Sunday, December 22, 2013

Rural Blues Vol. 3 - Down Home Stomp


Back in the early 90's I was up in Portland Maine. I ended up at a local place that sold only vinyl. NO compact discs allowed! In fact, their CD section was a zip lock bag with broken CD's inside. I think its still there, but I forget the name of the place.

So I'm in there browsing around when the most fucked up distorted blues I had ever heard came chugging out of the little speaker in the store. It hit me like a freight train. What the fuck was this?! Ok, play it cool, don't go running up to the counter asking what the hell this was.  So I continue shopping around.

Then another track bursts forth and its even more mind blowing then the previous one!  Distorted vocals, killer harmonica that mimicked a train sound....jaw dropping stuff...

At the time I had been listening to a lot of what is now known as "garage punk" of that era. One band in particular that I couldn't get enough of was the Jack O' Fire. These guys were amazing.  Amazing harmonica playing lead singer, like a twisted little brother of Howlin' Wolfe himself. The rest of the band was amazing too. They covered a ton of blues tunes and also did punk rock covers but in a blues style.  Great, great fucking band.

Well the first two songs I heard that day sounded a hell of a lot like the Jack O' Fire. 

It ended up being Papa Lightfoot. 

So after a while I went up to the owner and asked what record he was playing. He showed me the record pictured above.  It was a compilation of various artists from the Imperial record label. I asked him how much it was, to which he replied; "Oh, THAT'S not for sale!"

UGH, like a punch to the gut. I wrote down the name of the record and some of the artists and after buying some stuff that WAS for sale, went on my merry way. 

That record haunted me for like 3 years. I found it at Amoeba records in SF.  It's one of my favorite records that I play all the time.  Pick up the other records in the series if you can find them. All great that I've heard anyway...

DOWN_HOME_STOMP

Saturday, December 21, 2013

VPRO Interview with Lux and Ivy


Here's a cool interview someone hipped me to on Facebook (thanks Jan Kooi!). It's from around the time Stay Sick came out. It's always great hearing Lux and Ivy talk about movies and music.

VPRO_Interview

Sunday, September 22, 2013



Here's a great Cramps boot of the band recorded live in Palo Alto, California, 1979.  I think it was originally brodcast on KFAT. 

Mentioned in the Ian Johnston book as being the one good Cramps bootleg (according to L and I).  Of course, they suggested you burn the album sleeve and liner notes because of the nazi connection...

Nazibilly_Werewoelfen

Add here is the insert so you can see what i was talking about...



Tuesday, September 3, 2013

A SCORPION by any other name...


Head over to Ichi Ban to download another version of Jimmie McConville's SCORPION!

http://wfmuichiban.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-scorpion-by-any-other-name.html

Original Post: THREE_SCORPIONS!

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Lux and Ivy's Favorites Volume 3 (remaster)



Presenting the Remaster of Volume 3!

A few tweaks here and there (one being the major change of the correct version of The Gorilla!), and overall improvement in sound.

Looking at the tracklist this volume reveals that I probably finished compiling it in 2001 or 2. The reason why is that the movie Ghost World came out in 2001. And that is the when the mystery of Ted Lyons and his Cubs was solved.

Most folks know this story, but it bears repeating. In the Incredibly Strange Music interview with Lux and Ivy, they talk about this amazing video of a band called Ted Lyons and his Cubs.  They go on and on about it and how cool it is, etc. I searched for anything by this "band" for years.  By now everyone's seen the famous Ghost World/Gumnaam video, hell it's even parodied in a fuckin' beer commercial!  But back in the early 2000's not a lot of people knew about it.  So the DVD of GWorld comes out and a friend spots it right away, the Ted Lyons logo on the drum head!  Mystery solved...

Thanks to J.R. Williams for the amazing artwork (sorry it took so long, J.R.!) and to Adam Fitch for his impecible layout work. And as always WFMU.

Incidentally, here is a photo of Lux with one of the comic books that was the basis of this volume's cover.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Intoxica with Howie Pyro!


Here's the show from when Howie had me as a guest on his show.

Here's the set up for this. I was in Los Angeles for the fabulous Norton Records benefit that Howie organized to help Billy and Miriam get back on their feet after Hurricane Sandy gave them a royal going over. It was one of many benefits that happened all over the world the last few months.  Amazing bands like 60's legends Thee Midniters, The Sloths (well, they're legends to me anyway), and a host of other bands both "old" and new played a day long concert to show their love for Norton Records.

So, by the time Tuesday rolled around I was literally dead on my feet.  I don't ordinarily have that "Pyro" lifestyle where I get a few hours of sleep and then it's go go-go, go, go go-go, ya know?  If you know me at all or have listened to the other shows I've guested on, you can hear my voice sounds kind of messed up. Well that's because I was developing some sort of viral upper respiratory infection at the time!  When I got back from California was sick for like 3 weeks...

Hopefully everyone that checks out this blog is familiar with Howie and his amazing show INTOXICA on luxuriamusic.com.  I must admit it was a blast to be on his show but also a little intimidating.  Just listen to his show and you'll see why pretty quick. This dude has a collection of wildest, most retardinest music out there. He also sends my already reeling head spinning 2 seconds before his show starts by telling me that all he wants me to play is stuff that he doesn't have! Uhhh, really?!

After a few minutes of drawing a blank I think I put together a pretty good mix of music to check out. Luckily I had brought a few hundred records for the week "just in case." 

So, thanks again Howie for doin' what you do, and letting me spin some rekkids...

Listen/Download here:

Intoxica with Howie Pyro April 2013 with Kogar   Updated download link 2021

for people outside the US INTOXICA with Howie Pyro and Kogar

And if you haven't, check out all the other archived shows (including the amazing show with Jimmy from Thee Midniters!)

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Psychotic Reactions w/ Pip



Hey, here's another of my appearances on WZBC's PSYCHOTIC REACTIONS with my buddy Pip.  Grabbed a stack of records and brought them to his show.

Enjoy...if only you could have seen the hijinks in the studio. Anh, sometimes it's better heard, and NOT seen...

Get_Psychotic!

Monday, February 4, 2013

Lux and Ivy's Favorites Volume Seventeen


Here is the last Lux and Ivy’s Favorites; Volume Seventeen.

Over a year ago when I put up the Ez listening double CD together I had kind of made up my mind that it was going to be the last volume for a few reasons. The main reason being the increasing number of bootlegs “stealing” my idea. There have been at least 3, that I know of, CD’s (or now even LP’s) of material taken from my compilations and being sold on the market. The worst of these even have liner notes from some guy that writes for that bastion of musical excellence, Mojo Magazine (huh?). I believe the guy even picked the tracks for them too. Wow, what a lot of hard work that must have been! Spending years collecting information, tracking down rare tracks, identifying and going through old tapes….wow, he must be a busy guy! Oh wait; he did most of that with the click of a button….

The worst thing about these endeavors is that they use Lux and Ivy’s name to turn a profit. Something I’ve never done. Over the years I’ve gotten numerous requests from people wanting me to put these on vinyl. I was always adamant that I wouldn’t do something like that. I do these for fun and to expose people to music that they may not have known about. Some people do radio shows, I put together compilations. The idea of some record label making money off this is too much for me to take.

For that reason, this volume has no track listing.

 Now, any fan of the series that downloads this last volume should have a good idea of what artist does what song. How could you not recognize (NAME REDACTED)’s voice or (NAME REDACTED)’s guitar tone? Most of the songs have been on any number of other compilations and now that you’ve listened to 16 other volumes of this stuff, I would hope you would have gone on to buying copious amounts of music from your favorite online retailers or those things that still exist in some corners of the world; record shops. If Seventeen was going to be made available, I couldn’t just put the track listing out with it so that some douchebag could throw it on some future compilation. Though the risk is there that it will happen anyway, I guess, but I’m not going to make it easy for them.

Seventeen basically exists because it was nearly done back when Sixteen came out. Sixteen came about because a track listing fell into my lap and it was easy to find a lot of that Ez listening stuff pretty quickly. Meanwhile Seventeen languished in my car CD player.  A good portion of Seventeen came from a tape that Lux gave to someone back in the late 70’s. That person was kind enough to send it my way. It took a lot of work to get this original tape copied because he didn’t have the means to copy it! Then once I received it, I had to go thru it song by song to identify them (much like you will have to when you listen to Seventeen), track them down, and then make mp3’s out of them.

So since so much went in to actually finding the tape and having the tape transferred to another tape, and so much work had already gone in to it that I felt it should be made available. Plus it would coincide with the Lux Lives events being held all over the world.

And since I mentioned it, I figured I’d throw this gauntlet down for everyone that reads this blog, listens to The Cramps, or digs LAIF’s: throw your own Lux Lives events every year! Don’t sit around bitching that nothing like that ever happens in your town. If no one else is doing it, YOU do it! Have a party, get some friends together, watch some Herschell Gordon Lewis movies, listen to cool music, and celebrate the life of Lux and all that The Cramps have given you over the years.

Every year we have the media reminding us that this is the day Elvis died, or the day John Lennon died, etc etc; but for someone like Lux, no one’s going to keep his memory alive unless YOU do something.

Special thanks go out to Adam Fitch for working on the cover, Bruce Milne, Howie Pyro, Martin Hemmel, and MizzKizz for identifying/uncovering some of these tracks, and the fine folks at WFMU.