Five years before The Velvet Underground recorded "Sister Ray," the utterly unknown Paul Livert & The Lions recorded two sides of non-stop primal rock'n'roll madness. There were many records released to cash in on the Twist dance craze, and most of them get pretty boring after a while. But this one could ignite any alcohol-drenched evening of debauchery - it's all instrumental (in the ever-reliable 12 bar blues form), all raunchy honkin' sax, wacky slide guitar, fat organ, and relentlessly pounding drums. The momentum builds until the final minutes of side one sounds like everything's about to fly out of control. Side 2 is a little more relaxed (maybe they burned themselves out) but those nutty Hawaiian guitar solos are almost cartoonish. And the sax player is always on.
Paul Livert & The Lions: "Chicken Twist" (1962) side 1 and 2
Despite the "Vol. 2" tag, there apparently was no Vol. 1 - they're "lion" to us (har har!).We kicked off our new weekly "Filthy Friday" series last week because I've been pondering: is 'cool' dead? A number of events coincided recently: an article (in Slate I think?) asking: what does cool even mean nowadays?; the Smithsonian Institute photo exhibit "American Cool" currently on display thru Sept (doesn't something have to be dead, stuffed and mounted before it's in a museum?); reading a lowbrow art zine complaining about how the 'nerds and squares' have taken over; and being stuck in traffic in front of the Los Angeles Convention Center hosting an anime convention and being dumbstruck by the sheer volume of nerdliness on display.
I don't hate nerds, as I'm sure everyone has a little nerd in them somewhere, but it has occurred to me that with the recent deaths of Lou Reed and the last surviving original Ramone, there are precious few cool icons left. Any young Miles Davis or Johnny Cash sorts coming up today, or just pale imitations? Meanwhile, the rise of internet culture, political correctness, ComicCon-type stuff, etc is all making mid-century culture look increasingly alien...and to some of us, attractive. No wonder "Mad Men" is such a popular show.
On a musical level, few rock critics even bother with the pre-Beatles/Dylan era. Sure, they give props to Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, etc., but for the most part, the lower-income, chemical-fueled, sleazy aura of early rock (like its cultural contemporaries burlesque/strip clubs, exotica, nightclub comics) doesn't get much respect and is something that's rarely examined. It doesn't fit in with the Rolling Stone/Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame-approved view of history. Like how jazz, born in brothels and for years primarily a dance music, has somehow become 'America's Classical Music.' All of this takes the fun out of it. And is bad history to boot. Much of the music I'll be featuring here was found in the 99 cent bin, has never been digitally reissued, and as I have been unable to find much info about these artists, is apparently forgotten.
I believe cool developed as a way for at-risk people to deal with a cruel world. You could either curl up on the ground whimpering in fear, or put on your shades, act like you're above all this nonsense, and have a ball. But life in the Western world is generally getting easier (I emphasize 'generally'), so cool, like an evolutionary adaption that is no longer needed, atrophies. Bad-ass '50s actor Robert Mitchum actually served time on a chain gang. Today's Tom Cruise-types have only served time in acting classes. Which is probably why the hip-hop world and it's aura of street authenticity has so successfully moved into acting. (Ice T? Coolest guy on TV.)
Of course, there will always be poor and oppressed people, so maybe cool will take new forms. But til then, we're hosting an Irish-style wake for cool, inviting over all the hepcats 'n' flipped chicks, beatniks, hot-rodders, greasers, strippers, lowlifes, drunks, comedians who 'work blue', and JDs, breaking out the booze, watching 'B' movies, and whoopin' it up here every week til I run out of bargain-bin vile vinyl. We gonna party like it's 1959.
For a variety of reasons that I'll get into next week, I felt that the world needed more musical Sin! Sleaze! and Vice! So every Friday, I will endeavor to provide you hep cats 'n' flipped chicks with all manner of mid-century garage, surf/hot-rod, burlesque, novelty, rhythm 'n' blues, soul, lounge, b-movie ads and soundbites, and any other audio effluvia that can lead to the moral degradation of this once-great land of ours. Basically, if you can imagine Lux and Ivy spinning these platters in their leopard-skin draped den, sipping lethal cocktails, then baby, it's in. Let the weekend begin!
I realize that this is not new territory, so I'll try not to feature anything that has already appeared on compilation series like "Nuggets," "Back From The Grave," "Wavy Gravy," "Las Vegas Grind," "Jungle Exotica," "Songs The Cramps Taught Us," "Lux and Ivy's Favorites," and rare surf collections. To increase the level of difficulty, I'm also trying to avoid songs /albums that are currently being featured by such music blog compadres as Office Naps, Surfadelic, The Devil's Music, and Titty-Shakers. That still leaves plenty, as I delve into regions other trash collectors might overlook - comedy albums that might have one good dirty song amidst the stand-up stuff, film soundtracks (see the Kenyon Hopkins track below) or easy-listening albums (e.g.: Enoch Light, Lester Lanin) that throw in one sleazy rocker, international releases that have only recently hit our shores, even recording off video for film songs never released on record. And there are still 45s that have not yet been comped. This collection is a sampler, a little taste of some of the varia-tease of sleazy-listening musics that we'll be exploring in the coming weeks and months. Aren't you happy that there really was a band called the Four Finks?The name of this collection and the artwork come from an old nudie magazine spread (if you'll pardon the term, boom-tish!) featuring model/singer Bonnie Logan.Lowbrow vol.1: Sweet BeatAlternate Link (courtesy of super-swell reader Soylent White Trash)
1. Official Warning (from "Blood Feast")2 Rusty Warren - Do It Now [song extracted from a track-less comedy album by that "Bounce Your Boobies" gal]3 Billy Mure - Supersonic4 from "Porno Holocaust"5 Willie Tomlin - Stroke My Yoke [I am fairly certain that this naughty R'n'B singer was not related to Lily Tomlin]6 De Maskers - The Saint [mid-'60s Dutch band]7 "Triple Terror Show" ad8 The Four Finks - Rock-o-Nails9 Ron Haydock and the Boppers - Rat Pfink [from the soundtrack to "Rat Pfink a Boo Boo" by the great Z-movie director Ray Dennis Steckler; this really is one of my favorite rockabilly songs]10 The Deuce Coupes - Starter's Nightmare [anonymous studio cats on a "budget" label album; you'll be hearing plenty of those]11 Scatman Crothers - Transfusion [Oh! happy day, when I found this 45 in a Las Vegas thrift store - the great comic actor covered the classic Nervous Norvous car-crash novelty song?! Wow, who knew - I probably skipped merrily about the shop holding it up: "look what I got!"] 12 Bill Black's Combo - The Wheel [Black was Elvis' original bassist]13 "Mark of the Devil" ad14 Lester Lanin - Guitar Boogie Twist15 "fourteen Baby"16 Enoch Light - The Gang at the Green Grotto17 "Superchick" ad18 Barbara Stanwyck - Take It Off The E String [predating our post-WWII time frame for this one, recorded off the video of the film "Lady of Burlesque"]19 Ricky Vale And His Surfers - Soul Full of Surfin20 B. Brock and the Sultans - 30 Lb. Beetle [another budget label mystery; one of a few mp3s found on this collection that I've had on a hard-drive for ages; I might be able to get a better quality - maybe - were I to try digitizing the album with my latest music software; it really is excellent trad-surf, despite the ridiculous Beatles cash-in angle]21 "Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde" ad22 Los Saicos - Demolicion [teen garage-punk from Peru (!?) from an excellent recent reissue]23 Sil Austin - FalloutLookit! The song titles are now telling a story:24 Jerry Colonna - Hey Barmaid!!25 Don Carson and the Casuals - Yes Master26 The Daddy Os - Got a Match27 Lonnie Duvall - Cigarettes [this short-lived soul singer was backed by Booker T & The MGs, no less, on this 45]28 The Three Suns - Tequila 29 The Vagabonds - Walkin' And Talkin30 Billy Mure - Drums of India [exotic rock remake of the old standard "Song of India"]31 Brother Theodore - Horror of the Blood Monsters32 Kenyon Hopkins - Let Me Out [from the soundtrack to "The Fugitive Kind" 1960; is that Pere Ubu's David Thomas on vox?]33 The Vox Poppers - The Last Drag
Thanks to Count Otto Black for the international nuggets - plenty more of those to come.
I don't recall hearing the word "turntablism" back in 1989 when this album was released, but that's what this is. Needless to say, this ain't no "wiki-wiki-scratch" type stuff. I saw Marclay in performance with Tom Recchion and Toshio Kajiwara in 2003 and it was quite a sight to see records being so creatively abused, e.g.: 8 'tables all playing copies of the same record, with stickers placed on the vinyl so the records would skip at certain points. I wanna do that! The performance was part of an exhibit of his visual art, which is quite spectacular as well. Witness his giant, useless accordion, or his album cover collages (but what's the middle album in this one, the one in between Michael Jackson and Roxy Music?). 
From the liners:Each piece is composed entirely of records by the artist after whom it is titled.
"John Cage" is a recording of a collage made by cutting slices from several records and gluing them back into a single disc.
In all other pieces the records were mixed and manipulated on multiple turntables and recorded analog with the use of overdubbing.
A hand-crank gramophone was used in "Louis Armstrong". Christian Marclay – "More Encores"
