TAFBOYS FROM HELL
World Domination Enterprises
Sergey Kamalov
Sonic Youth
The Dot Tones
The Fall
Invisible Hand
Orion Newby with Clam
The Residents
Prentice 10
The Body/Full of Hell
чудестная группа
Guided by Voices
Cogason
_______________
TAFBOYS FROM HELL Leppo and the Jooves
‘VoGt PIKA / Gt RAZOR / Ba TAF a.k.a FAT / Dr TSURU’
_______________
World Domination Enterprises I Can’t Live Without My Radio
‘World Domination Enterprises was an English post-punk band active in the mid/late 1980s. Fronted by former Here & Now drummer Dobson, the band’s dissonant sound mixed elements of punk, noise, dub, hip hop, and rockabilly. They were best known for their cover version of LL Cool Js “I Can’t Live Without My Radio”, and first single “Asbestos Lead Asbestos”.’ — Wikipedia
_____________
Sergey Kamalov You Only Live Once
‘ЭТО НЕ МОЕ ВИДЕО, Я ЕГО ТОЛЬКО ЗАГРУЗИЛ … Good luck Serj K., we hope some band realizes your talent and scoops you up to be their vocalist.’
_____________
Sonic Youth My New House
‘Sonic Youth vs. The Fall. In October of 1988 Sonic Youth paid a visit to the John Peel show on BBC Radio 1 a week before the release of Daydream Nation. Having recorded with Peel just two years prior, the group used the ’88 session to pay tribute to UK post-punk godheads The Fall.’ — Aquarium Drunkard
_____________
The Dot Tones Love Will Tear Us Apart
‘For our final video of 2023, we present a cover of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” performed by the youngest of the Dot Tones, Wilder (vocals), Jax (bass) and Kingston (drums), with special guest Lulu on keys and vocals.’ — TDT
_____________
The Fall Beatle Bones ‘N’ Smokin’ Stones
‘The Fall cover Beefheart for a 1996 John Peel session. Recorded 30th June/First broadcast 18th August.’
_______________
Invisible Hand Shocker in Gloomtown
‘Guided By Voices cover by Invisible Hand :: Summer 2011, Charlottesville VA.’ — Rich Tarbell
______________
Orion Newby I Will Follow
‘Orion Newby – I Will Follow by U2, a cover with Clam.’
______________
The Residents Satisfaction
‘If there was one record that told you the 60s were over, then this was it. The Clash may have crowed, “no Rolling Stones in 1977”, but their rhetoric was just gasbag posturing compared to this, a blowtorch evisceration of Jagger and Richard’s song that reduces their original to a piece of marketable rebellion fluff (Wham!’s “Bad Boys” with a better riff). The Residents start from the premise that there are rather more serious things to be unsatisfied about than romance or advertising things like total mental breakdown, a condition they proceed to delineate with unbearably off-key guitars and a vocal that sounds like the most haunted, driven, raging man alive. It’s excruciating, purifying and hilarious, and if inflicted on friends it usually receives two of the highest possible accolades: “Take that fucking thing off”, and “They weren’t being serious, were they?”‘ — The Wire
______________
Prentice 10 For Whom the Bell Tolls
‘The guitar kid is good he knows what he is doing but the bass kid is so lose he dideven know how to play the intro correctly, whatsoever well done keep practicing.’
______________
The Body/Full of Hell Gates of Steel
‘Like Ornette Coleman got the grindcore treatment when your lawn mower won’t start.’ — skylerhawley4116
______________
чудестная группа гитарист
‘На самом деле мотатель головой-это бассист. Просто он решил реально помочь группе’
______________
Guided by Voices Baba O’Reilly
‘Guided by Voices perform a rollicking version of The Who classic “Baba O’ Reilly” to end their show.’
______________
Cogason Cut Your Hair
‘AND THATS A PRETTY NICE HAIRCUT’
*
p.s. Hey. ** James Bennett, Hi. My pleasure, thanks. I’m not really precious with books unless they’re super rare or have personal import, say books signed to me by favorite writers, but otherwise, no, and I lend out and lose books all the time, even to trusted people, with minimal regret. I really want to hear/get the Still House Plants album, maybe today. Super intrigued. Ah, Schuyler, so, so great. My favorite individual book by him is ‘The Morning of the Poem’. In fact, I should do a spotlight post on that book, and I will. He’s one of my very, very favorite poets. So, are you now sporting a tactical haircut, I hope, and can you tell if it’ll extend in a shapely manner given time? à demain, me. ** Daniel, Hi, maestro! Nice Zoey Leonard. And Halston’s bookshelf is art too. Sweet. Thank you!!!! ** Misanthrope, Glad you liked those. Me too, well, obviously, or, well, maybe not. There were a few in there for variety’s sake that I’m not wild about. Yes, Zac is a good fella, that Zac. Tell Alex to start talking to his parents about the hotness of French chicks and how he needs to poke one. They’re famously so, even if in reality they’re as all over the place as any country’s female populace. That Bruce guy makes me nauseous even from way afar. ** Nasir, Yep. Yes, me too, re: finishing your piece. Just waiting for my brain to get peaceful again. Shouldn’t take too long. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Very happy you liked it so much. I was kind of pleased with it myself. I obviously agree about the committees. It would be great if festival committees were forced to take a vow of selflessness, but I think they’re more interesting in being able to say ‘we scored the new Almodovar film’, or ‘we discovered the next Almodovar’ and so on. It’s a racket. ‘der Igel’, ha, well, it does make hedgehogs sound kind of serious? Love making the French language give up its obnoxious requirement that everything, even objects, need to be given a male or female gender, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Oh, I’m sure you looked plenty cool whatever shirt you were sporting. ** Dev, Eek, 100 degrees. It even gets that high in Paris maybe two days a year now thanks good old global warming. LA is dry heat thanks to its proximity to the desert. So it generally cools way down at night even in heatwaves. That makes the heat a bit more tolerable but still hateful. Understood about your trajectory with the violin. I played piano as a kid, but not seriously, and I played guitar in my teens. I was in a couple of bands, but then, basically like you, I preferred to concentrate on other things. I have liked classical music, mostly 20th century stuff: post-Stravinsky and the more experimental things like Stockhausen and so on. I did and still do love Mahler. I have a soft spot for the melancholy sentimental American composers like Copland, Ives, Barber and so on for some reason. What about you? Okay, let’s do Dollywood somehow sometime. Med school sounds intense. But then I guess it should be? ** Mark, Hi, Mark! I’d like to read ‘City of Quartz’ again. I haven’t read it since it was freshly birthed but, yeah, I found it impactful too. Everyone in LA was reading that book at one point. Yes, I had a period where I was really into American Noir. I think my favorites were Jim Thompson, Chester Himes, and James Cain, off the top of my head. Exciting prose. I’ve never read Fante, always mean to. I guess it was just Byron’s birthday? Because he was suddenly all over my Facebook feed the other day, mostly due to ‘serious’ poets saying things like, ‘So, it’s the rock star’s birthday’ and snarky things like that. ** Nika Mavrody, That’s a nice one. I just put together a post about beds, and it could have gone in there too. ** Steve, Good questions there, man. Ooh, yes, the Obscure boxset, lovely b’day gift proposal. ** Harper, Ah, you too. I agree totally. Just trying to get those sonic effects to work in static language is exciting, and the translation failures can lead you to very new methods, I think. I swear by doing that. Great idea to feed off the ‘VU&N’ album and find a fictional approximation. At one point I was trying really hard to do that with the VU song ‘White Light/White Heat’, as much re: its insane production/mix as with its musical properties. Exciting! Oh, yeah, Seth Bogart! I’m surprised at myself that I didn’t think to include him. Great call. ** Darby 🚵♂️, You are, of course entirely correct re: my lazy clop-clop fallback when we all know their footfalls sound nothing like that. As bad as ‘bow wow’ or ‘mew’. Yes, where was the human skin one? My space out. I hope you have the best weekend in the entire history of weekends. ** Justin D, Thanks, pal. My favorite Haneke … hmmmm, I think either ‘Benny’s Video’ or ‘The White Ribbon’. My week has been sort of pretty respectable if lacking in specular occurrences or breakthroughs. And yours? I do like Cigarettes After Sex, and now I will listen to their new single, thanks to you. Oh, yeah, I love shoegaze and dream pop. The obvious British bigwig contingent (MBV, Lush, Ride, Swervedriver, et. al.) and the American versions like Swirlies and so on. Who do you especially like? I think I did a Shoegaze blog post way back when. I should restore it. Happy day! ** Uday, Hi. I’m still catching up. There are still obvious important things I haven’t read. It’s endless. ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’ is wonderful. ‘Sleepless Nights’ too. Quite a reading list you’ve got going on there. Have I even read a book recently that dated from before I was born? Hm. I seem to only read new things these days because there’s an avalanche of really good new writers and books, and it’s difficult just keeping up with them. And I was born pretty long ago, so it’s hard. When I was first reading seriously I read nothing but pre-me books, almost entirely French. No, I just had a think, and I haven’t read a pre-me book in a long time. Weird. When I was a kid, my parents moved us from a small house into a big mansion, and one of the rooms was ‘the library’ whose walls were nothing but bookshelves. So my parents, who barely read a book in their lives, went to the Salvation Army store and bought every hardcover book they had in stock and just filled the bookshelves with them. So, from a distance, it looked like my parents were serious book people, but when you got close to the shelves, you saw the the books were the most garbage-y crap popular books imaginable, and the jig was up. Hildegard of Bingen, no, I don’t know her. That is a nice phrase. Maybe I’ll look for some excerpts and skim them for tasty linguistic morsels. Thanks! ** Okay. Here’s a kind of goofy gig. Cover versions. I found the one at the top featuring a young Japanese band covering the Soft Boys song, and I loved it so much that I decided to use it to anchor a post, and I never found anything else that good, but there are some interesting and/or curiously awful things in there if you feel inclined to attend my gig today. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
*
Hi!!
Thank you for the cover gig! Sergey Kamalov’s version of “You Only Live Once” was certainly… unexpected. The Dot Tones’ “Love Will Tear Us Apart” was really surreal and great, though!
Yeah, I sadly agree… I keep arriving at the same conclusion: we need to get rich and start our own film festival.
Same goes for German – everything has a gender, and it’s not logical at all! Or at least I haven’t found any infallible logic behind what’s male, female, or neutral. For example, how come “salt” is neutral but “pepper” is male?
Love not being so hard on himself, Od.
Thank you Dennis for the well-wishes regarding the shapeliness of my incipient hairdo. God knows I need them. I am indeed sporting the tactical trim as of yesterday, but was it the right tactic? Only time will tell.
If you did manage to listen to the SHP album, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Philosophically I think you’re right to be free and easy with your books. I probably hold on tight to mine due to certain hangups and circumstances. Maybe the future will be freer and easier.
Thank you for the Schuyler reccomendation! I just read the poem about Auden and will tuck into the rest of it over the weekend.
Only and all the best to you.
james
Hey Dennis, today was fun, and please restore the shoe gaze post! x
The Dot Tones cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart is a great find! Pretty sure I have that same T-shirt somewhere as Lulu the keyboard player is wearing.
Saw this pretty great film the other day. The Ordeal aka Calvaire from 2004 is an ultra dark comedy that I think is French but might be shot in Belgium maybe. If you ever felt like leaving urban Paris and staying in an isolated village, this will put you off for life.
Dennis, I know three of these bands. 😛
Hahaha, I told Alex that and he said that’s funny asf. I’m like, Dennis is a funny guy. (You know I’ve always said you don’t get enough credit for your humor.)
Yeah, that Bruce. I must’ve summoned him. Right after I left my comment, Alex texted me. Bruce was in the gym and goes, “Yeah, I talked to George the other day. I haven’t seen him. Where’s he been?” He talked to me, yeah, right. Just that stupid text he sent. Seems too he kept talking about me. Then, when Alex went to lunch, he left at the same time as this gym goer Noah, a cute, 21-year-old, half-Filipino guy. Bruce drives over to Noah and says something and then drives over to Alex and goes, “Who let you outside the building?” Alex just shrugged and Bruce drove off.
Dude is getting fucking annoying. But I’m not gonna tell him to fuck off just yet. I’m curious to see what his endgame is and what he comes up with next.
Have a great weekend. Not much planned here. A basic weekend. I’ll be seeing Alex a bunch, even though he works Saturday and Sunday.
TAFBOYS FROM HELL are great retro fun, great name too! Apparently TAF = Traditional Asian Fatboy, ha. The Dot Tones: wow. And Orion Newby is certainly a… crowdpleaser.
Enjoyed yesterday’s books of course, and your stories about your parents populating their new library. I can’t remember the last time I had empty shelves to fill, haha.
Been catching up on Wes Anderson’s shorts. I’d say “Poison” is by far my favorite so far. 4 episodes into Ripley, it’s still very slow (despite very occasional outbursts), though pretty.
Bill
Hey, Dennis! Sorry for getting things mixed up about ‘Phoner’, I’ll look into it. Yeah, Serbia feels like a social experiment. I remember the film ‘Hostel pt. 2’ by Eli Roth, I think it’s very fun, have you watched it? Actually, I bumped into this page on Twitter that made me remember you. https://x.com/men_prison?t=NnRbtdYp1ftVUVcK_kfVag&s=09 Not very interesting, but maybe you would want to take a look. See ya!
Hi, Dennis! That Joy Division cover is so cute. Yeah, I really loved ‘Benny’s Video’. Couldn’t help but feel like he, as a character, was very Cooperian. My week’s been pretty humdrum so far. Maybe the weekend will be better. You should TOTALLY restore that Shoegaze post! I love the bands you listed. Throw in Trespassers William, Mazzy Star, Cocteau Twins, Beach House, Slowdive, Blonde Redhead…
I love that beefheart cover by The Fall. Have you heard The Fall’s cover of ‘A Day in the Life’ by The Beatles? It was for a sgt peppers cover album for charity. I remember my dad had the cassette and listening to it. The Fall are my dad’s favourite band along with Fugazi so I have a kind of nostalgic relationship with them (which is weird to say about The Fall). A lot of people’s parents don’t like alternative music so my way of rebelling was by listening to pop music. Well, it wasn’t mainstream pop, more electronic stuff but still. I’ve been listening to The Fall a lot as of late. I think ‘Perverted by Language’ is my favourite but it’s difficult to say. I think they did something special with that album that a lot of people stuck on two minute punk songs weren’t ready for but clearly anticipated the whole post-rock thing.
Sergey Kamalov impresses me so much but I hear my mom’s professional speech therapist voice in my head lamenting all of the vocal cord problems he’s setting himself up for.
Life goes on here unfazed. I’m living under the assumptions that my flight to Paris on Thursday morning won’t be cancelled and I won’t be an early casualty of World War III. I have no set itinerary, will play things by ear and would of course enjoy meeting you if possible. I’m scheduled to be in Paris from early Thursday morning until Tuesday evening, when I catch a train to London. Other than that I’m finishing up another round of home improvements and have been learning gardening from my neighbor who has a lot of plants on our roof and many more in a community garden that he runs. It’s the tiredest metaphor ever but a bumblebee pollinating my lemon tree actually convinced me I should go out to the techno club tonight. What are your weekend plans? Any news about your film?
Have you read that Bob Pollard is restricting himself to just one Guided By Voices album this year?
Teenage wasteland is the smoking section outside a high school in Dayton, Ohio in the ’70s.
Allergy season has begun, and it’s really kicking my ass.
Do you have any plans for the weekend? Is Record Store Day taking place in Paris as well?
I hope to make it to a rare screening of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s THE EXCITEMENT OF THE DO-RE-MA-FI GIRL tomorrow. Last night, I caught Quebecois director Robert Morin’s SMALL SCALE SADNESS. He’s not at all known outside Morin, but that was pretty great. Shot on crude video in 1987, it’s about a man with Down syndrome who seems to live an idyllic life with his parents in a Montreal suburb, but tensions rise. I haven’t really seen anything like that. It’s like a Todd Haynes melodrama made on a $10,000 budget with non-professional actors? If I feel livelier, I’ll try to make it out for his film MAY GOD BLESS AMERICA tonight.
I’m enjoying City of Quartz partly because it’s reminding me of how it reset my view of LA back in the day. Byron’s 36th birthday was January 22, 1824. He wrote this on that occasion: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43841/january-22nd-missolonghi Is there a lesson to learn from his life and work? I’m not sure, other than live hard and die young? He was certainly influential in his day and crossed paths (and dicks) with many a Regency personage. I suppose today he’s considered the height of white privilege, although he did seem to steer relatively clear of the rampant colonialism of the day, even if indulging a penchant for oriental exoticism. Fante’s Ask the Dust is an interesting read if only for its depiction of the OG Bunker Hill scene. Tonight we are going to see The People’s Joker https://www.thepeoplesjoker.com/
Hi Dennis, I don’t know if Mark has mentioned this to you but I have been working on a zine about gay skinheads. I’ve watched a couple of movies and short docs, I’ve met and interviewed people and I have been reading this book called “Children of the Sun” by Max Schaefer. Its a book with intersecting timelines about gay skinheads, Nicky Crane plays a large role in the novel as well. I was wondering your thoughts on them… do you fancy a skinhead guy? Had some fun with any?
That Residents cover of Satisfaction is funny. Yeah, I only ever experienced dry heat when I spent a couple weeks in Botswana as a teenager, but I liked it better than the humid heat I’m used to. I like Ives a lot too! I don’t listen to as much classical as I used to, but I should return to it more because it moves me pretty strongly. Something about having studied it for a long time I guess. My favorite composers are probably Mozart, Schubert, and Scriabin. I went through a Schoenberg phase as a kid but haven’t listened to him in a while. Varese is a lot of fun too. Yes med school is intense, and residency is even worse. I’m a little nervous, haha. Hope you have a nice weekend!
Most excellent, Dennis. I’ve seen one game this year. And early series with the Giants. Ohtani hit his first homer as a Dodger. It was excited to see it but of course I had mixed feelings. See you soon, sometime, somewhere. B
Beatle Bones ‘N’ Smokin’ Stones! One of my very favorite deep cuts from the Fall Peel sessions which I have on CD. Their Christmas songs from that compilation, especially Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, also very good. I remember when I used to have a CD player. They used to be everywhere. I had one in my car, I had one in my laptop. Where did the CD players go? Where did the time go?
What a nice post on the day my college has their annual music festival! The concert was steadily mediocre if I’m being honest. Garden variety indie rock. This was much better.
I wish I had your ability to pick up on contemporary fiction, but I’m mostly confined to a 3+ year delay. That’s ok. I try to adhere to the Zhou Enlai mode of thinking re: him thinking it was too soon to assess the French Revolution. I know the story is misrepresented/untrue but it makes for a nice mental nudge.
What a nice post on the day my college has their annual music festival! The concert was steadily mediocre if I’m being honest. Garden variety indie rock. This was much better.
I wish I had your ability to pick up on contemporary fiction, but I’m mostly confined to a 3+ year delay. That’s ok. I try to adhere to the Zhou Enlai mode of thinking re: him thinking it was too soon to assess the French Revolution. I know the story is misrepresented/untrue but it makes for a nice mental nudge!