Ten reasons to like David Bowie even if you hate his music #4

So you might hate Bowie, still you should at least respect him for one thing his friendship with Iggy Pop! It was his David Bowie who got him from several times from the gutter in the 70-ties to save him from an early junkie dead and revive his career. So without Bowie you would have seen this shit hot Stooges reunion shows and all these great Iggy Pop solo records. Face it, even if you don’t like his music, Bowie is the Man! Iggy Pop himself is also hero!

Bowie liked the Stooges and he met Pop for the first time in early seventies in New York. The rock star Ziggy Stardust was based on Iggy Pop, who according Bowie represented the wild side of existentialist America. So it was Bowie who got the band in 1973 together to record their third album “Raw Power“. Iggy Pop says about this himself “Very few people recognized the quality of the Stooges’ songwriting, it was really meticulous. And to his credit, the only person I’d ever known of in print to notice it, among my peers of professional musicians, was Bowie. He noticed it right off.” Bowie is also credited as the producer of Raw Power. Although according to the story he only had 3 tracks of the 24  to mix. So the only thing he could do is to turn up to volume of the guitar and vocal up and down and to put some echo on the guitar.

Unfortunately the album never really got off and The Stooges disbanded again a year after the release. Pop worked for a while on a  Bowie tour through the US, but drug problems made him leave. He became a heroin addict and checked himself into a psychiatric hospital in LA where Bowie foudn him in 1976. Bowie got him out took him as companion on the “Station to Station” tour and later they moved to Berlin, where they both had a really creative period inspired by drugs, parties and Berlin. Iggy Pop recorded “The Idiot” and “Lust For Life”, especially on the “The Idiot”  Bowie contributed a lot of songwriting. Vice verse on “Low” Iggy Pop is doing backing vocals. A true creative collaboration. China Girl, Night Clubbing, Funtime, Lust For Live, The Passenger…

Check out this great interview with Pop and Bowie in an American talkshow:

Bowie also played piano on “The Idiot” tour. Check here Funtime live:

documentary on bowie and pop

Bowie and Pop dressed up

The Process Zine #3

Through a trade with Michal, the maker of the zine, I got the Process  Zine of Final Judgement from Poland. The hc zine is dedicated to Satanism and in particular to the Proces Church of the Final Judgement.

The zine starts with an interview with the Polish tuff guy band Bloodstained. They seem to be nice guys, but I never would be interested to buy their record. Also an interview with Harms Way who also seem to be nice guys and I would be a bit more interested to listen to their stuff. Definitely would check them out if they would do a show in my town. Anyway these interviews seem to be there, because Michal has his roots in hc punk. The thing he really wants to talk about is about Satanism and he tries to bring that up in the interviews, but the bands have not too much to say on this topic.

Hans Verbeke of Liar has surprisingly a lot to tell on Satanism. Liar was one of my favorite H8000 bands. I always more affiliated them with animal rights than the church of Satan. So it was interesting to hear Hans in this interview explain his interest in Satanism. Lately he became the new singer of Holy Terror band Rot In Hell, which he also talks about. Good interview!

The zine also contains several columns and texts on Satanism. “The 11 satanic rules of the earth” by Anton Szandor Lavey himself which is printed in the zine with an explanation are bullshit to me. Too much of a punk for that shit. I don’t want any rules, especially not like “do not give advice unless you are asked” or “do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal”. I’m interested in how LaVey is influenced by Nietzsche and gnostics, but all these crappy symbols, codes, rituals and the idea of establishing a church as an organization is too authorial for me, even if they preach individualism. LaVey also seems a bit too much of a poser too me. He might be an intelligent and nice guy, it just doesn’t attract me.

The Process Church of Final Judgement that is of another level. More the real deal to me, although I’m not that interested in their theology, the story of Process Church, like a story of humanity, is really fascinating. The Process church started in late 60-ties in London as spiritual groups around Marry Anne and Robert DeGrimston doing psychotherapy and within years the group moved to Mexico to live in a commune. A book on Process Church, which this zine also refers to, was released in 2009 and I still want to read that book, which is written by an insider of the early Process church. In the zine also a piece of writing by Robert DeGrimston himself is printed, which is not too interesting for me. I’m more interested in the psychotherapy techniques the group used, undergoing them yourself even would probably be more insightful than reading hundreds of books about the church.

There is also a cool column in the zine on why metal shows suck. He complains about the fact that metal kids use satanic symbols, but don’t refer to sources of satanism. Yeah, a lot metal kids are just  long-haired beer drinking guys with dark evil t-shirts with reverted crosses playing Diablo and read Tolkien. Like in a lot of scenes there is a lot of emphasis on looks, just like punk and hardcore I believe. I mean how many punks with anarchy signs really read Bakunin? Still I agree with him too much fake Satanists in metal. And metal shows often are boring, but then just don’t go!

Great zine, especially if you are into Process Church. You can order it from Michal and I also have some copies available if you are interested. Just drop me a  mail.

Charles Manson Interview

I wanted to buy the new LP buy by Aaron Dilloway, which unfortunately already was sold out. So I was strolling around a bit into the catalogue of Hanson records and ended up in the zine section. Here I found a reprint of zine made by Robert Turman which contained the transcript of a legendary interview Tom Snyder did with Charles Manson in 1981. I was listening too much Integrity lately, so Charles Manson was somehow morphed into my head. Thanks god to internet the interview of course is also available on youtube. Tommy Snyder only seems to be interested in Manson as a psycho and not really in the interesting things he has to say to. On the other it is not bad and I have to give him the credits of doing the interview. Can you imagine a famous late night talk show host doing this in 2012?

First part manson explaining why he cut of hitman’s ear and about Helter Skelter, “It was a song that people sang“.

video 2

He shows a lot of anger at the start of the video, like a real animal. His Jesus joke is good, he has good sense of humour. although it seems Tommy doesn’t really get it.

video3

Asked about being in prison

“Well, we’re our own prisons. We each our own wardens and we do our own times. We get stuck in our own little trips and we kind of judge ourselves the way we do.”

video 4

Manson on drugs, children and his music: “but the way I do it, ain’t the same way you guys do it. And the way I do it scares you guys.” and “there’s only one person that you could be scared of and that is yourself”. Then his comments on woman are bit downgrading..

video 5

This part starts contains interview with Nuel Emmons, who helped Manson writing sort of a biography.

video 6

Last part of the interview. Killer quote “Sometimes I feel scared to live. Living is what scares me. Dying is easy. Getting up everyday and going through this again and again is hard”

What to say about Manson? He is quite an intelligent guy, who talks a lot of paranoid nonsense and sometimes he is really nailing things down fucking right. He is a smart guy who sometimes seems to be playing with Mr Snyder and at other parts acts like a child. Interesting video though and like he says himself if you are afraid of Charles Manson, you are afraid of something in your own mind.

Manson still in prison, is now 77 years old, you can read his letters at mansondirect.com The bastard turns 78 at 12 November.

Happy Easter!

Doddodo – Do

Doddodo is a wonderful singer from Osaka who I posted on before after I saw a concert of her on an underground festival in Namba Bears in2009. She is a artists who mixes electronics, samples, keyboard, vocals to make this crazy unique songs that stick in your brain. Somehow her creative sampling reminds me of the Dutch indie artist Solex, who was actually quite popular in Japan as well in the nineties.

“Do” is the name of her second full length that was released in 2011. Looking at the simple and beautiful drawings in the booklet “Do” is explained in the Japanese sense as the way, just like AikiDo and JuDO.The album starts with noizy electronics and people shouting “Do” in a million different ways. Then the next songs have a lot of Japanese folk influences mixed with electronics. Between the songs there are as well these crazy experimental interludes. One of the best songs of the album is the sixth song, いろんな童, which google translates as “Various Child”? A straight up rock song with catchy sing-a-long that should be obligated on every indie self-respecting indie mixtape. Another one is the 8th song, 木、風, (Google: Trees, Wind…) which starts with some Radiohead Amnesiac era electronics bursting into some Japanese CSS style rap and then pop rock. She finished the album with a crazy ballad kind of song 夕日 (Google: Sunset), she pulls it off though and gets away with it. Doddodo is cool, best album from 2011 that you will hear in 2012!

The record industry must be in a deep recession, since the album only has been released in Japan so far. Luckily lots of Japanese distros do paypal these days, so you should be able to grab it from her site, japanese amazon, cdjapan and indie/punk distros. Egypt Records have it, who for the punk kids also have the last Skizophrenia ep and last Zyanose (Edit: sold out), so….

Shellac!!!

Amazing video of Shellac. Fucking heroes!

Ooooph, check the list of Steve Albini Recordings!! Everything from Pixies, Nirvana, Neurosis, Jesus Lizard to WhitehousePure genius that guy. Interesting interview with Steve Albini talking about producing:

Steve also wrote several articles and columns in zines in early eighties. You can find one of scanned versions of Matter zine on this blog. Do It Yourself!

UG Man

My favorite Japanese HC band!

Records from Japan

Last week I finally got my package from Japan with some cd’s I ordered. I hope to review some in the next weeks on this blog.

The delivery note

 

The Stalin cd wasn’t the great re-issue that I hoped for. Only some extra songs and the sound quality wasn’t great, while I hoped it would have been a remastered version. Anyway Stop Jap is still a killer album. Anyway definitely on the Doddodo and Origin of M release I will write something.