Sure-fire Cure For The Blues:

Play the banjo!
(also alleviates inter-species tensions)

Harry Smith's Cipher

Lately I have been driven by unknown forces to spend all my listening time with the weird-but-compelling (and often frightening) music of early rural America. This is the stuff of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. Of course Smith was equally weird-but-compelling; a Theosophist claiming to be the son of Aleister Crowley and Grand Duchess (Czarina) Anastasia Romanov. As an avant garde filmmaker and self-proclaimed (but unschooled) folklorist, Smith unwittingly shaped the course of American popular music in the late 50's and early 60's by producing the musical Rosetta Stone upon which the voices of phantom prophets were indelibly etched in an awkwardly bound collection of six LP's. The 84 songs on these sides dropped Bob Dylan (like a reverse alien abduction) almost fully formed into the death throes of 1960's Greenwich Village (then populated by yet another generation of hip hucksters, tricksters, derelict geniuses, boozy romantics and lost souls not unlike the creators of the sounds preserved in Smith's talismanic grooves). The music of this lost, "old, weird America" (as Greil Marcus calls it) hits me as hard as (and isn't that different really than) Albert Ayler's ("old bicycle horn") Salvation Army band on acid or the speaking-in-tongues funk of Charles Mingus' Wednesday Night Prayer Meetings. In the early days of electricity (and even before), there was music that out-rocked and out-punked all the rockers and punks to come.

No-Space

I've decided to cancel the MySpace account.

I thought it would be a cheap and convenient "e-press kit" but it turned out to be less about the music and more about ranking and teeny-boppers posing as adults requesting to be my "friend" (and more)

blech

I've begun to revamp my original site with some updates and new freebie music downloads - stay tuned for more cool doo-dads!

Give it a Spin

Don Campau's the most generous guy in alt-radio!! Once again he's included a track from re: Visions on his No Pigeonholes radio program. This time it's "Mingus Mongus" and you can listen to an archived podcast of the show HERE (please give it a listen - there some GREAT stuff in this program!!)

You da man Don!

"No Pigeonholes"

Hi Kids!!!

Sorry I've been away for so long!!

A few curious things:

Found a new review of my now-classic Vermis HERE - interesting (and humorous) review by one of my heroes Eugene Chadbourne - hey, it's published in the All Music Guide and got 2 & 1/2 (out of 5) stars!! (The same review also appears HERE)

I also discovered that Orion's Specialty Music is selling copies Vermis for $10.00 (hmmm...)
Then I found out MP3.com is selling downloads of Vermis HERE! I hope they remember to send me some $ now and again!

The inimitable Don Campau has included a track from re: Visions in the latest broadcast of No Pigeonholes out of San Cupertino, CA. The podcast version of the show is over HERE (we're in Part 2) - thanks Don!!!

Won't wait so long between posts next time - I promise!