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This is from a 1988 LAZY COWGIRLS show live at the Anti-Club in Los Angeles, scanned from Australian fanzine B-SIDE in ‘89. Their shows there and at Raji’s were blessed monthly events that carloads of folks from Santa Barbara, where I went to school, would caravan down for. 

See the dork with the stern look and the Radio Birdman shirt? That’s me. See the smiling, bespectacled dude to his right? That’s my cousin Doug Miller. I assure you, I was having a mirthful time – slammin’, stage divin’ and getting in fistfights. 

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When I was 20 and 21 years old, I “interned” at SOUND CHOICE magazine, which was a large-circulation music magazine devoted to the obscure corners of cassette culture and independent music. Dave Ciaffardini, the editor, was a DJ on the same college radio station I was, and he was in need of someone to mail boxes, solicit ads and – and – jeez, I don’t even remember what I did there besides hijack promo copies of records I wanted. 

Ciaffardini was a very friendly guy who wanted to help mold me into a journalist/publisher, and to some extent he helped me along – giving me my first forum for written record reviews, which later led into me publishing my own fanzine. I’m not sure I would have let some 20 year old dum-dum write reviews for me, but there you go. Here’s one I wrote on The Flesh Eaters when their “greatest hits” collection came out on SST in 1988.

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I made my way through most of the catalog of Scotland’s LUNG LEG this past week, after tracking chunks of it down and ordering it for home and in-car consumption. Lung Leg were an all-female mid-90s garage pop band with what you might call “post-Riot Grrrl” tendencies and an embrace of angular, off-beat rhythms, some shouting and bellowing, and some kitsch. As has been the case recently with many of these mid-90s acts I ignored or passed over at the time, I discovered Lung Leg via the eye-opening Expressway To Yr Skull radio show, which you can download episodes of right here.

Not all of the band’s stuff connects entirely well, but very little of it was boring or blasé. Some of it’s a real blast, miles ahead of more popularly-recognized hard-edged US riot grrl-esque pop bands of the era, and right in there with frantic & fun acts from this time like The Rondelles and Henry’s Dress. In fact, different as they all are, that would have been a hell of a triple bill in 1996. I probably wouldn’t have gone then, because I was sooooo goddamn cool. Not anymore. This one’s called “Theme Park”. Full knobs-to-11 all the way.

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One of the most satisfying and consistent releases of 2012 so far is “Circles” by MOON DUO. I know, right? I’d about given up on Ripley Johnson after his Wooden Shjips albums continued to fall short of the the early promise of those amazing 45s, and paid a cursory passing interest in Moon Duo when they started up and found it to be progressive/psych twaddle-wank. With all due respect, of course! (And he is due quite a bit for those Shjips records). Maybe I should revisit that stuff, or maybe they evolved toward me in an effort to curry my favor. 

In any case, this record is fantastic. Moon Duo are now deeply into Stereolab territory, with a dose of heavy psych and a thin veneer of krautrock. Each song bend and shapes multiple riffs into submission, never tiring and never boring. It’s approachable to all but the most fearful of listeners – a “pop” record coming from deep lysergic territory. It’s listenable over on Spotify for $0.00 if you wanna check it out.