The Last Shout of Yet Another Rock Band: The surrounding mallspace changes with the commercial fortunes of Hollywood Blvd., but the Knitting Factory continues to take on a fine patina of rockist grunge. The Tinseltown Knit is the last great Boulevard rock joint and if Hollywood itself faded into a John Carpenter movie hellhole, this place would be its Al’s Bar. Subdivided by genre, the main room boomed with club kids while about a dozen bits of hipster jetsam crammed the tiny AlterKnit Lounge for the reputed last-ever show by the Horse Thieves. Lead guitarist Alex Maslansky confirmed the terminal status by mumbling something about “the last temptation of the Horse Thieves” before his band twinkletoed off into a twee-country that might be called “cowpop.” Their MySpace page shows them fairly deft hands at Cali country vaudeville in the ironic-distance mode. At this transit lounge for distracted hipsters, the trio sped through despite complaints about the sound and an audience standing around in the usual flat affect. Even at the clipped length of sets at the AlterKnit, the end couldn’t come soon enough, so I left as the last song came loading into the chute, with Maslansky’s elegant hawgleg grunt receding as I zigzagged down the corridor.

Castellari vs. Tarantino: From there, I felt like a bit of regenerative ultraviolence, so I legged toking over to one of the last screenings of Inglourious Basterds during its long stay at the Arclight. I was way behind seeing this partially because I wanted to screen the 1978 Enzo Castellari original first, a full-tilt basher that never played the Southern drive-in circuit or much of anywhere else in North America. Basterd kin to The Dirty Dozen, Cross of Iron and Kelly’s Heroes and chock with affectionate shoutouts to all three, Inglorious Bastards treats American participation in WW II like a big-budget proto-Burning Man party, complete with hippies, guns, designer explosions, naked Nazi chicks, rockin’ individualized uniforms and more fuck-you attitude than a fistful of middle fingers. This is very likely the only punk-sensible WW II movie, as almost all the characters are in cheerful rebellion against everything but dismantling the Third Reich, itself a kind of ultimate in bummer Authority. This sensibility resurfaces in Quentin Tarantino’s epic in Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine, a Tennessee hillbilly whose unstated-but-sufficient reason for hating Nazis is they’re such obvious and insufferable pricks. Basterds rebukes an entire substratum of WW II cinema of the 1950s-1970s that tended for Cold War reasons to “humanize” servants of the Third Reich; even Patton managed to make the Red Army look a lot less savory than the generic-looking Good Germans George C. Scott spent most of its runtime jawboning to death. The takeaway serves Q’s trademark sense of justice well—history too often fails to mark survivors with anywhere near the right degree of thoroughness.

Brief Dream of Decom: My experience of this 6th installment of Burning Man’s annual L.A. afterparty was short and full of wonder. A lady named Gypsy Goddess was visiting me that weekend and we took up where we left off when parting at Burning Man 2009. Consequently, we didn’t get out to the Cornfield (what the rest of the world calls Los Angeles State Historic Park in otherwise nondescript Naud Junction) on Saturday, until the hour was already well advanced. Decom has gone from a big outdoor art-party in the Warehouse District to a mini-BRC, with exhibits Patrick Shearn’s and Cynthia Washburn’s Holding Flame seeming to have the dust still on them. All the pals we saw looked to be recuperating, minds still blown and reeling from what everyone swears was a miraculous uber-Burn—seven days of bliss difficult to absorb even by the breakneck hedonics of the L.A. underground party set. I was informed my presence was required back in bed so we headed there, walking all the way back to Union Station as hippies and party folk streamed past us, their great glad Fellini smiles smearing the night like glowsticks. We were high by the time we passed through Olvera Street.

All Night Horrorthon: When the all-night horror marathon became part of U.S. culture, I don’t know, but the practice was already venerable and going full-blast in the South and Midwest of my youth. The surplus gross tonnage of horror/SF/giant-bug cinema produced from the sound-era on had already taken over Friday and Saturday night TV in most regions, with vintage flicker featuring Boris, Bela and Vincent buttressing the surreal slasher/cannibal/lesbian-vampire fests then unspooling at drive-ins. One of the best things about L.A. is that it hosts several such dead man’s parties every October, with the bill at the Aero on Halloween Night looking like prime slime for fans of Reagan/Bush I-era High Cheese. The New Beverly’s seven-feature hoedown on Oct. 10 showed the finicky hands of true gutbucket connoisseurs. Dog Soldiers (2002) is a nice U.K. howler about how well an out-on-maneuvers platoon of Her Majesty’s Own serve up as werewolf-feed. About a reel into The Burning (1981) came realization I’d seen this Friday the 13th knockoff back when it came out, but I stayed for every hack and gouge anyway. Future master-thespians Jason Alexander (sporting a riot of hair on his skull) and a pre-mummification Holly Hunter keep things moving, treating the between-slaughter bits as Catskills cabaret. This superior genre entry represents the first nickel Miramax’s Bob & Harvey Weinstein made in the biz and well-earned it was. After such slick popcult, nothing less than the high art of Lucio Fulci’s The House by the Cemetery (1981) would do. Among the most delirious of the late maestro’s films, the only difference between this and any academically recognized surrealist “transgressive” or avant-art masterpiece is the near-incidental horror claptrap of what passes for the plot. Few Ken Russell movies ever made the grindhouse/arthouse jump, but the ones that did (The Devils, Tommy, Altered States) all recall the balls-out gonzo Fulci applies here to the art of the body count. It ended with a flash of maggoty poetics well past the midnight hour and house lights went up on an almost-full room. The “surprise” movie turned out to be rare episodes of Tales from the Crypt, so I took a long, quiet walk around Hancock Park, toked up a monsteroso indica buzz and settled back in time for opening credits of Superstition (1982). A little-screened modern-witchcraft wheeze with many longueurs, a few interesting arty pretensions and scads of stylish murders, end credits flapped at about 4:30 a.m. and Fight for Your Life (1977) cranked up moments after. I’d read of this storied shock-morality fable and theatre management warned us of it in vague but emphatic terms many hours before. Nearly everyone around me was gently snoring when this worn print of the event’s oldest, cheapest movie started clattering. Its plot details an interval of rape and brutalization inflicted in the far suburbs on a peace-loving African American family by three maniacs—all gross racial stereotypes including an indolent Latin, a rape-crazy Asian and a windy, psychotic Southern redneck. The latter is a tour-de-force acting job by none other than William Sanderson, the backwoods idiot on Newhart with the two brothers Darryl. Nearly everyone in the movie is a voluble bigot and all own their hatreds lovingly at top volume, spacing bouts of low-budget Salo-like sadism with a kind of verbal violence that tends to make Angelenos of all ethnicities exceedingly nervous. The adenoidal sawing in the seats abruptly choked off and tight uneasy laughter welled up as one over-the-top offense to human decency chased another in a movie perhaps best described as a Last House on the Left for racists. Worse, as very likely the only authentic hillbilly in the house, I got a sudden, immersive sense-memory (total props to the brilliant Sanderson) of what old-school rednecks were like back in that long-gone day. The recollections thus let loose sent several nightmares back-projecting in my own mind, pulling me home to Gothic Dixie as the film clattered on in front of me. The abused family was about to take revenge and, from the far back, I could see heads beginning to sink and disappear below seat level when my (muted) cell throbbed and I bolted outside. At the other end was a tiny, tender voice calling from Caracas, where it was already mid-morning and all she wanted was for me to be careful going home tonight in crazy L.A. Thanks, baby. I incinerated the last shavings in my weed pipe before finally resorting to shrooms, the preliminary buzz of which hit sometime in the second reel of Galaxy of Terror (1981), last in the marathon. As pretty much your basic early-1980s Roger Corman B-movie, this welter of space-opera clichés sports nothing worse than a woman being raped to death by a giant slug. Sick. Featuring astoundingly weird acting (from Sid Haig, Ray Walston, Robert “Freddy Kreuger” Englund, Joanie from Happy Days and the stickwood son of Oliver from Green Acres) and dialogue even H. Beam Piper would reject as too unlike human speech, it was the kind of flick a roomful of semi-strangers could bond over and did. There was a Tom & Jerry cartoon afterwards, followed by an old TV sign-off message as a Soviet-looking ordnance parade rolled by to the tune of “The Star Spangled Banner.” As I slipped out the lobby for home, there was still a swarm of dazed and happy folks on the pavement outside, all of them wisely unwilling to leave this 12-hour temporary community for the slate-grey of another midtown Sunday morning.

Cali Countryfolk and Woes of a Cub Rockcrit: Outgoing L.A. RECORD photog and writer Scott Schultz says I’m “an L.A. institution” and I hope that’s not one of the reasons he’s off to photograph rock bands in China for a year. He cites the rotten economy and that’s certainly plainly visible in the local scene, as veterans like Scott are vanishing in favor of kids who’d be making bones elsewhere in the literary underground had not 1) the L.A. music scene blown up as it has in the past half-decade and 2) the economy hadn’t (symmetrically) imploded, making the reaches of urban deep-innerspace suddenly attractive as a Subject. Most of the local music writers around when I got my first rockcrit job a decade ago couldn’t be bothered with live music and almost all are now gone, replaced by striplings doing something remarkably close to what I did when starting out. A scheduling bump with the RECORD struck my name from the list at the “secret” Flaming Lips-o-palooza at the Montalban last Thursday, Oct. 15th, so Scott got to cover that and I wound up at the Echoplex instead, getting the joy of seeing one of L.A.’s wondrous little surprises, He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister. Cali country is something I love with the fervor of a late convert, since even Buck Owens was little more than some jackass on TV until I moved my Dixie-fried ears out here for an accidental steeping in the Bakersfield Sound and its many variants. Robert Kolar and Felipe Ceballos from tough indie wide-boys Lemon Sun contribute heavily to Brother/Sister, with the whole, shifting, multi-piece concatenation in the great line of Gram Rabbit and the Parson Red Heads in the insistence on coupling the High with the Lonesome. The Lemon Sun songcraft is certainly there, with harmonies and filigree from Rachel Kolar, Lauren Brown, Robby Delosier, Molly Collins and more making the crowd-lonely poetics of the genre sound fresh, even sociable. I snagged one of their 3-song EPs outside as fellow RECORD scribe Steve Slaughter from Cigarette Bums unloaded upon my geezer’s shoulders a doleful and familiar blues—bumped off guest lists, girlfriend logistics, erratic hours; the usual sleepless days and wasted nights. Steve, who made notes of everything and had even brought a tape recorder (something I’d quit doing years ago), longed for an exclusive on Devil Makes Three, and got one by my simple expedient of slowly walking out the door into the Echo Park night. He was happily interviewing one of the members of Brother/Sister as I went back inside for a linger before Old Man Markley. This passel of root-tooters were fresh from a gig at Brick by Brick, an oldtime San Diego dive I’m overjoyed to hear is still open. This unsigned gang of owlhoots packs a heavy reliance on trad instrumentation (banjo, kazoo, washboard) along with trainwhistle harmonies and a hellcat’s freight of regret. The place was full of tattooed girls and urbane cowboys already, like some peyote dream of Hoot Gibson, who used to shoot movies about four miles from here in some other America altogether.

—Ron Garmon

(from Rent Party on Sympathy For The Record Industry)

Walter Lure was with the Heartbreakers during everything that would later become history—L.A.M.F., the Anarchy tour with the Sex Pistols and Live At Max’s and whatever else it says in Please Kill Me, which he hasn’t read. He speaks now before performing at the Knitting Factory with his band the Waldos. This interview by Daniel Clodfelter.

How to you get asked to play guitar for the Heartbreakers?
[My earlier band] the Demons were the lucky contact for me. You see, the singer of the Demons—Elliot—was a friend of the Dolls. I think he was actually their drug dealer! Elliot was looking for a band and it just turned out that we wound up sharing the Dolls’ rehearsal space. I would run into the Dolls from time to time—I had sort of known the Dolls, not personally, but since they were playing New York a lot I knew who they were. But then we started chatting, and Johnny came down to one of the Demons shows—I think it was our first gig at the 82 Club. You see, Johnny was always a sneaky little fuck—he pulls me over to the side and asked me if I wanted to join the band and my eyes just lit up! And I said, ‘Yeah, sure. Why not?’ But that was Johnny—he was probably out of his mind or whatever. Just putting the bug out there. Then a few months passed and I hadn’t heard anything until that gig the Demons played with them at the pub in Queens. There was hardly anyone there and we were just sitting around and Jerry pulled me aside and asked, ‘Do you like any of the Heartbreaker songs at all?’ ‘Yeah, I love ‘em.’ ‘Well, I think we want you to play.’ And that was it. I didn’t even know they were even thinking about me since it had been months. Soon after we started rehearsing and I was in the band.
How was it working with Johnny, Jerry, and Richard with their drug habits and conflicting egos? I know it led to Richard Hell leaving the band somewhat early on.
Richard leaving the band had more to do with ego than drugs. It was definitely challenging, since I was the new kid on the block. Johnny and Jerry were from the Dolls and they had the credibility—‘street cred,’ if you want—from that, and Richard had also been around. He already had the one song ‘Blank Generation.’ It was a great combination but they just needed another guitar player to hold it all together. And that’s what I was there for. I didn’t have any musical credentials like they all did. The ego battle was mostly Johnny versus Richard, with Jerry sort of playing the middle but mostly staying on Johnny’s side. Hell was sort of funny in the beginning because he all these wacky lyrics that made everyone laugh—you know, they were all junkies so they all had the same sort of humor—but that changed as time went on. It was a good combination. It was rock—the Hell songs were just sort of wimpy without a rock band behind him, and he added that sort of ‘Blank Generation’ element to the Heartbreakers stuff. A lot of people already had an idea of Johnny and Jerry, since they had already been around in the Dolls. It’s funny since there was only like a two- or three-year difference between the older generation and us, and there was a sort of a credibility gap. So the combination of Hell, who was sort of the newer wave, with Johnny and Jerry, who were more part of the tail end of glam, worked well. As much as I loved the Dolls—they wore some fucked-up clothes!—they were more of a transition between the glam and what became the punk scene. The actually brought the rock ‘n’ roll back to the forefront as opposed to the orchestral shit that was consuming everything before. I guess for that you could call them the godfathers of punk. That’s where the whole scene started—from them—but they weren’t really afforded the recognition.
You mentioned that Richard Hell was better when backed by a rock ‘n’ roll band—what was your impression of the Voidoids and his albums with them?
Let me start by saying that I remained good friends with them over the years and we still are friends. So I’m not going to say that I didn’t like it, but it didn’t have the same edge. For my own personal taste I tend to like rock more than clanky noises. They just didn’t have the same punch to it compared to with the Heartbreakers. For instance, ‘Love Comes in Spurts’ doesn’t even come close to ‘One Track Mind,’ which I wrote the music to and Hell added the lyrics over it—and once he left I just changed up the lyrics. [The Voidoids] didn’t have the same feel, but I’m sure he didn’t want it to be the same. They didn’t play the music like we did—which was more rock—but Hell didn’t necessarily want that. He had it with the Heartbreakers but he didn’t have to have it. He tried to do it on his own terms, but I don’t think that any of those songs have any sort of lasting power compared to what we had with the Heartbreakers.
After Hell left, you and Johnny Thunders were the main songwriters of the Heartbreakers—what was it like writing with him?
I didn’t really write anything with Johnny. Johnny would just show up to the rehearsal studio with a song and we’d just work on it. He was always running around really high. It was hard to hold a conversation with him—same with Dee Dee Ramone. You couldn’t really get a word in—at least that was my experience. However, I did write a few with Jerry. Jerry would have a guitar riff or chord progression and we’d play along and I would finish off the words or what not. With John, the only song we actually worked together on was ‘London Boys.’ I deliberately structured the music to sound like a Sex Pistols song and Johnny wanted to write the lyrics. The other ones, like ‘(Too Much) Junkie Business’—Johnny would just stick his name on it years later because he liked it so much and he wished he’d wrote it, even though I actually had.
The Heartbreakers—along with the Sex Pistols and the Clash—became part of the British Anarchy tour in 1976 that introduced the masses to punk rock. What are your most vivid memories from that tour?
The lack of gigs! It might have exposed British kids to our New York punk, but they already had their own type of punk before we got there. We didn’t realize until we got there how big it actually was—it was much bigger over there than in New York and the States. It was already mainstream over there, as opposed to still being underground here. And it was a different version as well. I thought the Sex Pistols were the best band I had seen in ages, and being on tour with them—it was great! And the Clash! The Damned didn’t really tour with us—they maybe played one or two shows. We all got along pretty well and everyone was still pretty innocent to a point—less egos involved. They were all in awe of Johnny and Jerry since the Dolls were basically their inspiration. Those were some of the best times! I’ve told this story about a hundred times—about being outside a theatre in Wales and the local priest and a bunch of parents were in a parking lot across the street with loud speakers and megaphones saying, ‘Tell your kids not to go into the theatre because the devil’s inside!’ while praying and waving bibles at us. We were all looking at the people like it was hilarious, and there were still all these kids inside the theatre.
On your website it says that after the Heartbreakers you worked the Ramones for a little bit—on Subterranean Jungle and Too Tough to Die. What was your role on those albums?
If you look at those albums on the record sleeves, hidden some place buried in a corner it says ‘special thanks to Walter Lure.’ I played the solos and guitar work on a lot of the stuff. On Subterranean Jungle, I played on every song. The next one, which I was think was Too Tough to Die, I played on like half of that. The one after that, Animal Boy, I played on like two or three songs. They were looking for something—a different sound—trying to get a hit record. They were popular but they weren’t making a lot of money—they made most their money touring and stuff. So they tried to do other things. Phil Spector and so on. Then they decided to get another guitar player and they asked me.
Did you ever play live with them or was it strictly studio stuff?
Just studio stuff. Johnny [Ramone] didn’t want people to know that he didn’t play all the songs—that’s why they didn’t really give me credit on the albums. Even live, they’d have their roadie do all the solos playing backstage on a milk crate. Johnny didn’t really want people to know that he couldn’t play that kind of guitar. He played his own thing but he had some sort of image issue. Not that it really made any difference because he had his own style.
What was your reaction to the passing of Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan in the early 1990s?
It was weird. It’s always a shock when you hear it, but Johnny was due for years—he was just going deeper and deeper. He just couldn’t get out of that whole drug syndrome. I remember when we were doing the Heartbreakers reunion in I guess November 1990. We had done a couple of rehearsals and it was Jerry, Johnny, myself and this guy Tony on bass. We’d be rehearsing, and Jerry’s calm now—he’d been on methadone for like 20 years. But Johnny was still running off every twenty minutes to do a shot or whatever. We had all gotten past the whole drug thing but Johnny was still going. When I heard it, it was still a shock, but I can’t say it was unexpected. With Jerry, he had a stroke and was in the hospital and I had a feeling he wasn’t going to come out of it. I went to visit him at one point and he was just a body lying on a bed with tubes running though him. They’re buried about twenty feet from each other in a cemetery in Queens.
You’re now playing with the Waldos—a band named after yourself which you’ve been doing for the past 20 years or so.
It was just me playing around New York getting people to play together with. There have been several incarnations as several people have died over the years. We did the CD in 1993, then Tony got sick and died in 1995 and I was ready to give it up because too many people were dying on me. Then we got asked to do a couple of shows at the Continental—a few nights as the Waldos and then a few as the Lures, and then there were these Japanese kids who were fans and came over with their own band and set up some shows. Then also the guitar player from Sonic Youth set up a few shows with us, and then it has become what it is now—with the two Japanese kids and Joe on drums. This has actually been the longest standing version, since like 1996 or 1995. It hasn’t changed much since—no one’s dropped dead on me for a while.

WALTER LURE AND THE WALDOS WITH THE STITCHES AND KEVIN K AND THE HITZ ON THU., AUG. 27, AT THE KNITTING FACTORY, 7021 HOLLYWOOD BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 8PM / $10-$12 / ALL AGES. LA.KNITTINGFACTORY.COM. VISIT WALTER LURE AT MYSPACE.COM/LUREWALTER.

L.A. Times reports that Hollywood’s Knitting Factory—which the Times says spent $200,000 wrangling with city permits almost exactly a year ago—will not seek to renew its lease at its current Hollywood Boulevard location once it expires this October 31. Company CEO Morgan Margolis told the Times he is considering other L.A.-area locations, however:

Margolis said he’s been aiming to leave Hollywood since before the struggle to keep his permit began. “I’ve been looking two years now for the right space,” he said. “I’m looking all over — downtown, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, North Hollywood, Studio City. I’ve looked as far as Alhambra.

“I don’t want the community to think that the Knitting Factory is done in Los Angeles,” Margolis said. ”I’m looking, and have a couple deals on the table. If one of these goes through, there may be a full-on lateral move and no shutdown. It may just be a week or two changeover.”

But before anyone gets too optimistic, he adds, “Or it could be a year.”

Shows scheduled this fall should proceed normally until the lease is up. More info from the Times here.

A Little Night Orgy: Kim Fowley once famously recommended Hollywood as a place for the cynical who’ve fouled their nests elsewhere. While it’s impossible not to marvel at the agglomeration of shitheels hoofing it in this basin, few can remain cynical around the fellow’s female entourage, most of which were running rampant at his Lipstick Orgy extravaganza at the Knit last Wednesday, the 20th. The tall and glowering host, father of a hundred chart hits across the decades and busy these days as ever, left briefing details to Christie Blood, the entirely delightful mistress-of-ceremonies for further cozening. Fowley’s shows always remind me of mid-1960s A.I. P. joint Dr. Goldfoot & the Bikini Machine, in which Vincent Price attempts to conquer the world with an elite force of pulchritudinous chickbots molded to every kink in ruling-class chauvinistic taste. On the bill were Beat Killers, the Fabulous Miss Wendy and Zombelle, the latter a lone gothgirl performing “blasphemous doo-wop.” Scattered around the venue were scene-folk I’ve been tripping over for years in one likely venue or other, names less familiar than the same old faces grinning atop ever-gaudier hipster-wear. Anon came Fowley, laying on a little of his Crazy White Man improvisatory chant-rock, followed by lots of lascivious q&a with a nubile self-admitted virgin. I left before the lesbian slave auction, chary of taking on yet another commitment known to be wearing in the extreme.

Another Friday, Another Raid: Aesthetes of the post-noir hardboiled crime movie show too little love for Michael Winner’s The Mechanic, a nifty 1972 bit of hitman agonistes featuring an uneasy male bond between Charlie Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent —the verbose likes of David Mamet might well have given both nuts to author. This marvel was somewhere into its fourth reel at the New Bev the following Friday night when a text bade me meet various L.A. RECORDers at a downtown speakeasy. I hauled myself away from Mr. Majestyk and passed on a planned after-movie inquiry into just how the pluperfect fuck a tiny storefront like Echo Curio was going to get away with a performance by killer hodads Double Naught Spy Car with anything short of structural damage. (Accounts from survivors are welcome and should be appended below.) While we await reports, I can only relate this upstairs eyrie throbbed with some stupendously DJ’d hip-hop in the very few minutes my arrival preceded that of the Fire Department and grim-looking LAPD officers. Sight of the taxpayer-funded mold and spit of Kevin Tighe, Randolph Mantooth and the two zombies from Adam-12 putting an end to my night was anything but new to me. I thought the full helmeted regalia on the firemen a bit hammy, as was the big red LAFD engine flashing and howling down Broadway. As we left, cops were detaining the doorman. It had the exact feel of a clownshow staged for tourists, like Yakov Smirnoff’s run in The Producers, still with two weeks left at the William Castle Dinner Theatre in scenic East WeHo.

Red Lightning: Cynics might ask what anyone expects might come of running an unlicensed party in more-or-less plain sight downtown. Well, the habits of J.Q. Law are scarcely inscrutable either and his minions insert themselves into the damnedest contexts, like in the form of Sheriff’s deputies answering a noise call at the Red Lightning Temple fundraiser last Saturday night. The cause for jollification is construction of a huge and stupefying interactive art project for Burning Man 2009 involving the Tesla coil that merrily spat at passersby in the chill space. Things were just as frisky on the dance floor and in the Jacuzzi (where you really get to know your neighbor), as both were wracked by the action-adventure DJ pulsations of FatFinger, Jesse Wright and many more. Held at a onetime cowboy-music recording studio nestled high in some remote Malibu canyon, this marathon event was all but over by the time the noise complaint hastened on the chill portion of the program. That’s as far as the bad vibes went, Burner point-people being arch conflict-resolutionists. The near-impossibility of getting a fire engine out that way on a night not illumined by total incineration no doubt figured into their calculations. Needless to say, it was a first-rate party.

March Fourth into Memorial Day: Sunday was for sleeping late and a bit of the old groan-and-creak as my morning pot of coffee stretched into the late afternoon. The evening was already far advanced by the time I wandered onto a rowdy Whittier Boulevard, spiffy in purple ruffles and black velvet, to totter in an oncoming cubensis haze to Soto Street, where I met a number of chummy fellows eager to sell me cigarettes or buy my lighter. The 251 bus dropped me a fine stretch of the legs from SmashLabs, a longtime underground partypad situated in a neighborhood with close to no bipedal activity at this hour. The soundproofing is so good I didn’t hear the blistering hullabaloo that is March Fourth Marching Band. This Portland mishigas has been a favorite of mine since their lunatic Fellini parade through the campgrounds on Saturday afternoon of Lightning in a Boittle 2007. They’ve matured into a kind of Romilar-based version of the Bar-Kays, all loopy soul-horns and disco-squawk. It went on and on, the band up way into afterhours before some fairgrounds gig or other. DJ Wolfie led the dancefloor capers and I dallied long, chatting with charming ladies in this bastion of the old pre-hassle days, when a lone hillbilly had room to maneuver.

—Ron Garmon

Grumpiness takes over too easily on most Monday evenings, but after seeing the parade of kids with Mohawks all clad in black, a pure energy set in. We got there during Municipal Waste. From afar, it sounded like Anthrax and I was thrown back to the time when my life changed from Def Leppard to the dark side.

Neurotoxin played really fast and did an amazing Slayer cover. I think that Nighthorse was yelled at for playing “jazz,” though it was blues-inspired jam-rock. There were a few blank spots between the stages, and PBRs, too. Dr. Know reminded me of the reaches of Nardcore–even to the far mid-east-west of Ohio. They stirred the pit with dancing and stage diving far beyond what I’ve ever seen in L.A. at any “adult” rock show. And the memory picks up again at Crom; they’re always great–even with shirts on their bodies. But the big present under the tree was Annihilation Time.

The kids rolled into the small stage area like a high tide. As the band was setting up, the energy rose. Once they kicked off their set, I think that the band was even surprised by the enthusiasm of the crowd. Annihilation Time: the best band ever now.

I was so drunk with Annihilation Time’s power that I missed the headliners Municipal Waste. This fall, vote for rock ‘n’ roll–it seems to be the only thing that really matters all the sudden.

– Rita Kassak

Alan and Richard Bishop are touring this summer as the Brothers Unconnected to honor Charles Gocher, who passed away last year, and the music they made with him as Sun City Girls.  This may be the last chance to hear Sun City Girls’ songs played live by the surviving members so see them in San Diego or Santa Cruz if you missed their show at Echoplex last month.

The show began with a forty-minute video showcasing some of Charles Gocher’s experimental films.  One of the highlights being Charles Gocher jamming with a television playing a recording of him playing another instrument with a television behind the second generation Gocher showing yet another Gocher playing another instrument, creating a kind of M.C. Escher visual effect and a mournful drone.  His videos explore the potential of what one man can do with a camera, their uninhibited exploration putting all those YouTube bloggers to shame.

When the Bishops took the stage and sat down, I found that I couldn’t see a thing (and I’m six feet tall).  I could see only one brother at a time by twisting and craning my neck.  I finally found a spot on the mezzanine where I could see Richard and part of Alan’s right hand.  But where the Knitting Factory lacks in choice vantage points, it makes up for in sound fidelity.  For only two guitars and two voices, they had a rich and full sound.

They tear into an acoustic “greatest hits” set.  A dozen songs in, Alan Bishop gets up to restring Sir Richard’s guitar for the third time.  “If it wasn’t for my guitar tech here,” Richard says of his brother, “We’d be playing one string attached to a stick. It’d probably be cooler but only ten people would show up.”  But thanks to Alan’s technical skills, not to mention the fifty-some albums Sun City Girls have released over the past few decades, the brothers played to a full house at the Knitting Factory, which for this small venue couldn’t hold much more than ten people anyway.

Richard stood only to bless the audience with a handful of cocaine that he ceremoniously rubbed onto the heads of the lucky few in the front row (my friend who had spent the last six months in Bolivian coke dens nearly jumped off the balcony).  Amid the hits they read some of Charles Gocher’s hilarious poetry: “Flesh Balloons of Tibet,” “Encyclopedia Vomit” and  “Aristocrats of Impertinence.” It was over all too soon but I bought the Brothers Unconnected tour CD as a memento (and is an excellent acoustic recording of the songs they have been playing on tour).

— Jon Hustad

Blowfly “Sesame Street”

Blowfly is one of the original shit-talking recordings artists with an X-rated career dating back almost forty years. Blowfly’s tour manager explained before this interview: “Ask him specific questions. He will interview himself if he can.” He speaks now to Rebecca Balin about her mother.

Blowfly’s Voice Mail: It’s a weird world robotic and I’m your one-way ticket straight to pussy hell. Go ahead leave a message if you dare…
Blowfly: Hi, baby.
Do you mind giving me a visual of your surroundings?
I’m at the Highlight. That’s a game that they’ve been playing for years since the ’20s and you bet on it. It’s kinda weird. If you come down here, I’ll show it to you.
Do you constantly wear your costume? Are you wearing your mask right now?
It started way back… Well, first of all, I was born in Cochran, Georgia, in a house where thirteen babies had been born in it, black and white. My mother was married when she was 16 and I was born when she was 18. So they were telling her that this baby may not survive. So after four months old most babies say their first word, and I said my first word which was “nasty,” because I liked fried okra and they gave me boiled okra. And my grandmother spanked me.
What?
Okra. Girl, you know I don’t like boiled okra. White women smelt like billy goats and black women smelled like fish, and I hated fish. I never eat fish, seafood, or chicken. I thought it was weird. So at four months I said my first word which was “nasty” and I was walking at six months…
I’m just confused as to how all the pussy and fish and the okra relates to your Blowfly costume.
Oh, I was just sayin’ as a baby they give you milk which means I was skinny cause I never liked milk, and it was kind of weird that my mother… (mumbles something)… But yeah most babies at four months they just go “wah wah wah” and I said “nasty” cause I don’t like boiled okra cause it’s stringing and slimy.
So okra was your first word?
No, “assty.” My grandmother tried to correct me and said, “No, baby, not ‘assty’—‘nasty.’” Because the okra looks like something that came out the ass. Of course she spanked me at four months and at six months or seven months I was walkin’, and I was talkin’ all kinds of shit then.
My first word was “Hello”.
Ha, ha—that’s nice. I went to school—I was a little kid and white girls loved me because I keep them laughin’. I would sing ‘Walkin’ The Floor Over You’ and of course I would change it to ‘I’m Jerkin My Dick Over You.’ And the white people would crack up. ‘Yes, Minnie Pearl?’ ‘Do you love me?’
‘Minnie, if you knew what I was doin’ now, you’d know I love you.’ ‘Well, what are you doin?’ ‘I’m lookin’ at your picture and I’m jerkin my dick over you—I jerk it until it’s black and blue—I’m jerkin my dick over you.’ White people just crack up—they love that. And I was five years old.
That whole story took place while you were five?
Yeah.
Do you think one of the main reasons that you are such a sensual being is because you were born on St. Valentine’s Day?
I think so. My mother was only 18 and the black and white people ring the bell at 12 o’clock for all the workers, black and white, to come out of the field and eat. And the bell was ringing when I came out my mother’s womb and they said I was laughin’. This granny lady came out and said, “Oh lord, he’s laughin? He’s from Satan.” Movin’ on up at seven years old my granddaddy passed. My mother had moved to Miami and I was in Georgia and I’m seven years old and my granddaddy died of cancer and the white people said, ‘We gonna have to throw you off the field, and give you six months to find another place to live cause there’s nobody that can work.’ I said, ‘Sir, I can work.’ And he said, ‘Now get yo’ lil’ nigga ass over there and sit down.’ So I started and they let us stay on the field… And the blacks ain’t making more than a dollar a day and if you’re a good worker you’re making $2 a day. I would go home with about $18 or $19 and my grandmother thought I was stealin’ and the white people came down and said, ‘Cindy, Clarence is not stealing the money.’ ‘Well how is he getting all this money?’ ‘Because he sings us these songs.’ And one day my grandmother found out what I was singing and she said, ‘You’re the most disgusting thing ever—look at you. You’re a disgrace to the black race and you’re no better than a blowfly.’
I don’t mean to cut you short but you’re telling me stuff that I already read. I am seeking the Exclusive Blowfly Interview.
I didn’t know what a blowfly was. Since some nice girl—my favorite one was Nelma Cross. She was born Valentine’s Day at twelve noon like me. She was about six years older than me, and she said ‘Junior?’ and I said ‘Yes?’ ‘You know what a blowfly is?’ I said ‘No.’ ‘Promise me you won’t get mad?’ I said, ‘I won’t get mad—I’m the world’s baddest nigga.’ She said, ‘A blowfly is a black and white and green and yella insect that lays on dead things and turns into maggots.’ Now I started to cry. She said, ‘I’m sorry I told you, but there’s a good side.’ And I said, “’How could there be a good side?’ She said ‘When the comets fall out of the sky and struck the earth, and killed all the dinosaurs,’ which they did, ‘life would never evolve, except blowflys came and laid eggs on the dead things that turn into maggots, and those maggots ate the germs up.’ And I start laughin’ and she says, ‘Oh my God, you ain’t gonna call yourself Blowfly, are you?’ And I said, ‘Yes. I am gonna call myself Blowfly.’ Do you remember a group called Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys?
No, I’m not familiar with them.
Yo’ mama or your dad would. I could yodel back then. The white boys—they’d be the one to go see Bob Wills. And they took me and Bob said ‘What do we have here?’ And they said, ‘This is Junior.’ ‘Well, hi Junior.’ And then I said, ‘Your name isn’t Bob Wills—it’s Bob Jill and those are the Texas Gay Boys.’ I call them gay because they could be broke, hungry, and cold, and they just be happy. So that’s how I got started. He must have given me like $40 or $50 ‘cause I kept him laughin’. By now my Grandma was got use to it. Now all of this is true. It can be checked.
Wait, I have some questions for you. I’m sure you’ve partied till the sun came up. You want to share a story about one of your crazy all nighters?
I’ve had some parties but I never drink or use drugs. So they’d be at those parties and I never drank or nothin’ like that. My friend Mike told me if I cleaned up after his parties for three months he’d let me do a free recording session. When I recorded ‘Rap Dirty’ it came out in Germany and I noticed if a guy has five girlfriends they call him a lover. A Casanova. And if you dated two men at once you were called a whore. I couldn’t understand it. So I came up with ‘Girls, You Can’t Do What The Guys Do’ and that’s how Blowfly got started. And then I still got a whole bunch of stuff you’re missing with 2 Live Crew. I was on the road and he was at this place and there was this song called ‘Rhinestone Cowboy.’ It’s not ‘Rhinestone Cowboy.’ Well, what is it? It’s ‘Rhinestone Black Dick.’
Are you serenading me, Blowfly?
They said ‘Why is Blowfly getting stuff from Wille Nelson?’ I was this redneck boy getting stuff to Fishbone and Red Hot Chili Peppers. And they say, ‘Clarence, Wille don’t like it…’ I said, ‘I ain’t recording this if Wille is gonna get pissed off.’ I said, ‘Give me a picture of Wille.’ And the picture they got was a picture of him on stage playing his guitar pointing at some white girls. I said, ‘You’re pointing at her butt.’ ‘I’m not but what if I was?’ I said, ‘I betcha singing “On The Road Again.”’ I just lucked out—that’s what he was singing. ‘What the fuck are you talkin’ about?’ I said, ‘You’re pointing at some white girl’s butt and singing “On the road again—I can’t wait to get on that road again, back on that highway with all the turns I’ve ever been…’ He just started cracking up. So how long have you been doing this dirty shit? Well, the first rap record I recorded was in the 50s and it was a record called…
Wait? Did you just ask yourself a question? You’re making my job easy.
Yeah?
Have you ever partied with Rick James?
Yeah. I knew him personally. I got this thing I got to explain this to you about. I’m religious. But I got this thing against ordained ministers having a record worse than the people they prayin’ for… Rick James didn’t steal from MC Hammer. Sampling is like raping somebody. I take your body and do whatever the fuck I want with it. [tape gap] And I said to her ‘Terrorists are bad, right?’ ‘Oh, they’re horrible. They beat up people.’ I said ‘That ain’t shit—they copy cats.’ ‘Whatcha mean?’ ‘John The Baptist in the Bible got his head cut off and served on a silver platter cause he wouldn’t fuck a dancer mothafucka!’
How is your music received in Europe?
I had a record I had out in 1980—When I Become President—and I had this song ‘First Black President’ and I ended up doing shit with my secretary, Miss Clit—what I called her. After that it was a coincidence that President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky did the same shit that I had on my record. It’s a coincidence, but the Germans thought that they copied me. And they don’t like nigger presidents and I was a nigger president and all that kind of shit. They loved that song. That’s why I’m so big in Germany. And they tell me, ‘What about Obama?’ And I say, ‘Well, he lives up to his name. He’s a fucking bomb.’ They want us to be comfortable with black and white, young and old, straight, gay and bi—Hillary’s the one to do it. He has ties to outside terrorists and if he becomes presidents a lot of scumbags ain’t gonna have no problem getting into America.
Did you ever take your mother or grandmother to Europe?
Well, my grandmother passed a few years ago, and I told my mother I wanted to take her but she’s kind of religious and she’d miss doing a lot of her praying out here. That reminds me of something. The preacher comes around and says to my mother, ‘Why don’t you do something about your scumbag son?’ My mother said, ‘I presume you’re talking about Blowfly?’ ‘Yes.’ My mother said, ‘Now let me see if I got this right. I got six sons. Who finished school, finished college, and played professional football.’ The preacher said, ‘Well, that’s great.’ Mother said, ‘No, it ain’t. They either dead or in prison because of drugs. Blowfly never drank, or smoked, or used drugs in his life. And you all want me to pray for him?’
I was doing some research and I noticed you also have some recordings under your birth name Clarence Reid. I feel it’s still very provocative but a little more wordy and clever.
A lot of people still don’t know of Clarence Reid and The Blowflys. In 1969 I had one of the biggest records in the country under Clarence Reid—‘I’m Doing My Thing For Nobody But You Babe.’ We were gonna get sued from the song ‘It’s Your Thing (Do What You Want To Do.)” That came out in about ’68, and mine… How could they sue me for stealing ‘Nobody But You’ for ‘It’s Your Thing’ in 1968 when I recorded mine on a two track in 1964? So I played the tape for them. In the early 60s Jackie Wilson—we called him ‘Pretty Boy.’ Women went crazy for him. He was on the James Brown show in Tampa, Florida—this is the truth—and for the first time he didn’t make any money. And he said ‘I can’t make the money you’re making if I’m a guest on your show.’ So he was a guest, and he got into it with James Brown. James said, ‘Hold up, I’m not talking to you, little punk.’ James Brown made some pretty good music. But yea—the 60s here, that was the key. He was big on blacks but he needed just to catch on the whites. He was on The Ed Sullivan Show. The first time James wasn’t the star. Some of your friends were. Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, and the Rolling Stones. And it was the first time I heard the words old school. James said, ‘Nobody wants to hear this old school shit—“Please, Please, Please”’
Here we have modern top-40 rap music today and here you are, the king of explicit content. What’s your take on rap music today?
I love you for asking this. You won’t believe the interviews I do. Millions of them and I’m not lying. You’re the first one that asked me that. And it’s because all rap music today is not rap. And they say ‘Well, Blowfly you started rap.’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t start rap. Rap goes back to 1943. Those hillbilly records—they didn’t call it rap then. They called it close-talkin’.’ These days what rappers call rap is not rap. It goes back to Africa—the Swahili tribe, and that’s not rap. That’s chanting. Gun fire, that’s rapping fire. They ain’t rappin’—they’re chantin’.
Do you want to tell us a bit about your upcoming records?
We got about two or three of them. Talking Dirty, Hard Rock and two live albums. One from Australia and one from Germany and some of those are burnin’ pussy. Before we leave I’m gonna put a curse on you.
Don’t you dare!
Heepers, jeepers—
Wait! Wait! Wait! No curses allowed. No curses.
—You’ll have a little baby before this time next year. Over the mountains and over the sea, it will be pretty like you, but talk shit like me. When it come out of your womb it will leave the doctor’s hands bloody. When it looks at you it will say, ‘What the fuck is up, Mommay!’
Don’t put a curse on me and tell me I’m going to have a baby. If I end up having a baby next year because of your curse, I’m naming him Clarence. I’m naming after you, Blowfly, and I’m telling everyone you’re the daddy!
I’ll be the only one who will ever be able to get along with him.
You better take him fishing and pay your dues.
I’d glad to be his god dad. Whoever he is, whenever you have a kid. Don’t worry. Since you don’t want the curse I got to do it like this. ‘Witches sneeze and they cough, your beautiful womanhood is back on, the Blowfly having a baby curse is off… even though I wanted it to stay on.’
Thank you so much for the interview.
Hey, yo’ momma still around?
Yes, she is.
What’s her name?
Her name is Rochelle.
What horoscope sign is she?
She’s a Taurus.
To Rochelle—you are Taurus the bull, as evil as a bull, as strong as a bull, and between your legs you smell like a bull… your daughter made me and said it was, Rochelle! Ha ha ha!

BLOWFLY (WITH NORWOOD FROM FISHBONE) WITH ANTISEEN, ANGUS KHAN AND SUCKER STAR ON THUR., MAY 15, AT THE KNITTING FACTORY, 7021 HOLLYWOOD BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 8 PM / $15 / ALL AGES. KNITTINGFACTORY.COM. VISIT BLOWFLY AT BLOWFLYMUSIC.COM.

Jucifer “Henin Hardine”

The first time I saw Jucifer, a friend told me to bring earplugs. I was kind of anti-earplug at the time, you know, high-frequency attenuation and whatnot, but I knew he was right when I saw the ready-for-Wembley Stadium wall-of-amps. Amber Valentine’s and Ed Livengood’s performances basically go like this: they eat pizza backstage, Ed drinks some beer, they blast some NWA, then some guitar noise starts seeping out of the amps, the drums get going and they end up kicking it like a church revival—only louder, a lot louder. I don’t attend religious services myself, but going to see Jucifer yearly makes up for a large soul-shaking spiritual deficit.  Their new album L’autrichienne is out now and is apparently inspired by the French Revolution, which, judging by their Civil War-influenced song “Antietam,” should be a killer.  Still, unless you have a stereo capable of more than 1,000 watts, you’ll need to see Jucifer live for the full effect.

— Rich Seymour

JUCIFER WITH  MIDDLE CLASS RUT,  SUNS BENEATH AND SNAKES ALIVE AT THE KNITTING FACTORY,  7021 HOLLYWOOD BLVD., LOS ANGELES.  7:30 PM / $10. KNITTINGFACTORY.COM.