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. Fury
Most people know perpetual NY proto-punk Sonny Vincent from his mid 70’s snot-rock band The Testors, but a few years before that, he was cranking his amps and creating an unholy fuckin’ racket with MC5-esque power-jammers Fury. Hozac records put out an  archival 7” on blood-red wax last year. You gotta check it out, it’s like the Freak Brothers on angel dust. Heavy! (K)

12. Dirty Tricks - Dirty Tricks (1975)
A long since forgotten or maybe a never remembered British rock band.  The music was too early seventies for the mid-seventies, when everybody was looking forward to the late seventies. Well, fool's choice,  'cause this is as good as anything that anybody has ever taken a bong hit, boiler maker or blotter to, maybe even better. The singer's got crazy heavy, yet mellow ( my favorite combination) vocals and it's a riff-oh-thon from start to finish. Dig the minimalist witch sleeve. (S)

11. Witchfynde – Lost Tapes of 1975
Witchfynde was one of the more sinister NWOBHM bands. Totally into the occult. Worshipped Satan all day long. Their heyday was around ’79-’80, but these recently unearthed tapes find ‘em bashing out primitive demon-prog back in the mid 70’s! This is what happens if you’re a teenage waste-case in Britain in 1974 and the Wicker Man is your favorite movie. Wild. (K)

 
10. Manilla Road - Open the Gates (1985)
This week Swilson finds himself knee deep in the blood of a masterpiece of metal. Crystal Logic was awesome in it's space race theme, but 1985's Open the Gates is down right brutal. Mark Shelton is a wizard. I don't mean guitar wizard, I mean I think he's actually a wizard. Beamed through time on a wave of sound. Pulverizing!!!! (S)

9. Daft Punk VS 2001: A Space Odyssey
Remember the end of the movie when the astronaut goes astro-nuts on Jupiter and races to the heart of the sun or wherever the fuck he was going? If that ending made no sense to you, then check this out. I mean, it still doesn’t make any sense with the Daft Punk soundtrack, but it’s bitchin’! (K)

8. Night Sun - Mournin' (1972)
They drank a whole pot of coffee and they took some of these, now they're  totally wired. A record about taking speed, the lyrics are all over the place, but this is about speed. Come on… Night Sun, like the disco sun and good morning because while you were asleep these guys were up, way up. The song below is one of the "slow" numbers. (S)

7. Baby Groupies 
From the frequently alarming 70’s rock groupie blog Diamonds from the Mine, here’s some tawdry true tales of some very young – and even some pre-teen (!) - groupies and the rock n’ roll creeps (Johnny, Iggy, Syl, Stiv, etc) who slobbered on ‘em. Weirdtimes. (K)

6. Starz
So I guess everybody knows about this New Jersey rock 'n roll outfit that inspired Motley Crue and Twisted Sister but were actually better than both those bands put together.  Or maybe nobody knows. Another  mid-seventies mismatch.  In this case it was the mistake of being way too 80's for for 1975. (S)

5. Black Goddess
Crazy Nigerian movie from ’78 with a head-spinning afro-funk/experimental jazz soundtrack and visuals that are like a Brazilian spaghetti western. The whole thing will have you wandering around in circles for days.(K)

4. The Devil's Music Blog
A crate digger from Jersey posts really rare and totally unknown 45's from the golden years. Well worth the mouse click. (S)

3. Roger Corman Drive-in Channel
So, Youtube’s about to kick-start a bunch of subscription channels, and one of ‘em is from Roger Corman. Looks like a huge portion of his amazing catalog is gonna be available. Sexy nurses, women in prison, crazed killers, naked Angie Dickinson, cars that eat people, just imagine the madness and mayhem that awaits us! Finally, the goddamn internet offers up something useful. (K)


2. The Bridgewater Triangle
Bridgewater is a dumpy town about an hour outside of Boston. It’s got an asylum/prison. That’s what it’s known for. At least, that’s what it used to be known for. Turns out, there’s even weirder shit going down in Bridgewater, like giant apes and pterodactyls! I’m still not going, but it’s nice to know there’s monsters lurking just a few miles down the road. (K)


1. The Fertility Cult
Give this some time, you won't be disappointed, nothing is predictable. With clean pianos and a production that is closer to a jazz record than rock, keeping it all mellow, than blowing it out with fuzz and lyrics about devils and demons and pagan gods. Fantastic english as a second language accents.  Slow burning occult rock destined for greatness35 years from now. (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 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)

We are the Hellcats nobody likes

The Eye Popping Sounds of Herschell Gordon Lewis
Birdman Records

Sure, there's Jaws and Halloween, but this side of Hollywood, has there ever been a more memorable movie theme than the creepy two-note kettledrum death drone of Blood Feast? Sheep guts king and exploitation pioneer HG Lewis not only dragged the rotting meat and Karo syrup gag out of the gutters of German performance art and onto American drive-in screens with nothing but pocket change and an eye for shameless opportunism on his side, but he also did it all to the cock-eyed rhythms of his own hillbilly-skewed compositions, and if the self-penned liner notes on this amazing collection of songs from the abyss is any indication, than on-the-fly songwriting was one of his favorite parts of the trip. "Eye Popping Sounds" encompasses a vast array of his film music, from the aforementioned faux-Egyptian human sacrifice tunes from Blood Feast to the immediately recognizable ("Yeehaw!") redneck hoe-down mutant bluegrass of 2000 Maniacs. Herschell's son Bob even gets in the act with his high school buddies in Faded Blue for Get Off the Road, a ramshackle slice of 60's fuzz pop from She Devils on Wheels. Elsewhere,they perform the hilariously dated Blast Off Girls theme, and there's plenty of Lewis penned C&W and incidental tracks, as well as a few choice radio spots and dialogue snippets. If you're looking for actual good soundtrack music, well, you're in the wrong place, Jack. But nobody ever looked to HG Lewis for good, anyway. He's always been about cheap, fast, and out of control, and there's plenty of that action here. For fans of Lewis' notoriously sleazy world of trashfilm, or of cheap thrills in general, this collection is as about as mandatory as they come.

- Ken McIntyre