5/24/98
The Flying Luttenbachers played a furious free jazz set at the Fireside last night. The
line-up included Weasel Walter, Michael Colligan, and Kurt Johnson.
German terrorists Happy Grindcore and the blasting Minneapolis duo Vaz
also appeared.
Adam and the Ants resurfaced at the Big Horse on the 19th, commemorating
a guitar-less Ants gig exactly 20 years before. The trio wiped the audience out with all the hits.
Li'l Combo featuring Rayon Orlon, Zeek Sheck, and
Bobby Conn
will play their first show in years next Friday, the 29th at
2255 South Michigan at 10 PM. One can expect only
the most arty weirdness from this cocaine-addled troupe.
Metalux will also appear.
5/22/98
Last night at the Empty Bottle, a throng of chin-scratchers were treated to an extra rocking
set by Bobby Conn and his band. The ensemble was decked out in gold threads and played
"Rise Up!", "White Bread", and "California" off his upcoming lp and 3 newer ones, including
a homage to the fallen Linda MacCartney. Bobby recently banned himself from playing guitar in his
own band, due to complete incompetence.
Hatewave will perform with 7000 Dying Rats
and the Devil Bell Hippies at the Big Horse on
Saturday May 30th. The show starts at 11 PM. Hatewave just finished 10 tracks for an LP
to be released soon.
A second Zeek Sheck album for Skin Graft Records will be released this fall.
U.S. Maple will open for Dutch underground legends,
the EX at the Empty Bottle on June 12, 1998.
5/17/98
Last night's Skin Graft Records party at 6ODUM was a hot, sticky, tour-de-weird. Following
a cloud of foreboding smoke and a very "evil" announcement by MC Glen Danzig
,
ZZZZZ (featuring Flying Luttenbachers' alumni William Pisarri) played
a short set of skronk. Mount Shasta delivered the rock, with frontman John
Forbes raking his guitar and mugging like a deranged foot freak. Another pungent
taste of the usual confusing Skin
Graft, uh, "skits" took place before an intense free improvised set by the latest incarnation of
The Flying Luttenbachers. Zeek Sheck presented a confounding tableau,
complete with a Zeek impersonator and culminating in a lot of audience making-out and fighting. Yet another
Skin Graft skit followed complete with inaudible mumbling by giant cartoon characters and simulated abortions. The
evening came to a close with Bobby Conn exhorting the ragged, sweaty audience to "Rise Up!"
and destroy the pig system with rock music.
A disgusting new ensemble called The Chicago Sound ("a tribute to rock music")
will make its debut on June 9, 1998 at Lounge Ax in Chicago. The large group features a multitude of singers,
guitar players, drummers, poseurs, and other rock scalliwags allegedly performing "under-rehearsed"
versions of classic rock chestnuts by Foreigner, Journey, Heart and the like. We
have been promised "a battle royale of Rock and Roll" and "total chaos" by an informant close to the
organization, ruputedly featuring members of U.S. Maple, Cheer-Accident, 7000 Dying Rats,
the Flying Luttenbachers, Hatewave, Orbitronik, etcetera.
5/11/98
Here's a list off of the top of my head of lesser known No Wave bands from all over the world.
- Couch - Defunct Ann Arbor group with recordings available on
Bulb Records. Members went on to play with Lake Of Dracula, Galen, Many Moods of Marlon Magas, the
Pterodactyls, the Browns, Gerogerigegege, etc.
- To Live and Shave in L.A. - founded by Tom Smith (ex-Peach of Immortality, Pussy
Galore, Velvet Monkeys, et al.) in early Nineties. Many recordings on Menlo Park, L.I.S.P., Fifth Column,
Audible Hiss, a.o. Triple track glam vocals over hellish tape cut-ups.
- Xerobot - formed in early Nineties in Madison, moved to Chicago, then San
Francisco. Presumably on hiatus. Releases on Coat-tail, Gentle Giant. Hyper-structured skronk with bestial/
schizo vocals.
- Jackwacker - Defunct Madison duo with impending release on Coat-tail. Guitar/drum
duo akin to a more abstract, abrasive, rockist Ruins with improvisation.
- Midget - Six member group from Stuttgart, Germany. Two self-released seven inch
eps. Live sound is an overwhelming assault of frantic, Beefheart-ish guitar counterpoint topped off by manic kamikaze
vocalist.
- Galen - Presumably defunct Ann Arbor group formed in early Nineties with releases
on Hanson and Bulb. Wunderkind no wavers went on to bands like Isis and Werewolves, AAB,
the Pterodactyls, Kangoo, the Beast People, Couch, ad nauseum.
- Arab on Radar - Rhode Island quintet with several releases. Trebly attack with
outlandish vocalist.
- Nautical Almanac - Presumably defunct Ann Arbor band with album on Hanson.
Disoriented noises and homemade instruments.
5/10/98
Here's a list off the top of my head of stuff that should be of interest to mutants interested in No Wave
aesthetics.
- Cromagnon - Orgasm (ESP-Disk)
Recorded in the late Sixties (and re-issued approximately four years ago under the title of "Cave Rock"), this
surreal, ultra-weird album runs the stylistic gamut of proto-noise. The first song "Caledonia" is a mind-
bending classic featuring bizarre lysergic prose growled over noise guitar, pounding drums and
bagpipes (!). If the voice sounds familiar, it could be - rumors abound that several future members of
The Residents were involved in this cryptic project. If you can find it, buy it, because the
ESP catalog has once again been deleted.
- Nervous Gender/Beelzebub Youth - Music From Hell (Subterranean)
Nervous Gender sprang up from the late-Seventies West Coast Art Punk scene as Devo's queer, illegal
alien doppelgänger. Their sole full-length release (following a catastrophically destructive appearance
on 1980's Live at Target compilation), Music from Hell contains a
bunch of psychotic, anti-social pop songs with sour analog synth whirrs and blurts and a side-long "rock
opera" that I haven't quite gotten the gist of yet. Don Bolles (45 Grave/Germs/etc.)
puts in some drum work on a few songs. Other "no wave" units from this overlooked scene included
Johanna Went, Z'ev, the Deadbeats, the Screamers, Noh Mercy, NON, Factrix, Monte
Cazazza, and later, shit like
the Longshoremen, Caroliner, et al.
- The Electric Eels - Having a Philosophical Discussion with.... (Tinnitus)
This was the first "archival" release from Ohio's legendary art-assault squad. Between their founding
in the early '70s and their theoretical dissolution in 1975, the band played only a handful of shows, most
of which ended in riots, fights, or arrests. One show featured a live lawn mower. On record the band
cranked out mega-blasting two chord sludge rock with frenetic, dissonant, James Williamson on crack solos by
leader John Morton and ultra-sardonic subject matter. Everybody must know the obvious connections
to the Dead Boys, Pere Ubu, etc., but other Cleveland weirdos included
Eels spin-offs like X-X, Johnny and the
Dicks, the Charlotte Pressler band, and the Cool Marriage Counselors.
- Von Lmo - Red Resistor (Variant)
Von Lmo is recognized as playing a part in the original No Wave insurgence by being
a member of Red Transistor (with Rudolph Grey), who released an amazing, posthumous single in the early Nineties.
Lmo doesn't seem to get any respect; maybe he is too visionary, or too insane. Red Resistor is a
stunningly intense album he recorded a few years ago, featuring the cataclysmic, 30-minute noise
rave up, "X+Z=0". Rock music get any more chaotic and destructive than this, and "X+Z=0" makes
Fushitsusha's "wilder" moments look like pure hippie love songs." Other lesser known New York No
Wave bands from the late '70s/early '80s include the Gynecologists, Kongress, Jack Ruby, Rosa Yemen, the Devil
Dogs, Beirut Slump, the Static, Theoretical Girls, Toy Killers,
and later, Red Decade, Blue Humans,
Don King, Harry Crews, Rhys Chatham, Loved By Millions, etcetera.
Man. Unfortunately Chicago isn't the greatest place for the No Wave right now. The circumstances under
which the scene thrived (cf. 1992-1995) have almost totally dissapated. The economics suck. Everybody
works too much just to get by. The old people have gotten tired of struggling for little reward. A lot of people
have been decentralized. Many audience members are incredibly jaded, due to the perpetually repressed environment and the
lingering nausea caused by information overload. New
blood occurs rarely. Apparently there is a rapidly dwindling audience for truly destructive,
nihilistic art here. This also explains why effete, intellectual, passive, derivative, COOL art music
rules Chicago. Tortoise is the perfect soundtrack for tired 9-to-5-ers looking to enhance their culture vulture
hipness statuses. The music is about as inspiring and sonically exciting as an old Bob James record.
Its quasi-modernistic veneer ensures accolades of "innovation!" from the pencilnecked critics/white-
guys-with-bad-eyes establishment that controls the alternative media.
What I'm saying is: it's time to leave.
Anyways... a few notable shows happened this week. 7000 Dying Rats turned in a
great performance at the Fireside Bowl on Friday night in celebration of the release of their new album (see
last months' article! at the archives). By the end of the set, "Female" vocalist
Toney Vast-Binder was stripped to his saggy grey jockey shorts before the whole band
hog piled random audience goers. It seems that the band is gaining the "disenchanted suburban punk
rocker" demographic, probably due in part to radio airplay and their witty new video for "Train Come to Town, Make Town Dirty".
The following night the venue hosted a very chaotic show. First up was a set of hilarious no wave
by Abort Protocol featuring Billy Sides on bass, Hanson Records
/Couch/Galen/etc. mogul Aaron Dilloway on drums, and two
unknown girls, one playing plaintive trumpet exercises off a piece of sheet music held by the other. Next
was the assault/noise of VD. Basically these guys broke a lot of stuff and made a lot
of invigorating racket. One of their guitar players was dressed like Freddy Krueger from "Nightmare
on Elm Street" and scratched his strings with deadly precision with knife-blade finger nails. Following VD
was a sombnambulistic set by Mini-Systems, featuring Dilloway and
Twig Harper. Their cracked electronic snooze-core definately cooled the crowd out for a moment or two.
The true warriors of blitzkrieg metal, Hatewave played their fastest, loudest genocide
anthems before Cock ESP took the stage by storm. Cock-smiths
Matt Bacon and Emil Hagstrom pulled off a two-minute set of total, hilarious
chaos, ending with Hagstrom executing a roundhouse flip with a Peavey combo amp on top of Bacon, rendering
all of the equipment useless. This show was a lot of fun, but apparently hardly any one would agree. You
boring fucks. An exciting event will occur at 6 ODUM on Chicago Avenue and
Damen next Saturday, the 16th at midnight (following the Sonic Youth/EX/Kevin Drumm
show). A German film crew is in town, so Skin Graft Records is throwing a party featuring
performances by U.S. Maple, The Flying Luttenbachers, Zeek Sheck, and Mount Shasta.
Admission is only three bucks and a good time will be had by all. For more info call Michael at (733) 227-3617.
Bobby Conn's Legg Warmers will perform at the Empty Bottle in Chicago on Thursday May 21, 1998.
Hatewave and 7000 Dying Rats will play a special two dollar admission rock gig at the Big Horse (1558
N. Milwaukee in Chicago) on Saturday, May 30, 1998. The bands will play at 11:30 PM.
5/6/98
Click here for an account
of last week's Flying Luttenbachers/Otto Muehl event at the University of
Chicago. |