Saturday, November 07, 2009

eMUSIC NOVEMBER


* Locust Abortion Technician by Butthole Surfers. These days when you hear the phrase "indie rock," chance are you think mopey wimps singing wistful little tunes full of irony and suburban pain.

Twenty years ago, your image of "indie rock" likely would included visions of crazy motherfuckers with shotguns playing intense psychedelic guitar riffs against a visual backdrop grotesque medical school films of bloody operations

With each passing year I realize more and more what an essential band The Butthole Surfers truly were. Raw psychedelic punk with a Texas drawl. How could you beat that?

This album, their third, was released in 1987, when indie was still underground. The Buttholes were pretty close to their peak at this point. I downloaded it a couple of weeks ago because a hip kid who listens to my Sunday night radio show requested I play "Graveyard" on my Terrell's Sound World Spooktacular . I realized I didn't already have Locust Abortion Technician, and when I listened to the first few seconds of "Graveyard," I realized I needed the whole album.

True story: In 1993, after seeing the Butthole Surfers open for Pearl Jam, my daughter and I saw Gibby Haynes at the old IHOP on Menaul and University in Albuquerque. From that point on, we referred to that place as Butthole Pancakes.


* 99 Chicks by Ron Haydock & The Boppers. I wasn't familiar with this Chicagobilly until earlier this year when the rowdy title track of this collection appeared on Norton Records' I Still Hate CDs compilation.

On this Norton album, there's some decent rockabilly in the mode of Haydock's hero Gene Vincent -- who is the subject of a tribute song here called "Rock Man."

But it's not all rockabilly. The later period of Haydock's musical work comes right out of the world of 1960s era drive-in movie culture.

Indeed, Haydock's life became even more interesting when the original Boppers broke up in 1960. He moved to Hollywood and began writing and editing for horror movie magazines, including my childhood favorite Famous Monsters of Filmland. He even landed some parts in some tacky drive-in type movies including The Thrill Killers (there's some audio from the trailer for that included on the album) and the starring role in Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, a comedy that dealt with a rock 'n' roller who moonlights as a super hero. Five songs, plus film dialogue and a clip from the trailer appear on this album.

Somewhere along the line Haydock started writing what his bio at the Internet Movie Data Base calls "gloriously lurid porno novels" under the pen name Vin Saxon. His musical career apparently was over, but he kept his hand in writing for monster mags and occasional B movie roles. But he began suffering severe depression. According to IMDB,

Unfortunately, Ron suffered a severe mental breakdown in 1977. On August 13, 1977 Haydock was struck and killed by an eighteen-wheeler as he was walking on an exit ramp on Route 66. He was 37 years old. Ron Haydock was buried on the same exact day that Elvis Presley died.



The Very Best of Julia Lee. Here's a Kansas City piano player with a knack for good dirty songs. No, she wasn't crude in the mode of a Lucille Bogan or, skipping ahead a few decades, as explicit as a Denise LaSalle. Lee, whose band was called Her Boyfriends, was the queen of the double-entendre. She was sexy, cleaver and funny, and she could rock that piano.

Back in the mid-to-late '40s, she didn't need to talk dirty for people to know what her songs like "King Size Papa," "My Man Stands Out," "Don't Come Too Soon" and "Don't Save It Too Long" were all about.

Though she was known for her sex songs, this album includes several standards like "When You're Smiling," "Trouble in Mind" and "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles."

Settle down, Beavis!


* Rob Zombie presents Captain Clegg And The Night Creatures On his previous music project, Texas singer Jesse Dayton, whose résumé includes stints as a guitarist for Waylon Jennings and Ray Price, teamed up with bluegrass singer Brennen Leigh to create an album of sweet country duets. Since that time, Dayton was apparently kidnapped by Rob Zombie and transformed into a fiend named Captain Clegg to sing hillbilly horror songs.

I reviewed this album recently in Terrell's Tuneup. Read that
HERE



Plus

* "Found a Peanut" by Thee Midnighters. Kid Congo Powers covered this on his recent Dracula Boots album. And I just heard the bitchen original version by East L.A. Chicano garage rockers Thee Midnighters on the latest RadiOblivion podcast.

* The tracks I didn't get last month on A Country Legacy 1930-1939: CD B by Cliff Carlisle

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

  Sunday, March 17, 2024 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM, 101.1 FM  Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Te...