The Nation Of Ulysses - 13-Point Program To Destroy America

Back in the early 1990s, the Washington DC area was filled both with great music stores and slammin' music venues. When I moved back up to the region for my shore duty station in Arlington, after spending three years on sea duty out of Norfolk, Virginia, I was like a kid in a candy store! I set about rediscovering all of the great places in and around the city, some of which I became familiar with during my time in school in nearby Annapolis, Maryland in the mid-1980s.

In a post I wrote about fifteen years, I summarized the club scene in DC during this period; here's an excerpt from that write-up once again:

Back [in the early Nineties], downtown DC used to have a PUMPING bar/club scene - with Fifth Column and its next-door neighbor, The Vault, anchoring the F Street dance circuit (the old 9:30 Club was right across the street, along with a really good multi-story club whose name currently escapes me that ran through the entire block from E to F St. - one section was an old-school R&B dance club, one section was a quiet live jazz lounge, another featured house music, etc.). The 80's-themed dance club Polly Esther's was just half a block away. A few blocks northwest, close to the Treasury building between 14th and 15th Streets, was Zei Alley, home to Club Zei and its cross-alley dance club companion, the Spy Club. In the scary, dangerous, decrepit neighborhood over by the Navy Yard was the legendary Capital Ballroom/Nation and the nearby Tracks, a gay dance club that nonetheless drew a mixed crowd due to its great music. There was Anastasia's (New Romantic) and Poseur's (New Wave) in Georgetown; reggae clubs on U Street and 18th Street (near the current 18th Street Lounge); samba and live jazz in Adams-Morgan - frankly, there were great places all over town, and you could strike sparks wherever you went for whatever sort of music you were in the mood for...

In addition, there were some great back-alley/warehouse type clubs along the M Street corridor, in one of which one night I first heard Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", a story I've related to you all earlier.

As for buying music, my go-to place back then was the old George Washington University branch of Tower Records, just off of Pennsylvania Avenue. They had a huge selection of tapes and CDs spread over two floors, and the place was always packed. For music that was more out of the mainstream, I'd go to one of the then-several locations of Olsson's Books & Records;

my favorite one was on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, just around the corner from Smash! Records, a venue that specialized in local hardcore punk and English post-punk releases, along with an incredible selection of band/concert tee shirts. For house and dance music, few stores could beat 12 Inch Dance Records on P Street near Dupont Circle. And over in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood, the discount CD & Tape Exchange had thousands of used, half-price albums for sale.

As I gradually moved away from cassette tapes and into CDs in those years (I suppose I was one of the last holdouts for THAT format...), I began to seek out stores a little further afield than in downtown DC to feed my collection. In an earlier post, I mentioned Phantasmagoria Records in nearby Wheaton, Maryland, the place where I almost saw Stereolab play their second U.S. show back then. Really loved that store; it's been gone for more than 25 years now, but still missed by many.

The other place outside of the city I used to frequent early in my time in the area was just over the city/state line: Vinyl Ink Records in Silver Spring, Maryland. Vinyl Ink was a relatively small, single-room facility, and the selection there wasn't as extensive as could be found at Tower or Phantasmagoria. But the place was staffed by locals who were incredibly knowledgeable in both the local scene and in what was happening over in England (from what I understand, members of such still-celebrated DC indie bands such as Black Tambourine and Velocity Girl worked there at various times; the Slumberland Records music label was initially started out of that shop). Vinyl Ink specialized in English shoegaze bands and local groups, but the main
attraction there for me was the store's extensive rack of music fanzines for sale. They had a few of the national ones, and a ton of the locally produced ones, including my favorite, Teenage Gang Debs (a superb history/overview of this great fanzine is located here).

One day, while I was in Vinyl Ink browsing the racks, I noticed a small half-sized (5 1/2" by 8") pamphlet on colored stock, half-hidden among the larger-sized publications. It was the seventh edition of Ulysses Speaks!, the ongoing half-music 'zine/half manifesto dissemination put out by The Nation Of Ulysses.

The Nation Of Ulysses was a DC-area punk band that formed a couple of years earlier, in 1988. The band (made up of drummer Jim Canty, bassist Steve Gamboa, lead guitarist Steve Kroner, second guitarist Tim Green and Ian Svenonius on lead vocals) gigged constantly around the area, shows that were infamous for their high-decibel, aggressive, almost free form noise and extreme violence. Audience members routinely got hurt during their performances, and band members were known for breaking bones on stage. That sort of scene really wasn't my cup of tea at that time, so I heard about these events secondhand, never attending one of their concerts.

Coupled with their sound was a jumbled, somewhat pretentious and semi-infantile "band philosophy" the group claimed to operate under. To quote from Wikipedia:

Nation of Ulysses described themselves not as a rock 'n' roll group in the traditional sense, but "as a political party"[14] and as "a shout of secession." Explaining their intent, Svenonius said "it's basically a new nation underground for the dispossessed youth colony. It's all about smashing the old edifice, the monolith of rock and roll." AllMusic's Steve Huey described the Nation of Ulysses' philosophy as "a relentlessly provocative (and entertaining) jumble of teenage rock 'n' roll rebellion, leftist radicalism, anarchist punk polemics, and abstract intellectual rambling, [...] [which gives the sense of] an off-kilter, almost tongue-in-cheek approach to a 'perpetual 18-year old's' view of America, and life in general."

Outside of their music, the band's main organ for promoting this somewhat effed-up agenda/ideology was via Ulysses Speaks!, initially distributed at their concerts before the 'zine became more widely available at independent music shops in the area. The zines espoused what The Nation Of Ulysses referred to as "The Ulysses Aesthetic, "a jumbled mix of "1960s and 1970s radical politics, French Situationist writings, and juvenile delinquency". One was never quite sure if the group was being serious about this philosophy, or it was all just a giant put on.

Anyway, by the early '90s, The Nation Of Ulysses was simply another hardcore punk band in a city filled with music, with a small but rabid regional following. That changed in 1991.

Sassy, a feminist magazine for teen girls, was launched in 1988. It was considered the antithesis of existing mainstream teen lifestyle magazines such as Seventeen and Teen, because in its time it reflected a very hip, independent and (shall we say) "sassy" attitude about what was going on in the world. Every issue of Sassy contained interesting, irreverent feature stories with a feminist outlook, interviews with people important to teens, and extensive coverage of emerging indie bands nationwide (DC area native Erin Smith, one of the editors of the aforementioned Teenage Gang Debs 'zine and a member of Bratmobile, was hired early on as an intern in the music features department). And the public responded to this fresh approach; by 1990, Sassy boasted a monthly circulation of more than 450,000.

Since its founding, the magazine held an annual "Sassiest Girl In America" contest. And in the winter of 1991, Sassy launched its first annual "Sassiest Boy In America" competition. Over 100 entries were received from readers all over the country, and that inaugural winner was none other... than Ian Svenonius.

Overnight, the band's profile went nationwide, with the article declaring that The Nation Of Ulysses and Svenonius were going to be HUGE: "He's going to be a big deal. I'm sure he will be and we're going to be so proud that we were the first ones to discover him." Even afterward, when it was discovered that Ian had broken the contest rules and lied about his age (he wasn't a "boy" at all, but a 22-year-old man), the magazine still supported him (and let him keep his title).

Note that all of this national recognition and vaunted editorial predictions of success came before The Nation Of Ulysses had even released a single recording. The band's first long-player, 13 Point Program To Destroy America, came out in the early summer of 1991, a few months after the magazine issue hit the shelves, and just after I moved back to the Washington DC area.

What can I say about this album? Well, for the most part, to me, it's paint-by-numbers juvenile hardcore punk - all thrash-and-bang, trebly (whoever mixed this disc turned the bass WAY down, so the majority of the songs have no bottom rhythm), fast and loose, with Svenonius' shouty declarations slathered over the "music'. The few songs that do break out of this mold aren't masterpieces themselves per se; but you notice them mostly due to the fact that they aren't screechy pounding screeds. "Diptheria", driven by a nagging, insistent guitar line, is actually almost a gentle ballad, even in the moments where Svenonius cranks the urgency of the vocals up a notch. And "P. Power" is a pretty good near-mainstream rock song, and a highlight of the album.

But overall, while well-received in certain limited quarters, this release did little to increase the band's national profile. Because of the strong local connection, Vinyl Ink played portions of this album as background music in their store for weeks during that summer - so much so that I became heartily sick of the band and anything related to it. I never got into their fanzine, and it was years later that I finally acquired a copy of this disc (Why? Because I'm a music completest, that's why... and I want to have everything associated with a certain genre, time and/or place).

After a while, I got tired of Vinyl Ink's music selections and relatively small inventory, especially after Teenage Gang Debs' publication schedule became more haphazard after 1990's third issue (the 'zine folded after Issue #5, sometime around late 1993). I began spending more of my time and money at Phantasmagoria's more extensive racks. There was also an incident nearby a couple of months later that REALLY put me off going to Silver Spring...

My visits to the record shop usually happened after work in Arlington, so to get to Vinyl Ink I generally drove through the center of the city, then turned north on Georgia Avenue in the Columbia Heights/U Street area, close to Howard University. That area was devastated by the riots that occurred in the wake of Rev. Martin Luther King's assassination in the spring of 1968, and nearly twenty-five years later, the neighborhoods were still struggling to recover. So, not to disparage the place, but it wasn't the safest place to motor through, especially as evening approached. There was a large gas station halfway up Georgia Ave., between Brightwood and Takoma, where I sometimes stopped to get gas. So, one night, I made the trip up to the store, and on my way back down through DC, I stopped at the station, filled up, and went on my way - no worries or issues.

The VERY NEXT NIGHT, a driver with the same make and model as my car stopped at that very same filling station. While there, he was approached by an armed robber. I can't recall if he resisted or not - the news stories didn't make that clear - but he ended up being shot dead.

Same car... same place... 24 hour's difference. Not a big believer in "signs"... but I immediately curtailed my visits to that area.

The original Nation Of Ulysses lineup lasted for another year or so. They released their follow up
album, Plays Pretty For Baby, in October of 1992. But things were not all quiet in their world. During the recording of their sophomore disc, guitarist Kroner left the band. The remaining quartet made a haphazard effort to soldier on, prepping songs for a third album. But the band completely fell apart by the end of 1992 (six songs from these final sessions were finally included on the posthumous 2000 release The Embassy Tapes).

After the breakup, Canty and Gamboa stuck with Svenonius for a couple of short lived bands, Cupid Car Club from 1993 to 1995 and The Make Up from 1995 to 2000. Since then, Svenonius has involved himself with a number of DC-area indie groups and solo projects, with names like Weird War, Chain And The Gang, Too Much and Escape-ism, to name a few. By latest count, over the years he has been involved in or released more than twenty full-length albums and the same number of singles/EPs. As for the remaining former Nation Of Ulysses member Tim Green, he spent a few years on the production/engineering side of recording, before joining the California-based metal band The Fucking Champs, which is still going strong to this day.

The demise of the Washington DC area independent music markets took place slowly over the next decade and a half. Phantasmagoria gave up the ghost in 2001, replaced by a neighborhood cultural center. 12 Inch Dance Records in the Dupont Circle area closed its doors in 2002. After fending off bankruptcy for a number of years, the remaining locations of the once-vast Olsson's Books & Music chain shut down in 2008. But Vinyl Ink was the first to go, closing up for good in 1999. About the only place still left in DC flying the punk/indie flag is Smash Records, originally situated in Georgetown but now with a storefront in Adams-Morgan.

Sassy didn't make it past the '90s either.  After a series of editorial missteps and sale to another publisher that blunted its once-formidable edge, its circulation collapsed, and the magazine folded in 1996.

I still miss those shops, and the music they offered, making it easy at the time to find that left-of-center/quirky release you may have heard on WHFS or the college stations. And I include Vinyl Ink in that long-lamented group. It was a good place, for its time... but apparently some things aren't made to last.

And that includes The Nation Of Ulysses. Again, I personally wasn't a big fan. But they are still revered in certain corners, and several existing bands today (including The Hives, Bikini Kill, Death From Above 1979 and LCD Soundsystem, among others) have cited them as an influence.

So, if you have some residual nostalgia for that time and genre, or just want to hear what was happening in DC's early '90s punk scene, this one's for you: 13-Point Plan To Destroy America, the debut release of Washington's own The Nation Of Ulysses, put out on Dischord Records on July 1st, 1991. Have a listen if you can stand it, and as always, let me know what you think.

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The Beatles - Sdrawkcab!

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Mark E. Smith with The Rolling Stones - Grotesque Rescue

Haven't put up an annual tribute/commemoration post on the anniversary of Fall frontman Mark E. Smith's death in a couple of years (he died on this date in 2018)... simply because in my opinion there hasn't been very much newsworthy information and/or activity regarding the band in a long, long while. The Fall Online forum, once my frequent go-to, is completely dead - the last update to their "Fall News" section was back in 2020. Same goes for The Official Fall Website - there's just been nothing there to report on.

At least House Of All, the band made up of former members of The Fall (including Martin Bramah on vocals, the great and long-serving Steve Hanley on bass, a dual drum attack from Paul Hanley and Simon Wolstencroft, and Pete Greenway on guitar) is still going strong. When they formed back in 2022, there was a lot of sniping in the press from Smith's family, who disavowed the band and claimed that they were ghoulishy trading on the name and legacy of The Fall (which of course the band members denied). But since that time the group has put out a series of well-reviewed releases which have for all intents and purposes put that issue to bed. While there are some echoes and vestiges of the former
group present, House Of All has managed to create their own unique sound and aesthetic. For their latest album, House Of All Souls, released in February of 2025, for some tracks they added an additional former member whose presence electrified old Fall fans - long-lost drummer Karl Burns. It was their most well-received album to date.

As for what Brix Smith-Start is up to, I really don't know. I haven't paid much attention to her since Brix & The Extricated, that half-assed karaoke band/vanity project she fronted with the Hanley brothers, folded in 2020. She announced the release of a new album, Valley Of The Dolls, in 2023, and I heard she put together another band to tour it. But I've made no effort to seek it/them out.

So, with all of that (such as it is), I can't recall how I first got wind of the release I'm featuring in this post. At first glance, it sounded intriguing: a mashup of two albums by seminal English groups, Emotional Rescue by The Rolling Stones and Grotesque (After The Gramme) by The Fall, both released in 1980, and both albums containing a total of ten tracks. From what I could gather, it was produced by a 
conceptual artist and musician out of Chicago named Peter Speer, who released a couple of other mashups/distortions by other artists on Bandcamp. I've got a number of mashups in my collection, including one of the greatest, Danger Mouse's Beatles vs.Jay-Z 2004 hip-hop masterpiece The Grey Album. So I was expecting/anticipating Speer to focus the same sort of care and imagination in putting this new one together...

Nope - didn't happen.  Sorry, but in my opinion, this is crap.

Instead of trying to meld/blend the two group's sounds and approaches into an interesting and modified sound, it appears that all Speer did was utilize the instrumental tracks from the Stones' album and superimpose Mark's vocals over the music. And for the most part, not in a coherent way. There's little attempt to 'fit' words and music together - Mark's voice is just sort of slapped in there. I tried my hardest to come away with some sort of good feeling from this disc, and finally just gave up. I can't even chalk this up as a noble attempt or inspired experiment; I don't know WHAT this is, but it certainly doesn't come across as such.

Shortly after this was released, the guys running the We Are The Fall podcast (Gavin and Steve) dedicated an entire show to this album - here it is:

I love this podcast, and usually I think these guys are spot-on. But they just go on and on singing the praises of this release... so much so that I was like, "What the f*ck are you two talking about?", and came away thinking that they and I had listened to two totally different albums.

In either event, if you're burning to hear this, here ya go: Grotesque Rescue, a purported Fall/Rolling Stones mashup album, produced by Peter Speer and released on vinyl in limited quantities (and later on CD-R) by Faxed Records on January 1st, 2024. Get ready... and after you've listened to as much of this as you can, let me know what you think, as always.

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The Grateful Dead - Wake Of The Flood: The Angel's Share

Another November 2nd (Day Of The Dead) - another Grateful Dead offering for you all!

In celebration of the original album's fiftieth anniversary, The Dead's vaults were thrown open to provide Wake Of The Flood: The Angel's Share, the third installment of the celebrated Angel's Share series, featuring more than two hours of previously unreleased studio chatter, outtakes and alternate versions recorded during the band's August 1973 Wake Of The Flood sessions, held at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California. Some great additions to this release include:

• Takes of “Let Me Sing Your Blues Away,” Keith Godchaux’s first and only vocal on a Grateful Dead studio record;
• Bobby Weir’s continually evolving “Weather Report Suite”; and
• The track “Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain)”, released on the group's later album The Mars Hotel.

In case you're curious, here's the track listing:

1. Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo (Take 9) [Not Slated] [8/6/73]
2. Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo (Take 10) [Slated] [8/6/73]
3. Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo (Take 11) [Slated] [8/6/73]
4. Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo (Take 16) [Slated] [8/6/73]
5. Stella Blue (Take 1) [Not Slated] [8/7/73]
6. Stella Blue (Take 2) [Not Slated] [8/7/73]
7. Stella Blue (Take 4) [Slated] [8/7/73]
8. Stella Blue (Take 5) [Not Slated] [8/7/73]
9. I Am The Rain (Weather Report Suite) [Take 2] [Slated] [8/7/73]
10. I Am The Rain (Weather Report Suite) [Take 3] [Slated] [8/7/73]
11. I Am The Rain (Weather Report Suite) [Take 4] [Slated] [8/7/73]
12. Pistol Shot (China Doll) [TAKE 1] [SLATED] [8/8/73]
13. Pistol Shot (China Doll) [TAKE 2] [SLATED] [8/8/73]
14. Pistol Shot (China Doll) [TAKE 3] [SLATED] [8/8/73]
15. Pistol Shot (China Doll) [TAKE 4] [SLATED] [8/8/73]
16. Row Jimmy (Take 1) [Not Slated] [8/10/73]
17. Eyes Of The World (Run-through) [Not SLATED] [8/10/73]
18. Eyes Of The World (Take 1) [SLATED] [8/10/73]
19. Eyes Of The World (Take 6) [Not SLATED] [8/10/73]
20. Eyes Of The World (Take 15) [Not SLATED] [8/10/73]
21. Eyes Of The World (Take 16) [Not SLATED] [8/10/73]
22. Let Me Sing Your Blues Away (TAKE 1) [Not SLATED][8/15/73]
23. Let Me Sing Your Blues Away (TAKE 2) [SLATED] [8/15/73]
24. Let Me Sing Your Blues Away (TAKE 3) [SLATED] [8/15/73]
25. Let Me Sing Your Blues Away (TAKE 4) [SLATED] [8/15/73]
26. Let Me Sing Your Blues Away (TAKE 13) [Not SLATED] [8/15/73]
27. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 1] [Not SLATED] [8/16/73
28. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 2] [Not SLATED] [8/16/73]
29. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 3] [SLATED] [8/16/73]
30. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 4] [Not SLATED] [8/16/73]
31. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 5] [Not SLATED] [8/16/73]
32. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 6] [Not SLATED] [8/16/73]
33. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 7] [SLATED] [8/16/73]
34. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 8] [SLATED] [8/16/73]
35. Weather Report Suite (Take 10) [Not Slated] [8/16/73
36. Weather Report Suite (Take 11) [Not Slated] [8/16/73
37. Weather Report Suite (Take 16) [Not Slated] [8/16/73]
38. Weather Report Suite (Take 8) [Slated] [8/17/73]

Sort of not much else left to say here about this album - so I'll just shut up and offer up the music. Here for your Dias De Los Muertos listening pleasure, here's Wake Of The Flood: The Angel's Share, released by Rhino Records on August 18, 2023. This one's for all the Deadheads out there!

Enjoy, and... well, you know!

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Various Artists - Ace Records Halloween Compilations

No long-winded Halloween stories this year; I couldn't think of any that were of any import or interest. But during the year, I gathered up a few more releases related to the holiday, and wanted to get a couple of them posted here before Friday - so here you are.

The first, These Ghoulish Things - Horror Hits For Halloween, was released in 2005. It contains some superb selections of horror rock from the Golden Age of Rock 'n' Roll, between 1957 and 1964. Artists both renowned (like Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Bo Diddley) and obscure are featured here. But what makes this release unique is that it also contains several 1962 radio station plugs recorded by Mr. "Monster Mash" himself, Bobby "Boris" Pickett. In all, many of the tunes on this disc had never before been released on CD, making this an essential album for connoisseurs of this genre. Here's the lineup:

1 Radio Plug for Monster Mash on Station KFWB - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett
2 Screamin' Ball (At Dracula Hall) - the Duponts
3 Drac's Back - Billy Demarco & Count Dracula
4 Midnight Stroll - Revels
5 Ghost Train - Virgil Holmes
6 The Mummy's Ball - The Verdicts
7 Frankenstein's Den - The Hollywood Flames
8 I'm the Wolfman - Round Robin
9 Spooksville - The Nu-Trends
10 The Munster's Theme - Milton Delugg & the All-Stars
11 Coolest Little Monster - John Zacherle
12 Monster Party - Bill Dogett
13 The Creature (From Outer Space) - The Jayhawks
14 Mr. Were-Wolf - The Kac-Ties
15 Radio Station Promo for Bill Gavin - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett
16 My Son, the Vampire - Allan Sherman
17 The Monster - Bobby Please & the Pleasers
18 Theme from the Addams Family - The Fiends
19 Nightmare Mash - Billy Lee Riley
20 The Voo Doo Walk - Sonny Richard's Panics W/Cindy and Misty
21 Feast of the Mau Mau - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
22 Frankenstein's Party - The Swingin' Phillies
23 Legend of Sleepy Hollow - The Monotones
24 Bo Meets the Monster - Bo Diddley
25 Rockin' in the Graveyard - Jackie Morningstar
26 Radio Plug for Monster Mash on Station WCOP - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett
27 Monster Mash - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett
28 The Vampire - Orvin Yoes

The second one here, Mostly Ghostly: More Horror for Halloween, coming out a few years later, was a follow-up of sorts to These Ghoulish Things.  All of the music on this album is from the same general time period as the earlier comp, i.e., late '50s/early '60s. Allmusic.com put together a great summation of this compilation that I really can't add much to or refute:

If you're looking for a non-run-of-the-mill soundtrack to your next Halloween party, this disc, and its predecessor, These Ghoulish Things: Horror Hits for Halloween, should just about tide you over the first round of trick and treat. Devoted wholly to rock/horror novelties from the mid-'50s to the mid-'60s, just a couple of these 25 tracks... were hits. And as a matter of fact, just a few of the other artists... will be familiar to the average knowledgeable rock fan. Since these are essentially novelty songs, you might not feel much like pulling them out on occasions other than Halloween, much like you only play Christmas albums at a certain time of year.

The songs are longer on novelty than musical value, but if nothing else, they're entertaining relics of just how outrageously silly early rock & roll performers (and labels) would get in search of a quick hit. Some of the songs, too, are pretty strong in their own right, especially Sutch's "'Til the Following Night" (one of the best pre-Beatles rock & roll records from Britain), "Haunted House," and the Moontrekkers' instrumental "Night of the Vampire" (one of Joe Meek's best productions). It doesn't get much weirder than Gary "Spider" Webb's "The Cave, Pt. 1," consisting mostly of a boy and a girl sporadically calling out to each other in a cave as guitars twang and drums throb.

Beatles' novelties, to stretch the thread more, don't get much weirder than Gene Moss & the Monsters' "I Want to Bite Your Hand," issued in the wake of the Fab Four's invasion of the U.S. For Cramps fans, there's the original version of "The Goo Goo Muck," as first heard on Ronnie Cook & the Gaylads' 1962 single.

Here's the track list for this one as well:

1 Dracula's Theme - The Ghouls
2 Til' The Following Night - Screaming Lord Sutch & The Savages
3 Do The Zombie - The Symbols
4 Haunted House - Jumpin' Gene Simmons
5 Dinner With Drac - John Zacherle
6 The Goo Goo Muck - Ronnie Cook & The Gaylads
7 The Mad Scientist - Zanies
8 The Cave - Chuck Holden
9 Spooky Movies - Roy Clark
10 They're Here - Boots Walker
11 Black And Hairy - Screaming Lord Sutch
12 The Hearse - Terry Teen
13 Terrible Ivan - Art Roberts
14 Night Of The Vampire - The Moontrekkers
15 The Mummy - The Naturals
16 I Was A Teenage Creature - Lord Luther
17 The Cave - Gary 'Spider' Webb
18 The Cat - Rod Willis
19 Zombi - The Monotones
20 Alligator Wine - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
21 Morgus The Magnificent - Morgus & The Three Ghouls
22 Sleepy Hollow - The Last Word
23 Rockin' Zombie - The Crewnecks
24 I Want To Bite Your Hand - Gene Moss & The Monsters

So, that's that. For your enjoyment this holiday weekend, here are two superb and lauded Halloween-themed releases put out on the Ace Records label: These Ghoulish Things - Horror Hits For Halloween in 2005, and Mostly Ghostly: More Horror for Halloween in 2012. Have a spooky, scary, fun listen, and as always, let me know what you think.

Happy Halloween! 

Please use the email links below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

• Various Artists - These Ghoulish Things - Horror Hits For Halloween: Send Email
• Various Artists - Mostly Ghostly: More Horror for Halloween: Send Email

 

(Oh, and just in case you were wondering - yes, there WAS a recording of "The Cave, Pt. 2" by Gary Webb, a follow-up to the original.  For the sake of completeness, here it is for your listening pleasure - however, you won't find it as being much of a variation of "Pt. 1":)

 

Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies (1974 & 1975)

An old elementary school classmate of mine died a couple of weeks ago. I can't call him a "friend", per se, but he was an essential presence in my childhood experience.

I've mentioned in previous postings that my Navy officer dad's next duty station after the conclusion of our time in Wisconsin was serving as a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. We arrived there that summer, and settled into a two-story townhouse in military housing across from one of the main academy gates, directly behind the neighborhood pool and adjacent to the neighborhood of West Annapolis.

West Annapolis is about a forty square block area, bounded by Rowe Boulevard to the south, Weems Creek to the west, the Severn River to the north, and government property along its eastern edge. The neighborhood is pretty much cut off from the rest of the city of Annapolis proper due to its proximity to said "government property" - namely, the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy and the adjacent housing areas for officers and their families stationed there, where I lived. As such, West Annapolis has over the decades developed a somewhat insular, go-it-alone stance among the longtime residents there, not mixing much with regular Annapolitans and maintaining a cool attitude towards the "interloping" military families living just on the other side of the old wooded Baltimore & Annapolis Railroad right-of-way.

However, the young children of area officers had to go to school somewhere. And since the Naval Academy Primary School, a K-through-5 private school located across the Severn at the Naval Station, had limited enrollment, for many years the majority of kids living in Arundel Estates and Perry Circle (the military housing areas) were required to attend local facilities, the first and closest one being West Annapolis Elementary School (WAES). So in 1974, that's where the majority of my siblings and I began our latest academic year.

For the most part, relations between the local youngsters and the relatively more transient military offspring at the school were tranquil. I know that some of the West Annapolis boys and girls considered many from my area as "rich kids" and elitist snobs (believe me, we were most decidedly not!), while some of my Navy acquaintances thought many of the locals were lower-class lowlifes (again, not remotely true). But in those years, that tranquility was constantly being roiled by one boy, Frederick, the Terror of West Annapolis.

Frederick (or "Freddie" as he was more commonly known) was a short, wiry redhead with a fiery temper and rock-hard fists that he seldom hesitated to make use of, if the situation called for it. He was a year behind me in grade; however, for a few years in the early/mid '70s, WAES administration decided to experiment with a new teaching approach whereby instead of having the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grades in four separate classrooms, each classroom would contain a combination of ALL FOUR GRADES. So each individual teacher was were forced to provide instruction to all of the learning levels simultaneously, every day - which must have been a nightmare for them. In hindsight, it was a nutty idea, and I don't recall learning very much that year. WAES finally abandoned that practice before the 1970s ended, segregating the grades into separate classrooms, like most other schools in the nation do. But I went to school there through the brunt of this experimental period... and as 'luck' would have it, Freddie was one of my classmates.

Freddie's fearsome reputation, cultivated by classroom and schoolyard incidents that landed him in the Principal's office several times that year, and nurtured by juvenile word-of-mouth, was such that he became, in many of our minds, the pre-teen 'crime boss' and 'bete noire' of West Annapolis. Outside of attending school there, most Navy kids avoided the neighborhood, especially the area close by Freddie's house, lest they run afoul of "Freddie's gang" of area kids he reportedly controlled.

There used to be a little neighborhood store directly across the street from WAES, on the corner of Melvin Avenue and Annapolis Street about a block away from his home, called Waxman's Grocery. Mr. Waxman was the sour and crotchety proprietor of this old-fashioned one-room store, and he seemed to hate kids (many years later, I learned that Mr. Waxman's son, a WAES graduate, had been killed in Vietnam in his teens shortly after arriving over there as a new enlistee in the late 1960s... so it was then I began to understand Mr. Waxman's demeanor and feel some sympathy for him). Despite his cantankerous nature, children flocked to his shop after classes ended for the day, as Mr. Waxman stocked every brand and variety of popular candy then available - Atomic Fireballs, Mike & Ikes, Lemonheads, Pop Rocks, Marathon bars, Chunky Bars, you name it. The store owner was well aware of the individuals who kept him in business. The market was Ground Zero for the local Wacky Packages craze of the mid-70s; students would buy the packs by the dozen, trading the adhesive parody renditions of popular consumer products with others in the school or otherwise sticking them to their school folders and lockers.

Bubble Yum, the first soft chunk bubble gum, was released by LifeSavers (in limited quantities) in the Western U.S. in late 1974, and the company began a gradual national rollout later that year, with the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area serving as an early East Coast test
market. When it initially appeared, it was shipped to only a few stores in our area in very small quantities, and Waxman's Grocery, with its proven track record of moving vast amounts of confectionery product, was one of the stores selected. When Freddie and his boys discovered this, they staked out Waxman's for hours on end, watching for the delivery trucks and, by their presence, "discouraging" (so to speak) non-neighborhood kids from going there. Freddie's gang would buy up every pack of Bubble Yum available, at 30 cents for a pack of five pieces, then take them to school and resell them to children craving the new gum for upwards of fifty cents to a dollar for each individual chunk. Those guys ended up making a small fortune that winter and spring, until increased product distribution and availability put Bubble Yum in more local stores. But for a long while, they were the preteen Gum Mafia.

As much as I've detailed the fearsome, threatening antics and actions of Freddie and his gang here, I did have some normal interactions with him from time to time. More that once, I recall heading over to West Annapolis to hang out and play with him and his friends, and during the winter he and his crew gathered with the Navy kids sledding down Suicide Hill directly adjacent to Perry Circle, the only decent place to slide in the immediate area. In our few playtimes, a sort of detente existed between us, as it does between kids. Still, Freddie would sometimes suggest we do activities that I wasn't comfortable with, such as shoplift sweets at the local 7-11. In those situations, I would demur, then try to quickly and quietly remove myself from his presence and head back home, as the unspoken threat of drawing the ire of "Freddie's gang" was always present.

The mid-70s period was a transitional period for music. AM radio fare, consisting of lite rock, novelty songs and other lightweight fare, still ruled the airwaves, but harder-edged punk, reggae and hard rock music was bubbling just below the surface, ready to break out. Songs that were giant hits and schoolyard favorites during that time included "Up In A Puff Of Smoke" by an obscure (for the U.S.) British singer named Polly Brown:

For some reason, this song was HUGE as WAES - never did much for me, though (in a related story, Polly Brown never had another charting song in America...).

Another massive song from that time was "Billy, Don't Be A Hero" by Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods:

Although the premise was hokey and overly sentimental (a young woman begs her love not to go off to war, but stay and marry her; he goes anyway and, of course, buys the farm in his first battle), this song still went to #1 in America in the summer of 1974, selling nearly four million copies. However, it was hated as much as it was loved, voted No. 8 on Rolling Stone magazine's readers' poll of "10 Worst Songs of the 1970s".

What I didn't know at the time was that this song was a remake of a British hit from earlier that year. Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods were an obscure group of journeymen from Ohio who hadn't had much success in the prior ten years of their music career, until they glommed on to "Billy, Don't Be A Hero", originally penned by a British group, Paper Lace, who took their version to the top of the UK charts just three months prior. Understandably pissed at seeing their thunder and stateside glory stolen by Bo Donaldson et al., Paper Lace quickly released their follow-up single, which made it to US #1 six weeks later that midsummer, the group's first (and only) American hit - "The Night Chicago Died":

Children couldn't get enough of songs like this back then!

The potential menace of Freddie and his gang overall did little to affect the fun times I had living there in Annapolis.  There was a great group of kids on my street and up the hill in Perry Circle, and we were a close-knit bunch.  We would all hang together at the pool on warm days, playing Marco Polo and basking in the sun.  The winters were marked by building huge snow forts, from which we would choose sides and have intense snowball fights.  There were birthday parties, slumber parties, football games, and expeditions into the restricted areas near Shady Lake or through the old Civil Defense tunnels and shelters under the apartments.  During the holiday season, we would practice Christmas carols together, then put together a chorus and go door to door singing to our neighbors.  Or we would head over across the street through the Naval Academy gates, to play baseball on the diamonds there, hang out on the platforms and structures of the old Academy obstacle course on Hospital Point, or try to sneak into the "Midshipmen/Authorized Staff Only" areas throughout the Yard.  

After years of requests, I was finally awarded the paper route in my neighborhood, delivering the Evening Capital each night after I got home from school (I was one of the paper's youngest newsboys).  I worked that route like a dog, doubling the subscriptions on my street inside of a few months, and by Christmas that year I was making a fortune (well, a relative fortune for a preteen in the 1970s).  The Evening Capital provided me with a few extra over-the-shoulder newsbags, and there were always a few extra papers in my stack each day.  So with them, my friends and I devised a game called Dogfight: each of us would have a bag filled with newspapers tightly wrapped with rubber bands, then we would get on our bikes and ride circles around each other in a big field, whipping papers at other riders to see who we could knock off!  Sounds kinda brutal now... but it was a very fun, looked-forward-to activity, and I never recall anyone getting seriously hurt.

Great memories. 

Freddie and I weren't close friends, only casual acquaintances at best, and I didn't keep in close contact with him after I left elementary school and moved on to Bates Junior High across town the next year. I would, however, continue to hear stories about him from some of my younger friends who still attended WAES - from all reports, his attitude and demeanor didn't change an iota. And after my family left Maryland in the late 1970s, he all but completely faded off of my radar. I learned more about him in recent years through my contact via Facebook with his older brother, who I didn't know at all back during my Annapolis childhood but got to know later. Through him, I learned that after Freddie left high school, he served a short stint as an enlisted Navy man, then quickly returned to the Annapolis area, where for decades he worked as a local handyman and house painter.

My lone interaction with Freddie since the end of our school days together occurred a couple of years ago, when I repeated to his brother a funny (and probably apocryphal) story about a practical joke Freddie reputedly played on one of his West Annapolis cronies, that quickly made the schoolyard rounds. Freddie fired off a blistering response through his brother's thread, angrily denying the legend and castigating me up and down for even INSINUATING that it was true. Mind you, I was retelling the tale of a harmless and minor childhood prank that allegedly occurred... but still, almost fifty years later, it managed to set him off. Apparently, some things - and some people - never change. Freddie's brother is friendly, stable and accomplished, and managed to put together a pretty good life for himself and his family - in other words, the complete opposite of Freddie.

So, as such, I don't have any particularly deep feeling of loss regarding Freddie's demise - he was a bully, and sort of a dick, and from all reports and indications remained so up to his dying day.  I wasn't the only one with this reaction; for decades, I've remained in close contact with several of my old Arundel Estates childhood friends. Their feelings on Freddie's death can be summarized in a single comment one of them made to me: "He was the 'bogeyman' for a lot of kids back then." Can't really refute that assessment.

With that being said, Freddie was an integral part of that fondly remembered time and place in my life, and his presence and actions have done little to obscure the happy times I recall living in Annapolis as a child (prior to my return there as a Naval Academy midshipmen almost a decade later). If anything, Freddie was like a grain of sand in an oyster shell - an irritant whose presence still ended up creating something lasting and cherished.

So, in honor of his passing, and in homage to that time, here are a few music compilations from that period that will give you a sense of what was being listened to in the mid-70s. These are part of a forty-volume(!) series of recordings released by Time-Life Music between 1989 and 1999, covering the entirety of the 1970s. I only picked up a few of these, since I had other compilations that covered this same general time period. But the ones provided here, covering 1974 and 1975, are an excellent summation of music from that time.

In case you're wondering, here's the lineup:

Sounds Of The Seventies: 1974:

1. Can't Get Enough – Bad Company
2. Show and Tell – Al Wilson
3. Come and Get Your Love – Redbone
4. I Shot the Sheriff – Eric Clapton
5. Help Me – Joni Mitchell
6. I Can Help – Billy Swan
7. Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy) – Al Green
8. Rock the Boat – The Hues Corporation
9. Bennie and the Jets – Elton John
10. Midnight Rider – Gregg Allman
11. Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd
12. The Loco-Motion – Grand Funk Railroad
13. Smokin' in the Boys' Room – Brownsville Station
14. Rikki Don't Lose That Number – Steely Dan
15. Rock On – David Essex
16. Midnight at the Oasis – Maria Muldaur
17. Kung Fu Fighting – Carl Douglas
18. Keep on Smilin' – Wet Willie
19. Then Came You – Dionne Warwick & The Spinners
20. The Bitch Is Back – Elton John

Sounds Of The Seventies: 1974 - Take Two:

1. Lookin' for a Love – Bobby Womack
2. You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet – Bachman-Turner Overdrive
3. The Joker – Steve Miller Band
4. Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do) – Aretha Franklin
5. Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe – Barry White
6. Mockingbird – Carly Simon with James Taylor
7. I've Got to Use My Imagination – Gladys Knight & The Pips
8. Sundown – Gordon Lightfoot
9. Everlasting Love – Carl Carlton
10. Shinin' On – Grand Funk Railroad
11. Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo – Rick Derringer
12. Takin' Care of Business – Bachman-Turner Overdrive
13. Rock Your Baby – George McCrae
14. Sideshow – Blue Magic
15. Haven't Got Time for the Pain – Carly Simon
16. Tin Man – America
17. Dancing Machine – Jackson Five
18. Jungle Boogie – Kool & the Gang
19. Nothing from Nothing – Billy Preston
20. I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song – Jim Croce
21. Radar Love – Golden Earring

Sounds Of The Seventies: 1975:

1. You're No Good – Linda Ronstadt
2. Jackie Blue – Ozark Mountain Daredevils
3. That's the Way (I Like It) – KC & the Sunshine Band
4. Must of Got Lost – J. Geils Band
5. Why Can't We Be Friends? – War
6. Sister Golden Hair – America
7. Philadelphia Freedom – Elton John
8. Black Water – Doobie Brothers
9. Love Is a Rose – Linda Ronstadt
10. How Long – Ace
11. Dance with Me – Orleans
12. Free Bird – Lynyrd Skynyrd
13. You Are So Beautiful – Joe Cocker
14. Feel Like Makin' Love – Bad Company
15. Lady Marmalade – Labelle
16. Pick Up the Pieces – Average White Band
17. Island Girl – Elton John
18. Some Kind of Wonderful – Grand Funk Railroad
19. The Hustle – Van McCoy & Soul City Symphony
20. Let's Do It Again – Staple Singers

Sounds Of The Seventies: 1975 - Take Two:

1. When Will I Be Loved – Linda Ronstadt
2. Bad Time – Grand Funk Railroad
3. Roll On Down the Highway – Bachman-Turner Overdrive
4. Movin' On – Bad Company
5. Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While) – The Doobie Brother
6. They Just Can't Stop It (The Games People Play) – The Spinners
7. L-O-V-E (Love) – Al Green
8. Shining Star – Earth, Wind & Fire
9. Get Down Tonight – KC & the Sunshine Band
10. I'm on Fire – Dwight Twilley
11. SOS – ABBA
12. Shame, Shame, Shame – Shirley & Company
13. Cut the Cake – Average White Band
14. You're the First, the Last, My Everything – Barry White
15. Low Rider – War
16. Fight the Power (Part 1 & 2) – Isley Brothers
17. Bungle in the Jungle – Jethro Tull
18. Only Women Bleed – Alice Cooper
19. Can't Get It Out of My Head – Electric Light Orchestra
20. Poetry Man – Phoebe Snow
21. I'm Not in Love – 10CC

Enjoy these discs, released in 1990 and 1991 (for the "Take Two" versions), and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email links below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

• Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies: 1974: Send Email
• Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies: 1975: Send Email
• Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies: 1974 - Take Two: Send Email
• Various Artists - Sounds Of The Seventies: 1975 - Take Two: Send Email

The Beatles - Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe (5-disc set); plus concert film

Sixty years to the day since The Beatles played Shea Stadium in New York on their second American tour... hard to fathom that it's been THAT long since that watershed moment in rock history.

I was going to pen one of my extended screeds in celebration of and in relation to this day... but it appears that Rolling Stone magazine beat me to it. I don't think I can improve upon this article, which contains the following summation:

"...Shea was more than just the first high-profile stadium concert. It showed everyone how huge, untamable, crazed pop music could be. It destroyed the hopes of everyone who still thought the Beatles — and their young female audience — were just a passing fad, which was still the conventional adult wisdom in 1965. The Fabs couldn’t be dismissed anymore, and neither could the girls. It shattered all the cliches about how show-biz was supposed to work. Never before had that many humans joined together in one place to celebrate music — and on a deeper level, to celebrate each other. That’s why “Shea Stadium” is still the two-word code for the culmination of pop dreams at their loudest, lustiest, scariest, and most deranged."

Can't add much else to this phrase, or the overall writeup in general... so I'll just shut up and provide the music!

I was thinking about posting the venerable Purple Chick Sheaken Not Stirred two-disc set - but I think that the one offered here is better. Here's the Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe set, a fan-generated compilation that popped up on a Beatles bootleg site a couple of years ago. This set features the ENTIRE concert, with music from opening acts including King Curtis, Brenda Holloway, Sounds Incorporated and Cannibal & The Headhunters; 1991 stereo versions and 2003 remix/remastering of the Fab Four's set; and bonus tracks.

And speaking of bonuses...

Knowing that the Shea Stadium show was going to be a big deal, NEMS Enterprises (band manager Brian Epstein's holding company) and Sullivan Productions (television host and show presenter Ed Sullivan's firm) arranged for the concert to be intensively documented on film. More than a dozen cameras were deployed in and around the stadium and backstage to capture the frenzy of the moment. The hours of tape generated were then edited down to a fifty-minute-long documentary, The Beatles At Shea Stadium, which premiered in England in early 1966, but not shown in America until January 1967.

The Beatles At Shea Stadium should not be considered a "true documentary", however. A couple of songs played that night were not included due to concerns about the film's length. The remaining songs were heavily edited.in post-production - some being overdubbed, and a couple replaced with studio versions already existing on record or rerecorded by The Beatles at a London session in early January 1966. The Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe set includes the soundtrack from this movie (in mono format)... and I included the film here as well, for your review and amusement.

So, again, for this post, I'm providing:

• Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe, a five-disc bootleg set released in 2023; and
• The Beatles At Shea Stadium concert film, released to television and theaters in 1966

I hope these offerings help you to either relive or experience for the first time the revelry, euphoria and hysteria from one of the landmark shows in music history! Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

• The Beatles- Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe (5-disc set): Send Email
• The Beatles - The Beatles At Shea Stadium: Send Email