Sorry for the silence on here. For some reason of the other I’ve just sort of neglected the blog for a while. I think my head has been a little out of it. Don’t know why. I’ve got a few buddies who have written me recently and spoke of a similar low grade early spring depression. I read on line that perhaps I should try putting twice as much gin in my G & T’s and then drink half as many G & T’s per day and I have been doing that but I have added a white wine chaser and it seems to be helping.
One reason I’ve been neglecting is I have got the new incarnation of Howlin Rain as a power rock 4 piece up and running and we’ve been rehearsing like madmen. In recent years I kept experimenting with mellower and mellower music with Howlin Rain and then when we hit the road last year forever I just kept wanting to work the songs into heavier and heavier jams on stage. It’s a blast to make mellow jams in a studio. Maybe even more fun than making heavy jams because there is so much room for nuance but then when you hit the stage it just feels so goddamn good to feel like you are stepping in to the gladiator’s arena to do battle to the death with heavy jams. I can feel these new 4 piece Rain jams like a hungry lion trying to eat me for lunch. You know, you feel like you're under the shadow of something big and wild and you can’t outsmart it you just have to try and tear its eyes out while it takes you down to the dirt and blood.
Another thing that kind of got the spark a little hotter in the engine recently was running into this old cassette tape that was in the car the other night. Yes, my wife’s car has a cassette player still so that’s where cassettes go to die. “Explosive Rock Comp” made for me years ago in 2003 by Steve Krakow aka Crimewave. In fact I’m not totally sure it was made for me or if he already had a library of comps with different themes made up, but at the time I got it I was just immersed completely in heavy-psych-garage-explosive rock from all the touring and album making in Comets on Fire, being in a heavy psych rock band, the bands we’d play with, the music people would give me. Even though I'm pretty sure I asked Steve to make me the comp, I just didn’t want to hear “heavy psych rock” for a spell at that point. I thought the comp was well above average of course because Krakow is like the Library of Congress of lost rock and roll and I remember listening to it quite a bit when I got it but it wasn’t until March 30th, 2009 (4 days ago), that I really got the full impact of this killer comp.
My full taste for busted gnarly broke dick savage rock and roll has come back full force in the past year or so and when I pushed this dusty, rattling old cassette into the player I got my mind blown. It was just what I wanted to hear. You may know some of these songs and bands or you may never have heard any of them. It is indeed a great "Exploding Rock" comp either way. It’s an incredibly inspiring riff comp also for you song and riff writers out there, and perhaps even more inspiring are the wild solos. Lots of unhinged, fuzzed out , I don’t give a flying fuck cause I’m on speed and acid and I have this Hi-Watt cranked solos!!!
So I guess the long and the short of it is that this is the second in the series of “Great Riff” comps (more to come) that I have been given that I am using as inspiration for heavy riff writing but this one waltzed out of a corridor of my past to find me instead of me asking for it. Well, I asked for it in 2003 or whatever but it hibernated in a glove compartment and came back to me when I really needed it for inspiration.
A couple notes about the comp itself. I have transferred it to mp3 from cassette. Krakow’s shit came from his 7 inches and albums not mp3s. He made this before all this on line shit was mainstream. It’s questionable whether he even has a computer now with any music on it. Some of the songs skip when he made it. That’s just how it is. I like to think of it as part of the charm. He probably dropped the cherry of his joint onto the 45 as it was recording and was frantically trying to brush it off and knocked the needle but didn't go back and rerecord the jam because he was on a roll.
Amen!
Thanks Steve, in case I never said it back in 03.
Nobody love's the mother fucking HULK!!!
Explosive Rock!
1. Futilist's Lament. High Tide
2. Its Too Late. JPT Scare Band
3. Why Can't Somebody Love Me? Edgar Broughton Band
4. Hassles. Fresh Blueberry Pancakes
5. Chauffer. Black Cat Bones
6. Vacation. John Mayall
7. Cradle Rock (Live). Rory Gallagher
8. Virgin. Brain Box
9. Is There A Better Way. Status Quo
10. Wonder Woman. Attila
11. Nobody Loves The Hulk. The Traits
12. Only Good For Conversation.Rodriguez
13. Seven Times Infinity.Sunlight
14.Lame. Incredible Hog
15.I'm A Freak. Wicked Lady
16.Grey Skies.Northwest Company
17. Can't You Feel It. Water Music
18. It's Just the Way I Feel. Mt. Rushmore
19. Sticky Living. BB Blunder
20.Child He Die.Rats
21. Photogenic Jenny.Curfew
get it here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?ni5nztxtemt
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