Dynamite Hemorrhage

Dynamite Hemorrhage - the blog - now lives elsewhere.

I’ve moved dynamitehemorrhage.com from Tumblr over to Wordpress.

This will be my last post on the former - all future posts live on the latter. All of this material, created on Tumblr from 2012-2017, will stay on at a new URL, http://dynamitehemorrhage.tumblr.com.

This 90th time we've assembled together here at Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio, we're taking a deeper interest in the music of CATE LE BON; we're supplying listeners with new sounds from BRAIN DRAIN, WEAPON MAN, BLANK SQUARE, GEN POP, SIDA, DRINKS (pictured) and more; we're indulging in a 70s Euro-glam detour; and we're shelf-digging stuff out for you from ROYAL TRUX, AMOS & SARA, THE BONGOS and others.

Why not join dozens of other like-minded individuals around the world and spend a little time curling up w/ our latest hour-long episode?

Download or stream Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio #90 on Soundcloud.

Stream Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio #90 on Mixcloud.

Subscribe to the show, get this episode + about 70 others on iTunes.

Track listing:

CATE LE BON - Rock Pool GEN POP - The Wall SIDA - Subject Awesome ON ON ON - Chamoney SIX MINUTE WAR - Giles Hall WEAPON MAN - Everybody is Shit SUN BATHER - Waiting PAMELA - I'm Nobody BRAIN DRAIN - Norwood's Disease DRINKS - I Am a Miserable Pig THE BONGOS - In The Congo COASTING - Portland CRUNCH - Let's Do It Again ANGEL - Little Boy Blue MABEL - I'm Only Here to RocknRoll CAPTAIN LOCKHEED & THE STARFIGHTERS - Ejection BLANK SQUARE - Put a Lid on It ROYAL TRUX - Incineration AMOS AND SARA - Green is a Bad Colour CATE LE BON - Aside From Growing Old

A brief, out-of-context snippet of RAYS, performing live at the Eagle Tavern in San Francisco, February 16th 2017. A fantastic band - far & away my local favorite in a “scene” w/ more than a few winners.

Album’s coming out at the end of March on Trouble in Mind.

I went to a reunion of “San Francisco’s first and only rock and roll band”, CRIME, over 12 years ago. This review, from my old Agony Shorthand blog, is the story of that night.

CRIME / SALEM LIGHTS / KILLER'S KISS, 10-1-04, Thee Parkside, San Francisco.....

My evening started at a high-society benefit/Q&A with "Curb Your Enthusiasm"'s LARRY DAVID, which I had to high-tail it from in order to find a way to crash the massive, big deal, ultra-secret-but-everyone's-talking-about-it CRIME reunion show.

The Larry David thing was packed with black-clad matrons in pashmina wrap-arounds & 5-inch heels, former mayors, back-slapping titans of industry, and glistening glitterati as far as the eye could see. Obviously I was a tight fit with that crowd, my people. Storming the Crime thing right afterward, I found a great American (CO) had thankfully secured me a rare ticket, and that there were plenty to be had regardless.

Apparently they kept the reunion of San Francisco's first and only rock and roll band a little too secret, but by the time the band got on there were a bunch of hooters & hollerers amped and ready for '77-style action. There was even a posse of awesome leather-clad, mirror-shaded Japanese hipsters right out of the Shinjuku underground & straight off the JAL flight from Tokyo, as there always seems to be whenever there's a big "garage rock" festival in San Francisco. This was the kick-off night of a 3-day "Budget Rock" fiesta, so let's quit the gawking and start talking about the rocking. It was great to see KILLER'S KISS back up this year's loud-ass 45 with an equally tough set. They're probably the closest thing this coast has in spirit and approach to the REIGNING SOUND, but with a little more in the way of 60s-style growling & pummeling. One guitarist is all about propelling the song forward, the other about jarring feedback and screech, and there's a anarchronistic female keyboardist pounding away to make herself heard above the racket. A fine way to get the eardrums in shape and my game face on.

I was really surprised by the SALEM LIGHTS, not simply because that was my Mom's 1970s brand of choice. These guys reminded me of nothing so much as one of my drunk-era early 90s faves, THE HUMPERS, with a glammy Small Faces/Mott The Hoople overlay to big, bombastic, meaty hooks. Another blow-the-sockets rock band, one with one killer crunching song often another. I thoroughly enjoyed them with only a mere sheet to the wind, and in response to the inevitable question -- were they simply a "middle band"? I say no way! I'm calling in my pint orders ahead of time next time these guys hit a local stage. I've vacillated on my I-don't-do-reunion-shows stance after seeing Mission of Burma a couple times, but after CRIME's flat, lackluster set I'm thinking of clamping the lid back on. I figure these guys -- these Crime guys -- really don't deserve a ritual flogging; I mean it was 2/4th of the godlike legends CRIME, right, and you have to throw out some big props just for trying to give it another go. But perhaps it never really dawned on me just what an outstanding guitar player the deceased-since-1996 FRANKIE FIX was, and how that patented ungodly wailing guitar sound was his & his alone. JOHNNY STRIKE, bless him, was and remains a competant rhythm guitarist, but you lose Fix's incredible 3-second leads (leads that make tracks like, oh, say "Hot Wire My Heart", unlike any punk or rock & roll band ever) and you lose a LOT.

Pat Ryan from the NUNS stood in tonight but it just wasn't there. Was there really ever anything more to the Nuns than a beautiful girl, "Decadent Jew", and friends in the right places? Maybe. I'm feeling generous. But when they tried to play "Hot Wire My Heart", it was almost unrecognizable without that squealing guitar squirting out like molten toothpaste after every lyric.

They also did "Murder By Guitar" and "Piss On Your Dog", and maybe another one from the olde days, but it appears this new Crime are going to give the reunion thing a real college try, and that this was the first of several shows to come. Thus, they've written a whole suite of new songs, none of which stuck out as particularly memorable nor annoying -- songs that just sort of flopped around on the floor begging for attention.

And despite being lucky enough to share a stage with Johnny Strike and Hank Rank, whose hour this really should have been, the garrulous bass player kept bleating about "We're gonna" this and "We are Crime" that. Dude. A little respect! I too once dreamt I'd be standing up on stage as Ron The Ripper, but in my sweat-bathed dream, I kept as quiet as a churchmouse and let the real warhorses bask in the glory they'd earned. So hey, call it first-night jitters or maybe the soft bigotry of high expectations. I truly applaud Johnny & Hank for getting out there on the rock campaign trail again, but I think I've seen what I needed to see of the 21st Century CRIME.

"Fiddling while DC burns" edition. A salve and tonic for tough friggin' times. New stuff from GEE TEE, FEATURE and BEATNIKS, and a host of older material from the last five decades of sub-underground rocknroll, including CAN, LA DRUGS, THE KIWI ANIMAL (pictured), HALF JAPANESE, THIGH MASTER, TRÜMMERFRAUEN and BUTTER UTTER (!)

Download or stream Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio #89 on Soundcloud.

Stream Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio #89 on Mixcloud.

Grab loads of older shows, and this one - and subscribe - on iTunes here.

Track listing:

FEATURE - Schedules Align TRÜMMERFRAUEN - Gelbkreuz GEE TEE - Rev Arena FIREWORKS - She's a Tornado ANGST - Neil Armstrong THE LONG BLONDES - Darts LA DRUGS - High School THIGH MASTER - Head of the Witch DISCO ZOMBIES - Mary Millington TACTICS - Watch My Hands RUBY PINS - My Friends Are Insane THE KIWI ANIMAL - Assassin BEATNIKS - Dreamless A-FRAMES - Test Tube Baby THE MIAMI DOLPHINS - Blender FEEDTIME - Motorbike Girl SCORPIO TUBE - Yellow Listen HALF JAPANESE - Girl Athletes BUTTER UTTER - Soho CAN - Oh Yeah

This irregular spin-off podcast from Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio is the place to cram your ears with 1 hour of deep, heavy, face-melting DUB from 1970s Jamaica. We pay close attention this time, on HEMORRHAGE IN DUB #4, to recent reissues on Pressure Sounds, Jamaican Recordings and Dub Store Records, and after doing the math, it's come to our conclusion that King Tubby had a hand in over half of the tracks you'll be listening to this time.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. Get a full handle on some of the most intense 70s dub of all time by pressing play, or by downloading this one now.

Steam or download “Hemorrhage in Dub #4″ on Soundcloud.

Stream “Hemorrhage in Dub #4″ on Mixcloud.

Grab the show on iTunes, as well as the 3 older ones + dozens of episodes of Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio.

Track listing:

JOHNNY CLARKE & THE AGGROVATORS - A Ruffer Version TAPPA ZUKIE - Population Dub LINVAL THOMPSON - Africa Love Dub REVOLUTIONARIES - Cell Block Dub OSSIE ALL-STARS - Leggo Dub ERROL BROWN - Orthodox Dub IMPACT ALL-STARS - Maro JOHNNY CLARKE/KING TUBBY - Skanking With Pablo AUGUSTUS PABLO - 1 Ruthland Close THE AGGROVATORS/KING TUBBY - Channel Get Knockout SKIN FLESH & BONES - Dub to the Vein MORWELL UNLIMITED & KING TUBBY - John Bull GG ALL-STARS - Let Me Dub AFRICAN HEAD CHARGE - Crocodile Hand Luggage YABBY YOU & THE PROPHETS - Life Money Version

It's the first Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio of 2017, and we're hoping you're gonna think it's a whopper. Just over one hour, as always, this time with new stuff from RAYS (pictured; photo by Melissa Leitman), EXILES FROM CLOWNTOWN, GEE TEE, BALEINE 3000 and GROWTH, along with newer reissue material from SMALL WORLD EXPERIENCE, METAL URBAIN and DRIVER U.F.O.

There's also some vault action from everyone from WIRE to GUIDED BY VOICES to THE GORIES. In order to get a handle on it, you're going to need to press play.

Stream or download Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio #88 on Soundcloud.

Stream Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio #88 on Mixcloud.

Subscribe to the show and get all the episodes on iTunes.

Track listing:

GEE TEE - Thugs in Cars RAYS - Drop Dead TWILIGHTERS - Nothing Can Bring Me Down BALEINE 3000 - Fried Oyster THE MIAMI DOLPHINS - Carcrash NOTS - Dust Red THE GORIES - Drowning DRIVER U.F.O. - Cuisinart THE CLITS - Zoo Song WIRE - Outdoor Miner GUIDED BY VOICES - Break Even METAL URBAIN - Paris Maquis PATSY - Nazis Are So Plain THE LAST SONS OF KRYPTON - Atom Bomb GIBSON BROS - My Young Life SMALL WORLD EXPERIENCE - Get Lost CRASH NORMAL - Moon Food BONA DISH - 8am GROWTH - Ice Age EXILES FROM CLOWNTOWN - Oh Well

(Originally posted on my Agony Shorthand blog, June 2006)

COUNTRY TEASERS : "THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK" CD......

Every couple years or so our old friends the COUNTRY TEASERS seem to come around with a new one chock full of jaunty skiffles, nasally rants and weirdo keyboard-based dirges, and every couple years the payoff amounts to about a solid B-, give or take a grade.

Oh, I've sort of said otherwise in the past, but the march of time & the wisdom of age has helped me to understand why I'm seeing the glass as half empty this time. To read the hyperbole spilled out on these guys every release, you'd think that these discs were something you'd wanna put on time & again, day in and day out all year, because these guys are such a wildly inventive gas. I don't know about that; I can honestly say that for all my respect for this act, dragging their discs out of storage for repeat play doesn't happen a whole hell of a lot. Allow me to explain.

First, let's establish what's good about this CD and about the Teasers in general. I've always liked the total ramshackle construction of their songs & the fuck-all way lead nihilist Ben Wallers slurs out his words. Everything about the band appears to be so inborn & with nary a thought to what folks think that they're capable of some real naval-gazing bedroom genius at times. Every record has a couple of doozies. When they're hitting on all six cylinders, a better FALL-inspired Northern European post-punk aggro country band can't be found. You'll find that band on this record's "Points of View" and closing "Please Ban Music/Gegen Alles", and it's a real treat.

My concerns lie on two fronts. Ever since a friend gave me a tape of this at-the-time-unrecorded band around 1992 or so, I've quickly tired of Wallers' insistence on punctuating every record with his giggle-giggle-I'm-so-bad "transgressive words" -- "Jew", "coon", "Hitler", "blacks", "queer" etc. Once you get a politically incorrect titter out of the listener - and believe me, I will always love a smartly-delivered right hook to the word police -- what's left? It appears that entire songs continue to be built around slipping said words into the lyrics, and that's about as boring as bean curd.

But that's not as big a deal as the aforementioned staying power of the music. You folks that talk about the Teasers like they're consistently awesome and are such brave radical musical iconoclasts, are you seriously cranking this up and playing it for your pals? Because a large chunk of it's dull dull dull, meandering with no direction forward, backward nor home - just made-up-on-the-point garbage (or highly calculated to sound that way, I don't know).

I read three reviews of this thing already just this past couple weeks that posit that it's the goddamn musical second coming. Midheaven Mailorder, flacking for this thing on their web site, ask the very easily answerable question, "Is there another current group operating at such a high level musically or lyrically?". Wow, probably not, right? The evidence is overwhelming! Seriously, did you guys even listen to this thing?

I repeat myself -- The Country Teasers are a solid B- band all the way around, and this thing comes off the shelves for reevaluation again in 2008 at the earliest.

Dynamite Hemorrhage #3 is an 84-page music fanzine devoted to sub-underground music from the last five decades. Like the previous ones, this is an 8.5"x11" MAGAZINE with a color cover and B&W insides. I put it out in May 2016, and I’ve still got copies for sale now for $5.99/each.

Order Dynamite Hemorrhage #3 fanzine here.

It features:

- The definitive story of THE VELVET UNDERGROUND APPRECIATION SOCIETY, as told through an interview with VUAS founder Phil Milstein. Find out what it was like to lead the secret society of Velvets fiends in the 1970s and how Milstein managed VUAS with the fans and with the Velvet Underground members themselves.

- An epic, Homeric oral history of wiry & jagged 1980s San Francisco pop band WORLD OF POOH, as told by band members Barbara Manning, Brandan Kearney and Jay Paget themselves, as well as choice anecdotes from those who witnessed their rise, reign and collapse

- In-depth interviews with four of the finest acts making rock and roll music in the year 2016: WHITE FENCE (Tim Presley); Portland, OR's LITHICS; Oakland's RAYS and Auckland's THE COOLIES

- An interview with phenomenal lost folk singer SIBYLLE BAIER, whose early 1970s recordings from Germany appeared a decade ago and stunned the world. We found her & gave her the Dynamite Hemorrhage once-over, and then went and interviewed & celebrated five of her ghostly folk "heirs" (MAXINE FUNKE, JULIE BYRNE, ALLYSEN CALLERY, JOANNE ROBERTSON and MYRIAM GENDRON) as well as part of the piece

- "BELOW THE FLYING NUN", Gregor Kessler's piece on some of the wildest and most obscure New Zealand 45s of the 1980s

- An interview with SARA FANCY, aka "Sara" from early 80s UK DIY acts Sara Goes Pop and Amos & Sara. You'll learn about her journey from the squats of Europe to the bodybuilding competitions of the 90s to the tranquil equine therapy practice she leads today. A fascinating glimpse and first look back she's given on her time spent making music with Jim Welton (aka L Voag, Amos etc.)

- The first-ever posthumous interview with early 80s all-female Belgian punk band UNIT 4, who surfaced on the "FM-BX Society Tape" in 1981 with four amazing songs of shimmering Kleenex/Delta 5/Au Pairs-ish brilliance.

- David Perron's "FREE FORM FREAKOUT" column of outside and experimental tape & LP releases from the last year

- Jay Hinman and Erika Elizabeth also wrote 82 record reviews devoted to the nether regions of sub-underground rocknroll and elsewhere

ORDER DYNAMITE HEMORRHAGE #3 here.

Not a best-of 2016 show, but a compendium of almost entirely 2016 material from the likes of CAR, THE MIAMI DOLPHINS (pictured), NEUTRAL, GROUPER, LES POSTERS, PURPUR SPYTT, THE STACHES, URANIUM CLUB, AMATEUR HOUR and many other leading lights from the sub-underground. I found a way to harness the Now Sound of late 2016 in one 62-minute episode in hopes that you'll be finding your new favorite band or artist during that hour.

Download or stream Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio #87 on Soundcloud.

Stream Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio #87 on Mixcloud instead.

Subscribe to the show on iTunes, and grab dozens of older shows there.

Track listing:

THE MIAMI DOLPHINS - Quail Birth CAR - Pretty Seriously Mad URANIUM CLUB - That Clown's Got a Gun LES POSTERS - European Eyes MARS - 3E (live 1978) BLANK SQUARE - I Was High NEUTRAL - Gaze CARLA DAL FORNO - Fast Moving Cars GROUPER - Headache DADAMAH - Nicotine LEDA - Clear PURPUR SPYTT - Limp DOCTOR NOD - I'm The Creator THE STACHES - Fury AQUARIAN BLOOD - I'm Lit NOPES - Screens AMATEUR HOUR - Down

AMATEUR HOUR are a newish, three-person experimental/psych act from Gothenburg, Sweden whom I’ve been quite excited to stumble upon in recent months. Their stuff’s not exactly easy to find; you may wish to try illicit means if you can’t come across the records.

I get the same sort of scratchy, lo-fi, intensely enveloping sense of distortion & spacelessness that we heard in Dadamah twenty-plus years ago from them. One track will include ethereal vocals much like Liz Fraser’s from Cocteau Twins; the next might be a formless instrumental that sounds like as if someone’s flipped on a 1940s-era generator & just let it hum in the background.

Someone needed to get to the bottom of the Amateur Hour conundrum, so I nominated myself and set to work. Interview conducted via email in December 2016.

Amateur Hour: Dan Johansson, Hugo Randulv, Julia Bjernelind

Dynamite Hemorrhage: The Amateur Hour album is a beautiful mix of murky, experimentally-tinged pop and a darker, more strange sort of electric folk that could probably be called “psych” for lack of a better term. When the three of you sat down to make music, how did you verbalize what you wanted to sound like? Hugo: The way i see it, we want to make simple and beautiful pop music. But we have never rehearsed or written any songs together, so all the music on the album is either improvised or recorded on its own and then placed together with other sounds to make it fit into the idea or thing that we were going for. We rarely talk about how things should sound before we meet. It's all pretty much decided the very moment we start recording. Dynamite Hemorrhage: Tracks like “Get Fucked” aren’t really music per se, but that might be my favorite piece on the album. What were you going for with that one, and how would you describe how it was made? Julia: Hugo and Dan had made an instrumental piece they showed me, and they said I could do anything i wanted with it. It was really dreamy and soothing, still very melancholic and sad. I wrote the lyrics and we just recorded it. That's how we do with most songs. We try not to think about or talk too much about what we're doing. I think the lyrics are about alcohol abuse in this one. Dynamite Hemorrhage: There’s a “Garlands”-era Cocteau Twins feel to some of the tracks, such as “Paradise Lost”, with a lot of swirling synth & multi-tracked, sugary vocals. Is that band an intentional influence – and if not them, whom? Hugo: Cocteau Twins is definitely a band that have had a big influence on me, at least. I think that kind of dreamy-sounding pop music from some of the bands on 4AD and artists like Julee Cruise and Virginia Astley has had an impact on our sound. Otherwise i guess we draw inspiration from all over the place. From early industrial music and noise to some indiepop music, like the bands on Sarah records.

Dynamite Hemorrhage: Julianna Barwick is another (significantly less smudgy/DIY) artist whose music slots in well next to yours (at least I think so), but I suspect you’re going for something a little less ear-friendly on most tracks. Would you agree with the comparison, and if not, who else currently making music would you prefer to align your approach with?

Hugo: I had never heard of Julianna Barwick before, i probably should have though, it sounds great! I totally get the comparison, but i think the thing we do is a little bit more focused on the improvisation and make up stuff as you go kind of work method. Our songs are not so much compositions as it is like a sonic collage made up of stuff we have recorded on different occasions, and then afterwards put into a context.

I wish I could namedrop a bunch of currently working artists that we feel have something in common with. but i honestly can't think of one. One the other hand, I am not really too up to date with what's out there... Dynamite Hemorrhage: I get the sense from various things that are dribbling out & from fanzines like FÖRDÄMNING that there continues to be a pretty deep Swedish musical underground of DIY noisemakers, off-centered rock bands and artists of many strange colors. How true is that for you, living there, and are you content with what’s right there in Gothenburg? Hugo: I feel that There is a pretty strong, although extremely small, scene in Gothenburg at the moment. But it's hard to get an outsider’s perspective of it since I know most of the people very well, and play with a handful of the projects that could be tied to this scene. But it continues to inspire and a handful of really, really good releases tend to come out every year so I'm really glad about it. Dynamite Hemorrhage: How much better or worse is it for you to be making music in Gothenburg as opposed to Stockholm? Hugo: I don't know actually, i have been living in Gothenburg for my entire life and don't know too much about the scene in over there. But Gothenburg has always had a very healthy music scene. But the eyes are mostly set on Stockholm so a lot of the stuff in Gothenburg remains fairly underground, which is a both good and a bad thing. Dynamite Hemorrhage: Where has Amateur Hour played live so far, and what goes into a live Amateur Hour performance? Your first gig, which is on YouTube, looks like you did everything from flip on some tapes and sing to play together in a pretty “standard” guitar/guitar/drums lineup. Julia: The one on YouTube is actually the only gig we've done so far. It was at Folk in Gothenburg; we were the opening act for Neil Hagerty. Since we're not like a regular rock band that rehearses two times a week, we didn't really have a repertoire, so we decided in what order we'd play the songs and how some of them could be played live. It was pretty hard with some of them, like Sprängd, that was improvised while we all were really drunk.

We tried not to make it too much like a singer/songwriter gig and not too noisy and wild. Somewhere in between, I guess.

Dynamite Hemorrhage: Online I’ve found that “Amateur Hour contains members from Enhet För Fri Musik, Makthaverskan and Westkust”. What can you tell me about those bands – and where does Amateur Hour fall in your lists of musical priorities?

Julia: Hugo has been playing in Makthaverskan since he was 16 I think, and me and Hugo met during 2010 when we started playing in Westkust. We had always been talking about making more experimental music together since we're both big fans to a lot of post-punk bands like Birthday Party etc, but nothing really happened. Then Hugo and Dan got to know each other when Hugo went to Sewer Election (Dan’s band) gigs and started talking. They formed Enhet För FrI Musik and then they asked me if I wanted to do some vocals on a new project. And Amateur Hour was created. Hugo: Yeah, and since both Mathaverskan and Westkust are more traditional "rehearse and write songs together" kinds of bands, both me and Julia really enjoyed the freedom of writing songs the way we do in Amateur Hour. Enhet för fri musik, which consists of me, Dan, Gustaf Dicksson, Sofie Herner and Matthias Andersson, have a bit of the same working method as Amateur Hour, but even more chaotic i think. Dynamite Hemorrhage: You’ve got an album in an edition of 100, a “dub plate” single in an edition of 20, and a tape in an edition of 60. Is that really all you envisioned selling or giving away? Hugo: Both the LP album and the cassette tape was released on labels closely connected to the band. I run the Forever United label with some friends, and me and Dan are involved in the the Förlag För Fri Musik label with the rest of Enhet för fri musik. The 7" was released on Folk records. I guess we did such a limited number of records just because it's cheaper and more convenient to not have a bunch of records that no one wants lying around your place. i think there is also a beautiful thing in something that is not available just through a click with your computer or whatever. It's done in a few copies, and that's that! Dynamite Hemorrhage: What else do the three of you do to get by and live life? Work, families etc. Hugo: No one of us get any money at all from the various musical projects we are involved in, so we have to get by with day jobs or studies... Dynamite Hemorrhage: It’s only been half a year since your first gig and just a little over that since you started releasing material. Where do you intend to take this project in 2017? Hugo: We have been doing some recordings  recently and hope to be finished with our second album in 2017.

I’d forgotten about this until I flipped through it recently, but apparently I wrote some record reviews for THE CIMARRON WEEKEND fanzine around 1998.

Here's the final issue of SUPERDOPE (#8), which I put out in 1998. You can download a PDF of it to your computing device.

Download SUPERDOPE #8 here.