Death Factory "Drone Image"

(NoSides, 2017) Futuristic electro free jazz screech-scapes that are more noisey than it is Neu-sy, but still get the art-rock A+ in my grade book.*

*I am notorious for inflated grades and passing trouble kids through so someone else can deal with them, but an A is still an A.

The Shoe Birds "Origin"

 

(Waxsaw, 20200) I had a hard time figuring out what kind of birds these were but I settled on Henery Hawk, grown up and mellowed out, and getting into insurgent country and indie pop in college. But I'm pretty sure what kinds of shoes it is...Crocs made out of moccasin leather! This one's for the birds...in a good way!

"All Ages - The Rise and Fall of Portland Punk Rock 1977-1981" by Mark Stern

 

(Reptilicus Press, 2015) This hefty volume tells a history of punk rock in the Pacific Northwest that is, in some sense, broad and comprehensive, but is actually ultra specific. The three best known acts of the region are represented, yet remain kind of remote -- Fred Cole's  pre-Dead Moon bands help birth the movement (Stern is in King Bee with Cole), are constantly playing, and Cole's music shop and gear are integral to scene developing, but he manages to live in his own world despite being a key scene builder; the Poison Idea boys are just coming into their own when this book wraps its story; and Greg Sage, of the Wipers, was so serious about his art that he was above the nuts and bolts (and pettiness) of the punk production and politics this book is really about. What gets covered in this exhaustive document (culled partly from latter day interviews but largely from memory and meticulous archived clippings, meeting minutes, accounting ledgers, calendars, and studio notes) is exactly how much work goes into putting on shows, creating space for underground music to develop, and producing a scene-documenting a compilation. There is some genuine ridiculousness (a committee deciding which bands qualify as punk), some brutal slaps of reality (the treachery of partnering with legit venues vs. the chaos of creating a functional punk space), and, most vividly, some Real Housewives-type drama that resonates and defines the development of Portland punk (including a guestlist snub that splits the scene). The book does a good job demonstrating the way self-destructive individuals can't help but spread havoc (yet still get welcomed back...there's only so many people to play the music) and the way outcasts and weirdos and genuine artists (Smegma is well represented) need to come together, however precariously, proving that the "Y" is always a lie in D.I.Y.. 

Various Times: November 7, 2012 by Eugene V. Booth with Chrris Kuck and Jack Henrie Fisher

 

(Dum Ditty Dum, 2020) Yesterday I was marveling at the audacity of committing to do a podcast summarizing each of Bonanza's 431 episodes, but the ambition of this project really blows me away. Each book in this series covers a single day in the rock era, so this is a proposed 25.550 (and counting) volume set!  Though the dates are randomly generated this one happened to fall on the somewhat historical Obama reelection date, and though most of the material here is not Obama related, race relations and systematic racism have staring roles in this musical snapshot curated by Booth (and his consultants). For the most part this book focusses on Kendrick Lamar's triumphant 2012 LP, which was #1 that day, and the Peter Brotzman Tentet, which was on A European tour playing one of their final shows. For the former, Booth researches and analyzes the artist's history and the album's contents, and for the latter he interviews Fred Lonberg-Holm, and challenges Amiri Baraka's rejection of Brotzman (and other white improvisors), in part because Baraka dismisses some of these groups upon hearing their goofy names (which is, incidentally,  how this book opens, with Booth deciding not to dig deeper into the #2 Billboard song, "Some Nights," by fun., which he is unfamiliar with, not interested by, and gives up on partly because of the name. I don't know the song either, but I recall being impressed by their hit "We Are Young," which sounds pretty but is about genuinely miserable people getting blackout drunk because life, which includes a protagonist regretful for beating a his girlfriend, is terrible. AV Club once summarized the song as a celebration of how great it is to be young, so judging by names gets around). Anyhoo, this book kind of reminds me of The Best Show bit about the Rock, Root, and Rule book (I'm unsure of, but endorse, that Oxford comma). While this is the opposite (detailed analysis vs. a column of band names facing a column of rulings on ruling [or not]), they share the premise of publishing a book about the pop music musings you and your friends shared at length over coffee. This is not only because Booth recounts discussing these matters with knowledgable co-conspirators, and includes a Q and A with a cello fellow he admires, but because the premise and execution of this series feels more like an exercise than an academic pursuit. Specifically, it feels like the exercise of indulging in minutiae and exploring broad themes and making crazy comparisons (what rock opera does To Pimp A Butterfly most recall?) in the act of fellowship with your fave record collector buddies over beers, a bong, or brewed java. And it's nice to be invited to clink steins, take a hit, or pass the Splenda.

Bonanaz for Bonanza

 

(Earwolf, 2020) This is pretty much the funniest podcast I have ever heard. I was always supremely impressed by Andy Daley's optimistic, yet inevitably suicide and/or homicide (and hell) bound characters on Comedy Bang Bang, but to be honest 2020 has been so gruesome that I just couldn't take some of my favorite larfs. Early in the lock down I tried re-watching Review and I needed to pause the Ashley Tisdale episode every one minute, and eventually just had to abandon it. I really don't need extra cringes this year. But for Daly to find such a rich, life affirming outlet for his most murderous character has been a genuine delight. Cowboy poet Dalton Wilcox (spoiler: his poems are about dirt hole fucking), his musician pal Mutt Taylor (Matt Gourley, being as funny, charismatic, and weirdly knowledgeable as anyone can pull off while in trainwreck character) and Maria Bamford as a Christian entrepreneur (the brilliant comic's best character ever...literal out loud laughs every week) watch every episode of Bonanza in order. That's the show. Their characters feign obsession with and loyalty to the Cartwright boys, while week after week Daly, Gourley, and Bamford become more and more genuinely impressed by how actively strange, offensive, and confounding the program was. One running theme is Gourley's conviction that the show is recycling pilot scripts from un-produced Westerns  and just plugging in as many Cartwright boys as they need to fill the script. There are guests that watch along with them, and when they appear as wacky characters it's being extra, it proves better to just be yourself and genuinely react to this grand, strange show. The best guest was Brooklyn 99's Dirk Blocker, son of Dan "Hoss" Blocker, who was rightly treated like royalty. The chemistry, the abundant funniness, and the confounding tech (Daly, in quarantine, fumbling to call up the audio from Youtube clips, which they need to describe visuals-wise, is an unexpected pandemic pleasure) make this a can't miss. Of course like most of my fave podcasts, when they cut to commercial there is no commercial, as sponsors have better places to sell their fancy underwear and collapsible mattresses, but if this can hold on just 416 more episodes we can get the whole series in!

Maximum FF by Mark Evanier, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee &...Walter Mosley (?!?!?!!!!)

 

(Marvel, 2005) For the pandemic my big reading projects were consuming the entire series of Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins books, and launching a read through of the full run of Jack Kirby Collector. So far I finished Rawlins (and started on the Leonid books), and I am up to issue 50 of the amazing JKC (hoping the pandemic ends before I get up to issue 80). Anyhow, with the only good parts of 2020 brain bouncing between in in Easyland and Kirbyville it was kind of jarring to discover the existence of this book. Upon first inspection this book-length reproduction of Kirby and Stan Lee's industry shifting Fantastic Four #1 seems to have some kinship with the Chip Kidd-desinged comics books which take familiar Snoopy or Batman imagery and embrace the familiarity while recontextualizing as art and cool and artifact and beautiful by making them bigger and bolder and newer and realer than we are used to seeing them on newsprint. However, the most important (to me, at least) element of Kidd's design is celebrating the printed comic or toy or board game as object, and luxuriating in the yellowing decay and wear and tear of enthusiastic spectatorship (I credit Kidd's influence with the public domain/easily licensed reprint boom that lets old comics look like old comics rather than washed out photoshopped messes or gaudily recolored anachronisms). Anyhow, the only place we get that element in this beautiful book is in the dustjacket which folds out to a poster of the FF#1 cover roughly the size of an Winnebego, which features on the flip side a reproduction of a complete, decayed, taped, yellowed copy of issue #1 (I had actually never seen all the ads despite reading a thousand reprints). Other than that designer Paul Sahre is taking the individual panels with crisp new coloring and blowing them up so that each page has has just half a, or one, or two panels. This is not a Pop Art excision, as the story is still to be read, but I definitely found myself reading it more slowly and appreciating the Kirby art's power much more than on previous readings. But what walloped me was the essay by Mosley. Granted, his 50+ books go beyond mysteries, with nonfiction, sci fi, cultural criticism, etc, and he made a couple comic book references in the Rawlins books, but this still took me by surprise. It seems that Mosley bought an early FF issue in the 60s as a kid and has been devoted since (the crappy copy on the inside dustjacket is his), but in recent years felt a disconnection which he defeated when he began scanning and blowing up panels to a huge size which opened his comic fan third eye and let him see his old favorites in a profound new dimension. This book was his concept and it is a triumph. The other essay in the book is JKC star columnist (and Kirby assistant and Garfield cartoon kingpin) Mark Evanier, recounting his detective work about the FF#1 inker (which he'd been working out in Collector issues). I may have never stumbled upon a book as in tune to my converging interests as this one. The book cost $50 originally, is easily worth $100, and I got it for $20, so please find yourself a copy, you will treasure it. Possibly not as much as me after consuming 14 detective books and 4000 pages of Kirby worship, but maybe next pandemic you could go my route.

DICK ALLEN REMEMBERED! Fan Interference - A Zisk Anthology

(Blue Cublicle, 2013) If you can find a copy of this great collection of idiosyncratic takes on baseball fandom, grab it. What follows is my piece on Dick Allen's #1 fan that appears in it, one of my favorite interviews I've ever done. Thinking of the late great Dick Allen, amazingly on the precipice of the Hall of Fame, with only a little thing like a global pandemic keeping a committee from enshrining him, I am also thinking of the the living Ziff Sistrunk (who made the news this year by prominently making his way into the coverage of Blago's return home after his Trump pardon). Please remember Allen's amazingness as you read this piece (which I could not find online anywhere and wanted to give folks a chance to read. It is from 2002 so I made a couple updates/edits):

Who Is Dick Allen? by Jake Austen

Richard Anthony Allen should be remembered as one of the greats: he hit over 350 home runs, had over 1,000 RBI, and was the decisive AL MVP in 1972 when he led the league in home runs, RBI, walks, and slugging. Instead, when he is remembered it is often in a negative light, based upon his incendiary chemistry with the fans and press. As Richie Allen he slugged for the Philadelphia Phillies from 1963-1969, where the notoriously brutal Philadelphia sports fans had it in for him.  (These are fans that historically have booed Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Beyonce.) When he came to the American League he found a home with the Chicago White Sox (along with a new name—his experience in Philadelphia was so bad he insisted on being called "Dick" instead of "Richie."). He was a fave with the royal family of Chicago, Mayors Daley I and II, and as one old joke goes, "Who was the first black manager is baseball? Dick Allen, he ran the White Sox from 1972-1974." On the other hand, the press didn’t cotton to his unusual habits (he didn’t practice with the team, he smoked in the dugout, he didn’t give interviews) and the notoriously frank Sox announcer Harry Carey gave him hell, declaring, "Dick Allen has a million dollars worth of talent and 10 cents worth of brains."

Well one man is trying to right the injustices Dick Allen suffered, and that man is Ziff Sistrunk, Dick Allen’s #1 fan. We had a chance to talk with Ziff, and this is how it went down:

Who is Dick Allen?

Ziff Sistrunk: Dick Allen was a famous baseball player from the ‘70s. He was a person who was an example of the true American spirit of independence and freedom...a free spirit. He was a man who had tremendous power. Essentially, the Black Babe Ruth.

When did you become interested in Dick Allen?

I was a bat boy for him in the '70s. In those days they had contests, and I wrote a letter to the Cubs and White Sox, "Why I Want to Be a Bat Boy." I won the contest based on my letter and become the White Sox bat boy from 1973-1974. I was the first Black bat boy in Chicago history.

What is your greatest memory of Dick Allen?

Sparky Lyle on the mound for the Yankees, in front of a gigantic White Sox crowd. It was the second game of a double header, bases loaded, ninth inning. (White Sox manager) Chuck Tanner sent me in to the clubhouse to tell Dick Allen he was pinch hitting. He was sitting out because his contract said he didn’t play the second game of a double header. He came out and hit a screaming line drive into the upper deck. Me and the trainer were jumping up and down, screaming and hugging each other! Dick Allen brought excitement to Chicago sports (comparable to) Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. Nancy Faust, the White Sox organist, plays a different song for every player, and for him she played, "Jesus Christ Superstar." I asked her why and she said, "Because he approached the plate like a king!"

Do you consider yourself his number one fan?

Not only do I consider myself his #1 fan (other than his wife and his mother who just died a few years ago...he was a mama’s boy), I am also the official president of the Dick Allen International Fan Club on Race Relations. It is called that because Allen was subjected to a lot of racism, and baseball needs to acknowledge what he went through if the sport is ever to achieve real racial harmony. When he played Triple A for the Little Rock (Arkansas) Travelers he was the first black baseball player in that state. When he first arrived the Governor and 200 fans met Allen at the airport with a sign reading “Don’t Niggerize Our Baseball.” When he went to the Philadelphia Phillies, the Phillies had never had a black superstar. On the field one game Frank Thomas, a veteran on the team who was near retirement, called Allen a “nigger son of a bitch.” Allen knocked him down and Thomas hit Allen on the shoulder with a bat. This was in front of fans, and the Phillies fans turned on Allen. The next day the attendance shot up, just to boo Dick Allen. They brutally rode him out of Philadelphia. He had to wear a batting helmet in the field because they threw things...nails...at him. His life was in danger. If you threw a nail at a player today you would go to jail. Baseball didn’t protect Dick Allen. Can you imagine the mental strain?  You can’t!

What does being his #1 fan entail?

What it does is it has me trying to correct the way that Dick Allen was painted as a bad person or troublemaker. He was an independent person who exercised the United States’ Constitution’s right to free speech. He chose the freedom to not speak to reporters, so of course they wrote bad things about him. I’ve been working on a documentary about Dick Allen for years, but it doesn’t have an end yet. I’m going to take my Dick Allen museum on the road and collect a million signatures, and present them to the baseball commissioner so that he will make a special proclamation. I think Dick Allen should be in the Hall of Fame.  It’s the only way his career could wind up and it’s the only way that baseball can achieve racial harmony in the sport. I was talking to (Allen), and he said he wouldn’t want to be in the Hall of Fame unless they also put me in as the first Black bat boy. That was a nice thing of him to say. You know, this is the 30th anniversary of the season he saved the Sox. They were going to move to Seattle or Florida before Allen doubled the attendance. I am trying to get the White Sox to retire his number and erect a statue. (Former Illinois Attorney General) Roland Burris said it best, he said I’m “keeping Allen’s legacy alive.” No, Channel 7’s Bob Petty said it best, “If Dick hadn’t been like Dick, then there wouldn’t be a Dick Allen!”

What’s the single act that you’ve done that best exemplifies your devotion to Mr. Allen?

I’ve collected over 500 pieces of memorabilia for my traveling Dick Allen Museum—his old uniforms, his bat, his glove.  I went to the Academy Awards to support Michael Clarke Duncan (nominated for The Green Mile) who I went to King High School with, and he told me he had Dick Allen’s glove, which I thought was strange. Allen only had two gloves. I didn’t know him and Allen were close. Duncan sent the glove to me and now it’s in the museum.

How would you like history to remember Dick Allen?

As one of the finest ballplayers to ever play the game. He ran like a deer, hit like Hercules, and dressed like the president. When everyone in the locker room had cotton drawers, he was walking around with silk drawers and a big Afro. They say he was a bad guy.  He never threw his bat, never argued with the umpire.  His mother raised him to be at peace with himself and to believe in God. The hostility he was subjected to was unfair. But he went through these things so others wouldn’t have to. Ballplayers are murdering people now, and Dick Allen is supposed to be bad. Yes, he didn’t like playing the second game of a double header, he didn’t go to spring training or take batting practice. He wasn’t perfect; once he had three homers and six RBI and had given the team an eight-run lead in the seventh inning and asked the manager if he could go. He went to the racetrack, and the team lost the lead and the game, and the reporters saw him at the track, so you can imagine how they let him have it. But ballplayers are murdering people now! He wasn’t a bad guy, just a rebel, an independent, free spirit.

How would you like history to remember Ziff Sistrunk?

As a person who stood for what was right in Dick Allen’s case, who put this in front of his own career. This isn’t about racism, it’s about racial harmony. We’re still not over Jackie Robinson. As long as baseball looks at Dick Allen as bad there will never truly be racial harmony in the game.

   

The Ones CD/7"/pins set

 

(Rerun, 2014) There was a joke on the National Lampoon radio show that went something like,What is the #1 hit in Canada? Whatever was the number one hit in the US 6 months ago. This amazing collection documenting the late 70s Milwaukee band Ozone (not the Zone brothers band), a/k/a The Ones, seems to indicate that in Wisconsin the lag is a little bit longer. Somehow this teen renegade aggressive edgy spirit-of-punk-rock band seems to have missed everything recent going on in London and New York and instead got really excited about new bands like the Stooges and MC5. And did their Midwestern proto-punk godfathers proud! Which is to say that this bag set (a 45 repress of their incredible 1979 single "Short Dress" b/w "Tightrope" - the latter of which can be seen rattling a Milwaukee telethon on Youtube ,  a CD of 16 raw and rad rehearsal and live tracks. and some pins) makes a compelling argument to put these heavy hitters in the Cream City HOF with the Haskels, Die Kruezen, Blue Ribbon Pub Cheese Curds, Jeffrey "Hack Man" Leonard's sleepy-eyed smile on his 1986 Topps baseball card, and Lenny and Squiggy (RIP). 

Make Some Space by Emma Warren

(Sweet Machine Publishing, 2019) Hopefully as a music and culture fan you will get a few opportunities during your life to enter spaces that feel hard to believe - spaces where ideals and aspirations and even fantasies about creating a communal physical zone where art and expression and fellowship and a kind of ethereal cool that transcends fashion and trends (while often embracing them) thrives. Places like that often seem transient --  how can such  a thing survive in the realm of culture cannibalism and corporate capitalism? But even if you only get to enjoy it for one month or one night or one song, what it does for your soul is huge. Warren found such  a space in London's Total Refreshment Center, a marginally legit arts hub/recording studio/practice studio, and music venue where DJ parties alternated with live music nights that brought together thrillingly innovative young jazz musicians (with some notable Chicago artists making appearances). Combining elements of oral histories with a cultural critic's musings about the meanings of such space, and with thorough research about the Century-long history of the building, going back to its industrial origins, the writer takes their role as documentarian seriously and passionately. Most impressive is a coda where Warren explains how she tracked down the info, conducted the interviews, and financed the book's printing, demystifying the process in  hopes to encourage similar documentation of these too often ethereal moments in culture.

The Story of My Scab #10

 

(xxxwwmxxx@gmail.com, 2019?) Mw. McCurtin is one of the absolute best of the army of genius artists contributing to Roctober, and I am grateful and surprised every time I see something new from him. His drawings are richly beautiful, chaotically powerful, absolutely emotional, and super weird without suffering from any of the artifice, airs, or attitude often associated with hipsterism or intentional underground-ism. This art zine (which also had some buttons and stickers) has every inch jam packed with drawings of monsters, machines, musicians, and even coverless cassette tapes which all feel like fascinating, soulful characters. Like Charlie Brown's criteria for a Christmas tree, this masterpiece redefines "sincere."