Rag Mag 21

What’s up rag mag? Summer is in full swing and it's been busy here at Rag Mag headquarters, so going to keep the intro short and sweet this week. Wasteland Chick reviews The Jetz - Catch Me (such a catchy punker) and Batman Forever, Leela Corman’s Splinters, Creature’s Double Feature, photos from Simon Slowinski’s Left Tower Key exhibit at the speedshop, and Creature’s Double Feature.

Wasteland Chick

This show is actually most triumphant, and I’m not kidding. Salutations, fellow Wasteland Chicks. Welcome back to another WC Double Feature. And to start off the music side, today we’re tackling “Catch Me” by The Jetz. And, let’s start off with a most excellent bang and review the rhythm and melody, which I give a nine out of ten. They’re vibe-able, pop-ish, punk-ish, and kind of give me a springy beach vibe, which I quite enjoy. It almost has an airy feeling to it, which is pretty ironic, given some of the lyrics. Speaking of which, I give the lyrics an excellent 8 out ten. They kind of have a soft yet scream/chant-able feeling to them, as the core of the song seems to be about friends catching each other, which is peacefully hammered in by the lyrics. In general, the song has a nice, excited yet calm feel to it, something you could just sing in the car on your way to a party, or to the horrors of the Trader Joe’s parking lot (somebody PLEASE get that reference). Anyway, I give this song a 9 out of ten, due to its positive yet calm feel, and the sing-ability of this song. Pure joy! Make sure to be excellent to each other in these strange times, fellow Wasteland Chicks. Bye!

Sincerely, Wasteland Chick

Like, seriously, can I finish the thing I was looking at?! Salutations, fellow Wasteland Chicks. Welcome to part 2 of WC’s Double Feature. And today, we’ll be tackling straight into the ground and grinding its bones into dust the movie “Batman Forever”, AKA the last good Batman movie until the 2000’s. Anyway, I give the movie a 8 out of ten, partially due to Jim Carrey. He’s an excellent Riddler, and an excellent weird-as-hell-goofy character actor. Just-Just excellent. Wow. Meanwhile, the plot itself is pretty good; It tells the story of Batman’s battle with Two Face, The Riddler, and a woman named Chase who is creepily into him. Also, it tells the tale of how he meets whiney-I mean Robin. I also love how in all of these movies, Alfred is always the best. Like, he’s super nice and encouraging to Robin, appropriately tells Bruce Whine he’s being a dick, and just is pretty cool. Also, shout out to Bruce Whine for having the passcode to the Batcave, the literal BATCAVE, being to sit in an office chair and say “chair”. No wonder Awesome Makeup Man and Jim Carrey were able to figure out Batman’s secret identity so easily. Also, speaking of Two Face, I love his makeup and character design in this film. The two different patterned coats, the whole ass split in two room design, the other side of his face! I strive to be that good at special effects makeup one day. That would be most excellent. Ghost zombie Jesus, how many times have I said that? Probably a lot. Anywho, I also love how Robin, despite being whiney, does protect a girl from a weird blacklight makeup gang when he takes a spin in the Batmobile. He didn’t have to, but he did. True hero. Final shout-out goes to Chase-I-Wanna-Sex-Batman and Bruce Whine having the driest dialogue known to man, and repeating the same GODDAMN LINE multiple times! Time for the final question: Should you, my dear readers, watch this movie? If you like good costuming and makeup, weird dialogue reads that are dry as hell, whining, and really cool villains that are much better than the heroes (in most cases), then yes. If you selected no, then no. Watch something else. See ya later, fellow Wasteland Chicks. Bye!

Sincerely and tiredly, Wasteland Chick.

Splinters by Leela Corman

Pieces from Left Tower Key by Simon Slowinski. Caught the new August exhibit up at the speed shop. Loved the use of the space itself and the mugs were beautiful (the one featured here came home with me). Photos by Creature

Welcome back to another Double Feature with yr ol’ pal Creature. After discussing legendary techno noise punks Exit Hippies in front of a nice fire on a warm summer evening with some good friends, the next day I pulled out my box with odd size records to play the Exit Hoppers 8” split record with Joy. Going through the box, I remembered a really solid 10” record by a Norwegian band called the Titmen, that seems to be the final lineup of the Anal Babes under a new name. The record consists of covers of the monks, drunks with guns, liket lever, and chrome. The cover of Pharoah Chromium is great and really thugs up the artier original (which still rules of course, its chrome!) Anyway, that gave me the inspiration for this week’s column, the legendary (in my mind at least) High Rise plays Gaseneta tape. The tape is studio (practice space sounds like) recordings of Gaseneta songs on the a-side and a 1985 live set with a couple of the original members of Gaseneta. While recordings by both bands are easily found online, I still can’t find this tape streaming anywhere online.

Gaseneta and High Rise are legendary bands in my mind, playing some of the best music (punk or otherwise) ever. Gaseneta formed in September 1977 by a group of university students and lasted less than 2 years, writing a total of 4 songs and leaving behind nothing by live recordings (there is a 10cd box set for the true obsessives and is likely the source of the mp3 where I first heard this tape). Members went on to play in Fushitsusha, Taco, and The Stalin to name but a few. There’s a great memoir called Gaseneta Wasteland by the bass player on Public Bath Press (RIP Kato David Hopkins and Osato Toshiharu). A very literary memoir with more references to French literature than a les rallizes desnudes yahoo chat group. The translator went with Bullshit Wasteland as the name, over the translation Disinformation Wilderness used in prior releases. Name feels too fucking prescient in our current world. Any description I give of this band doesn’t feel like enough to describe how they make me feel about playing music.

Photos from Creature’s collection.

Luckily we have the words directly from the band describing with the bassist Osato Tohashiharu writing “ we hated pretty much everything, but we especially hated repetition. Doing the same thing twice was unbearable. So we were always frustrated and angry at the idea that songs have a “reiteration is equal to reenactment” quality. But I think our repertory of four songs, taken all together, was probably just written as an excuse. Excuse? An excuse for an ending…Ending now there’s a strange word…Continuing to end…The ending is the finish, the start, the middle, and again the finish…How could we finish? That’s what I always thought when I was playing. Ending. We were always continuing to finish.”

High Rise formed under the name Psychedelic Speed Freaks by Asahito “Red” Nanjo on bass and Munehiro Narita on guitar. From various interviews I’ve read over the years, the main requirement they had for their many drummers (including legends like Pill) was that they played hard and fast. High Rise is the ultimate psychedelic punk band with absolutely insane fuzz guitar over everything. As you can see in the photos above, yr pal owns quite a few High Rise records (let alone the innumerable other bands and records associated with this group like the almighty Mainliner and Kyōaku no Intention). High Rise always had that same spirit to me as Gaseneta, a dedication to playing everything as if your life depended on it, and never playing it the same way twice. But this is a digression as I could talk about High Rise all day.

Back to High Rise plays Gaseneta. I got mp3s of this back in the day (is this from the long gone mutant sounds blog or did I just get it off soulseek, who can remember?). The idea of getting a tape of a band covering another bands songs multiple times on the same record seemed absurd. But once that tape hiss kicks in and you hear Munehiro Narita’s fuzz guitar start pounding out those riffs, its magic. Shakkaifukki (Return to Society) by Gaseneta may be my favorite song of all time, but the cover (2nd time on side a) on this tape might be the ultimate piece of music to me. Similar to the pharoah chromium cover that kicked this thing off, it has this heavy quality to it that the Gaseneta recording don’t have and has the same feeling of unworldly fastness of Gauze, the whole fast not fast thing. Song is sick and punk music is the best music.

Records of the week starts off with a brand new 3 song 45 called Shut Up Shut Up and a Double Fuck You by Out of the Blue, a new band with Matt Z from Funeral Cone and Abby Banks on vocals. Cool darker adverts style punk played at hardcore speeds and a ripping (and fitting) cover of Up Front by the Wipers. Record rules and hope to get to see them live someday. The only contact info on the entire record is a 1-800 number where you can hear the a-side and leave a message for the band. 1-888-368-HELL. Hit them up!

Next up is a recent record from Rock Candy, a guitar duo of Emily Robb (Astute Palate/solo) and Kryssi Batalene (Mountain Movers/Headroom) in what the label Carbon Records is calling a powerhouse guitar duo. Having heard previous records by both members of the duo, I was expecting something more aggressive and loud and instead we have two meditative, quiet pieces, drifting along and I am here for the ride. Give us an LP worth of this guitar bliss.

Soul song of the day is the b-side to Bill Withers biggest hit Lean on Me. The flip is called Better off Dead, tonally opposite of the aside and was big surprise the first time I spun this one. Hell of a song.

That’s it for Rag Mag this week punks. Check out the events below and hope to see you there.