Saturday, July 28, 2012

Advanced Demonology Podcast Episode 8

This month's lesson: Disco Inferno!
Join Ken, Swilson, and Alistair as we present you with six hours of non-stop party music for Satanists, coke-monsters, and sexy people everywhere! 


If you missed 1979 the first time, here's your chance to (re)live the magic! 
Listen/Download HERE! 

Next lesson: Summerjams! 

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.Fastway - Eat Dog Eat (2012)
So there is a new Fastway record out. it's the first one in 21 years. Aside from a few tunes that feel like Eddie must of listened to some grunge records along the way not much has changed.  Just no nonsense  wall rock 'n roll. This recording, sonically speaking, sounds better than the records made in the 80's, it's real raw and full, and I've never been much of Dave Smith fan so I dig the new singer. Great job guys. Long live Fast Eddie! (S)




12. You may wonder to yourself, what would Marc Bolan be doing if he was around today? 
I'm pretty sure he'd be doing exactly this, remixing his early 70's hits into Studio 54 party anthems or hazy chillwave jams. The DJs at KCRW mutate several well-known Bolan boogies into some seriously groovy T Rex-tasy. There's an EP available. If you are a child of the revolution. you'll get it. (K)





This great instructional guitar book traces the history of the guitar players ,who helped fuse Blues and Jazz into Rhythm & Blues, which helped form soul and Rock 'n Roll and ultimately Funk. It's a fantastic history with biographies and in depth analyses of the playing styles of such six string luminaries as Tiny Grimes, Robert Ward, Steve Cropper, and Cornell Dupree. Hell there is even an interview with my most infamous main man Ike Tuner! It comes with a CD to help you play along to examples and, if your a guitar player, it's a great way to spend a  Saturday night. (S)







10. Lydia Lunch - Spooky 
Lydia was/is a hardcore NYC no-waver turned angry poetess, and to be honest with you, most of the time, she's just way too much for me. Seriously, try to get through one of her 80's spoken word records in one sitting without a bottle of something stiff to soothe your nerves. But on her first solo album, 1980's Queen of Siam, she croons her way through a sultry, stripped-down version of Classic IV's late 60's mega hit Spooky like she invented "spooky". Or at least perfected it. (K)





9. Prog Not Frog search engine
You know, times have been tough lately for diehard obscure music fans. After Megaupload got nailed, everybody else started panicking and now the music blogosphere is a sickly, shivering shadow of its former self. At least, that's the way it looks on the surface. The new PNF search engine (sponsored, I'm guessing, by the excellent and still-kicking Prog Not Frog blog) is an excellent way to find some way-out, long-gone tunes. Just type in whoever you want to hear, and it will find blogs posting your chosen poison. It's still being built, so not all blogs have been indexed yet, but it's a strep in the right direction, for sure. Try it! (K)





8.The late great Sherman Hemsley was a acid eating Gong fanatic!

This little tidbit has been kicking around the inter-web since George Jefferson passed away. If you haven't read it yet, you can check it here. It's just such a mind-blowing story that it seems like it comes from the Advanced Demonology parallel universe. Just a few things to keep in mind when reading it. This first person account from Daevid Allen is from late 1978 or 1979, not 1969, almost 1980. Think about that. Also Hemsley would go on to have a hit series with "Amen" after this story took place. He isn't exactly a counter culture icon. He's more like Jerry Seinfeld at the time. I can't wait for a bio to be written about this man. (S)







7. Some dude from Vice went to the Westminster Dog Show. On acid.


6.Ron Asheton 1986 Interview
I stumbled across this really cool clip of the god of thunder talking with the Dutch in 1986. If anyone can track down the rest of this documentary let us know.(S)





5. Ike & Tina Turner Live 1971
Caught this one on the Netflix watch instantly this week. Awesome!  The opening with just the Ikettes is worth the watch,  and you couldn't imagine things getting hotter and sexier, than the acid queen comes on and your reduced to a puddle of jelly. No wonder Ike Turner was dressing and  acting like a pimp. This is serious, uncut, pussy power,that blows away that watered down stuff in years to come like Madonna and that Ciccone rip-off act Ga Ga. (S)




4. The Orchis Italia
Also known as the Naked Man Orchid, for obvious reasons. They grow in the Mediterranean. Pink flowers that look exactly like grinning idiots with large, dangling penises. Nature is nuts. If you stumbled across these by accident,  they'd probably fry your brain but good. (K)




3.The Bad Trips - Open

When I ordered the reissue of Walk to the Fire ( you should get yours now they are going fast apparently) I also grabbed this. Grady Runyan is a guitar god al la Randy Holden, he also owns a cool record store, and this is his other band the Bad Trips. To quote apparently square and misdirected youtube commenter "fucking druggie shite, grow up!". So you know, right on, that's exactly what we want here at Advanced Demonology. (S)





2. The Playboy Roller Disco and Pajama Party 
This really happened. On TV. In 1979. Girls on rollerskates, the Village People, Richard Dawson, Dorothy Stratten, Bill Cosby...it's all too much. By the way, midway through, there's an awesome news update from a local anchor who's clearly appalled that this is even on television. Holy smokes, was 1979 a fuckin' gas, or what? (K)





1.  I saw a Bobcat in my backyard!!!
I grew up on the east coast and the cities are concrete jungles. Not much nature around other than rats and roaches and pigeons. Los Angles is a wonderland and  it's the second largest city in America, but because of the climate, all the canyons,  the beach, and foothills there is tons of , to me at least, exotic wildlife that just mixes in with the concrete and grime, rats and roaches. We have coyotes, rattlesnakes, rabbits, lizards, black widow spiders, if your by the beach, seals, dolphins and sharks.  In my backyard alone I've seen a deer, had a hawk drop a 4 foot gopher snake out of the sky, been up close and personal with a coyote at 4am, and looked eye to eye with a weasel.  But the other day I came home from work to have a bobcat scamper out the yard. A bobcat!?! Isn't that related to a tiger or a lion? Is that animal dangerous? We have mountain lions too but I never want to see one. I'm from New Jersey!  California is full of creeps and weirdos and wild cats I guess. (S)


Friday, July 20, 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 comes in. 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. Marcel Chapman - Midnight Movies
Throbbing nu-disco jam set to clips from Jess Franco sexploitation flicks. What's not to love? (K)



12. Reeves Amps
I think the Hiwatt amps from the seventies are the king of all loud guitar amps and I'd love to own one. But they aren't cheap and like any old amp they aren't that reliable.These guys make really amazing repos of the originals and they do it right here in the good ole U.S.A. You can get 'em in 50 or 100 watt versions with all kinds of cool options like power dampening and different color tolex. They aren't that much if you know the price of any good guitar amp and when "Cool Skull" goes platinum I'm gonna buy myself one. (S)


11. Here's the Story by Maureen McCormick 
There's a lot of misery to wade through - this chick was never happy, pretty much - but worth it to read about Eve Plumb's gross dressing room habits, how Maureen sometimes went braless in the last season of the Brady Bunch  to protest her character's lack of maturity, and most importantly, what movies she was in when she bombed on coke (basically the awesome ones: Skatetown USA and Vacation in Hell). Also, the part where her dad and brother turn into hardcore conspiracy nuts and trap her in their black-curtained house to interrogate her on videotape is pretty rad, too. Also, she may or may not have made a solo sex tape in exchange for coke once. Shit happens in this book, is what I'm saying. (K)


10. Mondo Phase Band / Nothing People - Split
Been on a real Nothing People kick the last few weeks and I picked up this split they did with a cool Aussie group calling themselves The Mondo Phase Band. It's more fodder for the life long psychological war game that I seem to playing with my mind by listening to all this weird shit. Looking forward to hearing full length by these guys.  Semper Fi. (S)



9. Planet P - Armageddon
I avoided the Planet P Project back when these records first came out (early 80's) because let's face it, how excited is anybody gonna be for the side project from the keyboard player for Rainbow? And then I just forgot about it completely. But then I randomly came across the first Planet P album at the record store, picked it up on a whim, and was pleasantly surprised by its easy space-prog charms. Some of it is as lame as you imagine, but a few tracks - like this one - are actually pretty awesome. "Can-yuns"! (K)


8. Make sure you back up all your files on your computer in case the hard drive goes down, it's a modern tragedy.
I'm sure this has happened to almost everyone out there but it's my first time and I'm coming to grips with it. The modern world is fragile my friends and when the fall of the empire comes and future archaeologists hit this layer of the excavation sight there won't be much of the culture left, but a bunch of plastic.  My hard drive crashed and although I had a allot of  of stuff backed up I did loose some important shit. Mostly photos and the lyrics to about 50 unrecorded Swilson jams. Now maybe I can remember some of them off the top of my head but there really is now a "Lost" Swilson record somewhere in the vapor. (S)


7. The original Blank Generation
Raise your hands if you knew Richard Hell's classic snark-punk track "Blank Generation" was actually a cover of a 1959 equally punk tune by Bob Mcfadden called "Beat Generation". See, me neither, but wow, right? Great song no matter what the decade. (K)




6. Monoshock - Walk To The Fire (1996) reissue
I case anyone missed this time bomb of an LP on the first go round, next week is your chance to grab it.  The soundtrack to melting minds when it first emerged, then disappeared back in 1996.  S.S. Records is giving it a audio overhaul and it apparently sounds even better than the original. If you like Comets on Fire and Wooden Shjips you'll love these guys. The Guitar is still mightier than the sword. (S)


5. Galactic Zoo Dossier
I did not buy this because $21 for a magazine is fucking crazy, but if I had that kinda dough to throw around, I definitely would've. It's got (new) interviews with Rodriguez! And Susan "Poppy Family" Jacks! And Arthur "Crazy World of" Brown! Plus a CD of weird obscuro jams and psychedelic trading cards! Dammit, maybe it is worth the money. Don't be stupid like me, get it!(K)


4. Salem (S4LEM)
I'm not sure what to make of all this but somehow I really like it. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure all these kids were born in the 90's.  A bunch of mid-western kids dicing around with computers and the occult and probably some kind of prescription medication. There is absolutely no trace of anything traditional in they're music, not a hint of rock 'n roll or anything made before…. well…1990.  So it's next level.  It's gotta be. They are playing it at runway shows in paris and on hip british BBC shows. (S)



3. Sex in the Movies by Sam Frank
This is one of those illuminating "secret history of cinema" books, not unlike Incredibly Strange Films, which basically blew people's minds when it was first published in 1986. Page after page of amazing photos and info on (then) hopelessly obscure T&A flicks. This is the first place I ever laid my eyes on Cheri Caffaro. That was a good day. Still a great read! (K)


2. Upstairs Downstairs
Further proof that everything was better in the early Seventies, The Satanic Psychedelic Loner Rock Champ would like to recommend to my fellow demonologists, Masterpiece Classics: Upstairs Downstairs. Yes a show about Butlers and Maids who work for a rich family in a London town house, set in the early nineteen hundreds, is blowin' my mind this week. Every episode is fantastically well written the characters are amazing, nothing is over the top or heavy handed, it pretty much perfect. They slyly tackle modern problems like: drugs, sex, class, race, and abortion, there is even a "hippie' episode.  It won about every award known to television watching man and goes to show that it doesn't matter what the shows about it's how you do it. The singer not the song. (S)


1.  The Boner Popping Album Cover Thread
Go over to the Movies About Girls message board and add your own! Finally, something useful on the internet! (K)


PS: New episode of the Advanced Demonology Podcast coming soon! So far, it sounds like this:


Friday, July 13, 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. Astra
Of all the bands that claim Pink Floyd as an influence few ever get it right. They forget that Floyd's music was an ensemble of simple parts played sparingly at the right time with the right intensity.  Lot's of breathing room. Astra a band out of San Diego certainly conjures up the feeling and let's it breath big. Releasing records on the mighty Metal Blade and adding heavy doses of Sabbath and Hawkwind just to keep it streetCheck out 2009's The Weirding and 2012's The Black Chord. Heavy!!! (S)






12. The Accutrac +6
Jesus Christ, look at this fucking turntable. A fucking spiral shoots up and gently lowers your record on the platter! A 1970's computer reads the tracks and lets you program it like a CD! I would trade my car for one of these. I mean, Stacey wouldn't let me, but I would if I could. (K)






11. The Six Degrees Of Helter Skelter
The Dearly Departed Tours offer some of the best and most unique tours available. The city of Angles and southern California in general is the serial/mass murder capital of the world. Statistically speaking. Few mass murders captured the terrified imagination of America, and struck a deadly blow directly at the 60's day dream as the Mason gang.  This documentary, hosted by a D.D.T. guide and Manson murder expert Scott Michaels, focuses on the Murders themselves not on the back story or the trial/hysteria that followed after. It's a blow by blow account that puts you in the footsteps of the murders and the victims  those fateful evenings in late 1969.  I'm a pretty big Manson buff and I highly recommend this especially if you live in or plan to visit Los Angeles. (S)






10. And Party Every Day: The Inside Story Of Casablanca Records
What a book! Written by Neil Bogart's cousin (and right-hand man). There's a lot of mumbo jumbo about numbers, I'll tell you that up front, but otherwise the cocaine starts piling up early - back when they were both working at Buddah (home of Melanie! And 1910 Fruitgum Company! And Honey Cone! And Coven!)  - and it only gets worse/better when the move to LA and start up Casablanca, the juggernaut that spawned Kiss, Donna Summer, and the Village People, among many others. Crazy shit goes down and lots of blow gets snorted, a good portion of it by Curtis Mayfield! (K)




09.Terry Riley - You're No Good (1968)

Supposedly commissioned by a Philly disco, Terry Riley  ( the man behind the avant one hit wonder "In C") takes a perfectly good Harvey Avern tune and warps it into a 20 minute mind bend that will make you wanna reach for the Dramamine by the time you get to minute thirteen. Certainly a very early form of "remixing" if ever there was one. (S)






8. Seeds of Iblis - Iraqi anti-Islam female-fronted black metal 
Yikes! This is gonna end badly, I think. But what a scene, and what a racket! (K)





Pretty much invented Funk and Rock 'n Roll drumming and played on every record you've ever loved over the last 50 years. I just found out about him the other day. here he is on a Jesse James track from 1958, check out the drums on this shit!!!(S)





6. Roy C - Sex and Soul
Roy C is one of the great long-lost soul men, and his albums, Sex and Soul (1973) and More Sex and Soul (1977), are fantastic. Also, his lyrics are crazy. Like on this track, I Wasn't There (But I Can Feel the Pain). Did he just say, "I wasn't there when they raped my great, great great grandmother, and I wasn't there when she cried out for help, but I can feel the pain, early in the morning"? He sure fuckin' did. Holy smokes, Roy.  I love this guy! (K)





05. Nothing People - Smells Like Metal (2011)
There are few bands cooler than Northern California's Nothing People. Smells Like Metal is there latest effort and is a spaced out groove. Outsider one Percenters fo' sure. Dig?(S)






4. Mary Moor: Pretty Day
Killer ice-hearted proto- coldwave from a  murderous French chick circa '82. 
PS: This single currently goes for hundreds of bucks! Why? The strangled fake sax solo? (K)






03. Sylvester - Over and Over (1977)
Incredable!!!!




2. Solid Gold
Swilson dredged up the memory of this 80's cheesepop staple recently, and I was psyched to see the first-ever episode, glitchy and washed-out, on Youtube. I still don't get why they picked the snooze-worthy Dionne Warwick (and Paul Anka!) as the first host(s) - the gorgeous Marilyn McCoo, who replaced her a year or later, was a much better choice - but still, hot dancers "interpreting" then-hot tracks, many of which are now completely forgotten (Robbie Dupree's Hot Rod Hearts?!)? Irene Cara in a see-through Caftan? Kurt Vonnegut's kid wrote songs for Ambrosia? Also, that one dancer chewing gum during Chuck Berry's perf of Johnny B. Good? Awesome! (K)








1. Utz - Crab Chips
I didn't eat potato chips for like 15 years but now there back in my life and back with a vengeance. I highly recommend the Utz Crab chip. I can't get it out here so I have to special order it. Very good with cold beer if you get your kicks that way (S)





Thursday, July 5, 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 comes in. 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. Cucumber - The French Job
Cucumber is a French dude who may or may not be a member of  the pop-psych instro-jammers Stereoscope Jerk Explosion. He might not even be French. He might not even like vegetables. All I really know is that he's got a new record, “The French Job”, and it's crazy groovy, full o' fat organ riffs, trippy sitar freakouts, and 70's cop show funk. Far out! (K)



12. The Beguiled (1971)
The crowning achievement of the Eastwood/Don Siegel team up. Maybe because being trapped in an all girls school in the south is one of my fantasies, but I think this is one of the best movies of the 70's. Our friend Lalo Schifrin does the soundtrack and Clint sings one of the tracks.  This is a good candidate for a Movies About Girls episode if they haven't done it already (S).


11.Danuta Lato
Spectacularly top-heavy Polish 4-foot-11-inch“glamour model”/actress turned 80's synthpop singer. She's well-known in Europe for a long-running series of prank TV shows. All the pranks involving her also involved her boobs. Hard to find her stuff stateside,  but if the gleefully cheeseball/softcore “Touch My Heart” video is indicitive of her talents, she's my new fave singer of all time, ever. (K)


10. I'd Rather Be The Devil: Skip James and the Blues by Stephen Calt
Skip James is a mean mother fucker! You think gangsta rappers are bad asses this murdering, pimping, bootlegging, piano playing, guitar picking,  blues legend puts them all to shame.  You might not like Skip all too much after reading this book, you could argue that he's a product of the horribly racist Jim Crowe south, but that wouldn't explain all the rest of the people who didn't commit such atrocious acts like oping up a juke joint dance floor, indiscriminately  with a double barreled shotgun.  All this murder and mayhem aside this is an amazing book about the blues and music in general. The fascinating thing is that James was not all that successful a blues man the first go round. His voice was often too thin to be heard above the rumble of the Saturday night partiers and his style a bit idiosyncratic. Not until some white collage students unearthed his recordings in the 60's and played them up against all the other recordings made at the time, was it realized he was a true musical genius. (S)


9. Ball of Fire (1941)
Barbara Stanwyck stars in this fantastic comedy as the awesomely named Sugarpuss O'Shea, a showgirl on the lam who hides out with a geeky professor and his seven weird colleagues. They're writing an encyclopedia and they're stuck on the “slang” entry, since they haven't left the house in nine years and don't know how “regular” folks talk. She teaches them some way-out words and a lot more. Amazing dialogue, kooky characters, lotsa laffs, and plenty va-voom. It's the bees knees, daddy-o! (K)


8. The Plastic People Of The Universe
Legendary in there native Czech Republic, this band, influence by the Mothers and The Velvet Underground was  born out of the Prague Spring and the musical Inspiration to the underground resistance to the Soviet control of Czechoslovakia . They faced all kinds of hassles from the eternally buzz killing Red Army and were basically forced under ground until the Velvet Revolution in 1989.  Kinda reminds me of what's going on in Belarus now. (S)


7. G.L.O.W. documentary
What if I told you that, back in the  mid 80's, every saturday afternoon, there was a TV show where hot girls in ridiculous outfits whaled on each other? It happened. It was called The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, and it was glorious. And now, coming soon to a theater near you (maybe hopefully),  there's a documentary about the whole crazy phenomenon. Mostly I'm glad the 80's are far behind me, but G.L.O.W., that I miss. Holy smokes, what a show. (K)


6. Savoy Brown Is just not any good..except the song Hellbound Train.
I tried guys. I tried all week to get into Savoy Brown. I mean I really tried. Logged in the hours. But that's my job, right?  They got alot of things going for them. They dress pretty cool, have great heavy metal looking record covers. Play flying V guitars, and wear orange tinted sunglasses. The intros to the song all start out cool, but then they quickly devolve into the most boring chicago blues derived nothing you've ever heard.  It was almost incredible how boring they could make a rock song, l was starting to wonder if it was aspecial talent that I should be appreciating.  So you can skip Savoy Brown. Well,  except for "Hellbound Train", and you can just listen to it once here and move on with your life.


5. The Tyrant of Clipperton Island
Clipperton Island is off the coast of Mexico. It's about six miles long and uninhabited. At least it is now.  Once, back in the 1910's, a couple dozen folks lived there, in relative peace. They even had a governor. And then, one day, the lighthouse keeper went nuts, and took it over. And then things got weird. A crazy, creepy story!


4. San Diego 2012, 4th of July Fireworks Malfunction
 I love the fourth of July. It's a pagan summer solstice festival. That's what it really is anyway, right?  I love fireworks. I live across the street from one of the richest men in the world, in the worst section of one of the best areas of the City. Lucky for me the billionaire across the street parks a barge full of explosives 300 feet in front of my house. It's incredible, you can smell the gunpowder. Just one of the perks of living in close proximity to people way outside your economic strata ( I used to live in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Philadelphia, I didn't belong there either, and that had it's perks, I just can't get into it now). Anyway…. in San Diego all the fireworks went off at once, kinda like a Steppenwolf song, and the display only lasted 15 seconds. Now while that was probably a bummer for most, it did make for some beautiful photos.  I also think setting all the fireworks off at once is one of the most American things to do. Maybe the start of a new San diego tradition.(S)


3. Satan runs amuck in the Philippines
Last episode of the Advanced Demonology Podcast, we reported on a wave of Satanism in South African grade schools. Well, now the devil is digging his claws into kids in the Philippines now, too. During Sunday mass, no less! (K)


2. White Manna - White Manna (2012)
Bombastic space rock from Humboldt county California, an extremely credible place to make bombastic space rock, fronted by an Ex-New Jersey gang leader, who was once part of an 80's hip hop duo opposite Swilson ( yes that's 100% true). If AC/DC drank copious amounts of cough syrup and lived in the redwood forrest. If Hawkwind played a Vietnam Veterans Against The War rally. If John Muir had access to a wall of Orange amplifiers and a Telecaster.  If I could only take this thing back in time with me to 1991 and eat the "blue telephones" all over again!!!! Get it now on vinyl from Holy Mountain records, then dub it down to 8-Track.  (S)



1. The Lavender Panthers
Led by openly gay minister Reverend Ray Broshears, The Lavender Panthers were a vigilante group who prowled the streets of San Francisco in the early 70's. Trained in martial arts and armed with chains and brass knuckles, they sought out gay bashers and...well, bashed 'em. What bad-asses! (K)


Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Advanced Demonology is now on Facebook!

Yep. Lock up your hippie death goddess daughters, the crown/clown princes of Okkult Rock are now on Facebook!
Join our coven. It'll get you laid! (Probably).