TUNING

Roll On, Viagra, Roll On

" To succeed with the opposite sex, tell her you're impotent. She can't wait to disprove it.”- Cary Grant

The folk idiom is rife with tales of sexual bravado and errant potency.
The hokum blues is choc-a bloc with with entendres about grindin' daddy's et al, such that given the frailty of the recorded medium and the overdose of euphamisms, it's often confusing as to what's exactly going on.
You know it's really dirty, but only because of the liner notes

The Ballad Tradition of Great Britain has it's own take on priapism, cloaked in modesty- but smutty if you know where to listen. There is an emphasis on making cuckoldry somehow heroic, knights and highwaymen promise to return to thee after uh, "kneeling before ye...."

The chicks in these ballads being comely ( a euphamisim for having a great personality) and , above all,
way fucking naive, wait for the return of these clanking studs on horseback and wind up dying of a broken heart, or preemptively throwing themselves into the sea or over a cliff.
Not that there isn't some form of revenge in a few of them.
Lord Randall gets fed some spotted eels by his "True Love" for dipping his wick elsewhere.
Spotted eels don't sound good, because they are not good-as it turns out they are poisonous.
but then again who says "Mmmm... a dish of eels, sure hope they aren't spotted, the spotted ones are poisonous you know, munch munch oh , fuck me they are spotted and I fain' would lie doon........."
Don't even get me started on "Little Musgrave" a tiny dude who cuckolds the hell out the gentry and when they catch him says " Yeah, I'm tiny and whatnot, but dudes, I totally cuckholded you.... " The response to this is to quarter him post haste.

It is refreshing then, to find blues and folk songs about impotence. I know of only two, which I present to you below.

Bo Carter My Pencil Wont Write No More mp3
Armenter "Bo Carter" Chatmon performed with and managed "The Mississippi Sheiks" and had a solo career in "hokum" Blues that is ecellently represented on The Yazoo Collection Banana In Your Fruit Basket[buy] . The other songs are typically filthy, but this one is almost a lament. What other old blues mack daddy would pre-emtively tell the ladies he couldn't get it up? That would be no one.
How crazy is Bo Carter? Did you not hear what I just said?
He wrote a song about how impotent he has become and then sang it to some ladies.
It's jaunty and he just doesn't care , obviously. That's how nucking futz Bo Carter is.


Maddy Prior & June Tabor My Husbands Got No Courage In Him .mp3
Maddy Prior and June Tabor came together in 1976 to form " Silly Sisters" during a lull in Steeleye Span's touring schedual , and gameness on June's part .
This song, from the eponymous 1977 album, is a standout amongst several academic sounding olde ballads.
Asking the musical question "Who's a girl gotta do to get out of the Scottish Highlands?" then being more than willing to have a go with hubby, in fact insisting on it, the heroine of the song is thwarted by Lord Noodle Crotch.
Well, if that's the way it's going to be, might as well let the whole town know about it.
Hark the village, wait! Indeed.
I'm not sure if this is a rare example of women's empowerment in traditional balladry, or just randy kvetching.
Either way, it's fantastic.

Ironicly, Not Farts

First Sounds "is an informal collaborative of audio historians, recording engineers, sound archivists, scientists, other individuals, and organizations who aim to make mankind's earliest sound recordings available to all people for all time."
Thrill to the sound of the Metropolitan Elevated Railroad from 40 feet away (1878 Phonautogram) and barely decipherable French people played back at different speeds.
This is history folks!

Rappin and Sleepin

If you care to let's have luncheon, every day here just the same, but sweetheart-if you talk in your sleep, don't mention my name
"If You Talk In Your Sleep"- by Sammy Fain ,The Singing Composer

Somniloquy or sleep-talking is sleep disorder that usually occurs during the 4th stage of NREMsleep. The fourth stage of NREM ( non REM sleep) does not produce as many dreams as REM sleep, and dreams in this state are not as vivid as in REM sleep.

The content of dreams produced in this Slow Wave Sleep mode tend to be disjointed.
Parasomnias, or sleep disorders,- including sleepwalking, sleepeating, sleep sex, teeth grinding, night terrors, rhythmic movement disorder, REM behaviour disorder and restless legs syndrome occur in this state, and any number of these can be an adjunct to Somniloquy .
Sleep-talking has been reported in 50% of young children, who usually outgrow it by puberty,with about 5% occurence in adults, where it tends to run in families.

Sleep- talking appears to be of interest only if it is loud, profane or both.
One of the loudest and profanest of sleep talkers was Dion Mcgregor whose songwriting partner Mike Barr managed to record over 500 somniloquies in exchange for giving Mcgregor a place to sleep.
The choicest sleep talk sessions were released as an LP on Decca called “The Dream World Of Dion Mcgregor”, with cover art by Edward Gorey. A book of dream speech transcriptions.with illustrations by Gorey again was published at about the same time.

In Febrary of 1999, Tzadik Records released Dion McGregor Dreams Again, an additional ten dreams by Dion.
Torpor Vigil Soundworks spat out “The Further Somniloquies of Dion McGregor “ in 2004.

There are several prolific modern- day somniloquists who tend to be self-explotative like:
The Parasomnial Order who couches his morphic utterances in an almost impenetrable faux gnostic schtick
Sleep Talking On The Mic who is quite certain that his sleep disorder is evidence of demonic possesion
Somnography of Somniloquy - Dandan's Sleeptalk who seems to have a healthy handle on it- after all, the colophone to his blog is: “I talk in my sleep. I say weird things. I record it.”
Nate at Night who thinks it’s kinda fucking hilarious
And Ngram .net who just hopes it’s poetry.

Other Resources:
I Talk When I Sleep Support Group
Somnioloquism and the Sleeping Dimension episode of Educational Showdown hosted by Jamie and Adrienne on WRUV 90.1 Burlington Vt.
Dion McGregor On Myspace
Index of choice DM cuts[via Ink Mathematics]

The Winner Take It All .. (To It's Logical Extreme)

I didn't think there was a whole lot of breaking news on ABBA these days , but Mikory's ABBA Blog more than proves me wrong.

Instead of full-on obsessiveness with 1992 style layout and shitty jpegs,you get a well designed site that's ABBAlicious in the extreme with tidbits about what the members are up to now, and choice clippings from back when.

Five Not So Great Auditory Illusions

The comments section says it best about New Scientists' Music Special: Five great auditory illusions .
The popular science mag's website presents 5 examples of supposed fuck -with -yer head-itis that have been artificially created to fool the human ear and brain.
Except why do I feel like it's 1975 and I'm sitting with some balding prat with an over ambitious moustache in a fern bar whilst he tells me that quadrophonic sound is the future?
Cock your fourth ear to these examples and see if you hear what they're telling you you're supposed to.

A PSA ON LSD

The Dukes The Dentist
I thought that this 1968 recording by Germany's scuzz beat psyche merchants The Dukes was going to be a horror freakout all the way through , but then it turns into a public service announcement about the importance of visiting your freindly neighborhood dentist. Who knew? I'm thinking this combo are the same Dukes of "I'm An Unskilled Worker" non-fame.
Come to think of it,that song is ostensibly about the importance of trade schools. Could it be that the Dukes were part of some government program that tried to keep the kids in line with fuzz guitars and Teutonic screaming? I haven't been able to come up with any more Dukes cuts about washing your hands or community gardening , but you never know. Any readers have other songs by The Dukes that fit this civic mould?

She Loves To Yodel

Thanks to the more than excellent Magnets And Lasers I have discovered another yodeling sweetheart in Carolina Cotton .
Billed As The Yodeling Blonde Bombshell, the perfectly named Cotton did it all, radio, tv and B movies, and sang with a who's who of western swing bands.
Let's start with statement of intent-"I Love To Yodel".
"Cattle Call "approaches Desurik Sisters territory which is always a good thing, and then we have the embarassment of riches that is the cyclicly redundant "Yodel Yodel Yodel".

No one ever told Carolina that hoary old chesnut (even for the time) "Nola" was an instrumental showcase.
If they did, she wisely thought "Fuck that noise" and turned in an amazing, pyrotechnic performance.

I Love To Yodel
Mockingbird Yodel
Cattle Call
Yodel Yodel Yodel
Nola

What Makes Bob Holler?

Western Swing wasn't all about Bob Wills you know, it was also about flour- judging by the number of Western Swing bands sponsored by baking supplies.
Western Swing On 78 blog does what it says on the tin- and several adjoining tins- so great is their love, dedication, and altruism in bringing this forgotten music to the fore.
I would also like to thank them from the bottom of my heart for not hosting the downloads on rapidshare, which they could have easily done - they're on mediafire, which, if you're a shameless mp3 hound like me- you know is the good stuff.

Undisputed masters of WS -Milt Brown and His Musical Brownies are conspicuously absent because Milt Brown's estate, which consists largely of empty Nugrape and whiskey bottles, smashed Cadillacs and stale biscuits, is sewn up tighter than,uh, something that's really tight....... No matter, that leaves more room for The Sons Of The West (at Left).
The site has streamlined histories, all- important matrix numbers and not a whiff of acedemia, thank god.
These guys should get some kinda Smithsonian grant ,or something.

The Lord Don't Mind

The Rance Allen Group Talk That Talk pt 1
Having vauge notions of who the Rance Allen Group was/are , I clicked play on this mp3. At first, I couldn't figure out why it sounded kinda stagey- but really good none the less. Then it got to the scat singing part , and at that point I thought "ignorance of the law is no excuse" and ran them through various search engines. A little research revealed why I was immediatly taken with this song-It's secular gospel stuff. And I like that. Mystery solved.


A Soulful Experience [Buy From Amazon}
Rance Allen Group On Myspace (??!!)

The Economics Of AC/DC

University Of Calgary Economics Student Robert J Oxby didn't need fast machines or clean motors to expertly parse the discussion of the Efficiency of AC/DC: Bon Scott versus Brian Johnson .
There's almost a full page of footnotes, none of which really adhere to the age -old (Oh fuck, why not call it aesthetic) argument of who is the better singer; Brian or Bon.
It turns out, in terms of efficiency, Brian is the the better singer.

Ron Murphy Talks About Cutting Records

Lies, Lies Lies, Yeah........... The Secret World Of Vinyl Data

The reliably sporadic , yet never boring kempa.com unearths the fascinating world of Vinyl Data.
What's that you ask? These days, record companies try to get you to buy their product outright by offering dubious CD Rom only content if you buy the prepackadged disc rather than downloading it either legally or illegally.
Apparently, this extra data thing has been going on since the mid -80s with the exception being that the data was packaged as a special edition promo rather than tacked onto existing content, by and large.

In the case of the vinyl data, interested parties would record the specific selections to tape , which could then be interpreted by the mighty Sinclair ZX Spectrum personal computer (with a whopping 48K!).

The article mentions a lot of has beens and never- were's who have added data to their vinyl records (anyone up for a stirring round of the Shakin' Stevens game?) but gives special mention to a full on video game vinylized especially for that purpose by none other than none other than stunting great floppy haired limp -wristers The Thompson Twins. (screen capture pictured at left)
The author admits to not having played it enough to see how it ends, but does mention that "If you go north from the first screen, the Thompson Twins drown en masse. "
A fitting denoument to any game featuring the Thompson Twins, I should think.

The article is replete with emulators and browser playable versions of games and er, things... by artists like the Stranglers, Pete Shelley, The Freshies (Who get a sound critical thrashing, and quite possibly the most thorough history of said group in the proccess) , Information Society and Isao Tomita .

A very thorough overview of something I thought didn't deserve a second glance.
I mean, I knew about the spectrum -bending laser etching on side two of Split Enz "True Colors" album, but this shit is way off the charts- assuming there are charts for crudely drawn stick figure adventures that are hard to translate to a usable medium.

How Vinyl Records Are Made

I find this crap endlessly fascinating.
It's really great how the narration removes any sort of hip cache from the preceedings.
It's really just geeks going through an elaborate process to make something only a handfull of fellow geeks are going to truelly appreciate.
It's almost like the time I had to listen to the guy who ran Chicago's Jazz Record Mart go on and on about lathe settings and vinyl weights just so I could sort through a jumbled up carton of Novelty "cut in " 45s.
What was interesting about the box of 45s was that there where about 400 of them, and none of them were by Dickie Goodman. I don't know why I thought this was historically signifigant, or how this parlayed into me giving a shit, but it was the nineties. Anyway, the record making process is cool;

But Wait, there's more...........

SHAAAAAAROOOON! IT'S THE BLEEDIN' 14TH CENTURY AGAIN, AND THEY'VE NICKED ME CHOONS!

Rondellus are an Estonian Early Music ensemble who cover Black Sabbath songs in Latin on replicas of ancient instruments.
Songs covered include Verres Militares (War Pigs) and Post Murum Somnii (Behind The Wall Of Sleep), but alas-no "Crazy Train"

I Have It On Good Authority That Billie Jean Is Not, In Point Of Fact , My Lover- Oh, And Here's How To Moonwalk

Very detailed instructions on How to Moonwalk

Battle Of The All Midget KISS Tribute Bands!

This week only! (and for all other weeks in perpetuity throughout the universe) it's Tiny Kiss VS Mini Kiss !
Kiss gets short shrift
MiniKISS vs Tiny KISS!
Sploid On MiniKISS vs Tiny KISS
Tiny Kiss Will Have Their Revenge On Vegas

KI$$ MERCH

I'm not such a big fan of Kiss' music but oh man do I love the phenomenology of Kiss Merchandising . This site has it in spades.
There are at least two books about Kiss merchandising alone that make for fascinating reading.

Did I think they overstepped the bounds of propriety when they introduced the Kiss Kasket? No.
Was I perturbed that Gene Simmons his ownself donated a Kiss Kasket to the grieving family of slain Pantera Guitarist Dime -Bag Darryl? Well, yeah.
Am I jumping on a chair at the thought of a chain of Kiss Coffeehouses? -No I think that's a cool idea.
Do I think that theire caution that the Coffee is "hotter than hell" is
A)Alarming
B) Bad marketing
C) Lawsuit Squelching ? -fuck yeah.

KISS' STANLEY IN INCOHESIVENESS SHOCKER

This is an update to a post I made last year, now revised with help from the kind curatorship of Woody from 21 Gun Salute
It Seems that Bret B. had a bit of trouble scraping up the bandwith needed for the overwhelming response to his Paul Stanley post, and understandably so.
Woody took up the mantle of historical banality and informed me of same.

Paul Stanley needs no introduction. Every fucking song at a Kiss live show, however, seems to ........"-Bret B. of Post Punk Junk

Paul Stanley - “People Let Me Get This Off My Chest is an 86 MB zip file, 70 tracks strong , of nothing but Kiss Rhythm Guitarist Paul Stanley's inane between songs patter.

One could ask the rhetorical -to -the- tits question "Why?" but that would interfere with the enjoyment of same.
Great for fans of the "Whe're from Newcastle... where brown ale comes from..." interstitial inanities of hard rockers Venom

Resources, Such as They Are
Paul Stanley.Com
Wikipedia On Paul Stanley-this is one entry that has absolutely no one contesting it. That's No One.
I don't even care if there are any lies sprinkled throughout the article, which seems to be legit. Fascinating tidbits about his surgery and facial deformities abound (abound=are mentioned).

"Stanley was in fact born with Microtia, a congenital deformity of the pinna , or outer ear. "

Stanley badly needed hip replacement surgery but suffered through the Rock The Nation tour first, finally getting the surgery in October 2005. Complications from the surgery required a second in December of that year, and in December 2005 it has been announced that a third hip surgery will be necessary. Stanley regards the degeneration of his left hip as partly the product of thousands of shows performed since the early 1970s. In the "Rock The Nation Live" DVD he spends much more time standing in one place than he has on previous DVDs and tours."-ibid

Paul Stanley's Paradise [Fansite, message board & quarterly fanzine dedicated to Paul Stanley]
"He needs no introduction. [There's that word again-ed.] If you're here, then you must be a Paul Stanley fan and frankly that means you know enough in my book."-from introduction.
Has this webmaster heard of irony?
Methinks not. And by the way, I use "methinks" in the most utterly ironic way possible.
Let's take a look at the ontology of the statement quoted:
"If you are here [Fansite Paul Stanley's Paradise] Then you must be a Paul Stanley fan."
There is a perfectly pitched ring of desperation about the qualifier "must" , turning it from a conditional resolution of a logical proposition into a silent prayer.

Please God, let someone love Paul Stanley as much as I do, so I don't seem like such a confused and obsessive yoik-I will even set up a hit counter that glorifies thy name and shit- Hey Ma, I'm prayin' here, next time knock before you enter a room- it's what civilized people do. Shit now I gott start over....

Let's Stick It To The Man (Sorta)

The Listening Post (part of the Wired Blog Network, and oddly, also part of a balanced breakfast) reports on a hack that lets you stick it to The Man Rupert Murdock. Kinda.
Here's How it works:
The Problem: A band or label has uploaded music to MySpace to be streamed but not downloaded.
You as an omnivorous consumer of music become frustated by this. You want to download the song or songs of that hot new band you've heard about so you can give them a second or third listen at your leisure. Because MySpace stores music (at myspacecdn.com) using long and involved URLs (rather like Amazon items) , you need some help.

The Solution: MyspaceMP3.org lets you enter a band name or whatever abstractword the band uses in their Myspace URL (eg: myspace.com/[fucked up signifyer] URL) and then download any of the MP3s hosted on that page.

The Caveats:
Downloads using this method are stripped of their filenames and ID3 tags, so you have to stop and label/tag each one.MP3s are only encoded at a measly 96 Kbps with a 22.05 kHz sampling rate , so if you enjoy convoluted denoument that sounds like AM radio, then you'll eat this up with a spoon.

My Angry Rebuttal:
Bands should use Myspace for listing their tour dates and ego gratification, not for product placement.
That's what blogs and websites are for. For god's sake, If you have a record out, that means you at least have some money- money that could be used for a web prescence.
If your gonna plead poverty there's always LiveJournal.
Yeah, that's it- take back Livejournal from the goth kids and mass murderers with their allegedly amusing pomo avatars and emoticons, their inarticulate appreciation of cultural phenomena, and their general whining. Only you can prevent forest fires.

A Hype Machine For The Rest Of Us

MEGA SUPER MAMMOTH MP3 Blog List is kind of the anti Hype Machine in a way .
Blog listing are lovingly hand crafted by a single dude and you get mini features on new and nifty MP3 blogs , all the more important considering the fleeting nature of these alleged scoundrels.
The other great service is an extensive list of defunct blogs to help you weed out your blogroll and notation in the listings of how frequently updated some of these suckers are.
Not that I want to add more freight to his already impressive workload, but it would be nice to see alist of blogs that haven't been updated since 2006 or January of '07.
Excellent and much needed work, my freind.

The Teutonic Safety Net Of America's Past

It seems that we have to rely on other countries to preserve our precious musical heritage.

Much like the British Blues scene preserved the obscure and authentic bluesmen who had been forgotten by the mid sixties, It seems that the Germans have taken on the task of preserving the sound of country music before it was even called country music, and rockabilly by the shelfload.

By 1986, Sam Phillips was telling adherents who had made the pilgramage to Sun Studios and wanted to buy singles that "Sorry Hoss, the Germans done got 'em all".

That said, I need to alert those of you who may not know about the German Lable Trikont, and specificly their latest release, Flowers in the Wildwood;Woman in early country music .

Started in 1967 with proceeds from selling Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, the company has become the best archival label the globe has ever seen.

Sound quality is excellent considering the source, (78s mostly) and the annotation is near perfect.
I think It sounds so good because collectors (with the notable exception of Joe Bussard) didn't cotton to early country until the mid 1990s. Country 78's were what you passed over when you were looking for Black Patti Records.

Early country records were also less likely to be stored in crumbling cardboard boxes out in the barn for 45 years.
In short, they were taken better care of , were often recorded for radio play, recorded by major labels, and nobody wanted them. (much).
Thus they remained relatively unplayed and pristine.

If you got into my Dezurik sisters post, you need this CD pronto. Featuring two cuts by the sisters D and Many more sisters and mothers and aunts you have never heard of and will want to hear again.

The CD's liner notes and catalog description make the excellent point that A) There as country music before WWII
and B) Women were most likely the source of a lot of it in the rural south due to the relative inexpensiveness of guitars and autoharps , and the limited access to radio .

Outside of Alan Lomax, real authentic hillbilly music wasn't recorded that much. Come to think of it, authentic shitkickery by males was few and far between.

Doc Boggs and Bascome Lamar Lunceford are the only two artists I can think of who didn't have ties to radio shows sponsored by flour or tea, who are fairly well known in the genre. Boggs got sponsorship later in life on the strength