Norton Records Needs Your Help

I'm not going to get fancy.
If you read this blog, you know how important Norton Records, their artists, and their founders, Billy Miller and Miriam Linna are to the archive, preservation and perpetuation of the music and culture we hold dear.

Visit their blog at http://nortonville.blogspot.com/ to get the low-down in their own words and images. Just do it.

Notes From a Punk Rock Crash Pad - Live Reading! Tonight

It's all happening in a few hours.

Notes from A Punk Rock Crash Pad
Sunday, Nov. 11, 2012 At Skinny's Lounge

DIARY ENTRIES, LURID TALES, VIGNETTES, AND RANTS SPANNING FROM THE MID 1970′S TO THE 1990′S.
Featuring:

PLEASANT GEHMAN & IRIS BERRY
with
JOEY ALTRUDA
CHRIS BAILEY
A. RAZOR
SEAN WHEELER

and special guest
CHERRY VANILLA

Music by
THE LEGENDARY DUO
featuring Zander Schloss & Sean Wheeler

***PUNK ROCK KARAOKE******
IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THIS EVENT!

BE SURE TO STAY & MAKE AN ASS OF YOURSELF DOING SLOPPY COVERS OF SIOUXSIE, THE SEX PISTOLS, VANDALS, CRAMPS, BLONDIE, ADVERTS, 999, THE DAMNED, etc!!!!!!!!!!!

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 11, 2012
SKINNY'S LOUNGE
4923 Lankershim Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91601
(818) 763-6581

DOORS: 6:30pm
SHOW: 7:00pm
$5.00 21+0ver
Happy Hour Drink Specials

**Notes From A Punk Rock Crash Pad is a historical and hysterical readings series created by Iris Berry and Pleasant Gehman, soon to be a book on Punk Hostage Press.

Both LA scene queens lived at Disgraceland , one of America's most notorious Punk Rock Crash Pads, located in Hollywood, California.
In addition to being prolific writers, their rock and roll pedigrees are:
IRIS BERRY: The Lame Flames, The Ringling Sisters, The Flesheaters.
PLEASANT GEHMAN: The Screamin’ Sirens, The Ringling Sisters, Honk If Yer Horny.

Brad Pitt's Dog Is a Punk Rocker

Johan Kugelberg has historically been on the leading edge of pop culture. While the Swedish ex-pat who calls NYC home has a resume that sounds like a jack of all trades - worked in the music industry as an A&R guy (American Recordings and Matador; he was responsible for the Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments getting signed), played in a garage band or two (Union Carbide Productions, The Action Swingers), is a collector and preserver of pop culture (so much so that he was able to endow Cornell University's hip hop collection ) - he is the master of quite a LOT.

Johan has a new book entitled Brad Pitt's Dog, Essays on Fame, Death, Punk: A Punch and Judy show of intellectual diaspora making mincemeat of some pop culture sacred cows. It is published by Zero Books and available for pre-order on Amazon and is now available as an Ebook

"The book isn't about Brad Pitt, or about dogs, or about Brad Pitt's Dog. The title refers to what happens to you if you are told that the dog that you see making number one or number two on the sidewalk belongs to Brad Pitt. What's then being made by Brad Pitt's dog is number three," Johan Kugelberg said.

This is the first book of essays by a long-time renowned chronicler of underground culture. The way this book mashes up lo-bro and hi-bro is readable, funny and thought-provoking, and also downright provoking. Johan Kugelberg's essays on punk, style and pop culture have entertained readers of international publications including Dazed and Confused, Another Man, Ugly Things, Perfect Sound Forever, Spin, Hip Hop Connection, Raygun and Fact over the last couple of decades.

If you're in NYC, do stop by St. Mark's Bookshop, 31 Third Avenue (between 8th and 9th Streets)tomorrow - Tuesday, April 17th, 7 pm. There will be a reading and signing with Johan Kugelberg and Jack Womack, who contributed the afterword to Brad Pitt's Dog



Brad Pitt's Dog explores topics ranging from the psychogeography of record fairs, eulogies for Michael Jackson and Malcolm McLaren, a discussion of satire on Youtube, and essays on artists Dash Snow, Daido Moriyama, Carl Johan De Geer and Ragnar Persson, amongst other enthusiastic writings on photography, art, punk, and popular culture.

After a long career in blazing trails in music and the written word, Johan currently runs the exhibit space Boo-Hooray in New York's Chinatown. Recent exhibitions include In All Our Decadence People Die - Crass-era Fanzines, Artists' Book Not Artists' Book, Dreamweapon - The Art and Life of Angus MacLise, Ed Sanders - Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts 1962-1965.

Johan Kugelberg's previous books include Vintage Rock T-shirts, True Norwegian Black Metal, Born in the Bronx, The Velvet Underground - New York Art, Beauty is in the Street and Punk - An Aesthetic (forthcoming). His book on the early history of hip hop was nominated for the NYPL Books for the Teen Age award 2008 and his book on the Velvet Underground won the Foreword silver medal for music 2010. Beauty is in the Street is nominated for the London Design Museum 2012 Designs of the Year Awards.

Boo-Hooray is an exhibit space dedicated to 20th/21st century counter-culture ephemera, photography and book arts. They publish catalogues, books, artists' books and LPs regularly, as well as arrange readings and performances.

Boo-Hooray is located at 265 Canal St, 6th Floor, in Chinatown, NYC

boo-hooray.com

World Party's ARKEOLOGY Due April 10

I first met Karl Wallinger, aka World Party back in the 1980s. He was always a Prince-like musician, capable of being the entire band in Seaview, his own studio, writing and producing at a level above and beyond his years (we are age peers, as is Prince, so maybe its just par for the course for the musicians of my g-g-generation?). But to play live, one needs a band, and rising out of the generation that gave birth to punk rock and a more democratic way of presenting ones' musical self, Karl Wallinger presented his music via the band name World Party. The band that plays as World Party featured and features some of the most adept musical talent the world has to offer.

His prolific genius is unveiled next week (April 10) on Arkeology, a career-spanning 5 CD collection of 70 never-before-heard tracks packaged in a unique Any Year Diary intended for the purchasers’ personal use. Arkeology is at once a new album — with songs finished as recently as 2011 - and a treasure trove of rare studio takes, live sessions, concert recordings, radio interviews, covers, demos, B-sides and unreleased and until-now-unheard tracks culled from the band's 25-year history.


In my estimation, Karl has always been ahead of the curve, and by invoking some of the vintage music and styles that informs all of us baby boomers, punk/not punk/post punk and pop/populist, the World Party canon earns a place in the genre called "timeless." On Arkeology, you will find a cover of Little Richard's "Lucille," informed indeed by The Beatles' cover - and in taking a page from Sir Paul and his love of music hall styles, Wallinger also delivers a McCartney/Ray Davies/Noel Coward music hall style ditty, "The Good Old Human Race."

Back in the 90s, when I was working for the largest media company in the world, and World Party brought their tour to the USA, I had an opportunity to capture on video some of Karl & band's musical riffing on their own songs, and also a brief Q&A where I learned that Karl had been asked to provide the songs/soundtrack to the Ed Burns 1996 movie, She's The One (he had already been the musical director for Reality Bites) . The production ended up going with Tom Petty, and Karl told me that the benefit of that was that he got to keep his songs. Grown up boy band crooner, Robbie Williams had a hit in 1999 with the track, "She's The One." Arkeology features a live recording of this soaring ballad, which I prefer to Williams' cover.

A new song, "Everybody's Falling in Love" reminds me of something John Lennon might written and recorded. Another new track, "Photograph" was recorded over a period of years (17!). It mixes beats and piano and lyrically utilises the trope of a photograph to convey observations and emotions. It has the hit potential of another sprawling pop piano elegiac musing, Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is." It is not like that song - but it is as epochal/era defining and really, who can resist the musical journey that kind of piano part offers? From "Layla" and its fabulous Jim Gordon coda to Hornsby to Karl Wallinger's "Photograph," there are dots to be connected, disparate though they might be, but undeniable in their power to grab your attention and make you nod your head, tap your feet or keep time with the metronome in your head.

The power of comfort and familiarity combined with the joy and surprise of the new are two key elements to building a box set/career retrospective package and the World Party Arkeology succeeds on both levels.

Not included in the sprawling, gorgeous box set is a fave song of mine from Bang! I mention it only to bolster my assertion of Karl Wallinger being ahead of the curve... seriously, this just sprang up while I was driving.... in the song "Give It All Away," he sings "Hypocrites and zealots are struggling for the throne. King and queens and presidents younger than the Stones." Bang! was released in 1993, and recorded between 1991 and 1992. What I'm saying is that Bill Clinton, the first Baby Boomer President of the USA (born 1946) had not yet been elected when the song was written, and though he's younger than Mick n Keef by the blink of an eye, he's in their generation.... I'm referring to Tony Blair (born 1953) and Barack Obama (born 1961 - younger than me AND my sister! younger than Wallinger too).

The song (and pop culture itself, in a meta sense) imagines a time when we will have leaders younger than our idols... it imagines a time that is different from whatever the present is... a time that makes one scratch their head and re-think their journey. It inspires you to be inspired.

"How appropriate," I've been thinking the last couple months as I've listened to the selection of tracks from Arkeology so kindly provided to me by the kind folks at Shore Fire Media, "that Karl's called this collection 'arkeology,' for it is about digging up and imagining the future via the past." It also makes sense of the "any year" calendar in which the box set is encased. You put the message in the box. “The reason it’s all inside an any-year diary,” Wallinger said via press release, “is because I just got so sick of the CD packaging. I’m glad the whole CD format is dying, but I really didn’t want to put something out that was only digital.”

I have a suggestion: Vinyl?

Arkeology is affordably priced and available from all the usual suspects. The release date is Tuesday, April 10.

Track listing :

Disc 1 : Waiting Such A Long, Nothing Lasts Forever, Everybody’s Falling In Love, Where Are You Going When You Go?, Photograph, Everybody Dance Now, Closer Still, I Want To Be Free, I’m Only Dozing, No More Crying, Interview/Sweet Soul Dream (live)..

Disc 2 : Lucille, The Good Old Human Race, Put The Message In The Box (live), Trouble Down Here, Basically, Silly Song, Man We Was Lonely, She’s The One (live), Ship Of Fools (live), Mystery Girl, This Is Your World Speaking, All The Love That’s Wasted, Lost In Infinity, New Light…

Disc 3 : Words, Dear Prudence, Call Me Up (live), Like A Rolling Stone (live), Sooner Or Later, Love Street (live), Time On My Hands, Who Are You (live), Sweetheart Like You, Another World, You’re Beautiful, But Get Out Of My Life, Living Like The Animals, Stand (live), Thank You World…

Disc 4 : Break Me Again, Baby, Ship Of Fools (live), Put The Message (live), When Did You Leave Heaven?, Nature Girl, It’s A Pity You Let Go, My Pretty One, De Ho De Hay, We Are The Ones, World Groove / Mind Guerilla, Happiness Is A Warm Gun, Kuwait City, Do What I Want, All We Need Is Everything, Outro… Disc 5 : Mystery Girl (early version), What Is Love All About (alternate drum), I Hope It All Works Out For You, And God Said (long version), It Ain’t Gonna Work, Another One, I Am Me, It’s Going To Be Alright, In Another World, Thank You World (live), Cry Baby Cry, Temple Of Love, Fixing A Hole, Way Down Now (live), Change The World (demo)

Detroit's Opening Day, 2012

Today is many things rolled into one. Its Opening Day in baseball as I write this - and for the Detroit Tigers, Opening Day is April 5. April 5 is also Eddie Baranek's birthday. He's in The Sights... well, he IS the one constant of the Sights, a band he formed in 1999... a garage band in the vein of what garage bands were meant to be: suburban teenagers trying to play their favorite records. And it sounds like Eddie's favorite records included the catalogs of Humble Pie and Badfinger as well as the rich pop/R&B heritage of his hometown, the Motor City, which also helped give birth to punk rock while fomenting a revolution (see: MC5).

So, on his 2012 birthday, Eddie Baranek and The Sights will rock the Hard Rock Cafe in a very old skool way - with two sets, alongside their friends, Six and the Sevens - to celebrate what they're certain will be a Tiger victory.

You might be able to watch the Tigers pounce all over the Boston Red Sox on the teevee, but you've got to be in Detroit to enjoy this daytime musical extravaganza, outside at the Hard Rock Cafe.

If you're not in Detroit, not to worry. The Sights will be spending quite a long time on the road this year. They're opening for Tenacious D!

Here are some tour dates - and do keep up with them at these usual suspect links:

Band website
The Twitter
The Facebook

4/25 - Cleveland, OH

4/26 - Brooklyn, NY

5/5 - Detroit, MI

5/12 - Ypsilanti, MI

5/19 - Phoenix, AZ

5/23 - Santa Barbara, CA

5/24 - Oakland, CA

5/26 - Bend, OR

5/27 - Vancouver, BC

5/31 - Minneapolis, MN

6/2 - Marquette, MI

6/16 - Detroit, MI

6/17 - Chicago, IL

6/22 - Cincinnati, OH

6/23 - Nashville, TN

6/25 - Atlanta, GA

6/26 - Charlotte, NC

6/28 - New York, NY

6/30 - Philadelphia, PA

7/2 - Boston, MA

7/3 - Uncasville, CT

7/6 - Detroit, MI

7/7 - Chicago, IL

7/19 - Austin, TX

7/20 - Dallas, TX

7/21 - Tulsa, OK

7/23 - St Louis, MO

7/24 - Kansas City, MO

7/26 - Denver, CO

7/29 - San Diego, C