Ecco Homo - Motorcycle Baby / New York New York

A strange release for the fact that Bono and The Edge feature on it, but that info was never really advertised back in 1990. The story goes, when Max Q (Michael Hutchence/Ollie Olson) were jamming, The Edge and Bono dropped by the sessions after a Melbourne U2 show back in 1989 and recorded their parts of the song, which were recorded by Michael and Ollie. They only appear on the "New York, New York" track. Mixed by Todd Terry 

+ Ecco Homo profiles ill-fated musician, artist 'Troy' Davies

Van Der Graaf Generator: The Charisma Years 1970-1978 (20 Disc Boxset Coming August 2021)

A lavish deluxe 20-disc boxed set covering Van der Graaf Generator's entire recorded work for Charisma Records. Between the years 1970-1978 the band released 8 albums (two under the name Van der Graaf) for the legendary Charisma label. Each record was ground breaking and the influence of the band's unique music would be felt in the ensuing decades by artists of many different musical genres. The albums 'H to He Who Am the Only One', 'Pawn Hearts', 'Godbluff' and 'Still Life' have been stunningly remixed from the original multi-track tapes in both stereo and 5.1 surround sound by Stephen W Tayler. These feature on 4 additional CDs and two Blu ray discs. Also featured are two CDs of a recently discovered and previously unreleased entire concert recorded in Paris in December 1976 by French radio and all of the surviving BBC sessions recorded by the band, plus much much more 

HMV jumped the gun by putting up the now deleted details but go to the cached version to see the tracklist

Godbluff Live - Charleroi, Palais Des Expos(27/9/75)  

Tracklist: 

1 The Undercover Man

2 Arrow

3 Scorched Earth

4 Sleepwalkers

 +

Lighthouse Keepers Live 1971

5 Theme 

6 A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers/Eyewitness/Pictures Lighthouse/Eyewitness/S.H.M./Presence Of The Night/Kosmos Tours/Custard's Last Stand/The Clot Thickens/Lands End (Sineline)/We Go Now 

Drums, Percussion – Guy Evans 

Organ – Hugh Banton 

Saxophone, Flute – David Jackson 

Vocals, Piano – Peter Hammill

The design legacy of 2 Tone

The Beatles in India: ‘With their long hair and jokes, they blew our minds!’

Ballard

pic.twitter.com/ASTUPOKd3z

— Irène DB (@UrbanFoxxxx) June 1, 2021

Glory For The Shit For Brains Mix

Tracklist: 

Death To The Users Of The World

Dedication

Glory

Slave

200 Years

Bigot

Are You Experienced?

Where Are We Going? (Live)

Glory (Live)

NO were: 

Ollie Olsen - keyboards, vocals, sampler 

Marie Hoy - keyboards, vocals, samples 

Michael Sheridan - guitar 

Kevin McMahon - bass guitar 

Death To The Users Of The World / Are You Experienced? (RMIT 1988)

New Andy Gill tribute album released

Sometimes Mix

 

Various versions of Sometimes. Written by Ollie Olsen and released by The Orchestra of Skin & Bone in 1985. Flash forward four years and Michael Hutchence is fronting Max Q and the song is resurrected. Includes mixes by Perfecto and Todd Terry. Such agreat song. 

Watch the footage of Hutchence shot for the video below as well as an interview with Ollie and Michael HERE

Another mix of Ollie's music HERE

Orchestra of Skin & Bone Max Q

Unearthing the early electronic sounds of Ollie Olsen

Siavash Amini - Unfold | Fluster

I just love this man's sound(s) 

BUT because of the above reason do try and find his releases. The track above is released thru Moving Furniture Check here for other labels that have released Siavash's work and please support wherever possible

Dennis Cooper Gone: Scrapbook 1980-1982 (Infinity Land Press 2021)

Martin Bladh:  The scrapbook originates from the time just after The Tenderness of Wolves came out. Did you ever have it in mind as prima materia for a specific work? I’m thinking about how it has been stitched together, the continuity with different leitmotivs that overlap each other, and it looks like you’ve gone back on some occasions and reworked the composition? 

 Dennis Cooper: As I said, it was to help me figure how I could write the novel cycle that I had been dreaming of making since I was a teenager. I started making it because I had just had a small paying job that involved helping the man who, at that time, owned the William Burroughs archive, organize the papers. In the process, I was able to really study the scrapbooks that Burroughs had made while writing his early novels, and I was very inspired and influenced by the way Burroughs had combined texts, both original and found, with magazine images and photographs in a collage-like way, and I thought that trying to work out my ideas and sense of style and structure through that kind of multi-media approach without the pressure of having to start writing the novels might help me, and it really did...

Dennis was one of the early champions of EOMS and his giving a shout out and link to this blog a month or two after I started it certainly helped get the word out initially. Anyway it turned out that there was an overlap of us both living in Amsterdam in the early to mid eighties. I probably would have come across some of his early work (or at least reference to) but one place where we DID intersect was at William Burroughs' One World Poetry reading in the city's Melkweg on 12 November 1985. My first job in Amsterdam was actually working in the bookshop in the Milkyway for Alistair, who you had to say knew the market he was catering for. It was just selling (lots of) copies of another way of deciphering the Kabbalah with me trying not to puke at the smell of patchouli. Interestingly as I googled how to spell the p-word then, this came up:

I KNOW the answer to that one but you won't like it...see also this:

Unfortunately I can't say a word about that what with me at this moment wearing my Grateful Dead jacket and not having had a haircut for over the year that we have been in and out of lockdown.

But back to that night in Amsterdam. JLP of the Gun Club at one of his first spoken word appearances had to be escorted off stage by Simon Vinkenoog after what five minutes (?) as he was as nissed as a pewt. Was he as pissed as 12-18 months before this night, when playing A Love Supreme as the last song of a Gun Club performance at The (London) Lyceum he crawled under the stage and managed to get himself stuck under the drum riser, having to be helped out by roadies as the audience stared and clapped in disbelief.  They were the last two times I saw him. Very sad actually. 

But back to Burroughs and this was the sixth time I'd seen him read and boy did he make me laugh but as he left the room where he had been reading the glass door that he had just gone through exploded with glass flying everywhere. Turns out that Dennis was right in the middle of it as he was only a couple of paces behind WSB and I was probably another 4 or 5 people back from him trying to make my way out. Turned out that Burroughs still had the power to give some people the shits and take offence even then. Such a small poetic world we live in really isn't it?

Dennis Cooper's Blog

Manic Street Preachers - Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

Sadly the writer of the song BJ Thomas died last week but this is my favourite version, which may surprise a few people. Apparently this was the only song they recorded in '95. Here's a live version

For decades, scientists have been hot-wiring viruses in hopes of preventing a pandemic, not causing one. But what if …?

CUNTS

Why Porter capitulated: a defamation lawyer’s view

Black Cab - Bad Robot / Dream Baby (Gershwin Room Melbourne May 2021)

My recording on the night was the worst I have ever done and I didn't even pass it on to Andrew. Luckily the Espy has mics set up to record the performances

I do hope that this current lockdown here doesn't last too long and that the Footscray gig takes place on June 12. We will have to wait and see...