Category Archives: Featured

Chris Joss: A Part In That Show 12-Inch Single

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Chris Joss is a musical juggernaut. Based in France, the Chris Joss experience is a funky, uber-smooth retro callback to the disco dance floors and too-cool-for-school Shaft-style action soundtracks I grew up digging very much. The fact that Joss plays all his own instruments cinches the deal–he has too much talent to measure and if you are one of those people (like me) who can sit through an otherwise lukewarm 60s or 70s film because it has a killer soundtrack, this 12-inch is for you. A Part In That Show is from the You’ve Been Spiked album, a must-own. Go to the Chris Joss site to hear a very generous free sampling of everything he’s done to date. RECOMMENDED.

Geyser: Icelandic Indie Rock Anthology

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Before Bjork started caterwauling about UFOs, before the Sugarcubes was upping the weirdo factor on MTV’s 120 Minutes with Dave Kendall (whatever happend to THAT guy?) Iceland was growing a great indie music scene that went totally unappreciated in America…except by Enigma Records. Geyser is an anthology released on vinyl in 1987 featuring a nice lineup of talented groups from the land of the midnight sun.

Iceland’s indie scene is even more fascinating today with blokes like Bardi Johannsson (aka Bang Gang), but before Bardi, there was Kukl, Hoh, Bubbi Morthens and Das Kapital tearing things up. This album covers all the bases from techno throb to the great, Crass-like screaming about “the man on the cross” on Kukl’s stellar track. Mickey Dean and De Vunderfoolz give some new wave/Billy Idol thrills with “Citified”…there simply isn’t a bad cut on this album.

I have no idea why Enigma released this in 1987, but I am so grateful they did…it gave me a lot to look for when I finally made to Iceland for two years in 1999. Icelandic indie lovers should also search high and low for a two-CD soundtrack to the film Rokk i Reykjavik, a concert film roughly equivalent to Urgh! A Music War in terms of the number and diversity of bands. If you want to get an idea of modern Iceland indie music, check out my interview with Bang Gang’s Bardi Johannsson for Gearwire.com.

JapRockSampler: Julian Cope on Far East Psych Vinyl

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I picked this up yesterday in one of Chicago’s finest vinyl sources, Reckless Records. I’m already four chapters into this amazing tome and I must say, Copey is right on the money. I got addicted to his confessional acid-soaked memoirs Head On and Reposessed ; since then Cope has written a slew of books including the vital KrautRockSampler.

Julian Cope has a fascinating brain. He’s not content to look at the music–he examines the cultural forces which shaped Japan’s psychedelic music explosion–including the seeming contradictory anti-drug stance of some of these performers. Acid music without the acid? A stretch for the western mind, to be sure until you understand that Japan has a long-standing cultural association with meditative states and free-form musical expression. Take one part Shinto, one part Zen, and mix in an obsession with death and rebirth and you have a quite fertile breeding ground for the imagination.

Cope hits all this, plus Commodore Perry’s “opening of Japan” and more. I’m a huge fan of this book already and haven’t yet put it down except to write this. All the bands listed in this book are on vinyl, glorious vinyl and I am afraid that I’m about to be drawn into some kind of obsessive tunnel-vision quest for all these and more. Any musical omnivore will love this.

I foolishly paid $30 for this, only to find it JapRockSampler at Amazon for much cheaper. This will teach me to fall in love with hardcover books before doing my research. Still, I don’t begrudge Reckless Records–I never would have found this otherwise until getting clued in by some fellow traveler.

They Could Have Been Bigger Than EMI

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Oh, damn! What a great concept. This book is a labor of love put together by Joachim Gaertner, who is responsible for the late, great Germany-based Get Happy!! Records. This label released a CD by Crevice, a Texas-based psych/experimental group I performed and recorded with from on and off from 1997 to 2002. I have many fond memories of Crevice and will always have a fondness for Get Happy!! Records…but that’s not the reason I’m posting now.

In its second edition, They Could Have Been Bigger Than EMI is a collection of discography info on defunct indie labels that released vinyl. This massive, 567-page book has information on more than four thousand labels, with thousands of images. Want to know all about Stiffwick? Unicorn? Crass Records? Green Fez? Small Wonder Records? It’s all here. For the record–I have NOT read this book yet, but I am totally excited by the idea of it. What an amazing accomplishment!

These days Joachim Gaertner runs Pure Pop For Now People, his small vinyl label and mailorder. I’ve not heard any of the groups on his roster except for the great-sounding S/T, but I am sure the others sound equally delicious. I am very happy to see him still at it after all this time and doing it on vinyl to boot! Check the book out, drop him a line at the PPFNP site to get ordering info.