More musings on Finnish Nuggets

After receiving a reprimand for not posting comments in garagepunk.com, here are some more comments...

Some thoughts and musings on this massive comp, ( I received a copy on 4 discs!)

I dig the fuzz on Hey Hey Hey by Blues Section. The Sax riff in response to the vocal is a bit disconcerting. A pretty heavy tune otherwise.

The Ernos bust a moody move with the track Harha. A hypnotic riffs reels the listener in and then returns to continue pushing the song forward. The vocals are more of a harmonic thing, think these folks were influenced by Mamas & Papas?

The Renegades (Birmingham UK) give a hard, Brummie reading of 13 Women. That organ riff still startles me after a few listens. The dog seems to dig it. The guitar break is punctuated by screams, growls and cymbal bashing. Great tone on the axe. Ace.

Jormas scream it out on the keyboard heavy I Can't Break The Habit. Falcetto vocs provide the counterpoint to the distorto guitar that sludges along.

The Roosters shake a soul feather on thier version of See See Rider. I dig the rolling organ at the bottom of the mix.

Topmost gives the Artwoods a run for the money with their reading of I Keep Foregtting. The guitar break is pretty sweet, but could be tough by either turning up the amp, or hitting a distortion pedal.

The Careless hit the garage pocket with Desolate Time. I dig the accent here. Garage vibe from the North. Drum roll intros the tuff guitar solo. The cymbals are smacked hard as well.

The book that Euphonic assembled is also unbelieveable. After all of the comps that I have bought over the years, this surely has to be one of the most complete. Compilers take note...

I hope to print it, sit down with the comps, with a Belgian Ale and fully get the story of Finnish Nuggets.

Sons of Adam Moxie ep

Ah yes, the soothing sounds of The Sons of Adam. Soothing would not realy be a proper adjective with Randy Holden's blistering guitar. Mr Holden is a master.

This ep starts with You're a A Better Man Than I, the Yardbirds track. While most of the performance of the song has little to improve on the original save for Holden's guitar. The break will bend your mind. Lots of strings bending, sustain and speaker rippling feedback.

The Sons cover an Arthur Lee song called Feathered Fish that Love never recorded. Here Randy builds the base for the entire sound. He pounds it out, and the vocals, in a very 66 LA follow the path blazed by his guitar.

Baby show Me The Way was introduced to me from one of those Tony The Tiger comps from 10 years or so ago. This is a hard number with Mr. Holden playing counterpoint to the vocals. He seems to be trying to keep his axe under control, but his youthful energy and chops demand that he let it rip. "Lets move it down, now... Yeah."

The vibe is the MC5 at their most raw, without the politics. Word is genius.
The sound on this ep is pretty rough, obviously "mastered" from the original 45s themselves.

Here is a link to d/l mp3s. Thanks, Lost In Tyme Blog

Noise for the people

If you have been paying attention, I have been trying to get my skills together with garageband.
I still have a lot of work to do with the learning curve, but here is a remix of the funk nugget "Hachet."

Hachet

(the link above is to a non compressed 34 M file hosted by our friends in Deutschland at Rapidshare.)

Thanks to the prodding of my friends, hopefully this is just the beginning.

Nuggets from Finland

Wow, I constantly amaze myself with how much cool music came out in the 60s. It came from everywhere. Last year somebody provided multiple cds of mp3 sourced Portugeuse 60s music.

So here we go with FOUR (!) cds worth of 60s beat from Finland, home of a very heterogenous (and rocking) population.

The sound quality varies on record to record, but what else would you expect. Even the worst disc does not touch the "sound" of earlier Pebbles type comps. There seems to be some digital imperfections at some places in the songlist.

There are tons of tracks here, but I will try to stick to the ones that caught me ear. On disc two, there is Kevat by the New Joys. The fuzz riff is maximum, but then mood is kicked down quite a few notches when the vocals start. Lyrics are in Finn, and add an eerieness to the proceedings. Then a Keith Moonalike makes a quick appearance and smacks his drum kit like a collection of garbage bins. Cool track.

Dance to The Locomotion by Jormas, is wary fast and smokes. How does the drummer play that fast? R&B speeded to the max, the snare solo is crazy, followed by a frantic guitar lead. Their take on California Dreaming aint so hot, though. The tempo is kind of jerky on that song.

The Downwalkers do the moody thang with I Don't Believe You. These gents are from Espoo. There is a bit of the string jangle, but the vocals make the mood here.

Tunnen Sen by The Esquires seems that it may be more of an authentic sound, as it doesn't sound like anything else.

Volume Three kicks off with Call Me on The Telephone by Blues Section. It has more of a tough sound, I liked 80% of this one, excepting the saxaphone, and the cowbell might be a bit abused. The guitar snarls and wheezes trhough a break sounding like nothing else.

The Renegades do a great cover of the Sorrows, "Take A Heart," with a phenomenal harmonica sound.

The Hitchhikers do a track called Meditation with a driving organ. The tempo is all over the place.

I will try to post some more thoughts later.

Captain Beefheart Bat Chain Puller

This unreleased album from 76 comes my way via the mail. I am not sure why Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band never released this one. But thank you, internet.

The title track that leads this off, makes me say, "What an astonishingly odd way to start a record."

The harmonica "tone" that came out of the speakers gave my dog the inclination to do a double take. Sounded like wounded young elephant.

Maybe as I listen to this I am beinning to understand why this is lost. The third track, Harry Irene with it's sing songy vocals and whistle solo, really makes me this of one Jim Croce. Sorry, Captain.

Poop Hatch, while being a wierd Beefheartian spoken word piece, just kind of sucks.

Bat Chain Puller redeems itself with the track Brickbats. Lots of skronkity skronk horns dueling with some sloppy drums playing in an uncountable time signature. Surely those AZ pizza hut employees the Sun City Girls modeled their music in that style.

Not his strongest effort. I guess the hardest part is getting past Van Vliet's singing style. His famous multi octave voice is nary in view.

Handbraking weather

Well, to say that I am a fan of my daily driver whip would be the overstatement of early 2007.

My tonda shivic is quite excellent in the weather as experienced today. We received an inch or so of snow that fell at around 30 degrees, so that the snow was both slippery and fun. This is where the car shines, and I enjoy it the most, outside of the built in reliability.

Here are the main important features of the car:

1. The car is pretty light.
2. The car is front wheel drive.
3. Said shivic has a handbrake (even though it is a 4 speed lame o auto tranny.)

I enjoyed going to a local mall with Cratedigger Sr. holding onto the chicken bar on the headliner, and plunging over the snowplow "drifts" at the edge of each parking row. The look on pop's face was quite priceless as he screamed, "Craaaaaaaaatediggeeeeeeeeerrrrrrr Watch It!"

Another fun routine was forcing the vehicle into right angle turns, by taking my foot off the throttle and then pulling the handbrake, thus slowing front wheel spin whilst at the same time locking the rear brake drums, and jerking the steering wheel in the direction of intended turn.

I really should have taken some shots of the right angle turns in the slush. Good times.

DJ Shadow Psych Mix

I have been spending time in the cut/paste/edit/repeat zone as noted in recent posts. I finally got around to downloading the DJ Shadow psych mix as discussed on the yahoo group U-Spaces. I have to admit to being a lurker in that group...

This has been of interest to me for awhile, but my MP3 aversion is hard to overcome. I can't pull many of the songs that Shadow uses here, but I did recognize an Alexis Korner record used on the first track, as well as a Zappa voice over, "Suzy Creamcheese, where are you?" I do believe that is from the Mothers' Freak Out record.

For me the source records are not the most interesting part of this sound collage. The film strip from 7th grade sound quality of some of the sampled voice overs is of most interest. In fact some of the snips remind me of real experimental/industrial (not waxtrax) from the 80s. I wish I still had some of those tapes... The snips make mention of UFOs and other appropriate spaced out subject material that well accompanies the light headed feeling that the listener will get from jamming this. The sum of the parts, is much greater as a cliche.

The build from some unknown (to me) record at 4 minutes into track five, would be a great sound track to pumping the pedals up a large uphill ascent on your old roadbike. Then it breaks into "I am so tired and I don't know who I am..." A melancholy come down, go buy a farm in the country, hippie. There was some sound collage here also, but hard for me to make out at volume. Nice touch on the sampled loc groove at the end, scratches and all.

The sound quality is dodgy as I doubt this was ever very hifi and the source>aiff>mp3>aiff sound path has not helped on the highs in the sound spectrum. But I enjoyed splitting my wig to it nonetheless.

Not much in the scratching arena is in evidence here, but there are tons of edits, of that I am sure.

I found this collection of tracks to be highly effective, in additon to my homebrew espresso, to get the Sunday going.

AR + Machines Echo

What have I been up to? I have been getting lost in the Interzone of cut up music and distorted internet culture. Old WSB's ears may hurt from this $h!T, but he would surely get it from the creative and production level.

Take for example, the double record, AR+ Machines. Apparently, this is a Krautrock masterpiece that will "Never" see the light of day in a proper cd reissue. So the FLAC files that I decoded and burned to a couple of cdrs will be as good as it gets.

The dude behind this release is pictured above. His name is Achim Reichel and he used to be in the Rattles, a beat band with whom I am somewhat familiar. This record is firmly in the progkrautrockcamp. As illustrated in the pic above, Herr Reichel, likes to abuse the Strat and the tape loops. There are even some floot loops on one of the tracks.

Echo is one of those releases that you can put on and start the coffee and go about your Saturday morning, and the noise will put you into an oddly creative mood. I think that volume will make a big difference in what your personal takeaway is from the record.

It is almost useless to out write Julian Cope in regards to this record. He seems to get his Freak On about Echo.

AR+Machines abuses the tape loops and edits and uses phasing in such a way that it makes me wonder where I put my Fripp and Eno records. The mood goes from outer space to inner space and back again. I think that I will listen to this on the headphones the next time that I am on a plane.

Damm GarageBand is Baaad

Thanks to some of the persistence of one of my bros, I have been abusing the mac program GarageBand. The claw knows...

I have found it incredibly entertaining to abuse the tunes around the house and fill the system with some discombobulating noise. Just drop the noise into iTunes and then find it in GB and bring it in. I am thinking that putting it back out should be just as easy. So far I ahave been mixing live and hurting my garage sale amplification. One of my "tracks" is getting closer to the point that I may be able to record it soon.

Some of my faves are pretty mainstream funk dusties, then busting fills with Dutch noise. I may be onto something, or I may just be lame. But it doesn't matter really.

The program has an extremely easy learning curve. I really know nothing about sound, but GB makes it very easy to make edits, cuts, loops, and add extra tracks without much skill required. I can't believe how much fun this has been, maybe more fun than my tascam 4 track 15 years back.

The Churchills LP from 68

I had heard a bit about the Churchills LP from 68 a bit as being the one high dollar psych lp that is actually worth the money. They were an Israeli band that challenges Plastic Cloud on the fuzz category.

I am happy to get a cdr of an out of print $5-6000 lp usually, but I have not been able to make that happen yet. Yesterday, I was able to download an mp3 copy of the album from 1992. For mp3, this particular burn makes quite the room filler of sound.

Pictures in my mind has a preponderance of fuzz curlique throught the mid range. The stereo mix is very effective here. The 'Hills use the the panning effect to excellent result. Towards the end the fuzz travels channel to channel, up and down in volume in the mid range. This is all over a pounding blues based rythm stomp. Very cool.

Track four mellows a bit and takes the progression down.

Track 5 starts to pound and the guitar workout would give both Jimi and Ron Asheton a run for the money. Once again the panning effects are used to build tension. The arrangement is spectacular. The bass is tight and the drum kit is spanking out. My listening room is rumbling.

When the Churchills get to Straight People, they lose my attention a bit. The tempo reminds me a bit of Coronado's biggest drunken export, Jimmy Morrison. That f er should have sent more time mowing his lawn instead of "poetry," but I digress. Not a good thing to my ears. They use a preponderance of reverbed sound effects to move the song. The vocals just kill it for me. There is also either more tape hiss or snare rumble on this track.

Subsequent Final betrays their geographical heritage by including local instrumentation (the saz?). Sonically it reminds me of some of the more powerful Turkish psysch that was being reissued in years back. The bass is just doing bass drops. My neighbors must love me this morning. They break it down in an almost bluegrass fashion at the end. Amazing. This is possibly best one of the best arranged songs that I have heard in months. Rumble, rumble rumble oes the electric bass under it all. "Here I go..." Nice test tone at the end.

So Alone Today uses backwards guitar and echo to make chills form on the back of your neck and to make the dog ask to go outside. Freak.

Debka has the freak out award for this record though. Listen to our friends consult the joint chiefs over a rambling stringed arrangement as they build into a more medium tempo. The leader and intro is asking to be sampled.

I won't bore you with the details as they move into Led Zep cover territory.

Frank Zappa - King Kong (1968)

This was posted, just because it is there.

Many Beefheart collaborators,and FZ kind of stinks up the joint.

critical mass

Kind of glad that I missed this part of the Mass.

Critical Mass 12.29.06 pt 2

So after riding down Milwaukee, we follwed a couple of fixed gear riders down Lake Street underneath the El to Franklin, where we once again followed the El tracks, but this time south. Manouvering the Dahon amongst the supports for the El tracks and the Friday traffic was quite challenging. The Speed handled very well, I need to take it in for a dialing in, though. The brakes could use some adjusting. Overall, the chrome moly frame feels stiff and the SRAM shifter is a huge improvement over the 5 speed Sturmey Archer failure.

We got to Daley Center and there was a crowd, but not as big as I suspected for a New Year's Critical Mass. The weather was extremely mild and dry. Amazing for late December in Chicago.

We met our two groups of friends, two of the total group were Chicago CM first timers. They seemed pretty psyched. We heard rumors that the ride was going to head south to Hyde Park for a bonfire. None of our group was up for a ride down south and then all the way back north.

We headed out and almost immediately started heading south and west. We went past Greek Town and then headed west on the street directly north of 290. When we got to Ashland, the ride headed south. Our group was definiately not into going to either Oak Park (west) or Hyde Park (south) at that point. We called a group audible and decided to head back north and hit a couple of bars.

Based on a video that I posted, it looks like we are all wrong, and the ride did head north at some point, since the video shows some CM nonsense in Wicker Park at the North/Damen/Milwaukee intersection. We did see more than a few groups of riders heading both east and north as well.

Anyway, we headed north and stopped at a place called the Union Club,, on the edge of the hood. Judging by the bars around the parking lot, I felt that this was a somewhat unsafe place to park our six bikes. We used our Kryptos and some of our friends used a cable.

We mentioned to the door dude to watch our bikes, but I didn't feel that he gave it much priority. I came out the front door of the bar every few minutes to check. Everything was there each time that I checked. After we were done, maybe 45 minutes or so, we settled up and left. I was the first one out the door and was the first to notice that there were only 5 bikes!

f-ing thieves!!!

Our one friend had his mountain bike stolen. Not cool. We talked to the manager, and then we headed the 2 blocks to the police department. We dropped our friends there, they were going to file a report, take the blue line to the red line and go home.

We started heading east though the Loop. It was a great night to be out in the city on a bike. Pretty calm, and the weather was perfect. We went north on Clark, and then took the scenic route through Lincoln Park. Going through the Park at night on a bike is another cool thing to do. All of the familiar sights and smells from my childhood at the Zoo seem so much different. It is a quiet oasis between Broadway and Lake Shore Drive. I also almost ran over two rats that think that they have the park to themselves at night.

We continued up Broadway and evetually ended up at Moodys. Ths place has the 1966 beer joint down. Nothing has changed there since the 60s, a nice dark joint with free peanuts and $9.00 Anchor Steam pitchers! I will be going back.

We continued north and caught the Rogers Park train at 11.52. It was a long night of riding. I can't wait for next month.

Chicago Critical Mass 12.29.06

So yesterday after taking a short holiday schedule at work, I went to the city to have my new Dahon Vitesse 5 speed tuned up at Rapid Transit Bikes, where I bought it. This was in preparation for the last Critical Mass of 2006.

I used the new Bolsa bike bag to carry the folder on the Metra commuter train to the city. The ride to the Clybourn stop was uneventful.

We got off the train, folded the bikes up and headed down the bike lane on Cortland through the yuppie borough of Bucktown. As I was pedaling amongst the city dweller hoopties and the yupster whips like Mini Coopers and Range Rovers, I detected a major clicking and vagueness coming from the Sturmey and Archer rear hub. This was not a cool feeling coming from any bike much less one that was a week and half old.

We get to the shop and they put the Vitesse on the rack. There was a mood of familiarity that permeated the room as if they had seen problems with this ride in the past.

Apparently Sturmey Archer is now owned by another company and is NOT known for the quality that I am familiar with from vintage Raleigh 3 speed transmissions.

The mechanic replaced the gear selector cable, ground down the adjustment barrel, replaced the cable again, and when I took the Vitesse on a test ride the same problem was evident. The bike couldn't find gears in the rear end and when it could, it could not stay in gear for long. Bogus.

Things were not looking good to use the bike for the final Critical Mass of 06.

After another agonizing hour, I said that it didn't look like the bike could be fixed, as the mechanic had tried everything. He seemed releived, then he shared with me that they had taken back 5 of this model due to similar issues. Dahon had even made a mod that was supposed to rectify the situation.

Strike #1 Dahon company.

I still kept my cool, but I was very determined to have a bike to ride in the Mass, especially since I took time from work and planned to meet a few people from both out of town as well as from the surrounding area.

They are determined to keep customers happy at Rapid Transit, so they let me pick out another Dahon in even exchange. The one that I selected was the Speed 8, which is much more of a performance bike as opposed to the 16" Piccolo and the D5 Vitesse, which are commuters. Also the Speed 8 has a derailleur instead of an internal hub tranny.

While this bike is off the floor, and could still use a few adjustments, I can say that it honestly hauls. The SRAM shifter moves the chain over the cogs pretty consistently with nary a skip.

So after getting a quick felafel at Sultans Market, (in Wicker Park at North and Hoyne), we flew down Milwaukee and enjoyed the bike lane all the way to Lake Street. We were able to see a tall bike and a stereo equipped trailer bike as we stopped for the requisite Old Style 6 pack.

Abby: Exorcist rip from 74

Here is another winner (loser?) from the CD archives, 1974's Abby. This is a Blaxpolitation version of The Exorcist.

Being an American International picture, it hits on many points in the Blax genre. Also, this is a cratedigger vault member that appears to never have recieved a dvd release. The vhs copy is a multi generational copy from a scratched film print. Some of the scenes are pretty washed out. I would imagine that this is from both the film source as well as the old tape on which the signal is stored, but I digress.

William "Blacula" Marshall co stars in this film and plays a critical part in the plot as well as the resolution. The actor can emote. Not hard to imagine him as Lord Vader in the place of James Earl Jones. He plays Abby's father in law. He is trained in the ways of the Eshu spirits and knows how to deal with them.

This is a real freaky film as it starts all happy and positive with Abby (Carol Speed) moving into a new house with her husband who also happens to be a pastor. Spirits come to visit on the first night and Abby is never the same.

Once she starts to get her posessed freak on, first in a hot shower and then notably while cutting some bloody chicken, the positive tone of the film goes south. I guess this is much like the tone of the US during the early Ford Presidency circa 74.

When she freaks out and gets evil, the reverb used and the spooky green face flashed in really freaked out the youthful members of the audience. Sidenote, when I scored this video 10 years ago, a co worker named G 2 tha E said that he saw it on the West Side and had nightmares for the rest of the year. The combination of sound and visual effects remind me of the 70s anti drug film Angel Dust the Wack Attack!

Abby diverts from her training as a marriage counselor mighty quickly as she becomes the soul shaking hootchy mama enticing the brothers with the soul glow with her evil ways. The bar scene where this occurs will make any crate digger of soul quite happy. There are at least two cool shots of an old jukebox spinning the dusties, and afros and wild threads all over the place.

Marshall ends up saving the day and in so doing gives a positive resolution to the film. This is somewhat unconvential for movies from the blax era.

While being a cheapy, I enjoyed viewing this film again for the first time in years. The acting is not too bad for a blax movie and there is a basic plot that is not hard to follow. This would be great for a beer or cocktail fueled viewing party. Find a copy of this and dig it.

Weekend with The Babysitter

With the Holiday season in full effect, I received a dvd recorder as a gift. As part of the process of learning to use the machine and the related technology, I am digging into the cratedigger movie vaults (boxes and crates) to find movies that are trapped in the vhs domain. Many of these gems are way out of print, (if they were ever in print) on vhs, and certainly do not have a proper dvd release. I am wrong-- look here.

So that said, the first film that I pulled out of the basement video vault was Weekend with The Babysitter from 1970.

This Crown International picture opens with a cool scene at the CA / Mexico border that shows the border security in place in 69/70. Great mid 60s cars are all over the place. A hippie-aged young person gets taken down after he tries to run after being selected for a search. As I watch the film, I wonder what this has to do with the plot. I guess it is an attempt to have a teaching concept to this mild explotative time killer. "Sex and Betrayal," I guess...

George E. Carey seems to have done just about everything in this film (write, direct, produce) and Susan Romen stars as the teenaged, Honda Dream riding, gogo boot wearing babysitter named appropriately enough- Candy Wilson.

The babysitter randomly shows up one evening, apparently univited, The dad, Jim, is surprised to see her. The doped out wife, Mona, is "going to see her parents" with Mike, the wee laddie son. That leaves dad and the babysitter alone for youthful shenanigans.

The question remains, did Mona really invite Candy over to husband sit as a distraction?

Candy is soon making Tanqueray martinis ("on the rocks") and taking Jim to Sunset Strip, for some beer drinking/acid rock/lightshow/dancing mayhem.

Really, Mona is going to hang out with Rich, to get some drugs while her mom takes care of Mike. After a bit, Rich entices Mona to use Jim's cabin cruiser to sail to Mexico on a drug run.

Meanwhile, Jim takes Candy to the mountain house in his airplane.

This movie has it all, drugs, sex, some violence, motorcycles, motocross, youth rebellion, "rock" music, and hip lingo. The plot is pretty snore inducing. But the exploitative nature of this film tries to cover all bases. Some of the coolest footage is of the early motocross action.

JB Update--still b!t$h slappin' from beyond the Grave

I don't know if this is for real or not, but pretty amazing nonetheless.

It appears that James Brown might have locked his wife out of his GA house after his death.

There must be something to the story based on USA Today's coverage:

"It's not a reflection on her as an individual," lawyer Buddy Dallas told The Associated Press. "I have not even been in the house, nor will I until appropriate protocol is followed."

Brown's partner, backup dancer Tomi Rae Hynie, was already married to a Texas man in 2001 when she married Brown, thus making her marriage to Brown null, Dallas said. He said Hynie later annulled the previous marriage, but she and Brown never remarried.

"I suppose it would mean she was, from time to time, a guest in Mr. Brown's home," Dallas said.

On Monday, after the 73-year-old "Godfather of Soul" died at an Atlanta hospital, Hynie, 36, found the gates to Brown's Beech Island, S.C., home padlocked and said she was denied access."

Ouch, JB. You are still pushing people around, even though you are gone. The world is a much less interesting place without you.

RIP JB

This will be a lot less funky Christmas this year.

I just got word that James Brown has passed away.
Rest in piece Soul Brother Number One.

You will be missed.

James Brown dies aged 73

By Telegraph staff and agencies

Last Updated: 10:52am GMT 25/12/2006

James Brown, the dynamic, pompadoured "Godfather of Soul", whose rasping vocals and revolutionary rhythms made him a founder of rap, funk and disco, died today in Atlanta, aged 73.

	James Brown had a complicated and unhappy personal life

Brown, whose career spanned six decades, was taken to hospital yesterday with pneumonia, said his agent, Frank Copsidas, and died with longtime friend Charles Bobbit at his side.

Brown’s music was a major influence on modern music, and his work has been sampled by rap artists from the 1980s to this day, his famous 1960s and 1970s break beats becoming the basis of hip hop.

"The music out there is only as good as my last record," Brown joked in a 1989 interview with Rolling Stone magazine. In 2003, he reaffirmed his impact: "Disco is James Brown, hip hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I’m saying? You hear all the rappers, 90 per cent of their music is me."

His hit singles include classics such as Out of Sight, Funky Drummer and Say It Loud - I’m Black and I’m Proud, a landmark 1968 statement of racial pride.

"I clearly remember we were calling ourselves coloured, and after the song, we were calling ourselves black," Brown said in a 2003 interview. "The song showed even people to that day that lyrics and music and a song can change society."

Brown won a Grammy award for lifetime achievement in 1992, as well as Grammys in 1965 for Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag (best R&B recording) and for Living In America in 1987 (best male R&B vocal performance.)

He was one of the initial artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, along with Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and other founding fathers.

He triumphed despite an often unhappy personal life. Brown spent more than two years in a South Carolina prison for assault and failing to stop for a police officer.

Brown, who had his first hit, Please, Please, Please in 1956, earned the nickname "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business" for his tour schedule and number of performances. He was still touring this year, with concerts as far flung as Auckland, New Zealand.

"James presented obviously the best grooves," Chuck D of Public Enemy once said. "To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one’s coming even close."

Born in poverty in Barnwell, South Carolina, in 1933, he was abandoned as a four-year-old to the care of relatives and friends and grew up on the streets of Augusta, Georgia, in an "ill-repute area", as he once called it. There he learned to wheel and deal. "I wanted to be somebody," Brown said.

His troubled childhood saw him duck in and out of reform school, and it was there that he met Bobby Byrd, a major early influence. While most of Brown’s life was glitz and glitter, he was plagued with charges of abusing drugs and alcohol and of hitting his third wife, Adrienne.

In September 1988, Brown, high on PCP and carrying a shotgun, entered an insurance seminar next to his Augusta office. Police said he asked seminar participants if they were using his private toilet.

Police chased Brown for a half-hour from Augusta into South Carolina and back to Georgia.

The chase ended when police shot out the tires of his truck. Brown received a six-year prison sentence.

He spent 15 months in a South Carolina prison and 10 months in a work release program before being paroled in February 1991. In 2003, the South Carolina parole board granted him a pardon for his crimes in that state.

The Plastic Cloud

This reissue CD from 68 arrived in the mail the other day. Tonight, being all black and inklike outside seemed to be the perfect time to warm the vacuum tubes and give this CD a spin on the reference system.

Sonically, this record appears to be in early stereo. It is a bit disconcerting, but I guess is part of the trip here. Track 2, Shadows of Your Mind exemplifies the fizz riffing, scale running and balls out jamming appears in the left channel while the plantive vocal attempts to balance coming out of the right channel. A backup vocal appears in the left channel later in the song.

The guitar appears to favor the left channel on Art's A Happy Man as well, the hippy vocal stylings can be a bit trying, but you can feel the build of the song by using multi channel mixing of the various vocals.

Fuzz face or some other cool old pedal appears to be modifying the signal of the guitar at the beginning of the focal point of the LP, You Don't Care. The guitar is mixed into the lower depths here. It moves back and forth. The drums roll and the cymbals are used mercilessly.
"You Don't Care for the morning, you dont care for the sumer rain." Then the guitar takes off. Maybe like a much speeded young Jorma... Everything chills the weird Indian sounding drum tone appears in the right channel, and the master volume of the guitar is somewhat squelched.
Finally the bass moves into an area of the mix where it can be heard.

Bridge Under the Sky, seems like way light after You Don't Care. "Everybody knows, everybody says... might as well be dead." Have to love anti happy hippy lyrics like that. There are some odd tones and hums that leak from various areas of the sound pallette. It is hard for me to tell if it is tape hiss, or what, but it certainly does seem that the system is appropriately grounded.

Dainty General Blues moves the vocals more in the center of the mix. There is a hefty ladel of plate reverb added to the vocals as well. The bass really stomps in the right channel and may bleed a bit into the left. The marching beat matches well with the lyrical matter.

The lp does not end on an easy listening note as they trot to a near sludge beat on Civization Machine. "Finest you've ever seen."

This is a bit off the beaten path, but fans of psych like Love or perhaps West Coast Pop Art Experimental band should dig this. While the fuzz is the element that sticks with the listener, The Plastic Cloud is much more in the psych realm that in garage. This record may contain the highest possible level of fuzz.

In fact, other than the raw production there is nothing garage about this record. The packaging goes to lengths to provide all the material from the original vinyl release. It includes complete lyrics and oddball liner notes that give the feeling that these kids dug their Hobbit.

Plastic Cloud shot a bit of light out of the loudspeakers on this the most dark of nights.

Scoot Cannon

I have always been into scooters, and I even have a pic of this Vespa on the CD listening room wall, but I did not have the full story... until now.

"After World War II, there was little money for defense spending while the nations of Europe rebuilt their industry and society. When there was some cash to spend, one had to be creative to stretch it as far as possible. The French probably accomplished the most astounding example of that with the ACMA Troupes Aeról Portées Mle. 56. Deployed with their airborne forces, this was essentially a militarized Vespa scooter outfitted with a 75mm recoilless rifle. Five parachutes would carry the two-man gun crew, weapon, ammunition, and two scooters safely to earth, and the men would load the weapon on one scooter and the ammo on the other, then ride away. More impressively, the recoilless rifle could be fired effectively on the move by the best of the gun crews. Total cost? About $500 for the scooter and the recoilless rifle was war surplus. Were they successful military machines? Well, the French Army deployed about 800 armed scooters in wars conducted in both Algeria and Indochina."

Kind of like the story of the Vespa scooter itself. Piaggio, was a supplier to the Italian aerospace field, this helps to explain some of the defining features of the Vespa, such as the stub axle and the monococoque integral frame and body structure. The Vespa was very key to the moblization of Europe after the devastation of WWII.

Thanks to Scott for sending the link.