Friday, December 11, 2009
from a jambox sitting at the edge of Yngwie Malmsteen's swimming pool on the moon
Mastodon - Crack the Skye (listen) The only way this could sound more appropriate to me right now would be if I was hearing this echo from inside a hollowed-out rhino horn handed to me by an armored dwarf astride a battle dragon. Or from the blown speakers of my babysitter's boyfriend's Trans Am circa 1978. Or from a jambox sitting at the edge of Yngwie Malmsteen's swimming pool on the moon. Or in the still-beating heart of an elk killed with a throwing star in Ted Nugent's mind. Or in the roar of an actual mastodon.
Anything would be more metal than computer speakers.
Flower Travellin' Band - Satori (YouTube) This record keeps coming up as the lynchpin in Japrocksampler, the ravenous dissertation on the development of Japanese hard rock.
Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptum (listen) Julian Cope seems to see this monster of 1968 seems as the Mayflower Compact of most of the heavies illuminates in said tome, with every band belting out their own "Summertime Blues" at some point. The beauty of Cope's powerful prose is that I'm not sure I can follow all the dots he is connecting - it becomes a blur of Japanese names to me at points - but I don't really care, because the lines between those dots are so tight they make a perfect ring when my head bangs against it. Rock 'n' roll should not be about the Mormon-grade genealogy but about the roar of the cosmic Viking/shogun/mastadon/whatever welling up inside us all.
Poltliquor - Louisiana Rock and Roll (listen) So far, no case for Louisiana's own Potliquor has been made as being an influence on Japanese rock 'n' roll in the book, though the aforementioned Flower Travellin' band did put a song "Louisiana Blues" on their Anywhere album, on which they all appeared naked riding motorcycles, which actually doesn't make much of a case either, but is pretty awesome nonetheless.
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