Best Of The Blogs: Part 1
No longer does the world have to suffer the carbon footprint of my almost daily musical quests. All I have to do now is sit in front of my computer to find a plethora of unique, non-mainstream inspirations that eluded me, more times than not, when I had to physically travel untold distances to get my fixes. Here are but some of my favorite places to go...
Dedicated to extremes in music and utterly unique sounds, this is one of my favorite blogs. As of late, Mr. Fab has been posting tunes by the little known thrift-store Frank Zappa: Zoogz Rift (born Robert Pawlikowski, July 10, 1953 in Paterson, New Jersey), a man whose prodigious output over the last 30-odd years is virtually impossible to find. The ongoing series features choice cuts from Mr. Rift’s vast catalog of difficult listens, from 1979’s screamingly obtuse Idiots On The Miniature Golf Course, to the tormented anger of 1989’s appropriately titled Torment. If it weren’t for this wondrous site, I would have never have heard India's Milind Tulankar (one of the few virtuosos of the Jaltarang, a collection of 16 bowls filled with varying amounts of water that are struck with sticks), Arnold Schwarzenegger’s exercise record from 2000, Total Body Workout, or Fun-Da-Mental’s anarchist cookbook instructional raps. That would have been horrible. And how could anyone live a life designed to be lived to its fullest without hearing La Lupe’s cosmic lounge oddity, The Lavender Jungle? I shudder to think. My advice to you? Download everything Music for Maniacs posts. It is the good stuff.
It is my informed musical opinion that the blues is dead. People have been raping its 1, 4, 5 corpse for decades. Having said that, there is nothing quite like the blues in its pure original form. It’s so human it hurts. Named after the immortal Robert Johnson tune, Hellhound On My Trail posts crucial acoustic blues gems from yesteryear by Blind Boy Fuller, Memphis Minnie, Lead Belly, William Harriss and a bevy of timeless others to remind you that what passes as blues today is really just dog shit.
Oh, how I suckled on the nipple of punk rock in the early 80’s. All that vigorous nipple sucking made me the man I am today. Killed By Death is a vast resource of adolescent nostalgia for me. I’ve kept a lot of those records over the years, but somehow I lost my copies of Downward Christian Soldiers by DC’s Black Market Baby, the original single version of “I Love Livin’ In The City” by Fear, and the great lost DC compilation of early 80’s racket-making on Dunn Loring, Virginia Label DSI, Mixed Nuts Don’t Crack. Not only does KBD Records post high quality MP3’s of these recordings, they post the original artwork, give insightful historical notes, and provide always-witty commentary on the bands and their influence. It reads like a cheap Xeroxed fanzine. I’m not one for nostalgia, but if you want an accurate, unsanitized site for all things underground/hardcore/punk rock when Ronald Reagan was president, this is the place to, as grandpa used to say, “Flex your head."
Reading/listening to blogs like this, one question comes to mind: where the fuck do these people find the time? If there was a profit motive, I would understand. But seeing as it is extremely doubtful that the gentleman from Wisconsin posting all this great rare African music is making a pretty penny from all his web based diligence, the only motivation I can think of is the music. And this site is work. A lot of work. Everything he posts is transcribed from the original vinyl recordings, and the time and effort put into the biographical information on the artists and bands he champions (Tanzania's Mbaraka Mwinshehe, Rigo Star and Josky Kiambukuta from Kinshasa, Kenya’s Sylvester Odhiambo & the Ambira Boys, etc.) can’t be easily copied and pasted from Wikipedia. As I said before, brother-man puts a ton of hard, time consuming work into this site, and I for one thank my lucky stars for it (as should you).
If for some unexplainable reason you have a burning desire to hear my shitty band from the mid-80’s, The Alter Natives, Archived Records has a couple of our tunes posted for your possible (though highly unlikely) listening pleasure. This site catalogs the myriad of Virginia and North Carolina bands from yesterday and today that went or are currently going nowhere and nowhere fast (notable exceptions being GWAR, House of Freaks and Cracker, though I will never consider the latter to be a Virginian band). Primarily a history lesson, old Richmond favorites such as the Good Guys, Flannel, Near East and Breadwinner are featured with a smattering of tunes and video links. There isn’t a whole lot of biographical information on any of the bands or artists, but that is fitting given the obscurity of the groups. The gentleman who puts together the site is currently looking for music by Mudd Helmet, Fat Elvis and the Sex Police, so if you have any moldy old tapes or long forgotten recordings of these groups or any other bands from Virginia or North Carolina that nobody knows about, he would appreciate being tuned in.
Chris Bopst has been a fixture on the Richmond music scene for over two decades, playing in GWAR, the Alter Natives, and The Holy Rollers, among other bands. His free-form radio show, The Bopst Show, has existed for over a decade, appearing on multiple Richmond AM radio stations before becoming an internet podcast in 2008. Weekly episodes of the podcast can be found at rvanews.com.