Up for the Down Stroke

 UPDATE: This post has been re-uploaded 08/27/2013. Enjoy, NØ.

This is thee premier FUNK!

Parliament’s second outing, their first with Casablanca, the return of Bootsy to the Mothership (after two years along with the Horny Horns over at Godfather JB’s place). Everything is right with this slab. The critically acclaimed title cut, the funkier reworking of (I Wanna) "Testify", the poignantly hip "Presence of a Brain". & just as "Maggot Brain" is my número uno Funkadelic song, this album contains my favorite Parliament song, "All Your Goodies are Gone". That song alone propels P-Funk well beyond the adulations laid on less worthy bands like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. Clinton & frenz are in a class of their own. The title of the album tells it all.

Parliament - Up for the Down Stroke,
Casablanca Records NBLP 7002, Dec 1974.
decryption code in comments

Side 1 -

Up For The Down Stroke
Testify
The Goose
I Can Move You (If You Let Me)
Side 2 -

I Just Got Back
All Your Goodies Are Gone
Whatever Makes Baby Feel Good
Presence Of A Brain

Enjoy,
NØ

Really Freaked

So I see Randy Quaid is in the news a lot lately, & since he is one of my favorite character actors, I was wondering what all the buzz was. I found out it is great news. He is starring is the sequel to 1993s Freaked.


The movie is called Really Freaked: The Persecution Of Elijah C Skuggs. Elijah & his wife Evie are wanted by the law & are found hiding out at their old place, Freekland. After being released on a half Zillion dollars bail each, they flee the country, trying to get asylum in a foreign Dominion. Elijah has incurred the wrath of the Hollywood Hierarchy after creating his troupe of mutant Entertainers using his Zygrot 24-powered mutation device.


The Hollywood Hierarchy dispatch the insidious Hollywood Star Whackers. What ensues is an action-packed comedy/thriller. The Star Whackers follow a trail of star-studded clues in the search for Elijah & Evie, eliminating everyone they encounter as they go. They manage to kill Heath Ledger, Britanny Murphy, Chris Penn, Natasha Richardson, Michael Jackson, & David Carradine. They poison Jeremy Piven with mercury-laced tuna, launch smear campaigns against Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, & Mel Gibson, & frame both Robert Blake & Phil Spector for murder.

The mainstream media is quick to side with the Hollywood-written script, mocking & ridiculing the couple, attributing their defection & apparent betrayal to drug abuse. They circulate rumors that the Skuggses “snort Demerol to cure migraines”.

Then one of Hollywood’s own, publicist Ronni Chasen is gunned down in her Mercedes on a busy Beverly Hills street in broad daylight. She has left documents & photographs to be released to the World press in case of her untimely demise. The media quickly begin singing a different tune (the theme song “Really Freaked” by pedophile Gary Glitter).

I’ve probably given away too much about the film already & I wouldn’t want to ruin the climax for anyone so all I’ll say is, go out & see it yourself. You’ll love it, it’s REALLY FREAKED.

Various Artists - Freaked Un-OST, Bill & Ted Records BTR @$*%!, 19--.

Freaked - Blind Idiot God featuring Henry Rollins
Gumby Jack Flash - Paul Leary
Rip/Stop - Blind Idiot God
Butter Queen - Butthole Surfers
Hideous Mutant Freekz - Axiom Funk (PFunk, Bill Laswell, & frenz)
Sweat Loaf - Butthole Surfers
Midget Man Skank - Blind Idiot God
Cha Bump - Bald Bill Hagan and His Trocaderons
Gluehead Stomp - Blind Idiot God

Eye & Eye, mon.

Enjoy,
NØ

San Francisco Blues

UPDATE: This post was re-uploaded 08/22/2013. Enjoy, NØ.






While digging through all my accumulated esoterica, I came across this forgotten tome.

Kerouac typed up the complete text for San Francisco Blues in 1961. There were 79 choruses in all. Those choruses were never published together until 1983. Before that, fragments had appeared in small magazines & some only materialized on records. Fifty four of the choruses were never published at all! Kerouac would have loved for the entire work to be published as a 'beautiful unity' as he saw it. To fill that gap in the Kerouac shelf, San Francisco Blues is here published in its entirety.

"My new book of poems SAN FRANCISCO BLUES...I wrote when I left Neal’s in March & went to live in the Cameo Hotel on Third Street Frisco Skidrow---wrote it in a rockingchair at the window, looking down on winos & bebop winos & whores & cop cars..."
--Jack Kerouac (1954)

"SAN FRANCISCO BLUES was my first book of poems, written back in 1954 & hinting the approach of the final blues poetry form I developed for the MEXICO CITY BLUES.
In my system, the form of blues choruses is limited by a small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they are written, like the form of a set number of bars in a jazz blues chorus, & so sometimes the word-meaning can carry from one chorus into another, or not, just like the phrase meaning can carry harmonically from one chorus to the other, or not, in jazz, so that in these blues as in jazz, the form is determined by time, & by the musician’s spontaneous phrasing & harmonizing with the beat of the time as it waves & waves on by in measured choruses. It’s all gotta be non stop ad-libbing within each chorus, or the gig is shot."
--Jack Kerouac (1961)

Chorus (15)
When whistlers stop scowling
Smokers stop sighing
Watchers stop looking
& women stop wailing
& worrying overcoats
When gray beards grow no more
& pain don’t take you by surprise
& bedposts creak in rhythm
Night & morn
& dry men’s bones
Are not pushed
By angry-meaning
Pelvic propeled legs
Of reason
To a place you hate
Then I’ll go lay my crowned body
On the heads
Of three men
Hurrying & laughing
In the wrong direction
My idol

Chorus (25)
For the World’s an eye
& the Universe is seeing
Liquid,
Rare,
Radiant

Chorus (35)
I also have loud poems:
Broken plastic coverlets
Flapping in the rain
To cover newspapers
All printed up
& plain

Chorus (51)
Little boys are angels
Crying in the street
Wear funny hats
Wait for green lights
Carry bust out tubes
Around their necks
& roam the railyards
Of the great cities
Looking for locomotives
Full of shit

Chorus (52)
Run down to the waterfront
& dream of Cathay
Hook spars with gulls
Of half-a-void thought

Jesse ‘Lone Cat’ Fuller - San Francisco Bay Blues,
Original Blues Classics OBC 537,1992. (re-issue of 1963 release)
decryption code in comments

Side 1-

San Francisco Bay Blues
Jesse's New Midnight Special
Morning Blues
Little Black Train
Midnight Cold
Whoa Mule

Side 2 -

John Henry
I Got a Mind to Ramble
Crazy About a Woman
Where Could I Go But To the Lord
Stealin' Back to My Old Time Used to Be
Brownskin Gal (I've Got My Eye on You)

Enjoy,
NØ

As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade

UPDATE: This post was re-uploaded 09/08/2013. Enjoy, NØ.


Since I started the heavy rotation of Singers & Players around here, I dragged out all the OnU Sound/Adrian Sherwood material (Skip ‘Little Axe’ McDonald, Tackhead, Mark Stewart & Maffia). This is one heavy, heavy chunk o’ vinyl. 1985!

from the OnU Sound website -

"Mark Stewart & Maffia"

"As teenage front man and mastermind of seminal Bristol post-punk legends The Pop Group (1978-80), Stewart already used his microphone as a weapon. In an era that saw public opinion and perception tainted by Thatcher, Reagan and the Cold War, The Pop Group emerged as one of Britain’s most radical exponents of new music and quickly gained notoriety well beyond the British Isles. Their until then unheard mix of punk, funk, dub, jazz and noise, countered by Mark Stewart’s scathing political slogans and lyrics (We Are All Prostitutes), easily counts among the most impressive, provocative and lasting manifestations of musical spontaneity seen, heard and experienced by the end of the 1970s.

After the group’s dissolution in the early 1980s, members of the Pop Group re-emerged in a flurry of new bands and guises: Rip Rig & Panic (featuring the then still unknown Neneh Cherry), Pigbag (with their surprise Top 10 hit ‚"Papa’s Got A Brand New Pig Bag”) and Maximum Joy. After a short stint with the New Age Steppers, Mark Stewart decided to pursue a solo career as Mark Stewart & the Maffia. His friend, On-U sound owner Adrian Sherwood, took care of production and mixed the Maffia on their various tours. With Doug Wimbish, Skip McDonald and drumming talent Keith LeBlanc Stewart recruited a truly exceptional rhythm section who had previously played with the likes of Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, James Brown, Madonna, Africa Bambaata, George Clinton, Tackhead and many others. Considered seminal milestones by many of his peers and fans, the solo outings by this‚ godfather‘ of Bristol’s eclectic music scene blend the most diverse of genres in a unique and unconventional mix of dub, funk, punk, techno, electro, noise – spiced up with a generous dose of Stewart’s trademark political lyrics and slogans.

Albums like As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade or Learning To Cope With Cowardice have left a lasting mark on the current music scene: icons in their own right like Massive Attack, David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, Carl Craig, Asian Dub Foundation and Nick Cave call Mark Stewart’s work a decisive influence."

Mark Stewart & Maffia - As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade,

Mute STUMM 24, 1985.
decryption code in comments

Side A -

Passcivecation Program & (passcivecation dub)
Bastards
The Resistance of the Cell
Untitled (Call to Mecca)

Side B -

As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade
Pay it All Back
Hypnotized
Slave of Love
The Waiting Room

Enjoy,
NØ

Blood Satisfaction

UPDATE: This post was re-uploaded 10/12/2013. Enjoy, NØ.
 
Well, it’s a New Year.

Hope you all got your blood satisfaction for all your funky little demons.

You can read all about it in the Wolfgang Press.

" Too sophisticated for the mainstream and too, well, arty for the prevailing underground scene of the time, any record of theirs was always going to require more than one pass to grub out the intricacies. "
----- Sam Bucca

The Wolfgang Press - Funky Little Demons,
4AD CAD 4016, 1995.
decryption code in comments

Side 1 -

Going South
11 Years
Blood Satisfaction
Chains
Christianity
Derek The Confessor

Side 2 -

So Long Dead
Executioner
She's So Soft
New Glass
Fallen Not Broken
People Say

I have added the bonus CD Funky Little Demons Mixes from the 2007 CD re-release.

Executioner (Adamson mix)
Christianity (Sherwood mix)
Going South (Adrenalin mix)
11 Years (Sabres main mix)

Enjoy,
NØ