I was following a link trail on the search for Kathy Dalton videos when I found this work of genius. Perawan rimba (1988) , also known as Jungle Virgin Force, is an Indonesian jungle film, and I don’t know if I need to go further than this 10 minute opening scene. Total chaos, this opening is up there with the greatest cinema produced by all the dimly lit subgenres of filmdom.
Merle Haggard’s music has been a presence in my world…well, it seems like forever. As a person whose roots are in the working class, his music speaks to me on another level of consciousness. It’s so ingrained in me, it is part of my musical DNA. Robert Christie and I bonded over our mutual love for his music. And in my opinion, he can have however many saxophones he desires.
Merle Haggard - Had a Little Mule feat. Johnny Gimble
Merle Haggard is so boss.
Agreed. And you can’t even hear the dreaded mandatory Hag sax player.
My snobbishness extends to housing choices. Unfortunately, I do not live here, or in a house like this. But I admire it. It looks like the kind of a place it would be great to come home to after a hard day. This house is located in Portland Oregon. You can see the moss, and sense the moisture in the air. I come from Oregon, and I grew up in Southern Oregon. I have lived in Idaho for 23 years, but maybe someday I will go back. Get close to the ocean. And get some of the moisture back in my body. Funny how I hated that when I lived there.
Daily Bungalow - Portland, OR - Hawthorne Neighborhood on Flickr.
I was a fan of the Pistols, they blew through my world and turned it upside down. I even considered skipping school to go see them in San Francisco, but didn’t have the balls to do it. Nor a car, but that didn’t stop me from doing things like that before. Anyway, I finished high school, got some jobs, earned some money, and avidly collected import singles, like the first one from PiL. And I got this album from Renaissance Records up in PDX. This really stretched my understanding of punk rock, because this was challenging stuff. I remember playing this at parties in Sutherlin when I was lucky enough to be invited. Soon, the invitations stopped coming. “If you are into it, I guess it’s alright.”
Then….The Metal Box, and Second Edition <us version of metal box> and Flowers Of Romance. I loved it all. I still played Yes records though, and saw Van Halen, and went to rock shows with my friends. But the basements were calling, and I started to write songs, I learned a few chords on the guitar, and began that learning process. But, Mr. Lydon was such an influence on me, and I have a fondness for his work to this day. Despite the nagging wife tendencies it displays.
listening to.
My people getting it done in Austin. It will be great to see them on IFC, if and when this gets aired.
Hillfolk Noir have hit another gear. It’s only going to get better and better from here. The new album, “Hillfolk Noir Radio Hour” is brilliant, an encapsulation of where they’ve been, and a pointer towards where they are going. The boys toured their way down to Austin playing shows, and Ali flew down to play the showcase because she couldn’t/shouldn’t get more time off.
#HillfolkNoir in the #IFC house! #sxswmusic #boiseshowcase (Taken with instagram)
Song-worthy Cities: Places mentioned in country music hits and the words most commonly used.
My boy doctorfresh is getting busy with actual film, with an actual camera, and is getting some dynamite photo images down on his blog of Tumblr. You should go check it out. Here he captures Mozam_Beaks at a recent show at the luk-o-max. They are a fantastic new group. You have got to watch for them. They kill it.
There is some top level shit happening in our town. The new groups. The radio station 89.9. Treefort Festival. And some new music from some of my favorite people. hillfolk noir have a new album coming out next week called Hillfolk Noir Radio Hour, Curtis Stigers has a new album coming out in May, Finn Riggins are putting out a 10 inch vinyl record, Bill Coffey has a new cd coming out (so he says,) Ned Evett is out in the world with a new Adrian Belew produced album, AKA Belle are still selling a great new CD, Matt Hopper is trying to get his newalbum kickstarted. It could be at the end of the year that every one of the titles on my year end top ten list will be local artists.
#Go Listen Boise
Mozam at Neurolux 2/22/12
Treepeople “Party”
In a warehouse somewhere in Seattle, on a Tuesday. 26 June, 1990. The great lineup. Every person played a part, and when the parts are great, added up it equals a whole that is immense in its greatness. And they were great. I don’t use this term lightly. Such terms are imposed on memories, and soon they become legends. But, this is before circumstances splintered this group, bringing the members back to Boise one by one, with only Wayne staying out permanently. Perhaps by June 1990 things were beginning to fray a little. Moving to a bigger place can be stressful.
The very first time I saw them was on the lawn at BSU, when Treepeople and the Dirt Fishermen played music before a showing of URGH! A Music War was screened outside on the quad. I hadn’t even moved to Boise at that point. But when I saw that band, I knew I was in the presence of something great. One month later, they were moving to Seattle, and 3 months later I moved to Boise from Eugene Oregon.
They have all done great things individually, and I am proud to know all of them by name. Wayne went on to form a great group named Violent Green, with a friend of mine from Eugene, Jennifer Olay. Doug came back to Boise to form Built To Spill. Scott soldiered on with Treepeople, which morphed, more or less, into a group called Stuntman. You can read more history here: Treewiki
But, for me, Pat was huge. He came back to Boise, enrolled in Boise State University, started ( or restarted, I’m not sure) a tabloid called Streetmag, started a band called Hive, set himself to the project of living in Boise, raising his daughter with Anna Fell, and living. He got drunk, he got arrested, he graduated, got married to Jennifer Schlender, moved to Seattle, worked at The Stranger as production manager. One day I called him up there, and they said he was gone, and no-one knew where he was. He ran aground, I guess. In November 1998 I was working Thanksgiving weekend, and he appeared in my office. He hugged me for a long time without saying a word. We talked for a hour or two, he bought the Beastie Boys. And then he was gone. I never saw him again.
There is not a day of my life that goes by that I don’t think about Pat Schmaljohn. The guy was immense. He made you SO MUCH BETTER by being around. And he couldn’t stay around. I failed him. We all failed him. HE failed himself. And he thought that was not alright, evidently.
I think about him often. For very selfish reasons. Because he made me better. He used to call me “The Great JohnO,” and I let him, because I knew who the really great one was. And every minute I spent with him I believed I could do great things. And I have let him down.
Trust me, he was no saint. He let people down too. He made mistakes, he took chances that were really unnecessary, he failed at marriage, he failed to stay clean. He failed to live. That is a tragedy. That is our tragedy. It is so disappointing. He doesn’t get to know his beautiful, cantankerous, and so like him, daughter. And I feel bad about that.
I wish that there was an afterlife, that I could get the chance to see him again, and fix it, but there isn’t, and I won’t fix anything. But maybe, just maybe, I can put myself out there again, and honor his presence and spirit, and do something. Anything.
It doesn’t even have to be great. It just has to be something.
So unbelievably great. All of you little dicks who complain about the size of your stage and how hard it is to get a hearing need to shut it. Fuck all of you people who think you have it so bad. This is the real shit.
Bad Brains - “Attitude”
The name of the game is PMA - All day…
Posted by peahix on April 23rd, 2006
Yes and no. From a musical standpoint, they’re very VERY wrong! But nothing is actually wrong with your Optigan. In order to fit enough stuff onto the discs, they had to cut corners a bit. There wasn’t enough room for A and E major, so they decided that they would take a C# dim chord (which has a couple of notes in common with A major) and use that for multiple chord buttons. Similarly, a G# dim serves as the E major. The best way to bolster the tonal implications of these chords is to back them up with full-fisted majors on the keyboard. Even then, you’re still only getting dominant 7ths with the third in the bass!
