KISS

KISS
by B. Thomas Hunter

Peter Criss has traveled through time seeking the cure for the disease that has ravished his band mates. The pox on the band KISS was due to a run in with a voodoo priest on their tour of South America, and the cure was hidden far away at the dawn of time. As the cat-man traveled through time he pondered his own existence, and what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, his life after KISS.

“I could become a scientist,” he said aloud in the vortex that surrounded him, his face distorted by the wave of time that overcame his body. “Gene is always telling me that I’m really creative and I loved science as a kid... I bet I’d be a good scientist.” As Peter rambled on, he did not noticed that he had left the vortex. His feet were now firmly planted some where in the ancient past. But where?

 “Computer -- run an analysis on this time period,” Peter said firmly into his wrist computer that also served as a virtual tour guide to the slipstream of time. This wasn’t a KISS invention; it actually had belonged to Blue Oyster Cult.

“Sir, the time period is…”
“Repeat that computer”
“Sir, the time is…”
“Computer, what time am I in?”
“Sir, the time analysis is incomplete. I don’t show you being in any recognizable time period.”
“Dammit,” Peter snapped back.

If he could not trace his whereabouts, then he didn’t know where to go to find the cure. He looked at the ground, there had to be a clue somewhere. In the distance he saw what he thought resembled a city.

IRAG WAR MAKES WORLD MORE DANGEROUS

IRAG WAR MAKES WORLD MORE DANGEROUS
by B. Thomas Hunter

never make me go to rehab.
that would sux.

I'M PUTTING OUT A HIT ON YOU

"Sometimes some fucked up fate shit aligns and the planets are fucked in some beautiful way and that's how people meet and hang out, etc."

"You'd think for all the cool shit, people & drugs the Stones did, they'd have made way more really good music. But they only had that one album*."

"This is like the Wii of folk-y crust punk."


*Their Satanic Majesties Request

THE FUTURE or PERVERT'S DISPOSITION or THE COKE MINES OF FRANCE

1.
 "Good evening, gentlemen. Welcome to Man's Ruin. Please check your bad vibes with the clerk, have a drink, and don't forget to tip your server."

The doorman took our coats, leaving us in the anteroom with a man named Little Jelly. The club was warm, 80 or 90 degrees, befitting the red felt of the walls. We bowed to Little Jelly as he placed moodstones around our necks. Ezra, Peter, Micha & Ernesto's stones immediately turned deep green or a pale turquoise. As it often happens, mine turned deep red. Ernesto reached into his satchel and produced a blue gel to fit over the stone.

 "Jesus Christ, Franco -- cover your stone before someone sees you. You know, you'll be lucky if someone doesn't check it during the night anyway."

 The doorman returned and ran his fingertips across the edge of my lapel & pinched the fabric.

2.
 "Oh shit," she said, "her show is on." I looked to the ceiling tile I imagined her mother was just above. Marcia was down to just her bra and skirt when her the pounding began. She shut off the boombox, gathered up her clothes, and I'd have "Paul Revere" and "Brass Monkey" stuck in my head all day. "We should get out of here."

 My year was three articles of clothing away from being made.

3.
A $100 dollar bill peppered with cocaine arrived in the mail. The note: "I stood in the green-gray haze of the mold light & it was everywhere...!" It meant the harvest was good but we were over. When my boss heard, he tried to pimp me on any babe that came in. It was only when I burned the mood ring that I got off.

GHOSTS OF FOOD CAME BACK TO HAUNT YOU

1.
No, what I'm actually concerned with is the death of sincerity. Plus or minus plants. The efficiency of soul musicians. The cowbell's reminder.

A revisionist history had never been so beautiful. We, with coffee mugs in one hand & joints in the other, wondered just what evil was. The fangs of a deadly serpent spray apple juice. The mind was willing but the body couldn't stop thinking about some crazy shit it had read earlier.

They were all about the procurement of snacks but back at the apartment she watched him jerk off from the next couch cushion. It was not the strangest thing happening above a 7-11 that day. Sex with the professor is always out-of-the-body.

The forceful putting of the Mosrite string.
The easy buy of the drugged informer.

2.
The dog did not leap but instead fell under the table. It smelled like beer and it was certainly not going to be driving anywhere that night. The cats stood on their hind legs. "We must tell Rhonda about what happened tonight."  "Yes, but let them have their fun. They're already drunk & I'm hoping one of them takes their clothes off."  Someone puts on "Echoes" from Meddle.  "Forget it. Let's tell her now."

3.
The neck of the mask was soaking wet. He tapped it with two fingers. If it was blood, he couldn't tell. Why had he had picked red for the costume in the first place? He couldn't recall.

Turning to face the lake, he saw that everything had taken a soft blue hue. He was reminded of sitting on the beach with eyes closed, then opening them to see everything was a new, slightly blue version of the old everything. He kneeled, a sliver of pain in the gravel, then numbness.

The sensation of pins was fast & unreal, shooting through his limbs and dying out. The blue was darkening entirely past purple & turning black. Shadows took mass, obscuring the edge of his vision like the spiraled closing of a camera's shutter. Lying on his side, he folded his arms to keep the chill at bay, and said something as the waterfront became consumed with darkness.

Three bros skated by the body, laughing. The city planted a victory garden in the spot.

My sister unplugged the phone: "How about a moment of silence for a fallen hero?" Our father threw a shoe at her. "You pick some berries, you leave some behind!"

THE ARCANE GHETTO or SNOOZING & LOSING AT THE LATIN BATH

"Come now, this is a beautiful chair -- just as the Amish intended!"

SCUD MOUNTAIN BOYS

SCUD MOUNTAIN BOYS

by D.C. Berman

This time of year the light comes through the pines in flat beams and spark points, glancing off the frost that decorates the grounds of the light-studded medical cities. For a six-sided record I feel like I'm back in the haunted Piedmonts, a decorated major in the Japanese Inner Space Program, renewing my vow to bear down on the truth even if there is none for a hundredth time.

After the exodus of the Calm Reflectors I had started seeing the Scud Mountain Boys around town with their Baltimore haircuts, the guitarist's guitarist carrying his 1873 "trapdoor" Springfield rifle, the progeny of the muzzle-loading French Charleville muskets that had whacked so many Redcoats around these hills. I had heard it was the band's tradition to lay dinner on the table uncooked and then set the table on fire.

I was out for a walk with Mr. Fiddler the other night, when he turned to me and said, "this is the time of year when the region is at peace with itself." I turned to laugh in his face when the impulse subsided. He had been right of course. I'd already seen it happen in the slide projector's cone of lit dust: the November sky hovering over lives of dark employment like a televised clay bank, breech-loaders replacing muzzle-loaders, crows wired to the sky like marred pixels, portraits cubed into accordioned life while every single object of perception waited for us in the air conditioning. Yes, tennis crested in the seventies, killing Eddie Money and the last of the Holmby Hills Rat Pack, but how many times did we have to witness the L.A. fireplaces reflected in L.A. wineglasses before it ended?

You meet these suburban kids with Biblical names, but there are walls behind their eyes, strange mathematical mountains at whose base we sit playing our native keyboards and rinsing our teeth with digital snow. I'm starting to believe that the inscription above the portal describes this side, not the next.

Few people know that George Washington's favorite song was "The Darby Ram," or stop to think that before he was a statue he scratched his weld, got the hiccups, and danced alone in his room. All the "human things." He must have been scared when he fought in the woods, hiding in the dormant Christmas trees, his hand gripping the black walnut musket stock.

In those times and these we turn to the pacifics of a Gamelan orchestra for transport and release. We stand by the hind legs of a K car, listening to the new city cassettes, searching for some sign of human residence here beneath the justifiably uncelebrated Massachusetts sky.

This treasured early work brought calm forecasts and sad peace to our house. I hope you take it with you when you go.

COMEUPPANCE

Dang! The future looks brilliant, I'll tell you what. And this is just the half of it. Flyers to come!

7 August 2009

Ann Arbor Soul Club

Brad Hales & Breck Bunce play the very finest Northern Soul, r&b, modern, Motown, etc. you will never hear on the radio or pretty much anywhere else,. Always, always a good time. Robert Wells returns in September!

Blind Pig / 208 S. First, A2 / 9:30PM / $5

• Ann Arbor Soul Club on Facebook - www.facebook.com/pages/Ann-Arbor-Soul-Club/59084941493
• Ann Arbor Soul Club on MySpace - www.myspace.com/a2soulclub

9 August 2009

Our Brother the Native / Psychic Reality / Royalchord / Dark Matter DJs

Fatcat artists, Our Brother the Native, play with SF's awesome Psychic Reality (starring Ms. Leyna Noel, a member of Mirah's touring band) and Royalchord. The Dark Matter doods, Aaron Lindell & myself, will play records inbetween.

Yellow Barn / 416 W. Huron, A2 / 8PM / $5

• Our Brother the Native - www.obtn.biz
• Our Brother the Native on MySpace - www.myspace.com/ourbrotherthenative
• Psychic Reality on MySpace - www.myspace.com/realitypsychic
• Royalchord on MySpace - www.myspace.com/royalchordroyalchord

11 August 2009

Calvin Johnson & Hive Dwellers / City Center / Tyvek

The excellent new band from K Records head Calvin Johnson makes its Ann Arbor debut w/ Fred Thomas & Ryan Howard's City Center and the always great/sloppy Tyvek. I think Brett Lyman & myself will be playing records inbetween/after.

Yellow Barn / 416 W. Huron, A2 / 8PM / $5 / ALL AGES

• Calvin Johnson - www.krecs.com
• City Center on Blogspot - citycenternyc.blogspot.com
• City Center on MySpace - www.myspace.com/citycenternyc
• Tyvek on MySpace - www.myspace.com/tyvekmusic

SICK OF SICKNESS, HOORAY FOR POSITIVITY

This is it: the summer's lull. The slow part. The long part.

But I think it only feels like it's not totally great. Maybe I just have my own thing going on. Whatever the case, I'm happy to report that the response was pretty good to my first solo spoken word thing. The repertoire was basically a 'greatest hits' of this blog peppered with snarky comments & gross facial expressions. Nice! I think the soundman shut the monitors off within minutes of me starting which wasn't so nice.

Some recent picks:

Open Strings: Early Virtuoso Recordings From The Middle East, And New Responses (Honest Jon's). "A dazzling selection of virtuoso string-playing from Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Turkey, all recorded in the 1920s, and pretty much unheard ever since. In addition, Open Strings includes a disc of newly-commissioned responses to the themes in this music by underground luminaries." The first disc was so killer it killed the second disc which I thought I'd like more.

Blues Control - Local Flavor (Siltbreeze). "While past releases have been beauteous extrapolations into the miasmic core of psychedelia and billowing fog of ambient space, Local Flavor is the one where all the chickens have come home to roost." This is such a natural jam. Really blew my mind when I put it on the first time. From the hot, murky mix to the fine-tuned sequencing, it's so dang good.

Also excellent is the new Explode Into Colors 7" ("Devastating debut mastered for immense bass response...") on M'Lady's & the G Spots compilation ("The Spacey Folk Electro-Horror Sounds of the Studio G Library") on Trunk. I'm also slowly devouring the David Berman cartoon book.

I'd like to talk more about some shit coming out but I gotta' scramble!

MYSTERIOUS TRANSMISSION FROM NICK GEORGE/ZONE DOGS

I'll let you all know a little secret about tomorrow's show.

if you come at 5pm... you'll get a chance to chill a little bit harder than everyone who comes later... and you will be able to