Linton Kwesi Johnson - Sonny's Lettah (Anti-sus Poem)

In most things, I am a very laid back person, (with the exception of politics, religion and the mass majority of idiots in this world) some would say too laid back.  An unfortunate side effect I suppose of some of the medications that keep me moderately sane or maybe I'm just a lazy bastard.  I used to be the take two stairs at a time kind of guy, but as someone used to say to me back when I was a city worker, "my hero days are over".  On the other hand, sometimes I am particular (picky, anal).  There are tablespoons and there are teaspoons.  At my house we have a third size 'medium', there in the middle of the picture, maybe you do too.  We have three of those 'medium' ones in the drawer and when I use a spoon it must be that size.  If they are all dirty, then I grumble and clean a 'medium' one so that I can use it.  When my wife and I have company over, I do not offer anyone the 'medium' spoons.  Just saying, so you know. If you're going to be self-destructive, it's a bonus if you can do it with a smile on your face.  There comes a point though, where that smile gets wiped the fuck off your face. Ever wish the human race didn't exist, then realize you're one too. A couple of buddies have mentioned Kraftwerk recently.  First heard them in the early 80's with their "Computerwelt" Lp, but at that time, they were just kind of an oddity to me.  Never even realized they went way back to 1970.  While I was in high school Greg and Jeff Lewis, Davrick, Kevin Hasley and I went camping at the isthmus on Catalina Island.  My bro Match was on the island too working not that far away at the Emerald Bay boy scout camp.  We did not prepare well for the trip unless you count several cases of beer and a fifth of vodka.  We had a little bit of bread for sandwiches which quickly ran out.  Some people felt sorry for us and gave us some potatoes but there was no tinfoil so we cut the ends off of beer cans.  We brought a boombox but we only had two tapes, one was Kraftwerks, "Electric Cafe".  Be careful, this song gets stuck in your head easily, then you might be walking around all day singing boing (ping) boom tschak (ping). Or not. Did a LKJ post a while back that you really should have listened to.  I don't care if you like reggae or not (this is more of what they call dub poetry anyway), this is some beautiful, honest, real life, brutality. Linton Kwesi Johnson is well worth a listen.  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls9pSdVFaJU&w=560&h=315]

Disclose - Apocalypse of Death 7"

Busting my ass at work, because the boss is gone and I have to take care of some of the things that are normally on her plate, as well as what's normally on mine. Funny because one would think that with the boss away, it would be a good time to kick back and do as little as humanly possible. Did take a few minutes, just for the hell of it, to send out an email to pretty much everyone in my address book. The usual Justin babble about politics, big business, greed and the gluttonous hordes that cover the face of this planet (you've heard it all before). I guess just to see if people would write back and what they would have to say. Figured, I get people puking their political beliefs into my face all the time, maybe I could do the same. It's mostly the right wing fundamentalist Christian stuff I get from family members, which is blatantly false, so why not throw some thing out there that says both the left and right suck. "Left wing, right wing, you can stuff the lot, anarchy and freedom are what I want". -Crass  Really wanted to get some feedback from my relatives but didn't so anyway here are some of the excellent responses I did get:

"I can't begin to express how disappointed I am in Obama.  I voted for him, thinking that maybe he was different.  But, now, it seems he is no different than the rest of them.  I wish him luck, but will not be voting for him again.  Too bad there are no viable candidates for the future.  Pathetic is right."

"So how do we get people to stop being greedy and start being more selfless? If evolution is true, then there is no "morality". Only "survival of the fittest (strongest, most clever, shrewdest, etc.)". This is the ethic that most people are taught and grow up with. How can there be any morality beyond this in a cold, godless, random universe?"

"Well put, my friend. I still argue that we had better punk rock under Reagan."

"they're both cocksukers anyway  we're being played  I just saw Food Inc. - big companies rule us by our need for fast food, and we let them. the gov is so big it's untouchable. I gotta plant a better garden and see what animal I can raise out here that I can eat. any suggestions?"

Now here is a flag you (we, the ignorant masses) can pledge allegiance to.  Kinda stoked that I found that, very much what I had imagined a few posts back, although I can think of a few mega-monster-corps I would add, but we ran out of stars. Just got off the phone with Mike of Strange Reaction and was very stoked on our conversation.  My first friend from the internet (that I've never met), who shares some of the passions I do, to make that transition from internet buddy to being a homeboy you can chat with on the phone.  Silly I know, but there are very few people where I live who could give a rats ass about anything more than how cool their brand new gas guzzling truck, what kind of gun Jesus would use and when turtle hunting season starts.  I actually do have some pretty good friends here and don't get me wrong, even in my self imposed semi-isolation, I realize I have a very good life here.  Sometimes it's good to reach out though, and share stories and opinions with like minded people.  Thanx Mike. Speaking of internet friends, Josh, who is actually someone I should remember from my Humboldt days, but apparently the cells my memories of him were stored on are either malfunctioning or are just plain burned up, has his own site now.  If anybody bothers to read the comments around here, you may have caught some of his stuff.  Anyway, his site is called, Voice from the Hurricane and from the first post you know it's going to be well worth checking out. Two more internet friends, Erich and Peter (click their names to see the posts I'm talking about), have written a few times about the first D-Beat tune.  Kind of fits well with this post, in a way.  Anyway I tracked down two different versions of the song (two different singers I believe) and if there's one tune you must listen to in this post, it is this.

 

Buzzcocks - You Tear Me Up (1977) Buzzcocks - You Tear Me Up (1978)

Thanx guys for continuing my never ending education in music.  A very good lesson indeed.  (Ah ha, using the word "indeed" clicked something in my brain.  Anyone remember those stickers you could get in the head shops that said, "A friend with weed is a friend indeed"?  Another one, "Ass, grass, gas, nobody rides for free".)

Same as always, I've done worn myself out and here we are at what was to be the topic of this post.  Not much to say really, I'm not an expert at the whole Dis-Clone band phenomena and I think this would be the only record I have that fits into that category.  The whole genre is a love it or hate it thing, as is crust in general (actually I find that most people are love it or hate it type of people, when a lot of the times for me things are just okay).  I REALLY like Discharge.  There's nothing wrong with being influenced by the genius of their music, but this stuff is pretty much exactly Discharge, as if the band had never made the fatal error of replacing Bones with Pooch, releasing the "Warning..." ep and sealing their fate with "Grave New World".  (Just my opinion of course and maybe an outdated one at that.) Disclose are probable the most well known and most prolific (and best?) of these types bands.  There are two things that stand out for me with this band though, other than the fact that they do rock.  There is still that Japanese feel to this hardcore despite the blueprint.  You gotta dig that indescribable Japanese sound.  Most importantly though, I'm drawn to bands that have members who did death by addiction, as the singer did not too long ago (and by alcohol, my own drug of choice).  This 7" is sort of midway into the band's history.  Anyway dig it or don't.  Later. Apocalypse of Death But Still Work (Victims Of The Mine) Life Of Fear The War Dead Corpse of Hope

 

Devo - 1st 2 7"s

My 1991 Nissan Hardbody that brought me out of my personal Babylon in San Diego, to my quiet semi-Utopian existence here in NoWhere, Kansas.  I had a 93', same color, that was a little fancier and most importantly had a decent stereo.  That was stolen off of 35th and El Cajon Blvd in San Diego.   If you know the area you know that it's jam packed with hookers, dealers and just desperate people, especially at night.   I wasn't up to anything particularly devious, just having some of the finest Thai food to be found for many miles.  Pretty sure that thing went straight to Mexico, along with most of my tools and my decent stereo.  This one has been good to me though and the photo here does not indicate a noble end.  The damage on the front end is from a drunken journey that ended in a ditch.  The windshield is new because in that particular wreck, I smashed it with my head (always have had a hard head).  I don't miss drinking and driving.  During my exodus from SoCal I wound up somewhere between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico with a flat tire.  That's when I found out that the only tire iron in the vehicle, did not fit the lugs that were on the wheels.  In the middle of January it was somewhere around zero degrees but I couldn't run the heater for fear of running out of gas and somewhere in the middle of the night, with the hazards on, the battery went dead.  Cold enough to have died that night, which would have been a fitting end to the nightmare I was living.  250k and now the head's cracked on the motor.   Rather than add that somewhat expensive fix to the long list of repairs it's had, the salvage guy (Fred Sanford's white trash cousin) will be giving me $100 bucks for it. Being pretty burnt out, prone to saying stupid shit or spacing out and saying nothing at all, it's nice to notice that in others.  The other day I heard a MMA (for my inner Bruce Lee) announcer say about a fighter, "His precision is so precise".  Then you have the people I work with, who have mental retardation, saying things that make complete sense.  At one of the group homes that I work at sometimes, staff will put the names of individuals on their cups so they don't get mixed up.  This one resident always goes into the cabinet and grabs the hugest cup there is instead of the small one with her name on it.  So I asked her the other day, why do you always gab the big cup and she said, "because I have a big thirst". Grandpa sent me a site that I thought was kinda cool and at the same time a little creepy in that big brother sense.  Check it out, it's called VPike.  Not just satellite images, but street level stuff.  It shows my road at the highway, but not down a mile or so to my house. Don't know why these guys popped in my head, maybe because I recently got in touch with Doug E. Grime through (you have an ugly) Facebook.  He was a big time fan of these guys and actually the one who introduced me to them.  He was probably on dope, but he told me once that I looked a little like the singer Ian Curtis (strung out skinny me, not the present husky bundle of love).  Anyway this is from a live show, can't remember from where, dig how heavy it sounds with the bass way out front.  Joy Division - Transmission (live) Anybody a Joy Division fan? Did a short little 45 Grave post a while back (I know Jay didn't like Dinah Cancer's voice) and ran across something for those of you that dig them might be up for.  In 2008 they released "A Devils's Possessions" which is a collection of demo and live stuff, probably still available.  Anyway check out the version from the 7" I posted of  Black Cross and compare it to the live version, 45 Grave - Black Cross.  Serious energy. Well a while back I did a Devo post which didn't amount to anything more than a couple of videos from Youtube.  There's a shit load over there worth checking out if you're into that kind of thing.  In the comments though I mentioned how when I first moved to Burbank (1981) I caught a lot of shit from the stoner heshers at the park across the street from my house for having  Devo written on the side of my shoe.  (We used to do that back then write band names or shit like "I love so and  so" on the sides of our shoes.)  Got into these guys when they released "Freedom of Choice" in 1980 and then later went back in time to check out their earlier stuff.  Don't get me wrong, I love Freedom of Choice despite it's mass appeal, but you really see how these guys were a musical genre of their own.  A phenomena (I called them punk in my categories).  No need to really go on and on about these guys, you either know and dig them or you don't.  My copies of these singles are the Stiff Records versions released about a year after the original Bouji Boy releases.

 

Mongoloid Jocko Homo

 

(I Cån't Gèt Mé Nö) Såtisfactiön Slöppy (I Såw My Baby Gétting)

Just for the hell of it thought I'd post some interesting covers that various bands have done.  As cool as some of these are, nothing compares to the original tunes.  I tried to pick ones where they weren't doing karaoke, trying to sound just like the band and instead the ones who put they're own spin on the songs.

Melt-Banana - Uncontrollable Urge Plasmatics - Butcher Baby (oops that's not a Devo cover, maybe foreshadowing a future post though) Rummelsnuff - Mongoloid Soundgarden - Girl You Want (for Jay who loves Soundgarden) Sepultura - Mongoloid Claw Hammer - Jocko Homo The Aquabats - Love Without Anger Retry Don Knotts Overdrive - Snowball (a pretty decent poppy version of one of my favorite Devo songs) Voodoo Glow Skulls - Time Out For Fun Devo - Smart Patrol (demo) (for ...deutsche!)