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. Octopus Rex – Last Summer 
Last summer was miserable, and it really needs its own theme song, something that reeks of charred mobile homes, piss-soaked jeans, and gravel-pocked roadrash. And guess what? Now we’ve got one. Texan party-enders Octopus Rex have laid down the gauntlet with their sneering Last Summer 7inch. Gutpunching bikerpunk riffs and werewolf howls and everything bursting into flames. Heavy! (K)



12. Teenage Twins Soundtrack
The 1976 soundtrack to a porn movie I haven't seen before. Starring real "live" identical twin sisters Brook & Taylor Young. It's great. Mostly tunes by the always amazing British soundtrack funkster Alan Hawkshaw. Some tunes by Brian Bennett, who was a drummer in Cliff Richards & the Shadows and went on to have a career as a soundtrack composer doing everything from Blaxploitation to Ren & Stimpy.  Steve Gray who recently composed music for the Wedding Crashers and John Fiddy who did Spongebob SquarePants and Memento. I'm guessing the porn director just went to some British canned music agency and picked this stuff out of a hat. The clip below, as it turns out was posted on youtube by a MAG legend. (S)

11. The Natural History of the European Werewolf
From this year’s Skepticon, a compelling and fun lecture on the enduring werewolf myth and where it came from (aka crazy people and religious fanatics), conducted by the awesomely named and quite fetching Deborah Hyde. Bonus: she’s got a killer Hammer movie accent! (K)

10. Dead Porn Stars
In doing my research for Teenage Twins I stumbled across this video. I always knew porn stars had a short shelf life but this is really depressing. Let me know if anyone actually makes it through the whole seven minutes. Word of advice. Turn the sound off and replace it with some Jackson C. Frank if you want to get super down, or one of the songs from Teenage Twins for a bit of cheerful irony. (S)

9. Disco Station Disco
A musical excerpt from Bollywood extravaganza Haathkadi (1982) that takes disco excess to exciting new heights of ridiculousness. Turns out disco is even better with trains and midgets! (K)

8. Grizzly Man Soundtrack
I'm late to the table on this I know but I never listened to the soundtrack to the Herzog film in and of itself. Outsider folk guitar great Richard Thompson delivers a masterpiece! There is a behind the scenes doc about the scoring that promises to be really entertaining. (S)

7. In space, no one can hear you scream. Or can they?
Taking the Alien tagline to task, last month a group of scientists at Cambridge University got people to send in their most blood-curdling screams, and then beamed them up to a new nano-satellite (what?) to broadcast said screams, just to see what happens. We are now awaiting the results. This is really gonna freak out the Martians. (K)

6. Acid Baby Jesus
How did I miss a band called Acid Baby Jesus? Basically the Black Lips if they were from Greece. With all the cough medicine, beer and Riot on Sunset Strip you could want. (S)

5. Bloop Mystery Solved!
A few weeks back, on our last New Demons show, we tackled the Bloop Signal Mystery, which was a mysterious sound (“bloop!”) picked up by sonar 5,000 miles from its source. The original hypothesis was that it was an animal, a much bigger animal than any animal ever discovered. Like a mammoth giganto-whale! Pretty exciting. Well, turns out it was just some fucking ice melting. Bummer. (K)

4. The Black Gestapo
The People's Army Watts starts out with good intentions than it all goes wrong, man. Wrong for the honky bastards!  It's a little like a Charlie's Angels episode, if the the angels were black power fascists. Watch the complete movie here. (S)

3. Zig Zags – Monster Wizard
Listen, Swilson’s leaving LA. Like this weekend. So somebody’s got to be the new Hollywood go-to couch-of-woe freakband, and I believe I have found them. Zig Zags are everything you want ‘em to be: psyched-out  pill-popping dead-enders with heads fulla Stooges riffs and blood that’s 90% 70’s sugar breakfast cereal. Go ape!  (K)

2. Dick Venom – Sticky Pants Trance
Awesome psycho-gutterbilly jam that also happens to be the greatest two-minute boobs n’ blood b-flick I’ve ever seen! (K)

1.  L.A. Freeway - Guy Clark
I'm splitting the scene out here, man. It's been good, Los Angeles. (S)

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. Rolling Stone All Access
So here's something awesome: if you subscribe to Rolling Stone (you have to subscribe to the print edition for some reason. There's no digital-only subscription. Still, it's only $20 a year), you get instant access to EVERY ISSUE they've ever printed, going back to the late 60's. There's limitations – you can only read them on a browser, no offline downloads – but still, it's a pretty incredible treasure trove of music and pop culture. Listen to Rumours and crack open a (digital) copy of Rolling Stone from 76, it's like time traveling! (K)

12. Rockaway Beach
The summer is almost gone and I'm wrapping up my east coast summer vacation. The other day my brother took me out to Rockaway Beach and I have to say I'm impressed. They got a cool thing happening on the boardwalk there around B. 96. A bunch of young hipsters took over some concession stands and it's a damn good time. You can get a gourmet hamburger, homemade ice-cream, a cold bold beer and listen to a psychedelic band play live, than go for a swim. But the creme' de la creme has to be former Orgone Energy bass player Johnny DiCosmo's Italian Ice. Johnny adds a modern twist to his family's nearly one hundred year old tradition. All organic ingredients  and way out flavors like strawberry avocado.  It's maybe the best summer desert in the whole country. You only got a few days before he wraps it up for the summer so head out there! (S)



11. Nocturna
Belly dancer turned “actress” Nai Bonet wrote, produced, and starred in this amazing (and amazingly cheap) disco vampire flick from 1979. Everything about it is jaw-dropping. Nai's acting is horrendous, she's naked in it every five minutes, Brother Theodore is in it (!) as her werewolf manservent, John Carradine stumbles around as a very creaky Count Dracula, there's terrible dancing and bad disco, the vampire/bat transformations are handled via primitive animation, and the dialogue sounds like it was written by someone attending English as a second language night classes. Also, it was rumored to have been bankrolled by a mobster, who turned up dead a year later.  A cult classic in the making, dig it up! (K)



10. Hicky & Boggs
This is one dark and disturbed movie directed by Robert Culp and written by Walter Hill. It's a hard boiled neo-nior and is really completely relentless and bleak. It's no wonder that it was a commercial failure when it came out, i'm sure it was a further reminder that the early 70's were, yes….a bummer. None the less it's some kind of masterpiece, too bad Culp didn't direct more of 'em. (S)



9. Septien
Great little weirdfilm about a trio of dysfunctional brothers living in the woods somwhere who happen to stumble across the high school coach who molested one of 'em, causing him to dissappear for 18 years. They ponder what to do about it when a loony snake-oil preacher shows up to help exact revenge. This is a comedy, by the way, although there's not a chuckle in it. You gotta see it just for the scene where they all lie in bed and sing the “Smother the demons” song. Thoroughly whacked and unsettling, but with a surprising amount of heart and a sorta happy ending. (K)

8. The Worst Cars Of All Time
Everybody is always raving about the best cars of all time and many an Advanced Demonologist envisions himself hurtling through liquid light time and space behind the wheel of a 1973 Dodge Charger. We rarely have the alternate fantasy of being stuck in traffic on the 405 behind the wheel of an overheating Ford Pinto. (S)

  

7. The Mystery of Oak Island
Oak island is a tiny hunk of land in Nova Scotia. There's a mysterious pit on the island, 200 feet deep, that many people believe holds Captain Kidd's treasure. Unfortunately, the pit is booby trapped. Treasure hunters have spent the last hundred years trying to get to the bottom of that pit, and they've failed every time. At 90 feet, they found a stone with inscriptions on it that may explain what's down there, but so far, no one's been able to translate it, although it's online, so you can take a crack at it yourself. There was even an episode of In Search Of about it! Crazy stuff. (K)

6. Lonnie Frisbee
I haven't seen the 2007 documentary about the man yet, in fact I just discovered him a few seconds ago when I did the the search on youtube for "Hippie Death" (you see how a great mind works?).   Lonnie Frisbee (is that the best name of all time?) was the real life leader of the Jesus freak Movement. Since we like Jesus rock almost as much as we love Disco on this blog It's about time we dig deeper. (S)

 

5. Cat Gang – Locomotive Breath
Cat Gang was an Italian disco studio project. In 1983, they released their debut (and only) single – a nine-minute discofied version of Jethro Tull's Locomotive Breath, complete with maximum flute jams. Majestic shit! (K)

 

4. Peter Brotzmann - Nipples (1969)
Sorry guys, it's been a lot of traveling and listening to old favorites on the ipod. I know not a single Heavy Metal band ever listened to this record and it's considered by most to be a jazz record, even though most jazz fans have never heard and those that have hate it  and when you're riding on a bus from New York City to Atlantic City, it will cause a minor panic attack. (S)



3. Marahachibu
Amazing, hardcore psych-garage from Japan circa 1971. Maybe it's the singer's accent, but this sounds a lot like the proto Sex Pistols to me! (K)



2. UFO - Rock Bottom
Is the official song of Swilson's four week tour of the Jersey shore. It might be the number one beer drinking song of the summer , I listened to this tune every chance I got and I'd like to thank the song itself for rocking so hard and the band UFO circa '75 for all the summer of 2012 memories. (S)



1. Montreal – A Summer's Night
Well, it's September, so we can put this bizarre summer to rest. Dunno how it was for you, but for me, it was alternately amazing and devastating. I'm looking forward to a much breezier (hopefully) Autumn. To send off the summer of '12, here's a suitably dreamy meditation on the season by long-gone early 70's Quebec psychedelic outfit Montreal. Stay cool, everybody. (K)

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. Whipped Cream Lady
I don't think I've ever been to a record store that did not have at least seven copies of Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass's seminal '64 breezy-listening classic “Whipped Cream & Other Delights”, featuring the iconic photograph of the pretty lady covered in whipped cream. But who was that lady? And whatever happened to her? She's Dolores Erickson, she's 76, she's still pretty, and this week the Seattle Times broke the case! Delightful! (K)

10. Fred Eaglesmith - Johnny Cash
This tune is awesome. Fred Eaglesmith, who I know nothing about except that he is Canadian, lifts a Neil Young riff and lays down over the top of it a scathing criticism of Johnny Cash's newest fans, who like 'em now that he's dead. This is the only time I've ever really heard this sentiment expressed in a song. The prevalent idea among music fans that : "Sure, you like this stuff now, but where were you back when?!?!". I also wonder why there aren't more musicians writing songs about other musicians? It does happen, but not as much as one would think, since musicians themselves are some of the biggest music fans out there. (S)

11. 2nd Chapter of Acts

I wonder sometimes. I'm the least religious guy I know – in fact, I'm pretty aggressively anti-religion. Yet I love 70's Jesus freak music. Go figure. Had I been an impressionable teenager in 1974 – the year two-sisters-one-brother hippie Christian rockers 2nd Chapter of Acts released their first record, “With Footnotes” – would I have been swayed? Would I have seen the light? Probably not. But could I have scored with hippie Jesus chicks? Maybe. Anyway, dig this flowery resurrection rock and make up your own mind. (K)

10. Little Woman - Throat (2010)
Equal parts Blues Explosion and Soft Machine and a whole shit load of other outrageous contagious nonsense. Heavy Metal thunder.  I was subjected to this 1 AM one night in Jersey City and my brain melted out of my eyes.  It was really unpleasant. (S)

9. Cristina – Disco Clone (1978)
Some people will tell you this is the worst disco song ever made. I am telling you the opposite. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but the point is, you've gotta hear this jam. (K)

8. Super 11
This group plays wedding music from Mali, obviously from the clip, a very organically psychedelic place.  Buy the record!  I'm sure they could use the Euros.(S)

7. The Museum of Uncut Funk

The Museum of Uncut Funk is exactly that: they preserve funky artifacts from the past few decades, lest we forget the funk in it's purest form. Recently the Museum was visited by Collectors Quest – a pretty amazing website/portal where people show off their collection of...stuff – who shot some video of' 'em showing off their collections of black comic book heroes, blaxploitation posters, black animation, and more. Bad ass! And also funky. (K)



6. Crazy Homeless Man In Belgium
Cheap Satanism records should snatch this guy up before somebody else does. He's got over a million hits on youtube. It took him five years but hey…(S)

5. Katie Sunshine
If I was to tell you there's a girl who likes to put on Daisy Dukes and go hula-hooping in her front yard, what do you think her name would be? Exactly, Katie Sunshine. Sometimes, everything just works the way it should. (K)

4. Venom - Live in 1985
You want the worst and you got the worst! One of the best/ worst metal bands of all time here in all the stinking glory in 1985. I've been listening to these guys non-stop since I'm still in Jersey, I guess the place just inspires  a natural angst. I'm loving it! (S)

3. Real Life (Ukrainian) Sleeping Sleeping Beauty
So here's the idea: it's an art installation where a beautiful Ukrainian girl is dressed up like Sleeping Beauty and lies on a bed, seemingly snoozing away in her poison-apple coma. Dudes show up and are encouraged to kiss her, but here's the rub: first the guy has to sign a waiver that says if she wakes up from his kiss, he has to marry her. It's like a really weird/awesome game of Ukrainian Roulette! (K)

2. Brigantine Castle
I've been spending lots of time in the South Jersey town of Brigantine. Where when I was a kid there was a infamous haunted house called Brigantine Castle. The place actually had real people dressed up like ghouls and zombies who would literally jump out of the shadows and chase you through the hallways. Fuckin crazy! It was before lawsuits really took hold of our culture. it burned down in 1987. Bummer. (S)

1. Doro – Raise Your Fist in the Air
Holy fuck, Doro's back. I saw her at a strip club in New Hampshire once. This was a few years back.  She wasn't stripping, she was playing on the aging-metalheads stage in the corner. It was pretty amazing. I mean, she plays to 50 zillion people in Germany, but she's so dedicated to her fans that she's willing to play in Nowheresville New Hampshire for 60 boozy over-aged headbangers (who spent most of the dough they saved for Doro merch on the strippers)? You gotta love Doro, man. LOVE DORO, MAN! (K)

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. Marthas & Arthurs - The Hit World of...
Gorgeous debut album from these Brit sunshine popsters who sound like the Mamas and the Papas frolicking in the park with ABBA. And not even doing drugs or anything, just flying kites and whatnots. This could be the soundtrack to your summer, but only if your heart is pure. If it's not, then probably the Drive soundtrack. (K)



12. Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution
A CBS news special aired in 1967 hosted by Leonard Bernstein. It was an attempt to try and give some "credibility" to what the kids were listening to. There are lots of back handed compliments from Lenny like he likes 5% of the music the kids make, but  95% is trash and he would never defend it.  It's really pretty amazing when you see it now, because more than anything else, it's a reminder that there really was a generation gap back then. Not now. Not today,  Mom and Dad like the pills and metal, just like YOU. (S)

11. Don Juan (1973)
So, who wants to see Brigitte Bardot and Jake Birkin cuddle naked and smoke cigarettes together? Awesome and available on Netflix PS: there's a lot of nudity in the European section of Youtube. (K)



10. WEED: Adventures Of a Dope Smuggler By Jerry Kamstra (1974)
Cool book about dope smuggling back went dope meant grass not smack and mexico wasn't a country about to be overthrown by head hunting cocaine barons.  It's really a travelog more then anything from  a person who risked it all to provide the holy sacrament of the love generation. Great photos of Mexico. (S)

9. Chesty Morgan on Blu-ray
Doris Wishman's Chesty Morgan flicks from the mid 70's, Deadly Weapons and Double Agent 73,  are two of the most hilarious, depressing spectacles you'll ever see. You've got Doris's trademark wonky direction and random camera angles (look, it's a shoe! Now it's a painting on the wall!), a depressed, aging, disheveled "star" with gross, sagging, seriously over-ripe melons, terrible dubbing (Doris didn't like Chesty's thick Polish accent) and some of the most godawful "fashions" you've ever seen. What's not to love? And now Something Weird has graciously unleashed both of these fleshy fandangos (as well as a third non-Chesty Wishman flick, The Immoral Three) on a budget blu-ray! Hooray! I dunno if these have been remastered at all, but Chesty's chesties in hi-def is about the scariest thing I can think of. (K)

8. Fern Kinney - Baby Let Me Kiss You (1979)
Hot! This smokes!!!! (S)

7. The goblins of Kentucky
Back in the 50's, there were reports of goblins invading a Kentucky farmhouse. The case was never solved, although (spoiler alert) anybody with a lick of sense assumes it was an owl. Well, goblins are running amuck in rural Kentucky once again, and this time, the guy who's being invaded has photographic evidence (sort of, but clearly not really). Regardless of what's really happening (probably owls again), the saga-so-far is lots of fun to read about. (K)

6. The Manx: Storms Thrashing Our Vessel
Imagine the apocalypse has come and gone and the U.S.A. has been broken apart into tribes. The average life expectancy is 23 and teenagers are pretty much running the show. Music is at the center of these neo-savages lives and it's ethno-musical linage is based on a distant memory of early 21st century heavy metal (Girndcore, Death Metal, Black Metal etc.). There is no electricity and all they have is acoustic instruments.  There is no more volume or distortion so to approximate it , the whole tribe belts out the songs of horror and hell in unison. If that scenario were true The Manx would be it. Storms Thrashing Our Vessel is like a field recording from the Mad Max future…. or maybe Waterworld. (S)



5. Cannibal tunes comp!
The great film-music blog Manchester Morgue has put together a groovy-gruesome comp with a man-eating theme. Anthropophagic Cookbook has both music from cannibal flicks (Cannibal Holocaust, Ravenous, Parents) and songs about cannibals (Toto Coelo's I Eat Cannibals, Slices of You by Electric Six, etc). Fun, ghoulish stuff. Download for free, and bon appetit! (K)

4. Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
Directed by the great Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu) it's set in feudal Japan and follows a brother a sister's horrific journey through slavery and prostitution at the hands of the sadistic lord Sansho. Like all of Mizoguchi's films beauty and horror, hope and hopelessness race side by side unrelenting.  I'm not certain there is a story more painful than this portrayed on film. You'll pretty much feel better about your life afterwords. (S)

3. Starcrash lobby cards
The always-fun Space70 blog posted a generous sampling of Starcrash promo materials earlier this week, and they're a (laser)blast! Directed by Luigi "Contamination" Cozzi and released by Roger Corman, this bargain-basement space opera was bashed out in record time and splattered into theaters in just enough time to bask in the box-office afterglow of Star Wars. It stars the ridiculously hot scream-queen Caroline Munro, hippie preacher Marjoe Gortner, lots of dimestore robots and rubber monsters, and sexy space girls. Roger Corman re-released it recently as part of his cult-classics series, so be sure to check it out, it's goodtimes. In the meantime, gawk at these amazing lobby cards and stills. Not bad for a cash-grabbing rip-off! (K)

2. Lalo Schifrin : Dirty Harry Soundtrack (1971)
On Advanced Demonology we constantly remind you of how creepy the 70's were. I just re-watched Dirty Harry and holy smokes (!)  is it a creep fiesta. Dirty Harry himself is a creep (like a stoic Archie Bunker with a gun). The killer is a creep. The victims are creepy, and San Francisco seems like it's bubbling over with a racially charged psychedelic fear of civilization slipping away from beneath the sidewalk. But what I was most struck with this time seeing it was the soundtrack. It surges, swims,  grooves and jet propels us through this cinematic nightmare.  It's like the hippies, the brothers, vegas lounge act squares and Mantovani all showed up for a death of the 60's cocktail party hosted by Hunter S. Thompson. (S)

1. Late 70's Penthouse
I just bought an (almost) complete 1979 run of Penthouse Magazine and I've been poring through 'em all week. Penthouse tried their best to be "classier" than Playboy but the gross "forum" letters sprinkled through the mag sunk that battleship. Still, like Playboy, it's a great barometer for gauging what culture was all about in '79 - sex, stereos, disco, and murder. At least one (and usually a couple, sometimes all four) are plastered all over every page. And I gotta give 'em this much: their taste in naked women was impeccable. Great Donna Summer interview in the July issue, as well. (K)

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. The Somerton Man
Australia's strangest unsolved mystery. In 1948, a dead guy is found at Somerton Beach in Adelaide. Nobody knows who he is or how he got there, but experts are pretty sure he was murdered via undetectable poison. They find a rolled-up note in his pants pocket that turns out to be a page torn out of a very rare poetry book. The book's missing, but some dude finds in the back of his car. Naturally, there's a secret code written on the back page. And then, a year later, they think they find the dead guy's suitcase in a bus depot, and things get even weirder. Honestly, you can jump down this rabbit hole and lose days trying to figure out what happened. The case is still open and unsolved. The groovy, stylish 1977 giallo The Pyjama Girl Case is partly based on this story. (K)

12. The Exiles (1961)
This was filmed in 1958 and not released until 1961. It follows a group of american Indians who have left the reservation to try and make a life for themselves in the blighted Bunker Hill area of downtown L.A. We hang out with these lost souls as they drink and swagger for 12 hours through the City of Night. It's shot in a quasi-documentary style, it has an almost John Cassavetes feel, though it pre-dates Shadows by a year.  The scenes of Main Street L.A. when the bars let out is worth the price of admission alone and the music that blazes from the radios and juke box is fantastic. (S)

11. The first half of the new Tank album, War Nation
Ok, so Tank founder Algy Ward is nowhere to be found, and the dude singing now (former Yngwie Malmsteen frontman Doogie White)  is a little too high-pitched for my taste, and there's a weird Jesus-y vibe to the lyrics, and the second half is prog-metal sludge, but seriously, the guitars on the first half of the tunes are amazing, and all the songs are still about war (and now Jesus, too). I guess we're breaking 50/50 here, but any diehard Filth Hounds know the awesome power of Tank's relentless NWOBHM CHUGCHUGCHUGCHUG once they really get cooking. (K)

10. Tiger B. Smith
Glam? Metal? Proto-Punk? Proto-Metal?  Forgot it, man. Don't worry about the labels. Tiger B. Smith hail from a time when rock was a circus, outrageous, obnoxious, stupid! Leopard boots, afros, and pink tutu's. No baseball caps, sweatshirts, and shorts!  Music without the slightest tear of introspection.  Lovely!  (S)

9. Spider Invasion!
In a small village in India, a new, previously unknown strain of particularly aggressive tarantulas have invaded. They leap from trees and latch on to people, injecting them with venom. Also, the may or may not feed specifically on vertebrae blood. Holy fuck. The local witch doctors (!) are working overtime to treat the afflicted, but even real doctors report that there's no known anti-venom, and the best advice authorities have so far is to "stay inside at night", because that's when they attack. This is every horror movie, ever, come to squirming life. (K)

8. Ronnie Bass
What do religious cults, mad scientists, art academia, hip-hop, Elctro-pop, Texas, fish markets, Swilson, and New City have in common?  Why, it's Ronnie Bass. My partner in crime at the fish market and sometime collaborator is making some of the most next level art/music out there. He writes outsider electronic pop musicals about CompUSA workers turned cult leaders and all sorts of weird wonderful things. And ladies…. Gotham Magazine voted him one of New York City's most eligible bachelors. (S)

7. Jerrawerra
Australia's version of Sasquatch is a lot less scary. He's only four feet tall. More like Smallfoot, amiright? (K)

6. Giorgio Moroder: Son of My Father
Everybody knows Giorgio rules the wasteland. I just got turned on to this by the drummer in Swilson. Killer groovy euro-seventies sleaze. (S)

5. Umberto - Prophecy of the Black Widow
Umberto is the brainchild of one Matt Hill and a revolving cast of funky friends. Essentially the dude creates towering odes to 80's exploitation flicks not unlike Goblin wrestling St Vitus to the ground and bashing in their skulls with John Carpenter's megaphone. Prophecy of the Black Widow is, so far, Umberto's epic. It sounds like ten Suspirias at once. Word on the street is that live shows involve Keytars, fog machines, and gratuitous blood/nudity as well, so keep an eye on this gang o' loons.(K)



4. Boris Manco
Turkish psych is the best! Maybe because it was a hash culture for so long and the indigenous music is naturally psychedelic. Whatever the reason is, I love it and Boris Manco is the closet thing Turkish rock has gotten to international success. This video is amazing. (S)

3. Tim Blake - Blake's New Jerusalem
Tim Blake played keyboards for both Gong and Hawkwind, so clearly, he's an expert on all things space-rock. His '78 album, New Jerusalem, is a masterpiece of galactic synth-rock, blending acoustic guitars, mournful vocals, and hippy platitudes with his far out, light-emanating keyboards. It's majestic stuff, ridiculous and awe-inspiring and touching. Love it. PS Tim's apparently the first guy to offer a laser light show with his rock. Sorry, B.O.C.! (K)

2. Miami Vice
I'm balls deep into Miami Vice cause they got it up on Netflix. It's the ultimate 80's show. I didn't miss an episode when I was a kid, now that i'm, well….older…I notice a few things about it : It's extremely cinematic for a television show, and the music budget must have been HUGE. Every episode has some gigantic song from the day: Tina Turner, Clapton, Collins and the list goes on and on.  Also the gust stars!!! (S)

1. There's a Lot of Naked People on the Covers of Disco Records
As mentioned on the latest episode of the Advanced Demonology podcast, I've been loitering around the local disco hut lately, and I chanced upon a pretty amazing discovery: there's a lot of nudity and heavy sexuality on the covers of 70's disco records. Way more than in 80's metal, even. Dude, I really wasted my time with boys-only stuff like Sabbath in the 70's. I could have been oglin' fine ladies and learning to dance. BTW, I am going to make a disco record cover coffee table book.Someday. So don't steal my idea. (K)