The first album I completely obsessed over was Bill Cosby’s "To Russell My Brother, Whom I Slept With." In fact, to this day, I can recite the entire 22 minute conceptual piece b-side to it without assistance. As years went on, I ended up with Cosby’s entire discography and loved all of it, but "Russell" still stands out (perhaps due to childhood bias) as a shining star. Now, I’m sure you’re wondering why I bring this up……
Since around Christmas, I’ve been obsessing over the edits of will become Patton Oswalt’s second "proper" album which we recorded in Austin last month. Oh sure, I co-produced the first album and I produced all of the EPs and dumb little one-off things, but this album (due out in June) has been my singular responsibility and is now permanently etched into my cerebellum. I know my wife has grown tired of hearing it, my puppy is too cute to grow tired of anything, and me? I’ve fluttered between knowing what I’m listening to and thinking I’m a mad man over the past ten days or so.
Working on this album has given me a whole new appreciation for what actual record producers do. Fussing over mixes, overdubs, mastering, the whole nine yards. Hell, I’m working on a live stand up comedy album, and it’s a lot of work! However, with that said, I do think that this Patton album will easily fit in the pantheon of all time great comedy albums alongside records by Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Steve Martin, Bill Hicks and a few others that I can’t think of right now (it’s 3 a.m. and I’m drop-dead tired).
I’m so honored to be working on this album and I’m giddy to hear what people have to say about it because, in all honesty, I think it’s going to be an instant classic. In the meantime, get a mug of hot chocolate, download this mp3 and pretend you’re a 9-year old listening to this for the gabillionth time and you’ll get a glimpse of what was flowing through my noggin in 1978 as a kid sitting on the living room floor of my parent’s suburban house.
Bill Cosby – To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With
She was a pianist and organist, but was also noted for bringing the harp into the jazz idiom. Alice was also a well known Hindu guru in California. Our sympathies go out to her entire family.
Oh, it seems like yesterday when Cole from The Black Lips came up to my friend Pete who was visiting from England while we were at Stickfigure on a Saturday afternoon. Within 10 seconds of introducing himself, he thrust a copy of their debut single on Die Slaughterhaus into his hand…. And with that, a love affair was born. Since that moment some five years ago, the band has cranked out some damn great albums, equally great singles and their fireworks-laden live shows? Hoo, nelly. Top notch. And so, what do you think they do for their first release on Vice Records? They put out a live album recorded in Tijuana!
I got to download the album today thru the Vice Records press alcove, and it’s a fairly "standard" (yet obviously outstanding) set that the band’s been fond of playing the last year or so, it’s just that the fidelity is slightly improved. Just slightly. And you heard it here first, John Reis recorded it! Yes, Speedo! God bless ’em. So there’s three shows that I personally concocted to coincide with their album’s release. All three bands (by my estimation) are well known for their killer live shows, so I thought "What a better way to get even better shows than by pairing them all up together?"
by Zach Hobbs…
Dark Meat are a 20-piece mega band from here who have an other worldly sound somewhere between Albert Ayler and the MC5 if all of those artists were living in Athens in the past few years. Very over-the-top, borderline orchestral and extremely enjoyable! And the Fatal Flying Guiloteens? Well, Chunklet’s had a big ol’ boner for those Houstonians for years now. Their new album is due in the late spring on French Kiss Records and is a kinetic interpretation of The Jesus Lizard discography crammed thru a kaleidoscope of dark 90’s spazz rockers like the VSS. And again, their live shows are quite galvanizing and have only improved in all the times I’ve seen them. And hell, Tim Kerr adores them! That should be enough for anybody.
The shows start in Birmingham at the Bottletree on a Thursday. The Friday show will mark the third concert Chunklet has put on at Whirlyball Atlanta which is a non-venue planted 30 miles north of Atlanta in a strip mall where there’s batting cages, a video arcade, a comedy club, putt putt and go-cart tracks. The first two shows (Mogwai and the Melvins) were so memorable that having this line up will only add to the legend that is Whirlyball Atlanta. And the final show will be at Chunklet’s home-away-from-home, The 40 Watt Club in downtown Athens.
I can’t begin to convey how excited I am about these shows and hope everybody comes out. And yes, there will be plenty of surprises in store.
I should also mention that The Black Lips are performing tomorrow night here in Atlanta backing The Mighty Hannibal which is probably going to register as one of the most unforgettable shows I’ll ever witness. Oh, and to add to the mystique, The Reigning Sound and Gentleman Jesse open. Yes, it’s good to live in Georgia.
And if that weren’t enough, Mission of Burma play the EARL on Saturday. The missus and I will try to make it after Monster Jam at the Georgia Dome. No, I’m not kidding.
I can already think of the litany of jokes now, but man, if you save up your pennies and nickles, you can place the first bid (starting at $795,000) for this one of a kind item that can neither be confirmed nor denied as Robert Johnson. And to think that the Velvet Underground LP for sale last month set a new benchmark…
eBay Attracts Greed and/or Stupidity
Maybe somebody could hit Eric Clapton up for a few dollars. I’m sure he’s got plenty lyin’ around off the song he made about his dead son. And hey, can’t you hear the grimey, muddy Delta blues dripping off "Tears In Heaven". Wow, yeah, you’re totally right…
You know, earlier last year, I co-hosted a day at Shake It Records in Cincinnati where me and my co-host Billy took people out of the Hall of Fame that clearly didn’t deserve to be in and inducted many who so painfully deserved it. Of course, along the way, Billy and I became lovers. So it’s with great pleasure that I noticed that Van Halen are FINALLY being inducted. They’ve been eligible for four or five years but (as with most industry oogie-boogie rituals) there’s no rhyme or reason as to who gets in or who doesn’t. And the Ronettes? Doesn’t it seem like they would’ve been in ages ago.
This year’s inductees are: Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five R.E.M. The Ronettes Patti Smith Van Halen
Feel free to list any bands that should be inducted in the comments section. Me? The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, The Troggs and The Sonics seem like no-brainers, but I know I don’t have mass popularity in the front of my mind very often. Call it a curse.
The first time I even considered Athens as anything other than the home of R.E.M. was in the summer of 1988 when I first rented Athens, GA: Inside/Out from the local video store in York, Pennsylvania. By this time, I was already on a fevered search for the most fucked up, obscuro music that my 20 year old noggin could find. For fear of sounding like an old fuddy duddy, 1988 wasn’t only a time before instantaneous information thru the internet, but living in York, Pennsylvania made things almost impossible. Sure, there was the occasional trip to South Street in Philadelphia to hit the Philly Record Exchange (where I bought the first Nirvana 7" in 1989), Y&T in DC or Tower in NYC, but other than (say) The Trouser Press Record Guide, I had zero idea how to find cool music other than by frantically cross referencing everything that I could. From my initial discovery of R.E.M. in 1985, I found out about any one of a number of bands from any one of a number of different sounds. The Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Green on Red, The dB’s, Wire, The Undertones….. All of those originated in some form or fashion from my high school adoration of R.E.M.
And then there was Inside/Out. At the time I first saw the movie, I didn’t even know what a college town in the South was. I was in York and well, there was a band called Public Affection who covered R.E.M. and U2 and were later to become the insufferable cuntballs known as Live. Oh yeah, York was a charmed city.
The Some EP
Upon seeing I/O, The BBQ Killers became my new favorite band. Seeing this "thing" ferociously strutting around on stage with its equally hip/cool bandmates just clicked with me. Almost exactly how The Minutemen clicked. It was that simple. It wasn’t until I pored over the credits to their "Comely" LP (which I played religiously on my radio show) that I found out that the "thing" on stage was actually Laura Carter. "Wait, it was a woman?!", I thought. Unreal. With my cross-referencing kick in full swing, I found out about every other Athens band in a matter of weeks thanks to magazines like The Bob, Bucketful of Brains, MaximumRockNRoll, Flipside, Option and even Pulse put out by Tower Records. Again, I was working at a fevered pace to get up to speed on everything that was going on in this tiny college town hundreds of miles from where I was in Shit Splat, Pennsylvania.
Then there’s the first time I drove to Georgia with my then-girlfriend Lisa. It was right after I graduated from college and was looking for somewhere to move that wasn’t near York. I knew Athens was the town to move to when, upon tuning into WUOG about 30 miles outside of town, I heard the first track off the newest Thinkin Fellers record. "Is this heaven?" I thought.
The Some EP
Well, obviously, I moved to Georgia shortly after my first trip and the rest was mere academics at that point. I consumed Athens music for my entire residency there, and one of the very early records I purchased upon moving to town was the "Some" EP which was put out by Alan Connor, Brian Cook and the legendary Dave Barbe back in the fall of 1986. "Some" was the second (and final) release on their DRG (short for Dominant Rock Gods) record label, the handmade aesthetic immediately grabbed me and I’d lie if I didn’t say it wasn’t an all-time favorite Athens record. The hand crafted inserts, incidentally, were all made by the BBQ Killer’s Laura Carter.
Dave Barbe’s Mercyland, Eat America and Time Toy turned in fantastic tracks on this EP and as I found out, they did a tour of Florida to promote this album shortly after its release. The tour consisted of approximately 40 people in a bus which sounds disturbingly similar to those early Olivia Tremor/Neutral Milk tours in ’96 and ’97. Upon returning from tour, all parties were $2000 in debt to the bus company. The 40 Watt staff generously turned the club over to them for two nights to resolve their debt. And amazingly, Michael Stipe offered his services (even allowing them to put his name on the billing) on the second night performing on guitar to an adoring capacity crowd of frat boys and girls.
As years passed on, Laura Carter (not be confused with the "current" Orange Twin/Elf Power Laura Carter) became the presence behind the JackONuts and subsequently wrote for the Flagpole during the same time that I was. Unfortunately, Laura and I hated each other for reasons that, to this day, I still don’t understand. She’d smack talk me in the Flagpole, I’d volley by throwing out drunken heckles at their shows at the Shoebox or Club Fred. I don’t know, I think it boiled down to one of those things where we were so similar that we just butted heads. Of course, I say this, but at the core of it, I always regret that she and I were never friends because it is her performance on that Athens, GA: Inside/Out tape that was a major contributing influence in me moving to the South almost 20 years ago. Laura moved from Athens around ’96 after having massive back problems and (from what I’ve gathered) a slight pain killer addiction. She retreated to St. Croix, got married and had a child. Even with her aggro, contrarian ways, I always admired Laura. Sadly, Laura died in the winter of 2002 with her son and husband by her side in St. Croix. I’m sure if she would be reading what I’m writing, she’d invariably tell me to kiss her ass. Then again, that was all part of Laura’s unusual, yet charismatic, charm.
It’s records like "Some" that succintly define a music scene at a particular moment. And now, with the full permission of Dave Barbe, I offer up the "Some" EP to all those who haven’t been fortunate enough to get one of the hand-assembled copies that never got much distribution beyond Georgia.
Chunklet has a rather glaring distrust of so-called critics and their laziness. Oh sure, we know the drill, they get free records from publicists (who are paid to like the record they sent), they write about said record and then the publicist reminds the writer to include it in their top 10 wrap-up. "Fuck that," I say. All of the below releases I purchased and was happy to support in any capacity I could. And yes, this is an open challenge to any writer/publisher out there to compare receipts from the last year for new music and no, you can’t include credit received for shitty promo CDs that you traded in to get that gay-ass Bjork box set.
Okay, so the new Cheap Trick record wasn’t hyped at all, but I do have to give it up to Brian Walsby for convincing me that Rockford is easily one of the best summer records ever made.
“We’re all in this together. Except you. You’re a dick.”
