Reading Rainbow "prism eyes" LP, "Tough Love" b/w "Over It"

(Hozac) I don't know what it is about the recent releases by these Philly phreaks so spectacular but I have some inklings. Perhaps it's the hypno-harmonies that fall somewhere between 8-year old jumprope girls chanting on the playground and Phil Spector love slave backup singers making audio gold. Perhaps it's the ability to make every hook-filled tune sound simultaneously joyfully innocent and unnervingly erotic. Perhaps its the alchemy of removing all the grit and testosterone from garage/psyche/60s music yet never getting "twee."But its probably just because the songs are really, really good.

The Fresh & Onlys "Tell Me What You Want to Know" b/w "Nothing Ever Happens"

(Hozac) Screw any psyche band that makes you feel like you're on laughing gas seeing pink clouds and smiling unicorns...I want my trippy music to scare me silly...I want spooky, dangerous, weird incredibly memorable songs to haunt me...I want music to make me paranoid and scared! Thank you Fresh & Onlys...for gloriously fucking up my brain!

The Morlocks "Play Chess"

(popantipop) Assuming these are the same Morlocks that have been around forever, then the Morlocks have been around forever, and it was inevitable that eventually they would get around to regressively genuflecting in front of the Chess catalogue. Tackling Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf, and even Chuck Berry Tunes in a manner less concerned with reverence for the originals and more concerned with capturing the crazy fantasy magic vibe that haunts the grooves of those platters, these garage goons manage to make chestnuts sound intimidating again, using a more ominous, Link Wray-ful approach than the Rolling Stones or Manfred Mann ever thought about. If these cats were busking on Maxwell Street circa 1956 they would scare way all the bargain shoppers.

The Royal Pines "Come Forth"

(www.myspace.com/royalpines Prior to the invention of "Alternative Rock" there was something called College Rock, which was basically REM and a bunch of bands doing doing bad REM impersonations. Occasionally, within those narrow parameters, an act would stand out, and had this record come out in 198whatever this would be one of those bands. Royal Pines takes the REM concept of making poppy, hooky rock with all of the machismo of classic/cock rock siphoned out, then de-wussifies it by laying on deep timbred, dramatic vocals. Royal Pines freshens my world even moreso than their namesake windshield-hanging car-destinkafier. In fact, this is so good it made me not only come forth but also come for a fifth...and that's not easy to do.

Tony Fate "Half Virgin"

(Vital Gesture) This CD of solo instrumentals kind of reminds me of that Steve Martin record where half the album is him doing comedy and half is straightforward bluegrass banjo music. This is in part because "Half Virgin" opens with two ace finger-pickin' old timey barnburners (the best tracks here) but also because hearing these spare, solo instrumental tracks from a man who is synonymous with crunching, balls to the wall guitar solos is as odd as hearing the Wild and Crazy Guy get all folksy. The make or break point that determines if you could be a Bellrays fan was always love or hate of nasty garage rawk guitar solos, so hearing all this delightfully dainty stuff from the Bellrays (and Grey Spikes and Reactors and a bunch of other bands) guitar slinger is a surprise treat. This disc features acoustic guitar, mandolin (played in a florid Spanish style), some slide stuff that sounds almost like Hawaiian slack, keyboard that sounds like Korla Pandit gigging at Pee Wee's Playhouse, and only one fuzzy rock tune out of 21. At times the rudimentary references to ethnic music styles borders on hokey, but for the most part this is a tremendously pleasant listen. Play this for your lady and she won't be half anything for long!

Go Time! "hit it!"

(Sound Gypsy) There it is! I was wondering where all the regular guy rock went. You know, rock n roll music for actual people who actually like to have a beer,  have a good time, and hear some rock n roll. Hook-filled, driving, unpretentious, timeless stuff here...if they are playing at your corner bar don't dare miss 'em, and if they're not, then be sure to get this CD ASAP, cuz you'll dig it. Or you ain't regular.

V/A The New Hope (reissue)

(Smog Veil) GUEST REVIEW BY CHRIS BUTLER
My father was from a Cleveland suburb, so there were many trips to visit the Grandparents. I remember sunny days in the summer, and tons of Lake Erie snow-belt produced snow in the winter. And I remember being really excited about being able to tune in WMMS, the proto-classic-rock (because it wasn't quite 'classic' yet, it was current) FM radio station. But I also remember sometimes we would visit this guy on the East Side who rented his upstairs apartment to my parents before they had kids. Their old place was in a nondescript residential neighborhood, not like super-urban downtown Cleveland or anything, but it seemed to me that whenever we went there, it was always  drizzling, dim and depressing. This is pretty much the historical and emotional context I put this compilation into. Like the bands on this record were all comprised of kids from the gloomy neighborhoods, somewhere between the inner-city and the suburbs, of Cleveland, OH.
And it's funny that WMMS, a station that was so instrumental in promoting glam and arena rock bands from England and other parts of the US, was so blatantly scornful of local music. They occasionally played a token Cleveland band (Michael Stanley Band), but during this same time period (late 70Ss/early 80s) they were overlooking bands like Rocket From The Tombs (who would splinter into Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys), the Pagans, Electric Eels, X-X, etc, who were busy creating the Cleveland legacy most of us know today. And while none of the aforementioned bands are on this reissued 1983 comp, I think some of their influence shows up. 'The New Hope' could be considered a representation of the Silver Age, or second generation, of Cleveland punk.
Anyway, since one of the participants on this comp (Tom Miller from Agitated and the Offbeats) mentioned in the press release that when they made 'The New Hope' they were emulating (perhaps a little too hard) comps like the DC area collection 'Flex Your Head', I feel compelled to mention some comparisons between these records. First off, the driving force behind 'The New Hope', the Ian MacKaye if you will, was one Tom Eakin (aka Tommy Dark) and his band (the Dark) was on the comp (ala Minor Threat). Furthermore, Tommy's brother's band The Guns were included, as with Ian's brother Alec's band The Untouchables. Both comps feature a pompously named, politically over earnest band that also had a song of that name (Artificial Peace from DC and Positive Violence from OH). Positive Violence's theme song didn't appear on the original release, but it's included in the expanded material on this reissue. There's also a cerebral, sarcastic, scene critical, slightly poppy band on each comp; Government Issue on 'Flex Your Head' and The Offbeats from 'The New Hope'. And then there are the rest of the bands on each record, many of whom were just sort of going through the hardcore motions. But this reissue is totally worth it for the gems that are on it, and for the bonus content, all of which adds to a clearer picture of early 80s US hardcore punk than the coastal gatekeepers have been presenting.

Hermit Thrishes "Slight Fountain" LP, "Wooded Blankets" cassette

(SMK / Single Girl Married Girl) These Time-signature Bandits sound like the best indie band on the Island of Misfit Toys.

Diplomats of Solid Sound "What Goes Around Comes Around"

(Pravda) To get what must be gotten out of the way when discussing any retro soul R&B live band these days: it'sbetter than Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. Particularly because of the way this album does not simply showcase decent vocals and expect us to flip out for them. Although DSS features two strong female belters, I wouldn't say those ladies are fronting the band. Rather, I'd call the Diplomats an instrumental group in the Jr. Walker or Booker T mold, that just happens to feature some singing. Not to in any way belittle the gifts of Katharine Ruestow and Sarah Cram, who in addition to grooving harmonies also pull off the far more elusive skill of competently executing awesome Shangri-La-style talk raps. But the fun, hook-filled lyrics here just seem to be window dressing on deep, bottom-heavy jams. What I like even more is that every now and then the Dips dip into something outside of the R&B police's lineup -- was that a Santana riff there? This is funk-tional dance music!

When You're Strange DVD

(Eagle Rock) A FILM ABOUT THE DOORS…FINALLY !! (Guest Review by Gary Pig Gold)

The summer of 1970 was certainly a strange one in, for, and around what we may now quaintly call the pop/rock scene: Paul had just left his Beatles, for starters, the Stones and Dylan were missing-without-much-action, kids were throwing various Jacksons, Osmonds, and even Bobby Sherman way up the charts whilst the older kids were pretending to get back to the garden via a newly-released big-Hollywood Woodstock movie.

Meanwhile, this particular R-tober Reviewer was busy buying up every single Creedence record he could lay his young hands on, I’ll have you all know.

Then again there was the, well, strange case of John Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison who, after having closed out those Sixties with a “flop” album (The Soft Parade) and even floppier run-ins with the law (their singer having gotten busted acting naughty on stage in Miami, and again on a Phoenix-bound airliner) now found themselves in 1970 under immense pressure to resurrect their career and get back to where they once belonged. As in the basics, musically speaking that is.

These various struggles, conflicts, lewd behavior indictments and then some are all fully explored – along with, thankfully, lots of great music too – in a fascinating documentary entitled When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors, freshly available on DVD and Blu-ray from those fine folk over at Eagle Rock Entertainment.

Now, unlike the band’s own series of understandably self-serving concert films over the years or, on entirely the other hand, Oliver Stone’s utterly cataclysmic 1991 biopic The Doors, Tom DiCillo’s When You’re Strange perhaps comes closest to finally presenting, as no less an authority as Ray Manzarek has long promised, “the true story of The Doors.” It does so by wisely keeping 21st Century interference to a bare minimum, concentrating instead on a wealth of live and studio footage from throughout the band’s surprisingly brief career intriguingly intercut with – and this is the film’s real coup to my eyes – never before seen segments from Jim Morrison’s barely-released 1969 short subject HWY: An American Pastoral.

Without ever getting overtly ham-fisted a la the above-mentioned Mr. Stone, DiCillo (along with Johnny Depp’s narration) weaves the HWY footage of Morrison speeding across the California desert to actually drive When You’re Strange forward, onward and upward from the band’s infant gigs on L.A.’s Sunset Strip through the recording of their landmark debut album in 1966 and subsequent stardom. It’s interesting, not to mention important to realize and understand just how big a pop star Jim was at this time: He may have been playing it so cool by singing the dreaded “higher” word when The Doors performed “Light My Fire” on Ed Sullivision, but at the same time this was a man only too happy to appear bare-chested and love-bead-adorned alongside Davy Jones and Mark Lindsay across the pages of 16 Magazine.

When You’re Strange similarly pulls few punches in charting the band’s just-as-speedy fall from those poppiest of heights, mainly but not fully on account of Jimbo’s descent into the depths of alcoholic fear and self-loathing. It was indeed, and still remains, quite disheartening to watch The Doors’ slinky frontman decline from the leather-clad Lizard King of every bad girl’s Summer of Love dreams to the bearded, bloated ragamuffin who hauled sheep on stage in 1969, only to then berate his audience with cries of “You love it, don’t ya? Maybe you love gettin’ your face stuck in the shit. You’re all a bunch of fuckin’ idiots!” Oh, Morrison…

Such performance Art with a capital “F” notwithstanding, footage from the band’s 1968 European tour, and then a remarkable sequence from the “Wild Child” recording session itself, show The Doors were without a single doubt a four-piece band, oh so much greater than the sum of its equal parts, with each man contributing his own special brilliance to the creation. There wasn’t ever a single weak musical link to this band, its writing, arranging, and (usually) its performing skills, and When You’re Strange never once lets the viewer get distracted from this critically important fact …despite the carnival atmosphere which never seemed to cease swirling around the entire proceedings.

Finally, we also see how, following that tricky Summer of 1970, the band fully rebounded with its final two albums, Morrison Hotel and L.A. Woman (again, When You’re Strange presents fabulous footage from the latter’s recording sessions …apparently, the last existing footage of the band as a whole).

But then, most inconveniently, Jim moved to Paris and rumor has it actually died there very early on the morning of July 3, 1971.

Now he may indeed remain “hot, sexy, and dead” as Rolling Stone declared a decade later, kicking off the Doors Resurrection each surviving band member continues to propagate most efficiently to this day. Yet Tom DiCillo has bravely succeeded, where few have ever even attempted to before, in stripping away the excess, puncturing the mythology, and – What a concept! – letting The Doors’ MUSIC do the talking.

Strange indeed.