Celebrating the birthday of Kicks.Norton Records co-founder Miriam Linaa with an interview and some performances.
Writes Miriam...
"Thank you, friends and fiends, for the excitable birthday greets. I'm a 20th century gal who is still hanging onto the old world for dear life, so bear with my antiquated mind, means and methods. News is coming very soon about projects that have been stewing for a very long time - and are now ready to share. It's peculiar how synchronicity plays with our daily doings. I was reading one of my favorite paperbacks from the old days, Fahrenheit 451, during the wee hours this morning, and recalled that I had seen a copy of the fireproof asbestos edition under glass at a book fair many years ago. Now making this post, I wanted to reshare a clip of Stay, complete with its teenage TV host, and what do I see on the wall behind the group- look/see. So anyway, all rambling aside, please stay just a little bit longer. Thank you to everyone who has helped me through the hard stuff and to those who share with the fun and laughter. That accounts for everybody!" - Miriam XXXX
The Boom! doc about Tacoma's 60s punks The Sonics gets a long overdue T.O. premiere thanks to Ralph Alphonso.
BOOM! A Film About THE SONICS
TORONTO FILM PREMIERE
Thursday, October 24
The Redwood Theatre
1300 Gerrard St. East, Toronto
Doors open at 6 pm. Film starts promptly at 7 pm.
For anyone familiar with 60s rock and 60s garage rock, The Sonics are the motherlode; primal, raw, every one of their riffs has become someone else's entire album. Their classics (Strychnine, Cinderella, The Witch, Psycho) have been revived and become standard repertoire for dozens of bands; and their revved up definitive take on Have Love Will Travel as used in TV commercials and movie soundtracks has spurred on the band's revival.
The Toronto premiere of Jordan Albertsen's acclaimed 2018 documentary BOOM! A Film About The Sonics will be introduced by Ralph Alfonso (manager of The Diodes and Toronto's first punk club, The Crash 'n' Burn). Limited seating, so be sure to purchase tickets early right here. Watch the trailer and an interview with the director Jordan Albertsen below followed by a rippin' reunion performance from 2015.
The Flesh Eaters' forthcoming album I Used To Be Pretty is due January 18 from Yep Roc – the first single is a cover of The Sonics' "Cinderella."
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — One of Los Angeles punk rock’s most widely admired yet little-heard bands makes a striking return to records on January 18, as Yep Roc Records issues I Used to Be Pretty an all-new collection by The Flesh Eaters.
On the release, founding vocalist and songwriter Chris Desjardins — better known as Chris D. — is backed by the legendary “all-star” edition of the band, originally heard on the 1981 set A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die: Dave Alvin (guitar) and Bill Bateman (drums) of The Blasters; John Doe (bass) and D.J. Bonebrake (marimba and percussion) of X; and Steve Berlin (saxophones) of The Plugz (and later The Blasters and Los Lobos). The album was produced collectively by the band members.
On five of the album’s 11 tracks, this super-powered unit is joined by Julie Christensen, Desjardins’ vocal partner in both The Flesh Eaters’ successor band Divine Horsemen and latter-day editions of the original group. The singers were married during the ’80s.
Release of I Used to Be Pretty, which will be issued in single-CD and double-LP configurations, will be followed by a series of U.S. tour dates — the very first shows, save for a lone U.K. appearance, to take this hitherto elusive group outside the West Coast.
The Flesh Eaters were among the groundbreaking bands that emerged from the original Hollywood punk club The Masque in 1977. Chris D. — poet, novelist, actor, screenwriter, director, and film programmer — developed a stormy, lyrically intense style that drew on such varied sources as symbolist poetry, violent American pulp novels, and films running the gamut from classic European cinema to samurai, horror, spaghetti Western, and noir genre movies. He was also active on the local scene as a writer for the L.A. punkzine Slash and an A&R man and producer for the magazine’s offshoot record label.
The band’s first records employed various ad hoc assemblies of local punk musicians. For its second album, the howling, swampy, hoodoo-infused A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die — produced by Chris D. and released on Slash’s subsidiary imprint Ruby Records — the singer recruited a band then unrivaled for musical firepower. The potent lineup played only a handful of unforgettable local shows before its members’ commitments to their own bands sundered the group.
However, the Minute to Pray Flesh Eaters’ reputation abided for decades, and in 2006 the lineup reunited for an appearance at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in the U.K. and a few West Coast appearances. Two more brief regroupings followed in 2015 and 2018.
Desjardins says of the latter series of eight dates, “When we were doing the shows, I said, ‘You guys, we are so tight right now, we have got to go in the studio and document this and do an album. We do it within a couple of months after the live shows, by the end of April. That should give everyone a window where we can all get together.’”
I Used to Be Pretty is bookended by a pair of dramatic new songs. Desjardins says of “Black Temptation,” the ferocious leadoff track, “I wanted to do that song for the Miss Muerte album in 2004, but we didn’t have time to work the music up. I actually published the lyrics in my book A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die in 2009, and I never thought I was going to get to record it.”
“Ghost Cave Lament,” the sprawling 13-minute song that closes the album, was developed by Desjardins and Alvin before the recording sessions. This incantatory epic’s musical setting was inspired by “Moritas Moras,” an extended piece by flamenco guitarist Manitas de Plata.
Desjardins says the finished track reminds him of work by another notable L.A. band: “After we listened to it a few times when it was done, it struck me really forcefully like ‘The End’ or ‘When the Music’s Over’ by The Doors. It had that kind of feel that those longer Doors songs had. That had not been our intention at all, but those latent influences came out.”
Six tracks on I Used to Be Pretty offer forceful reinterpretations of previously released Flesh Eaters songs. “Pony Dress” was first heard on the compilation Tooth and Nail (1979), released on Chris D.’s Upsetter Records; “My Life to Live” and “The Wedding Dice” appeared on Forever Came Today (1982); “Youngest Profession” originated on Dragstrip Riot (1991); “House Amid the Thickets” debuted on Ashes of Time (1999); and “Miss Muerte” was the title track of the most recent Flesh Eaters album. (History repeats itself in a couple of instances: Doe and Bonebrake played on the original “Pony Dress,” while Berlin appeared on the earlier “The Wedding Dice.”)
“The album certainly is a summation,” Desjardins says. “It incorporates some older material that this lineup never played on.”
Check out the video for The Flesh Eaters' cover of "Cinderella" by The Sonics (below).
Yes you heard that right and yes it is the 60’s garage rock band THE SONICS releasing an unheard track called "Bad Betty" on Muddy Roots Music Recordings. What can possibly make this sweeter? Adding "I Like It Small" by MUDHONEY to this 7” split sure the hell would!
It will be available on Record Store Day (April 19, 2014) at participating independent retail stores.
So get your ass down to the local record shop and get a copy! This is a one time only pressing to add to your rare collection. Here's the Mudhoney track...
