The Fall of another Year ...and a new Malcolm Mooney LP!

There is, of course, only one Malcolm Mooney, but there have been quite a few incarnations of the Tenth Planet over the years.  And there was this band called Can that you might have heard of.  And occasionally the Tenth Planet would cover some of Malcolm's Can songs.  The version of the band on this new record performed nothing but Mooney-era Can covers for a brief period of time (just two live gigs in 2010, and some rehearsals).  Two of the band's four members (Peter Conheim and Marc Weinstein, on bass and drums respectively) have backed Malcolm for quite a few years now.  The other fellers, Stephen Clarke and Len Paterson (guitars), were new to the mix but fit in just like the two middle fingers of a glove:  perfect.  Together with Malcolm, a "weirdo poet singer guy" who occasionally sings in strange tongues and uses his own voice box for tape delay, they succeeded in laying down some really beautiful shit.  Both live performances were, thankfully, multi-tracked for future enjoyment.  We skimmed the creamiest versions of the best tunes and pressed them onto some really lovely blue vinyl, 398 copies for the world, and there's even a lyric sheet so you can convince yourself that those really are the words.   

$10 postpaid in the US
$13 postpaid Canada
$20 everywhere else

paypal to ::  records [at] milviason.com

On Beyond Bowles

The first album of Moroccan music I heard was a friend's copy of Paul Bowles' classic "Music of Morocco" 2LP for the Library of Congress, originally released circa 1972.  I was an instant fan.  And Bowles' efforts to capture the sounds of "traditional" Moroccan music, especially dance music, before the inevitable day when nearly every African musician would be exposed to "modern"/"Western"/"pop" music (for worse ... or better! or neither!) made inspired reading (Bowles' liner notes here).  According to the Library of Congress web page:

Bowles collected in 23 villages, towns, and cities along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, from Goulimine in the Sahara to Segangan in the Rif country, and inland through the Middle and Grand Atlas ranges to Zagora in the Anti-Atlas. Due to the political situation at the time, Bowles was not able to record in the southeastern region. 

Ultimately Bowles deposited about 70 hours of reel to reel tape with the Library of Congress and now, evidently, there's even an effort under way to digitize the whole thing and make it available for everyone to stream.

Five six or years after first hearing the record (about 20 years ago now), I decided to go to Morocco myself and make my own recordings.  I had heard that the Sun City Girls did this sort of thing, and I knew Mark Gergis who had travelled to the Middle East and Thailand and did the same.  How hard could it be?  So I sold off a bunch of records (e.g., my Sonic-autographed copy of Recurring with the textured cover -- never replaced; Shadow Ring's City Lights LP -- eventually found another copy; Mt. Rushmore LP on Dot -- still looking, won't pay more than $10) and took off for my North African solo adventure with a camera, and a cheap walkman, and stupidly designed giant backpack.

To make a long story short:  in Tangiers, I met Bowles in his apartment and he advised me there was nothing musically interesting happening in Tangiers and he advised I head out to Berber country; the next day I was paraded around town for about a half hour at knife point by a guy whose name I can't remember but we parted hospitably ("goodbye, my friend!"); I recorded a few calls to prayer in the pre-digital era (redundant in view of Justin Bennet's quintessential documentation); in Fez, I recorded an insanely drunk man outside my window who kept me awake for an hour at 3 a.m.; in Meknes I drank the water and got sick as a dog; in Taza I was rescued by one of the local alcoholics and cured; in Saidia I hung out on the beach with the lifeguards until my camera was ripped off and my spirt of adventure destroyed.

Just prior to this last incident I spent a great evening smoking hash with these lifeguards in a lonely building that was so close to the Algerian border that we couldn't piss in Morocco if we were standing behind it.  That evening I learned that Christopher Columbus was actually born in Morocco (I believe this is still matter of debate among some scholars) and also that there is a Moroccan fable about a "pale turtle" who tried to fly but flipped over and was eaten by ants (probably a reference to my backpack).

Other than the calls to the prayer and the 3 am drunken rant, the only recording I obtained was a French woman on the supertrain alerting us that the buffet car was open.

In retrospect, I was ill-prepared and just a tad unlucky (although somehow I managed to import an 1/8 pound of mahjoun stuffed into a dried antelope head).

I also remember now that prior to the trip I sold my copy of Joan LaBarbara's "Tapesongs" and an original copy of the Eater LP.  I would love to hear the former again.  I never really missed the latter.

But this story has an extremely happy ending, at least from my perspective, because other folks (e.g., the Bishop Bros., Hisham Mayet, the aforementioned Gergis etc) had a lot more dedication to the cause than I did.  And so it was that I found myself last Friday at the Rickshaw in San Francisco (my second indoor live music show in a week and also my second indoor live music show in god knows how many years) dancing like a freak to the sounds of Group Doueh.  I'd been following Doueh's releases closely on the tireless Sublime Frequencies label, especially because the first LPs (which, if understand correctly, were more or less archival releases of cassettes dating back to the mid 80s) included several tracks which were remarkably balls out for a what was purported to be a wedding band in an alcohol-shunning culture.  There was a blasted aspect to the recordings which evoked, at least from my coign of vantage, the best elements of American psych circa 1966-68.

Group Doueh has definitely changed since the days when those cassettes were recorded.  In fact, they seemed to have changed a bit even since the last Sublime Frequencies release (Zayna Jumma)  was recorded. The track on that CD that was closest to the overall vibe of the Rickshaw was probably the last one ("Wazan Doueh"): a tight drum beat into, through, and around which Doueh and the rest of the band groove, instantly confusing the issue of who is keeping the pulse, man or machine.  And that's the essence of dance music, or at least good dance music, as far as I'm concerned.  The first number seemed like a rough take to me ... it took most of its length to click for whatever reason (possibly intentional).  But they were solidly in (or out) of one groove or another for the rest of the night.

I know I wasn't alone in my bliss because from where I was standing I could see the sold-out crowd clapping and wriggling in ecstacy for minutes at a time.  Some of the numbers had a great reggae-inflected pop flavor that seemed especially evocative of the strange eighties.  There's not a whole lot of vids out there yet; these are pretty nice:

(yes, the sound in one channel is effed up distorted; good news is that there's a good chance the entire show was recorded off the soundboard so maybe we'll see a synch up down the road)

I won't deny that it was a hoot to see Doueh stroking his axe behind his head but for it's his more rhythmic, percussive playing that gets me moving.  The bass was handled by El Waar Bamaar (Doueh's son) via keyboard and he was simply out of this world for most of the set.  If you've got a live drummer and you want to achieve lift-off, it helps if the drummer is a tad ahead of the beat.  But if you've got a drum machine (which Doueh did on this tour) then it's up to the bass and El Waar fuckin dropped the floor out of the Rickshaw.  And regardless of who or what is producing the beats on stage, the experience only gets better with audience participation.  Polyrhythmic hand-clappers are welcome.  Bonus points if you can get Halima to look you in the eye and smile.

After Group Doueh left the stage, we were treated to another Gergis DJ set and the floor cleared out to reveal the best of what SF has to offer:  second and third generation neo-hippies unafraid to make dancin' fools of themselves, frooging to pan-Arabic disco in the dim light of completely unrelated (and inaudible) cheeseball Thai music videos.  And so it went until the music was over and they turned on the lights.  My new friends Saskia and Rauf convened outside for hugs and kisses goodbye, we thanked Hisham and Mark for the good times, and dispersed into the refreshing bay fog.  My feet are still twitching ...

'Tis the Season

Rather strange that St. Dominic's Preview isn't in print on CD ... what's the story with that?  I think this track is most readily available in the non-virtual format on a great 12" (?!) on Slow to Speak (with a couple other essentials) ... or you can still find original LPs cheap from decent people.

As it happens, it was hotter than hell today by the San Francisco Bay.  But as of one a.m., it's one of those cool, cool nights Van was singing about.

One short trip to San Francisco, one long trip down memory lane ...

Honestly, I don't get out as often as I should, and certainly not as often as I used to.  In case you haven't figured this out already, I really enjoy listening to records.  In my home.  With my pipe.  And my wine.

Back in the good old days, I used to get out to the big city to see shows at least once a week.  I'd even drive up to fuckin Chico or down to L.A. for one night just to see a favorite band or, sometimes, to check out a band that I'd never heard before simply because someone said I "needed" to see them play.  If memory serves, I must have seen about half the shows that the Thinking Fellers played in the Bay Area from 1992-1995.  It doesn't seem possible that they could have opened for The Wedding Present at the I-Beam on Haight Street almost twenty years ago but I know it happened because I saw it with mine own two peepers.  It was just the second show I'd seen after moving to Berkeley (the first was My Bloody Valentine at Slim's, earlier in the winter of 1992, during which I suffered minor but permanant hearing loss).  But I digress.

Flash forward to this past Thursday at the Hemlock in SF where I heard and witnessed an actual live performance in a club for the first time since ... cripes, I don't know when.  And wouldn't you know it?  I had a pretty good time.  I wish I hadn't burned the roof of my mouth beforehand on a horrifically boring slice of pizza (Napoli's on Polk St. - avoid).  That was not exactly a good time.  But The Hemlock offers little paper bags of warm tasty peanuts in the shell for just a buck and that made up for my weak dinner.  Of course, it would be an act of intestinal terrorism to fill ones stomach with peanuts.  Thankfully, the keg of Guiness at The Hemlock lasted all night long.

I first heard about the Hemlock show a month ago or so when I wrote to Bill Orcutt about where I could catch him playing and snag copies of the two singles I heard he was selling at his shows.  Bill told me about this Hemlock show and then, of course, I immediately spaced it until I found myself bored off my fucking ass (as usual) at the salt mine.  It occurred to me to check the Internets to see if I had indeed missed the gig, which I presumed was the case.  But in fact it was happening that very night and lo and behold who was listed as one of the opening acts but Date Palms, whose first album on Root Strata had burned a sizable and very pleasurable hole in my consciousness earlier this year. 

And I realized then that I could easily walk from the salt mine to the Hemlock.  And so I did.

The Hemlock is a rough space for a quiet band to play because the room where the band plays is separated from the bar noise (and there's plenty of it, including a jukebox) by just a few strips of thick, transparent plastic not unlike what separates the customer service section of your butcher from the room where the sides of beef are hanging.  I would have liked Bill (or the sound engineer) to crank up the volume on the guitar ten to 100-fold louder than what I was hearing.  That would approximate the visceral, physical experience I get at home when I throw the first track of 'Debts' onto the turntable at eleven.  But so it went.  It was even rougher for opener Jozef Von Wizzem, the lutist player whose gentle, thoughtful compositions, of all the music heard that night, would have most benefitted from a stage farther removed from the jabbering din of Thirsty Thursday revellers.

Judging strictly from the applause meter, the biggest thrill of the night was probably delivered by Derek Monypeny who I previously knew only as the guy who self (?) released an interesting LP of his own solo oud recordings titled after one of the most famous mondegreens in the catalog of one of the most embarrasingly swank bands in the history of popular music.  As the end of his set drew near, Monypeny took a couple swigs from a pint on stage, bantered with the mostly sympathetic, supplified audience about the joys of imbibing (although that sentiment was palpable already from the bar next door), picked up a grain-finished Gibson SG and began improvising a taxim of pure feedback without touching the strings.  That's not to say that the guitar was left unstimulated next to the amplifier.  Monypeny's fingertips were all over the body, tapping up a storm like Sammy at the Sahara.  If I was standing in the other room, I'd have guessed someone had plugged in their goat bladder bagpipes.  Eventually Monypeny began picking at the actual strings, at which point it started to get loud and, soon afterwards, loud and fucked up.  At a critical and appropriate point, peak intensity was deemed and Monypeny pulled the plug.  Expletives were shouted, along with the usual whoops and animal noises.  Personally I would have fled the stage at that point, with the audience ready to buy me drinks for the rest of my life.  Instead, Monypeny put the guitar down and returned to his oud.  "Do an acoustic version!" some wise-ass shouted.  Frankly, I couldn't tell you what Derek actually played (it was not "Wild Thing") as the previous number was still reverberating in my skull.  Through the magic of the Internets, you don't even have to trust my dodgy review, you can just see this number for yourself:

All of this additional music was just bonus gravy on my biscuits, though, because Date Palms were the first band to take the stage and I could have left immediately after their set and been perfectly satisfied.  As noted above, I took instantly to their LP because it perfectly melded certain essences of deep droning faves (e.g., Eno, Flynt) with minimal, down-tempo repetitive bass riffage (a la my favorite Les Rallizes numbers) and occasionally some lovely Fender Rhodes keyboard juicin it up like Keith Godchaux on a '73 Bird Song.  The closest anybody came to dancing at this gig was when Marielle Jakobsen (violin, flute, keyboards, and the bass player on the LP) got on the keys and started rocking back and forth to the percussionless groove.   If someone in the crowd was generous with the goony birds, or happened to have a pair of maraccas, I could see some free spirits getting gribby on the dance floor while the Palms are swinging.  Doesn't anybody remember how to do The Eggbeater?

One of the distinctive features of the Date Palms' album was Marielle's righteous bass playing so I was momentarily befuddled when the band presented itself as a three-piece for their Hemlock gig.  On the LP, it's mainly Marielle and Gregg Kowalsky (electronics, guitars) playing all the instruments.  As Marielle informed me afterwards, for live performances it's typically a trio or a quartet (when their tambura player is available) "because it's hard to play the bass and the violin at the same time."   The bassist for most (all?) of these live gigs is Trevor Montgomery (Lazarus, the Drift, Tarantel) and he certainly delivered the goods at the Hemlock, often filling the room with lovely beat frequencies, the natural mate to the constantly evolving, revolving long tones produced by his bandmates.

Evidently there is a short European tour in the works and a new 12" on Mexican Summer due in mid-August that sounds very, very promising.  In between there are a couple gigs (at least) scheduled for this summer in San Francisco, including one at St. John's Episcopal Church in SF at the end of July.  More info about Date Palms (pretty much all you need to get started) can be found here.  Check 'em out.

UPDATE:  Someone posted a decent vid of a bit of the Date Palms performance at the Hemlock.  Unfortunately the beating of the low frequencies isn't easily captured and conveyed at YouTube's bit rate but you get the idea ....

A Retrospective Emarf fo Dnim

Woodbe went on a wild tear earlier this month and made me feel like a guilty, lazy shit for not writing more.  Of course we lack a certain degree of discipline here and we're more than a little proud of it.  Like the Pig famously shouted to the dork vainly attempting to "emcee" a Dead concert:  DON'T BE PROGRAMMING IT, BABY.

Nevertheless, it seems like the right thing to do to pass the word when something fine reaches our ears and leaves an impression worth remembering for at least a few days (because who knows when our galtian overlords will pull the plug).

So I thought I'd talk abou this vinyl reissue of Stan Hubbs "Crystal" album by Companion Records, which for my money is the finest of their products to date, with the possible exception of the Luie Luie "Touchy" reissue (which was CD only, for you purists -- I know you're out there!).

Originally released in 1982, Hubbs' only album has been tagged as "stoner rock" and I suppose if you want to reduce it to its basest level, it's not wildly inaccurate.  But that description applies equally well to Steve Miller's "Space Cowboy" or Jimi's "Are You Experienced" and little or nothing on this LP sounds remotely like either of those.  I'm going to take the cheap way out and say it's the bastard offspring of Rumor's-era Fleetwood Mac (thanks to Kriss O'Neill's excellent vocals on a few tracks, and the relatively chill tempos and arrangements of the songs, including the "rockers") crossed with MX-80 (only by virtue of Hubb's Rich Stimm-esque deadpan delivery).  Unlike a lot of one-off "local" albums that disappear upon release only to be "discovered" by some thrift store gold miner decades later, this one is more of a grower with a consistent vision, as opposed to an LP consisting of 9 tracks of pure crap amidst which is buried a single nugget with modest camp value.  In large part, that's due to the excellent drumming throughout by one Ron Castro (like the rest of the band, he appears to be twenty years younger than Hubbs).  Castro's drumming is solid where it needs to be solid, just flashy enough to let you know he's digging it, and on the downbeat tracks, he's "exquisitely sensitive" (props to my high school biology teacher for that phrase).  That said, those looking for a cheap thrill will find it in the last half of the first track on side 2 ("The Best Man for Some Jobs Is A Woman), a jam that sounds like Terry Brooks attempting to solo his way out of the deep end of The Afflicated Man's peanut butter jar.


That tasty bit of apocalyptic improvisation is followed by 'Golden Rose,' a lovely example of the fogged over Pacific Coast reggae sound that I associate more with the mid-70s than the early 80s (probably Hubbs was playing it back in the 60s).  It was while listening to this track for the first time that I began wishing for a lyric sheet.  And lo and behold when I gently spread those thick laminated cardboard lips apart I found not just a lyric sheet but a lovely lyric booklet (with drawings!) ... and even better:  the lyrics are overflowin with pleasantly browned out vibes like this:

Four things will make you happy

The wise man beamed

Four things to make you

Cool as the breeze:

And the last is to have no ambition.

(from 'Golden Rose').  Yes, I do believe that Mr. Hubbs nailed it.

I Guess I Need to Get Out More

http://www.forcedexposure.com/bin/search.pl?search_string=SR+42011LP&searchfield=exkeyword

'Something You Can Hide In' is full tilt psychedelia that features every psychedelic trick in the book with fabulous results, this number reminds me a great deal of Love's underrated Four Sail album." --Head Heritage "

There are underrated Love LPs???

The Latest Batch: Jaki Jakizawa LP and Bad Drumlin Grass 7"

There was a taste of Jaki bleepage at the end of the first side of the 'Just a Little Bit of Milvia Son' sampler 7". This 12", entitled "Can You Feel the Juices?", goes quite a bit further, and in vastly different directions depending on which side one chooses to spin (we recommend playing both sides, in succession, repeatedly!). The entire first side is a breezy analog synth flight through the low-hanging clouds of dirty funk and upwards into a pink and green sky where the smell of fajitas mingles with the scent of White Rhino and other contemporary cultivars. Side B is a pulsating drum-less drone that flirts with the vaguely sinister but spends most of its energy swimming upstream in that beautiful Teutonic canal where melancholy and euphoria combine to make something that could almost be pop if it didn't melt your face. The icing on this lysergic cake is the killer silkscreened artwork (front and back) courtesy of Alan Sherry (of the famed Siwa Records label). Plus every copy comes with a set of Jaki stickers that will come in handy the next time you are walking through the church parking lot and feeling bored.

At the same time, we are unleashing our first FREE 7" (hopefully not the last!), "All Night Long" by Bad Drumlin Grass.


This one has been a long time coming, for a number of reasons, but the intent from the beginning was always to let it loose for nuthin. The economy blows bloody chunks and at the same time the cost of new vinyls keeps going up. At the present rate, the average price for a new LP (even a shitty one) will be $20 within a few years. With unemployment likely to stay at 10% or thereabouts for at least that long, who the hell can afford to invest in some freak's music? Anyways, enough politics. On this 7" slab, the Grass present the title song in two versions. Side B is identical to Side A except a portion of one lyric (oh yes, there's singing) has been censored so our favorite radio stations could get in on the action without incurring the wrath of the douchebags at the FCC. And we didn't just get any random yahoo to do the censoring, we got the immortal Richard Lesser to perform one of his infamous overdubs. If you've ever owned a copy of Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moo' (Wembley '74) on vinyl you might recognize his handiwork. Or you can simply enjoy Side A in the comfort and safety of your own home.

The Jaki Jakizawa LP is $10 postpaid in the US, $13 postpaid Canada, $20 postpaid everywhere else.

The Bad Drumlin Grass 7" is FREE with any order, or $3 postpaid in the US. Right now I think I can do $6 postpaid in Canada and $11 postpaid elsewhere. One copy per order, of course. ;)

Paypal :: records [[[a.t]]] milviasonD0Tcom, or drop a line at the same address if you wish to order a bunch of stuff.