Gone fishin'

I'll be back in a few days

Five dollars a song

About fifteen years ago, I decided to go ahead and spend $20 on a four issue subscription to Forced Exposure. What finally got me to sign up was a Tall Dwarfs/Chris Knox record that they were giving away to all new subscribers. That was the last issue that came out. I’m ready to give up on ever seeing the four issues they promised me.

Anyway, here’s the record I spent twenty bucks on. Enjoy! The two Tall Dwarfs songs were recorded live at the Gluepot in Auckland, New Zealand. I didn't separate them when I made the mp3. The two songs by Chris Knox are from February '91. Knox says that both songs were recorded straight to eight track with no effects added afterwards.

That's where my baby lives

I ain't going no further

Where the girls are

Jim Bob & The Leisure Suits were one of the very first punk bands in Alabama. They were the second band to get a record out anyway, a band called the Ravers had one out in 1979.

In 1980 Jim Bob & The Leisure Suits released a 5 song EP called FIRST TIME on Polyester Records. The songs are short and the shortest of all is also the best song on the record. Most of the Jim Bob & The Leisure Suits songs are about girls or the beach.

The second 45 came out a year later. There are only two songs on the record and neither one is as good as anything from the first record. The band did manage to write one about girls and the beach. There is an LP that came out in 1982 but I haven’t found a copy of that yet.

Matt Kimbrell went on to play in quite a few Birmingham bands, most notably the Ho Ho Men and the Mambo Combo. Mots Roden and Leif Bondarenko both went on to play in the great Primitons. Somebody re-issue those Primitons records!

Help Stabb

John Stabb was assaulted last weekend. Help out if you can.

Here's the first Government Issue song I ever heard.

He's the one

that believes in love

Daddy-o

Another 45 that I found in that box of tools at a flea market in Johnson City, TN. This one is by Bonnie Lou. I had no idea who Bonnie Lou was but it was on King Records and that’s always a good enough reason to buy a 45.

It turn’s out that Bonnie Lou (real name: Mary Joe Kath) was a fairly popular country singer in the late 40’s-early 50’s. In 1955, King suggested that she record a few songs in the up and coming Rock & Roll style. She did and had one of the first Rock & Roll hits sung by a white woman. Bonnie Lou didn’t have another hit until 1958. That was her last hit record but Bonnie Lou did have a long television career in Cincinnati.

Interesting trivia: Bonnie Lou actually recorded Murry Wilson’s “Two-Step Side Step” in 1954. It wasn’t a hit but I bet there was a boxful next to the record player at the Wilson house in Hawthorne.

Tempo of the veils

SOUL OF THE EAST is a fairly common sight in the cheap bins. Pick one up next time you see it. It's worth a couple bucks. I paid a dollar for it at Phonolux in Nashville about 15 years ago.

The record was released twice. Cameo Records released it in 1960 with a picture of a camel on the cover. In 1964, Cameo's budget division Wyncote Records dropped two songs from the LP and put it out again. The budget label also used a much better cover – a picture of a harem girl.

Buddy Sarkissian was a highly regarded dumbeg player. He was called the 'King of the Near-Eastern Drummers' and apparently worked as the musical director at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. Sarkissian died in 2000. Oud player and violinist Fred Elias is also featured on the record.

Where wise and true man stand

sipping from the cup of peace

Lover's Satellite

Los Angeles neighbors Henry Bellinger and Johnny Lageman were both high school students when they decided to make a record. The called themselves the Duals and worked with L.A. music industry veteran Ron Barnett to come up with some songs to record. Barnett added some car noises to one of the songs and pressed up the single on his Star Revue label. Sonny Bono was brought in to help promote the release, Bono and Barnett got the record into southern California record stores and on the radio. Sue Records picked up the 45 and got it into the charts, rising as high as the top twenty. In September of 1961, The Duals appeared on American Bandstand and with Jackie Wilson and Etta James at the Apollo in New York City.

Sue also released an LP by the Duals, which I found in the free bin at Sunburst Records a few years ago. It’s a pretty good album of instrumental songs. “Lover’s Satellite” is my favorite. Unfortunately, there are a couple of vocal songs too. Bad idea. There is a CD available but I’ve gotten used to the scratches on my worn-out LP. The songs wouldn’t seem right without them there.

It doesn't look good

and I feel like a block of wood

Calling Anyone

Another request for a repost. This time it’s Art In The Dark’s 1993 EP.

Here’s what I wrote about the record then:
Art In The Dark released a 4-song EP in 1983. The record was produced by Mitch Easter's at his Drive-In Studios in January and September of that year. This song is pretty much a textbook example of jangle. The whole record is good, it might’ve been a paisley underground classic if the band had lived in Los Angeles instead of Athens, GA.

Here’s the other two songs and there’s more of the band’s story here.

A few months after the original post, Art In The Dark keyboard player Sam McNair sent a message explaining what really did happen to the Art In The Dark. You can read that here.

Be good to you neighbor

and watch your step

Happy birthday!

Charlie Louvin!

"That was my first love, her name was Nell Cook. I seriously thought I was in love. It didn't work out that way. I went to the army in the early part of 1946; she wanted to get married right then. Well, I had this little bet with Daddy, we talked about some of the other kids, two sisters that got married when they were thirteen, one got married when she was fourteen, another one fifteen, to get away from home. My dad was pretty strict. Ira married when he was seventeen, was a father before he was eighteen. My father said kids today, too young to marry. You've got sense enough not to marry until you're twenty-two. And I said, Well, I'll be older than you before I get married. I did get married the year I was twenty-two. But getting back, she wanted to get married the year I and I knew too many war wives that anybody could have fun with, and I didn't want to leave one of them home. What she did as a single girl was her business. She corresponded with me the whole time I was in. Sweetest letters you ever seen. When I came back, before I even went to see my Mom and Dad, I went to Chattanooga, to that address where she'd been writing me from. It was a shotgun type house with a thing right down the middle, which meant one family lived on one side, one on the other. So here I saw a baby's play pen on the front porch and a baby's in there. I didn't know whose baby it was, so I stepped up to the door and knocked on the door with my cigarette lighter, a big zippo, and here she come to the door. Just before taking hold of her, just about to hug her neck completely off, I heard jolly green giant steps. Somebody you could tell was big. This guy walks up about this much taller than she was, and she said, 'Oh, I want you to meet my husband.' I could have fell through a crack in the floor. She'd been married for over a year. All the time she wrote those letters, she was married. But I'm kind of glad. She's gone through eight husbands by now." - Charlie Louvin

"This is something from the new album"

A while back, I posted something about David Werner. I also offered to post the promo only live record if anyone was interested.

Somebody was interested.

Epic Records recorded Werner's October 3, 1979 appearance at the Whiskey in Los Angeles. I don't know if there were plans to release the whole show or an official live LP. Whatever plans there were fell through. Five of the songs were released as one side of a promo record. Three of the songs were from Werners then current LP. Two songs weren't. It's a good record. If anybody ever reissued DAVID WERNER on CD, I hope they remember to include these as bonus tracks. Even better, release the whole show.

Boston's WBCN had something to do with the record but I'm not sure what it was. Side two of the LP is an eight minute summation of the WBCN broadcasting day. I'm not gonna post it because I really didn't want to listen to it again.

There's nothing in this world that I can't get

as long as I have you

Speed on

The new Royal Purple CD is out!

I've been searching all over

Back in 1984, I spent a lot of time listening to THE REBEL KIND. It's a great compilation of early eighties garage bands. I highly recommend you get a copy if you can. The liner notes on the back of the LP mentioned that United States of Existence was inspired to form after 17 consecutive plays of the Harumi 2 LP set. I had never heard of Harumi but I remember thinking that any LP that could be listened to 17 times in a row and inspire a bunch of high school kids to start a psychedelic band had to be worth hearing.

So I kept an eye out for the record. It wasn’t easy to find. The first time I ever saw a copy of the record was at Kurt Wood’s house one summer day in 1993. He had a copy that he had just found on one of his record hunting expeditions. Kurt wasn’t willing to part with his copy though. I told him how long I had been looking for it and that still didn’t work. I think I even went as far as offering him twenty bucks. For some reason, he still didn’t want to part with the record. Probably because even in 1993, the LP was going for up to a hundred bucks. Kurt did give me a deal on some Tom Lehrer records though. He’s a good guy.

After that close encounter with Harumi, I didn’t see another copy of the LP for another 14 years. Last month, I found a copy in Vertical House’s new arrival bin for only two bucks! And it’s in pretty good shape! 23 years after I first heard about the record, I was finally going to hear Harumi.

It’s not bad. I wouldn’t listen to it 17 times in a row but I have listened to the first disc about that many times in the last few weeks. Harumi writes good songs, the playing is good, Tom Wilson’s production (Tom liked the phase shifters) is as good as ever. The record is in pretty good shape, definitely worth the two bucks(!) I paid for it.

Coincidentally, Fallout Records just re-issued the album on CD last April. I probably would have bought a copy if I hadn’t just found the LP. It’s easier to skip the last two songs on the vinyl version.

You better learn how to treat everybody

for you got to go down