Category Archives: editorial

WTF: Porter Wagoner’s The Bottom of the Bottle

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Porter Wagoner may have been one of the legends of country music, but the dudes who approved the artwork for his records were clearly smoking Jimson weed for this one. Just WTF is going on with this picture, anyway?

Wagoner looks like he’s contemplating drinking this rotgut in spite of the fact that there’s a little man inside. “Hey Porter, over here! Look, you don’t wanna drink this. I just wee’d inside this bottle and it smells like a homeless shelter. Fer chrissakes, Porter…DON’T DRINK MEEEEEEEEE!”

The expression on Porter Wagoner’s face is priceless. It’s a cross between “Goddamn, I really want to tie one on here,” and “I wonder if free will is an artificial construct of the human mind or if it’s a crucial part of what makes our all-too-brief existence what it is?”

Or perhaps it’s kidney stones.

Scoring on Record Store Day

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It was a long crazy week, hence the dearth of posts here, but it all culminated in a lovely score on Record Store Day including the following:

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Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 on delicious vinly! Too bad it’s not blood red vinyl, but this one’s tough to find these days, apparently. I won’t say how much I paid for it, and while the cover left much to be desired (plenty of abuse on the reverse) the vinyl itself is quite yummy.

mondo-cane-sountrack-vinyl-lp

I confess I’ve never seen Mondo Cane as I’ve never had an interest in the Mondo genre, but Riz Ortolani is the same guy behind the Cannibal Holocaust soundtrack and I liked those sounds rather a lot. Nice stuff. A melange of styles from R.O.

heavy-metal-soundtrack-album

Here’s a quiz. How many of these bands are actually Heavy Metal? How about exactly ONE of them. The others can safely be called Jurassic Rock. Stevie Nicks? WTF? Of course, back when this one came out, some people thought Peter Frampton was “metal”. That was before the internet, when people were dumber.

johnny-rivers-satanist

On this album cover, for Realization, Johnny Rivers is supposed to look like a hippie, but this presentation really makes him look like he’s about to be inducted as an acolyte of the Church of Satan. I think it’s the red and purple. I LOVE this album cover and am seriously considering having one framed and matted, but only if I can hang it side by side with some kind of hideous Porter Wagoner cover for contrast.

I scored plenty of other vinyl, but these were a few of my favorites. I give serious thought to selling vinyl records here on Turntabling…stay tuned as this might actually happen in a few weeks.

WTF: From Jesus to Satan

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Imagine the conversation that went on at the record company about THIS one:

“Gladys, get me King Diamond on the phone.”

“Heyyyyy! King baby, it’s Mel down at the record company. Listen, baby, we didn’t sell enough copies of that last record you did and we need a favor. Holiday albums ALWAYS bring in a few bucks, so why don’t you come on down and give us something for Christmas, what d’ya say Kingie old sweetheart?”

“Whaddya MEAN you don’t celebrate CHRISTMAS? King, baby, I know how you feel, I’m JEWISH for cryin’ out loud. You think I wanna have anything to do with this goyim crap? Now come on, we all want a nice holiday bonus this year, right baby? Get your sweet self down here and take a nice picture for the album cover, ok? Yeah, yeah, yeah, hail Satan–I don’t care what you do at home, Kingie. Just come on over and let’s both make bank this year.”

“Thanks King, you’re beautiful, baby!”

Chris Joss Strikes Again With ‘Sticks’

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Barely a month out of the gate at press time, the new Chris Joss album Sticks is hot, hot , hot. Joss is up to his usual multi-instrumentalist tricks here–sitar, flute, heavy funk-tastic bass and a host of other delicious textures. His love of the more exotic sounds of 60s and 70s film is front and center–and when it’s a Chris Joss record that’s never a bad thing.

His previous albums have sonic tributes to cinematic touchstones including Lalo Schifrin, Isaac Hayes, and John Barry. But Sticks sounds more influenced by phases in analog music history rather than specifc albums–the Maharishi-era Beatles, Get Carter-period Roy Budd, that specific year when women dancing in go-go cages really caught on, you get the picture.

All Music Guide’s Rick Anderson tries to take Chris Joss to task for evoking these atmospheres, saying they’re for people who like “around watching cheesy movies from the ’60s and cheerfully doing the swim while bell-bottomed boys with bowl haircuts play cheerfully wanky psychedelic music.” But in declaring Joss to be “not terribly original” Anderson reveals that he completely misses the point. You might as well dismiss Daft Punk for being repetitive and too reliant on synthesizers.

Standout tracks on Sticks include Danger Buds, the “Have some opium, then” Little Nature, and my current favorite, Night Scare. All I can say is for anyone who watches Get Carter for the soundtrack as much as Michael Caine’s “ten feet tall and bulletproof” antics, the purchase of new Chris Joss record is a foregone conclusion. Sticks is a lovely, swirling and smoky collection of grooves.

PS–Chris Joss is best experienced for the first time via his jukebox sampler at the official website. There is a LOT to discover there…