Aug/Sept issue of PSF- Genesis P Orridge, Peter Hammill interviews and more

I might as well take pride in my work and tell you about the latest edition of my zine.

In the latest issue of Perfect Sound Forever online music magazine http://www.perfectsoundforever.com, you'll find (among other things):


BAND REUNIONS
* The good, the bad & the ridiculous
"The head starts to flush with delight as you envision seeing a favorite band you thought only still existed on records or old videos. Wether you haven't seen the band in years or maybe you never got to see them live before you're equally ecstatic. The chance to get to hear songs you love done live among a crowd of dedicated fans is a sure promise for a great show. Eventually though, after the initial joy of the announcement, fear starts to surface- can the reunited band can live up to the expectations in your head?" (See graphic to the left with Dinosaur Jr. and Bowser from Sha Na Na)


ERROL DUNKLEY
* From rocksteady to world traveler
"Dunkley's talent partly resides in his ability to turn a cover song (like Barbara Lynn's "You're Gonna Need Me," Sam and Dave's "Soothe Me" or John Holt's "Nobody Else") into an original tune. Maybe this tendency to rely on cover songs has done him a disservice and he may have come across as a competent singer lacking "originality." This view is quite erroneous as Dunkley's own compositions (like "A Little Way Different," "Repatriation" and "Rush Me No Badness") are evidence that he is a good songwriter too."


EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER
* In defense of
"Progressive rock can be a very disreputable subject. No other musical style has been so vilified by the critics and became a synonym for 'pompous' and 'bombastic.' Almost every music critic in the early '70's had something unflattering to write about it. None of them seem to have noticed that the genre combined the old with the new and brought things to popular music that simply wasn't there before."


PETER HAMMILL
* Van Der interview
"Some call him The Voice and still marvel at his thunderous, operatic rants and his celestial falsetto. Others follow him as a good-natured English philosopher, a wise, unassuming man who can express our feelings better than anybody, especially when trying to untangle the mysteries of love, memories of childhood, the castrating shadow of religion, the perversity of politics, or the doom of mankind..."


HAPPY GOODMAN FAMILY
* Gospel goodness
"What happens when one sees and hears a stout man, that man's brother who is a wisecracking tenor, a brother who is really a baritone but sings bass and writes songs--and the stout man's Rubenesque wife, who once aspired to be an opera singer? What one sees and hears is The Happy Goodman Family, one of Southern Gospel music's major pioneers--and a Grammy winner--from the 1960's through 1990. Actually, the verb in that last sentence should be 'was.' They are all, as country comedian Jerry Clower used to say, graveyard dead."


IIP
* Wunderkind folk duo
"Vanessa Palmer is not your average young woman. In addition to being, the prodding force behind the indie folk band In Ink Please, she has been married and is in the process of divorce, been to Antarctica, will be spending the summer in Germany, and is a chemistry major/environmental health minor at the University of Washington in Seattle. She and her band-mate Jerik Hendrickson have been on two major tours of the U.S. as In Ink Please..."


LOUIS JORDAN
Rock'n'R&B'n'rap
"Louis Jordan was one of the musical greats who emerged from the swing era to leave a permanent mark on American music. In addition to being an accomplished saxophonist, Jordan is best remembered as a vocalist of immense vitality whose combination of down home earthiness and comical patter played an integral part in the evolution of rock and roll music."


LOBBY LOYDE/IAN RILEN
* Aussie punk legends
"It would be unfair to throw the lives and work of Lobby Loyde and Ian Rilen into the same general basket merely because they died within a few months of each other... It would be just as unfair to their respective legacies to talk about them in the same breath merely because, for instance, they were both bass players for Rose Tattoo at different moments in the '70's. It might be more relevant, however, to discuss them together for the fact that they were both older participants in the world of Australian punk and new wave in the '70's and '80's"


GENESIS P-ORRIDGE
* Throbbing psychic interview
"Genesis P. Orridge should need no introduction as the hermaphrodite extremist fronting art-magick experimenters Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV and Thee Majesty. Now living in New York, he's recently rekindled his love of rock music, using it to espouse an exploration of future human evolution via pandrogyny on the new PTV3 album Hell Is Invisible / Heaven is Her/e out now on Sweet Nothing in the USA, Cargo in Europe, not to mention a long awaited TG reunion and new album (The Endless Not on Mute)."


THE SLITS
* Stalking their reunion
"The Slits are not typical girls. Never were. They made it clear some 30 years ago. Typical girls buy magazines, as they sang on their legendary if under-acknowledged debut album Cut. Typical girls worry about spots, fat and natural smells. Typical girls learn how to act shocked. Typical girls don't rebel. They are, however, typical Slits. And they'll say so."


MARGARET LENG TAN
* Avant toy piano
"Tan was the first woman to graduate from Julliard with a doctorate in piano performance, and the first decisive career move she made was to give up being a pianist in favor of training hearing-assist dogs. She was able to train and deliver two such dogs--a fact of which she is justifiably proud--before the badly run program collapsed, and she returned to the piano. On her return to music, she faced again the worry that had prompted her to involve herself with the potential of a non-piano-appreciating species: she felt that as a concert pianist, she was of no real use to society."


ROB TYNER
* Reliving the last rites for an ex-MC5
"I had several Rock n Roll heroes back in the late '60's One of them was Rob Tyner, lead singer from the MC5. The other was Dave Dixon, Chief Air Ace from Detroit's WABX Radio. Back then, Dave filled all our minds with radical politics and radical music, while Rob personally incarnated and exemplified that wild revolutionary hard rock life-style that made the late '60's into that powerful pivotal historical epoch we all remember with such suffering and such joy."


VINYL ANACHRONIST
* Listen for Yourself
"I've received even more requests for blanket recommendations on all things analog over the last few weeks. This, of course, is understandable if you're a vinyl newbie, and you're looking to get into this crazy hobby for the first time, or maybe even just the first time in many years. You don't want to spend a lot of money. You don't want to be fiddling around with cartridge alignment, anti-skating or tracking force. You just want a little taste of what vinyl can do, with as little fuss as possible."


ZOMBIES
* Their early years
"The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, and The Kinks are the bands from the first British Invasion era that garner the most attention, and deservedly so. Bands like The Yardbirds, The Animals, The Searchers, The Move, and The Dave Clark Five undeservedly garner a little less attention. And there are still other bands that garner even less attention, some probably deservedly so, but that shouldn't be so with The Zombies."