Sunday, 18 January 2015

Miriam Linna: My Dark Ages

Erick Purkhiser, better known as Cramps leader Lux Interior, died on February 4 (2009). Long ago, and for one year, he was my friend. I was the drummer in the first Cramps lineup which played forty-odd dates over an eight month period from the first show on All Saints Night 1976 through July 13, 1977, the date of the NYC blackout. With his passing came a mess of calls asking about the early days. After years of avoiding a backward glance, I was suddenly dropped headlong into the well. A moldering box of old stuff materialized from way back of the closet, and old friends began sending in decades-old snapshots, clippings, bits of correspondence. That first year in New York was my coming of age, at least in calendar years. It was also my first year behind the traps, on the flipside of fandom. It provided a hazing that alternately galvanized and confused my head, so these few words and pictures will seem sad and funny at the same time. I hope this helps clear the cobwebs for those who care. Walking through my dreams, like the Pretty Things would say. RIP, Lux.
Stuff started seeping out of the woodwork before the paint was dry. Phone calls, remember-whens, faded pictures, a couple grainy super-8’s, old letters, a stop-by. “Lux is dead,” they’d say. “He’s gone.” So I get a call from my first big town roommate, Pam, sister of the great and also-late Bryan Gregory, and we ruminate, a shot of white light into one hell of a moldy basement, and it’s with that conversation that I begin this slow descent into a year that time forgot. Round One is shot out of the cannon, a random blast. It was a lifetime ago-- everything’s changed, and nothing’s changed. Like when you spin around real fast and stop, and you’re digging your heels in, and everything around you is a whirling blur...

Continue reading

HERE

L.A. Unbound: James Ellroy Interviewed

Friday, 16 January 2015

Silver String Orchestra - Challenger (1986) Live & Studio Versions

The Cramps: (Memphis news 1979)

2001

Sadly, after 20 years of misinformation and misquotes regarding the Bryan Gregory chapter of

the Cramps, here's my one and only chance to directly express my feelings. While it's true that

Bryan didn't actually play on some of the seminal recordings that are attributed to him (he

wasn't always present for Songs the Lord Taught Us), he could be a truly charismatic live

performer when the spirit moved him - particularly in the CBGB/Max's Kansas City days, when

spirit was everywhere in the air.

He wasn't anything like the myth promoted by his record company and subsequently the

press; the real Bryan had a kooky charm the public doesn't even know about - the truth was

far stranger than fiction. He and I shared a birthday, and we met on our mutual birthday on

February 20, 1976. We were almost the same size and could fit into each other's pants and

shoes. We understood each other because we weren't the boygirl next door, and we'd both

already been through a lot and knew how to hustle tooth and nail to survive. We could be our

scary selves without horrifying each other. My fondest memory is of tripping on acid together

in Central Park that summer. We were never quite able to sustain that high.

Bryan's creative forte was more visual than sonic - when we met him, he had just moved to

New York to pursue a graphic-arts career. He loved art, jewelry making, decorating - I think it

was the visual aspects of the Cramps that appealed to him most. Lux and I had come to New

York in 1975 with a mess of songs and crude home demos and a plan to take over the world,

but I think it was mostly our exotic looks and Flying V guitar that lured Bryan to join us. When

we gave the guitar to him, he immediately decorated it with polka-dot price stickers and

painted our name in fancy script on the case, and you know what? It looked hot!

Bryan was more enigmatic and incongruous than imagination would allow. Once, in a packed

coffee shop, he pulled a switchblade on a boothful of square businessmen who were

snickering about him, but on another occasion he whined that he couldn't leave his apartment

because the neighborhood teen toughs followed him down the street teasingly singing 'Sweet

Child in the City'. A sense of adventure led him to let Lux dangle him upside down by his

ankles from a 17th-floor high-rise window "just to see what it's like", yet he despised touring

because of his fear and hatred of "foreigners". He thought rockabilly was "goofy" but said we

made it work for us "cuz you're so weird." We had a brief, intense relationship, and I don't

think any of us knew what hit us. At one time we all wanted to be in a band that people were

afraid of offstage. He was a true DMF - Detroit Motherfucker. On a soul level, the affair was

over by 1979, after we started touring and recording regularly. Without a passion for and

understanding of the fundamental forces influencing the Cramps, a combination of too much

hard work, chemical haze and backstage leeches drove him to the next bright, shiny object in

his path and a pursuit of so-called social relevance. I'll always remember the high-flyin' Bryan

that few people had the privilege to know, before he stopped being a rocker and became a

"rock star" . . . the way he walked, the way he talked, the way he rocked.

- Poison Ivy (The Cramps)

'Birmingham, UK, is a Muslim Country'

First Footage From Philip K Dick's Man In The High Castle

Kim Fowley Dead at 75

Al Green - For The Good Times/Love and Happiness (Soul Train 1973)

Florida police use photos of real people for target practice

Via

The Cinema of Michael Mann

Ralph Steadman on Charlie Hebdo, the Right to Offend and Changing the World

Tamara Williamson - Victoria

I was pretty sure I was done with writing music until I wrote "Victoria". I've never felt the need to speak up about women’s rights before ...But a story burst my bubble and I took a look around...
One morning in 2013 I was driving my son to school listening to The Current on CBC. I was pulled into a story about a woman from Argentina named Victoria Montenegro.
At the age of twenty Victoria found out that the parents who had raised her were not her family, and had been responsible for her abduction as a baby. After many years of searching Victoria found that her father had been a victim of the “death flight’s” where thousands of young Argentinian citizen’s were thrown alive from planes into the Atlantic Ocean. Her mothers body has never been recovered.

Arca - Sheep (Hood By Air FW15)

Hood By Air for Pitti Uomo FW15 score
Art by Jesse Kanda
Tracklist:
1. Matriarch
2. Pity
3. Drowning
4. En
5. Sifter
6. Submissive
7. Umbilical
8. Hymn
9. Don't / Else
10. At Last I Am Free (interlude)
11. Immortal
Mastered by Matt Colton at Alchemy
Sifter - contains a sample of ”Yayo Ha /W Lana Del Rey" by Beek ( @anthonybadon9 ) at 4:45
Interlude - contains a sample of “At Last I Am Free” by Robert Wyatt at 12:55
Immortal - contains a sample of ”Enjoy" by Bjork at 13:15