Friday, May 25, 2012

Top 13 (of the Week)


Sure,you know what's cool. But do you know what's really fuckin' FAR OUT? That's where Advanced Demonology takes over. Every week, (K)en and (S)wilson trudge through the murky waters of the pop culture hellscape, dredging up sparkly morsels of wonder. These are the result of our latest foray into the world of the weird, our wildest, wiggest-out picks of the week. Call it our 13 Point Program.

13. Roy Junior - Victim Of Circumstance
I just recently scored digital versions of the Back From The Grave series. These comps were monsters in the 80's and 90's noted for the fact that they somehow avoided Psychedelic and Pop in the selection of Garage obscurities. Instead focusing on the rawer almost hillbilly slabs of twang bash. Very Cramps. The real home run on the entire series for me  is Victim Of Circumstance By Roy Junior, who was the son of Roy Acuff. He put out a few singles and disappeared. This teenage lobotomy was successfully covered by The Mummies. (S)


12. Canadian party metal resurgence
While all the whiny simps here in the good ol' USA pluck out their sad-assed nu-folk and cultivate dad-beards, up in Canada the "kids" are busy doin' what we used to do in the 80's, i.e. ROCK THE FUCK OUT. Greasy NWOBHM-enthusiasts Cauldron are probably the hairiest n' scariest of new crop of Canadian Party Metal merchants, but for sheer teenage cheap thrills, check out the femme-fronted Diemonds, who might as well all be (and probably are) the bastard sons (and daughter) of Sebastian Bach. Their new video, Livin' Tonight, even features a cameo from Fubar's own Deaner, who's got his own party-metal concern, Nightseeker. If you miss mindless rock n' roll hedonism, head north! (K)


11. Love Live Life + One - Love Will Make A Better You
One of the best band names and an absolutely true statement on the nature of love it self.  If you can wade through the first 5 minutes of free jazz type exploration you are rewarded with a visceral life affirming musical LSD induced orgasm. Akira Fuse is the Japanese Tom Jones and he was recruited by a forward thinking label boss to team up with a traditional studio horn section and a wild , free jazz,  guitar wielding Takao Naoi. The result is nothing less than astounding. Remember kids, Godzilla is from Japan. (S)


10. New Cult record smokes! Mostly.
Man, The Cult were...well, like a cult to me and my friends back in the 80's. But their last couple records have been seriously lacklustre, and to be honest, I just figured their best days were behind 'em. And they might still be, but I will tell you this: the first half of their new album, Weapon of Choice, is as good as their self-titled album from '94. And that record was one of the best they've ever done. So, you know, do the math. The Cult is back! (K)


9. Quincy M.E.
I never saw this show when it aired but they put it on Netflix and it turns out that Lady Swilson grew up loving this series. Now I'm hooked. It's the same thing over and over again ( I'm only on episode 6 and perhaps that changes*) but the real gold is the ultra charismatic Jack Klugman. Super cool. Plus it's shot on location in L.A. in the seventies and I recognize most of the places. Than I get to imagine myself living here in the seventies. That's my happy place.  (S)


* it doesn't. - K
8. If you're lookin' for Jesus, he's in Siberia
Vice just did a pretty sweet mini-doc on this (reasonably benevolent?) cat from Siberia who thinks he's the new messiah and has a flock of (reasonably sane?) followers out in the middle of nowhere. Is it all going to end up in blood and fire? Yes. They always do.(K)


7. Far Out - Nihonjin
Japrock is great for when your working out trying to stave off the demons. Makes you forget about where the hell you are. This you tube clip does all the work for me on this entry. I'll just add that to me this sounds like Black Sabbath on a prog- rock holiday to Okinawa. Remember kids, Godzilla is from Japan. (S)




6. Black Leather - Volume 1
One man Gothbeat band from Seattle. He sounds very much like Swilson's spooky cousin. Makes me wanna dig a hole. (K)



5. Passing Show: The Life and Music Of Ronnie Lane
 Ronnie Lane might be the coolest member of The Faces and if you know anything about them than you know that's pretty goddamn cool! (S)


4.Sex, Drugs, Rock n' Roll. Awesome together, as confirmed by science!
According to a new study conducted in Netherlands - where they do a LOT of rockin' - it turns out that kids who listen to a lot of loud music have a tendency to engage in "risky" behavior, AKA gettin' loaded and gettin' laid. So if you're having trouble with the ladies (or the fellas),crank some Slayer and smoke some weed, and it'll all work out just fine. See you in hell. (K)



3. Ronnie Lane:  Debris & Ooh La La BBC 1974
The amazing song Debris and one of my favorite all time songs, Ooh La La….. since it's going to be a Ronnie Lane Weekend! Cheers, mate!  (S)


2. Amanda Lear




There's way too much going on with this amazing lady(boy?) to properly explain here, but here's some highlights. Amanda might be a man, might be a woman. Nobody's telling. She's almost definitely French, though. She was David Bowie's girlfriend and Salvador Dali's muse. She has had successful careers as a model, actress, TV host, and disco queen. Nobody knows exactly when she was born, she's probably in her 70's at this point, but she still looks like she's in her 40's. And she just released a sweet new jam, "I Don't Like Disco". Which is funny, because she totally does. (K)


1. Downliners Sect - Glendora
A song about falling in love with a Mannequin. Written by Lou Reed. the Sect were a british blues outfit during the first wave of the brit blues boom. Way more raw and unpolished than the stones or the pretty things. (S)



Saturday, May 19, 2012

Advanced Demonology Podcast Lesson 6

This month on the Advanced Demonology Podcast: Maximum Fruit Jams!

Just in time for your springtime bacchanals, Ken and Swilson offer up a four-hour cornucopia of fruit-themed/related tunes, hand-plucked at their ripest to keep your Okkult Rock weekend blow-out raging all night long! It's our juiciest episode yet!

Listen/download HERE! 


And please remember to keep fruit evil! 

Friday, May 18, 2012

Top 13 (of the week)


Sure,you know what's cool. But do you know what's really fuckin' FAR OUT? That's where Advanced Demonology takes over. Every week, (K)en and (S)wilson trudge through the murky waters of the pop culture hellscape, dredging up sparkly morsels of wonder. These are the result of our latest foray into the world of the weird, our wildest, wiggest-out picks of the week. Call it our 13 Point Program.

13. Disco Dracula - Betamax
whacked-out Nu-disco remake of "Soul Dracula", the legendary '77 dancefloor hit by German polyester-abusers Hot Blood. That song seemed pretty perfect just the way it was, but this one's a sweet, spooky jam as well. (K)


12. Ghost Blues: The Story Of Rory Gallagher
This is a really good, but not great doc on Rory ( he makes lots of appearances on the Top 13).  The not great part is the celebrity talking heads  included to give "credibility" to Gallagher's legacy.  The Fuckin' Edge from U2!  OK he's an Irish guitar player too……  Fuckin'  Bob Geldof!  Why the fuck is Bob Geldof famous anyway?!? Who the fuck listens to the Boomtown Rats!?!?  Other than that….this is well made, with great live performances and interviews with Rory's brother/manager and longtime bandmates. The coolest no fuckin' nonsense guitar player ever!  We will take what we can get. (S)


11. The Royalty - Lovers album
Texas band that basically sounds like retro soul-pop singer Duffy fronting a scruffy garage band that's super into 50's doo-wop. Great vocals, really catchy songs, more than a little weird. I'm into it.  (K)


10. The Great Unwashed: Clean Out Of Our Minds
A 1983 side project from  New Zealand's pop-a-delic  godfathers The Clean. Unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed super hits oh plenty. Nicked from the always crucial Ghost Capital. (S)


9. 42nd Street Forever: The Blu-ray Edition
This exploitation trailer series has been running for years now. There's even an XXX version. All of them are great and offer up many hours of entertainment as they unspool one jaw-dropping exploitation movie trailer after another. Now they've upped the ante with their first blu-ray edition: crisp HD transfers of bottom-of-the-barrel 60's/70's/80's cinematic swill. This one serves as a "best of" comp from the first two DVD editions plus a fistful of new stuff, as well. Overwhelmingly bad-ass entertainment.  (K)


8. Groundhogs: Uk Tour '76
Wow! Fuck! Holy Shit Man! Far Out! Heavy! I got a real kick out of seeing Tony McPhee's name on the 1976 Melody Makers reader's poll for the best guitar player in Britain, right next to that boring Eric Clapton, in the Gallagher doc (Rory he topped the list).  Captured live from that punk rock watershed year, touring to support the Crosscut Saw record, pure smoke on the water fire in the sky, cruiser's creek yeah. (S)


7. Run Angel Run - Tammy Wynette
Run Angel Run is a grubby biker flick from 1969. I haven't seen it yet, although I suspect it's exactly like every other biker flick ever made: hassles, weed, chain-fights, ol' ladies flashin' boobs. Regardless of its cinematic qualities, the fuzzy soundtrack by Stu Phillips is solid, and the kicker is the hazy, doomy theme song, by terminally depressed country crooner Tammy Wynette. It's awesome. If only Tammy actually starred in the movie too, as one of the aforementioned booby-flashing ol' ladies, then we'd really have something. (K)


6. Synanon
I watched the 1965 movie starring  Chuck Connors, it's a great film, and It got me reading about the real Synanon. Holy Cow!!! It was a drug rehab on the beach here Santa Monica. They coined the phase "Today is the first Day of the rest of your life". Well it starts out as a drug rehab….but like all things in California, it turns into a cult!!!!!  Shaved heads (Lucas used people from the clinic as extras in THX), forced abortions, child abuse, people not being allowed to leave, Tax evasion, a cultish concept called "lifetime rehabilitation", an actual underground railroad of sorts was started to get kids out of Synanon!  It did help people in some way, (see the 1962 Joe Pass record: The Sounds Of Synanon) but why did they have to take it so far?? Will Advanced Demonology devolve into a cult someday? I sure hope so. I'm sitting over here on a Parchment farm. (S)


5. Larger than Life documentary
When I was around seven or eight years old, I was nuts about Kiss. Of course, it was the 70's, and all little kids were. But then I turned nine, discovered AC/DC, and decided I was too mature for Ace and the gang. Besides, they were heading into some weird territory (disco, whatever the fuck "Music from the Elder" was, "She's So European", etc). By the time I was a teenager, they were deep into their "Lick It Up" era, which was...I mean, it was gross, right? And then after that, basically all you ever heard was Gene Simmons blathering on about how rich and successful he was. No rock n' roll in that at all. I guess what I'm saying is, fuck Kiss. But Kiss fans? Endlessly entertaining. Can't get enough of 'em. Enter Larger than Life, a documentary about a Kiss tribute band. It's like a suburban Spinal Tap with even worse haircuts. Awesome! (K)


4. LSD March: Under Milk Wood
Any band that names itself after a Guru Guru song has to be great, right? Japan blows mind again and again. Under Milk Wood is the entry point into the wild world of the LSD March. All things Advanced Demonological are represented here/hear, dressed in Nippon black cool, with ( stoned) zap comedy, and always  psychedelic artistic integrity. These are the people your parents warned you about…….psychedelic artist types……who are Japanese. (S)


3. Groovy Movies: Far Out Films of the Psychedelic Era
Even a cursory glance around here will give you ample evidence that Swilson and I are fairly obsessed with what could be comfortably be called the "psychedelic era", i.e. the mid 1960's to the mid 1970's. The music, the style, the mayhem, the kooky kults, we love it all. Naturally, the movies were pretty choice around this time as well, and this helpful, immersive tome offers up essays and reviews about all the various genre flicks splashing the screens during those woozy days: spy flicks, road movies, biker movies, whacked-out musicals, sexploitation, warsploitation, sun-baked spaghetti westerns, etc. etc. Dig in. Your Netflix queue will be fairly bursting by the time you're through. (K)


2. Ray Barretto: Acid
There ain't too much LSD marching on this record, I think Ray was trying to catch the hippies with a buzzword. But Goddam! This is a latin boogaloo!! BBBq, Beer and Weed for me, yes please. I just got back from a springtime vacation to New York City.  This is the soundtrack to the approaching summer. Listen to everything on Fania. (S)


1. Boob Mug!
Just got back from a week in Florida. I wanted one of these my whole life, and they had 'em at the souvenir shop. And now I have one. Mine says “St Pete's Beach”, because that's where I was,  but really, these are pretty representative of Florida as a whole. It's a very boob mug sorta state. (K)

Friday, May 11, 2012

Season in the Abyss

Ken and Swilson are on vacation this week, so the Top 13 will return next Friday. In the meantime, please watch this awesome documentary about Nancy and Lee in Las Vegas.


PS new episode of the Advanced Demonology Podcast coming next week, as well. So far, it sounds like this:




Friday, May 4, 2012

Top 13 (of the Week)


Sure,you know what's cool. But do you know what's really fuckin' FAR OUT? That's where Advanced Demonology takes over. Every week, (K)en and (S)wilson trudge through the murky waters of the pop culture hellscape, dredging up sparkly morsels of wonder. These are the result of our latest foray into the world of the weird, our wildest, wiggest-out picks of the week. Call it our 13 Point Program.


13. Golden Slumbers
New doc making the rounds about the lost world of Cambodian cinema. Basically, during the psychedelic era, Cambodia produced over 400 home-grown films - mostly groovy fantasy flicks based on local mythology - but once Pol Pot took over, almost all of them (and many of the people involved with the productions) were destroyed. The stuff that remains (Crocodile Man!) is tantalizingly kooky. Golden Slumbers tells the sometimes tragic, sometimes triumphant world of the Cambodian film industry. A must-see for fans of wild n' wooly world-cinema.(K)





12. Sweet Apple: Love And Desperation
I'm guessing everyone knows about this: J. Mascis got together with Cobra Verde madman Jon Petkovic and Dave Sweetapple from Witch, to belt out this heavy pop masterpiece back in 2010. If you also live five years behind the times, check it out. Every song is a super hit!  This project was apparently put together in order to deal with the loss of a loved one. (S)




11.Arthur Dave and Toni - Hearken to the Witch's Rune
Holy fuck, records don't get more 'Advanced Demonology' than this one. Stark, sparse, delightfully creep-o pagan folk from a trio of British weirdies whose day job was on children's TV. Only in 1970 did crazy shit like this happen. (K)



10. Juggernaught
These African rednecks play something known as Man-Rock. I don't know what that is, but does anyone know what anything is? Mountain Man is a  tune is from a record called: Act Of Goat. It's much better than anything that Black Label Society put out, in fact I think these guys are succeeding at what BLS is hoping for without even trying, Kinda like when the Faces out stoned the Rolling Stones, or maybe not. Maybe it's the reincarnation of Tad? Maybe South Africa is just like the Southern United States except with man eating beasts? (S)



9. Enterprise - Stages
Mexican nu-disco kingpin masquerades as mid 80's Mexican porn-soundtrack synth-assassin. Here's the tagline:
"Mexico, 1985, Nico Raibak is leading a small porn movies production company, when he decided to launch a new live concept linking the acts to the sound. After six months holed up in the studio with his actresses, they are on stage."


And here's the glorious results.


'


8. Angel Dust
Great "documentary" aired in 1980. This is all about kicking back with some PCP and is further proof that California is full of Satan worshipping creeps and weirdo's. Angel Dust is the nameless drug that you see in the after school specials that makes the kids think they can fly. When you watch that stuff in Health class  you say to yourself "I ain't never felt like I can fly when I'm stoned". Well, you just ain't tried Dust.  If anyone out there can track down the film "Angel Death", narrated by Paul Newman, let me know because I've been searching for since I saw it back in 1991. (S)





7. The Heavy Eyes - 2 demo 
 For a coupla dudes who made our bones on Stooges/Sabbath heavy-devy ass-rock, we don't really talk about it all that much on the Top 13. That's because it's a given, really. Who doesn't like, you know, The Devil's Blood or Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats? But every once in a while, a group of biker-grease scruffs release some new music that batter our earholes with such finesse and/or ferocity that we just gotta mention it. Southern lords-of-demonfuzz The Heavy Eyes just posted a couple demos on Bandcamp that will eventually land on their upcoming second full-length, and they FUCKING SMOKE. So check 'em out. (K)





6. New Dawn: Theres A New Dawn
This came out in 1969 but it's firmly rooted in 1966. They sound like they could be from Massachusetts but they reign from Portland Oregon.  Each tune is a sizzling weird bummer and I can't stop playing it. Lost classic. (S)




5. If Planets Orbited the Earth 
I mentioned this on the Space episode of the Advanced Demonology podcast. It's a startling/awesome/terrifying animation that depicts the Earth's night sky if the other planets in the milky way orbited Earth. Pretty much it would be panic-inducing. (K)




4. The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie
Flo & Eddie used to confuse me as a kid. They were talk show hosts? Record producers? They were D.J.'s? They played with Zappa….no wait, they were the Turtles? Anyway, now I'm old enough to realize they are just two of the coolest guys in rock history. Cool enough to be all those things. The Pholerescent Leech & Eddie is from 1972 (a record the drummer in Swilson turned me on too). It's an amazing ride of 70's sunshine, California groove, psyche and hard rock all swirled together with excellent taste and restraint ( not a quality I normally applaud).  We are trying to get them to produce a Swilson record. (S)




3. Brian Jonestown Massacre - Aufheben
So, fist fightin' psychedelic nutball Anton Newcombe fucked off to Germany a couple years back and has been picking away at the shards of his band, Brian Jonestown Massacre, ever since. Sorta comically, the latest from the Teutonictown Massacre gets released a week after their bitter cinematic rivals the Dandy Warhols (watch the awesome Dig! for further explanation). Aufheben is decidedly less "establishment" than the Dandies record, what with the generic sleeve and the lack of fuss or fanfare. It's also less overtly "rawk", but it's still a sweet, acid-fried ride nonetheless. Basically, it's a loose collection of groovy ragas with zithers and bloops and bleeps sprinkled atop rolling hills of glossy, glassy psychedelia. Great "couch of woe" type action.



2. Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte
Robert Aldrich (Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?) Teams up agian with Bette Davis for this star studded thriller! Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotton, Agnes Moorehead and George Kennady co-star.  Murder! Mayhem! Deceit! It ended up getting seven Oscar nominations back when it meant somthing. (S)



1. Discovr
Apparently this is the number one music app in the world, so it looks like I am as behind the times as El Swilson, but if you don't have it, you gotta get it. Basically what happens is, you search on a band you like, it finds it (Replacements!), and then like an octopus, it offers up a fistful of other bands that have been crowd-sourced to appeal to fans of the original band (Soul Asylum! Husker Du!). And then you can do that with the new bands it found (Mathew Sweet! Teenage Fanclub!), as well. It's nuts.I'm using obvious choices here, but you get the idea. Full songs would be alot nice than just snippets, but still, as a music discovery tool, it's amazing. (K)




Let us know your picks! PS New episode of Advanced Demonology Podcast out May 19th!