Get Ready, Heathen Children!

RIP Rowland S. Howard (1959-2009)

Toilet Guppies is dismayed at the news of the passing of one of the all-time greatest guitar players the world has had the pleasure (sometimes terror!) to hear. Besides playing the six-strings like no one else (combining sultry sexiness with urgent violence in a way that'd surely make Georges Bataille gush with admiration), Rowland Howard also possessed a voice and singing style unlike any other—a spitting, almost regurgitating sing-speak full of loathing, dejection or lung-black humour that would've been out of tune, had tune only had anything to do with it, and which perfectly conveyed the intense sincerity he seemed incapable of not channeling while performing. His almost deadpan delivery made him über-cool, while the evident sadness just cutting through the drawl provided substance. Crucially, the humour of his words ensured he never came across—or was—pretentious. His quivering voice and shaking hands (I thought he had Parkinson's, not liver cancer) didn't get in the way of his playing one of the best gigs at All Tomorrow's Parties on Mt. Buller, Australia last January, almost one year ago.

Howard's career was, probably to his detriment (and quite unfairly), overshadowed by his earliest achievements (which were considerable), when he defined the confrontational and completely uncompromising sound of legendary post-punk provocateurs the Birthday Party (go here for a free taste):



After the Birthday Party collapsed, Howard joined Crime & the City Solution, in which he got to display a quite frankly touching melodicism in his playing. (Which people tend to forget, impostors tending to plagiarise the feedback squall of the Birthday Party instead.) Their first few releases are mostly noteworthy because of his guitarslinging, as stand-out track «Six Bells Chime» (from Wim Wenders' overrated cult film Wings of Desire) proves:



He then went on to record some typically urgent stuff with his own outfit, the now largely forgotten These Immortal Souls. One of the high points in his entire back catalogue is surely this single, from Get Lost (Don't Lie!) (still available digitally, though shamefully long-out-of-print on CD):



After disbanding These Immortal Souls and collaborating with Lydia Lunch (check out «What Is Memory», off Shotgun Wedding), Howard recorded a couple of solo albums, the last one—Pop Crimes—just out in October. He produced HTRK's latest album, this year's Marry Me Tonight. (This track of theirs, though not produced by him, bears the obvious mark of his considerable influence.) A cult legend, he never quite got the recognition he was due.

Apparently, Howard's sources of inspiration were «Hanging out with girls, smoking, fraternizing with girls, talking to girls on the telephone while smoking, smoking with girls.» May he be sharing fags with seventy virgins where there's a light…

Rare or Unreleased 6: The Birthday Party

The Birthday Party: It's Still Living [.zip]

This is almost a bootleg—a 1982 concert released by the record company in 1985 against the band's wishes (they couldn't get with the mix). Which makes me feel good about depriving the label of income by sharing the album (which in any case is no longer in print), but slightly guilty about spreading material the band itself didn't like (but which they were initially relieved was no longer in print!). But hey, 'twas a long time ago…

Besides, it's a good live document, with performances of «A Dead Song» and «(Sometimes) Pleasure Heads (Must Burn)» that surpass the less unhinged versions on Prayers on Fire and their second Peel session, respectively.

But a clue to the perhaps juiciest bit about this album can be heard just before the band breaks into «The Dim Locator», when amid the sparks of static that are scattered across the album, someone (Mick Harvey?) says, «Someone take this microphone and-», the sentence disrupted by a series of crackles. Legend has it, singer Nick Cave was so out of it he didn't notice that his unearthed mic gave not only himself, but anyone he touched rudely awakening jolts of electricity, the more lucid band members only tortured by Cave's innocent attempts at intimate cameraderie…

It's the Spinal Tap of post-punk, really!

1. King Ink
2. Zoo-music Girl
3. The Dim Locator
4. She's Hit
5. A Dead Song
6. (Sometimes) Pleasure Heads (Must Burn)
7. Junkyard
8. Blast Off
9. Release the Bats
10. Nick the Stripper
11. Big Jesus Trash Can
12. Dead Joe

Babe, I'm on Fire, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Lamp

Ah, Spring!

Being a human is to experience a series of states of mind over which you have no control and that, when you stop and think about it, make no sense whatsoever. One text message with some choice words from the right long-haired specimen and suddenly you're dancing in the dark end of the street, full of doomed but deliciously ecstatic longing, as if trapped in some '90s Hal Hartley flick:



Not that I'm in love (as if I were capable of such fuzzy warmth and goodwill!), but I'm positively agog with excitement, due to a felicitous combination of longing, attraction, wishful thinking and that divine, omnipresent and treacherous LIFE FORCE—you know, that barely contained undercurrent of rapturous energy that recklessly sacrifices truth on the altar of the survival instinct, with no purpose other than endless perpetuation, purely for the sake of it, making you want to... well, procreate, even as the biology of it all is challenged by giddy ideas of your and the long-haired vixen's minds bathing in each other's untouchable, invisible and ineffable energy-somethings—and possibly even connecting.



Ah, sweet illusion! Welcome back, old friend. It took me a while, but now I understand: No one can tell you a lie quite like yourself. (If you want something done right, you'd best do it yourself!) And no one serves as a canvas on which to project your wishful thinking quite like a new acquaintance...

Now, Buddhists say you can't go on freeloading on Desire for the rest of your life, keeping afloat on lust and devotion forever. But for now, to Hell with that! I know from the download stats that the people who visit this blog prefer the positive stuff—the existential lies we like to tell ourselves—so let me take this opportunity—this moment sandwiched between the full-fledged hormonal delusion I can feel about to flare up, and the reality that'll surely come crashing down in the end—to share with you the boost of dopamine and serotonin levels in my addled brain by uploading a little playlist to celebrate the natural high of the truth-be-damned joy that we call love—or (as Sir Blackadder so exhaustively referred to it) rumpy-pumpy:

I LOVE LAMP! [.zip]

1. Vetiver—Been so Long (Toilet dubby pick'n'mix)
2. Spiritualized—I Think I'm in Love (Guppy edit)
3. The Brian Jonestown Massacre—Love
4. Kings Of Leon—Dusty
5. The Magnetic Fields—A Chicken with Its Head Cut Off
6. Flight Of The Conchords—If You're into It
7. Animal Collective—The Purple Bottle (7" mix)
8. Beck—Think I'm in Love
9. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds—Babe, I'm on Fire (Toilet Guppies choice edit)
10. tindersticks—CF GF
11. The Afghan Whigs—If I Only Had a Heart
12. Marlene Dietrich—Illusions

[Download disabled.]

In keeping with trying to post mostly songs that are unavailable commercially, I have included rare tracks, like the original 7" version of «Purple Bottle»—which had to be discontinued due to Animal Collective scandalously paying tribute to Stevie Wonder by attempting to quote one of his copyrighted songs—and the Afghan Whigs' hotel lounge rendition of Wizard of Oz classic «If I Only Had a Heart». I've even slapped together a couple or so «exclusive» Toilet Guppy mixes and edits of love song classics! (Forget Shakespearean sonnets; Spiritualized's «I Think I'm in Love» is the only lyric about being in love that you'll ever need to hear; all the rest is perfectly superfluous... although Nick Cave's «Babe, I'm on Fire» is a hoot.)

So, put this audiolove in your ears as you go outside, the ubiquitous bloom of Springtime working wonders on your biology as the sun melts your stone cold heart!

The hairy arachnophobic says it
The scary agoraphobic says it
The mother, the brother
And the decomposing lover says
Babe, I'm on fire
Babe, I'm on fire

I love lamp!

The Turner Music Prize 2007, vol. 1

It's a bit late, I know, but 2007 was such a doozie in terms of music that now that we're done with 2008, a revisit is well in order. Some of the most exciting bands and artists currently working in music unleashed tunes in 2007. So brace yerself; volume one has, as Lord Percy said to Sir Blackadder's crossdressing man-servant Kate, «balls!»

TURNER MUSIC PRIZE 2007, Vol. 1 [.zip file]
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1. of Montreal: «The Past Is a Grotesque Animal»

Only the beloved, so it seems to the lover… can in this world bring about what our human limitations deny, a total blending of two beings, a continuity between two discontinuous creatures. Hence love spells suffering for us in so far as it is a quest for the impossible… Through the beloved appears … full and limitless being unconfined within the trammels of separate personalities, continuity of being, glimpsed as a deliverance through the person of the beloved. There is something absurd and horribly commixed about this conception, yet beyond the absurdity, the confusion and the suffering there lies a miraculous truth. There is nothing really illusory in the truth of love; the beloved being is indeed equated for the lover—and only for him no doubt, but what of that?—with the truth of existence.

—Georges Bataille
From Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

2. Fuck Buttons: «Bright Tomorrow»
The Fuck Buttons’ debut 7-inch (no, I’m not referring to some cherry-poppin' man-bits) is what chill-out ambient should sound like. And that band name alone merits inclusion on any end-of-year list…
From «Bright Tomorrow» 7”

3. Spoon: «Don't You Evah» (Diplo mix)
This track seems minimalistic, but it's its seeming minimalism that allows you to notice all the details and changes going on, undermining this «simplicity». Rich and subtle all at once—and a little skewed—house music rarely sounded this good. It's even got a trace of human emotion! (Who said you can't dance to tristesse?)
From «Don't You Evah» digital single

4. GhostHustler: «Busy Busy Busy»
This is just sweaty, dirty, smelly rock’n’roll masquerading as electro—krumping at the Fight Club—all attitude and sexed belligerence—the sound of a demented spazz breakdancing—on psychoactive drugs. Glorious!
Not from any album (yet), this is one of those one-hit blog wonders.

5. Von Südenfed: «Fledermaus Can't Get It»
2007—what a year for testes! The fucker’s downstairs in the basement on this one. Mouse On Mars team up with Mark E. Smith for a track that’s as ruinous to virtue as any piece of music in human history. Twisted, pissed off and gagging for it (sometimes on it, by the sound of things), this track is pure hedonism—one of the saviours or redeemers of electronic music (justifying the genre's very existence with its
technology-defying human weakness) and the aural equivalent to rotten street speed (which, incidentally, is probably exactly what Fledermaus is referring to when he drones on that «I can't get it now, but I can get it»).
From Tromatic Reflexxions

6. The Fall: «Fall Sound»
… and they just keep coming. You can smell this song. «D-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! / You’ve just woken up to Fall sound-uh!» After driving his entire band and manager to mutiny on tour, «’80s reprobate» Mark E. Smith apparently just assembled some fresh meat along the way and, unruffled, stopped over in studios to seemingly effortlessly record monuments to attitude. Like this track, where he baits the former backing band he considered «TLC»—traitors, liars and cunts («thieving, lying cunts,» by some accounts). With a set of new and unfamiliar musicians behind him, Smith sticks it to his old band by giving us all a much-needed vitamin shot of that «F-f-f-fall sound-uh!». But then, as the man himself says, «If it's me and yer granny on bongos, it's the Fall.» Bless him. The world needs Mark E. Smith. 30 years into his career and at the age of 50, he still doesn’t let us down: «It’s a scream for help that’s desperate / But it’s tough luck!»
From Reformation Post TLC
7. Grinderman: «When My Love Comes Down»
The aural equivalent to libido, up and down, half of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds a.k.a. Grinderman’s «debut» album has several cool tracks on it, the obvious future pop culture reference being the driving, driven «No Pussy Blues». But «When My Love Comes Down» is the
embodiment of the frightfulness and terror of lust/love, and is probably the coolest love song lyric from the hand of Mr. Cave: «Your skin is like the falling snow / Your hair is like the rising sun / Your tongue is like a Kalashnikov / Or some other foreign gun»… (Reminds me of someone I used to know…)
From Grinderman

8. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: «Isis»
For fear of sounding like a bloody misery-guts, this is the kind of track that makes you want to dance, except no dance floor DJ will ever play it, either because a) it's not the kind of instantly recognisable hit self-conscious people need in order to dare venture onto the dance floor, or b) it's not the feelgood (or at the very least emotionally neutral) type of music DJs tend to believe are the only pieces of music fit to move your feet to. It’s an emotionally retarded situation that's emblematic of our times.
From «Is Is» EP

9. The Vandelles: «Lovely Weather»
They’re trying too hard to be cool when cool has to be effortless, but the glorious noise of this track is redeeming, and then some. And it doesn't hurt that the overall vibe is so damn sultry…
From «The Vandelles» EP10. Times New Viking: «Teenage Lust!»
«I don’t want to die in the city alone.» Quite reasonable, really.
From Times New Viking Present the Paisley Reich

11. Black Lips: «I Saw a Ghost (Lean)»
As Todd Killings once wrote of Black Lips, they're

… just not right for this world. … Seriously slurred swashbucklers living out the ultimate teenage dream, yet breaking through another layer of remarkable idiocy, transcribed through hallucinations, exasperation, and perfectly casual dick fumbling. … How the Black Lips manage to walk through the perfumed garden of life is a miracle of modern bullshit, but a miracle nonetheless. Their validity is overwhelming and so refreshing, it almost makes me dizzy, and the way they can find their way through the mundane darkness of modern music and discover their own notes and chords between the lines is unparalleled by their peers. … These boys have tapped into a very secret well that everyone wants to drink from. Too bad it's got weird bent rainbows and chunks of shit floating in it.

From Good Bad Not Evil

12. The Warlocks: «So Paranoid»
A band that struggles with pooling enough talent and whatever je ne sais quois it is that great bands have (wait a minute, did I just use that expression?!), the Warlocks occasionally come up with an utterly hypnotising doozie. This one perfectly captures that woe-is-me Desolation Of The Soul experienced by those of us who wish we were
merely «so, so, so paranoid,» yet know only too well that it’s just that we’re not buying into the lies that people so readily tell themselves and each other… Thank you, Warlocks.
From Heavy Deavy Skull Lover

13. Sonic Youth: «I'm Not There»
Originally recorded in 1967 by Bob Dylan and the Band, this song was never released until it came out on the soundtrack to that pretentious Dylan biopic that takes its title from this obscure song. Dylan was probably still woozy from a motorcycle accident when he wrote this one; the lyric seems confused, and perhaps the reason it took 40 years to release is that it’s a little «unfinished». I use quotation marks, not because I want to be pretentious, but because it seems to me the lyrics work better that way; a song may seem more sincere when it’s not covered up in the usual literary decoys employed by Dylan in his sometimes evasive, often overly clever lyrics. But I digress—this is Sonic Youth’s version, and Thurston Moore never sang so well, his weary drawl drawing in the essence of the words.
From I'm Not There

14. Arctic Monkeys: «505»
From Favourite Worst Nightmare

What a Lovely Way to Burn

Taking a time out from my best-of-2008 extravaganza to remember Lux Interior (21.10.46-04.02.09), a man-thing scholars debate whether came from the crypt, a UFO, a trailer or just straight out of the gutter—a deviant freak-hero who truly earnt his status as icon. Now that Lux has had his last kind of kick, my thoughts go to Poison Ivy Rorschach, his partner-in-crimes, nameless and shameless, for an eye-popping near-four decades—such an unlikely romance of the Ages, mired as the two were in filth. (But a cute, comic book filth, too, in-between the bona fide craziness.) It truly is one for the books: After Lux'n'Ivy, who can still say you can't be an indulgent libertine and a hopeless romantic at the same time? A decadent, hedonist reprobate in the throes of love?

I only got to see The Cramps once, in London in 2006. As I'd suspected, they weren't as subversive as I'd imagined they once were when I was listening to my fav tracks off of Gravest Hits, Songs the Lord Taught Us, Psychedelic Jungle and Off the Bone. But at a time when Nick Cave was being «stately» (in an attempt at growing old with dignity) and Iggy Pop was like a walking advert for organic health shakes, Lux Interior was still prancing around on stage, doing undignified things for a man at any age, sporting a too-tight leotard-type get-up he was definitely too old and out of shape to be seen in (even in front of the mirror in the privacy of his own home, much less in front of the exquisite and sexy Poison Ivy).

Which was precisely one of the things that made it great. Lux was just being Lux, and how could he be a parody of his former self when he'd always cultivated the tasteless? Sure, their performance might not have been as vital as they used to be in their heyday (like when they performed live at a mental hospital in 1978), but you could argue—The Cramps' obsession with youth culture notwithstanding—that Lux was being even more Crampy in his later, refreshingly undignified years.

And maybe some of the infamous edge had, not so much worn off, but been softened on purpose by Lux as he stood up there that night, after years of health-and-safety defying antics. That's understandable. (Would anything else have even been possible?) But how many people aged 59 stagger about on a stage with a bottle of red wine lodged in their mouth, drinking with no hands and sucking suggestively at the bottle, dribbling the Bacchanlian's favourite blood-like elixir like an exhibitionist splosher degenerate, the natural centre of attention in any crowd?

The answer, of course, is only one 59-year-old.

I originally wrote a lot more, but let's not get maudlin. Here's a little compilation I made with Lux and Ivy in mind. Their extremely knowledgable taste in bizarre, basic and ballsy music is well documented (check out the three volumes of Songs the Cramps Taught Us and eleven(!) volumes of Lux and Ivy's Favorites). So instead of all the usual fare, I've compiled a few songs I know they liked and many songs (or cover versions) I imagine they might like. I'm no rockabilly enthusiast, so I'm making up for that by including loads of their beloved garage-psych and a little exotica and novelty music. It's a guide to The Cramps—their background and their context; their influences and their influence—without actually including any of their music. (This doesn't seem like an appropriate time to distribute their output for free.)

Whatever the contents, the comp was made with this in mind: Lux Interior never stopped a-rockin' and a-rollin'!

Gonna take a week off
Gonna go to Hell
Send ya a postcard
Hey, I'm doin' swell!
Wish you were here
Aloha from Hell

I'll be dancin' thru the flames
Like a devil in disguise
You can hear me sing
But not by satellite
You can hear me sing
Aloha from Hell

I'll be glad to get away
Up here everything's so swell
You know some like it hot
And down there it's hot as Hell
Don't forget to write
Aloha from Hell

IVY EYES [.zip file]
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1. Vincent Price: «Music, When Soft Voices Die»
The eeriest voice ever, loved by ’50s revivalists and goths alike, recites a fittingly haunting poem by Percy Bysse Shelley.




2. Eartha Kitt: «Two Lovers»
Conceived by rape and born on a plantation, raunchy and sharp-minded autodidact Eartha Kitt passed away on Christmas Day. Kitt had been an eloquent and elegant champion of sexy freedom and tolerance in the risqué tradition of Mae West since the 1950s, The Cramps’ favourite decade. And she was the first Catwoman on TV, so I’m imagining they admired her. This song showcases the exotica leanings any fan of kitsch ’50s culture delights in (including The Cramps of course). RIP.

3. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins: «Little Demon»
The godfather of hysterical screams in popular music, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins sowed so many illegitimate seeds there’s an international association for those who can prove they’re his offspring. Lux Interior would focus more on honing the frantic delivery that made Screamin’ Jay Hawkins a timeless novelty artist, rather than on heroic evolutionary feats. This song's got a great lyric, about the «cat» who «took the fruit out of the frutti».

4. John Zacherle: «Dinner with Drac»
Zacherle was a schlock-horror TV host in the 1950s and ’60s. I imagine the coupling of vintage bad TV, horror and early rock’n’roll would be irresistible to The Cramps. «Igor! The scalpels go on the left, with the pitchforks!»

5. Mae West & Somebody's Chyldren: «Shakin' All Over»
In 1966, the 74-year-old sexpot film legend rounded up a few garage-dwelling teenagers and corrupted them into
recording lusty, garage rock versions of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, etc. «Shakin' All Over»—as played by the more subtle Johnny Kidd & The Pirates—is often cited as an influence on The Cramps. I prefer this wilder version by far; just picture West's saggy flesh, shakin' all over… Was there ever a sexier septuagenerian? Also, I like how golden oldies such as this one master the art of ingenious subtlety; in 1966 they'd sing, «Quivers down my backbone / I got the shakes down my knee bone / Tremors in my thigh bone…»—whereas nowadays, they'd just rap «Face down, ass up / That's the way we like to fuck!»

6. John & Jackie: «Little Girl»
Early rock’n’roll and tongue-in-cheek (not that cheek!) sex-ooze in perfect harmony, this one puts me in the mood.

7. The Frantics: «The Whip»
I know Interior and Rorschach liked The Frantics. This is my favourite of theirs. It brings to mind that time in Gold Coast's Warner Bros. theme park, where a lithe woman—squeezed into Catwoman's tight, black, full body leather suit—strode down the street, cracking a huge whip. As the Pulp Fiction «gimp»-like music of this track perfectly illustrates, I contemplated leaving everything and everyone behind and becoming her slave-thing, but was ushered away by my girlfriend…

8. Mohammed Rafi: «Nain Milakar Chain Churana»
Like everyone who hears it, Lux and Ivy loved Mohammed Rafi’s «Jaan Pehechan Ho». This one’s not bad, either.

9. Nervous Norvus & Kenny Burt’s Cavemen: «Stoneage Woo»
Nervous Norvus a.k.a. Jimmy Drake was one of rock’s weirder phenomena. He made novelty records, seemingly in all seriousness, in an idiosyncratic style no one’s possessed, before or since. Drake never scored a hit with his genre-defying style, but he kept trying, oblivious to the limitations of novelty music. The Cramps, like Mark E. Smith, were big fans of his song «Transfusion», but this one's just as representative of Drake’s nervous energy.

10. Billy Jo Spears: «Get Behind Me Satan and Push»
The Cramps are rockabilly connoisseurs, but apart from the occasional song, I could never get with that style of music. It always just makes me laugh. (Which might be the intention.) Like this song. But I love the attitude of «sassy lassie» Ms. Spears.

11. Ken Nordine: «Crimson»
Lux and Ivy professed a liking for Ken Nordine—a kind of Kafka, had the troubled bureaucrat made up stories for 5-year-olds. I'm sure Lux'n'Ivy would approve of this track, where, not very typically, Nordine's pleasing radio ad voice (the inspiration behind today’s ridiculous movie trailer narration) is set to surf accompaniment. This short track is one among many where Nordine explores the character of various colours. And crimson, as the man says, is sick—«sick and red!»

12. The Human Expression: «Love at Psychedelic Velocity»
The kind of naïve, dating and transparently calculating marketing strategy behind naming a track something so ridiculous as «Love at Psychedelic Velocity» is the kind of thing The Cramps, like so many kitsch revivalists, found irresistible. The track’s got great energy, though, and the type of sonic approach that would inspire The Cramps. Great fun—and the attitude!

13. Los Saicos: «Demolición»
The Cramps were professed fans of ’60s fuzzbucket proto-punk rockers The Sonics, and The Saicos have been labelled «The Sonics of Peru». Legend would have it that the Peruvian psychos never heard any of the American garage-psych records, but rather innocently tried—in their unskilled and technologically wanting manner—to make music inspired by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Animals et al. And they ended up with this crazed surf music. The vocals are inciteful, urging you to take to the streets and overturn cars and throw bricks through shop windows. «TA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TA YA-YA-YA-YA!»

14. The Leathercoated Minds: «Psychotic Reaction»
When I saw them live in 2006, The Cramps played this song in a rendition faithful to Count Five’s original one-hit garage wonder. But The Leathercoated Minds’ singer’s decrepit scatting is in full keeping with The Cramps aesthetic.

15. The Missing Links: «Mama Keep Your Big Mouth Shut»
Surely, The Cramps would approve of this obscure Australian garage album track: Attitude, bursts of noise & feedback—all to a melody and lyrics by their darling Bo Diddley.

16. The Third Bardo: «Lose Your Mind»
In a transparent and pathetic attempt at breaking big, this song is a replica of The Third Bardo’s previous (moderate) hit, «I’m Five Years Ahead of My Time»—a song The Cramps liked to cover. The song's sentiment is a good idea, though, and with a fuzz guitar like that...

17. ? & the Mysterians: «96 Tears»
Largely forgotten today, this is one of rock history’s most important hits, its raw simplicity inspiring a whole generation of non-musicians to play anyway—and Lux interior to whimper, on 1979’s «Human
Fly»: «I am a human fly / And I don’t know why / I got ninety-six tears and ninety-six eyes!»






18. Suicide: «Radiation»
According to Suicide singer Alan Vega, ’60s garage rock sensation «96 Tears» forms the basis of this song, just as it inspired The Cramps' own «Human Fly». Although they sound different, the two bands shared an affinity for early rock'n'roll, screams and yelps, the gutter, and punk (which they helped kickstart in New York back in the '70s when they'd play CBGB's and the like).

19. The Birthday Party: «Release the Bats»
At this point—1982—The Birthday Party was probably the closest-sounding band to The Cramps. The tongue-in-cheek, rockabilly-meets-goth stylings and gutter lunacy were something they definitely had in common, not to mention the hysterical vocals and ejaculations of white guitar noise. While Lux Interior attempted to sound like Charlie Feathers, and Alan Vega as Gene Vincent, Nick Cave here gives it the Elvis treatment.

20. Thee Headcoatees: «Strychnine»
The Sonics' original was an old Cramps favourite. Here's a version by Billy Childish's grotty version of Spice Girls, his unskilled protégés Thee Headcoatees, which would launch Holly Golightly's career.

21. The Fall: «I'm a Mummy»
Bob McFadden & Dor's bandwagon Beatnik novelty song, «The Mummy», was yet another Cramps favourite. But it’s still a bizarre choice for a cover version, if you ask me. But then Mark E. Smith does resemble the living dead—a Working Class Ho-Tep.


22. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: «Dang»
Jon Spencer moved to New York to start an art rock band in the vein of Swans, but ended up playing stuff like this obviously Cramps-influenced rockabilly punker, replete with Theremin, the staple of any '50s schlock sci-fi B-movie. Pure Cramps.

23. The Stooges: «You Better Run (version 2)»
The Stooges were a huge influence on The Cramps, what with the poor man's decadence of their street hedonism and their deranged sense of theatrics (publicly cutting yourself with glass, dressing up in fetish clothing, covering yourself in peanut butter). I used to put this song on a lot, and my girlfriend at the time—a bigger fan of Iggy Pop than I—would roll her eyes every time, not quite ready to embrace his ad lib about rape. But that’s a good thing; offensiveness is a hallmark of relevance, and I'm glad to see Iggy's still got it after all these years.
(Only about a month before Lux Interior passed away, and at around the same age, influential Stooges guitarist and, er, Nazi fetishist Ron Asheton died of a heart attack. RIP.)

24. Black Lips: «Buried Alive»
The inappropriate title aside, this track's perfectly in sync with The Cramps, what with the Tales of the Crypt-like lyrics coupled with wild and jangly raga rock that's as psychedelic as it is garage.

25. Grinderman: «Honey Bee (Let's Fly to Mars)»
Eschewing his high-fallutin' goth poetry and exchanging his piano for the Farfisa organ (which has been the staple of garage rock ever since
? & the Mysterians came out with «96 Tears»), Nick Cave reconnected with his libido and created an album full of scuzzbucket sexual frustration, with former Cramps sticksman Jim Sclavunos beating the skins. Cave's buzzing on this track sounds like a nod to Cramps classic «Human Fly».

26. Megapuss: «A Gun on His Hip and a Rose on His Chest»
The Cramps loved rock’n’roll pioneer Bo Diddley. Here, Devendra Banhart and Greg Rogove take the quintessential Diddley beat (and melody of «The Story of Bo Diddley») and set it to offbeat lyrics—a combination which in another age would've cast this in the category «novelty music». I mean, «Fuck the taxes / In their IRSes / … Fuck the pastors / Touching our baby boys' asses»(!)

The Turner Music Prize 2008

I was burning CDs for this guy—impoverished and starved for new sounds as this wandering stranger was when I first took him in—compiling playlist after playlist that all seemed, ironically, to contain only '60s music, when it dawned on me that he must think I suffer from a bad case of Obsessive Compulsive retro Disorder. Suddenly, I was gripped by a fear of becoming one of those people who grumble about no valid music having been made after 11:20pm on 6 December 1969.

So, beginning in 2007, I started keeping tabs on newfangled music by adding to a playlist freshly released songs whenever one caught my grubby little ears. About this time last year, I was going to send an end-of-year compilation to this hapless victim of mine, but I proved too lazy, and if other people wanted some new sounds as well, I wasn't about to send out three-CD sets every which way.

The bloke's name was Turner—and to my knowledge still is, even though he just got engaged (congrats, Dave!)—and there's a prestigious (if ludicrous) annual art award called the Turner Prize. So here you go: The first disc of my 2008 round-up of great music—my out-of-touch guide to modern sounds, all designed to impress upon some fellow music lover that I am not a crackpot!

TURNER MUSIC PRIZE 2008, Vol. 1 [.zip file]
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2008 was a p-r-e-t-t-y good year—in music. Hell, it was pretty damn great. A lot of moody noise was recorded, and on some days as I listen to the music on this first volume, I daydream that it was all to vanquish the inanity that besets our beleaguered world. Then I got a job working on the Norwegian pre-contests anticipating the international Eurovision Song Contest.

1. The Black Angels: «Mission District»
Their ’60s psychedelia/Native American drone’n’roll schtick is a tad corny, perhaps, but the Black Angels have bottom. There’s groove and balls, two qualities there's a desperate shortage of in contemporary rock’n’roll (the combination of which is even rarer). And DAMN! is that scuzzbucket fuzz bass nasty!
From Directions to See a Ghost

2. Endless Boogie: «The Manly Vibe»
I don’t know what’s going on «in the basement,» but listening to this pub blues rock gone horribly wonky, I wouldn’t go down there if I were you. (Actually, I would—and especially if I were me.) I don’t know if «Manly Vibe» refers to some sort of masculine essence or just a butt-plug. Whatever it is, I’m feeling (practically smelling) it. This is bearded, sweaty, bear music—what Kings Of Leon would sound like if they weren’t such pubescent pussies, but bald and furry and subjected instead to something David Lynch wouldn’t touch…
From Focus Level

3. The Fall: «50 Year Old Man (pt. 1)»
«I’m a 50-year-old man / What you gonna do about it?» Whoever said rock’n’roll is a young man’s game? Just because most rock’n’rollers slink off into irrelevance after a couple of albums doesn’t mean everyone has to follow the precedence set by Sirs Mick, Paul, Elton and Cliff. On this monster, rock’s foremost maverick coot, 51-year-old Mark E. Smith, slobbers and rants about the advantages of getting to that age where it only makes sense to give the whimpering ageism of obsessive mortals two crooked fingers up: «I’m a 50-year-old-man / And I like it / I’m a 50-year-old man / I’ve got a three-foot rock-hard-on». No wonder he likes it! (This track is an edited excerpt from an 11-minute-plus opus that degenerates into a banjo ditty. I thought it best to keep it short and sweet—unlike that three-foot erection.)
From Imperial Wax Solvent

4. TV On The Radio: «Halfway Home»
Hand claps! And «ba-ba-ba-ba-ba»s!
From Dear Science,

5. Goa: «Au dessus des nuages»
GLORIOUS NOISE! Everything about this track is primal. If they'd had video games back in the Stone Age, this is what they would sound like. Grit yer teeth and enjoy!
From Goa 3

6. Dan Friel: «Ghost Town (pt. 1)»
Imagine what all the pop hooks that have persecuted the populations of this planet could have sounded like with a little bit of drugged-up disco balls? Thankfully, you need strain your imagination no more; here’s a little taste.
From Ghost Town

7. Portishead: «Machine Gun»
Sadness, anger, loathing, hopelessness and a sense of foreboding; respect to those very few who aren't only able, but willing to stare down depression long enough to convey it. Portishead announced, shortly before the release of their long-awaited and hotly anticipated third album, that it would be a bit of a «fuck you» to all the chill-out muzak their insipid imitators have long since turned into a widespread genre afflicting anyone wishing to go out for a cuppa joe. This track's a destroyer, alright, merciless but righteous!
From Third

8. The Notwist: «Alphabet»
A weird rhythm and bits of noise scattered here and there, with a static, psychotic, high-pitched synth drone throughout and something that could be a skipping CD broken up with intermittent jazz drumming. These fragments and more come together to form a whole that is, inexplicably, frail and vulnerable—some kind of magic trick.
From The Devil, You + Me

9. Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band: «13 Blues for Thirteen Moons»
Where to start? The tense strings? The releasing noise? The funky drumming? The sexy riff? The plaintive vocal, stretching into a hoarse indignation, the vocal cords cracking with anger to the point of silence? Upon hearing this band—the heirs to Nina Simone’s badass activist attitude—most recording artists should and surely would hang their heads in shame. «No heroes on my radio!» yells Efrim Menuck, something I’m trying to do my bit to correct by putting this piece on here—one of the foremost musical accomplishments of 2008. (No «indie rock creeps» with personal stylists and sycophantic press here, castrating the legacy of early '80s post-punk for the teenage demographic.) Q: How do you spell «relevance»? A: S-I-L-V-E-R-M-T-Z-I-O-N.
From 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons

10. Megapuss: «Sayulita»
«Dancing whore / Dirty floor…» (Could easily have been the other way around.) This song makes me want to curl up into sleep, the sound of being too tired to feel depressed gently, distantly guiding you into the weird and wonderful world of dreams, where the miracle of consciousness, and so reality, unravels and is revealed in all its unfathomable illogic, taunting the pretensions of science and rationality (if you could remember such things). And just as you no longer have any awareness of self, nor any understanding of the senseless imagery you’re not apart from, but merged with in this non-place where nothing carries meaning nor bears any consequence, you recognise just about the only intelligible words falling out of Greg Rogove’s lazily sorrowful mouth—the mutterings of someone talking in their sleep suddenly clear now, tender, and content at last, as it sings the wishful thought: «I am where I want to be…»
From Surfing

11. Larkin Grimm: «Blond and Golden Johns»

I’ve been accused of all sorts of witchcraft and told that I am a perverse and disturbing influence, and have been kicked out of churches, schools, hippie communes, and the town of Skagway, Alaska…

So says Larkin Grimm, one of those people who's All Woman. Eerily backed by Fire On Fire, «Blond and Golden Johns» may or may not be inspired by Grimm’s time spent with the prostitutes of Bangkok: «I got no hooker’s heart of gold / My hooks are sharp, my heart is cold.» Say what you will about her intensity and unconventional perspective, in a worldful of crooners passing themselves off as sensitive singer-songwriters and menstrual folk girlies dabbling with «eccentricity», how refreshing it is to hear an artist with a different vision—one who takes risks, who has an edge, who gives things a slant, who sees it her way (not yours). Finally. She has arrived. «This mouth has wrapped around something / More delicious than the songs I sing…»
From Parplar

12. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: «Hold on to Yourself»

Well, cities rust and fall to ruin
Factories close and cars go cruisin’
In and around the borders of her vision
She says, «Oh woah woah woah»
As Jesus makes the flowers grow
All around the scene of her collision

Oh, you know I would
I would hold on to yourself

It’s in the middle of the night
I try my best to chase outside
The phantoms and the ghosts and the fairy-girls
On 1001 nights like this
She mutters, «Open sesame,» and Ali Baba and his forty thieves
Launch her off the face of the world

Well, you know
One day I’ll come back
And I’ll hold on to yourself
You better hold on to yourself

Aw, babe, I’m thousand miles away
And I just don’t know what to say
’Cause Jesus only loves a man who bruises
But darling we can clearly see
It’s all life and fire and lunacy
And excuses and excuses and excuses

Well, you know if I could I would
Yeah, I would lie right down
And I’d hold on to yourself

From Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!