Continuing my series on great, under-appreciated rock n’ roll bands….

HEY HEY, WE’RE THE GORIES!

You may already be familiar with The Gories, if you had an interest in good music around the time of all that White Stripes / Detroit hype a couple of years ago when they picked up quite a few namechecks in the music media. The work of Mick Collins you will hopefully be familiar with via his captainship of The Dirtbombs, the best high energy rock n’ roll destruction machine I have ever been lucky enough to see on a stage. If this man is capable of making music that doesn’t, to coin a phrase, “rip fuckin’ ass”, well I’ve yet to hear it.

Note regarding the MP3s in this post: the recording quality ain’t great, so for best results, TURN THEM UP LOUD.

The Gories are one of those bands, like Bikini Kill or The Beat Happening, who have come to stand for the ultimate expression of their particular aesthetic THING despite never really gaining much success as recording artists, and as such have ended up being referred to in writing about other bands a lot more than they’ve actually been LISTENED to. (Strange how this sad fate usually seems to afflict groups who kicked a hell of a lot more ass than their stylistic followers.)

The Gories started playing together in Detroit in 1988, comprising (L to R in my drawing above) Mick Collins, Peg O’Neil and Dan Kruha. They stopped playing together, still in Detroit, in 1993. Their THING, in case you need telling, was militantly lo-fi, riotously unprofessional garage-proud punk blues: no bass, no cymbals, no effects, no overdubs, no foolin’. As a quick shorthand, think Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers meet The Shaggs, and proceed to freak the fuck out in pure joy at the implications of that particular musical conception.

In 1990 The Gories travelled to Memphis to make a record with Alex Chilton (ALEX fucking CHILTON!) producing. As soon as I learned this, it became clear that the resulting LP, “I Know You Fine But How You Doin’?”, was one I should track down.

So I did, and well, it’s a bit disappointing initially. Chilton recording The Gories doesn’t sound any better than The Gories recording themselves at home, maybe even a bit worse. It sounds like Alex’s contribution to the sessions was to put too much reverb on everything, set the master volume too low and then pass out (much like most of his solo career). The album’s first few tracks are kinda throwaway or just don’t capture the energy and dynamics of the band at their best. But getting toward the end of side # 1, things look up as they drop some absolute primo material, leading to some of the best Gories gear ever. Stuff like this:

Goin’ to the River

Nitro-Glycerine

So much stuff to love about this band, I don’t know where to start. Actually, yeah I do – Peg’s drumming! In the groovy trading card style vital statistics on the different band members included in the CD booklet, she lists her dislikes simply as “bullshit”, and it is safe to say she didn’t entertain a great deal of it when playing in The Gories. She sounds like the girl who beat Mo Tucker up at school – just bass drum and tom-tom, Boom-Boom!, Boom-Boom!, beating a path of pure rocking simplicity back beyond Bo Diddley and straight through to 1,000,000 BC. I think I’m in love.

Then there’s those howling lead guitars, proving yet again all those people who decided Punk Rock = No Solos were fuckin chuckleheads of the highest order. Wild, cracked playing with no zero book-learned technique, running on blind faith and an instinctive understanding of what rules.

Peg and Dan both list “painter” amongst their previous occupations. I don’t know whether that means, like, art-painter or house-painter, but it’s a testament to the Gories close-to-the-ground genius that either would seem to serve as good preparation.

And just how plain righteous is Mick’s voice, even in these early days before he picked up his rep as garage-rock’s premier soul blaster? Wow. Mick’s hobbies are “Record collecting, writing, reading” and he dislikes “Intravenous drug use, racism/fascism, CDs, my mother’s dog”. Good man! I love the way the Gories all kinda holler along, backing up each other’s vocals in that really natural, unplanned way till you’re not really sure who’s s’posed to be singing lead.

CDs do allow for certain virtues though, like “I Know You Fine..” being bundled together on a single disc with The Gories’ first album “Houserockin’”, which is… even better! It puts me in mind of Lester Bangs’ response upon hearing the second Fugs album and being told that their first one was ‘more primitive’, “More primitive?? Any more primitive than this and they’d have bones through their noses!”

Well, yeah. Check this out;

Charm Bag

According to the sleevenotes, it’s a song all about voodoo, and thus eerie stuff went wrong every time they tried to play it live. Well ok, but clearly that’s got nothing on what happened when they tried to RECORD the damn thing! I’m reminded of that hilarious Ken Russell movie where that scientist doses himself up on super-strong acid in order to regress to a pre-human level of consciousness, and it works so well that he turns into a rabid apeman and breaks into the zoo to eat a live goat. (Altered States, if yr interested.)

But, ‘Charm Bag’ aside, the last thing I’d want to do is give the impression that The Gories aim at some kinda mindless neanderthal battering. True, there are moments on “Houserockin’” so blood-curdling in their descent into whacked-out caveman grunt they come out the other end looking positively avant-garde, with the ‘point-a-microphone-at-the-band-and-hope-for-the-best’ unproduction coming together with the group’s rabid energy and flailing, self-taught musicianship to produce a form-destroying mess of Pussy Galore / Dead C proportions. BUT, unlike those dullard dilettantes, The Gories are still playing rock n’ roll, and they’re not doing this shit to prove some stupid point (like, “we are assholes” presumably). Gories music carries a hefty rhythmic and melodic WHACK that speaks of a ton of practice, a lot of raw talent and a purity of purpose in the pursuit of making some straight-up, body-shaking Good Stuff. So when they get way out there and let the chaos off the leash occasionally, the result is electrifying rather than stupefying: they don’t encourage it, but it’s in there and when the hard-won boogie trips and collapses, it’s just gonna let itself out once in a while.

As a result, just about every cut on “Houserockin’” is a certified ass-ripper, covering a wider and weirder range of material to the Chilton album. The covers of John Lee Hooker’s ‘Boogie Chillun’ and Link Wray’s ‘Hidden Charms’ are tight on the money, ‘Feral’ is as righteous a Sonics tribute as has ever been conceived, and there are some strikingly good, heartfelt originals too.

I’m itching to post the whole lot for you, but I’m gonna take it easy on the freeloading MP3s because if yr picking up what I’m laying down, I want to leave you with some reasons to buy the damn records. If you’ve read/listened this far then you know that the blues stuff is obviously gonna be great, so here are a couple of more subtle numbers, starting with a Dan Kruha original. I fucking love this song, so treat it well;

I’ll Go

I like how most of the best Gories songs are about girl trouble. Guess it figures on some level that guys in stable, satisfying relationships wouldn’t be driven to start a band this good. And I mean, what else you gonna sing about, for christ’s sake? Well here’s one answer from Mick;

Sovereignty Flight

Apparently this song seeks to address the legitimacy of Canada’s territorial claim to the US Eastern seaboard. Now like I could give/know a damn about that, but I do know the second verse & solo is my new gospel. It’s like a wild, random, unknown tongue shot at a classic Arthur Lee / Johnny Echols Jesus Guitar Transcendence Moment! You get me? No? Well never mind, just listen.

So, in conclusion, what I’m trying to say is that if you were ever to look up “rips fuckin’ ass” in some non-existent dictionary of obscene 20th century phraseology, the questionable and drug-addled entry found therein would surely point you straight toward The Gories.

So go buy some Gories stuff from Crypt Records (Damn, what a great shop / record label!).

Hey, sorry for again breaking my unwritten update-once-a-week-or-die rule.

I've got a hell of a post lined up for you though, and I'm drawing a picture for it, which I can't really do whilst at work, so let's take the easy option and say that's the cause of the delay. Next few days - promise.

Deathblog:

ALICE COLTRANE 1937 – 2007

I am very sad to report the death of Alice Coltrane: details here.

I suppose it is inevitable that in the grand narrative of musical history, Alice will be unfairly relegated to the shadow of her husband’s achievements, but, despite the mutterings of certain closed-minded jazz critics, I would argue that she stands on her own merits as one of the most ambitious and unique artists in modern music.

As a female band leader / composer / arranger making radically unorthodox music within the patriarchal world of jazz, as a peerless harp and piano/organ player, as a spiritual thinker whose attempts to combine disparate strands of devotional tradition into a universal system of belief exhibit a power and dedication that goes way beyond mere ‘new age’ hippie-era dabbling… for all these things Alice Coltrane deserves our respect, but beyond all that, the main point here is that the albums she made for Impulse between 1968 And 1973 feature some of the most beautiful, transformative, genuinely psychedelic music I have ever heard.

In fact, I've deliberately avoided reading much about the context, personal detail and critical opinion of her albums, just because they're so stunning in their own right that I neither need nor want any outside interference.

So just listen to this cut from 1970’s "Journey in Satchidananda" and tell me this lady wasn't some mighty kind of a genius. Appropriately enough, it’s an evocation of Shiva in his aspect as “the dissolver of creation”;

Shiva Loka

The line-up here is Alice Coltrane on harp, Pharaoh Sanders on sax, ‘Tulsi’ on Tamboura, Cecil McBee on bass and Rashid Ali & Majid Shabazz on percussion.

Hope you enjoy (you'd be a fool if you didn't I fear), and good luck to AC on whatever unimaginable cosmic voyages her spirit has planned.

IT'S 2007 BABY

OK, I'll be putting up a post about Alice Coltrane this evening, but in the meantime my Monday morning trawl of the internet has revealed that promo-copies of the new Stooges album (yes, the NEW FUCKING STOOGES ALBUM; non-rock n' rollers please try to understand that this concept is rather akin to a Christian waking up to find a shifty-looking new messiah tap-dancing through the streets laughing off all that jive he used to talk back in the New Testament) have been making their inevitable way across the internet.

It's called "The Weirdness". I haven't heard it yet. Officially, it's out in March.

So, nearly 40 years since 'Funhouse', can it POSSIBLY be any good...? Shudder with dread anticipation as the internet-muso public gives a hesitant thumbs up! By far the best low-down I've read so far comes from Church of Me.

DEAD MOON SAVES LIVES



Dead Moon are (left to right) Toody Cole, Andrew Loomis and Fred Cole.

For the past 20 years or so, they have toured the USA and Europe regularly and have recorded and released records with no outside interference from labels/management, pressing their own vinyl, so legend has it, on the same lathe used to cut The Kingsmen’s ‘Louie Louie’.

Dead Moon are also the best rock n’ roll band in the world.

The downside of their otherwise admirable DIY aesthetic is that it has resulted in me living 24 years of my life before becoming aware of this fact.

So god bless Sub-Pop for releasing ‘Echoes of the Past’, a double CD retrospective of Dead Moon’s career and giving me the chance to find out.

It looks like this:



In most UK shops it will cost you about £10-13.

Fucking buy it. When you’re a few tracks in, you will realise why any notion of my above ‘best’ claim being subjective can take a flying leap.

Every aspect of music that’s ever truly rocked, taken from blues, garage, punk, metal, classic rock, it’s all here.

And there’s no sign of the faux-nihilist retro-trash ‘rawk’ shtick that their name and image might initially suggest either: these guys feel no shame in using their powers to sing about the stuff that really kills. Y’know, the stuff that most heavy rock bands have always claimed to be about whilst they reduce it to a bunch of third generation clichés because they don’t have the guts or honesty to acknowledge the symbiosis between the music they play and the lives they lead. Stuff like love and heartbreak and being lonely and survival and rocking out, like addiction and revolution, like fighting the power and like caring about and believing in people, like driving all night on an empty stomach…. basically Dead Moon just holler the fucking blues with a clarity and power that most other white guitar-slingers don’t even PRETEND to have seen the face of anymore.

They are the band that fully embodies the definition of The Great Rock N’ Roll Transcendence Moment, as thrashed out by me and Lester Bangs and Iggy and John Sinclair in our imaginary astral meeting in my head a couple of years ago.

Imagine about 50 songs worth of this, blasted out live-to-tape in a basement with everything in the red, and you will have imagined ‘Echoes of the Past’.

For as long as I can remember I have been slowly assembling ideas and bits of writing for a novel or story or script or comic or something based around the adventures of a touring rock band caught up in the midst of the end of the world. It is with no small amount of awe that I have come to realise that my imaginary apocalypse-defying super-band effectively IS Dead Moon, in all but name.

Certainly, if there was ever a group of musicians with whom I would feel comfortable fighting zombies, scavenging for food, stockpiling ammunition and following abandoned train-lines through deserted wilderness, Dead Moon are the ones.

And that’s all that needs to be said really. I’m sure I could conceive of some more clumsy critical formulas to try and encapsulate the reasons why Dead Moon represent all that is good and pure and right in the world, but what would be the point?

For seven days only, here are some MP3s:

Kicked Out, Kicked In

Graveyard

Johnny’s Got a Gun

Hate the Blues

If you claim to like rock n roll, and you don’t like Dead Moon…. well, I just don’t get you, man.

UNSEEN HISTORIES

I have recently managed to assemble that rare achievement, a mix CD which I would consider good enough for general distribution.

As it just so happens this ties in with the festive period, I will take this opportunity to offer a copy to all readers / friends as a new year's gift.

I know that a lot of people these days seem to have resorted to emailing and up/downloading entire mix tracklists to each other, but this all seems rather impersonal to me (not to mention technologically taxing with no access to free webspace), so, yeah, I mean I will actually post you a copy.

The CD has very few tracks on it from 2006, but everything on it has moved or cheered me during 2006. It doesn't have anything loud or scary on it at all I'm afraid, although there are several instances of lyrical obscenity, so I rate it PG.

Mostly it is good songs with good words in a variety of genres, with a few beautiful, weird instrumentals thrown in. If you like the same sort of bands that I do, or if you've swapped music with me before, you might already know some of the tracks, although astonishingly the CD has somehow ended up not featuring any Mountain Goats or Neil Young. But it does have Dead Moon, so all is right with the world.

If this sounds good to you, just drop me a line.

Happy new year!