s listening to the Glenn Miller Orchestra. What a goofball. Hell of a singer/songwriter though!

Omg, awesome episodes of Amoeba’s What’s In My Bag? series are honestly a dime a dozen but this one with Ali Shaheed Muhammad is just crazy, 25 long minutes spent going down at least 10 different deep-head rabbitholes. By the 8 minute mark we already have not only a deep appreciation of the career of bass guitarist Deon Estus (Wham!, Brainstorm, solo) but also of bass frequency itself, not to mention a staggering yet humble metaphor of “germination” used to describe the music of Can. Lots more within!

And now for something completely different, there’s inzane, and then there’s ‘Tedium House online T-shirt store’ inzane. Also: what was gonkism? (Hint: Choc Monk knows.)

BLASTITUDE BOOKSHELF DEPT.: Stopped by the Pillow again the other day and they were selling a beat copy of 33 1/3 Greatest Hits, Volume 2 (Continuum, 2007) for $3. Unfortunate manic pixie indie rock dream girl cover art aside, almost any one of these chapters is worth $3 by itself — J. Niimi doing R.E.M.’s origin story in a tight 15 pages, right up to preparations for the recording of Murmur; Daphne M. Brooks getting me to revisit Jeff Buckley and really discover for the first time his mind-blowing extended wordless qawwali-style singing, and how he would blend it live with shoegaze-via-Cocteau Twins guitarscapes to frame and extend already open-ended epics such as “Mojo Pin” and “Dream Brother” with crowd-hushing showpieces that I don’t think anyone else in rock music has quite brought before or since; Eliot Wilder interviewing DJ Shadow about his adolescent mid-1980s hip-hop-head origin story, which is not unlike my own (he was born in 1972, me in 1970) although his obviously goes much deeper; Don McLeese on the Halloween 1968 series of live shows at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom that would become the MC5 Kick Out the Jams LP, and many more I haven’t gotten to, like a chapter from Mike McGonigal’s book on Loveless, as well as chapters on such Blastitude-beloveds as Low, Music from the Big Pink, Paul’s Boutique, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, Bee Thousand, and Court and Spark, and all of that being only half of the 20 LPs that get a chapter/excerpt here. Like I said, worth three bucks! And one more book I’ve randomly discovered and thoroughly enjoyed this past month is The Loft Generation: From the de Koonings to Twombly: Portraits and Sketches, 1942-2011 by Edith Schloss. I did not know who Edith Schloss was, but there was her book on display at the Chicago Public Library (Rogers Park Branch) and I was drawn by the names “Twombly” and “De Koonig” on the cover. Flipping through, I couldn’t help but notice that in addition to chapters with titles like “John Cage and Merce Cunningham” and “Joseph Cornell: A Trip to Utopia Parkway,” there was a chapter dedicated to “Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV).” At that point I just went ahead and checked it out and took it home where I’ve since renewed it the maximum allotted 15 times (thanks CPL, very generous). In addition to her life as a painter, art critic, and mother, Edith Schloss was indeed the partner of MEV’s Alvin Curran from 1965 to 1985, which does make for a fascinating chapter or two, but all of her chapters are fascinating, not only for the art-world who’s-who hobnobbing, but especially her clear yet daring descriptions of the art itself. Her interest is mostly in visual art, but check how she writes about the music of her friend and peer Morton Feldman: “Some said it was oriental, some said it was like watercolor in its severe simplicity. Yes, it was something distilled, splinters of dawn and dusk, gritty bits of the city, taut liquid drops and shining.” She credits the dance criticism of another friend Edwin Denby as a direct inspiration on this sharp casual poetic style, and there’s plenty more pithy musings on people, places, and art where that came from; The Loft Generation is not just the memoir of an art critic, but of a serious painter, muse, and salonnière who was in the center of an entire movement.

KRAZEE DOUBLE KOINKYDINK DEPT.: I’m driving to work like I do most mornings Monday through Friday, usually listening to one podcast episode or another on my phone, but this time taking one of my MeTV-FM palate-cleanser radio breaks, and they play a deep cut by Steven “Bish” Bishop himself which I had never heard, and didn’t catch the name of or remember any words from, but have now determined was “Everybody Needs Love,” #32 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 1978, more of an uptempo rocker than his well-known hit ballads like “On and On” and “Might Be You.” MeTV-FM did play earwormy excerpts of both of those lovely tunes in a little mini-montage tribute to Bishop’s career, however, reminding me that the latter was the theme from Tootsie (1982, d. Sidney Lumet). Seemingly unrelated, I’m at work later that morning and my co-worker is about to leave early, excited enough about to prospect of the whole afternoon off to perform an oddly familiar cute celebratory dance and say “I’ll be dancing like the gopher in Caddyshack!” (1980, d. Harold Ramis.) I myself don’t get home until about 7:30PM, and there’s my sweet Angelina already in her PJs, working on her (mostly) solo re-binge of the entire run of 30 Rock, about ready to start S1 E18 “Fireworks” (first aired on April 5, 2007). I randomly sit down and join her, even though I hadn’t for episodes one through seventeen, and a central plotline is the Tina Fey character and the Jason Sudeikis character planning to watch Tootsie together, which means I hear the Tootsie theme song “Might Be You” excerpted for a second time that day. Which is coincidence enough, but then later in the episode one of the characters makes a reference . . . to the gopher in Caddyshack? Seriously? I’ve since kinda gotten back into 30 Rock, and it’s surprising how long it took for the show to even start to jump the shark (probably that one joke in S5 E1 “The Fabian Strategy,” IYKYK).

And one more thing before we go to press, the BlastiStack™ here doesn’t usually do RIPs, but RIP to Sly Stone and Brian Wilson, born less than a year apart in the 1940s and passing away less than a week apart in the 2020s, similar in so many ways, two great sound poets of Californian stoned pop soul who produced and arranged their songs magically, and sang beautifully with their siblings about the human condition. And RIP to the long-implacable South African jazz drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo who also passed away this week, age 85.