I'm heading out the door for the trek to Europe -- first stop, Rotterdam, tour dates here -- and I thought I'd mention quickly while I'm still on the American wifi that the digital verison of the MTX cover of Road to Ruin is now up on all the various services.
I get loads of questions about this, and I used to answer by shuffling my feet and hemming and hawing and trying to change the subject, so it's nice to be able to answer it like this:
"Why, yes, my good man, you may now download it at http colon slash slash amazon dot com slash Road dash to dash Ruin slash dp slash B009D4n6Z0 ."
As for future re-releases of CDs or vinyl of that particular album, well, hem haw, hey look over there in the reeds, is that a kingfisher?
The currently available digital Mr T Experience / MTX / Dr. Frank catalog can be found here.
Okay, I'm off. See ya in the Low Countries.
You can still order this 7" from Interpunk in the US, or direct from Surfin' KI Records in Europe. But it's a very limited pressing so...
I heard the mixed version of Kepi's "Two Minute Itch" for the first time the other day and it came out great, kinda Keith-ish, Johnny Thunders-ish, Nikki Sudden-ish, that type of thing. My side is more acoustic-electronic.
Your government's view of blasphemy and the First Amendment:
Jim Testa posted this video on facebook with the following tale:
Back in 1978, Robert Christgau wrote a piece in the Voice saying that punk rockers who hated disco were inherently homophobic. I disagreed. We didn't like disco because the music wasn't any good. So I wrote a song, and somehow it made its way into the hands of the brilliant Kim Kane, and he wrote new music for it and turned it into a Slickee Boys song. I hear this track was huge in Germany.
I'd never heard the song, and I hadn't known about Testa's efforts in the Disco Sucks Movement till now. Cool story.
Anyway, I started to type up a comment over there but it got too long so I'm putting it here instead. For I, too, was a Disco Sucks activist way back when.
The vehemence and passion of the Disco Sucks movement is hard to grasp now and impossible to communicate to people who weren't "there." It wasn't simply that the music wasn't any good, though much of it was not, obviously. It was a cultural attitude that crossed through many subcultures, each adopting it -- perhaps a bit hypocritically in many cases -- as a part of a vague disapproval of inauthenticity, mass culture, etc. It certainly wasn't simple identity politics in the crude way Christgau appears to have understood it.
Passion for rock and roll needs no defense or explanation. As to culture, however, the main sociological complaint I remember hearing had nothing at all to do with gays or gay culture: it was that most girls liked disco so it was hard to have a girlfriend if you weren't willing to be exposed to it and its culture and dancing and clothing at least a bit. cf. "I Want to be with a Rock and Roll Girl" -- a genuine wish, quite elusive for many white suburban dudes. I remember hearing Eddie Money lament his girlfriend's affection for disco on an FM radio interview and thinking: ah yes, we agree on something at least, women and disco, can't live with 'em can't live without 'em. That Beat song was an anthem (though to be honest, at that point I imagine I'd have taken anything you'd got.)
Well, I was thirteen. I wrote "Disco Sucks" on my textbook covers like anyone else, and never got to "be with" a rock and roll girl till much, much later. I was mad when KISS went disco. Of course I like a lot of disco now. What changed? Maybe it was the girls, simple as that.
You can pre-order the Dr. Frank / Kepi 7" at this link. It's limited to 450 copies, including 100 red clear, 100 blue, and 50 purple -- and the rest black vinyl, obviously. There's a package deal for one of each here.
Here's a new one (on me, at any rate): I got a note from graphic designer Caroline Moore about how she was commissioned to make a poster for a show that happened thirteen years ago. "Maybe you remember it, but it was apparently a pretty big deal to this guy and his friends," she writes.
In fact, I don't remember it particularly, though I do remember the tour with Ann Beretta. It strikes me that a world in which people had made such posters in advance of the shows rather than much much later might have resulted in different outcomes for the shows and possibly for various other more general matters; but on the other hand, perhaps not. Anyhow, we've got one now.
The whole thing is kind of sweet, of course:
... preferably in that order.
Some form of that is evidently going to be the cover of the Kepi / Dr. Frank split 7" that's coming out imminently on Surfin'Ki Records out of Pisa, Italy. We recorded it at Denny Muller's place in Oakland a couple of weeks ago. "Two Minute Itch" one of my old songs and "My Computer Said Kill" is a Groovie Ghoulies tune, so, you know, we did each other's songs and then added a few things together. Fun night, instant record.
This is in aid of some shows in Europe that we're doing at the end of the month. Here's the most recent schedule that I know of, as is:
22/09 SAT - Stardumb Mansion - Rotterdam (NE)So if you're going to be in NE, BE, DE, CH, IT, VB, A, or DE around then, you'll know where to find us. VB? Not sure, but Villadossola is in the far north of Italy from what I can tell.
23/09 SUN - Jh Kroenkel - Nijlen (BE)
24/09 MON - Bla - Bonn (DE)
25/09 TUE - Zwingerbar - Nurnberg (DE)
26/09 WED - TBA - Geneva (CH)
27/09 THU - Kofmehl - Solothurn (CH)
28/09 FRI - Blah Blah - Torino (IT)
29/09 SAT - Edone' - Bergamo (IT)
30/09 SUN - 12:00 - Secret BBQ (invite only)
30/09 SUN - 21:30 - 29100 Factory - Piacenza (IT)
01/10 MON - Titty Twister - Villadossola (VB)
02/10 TUE - PMK - Innsbruck (A)
03/10 WED - Autonomes Zentrum - Aachen (DE)
And here's the poster:
More on this later, I imagine.
You know, this blog isn't quite so much fun now that there are no comments. I almost forgot I had it. But having something to announce reminded me of it. Hello, again.