Captain Sensible - WOT! b/w Strawberry Dross

Wanted to get this done on 4/20 but oh well.  My son asked me yesterday, where that came from and if there was any significance to the numbers.  As heavily as I was into that particular activity at one time, I had no clue.  The first time I heard of it was from this character "Tro" in college and I just figured him and his friends made it up. Wikipedia says differently though. I don't think any of my hommies around here are too deep into the rap thing, but even though I don't count 'stoner' on my resume anymore, I can really groove to that kind of sick bass and the almost slurred, muted lyric. Missy Elliott was doing a lot of producing/writing type shit for other people when she came out with this one and believe me I'm no expert in this genre, but I remember when the video came out in 1997.  The video was a trip and was one of the first with that kind of style that you saw more of later in hip hop music. Yeah, I know, I spent a lot of time drunk sitting around watching nonsense in the late 90's, but check the video.  Educate yourselves my rap-a-phobic brethren. Speaking of stoners, my old bro Match (don't mean to 'out' you man, but let me know if you want me to edit this in case you ever want to run for president) hit me hard with a serious fuckin' blast from the past with this tune, Beat Happening - Red Head Walking The tune ties together that circa 1990 indie pop college thing that a lot of my friends back then had going. Anybody into Beat Happening?   That was the only tune I really got into of theirs, but here 20 years later maybe I need to explore them a bit.  Kinda from that same period, maybe a few years earlier than that particular tune, it reminded of another band.  I was not into them at all even when their first album came out and for the strangest reason it wasn't until I watched "Unplugged" that something sparked.  It was probably a subconscious thing because of the addition of Pat Smear, but since then I've come to appreciate them and close my eyes to the long line of hipsters that have claimed to be fans.  So again circa 1990-1, one of my house mates, Shawn, and my bro that I've mentioned several times around here, Jefe, have this band that practices a couple of days a week in the garage.  I don't remember anything except that they played this one song over and over.  I didn't feel it then, but now I know that is a bad-ass tune and they did a fucking superb job with it.  Nirvana - Negative Creep I tripped out when I found out they covered this, Nirvana - Seasons In The Sun.  For all you early 70's soft rock fans, you are very familiar with the original, Terry Jacks - Seasons In The Sun.  One of my Aunts had that on 7" and I use to "rock" out to that when I was about 7 :-) Speaking of old bros, Ed started up a Garden Weasel Myspace that somebody out there may want to check out.  Already have 71 profile views and 11 listens to the first tune and lots of friends, ha, ha.  Reminds me how there were hordes, take your pick, of better singers in the Humboldt County scene at the time, but the rest of the guys fucking rocked in the band and I had a hell of a time doing it with them.  Thanx Ed.

My wisdom for the week?  Told my buddy at work today, "it's complicated simplifying things".  Profound huh?  Should have gone on to do my my masters, maybe even a doctorate.  Professor Hrabe has ring to it.

When I first was exposed to punk in about 1979 with Rodney on the ROQ, I never did catch the bug for some of the heavy weights like the Sex Pistols or the Damned (the Clash was an exception).  Rodney did play that stuff a lot but I was more about Black Flag, Bad Brains, the Dead Kennedys and Crass.  Over 30 years later I don't know why I never really caught that bug.  Of course now that I'm older and wiser (yeah right), that stuff is starting to be explored again.  My friend Fernando and I were talking about that recently with the passing of Malcolm McLarren and really he knows mountains more about that kind of stuff and music (and philosophy) in general than I do.  I'm trying though.  So this guy Captain Sensible is an important part of all that and really for anybody exploring early English punk it could be a good place to start.  Known, most importantly for his role in the Damned, but he's a character that's been doing all kinds of shit for a long time.  Before the Damned he was in several bands, including Johnny Moped and interestingly enough, I think after he left they had some seriously great tunes. Johnny Moped - Incendiary Device was their hit and rightly so, that's damn good song. I guess a close second would be their, Johnny Moped - Hard Lovin' Man but damn that Incendiary Device tune is hard to beat. As I said though, I don't think Mr. Sensible had anything to do with that tune (I could be wrong) and really Johnny Moped is worthy of deeper investigation, but I don't actually have anything by them so you just get the samples that I stole from somewhere else. Speaking of stolen samples and Mr. Sensible, he was a big part of what is considered the first UK punk vinyl from his band the Damned, The Damned - New rose For some reason way back when I didn't Like New Rose too much and too be honest with you that Incendiary Device tune has it beat, but it's still a fine example of a sound that inspiring, was emulated and I guest just plain old copied. Long about 1982, the Captain was doing his own thing in addition to being in the Damned, some probably called it selling out (maybe to be fair we could call it artistic freedom, like he gave a fuck or owed anybody anything anyway), when he came out with a pretty silly tune. Gotta say though that when I saw the video, at 13, I just thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Remember though that a year later I thought that the video for Safety Dance was hilarious (fancy a live video for Safety Dance?).  Still kinda think it's funny, but what do I know, I'm brain damaged.  So anyway the video inspired me to pick up the single in the used bin back around that time.  Most of you guys know the tune and aren't going to listen to it here, so I won't waste my time or yours writing anything more about that.  What's interesting is the B side, which may be demo type stuff for the Damned album "Strawberries".  It says on the 7" it was recorded in his living room and really it's like 7 or 8 eight little ditties.  I think it's worth a listen, but I'm feeling pretty idiotic right so... Strawberry Dross

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pqC563bX_w&w=560&h=315]

Random Ramblings & Music 3

Guessing I've mentioned before that around here, for me the only source for records is Ebay and the kindness of others. The closest thing to an actual record store, 150 miles away, is the House of Sight and Sound in Salina, Kansas. I probably have more records in crates than they do for sale, but I still enjoy that old sensation of leafing through record after record, stood up on end, so that when you pull one toward you, you get a slight blast of air, that by the smell gives away whether you're looking at used or new vinyl. This store is small by the standards of some of the one's I've visited in my lifetime and of course, as with most record stores since the late 80's, is dominated by CD's. I remember in the early 80's when one of my rich friends introduced me to CD's (he also had this wild, space age for back then, top of the line Bang & Olufsen stereo), thinking they were pretty neat, hard to scratch, easy to skip around to the tracks you want and so on. I resisted for a long time though getting into CD's, because I knew that they were cheaper to produce and yet because of their "new and improved-ness" the record companies were charging almost double what they were for the same thing on vinyl. I won't even get into a discussion of the warmth of analog versus the coldness of digital (and really I'd probably just be playing pocket pool in saying I was an expert on any of that stuff, let just say it feels better). As CD's became the norm in the mid to late 80's, a LP on an indie label was about $7 and $9-10 on a big label. For a CD, that as I said, costs less to produce, you all of a sudden had to pay $13-16. Yet another one of life's many rip offs. Of course today I still prefer vinyl but, some things only come on CD and really I am a utilitarian and figure I can put whatever I want on a CD, as I did with cassettes, and take the shit wherever I need to go. Oops, kinda went off on a tangent there. So the other day I had the opportunity to go to Salina and check out the record store. This time I thought though that I might hit up a few pawn shops and see if any poor slobs had given up anything valuable. The first pawn shop I went to was a tiny little thing, with mostly guns and jewlery, run by a guy wearing a big old semi auto pistol thing hanging out of a shoulder holster. I have several guns at home so maybe I'm no better, but I always have to smile when I see guys brandishing guns. How hard would it be to snatch that thing and shoot the guy with his own gun. Anyway I asked the guy if he had any vinyl and he said he takes it all to a place called Acoustic Sounds. He says it's on the same road as his place, 9th street, across the street from some burger joint called Boogey's, but they don't have a sign. He got kinda snippy when I asked him what the cross street was, (guns make people brave), because 9th is a very long road and I've never fucking heard of Boogey's. I had to inform him that I was not from the area. He doesn't know so I cruise down the road, back and forth, looking for this fucking burger place and a building without a sign for about an hour and finally find it. I asked this guy in the parking lot if this was Acoustic Sounds and what it was about, and he tells me it's not really a retail walk in type of place but I should check it. I go into the door he indicated, at the side of this large warehouse looking building. I'm immediately met by this guy who for some reason looks like he's into jazz, Nate's his name, and when I tell him about the pawn shop and how I'm looking for records, he smiles and suggests that I get a tour. We pass a bunch of cubicle type offices and come to this door that looks like it leads to the main part of the building. We go through that door and BAM...almost the size of a football field, row after row of records stacked on 15 foot high shelves. I should have taken pictures, but I was in awe, because I shit you not, I have never seen so many records in one place at one time. The damn place reeked of records. Now you have to remember, Salina is what I would call a very large town or a small city of around 50,000 people and Nate tells me this is the biggest distributor of it's kind in the world. If I've sparked some curiosity, go check them out at Acoustic Sounds, they sell all kinds of music related shit and have a very unique recording studio. Most of the records are new, high end, 180 gram, 45 rpm (better sound), audiophile, represses of LP's. Everything from Coltrane to Flipper. They also buy estate type stuff from dead record collectors. He showed me the row of a recent acquisition of around 30,000 records, all still factory sealed. This place was really out of my league in a way, mostly catering to high end collectors. I was running short on time and to be honest with you I really didn't know where to start. You could spend a week in there, easy, going down row after row, up and down a ladder, struggling to figure out their cataloging system that was not alphabetical. I told him that I would really like to look at the used stuff sometime, which he said would not be a problem, but I didn't want to leave empty handed. We had looked at Hendrix's posthumous "Valleys of Neptune" earlier and I had noticed a 7" that had the title track and B side that wasn't included on the album (Nate told me that they really didn't have a whole lot of 7"s). So I bought that sucker, with the promise that I would be back. Both the tunes rock on the 7", by the way, check out the B side with Mitch Mitchell on vocals. (Saw him play back in the 80's with one of bands. Probably one of the greatest underrated and overshadowed drummers ever. 23rd greatest drummer, according to Rolling Stone, as if they fucking know.) Cat Talking to Me

A Grandpa joke: After dying in a car crash, three friends go to Heaven for orientation. They are all asked the same question: "When you are in your casket, friends and family are mourning over you, what would you like to hear them say about you?" The first guy immediately responds, "I would like to hear them say that I was one of the great doctors of my time, and a great family man." The second guy says, "I would like to hear that I was a wonderful husband and school teacher who made a huge difference in our children of tomorrow." The last guy thinks a minute and replies, "I'd like to hear them say...... LOOK, HE'S MOVING!!!!!"

Somehow I got off on this wild tangent, you guys know I do that, with hunting down tunes I was interested in hearing. I have a stack of shit I haven't listened to yet along with all kinds of MP3s, but still feel compelled to follow the Tao of music in a deceptively random way. Most people my age or older would remember Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher", if for no other reason than it's presence in the Blues Brothers movie (my second favorite musical moment in the movie, after John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom"). During the 20's and 30's, there was a lot of sex and drug inuendo in music, there's whole anthologies dedicated to the topics in that era. "Minnie the Moocher" was based on the original, Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon - Willie the Weeper If you want an interesting read check out Jaxon he was punk or at least new wave, way back in the 20's. After that another guy came out with this tune, Ernest Rodgers - Willie the Chimney Sweeper Of these three I'm sharing that one is my favorite (emailed it to several of you), because "he had the dope habit and he had it bad" and in the end, as real to life as possible "the dope gave out". I think when he's talking about smoking pills, he means heroin. After that Cab Calloway did his thing, Cab Calloway - Minnie The Moocher The (in)famous Minnie the Moocher, Bettie Boop, cartoon is worth checking out if you haven't seen it...here. If you're into that whole dope inspired music thing of the 30's and 40's you must go check out this post at What's In My Ipod. Was watching VH1 (I don't know why as 99% of it is shit and 75% of VH1 Classic is too) and they had another one of their Top 100 song things.  This time it was the 90's.  I am a son of the 70's and 80's so that's where my interest mainly lies, but the 90's reminds me a bit of what I remember of my 20's.  I only watched from about #'s 90-70, but there was some interesting tunes there. I love this woman's voice and her Irish accent you catch here and there, The Cranberries - Linger I was into the early Pixies stuff, so this was pretty cool, The Breeders - Cannonball I touch on rap here and there, and as much as I couldn't stand it in the late 80's, especially the Beastie Boys first thing, sometimes... This guy was cool, not pretty, not a gangster, but unique, Digital Underground - The Humpty Dance

My old bro Gage turned me onto something totally cool with this episode of, Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

[video width="640" height="360" mp4="http://mustard-relics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Aqua-Teen-Hunger-Force-Backstage-with-Chickenfoot.mp4"][/video] He was the tour manager for uber rockstar super group, Chickenfoot at the time this episode was made. Gage is a bit cracked but he's a good egg. Actually he was a pretty important part of allowing me to look beyond the slavery of addiction. In case you don't know him, he's the voice (and there's a striking visual resemblance) of the fly towards the end of the episode.

Guess what, I had so much to say on this one, there's no point in trying to squeeze in a main band/record for this post. Next time. One thing I did want to say, that to me at this very moment more important than anything else, is the understanding that being a caring person is not all it's cracked up to be. It's so much easier not giving a shit.  Know what I mean?

Daggers Rule - Gleaming the 'Cuse 7"

As a thumbnail, this picture looks like nothing spectacular, an end of the day shot, on my shitty cell phone camera, taken from in the car on a dirt (shale) road, looking off into an early spring wheat field.   If you click on the image though you may get the surprise I got (maybe enlarge it once in case you still don't see it, my next phone is going to have a better camera in it).   Maybe not that spectacular to you but I dig that shit. Not a totally unusual occurrence, but when it does happen every once in a while I gotta stop and check them out till they take off.  The animals themselves are the perfect example of fight or flight. No telling when they're going to take flight and in which direction they'll head, in front of a car or off into the distance. Maybe sometimes not so different from people in that respect. Interesting because around here they're considered a nuisance as far as running into them and wrecking your vehicle.  At the same time people kill off coyotes, partly because they reduce the population and make it difficult for your average out of state drunk hunter to make his big kill with a 50x scope from 300 yards away.   In honor of my home state of Kansas I give you, Scorpions- Dust In The Wind (live) Love the original, actually saw Kansas in concert circa 1985.   Dude from the Scorpions really has a beautiful voice.  That tune goes out to Jay, who not only loves the Scorpions but gave me a bunk phone number.  I feel like a loser at a bar who asked some hottie for her phone number and got the number for the tranny hotline instead.  Actually Jay got me to put my dancing shoes on and turned me onto this, Motosierra - F.U.C.K Out of Uruguay and recently disbanded, unfortunately.  Some seriously rockin shit that I will be looking into and maybe picking up a 7" that I can post.  Stay tuned. Fucking anxiety is killing me with this new job starting pretty soon and when I get anxious I get a little psychotic. (Just a side note, repeated, frequent alcohol detox does damage to you psychologically. If you or someone you know needs to detox, go to a detox center, hospital or whatever, where they give you Dilantin or Librium, to not only make the detox smooth, but to keep you from killing yourself. A home remedy for that is Benadryl or Diphenhydramine).  As I said about the new job, same place, same people, a little more money and a lot more responsibility. I just don't do too hot with change.  You know when I was drunk 24/7, I could have given two shits about change or whatever kind of "difficult" situations I was confronted with, as long as when I started to get the shakes I had access to my liquor.  Nothing to hide behind anymore.  In some ways like living the lives of two separate people when you face life drunk all the time or not drunk at all. On a positive note, and I swear I will take my skipping record off the turntable with this one, but with my new job and modest raise, I will now be able to make a million $$$ in 39 years.  Actually I started working for a paycheck at 14, so after 27 years, according to my last Social Security statement, I have made around $300,000 in my lifetime.  That does not include all the under the table sprinkler systems, stump removal, garbage hauling and what not I've done over the years, and it definitely doesn't include the under the floor that's under the table stuff I've done that is, you know...illegal.  So at this pay rate and if you subtract the 300k I've already made, after another 27 years I will be making my first million.  I will be 68 years old but with smoking and the abuse of my mind and body in a variety of ways, I will be lucky to make it that long.  Lets hope they come up with a type of coffee that cures all your ailments. Don't really know too much about this Tea Party phenomenon, except that they a far far right mix of fascism, capitalism, consumerism and a militia (But like the word socialism that's getting bounced around here, who really knows what those words mean? If the right wing fundamental fanatics stopped to think about it, they'd see that there was a little socialism in the way Jesus lived. Oh, well.)  Really crazy, politically where this country is headed.  Seems like even in our status quo people are getting more and more extreme.  So much hypocrisy and it's gotten to the point where no one really cares about the facts.  I haven't investigated it too much, although it seems a little more positive than the Tea Party, there is now the Coffee Party. Anybody check them out? Just the name makes them cool. I was wanting to do a post featuring something that was relatively new (to me) and had recently picked up several records in a lot for dirt cheap. I knew nothing about any of the bands and I don't know what you do in those situations, but personally I went for what I thought had the coolest cover. This one by the Pallbearers, out of New Orleans, released in 1999, kind of fit the bill, so I simultaneously ripped and listened to it for the first time. Not bad shit, kind of reminded me of the Circle Jerks for some reason. I get the feeling that these guys are your standard drunk loser type of band, which I can relate to. Was doing some looking around to see if I could find any info on the band, and found out that you can still get this 7" from the label, even though it's now defunct at Transparent Records. You can find a lot more about them first hand from a local New Orleans type blog called NOLA 504 & More and get their more recent LPs, Sex Crime of the Century and Murder Capital there. Since you aught to support the label even though it's dead, I'll just give you my favorites, the last two songs on the record, Public Shitter Sitter (great song title) Lessening The Numbers Looking at the cover on this one, you should be able to tell be the method I spoke of earlier, why I played this one next. A band I know nothing about, Daggers Rule, out of Syracuse New York, only existed I guess from 2003 to 2005. This is a posthumous release from 2007. The name is a reference to the movie "Thrashin" which I've never seen. Released on Barbarossa Records, it's out of print, but you may be able to find one on some obscure distro...that is if you really want to. This is some alright stuff, especially when you consider I got it in a lot of 12 7"s for under $10 ppd for all of them. The first thing that came to mind when listening to it, is that the vocals are harsher than the music (something that could be said of Garden Weasel as well). At the same time I like the vocals and I like the music. On the tunes "Revelations" and "Pissing Out the Poison", my two favorite, that seems to be less of an issue. Not sure if they're a straightedge band, but like some us, the singer talks about, the inability to drink and drug productively and how his life is different. I don't know...it's taken me forever to get around to finishing this post, so that's enough for now. Never Deny Do Not Taunt Happy Funball All Joking Aside Revelations Anon-Issue Pissing Out The Poison You Choose Poorly