BROADCAST #11
AIR DATE: 03-07-06

Hello Fanatics. Here’s all the songs Heidi and I played tonight. I hope you enjoyed our nonstop battle. We are like that all the time. For years. It’s funny, people really do think we’re married. I get asked all the time.
     Anyway, like I said, I will be taking off for some shows in Europe in a few days but Engineer X and I did put together some good music for the next two weeks. Now, the third week will be interesting. Heidi is going to do the show with Chuck, who does the morning show with Dickey Barret. He’s got his own show called Dead Air on Sundays and he agreed to do this with Heidi. He has sat in on my show before and has good taste in music. Anyway, Heidi told me to tell you all that you can write in and ask any question you want about me and she’ll answer them. As you know, she’s very to-the-point and loves to take any opportunity to take me down a notch so, feel free to write in with your questions to my address here and I will pass all of them onto her and she will decide which ones she’ll answer. Should make for some interesting radio. I’ll have a list of songs they will play and Chuck will bring in some music as well as Ms. Heidi. Should be a good one. In any case, I do hope you enjoyed the show tonight. I hope you liked that Deadboy & the Elephantmen outfit. The album is really cool. I’ll be back live in a few weeks. Thanks.
Henry

An archive of the 2005 – 2006 shows can be found here: http://www.rollins-archive.com/.

Huun-Huur Tu – Kyrgyraa: I was watching Werner Herzog’s Little Dieter Needs To Fly the other night and was tripping on the music. I checked the end credits and saw that it was music from Tuva. I checked on what’s available on CD an came across this band Huun-Huur Tu. I read reviews of their live albums and decided to check them out. This is from their album called Live 2. The whole album is amazing. I went to their site to see that I missed a couple of chances to see them. I will be near them in Europe coming up but I have only one day off and they’re not playing. I am shooting for their show in October at Cal. State Chico. Throat singers of Tuva y’all! http://www.huunhuurtu.com/.

James White – Contort Yourself: From the James White and the Blacks album Off White. James White aka James Chance was part of that great New York No Wave scene that included Suicide, Lydia Lunch, Mars and DNA. Such a great time for music there. New York has been the place for so much great music from as far back as you want to go. The classic compilation album No New York album is finally on CD and has great tracks and chronicles that scene really well. James has released some really great records. Off White, Buy Contortions to name two. There’s a nice box set from Tiger Style called Irresistible Impulse that gives you a healthy dose of Mr. White.

Thor - Thunderhawk: This is from the limited tour editing release An-Thor-Ology CD. I think I have all the Thor records. I got one of his records eBay awhile ago. The people I bought it from contacted him and told him and he expressed interest in coming to one of my shows. We put him on the guest list and he showed up. Cool guy. Anticipating the meeting, I wisely packed all my Thor records on the tour bus and he signed them all!

Butch Willis – Drugs: From the Repeats album on Teenbeat, one of my favorite labels. We’ve played other songs from this album. In 2004, we heard TVs From Outer Space and Girl’s On My Mind. I don’t know who to compare Butch to. I think he’s on his own. One of the many great DC area originals. The Teenbeat site has a great picture up on Butch’s page of Butch and Ian MacKaye. http://www.teenbeatrecords.com/.

The Dogs – Fed Up: I’ve had this single about a quarter of a century now. Great band out of Michigan. The single is hard to find but thankfully a CD of a lot of their stuff is out, same name as the song. The Black Flag guys were big fans of The Dogs and that’s how I found out about them. Here’s a cool page with an interview with them:
http://www.acc.umu.se/~samhain/summerofhate/dogs.html

Deadboy & the Elephantmen – How Long the Night Was: I don’t know much about this band but I sure do like the record. I have had it about a week or so. Heidi turned me onto them. I hope people check them out. Their album is called We Are Night Sky and it’s on Fat Possum Records. Let’s see if I can find some info on them. Here you go: http://www.deadboyandtheelephantmen.com/tours.html.

The Jive Five - Rain: I knew these guys from their song My True Story, which was a Billboard #1 single and appears on numerous Doo Wop compilation albums. I have a best of CD of theirs and it’s good all the way through in my opinion. No weak singers in the group so all the choruses and leads are really strong. The arrangements and song writing is beautiful. That’s one of the things that draws me to the genre, the construction of the better songs. Since you have already heard their hit, we’ll listen to another one of their tunes, Rain.

Iggy – Kill City: From the album of the same name. If I remember correctly, this is the post-Stooges, pre-Iggy/Bowie era recordings of Mr. Pop. I think I remember reading in a book about him that he did these vocals on weekend leave from some place where he was repairing his psyche. Being in the Stooges for a lot of years probably isn’t all that good for you. Some interesting musicians on the sessions. Raw Power era guitarist James Williamson and keyboard player Scott Thurston are on the record as well as the Sayles brothers, who as most of you know, figure into the Bowie/Iggy world. This was really a Williamson/Pop record. An interesting snapshot of the period of the demise of one of rocks greatest bands and the start of Iggy the solo artist.

MC5 – Gold: I had this track on the ROIR MC5 cassette for years and then a CD of it came out so I stopped wearing out the tape. The MC5 as you know, is a band with no shortage of great material but this one for me is a stand out. I forget when the tape came out, 1982 or something, but it really put the hook in me. I think the CD has been re-packaged and re-released on ROIR as Babes In Arms. The record has some interesting tracks on it, alt. vocals etc. This track though, is the most interesting as it breaks away from what you expect from this band. For me, it was always the 3rd album High Time that I listened to the most.

Buzzcocks – Everybody’s Happy Nowadays (Peel Session): I know, I know, a no brainer Buzzcocks pick but what the hell. Everyone’s heard this one. To throw the slightest of monkey wrenches into the thing, we listened to the Peel Session version. There’s some slight differences in lyrics and hesitation on this version that are long gone on the proper single release. If you play the two back to back, Peel version first, the single version fairly explodes out of the speakers. Without swaggering or raising their voices, the Buzzcocks display an enormous amount of confidence in their music. Pretty amazing, those early albums and singles, considering they hadn’t been playing all that long. Some people were just born to do it. Ok, before we go, let’s make note of some of the facts, as they are so important! The Peel Session was recorded 10-18-78 and produced by Bob Sargeant. It was one of three tracks done on that day. The other two were Lipstick and 16 Again. The single version with Why Can’t I Touch It? was recorded at the end of January on 1979 and was released 03-02-79. The picture sleeve had a few different slight differences, sending the collectors running. The front of the single had the band’s name in either blue or green ink and the photo was tinted in different colors. There is a US pressing of this single, a UK a-label promo as well as a German pressing and Irish pressing with no picture sleeve and sheet music with the Buzzcocks logo in blue. If you want to see pictures of all these and get great information on the discography of the band, go right here: http://www.btinternet.com/~buzzcocks/.

Sunn 0))) – It Took the Night To Believe: from the Black 1 album. I don’t know much about these guys. I just heard them, liked them, got their stuff and here we are. So far, this is my favorite one of all their records I’ve heard so far. It’s always great to hear bands that only play what they want. There’s no way the Sunn 0))) lads are thinking crossover success here. They are only thinking of what rocks them. It rocks me too. It at least smashes me to pieces.

Sly And The Family Stone – If You Want To Stay: From the album Fresh All of you have heard this album by now but the version of the song we’re hearing tonight is different than the one that’s on the Fresh album. As we talked about before, in the rush to get everything put onto CD to satisfy people’s demand, sometimes mistakes were made. The wrong masters of this album were committed to the digital domain and trotted out to the shops. This album was eventually pulled I think but enough got out there. I got a copy of this from a fellow Fanatic some years ago. This version is interesting with the different out to point, different beginning, etc. Pretty cool right?!

Pure Hell – Lame Brain: Another track from Noise Addiction, the long lost Pure Hell album! Recorded over 25 years ago and only released now. Available now from Welfare Records. A 2 disc set, one CD and one DVD. All black punk from Philadelphia!

The Gun Club – Bill Bailey: From the Mother Juno album. I always thought this was such a great riff and it allows singer Jeffrey Lee Pierce to really soar with the vocal. I saw the Gun Club play a lot of times and I thought the last few times I saw them were the best. He had a great band, the songs were as good or even better than ever and then when things were looking pretty good for JLP and the band, he died. I remember getting the call. I was living in New York at the time and my label was in the process of putting this record out. I really wish he could have seen it as it was going to be the first time Mother Juno was going to get an American release. I will always maintain that Jeffrey is one of the great underappreciated talents that came from the American Independent scene. This record and another, called Pastoral Hide and Seek are both really worth checking out. One time, I asked Jeffrey what Bill Bailey was about, thinking he was referencing the great American iconoclast writer, freedom fighter and larger than life figure of the same name. ( I got to meet this guy, what an honor http://www.larkspring.com/Kid/Bailey.html) Jeffrey said no, that he wrote it about Nick Cave and all the people following him around.

The Monks – I Hate You: The Monks were five soldiers stationed in Germany in the mid-sixties. They had a band called the Monks. They recorded an album, which at the time, terrified a lot of people who couldn’t get to the stripped down garage punk sound of it but so what. I have never heard anything like this record. The album, Black Monk Time is in print and really cool. There’s an informative write-up of the band’s history on their site: http://www.the-monks.com/. Had the band been in America when they recorded and released the record, perhaps things would have gone a little differently for them. I can’t think playing this music in Hamburg Germany at the time they were didn’t come without some difficulty. In America, they might have been seen as another garage band as the record isn’t all that out of the ordinary when you listen to garage bands of the same era. There’s something to be said for what comes from the lack of influence and distraction. It must have taken a lot of guts to go out and play this stuff in front of a bunch of drunks! Also, to demonstrate the staying power of their music, we listened to Manchester England’s mightiest export, The Fall, covering this song.

The Fall – Black Monk Theme Part 1(I Hate You): Mark E Smith of The Fall, like a lot of people, is a fan of the Monks. The band covered two Monks songs in the sessions for their 1990 album Extricate. I think they did a good job on I Hate You and prefer it to the job they did on Oh, How To Do Now, which The Fall called Black Monk Theme Part 2. They released their version of I Hate You on the album and Oh, How To Do was released on the Popcorn Double Feature 12” and also as an extra track on the Extricate CD. For Fall info, there’s only one place to go: http://www.visi.com/fall/.

David Lee Roth – Yankee Rose (sung in Spanish): After Departing Van Halen, Mr. Roth almost immediately made the Eat’em and Smile album. Diamond Dave, being the forward thinker he is, knew of VH’s vast appeal in Spanish speaking countries and did all the vocals for the album in Spanish so all those fans could rock as well. It’s really interesting, this one as besides being in a different language, the mix is a little more raw. As far as I know, this album was never released on CD and so tonight, we take it off the LP.