TVP fans and more prep their PayPals for the late great Syd Barrett estate sale. Frenzied bidding already for...

'Syd's' artificial Christmas tree and decorations, comprising mostly of tinsel and baubles. Removed from the back bedroom upstairs.

Syd's' basic tool kit, comprising a hacksaw, mallet, plane, chisel, hammer, screwdrivers and a spirit level, all contained within a red plastic tool box. It was with these basic tools and few power tools that 'Syd' created his furniture and modified his home.

'Syd's Chair', A cream leather reclining armchair. The chair was in the kitchen and was clearly used a great deal by 'Syd', as can be seen from the dark stain to the back rest.

How sad and gross! One day left to sign in.

Per LA Times: Riled blues pianist H-Bomb Ferguson passes away Sunday. Says Ponderosa Stomp, which hosted Ferguson in notable late performances:

Born May 9, 1929 in Charleston, South Carolina, H-Bomb's father was a strict minister who nevertheless encouraged his sons' interest in music, even going so far as to pay for piano lessons. While the future blues singer's repertoire was limited to sacred songs under his old man's roof (Ferguson once recalled that if he even so much as hit a couple of blue notes while practicing, his father would deliver the admonition, "That's the Devil's music! God's gonna strike you down!"), he'd sneak away to a friend's house where he was free to practice the boogie-woogie that he so much adored. He began guest vocalizing in nightclubs as soon as he looked old enough to get in the door and at nineteen Cat Anderson offered him a spot in his blues orchestra. Ferguson didn't have to think twice; he chucked some clothes into a paper bag, snuck out his bedroom window and threw his hat into the blues shouter racket.

In 1950 he found himself in New York City where he waxed his first sides for Larry Newton's Derby label. By the first few months of 1952, ads in the trade magazines hawked H-Bomb recordings on at least three different labels, Atlas, Prestige and Savoy. He was most prolific at Savoy, producing a smattering of classics such as "Bookie Blues," "Tortured Love," "Hot Kisses," "Slowly Goin' Crazy" and his first gold record, "Good Lovin." Savoy insisted on recording him in the style of his professed idol, Wynonie Harris, leading to Harris often referring to H-Bomb as his son during "Battle Of The Blues" shows where the two shouters pitted themselves against one another. After brief stops Sunset and Specialty, Ferguson cut "Hole In The Wall Tonight" for Decca with a seventeen piece orchestra and then vacated New York for Cincinnati, where he still resides today. There he formed the Mad Lads with guitarist Big Ed Thompson and recorded singles for local labels such as Finch, Big Bang and Arc before signing with King/ Federal at the end of the decade.

The Cincinnati recordings all featured H-Bomb's keyboard antics for the first time on wax; a style that began to be known around town as "Thelonius Monk-style blues piano." The results were some of the best records of his career, the zenith of which was the totally out-of-control "Midnight Ramblin' Tonight." His prolific recording career came to a screeching halt after he became disillusioned with the lack of royalties coming his way, but throughout the sixties he remained a popular nightclub attraction, touring with Varetta Dillard, Big Maybelle, Big Mama Thorton and his old Federal label mates, Hank Ballard and Freddy King.

Retiring from music in the early seventies, five years later H-Bomb was back on the scene, wilder than ever. Since then, he's never seen on stage without his series of crazy looking wigs. "The wigs are there to shake them out of their troubles and to reflect the mood I am in," H-Bomb recently told journalist Mick Rainsford, "If anyone in the audience is so wound up that they can't hear me, then they can damn sure see me and if that makes them laugh, then it opens up their minds to the music, to the blues."

More bio here. Apparent bio-pic in production here and if you wanna get his music try this though it's missing "Midnight Ramble" which apparently just slides around on dodgy comps. Like the Jook Block Busters series available here which you should completely get but I bet you won't.

It's been a few slow days for blogging 'round here (what could I possibly show you that Brit-Brit already hasn't?) so I let our rockin' intern Miles Clements do a little work while I took a four hour lunch. Let's read what he has to write:

There needs to be more bands willing to crank out good ol' fashioned rock & roll. Almost every Orange County band I've come across recently sounds like its gunning for a spot on The O.C. soundtrack, for some imagined scene where a pair of young lovers first spot each other at a party and share a delicate kiss on the balcony. Ugh. (Note to said bands: Stop. Please.)

Thankfully, there's the Henry Clay People, a group of young lads (read: my age) [Editor's note: he's 21!] who crank out concise and catchy rock songs. The band says that they pull from the Replacements, Pavement and Neil Young. All good references, especially since I can hear a dash of each of those. But there's one influence that the band neglects to mention: Conor Oberst. Vocalist Joey Siara more than echoes the slurred lisp of Oberst, and while it's a little over-the-top, a bit brash and even polarizing, it'll elicit a reaction at the very least.

Like all good rock bands, the Henry Clay People are best seen live. Whether they're accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation in a university lecture hall or donning some ridiculous Halloween costumes, rest assured that there'll be lots of energy and youth. And there's no substitute for that. [Sad, but true.]

As an added treat, this weekend you can discover what happens when you throw them into the mix with a few beers and some bowling!

Henry Clay People play the Eagle Rock Sunday Night Bowling and Drinking Club, 4459 Eagle Rock Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90041. Sun., Dec. 3, 8 p.m. $5. 21+.

Via the fascinating English Russia:

Here is a little photo-session of an abandoned city. When the Soviet Union collapsed, government didn't have much funds to support some small cities around strategically import objects. People of these cities were left all by themselves. Nobody could support them because any communication with this places terminated after the army decided that they now don't have money to support those objects.

America take a lesson here. Also note that this little photo essay is tagged as "russian humour". More ruins of tomorrow at the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. More Russian can-do-it-tude here. Your official guidebook for your tour here. And here is your tour guide Mr. Dock Boggs, who says he hopes he lives for a few more days. I tried to find Blind Willie Johnson but looks like no one ever youtubed him.

In 1957, a student named Keith Waldrop found a mysterious book called In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women written by a mysterious man named John Barton Wolgamot. It was a book of names:

Blue cloth binding: four and three-quarter inches tall by seven and three-quarter inches wide. Published in 1944. The right margin is unjustified in a way that suggests verse-but it is clearly prose. The first thing one notices, opening the book, is clusters of names-names of men and women, most of them writers, many well known. But then, even more striking, it becomes obvious that each page contains only one sentence, and it is always-except for the names-almost the same sentence.

Slowly Waldrop and friends would conclude that Wolgamot's book was one of the greatest lost works of the 20th century. Ubuweb has two essays detailing this history. Here are the full articles and below is a fragment:

We can hardly understand today the depth of a commitment to such a project. It makes Wolgamot seem a mad man. Wolgamot was not a mad man. He was one of the sanest and most visionary persons I have ever met. But he lived and worked during a time and in a place where such a commitment was the only possible expression of his genius. All over America, before we became homogenized by the media (and by the ability to travel!), people lived in loneliness and dreams. This was a new people. And especially in the vast (endless) Midwest, where the European-Americans were cut off from their roots, a "civilization"-that is, a collection of memories that make sense of the present-had to be invented.

I have seen this invention in many forms, and indeed most of the forms were a form of madness: the "collectors." (Example 1: A tiny town in Wisconsin where my car broke down and I spent a few hours in the "museum"-admission 25 cents. A huge shed, probably formerly a commercial chicken coop, filled with hand-made boxes about 18 inches in each dimension, with a glass front, stacked six feet high, each box containing every kind of thing the collector had collected in his life-matchbook folders, safety pins, pieces of broken glass, breathtaking banalities-each item elaborately labeled and dated. Hundreds of boxes. A history of civilization. Example 2: A woman with a house full of cheap ceramic carnival prizes-Mickey Mouse, vases, dinosaurs, etceteras, which were put out on the lawn every morning in a new display, a new configuration, and taken in every night and cleaned and polished.) These museums existed in the hundreds. Everybody could tell me about their favorite one. I thought for a moment that I should specialize in this history of America, and make a museum of museums. But of course I couldn't. I think they are all gone now. Still we do not have a civilization, but the museums of memories are gone.

More here. And here is Robert Ashley's sound piece based on Wolgamot. CD re-issue of Ashley's piece here and WFMU interview with Ashley and Waldrop here.

Providence's Elvis Perkins plays Club NME at Spaceland tonight, along with Pernice Brothers.

Perkins' despondent (yet somehow soothing) vocals are somewhat reminiscent of crooners Jeff Buckley, Colin Meloy (eh) or Rufus Wainwright—but minus all that excessive theatricality. And recently signed to XL Recordings (home to indie powerhouses Devendra Banhart, M.I.A., Basement Jaxx, Thom Yorke, Ratatat, Peaches and Tapes 'n Tapes), we've seen Perkins' name exalted in all the major music blogs in the past few months. Or maybe—just maybe—you recognize the name from his tour opening for local pseudo-celeb Matt Costa.

Listen to his tracks off Ash Wednesday here.

Oh, and P.S.? Here's what music blog favorite Brooklyn Vegan had to say about Perkins' July 1st, 2006 Bowery Ballroom show with Costa:

7) There were more people at the show for Elvis Perkins than for Matt Costa who was headlining (I left too).

ELVIS PERKINS PERFORMS WITH PERNICE BROTHERS AT SPACELAND, 1717 SILVER LAKE BLVD., LOS ANGELES, (323) 661-4380. WED., NOV. 22, 9 P.M. $10. 21+.

"The Barstow Boyz are to good taste what Kevin Federline is to good taste," Alison Rosen wrote in last week's issue. "Which is to say they wouldn't recognize it if it were a boat in their driveway." Which is a really cute and clever way (that's our Alison!) of saying that the Barstow Boyz play good covers of bad cock rock songs, bringing a party like you wouldn't believe. Tonight, they make a rare appearance at Detroit Bar. So sayeth the Boyz:

You're playing a special Thanksgiving eve show. Who would have been more into the Barstow Boyz: the pilgrims or the Indians?
The Indians would actually be into us because their spirits inhabit us. So they're actually in us, but I think the old black hats would be into us too. They disrespected women like we do.

Join them and about 200 fans and take a cab home. Although staying up till seven a.m. and waking up next to someone you don't know is not the way you want to start Thanksgiving. Trust me.

ALSO: Jerry Lee Lewis for up to $125 a pop at the House of Blues; karaoke at the Prospector; possibly special Definitely Maybe (Indie/Brit Pop) at Memphis Costa Mesa. Know of more? Let us know.

AND IF YOU LOVE LA: Join the Acid Girls as they ditch their night at Avalon for a party in the city @ Crash. Word is:"Crash is held every Wednesday night at The Stone Bar, one of the top rated bars in Hollywood. This place features a huge horseshoe style bar where we are serving the cheapest ass drink specials in town! Gang of Neon & special guest DJs will be thumpin' on an awesome JBL sound system which can be viewed from a make-out loft which over looks the dancefloor. This party is here to provide LA with the latest and greatest in everything in Fight House, Analog Rock, Heavy Synth, French Wave, Indie Rock, Balie Funk, and any other form of mature dance music that's taking the world over . . . This isn't your average bar and this isn't your average "Indie, Electro club" . . . Step it up and let's crash LA!" www.gangofneon.com for more info.

It's no secret that I love Harry Nilsson a lot. A lot a lot. And so it is that I hear traces of him in just about everything, from Madman Moon to Kelley Stoltz (if you look beyond the obvious Brian Wilson presence) to, now, Richard Swift. Swift's latest, Dressed Up for the Letdown (out February 20 on Secretly Canadian) brims with wistful mediatations on love and death--notably on how the former helps us all cope with the latter. It's heavy stuff, with Swift's sometimes happy/often sad piano melodies anchoring each song in a robust '70s throwback sound. And that's Nilsson '70s, not Jackson Browne '70s (sorry, Josh Rouse), the kind of stuff that plays in the musical theater quadrant of your mind's eye. Bonus points for asking too-good-for-this-one-SUV-town Frank Lenz to sit in on bass. For a better idea, hit Swift's MySpace page and listen to "Songs of National Freedom." Dude's touring Europe at the moment, but stay tuned for local shows to be announced. Also, check the Nov. 30 Dec. 7 issue of the Weekly for a full review of the CD.

OTHER RECENT ARRIVALS: All Black Cinema (formerly John Wilkes Kissing Booth), It's Like Stars Hitting Ice. Groovy stuff from former JWKB frontman Derrick Brown, once again begging the question: Why is this man starving in Nashville? Review to come in a few weeks Nov. 30.

KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR: The awesome boys and gal in Lightmusic, who are finally laying down some of their spectacular tunes in the studio as we type. I may just have to pull a Rob from High Fidelity and start a record label so I can sign these kids before anyone else does. Obligatory full disclosure: drummer Kevin is so rad, we hired him as an intern.

BONUS FUN OF THE MUSICAL VARIETY: Visit lovely LA dudes Division Day's MySpace to watch top notch video for their song "Hurricane." Totally Police, totally rad.

Sat., Nov. 18: Too bad there's already a Best of the Lemonheads album on the shelves, and badder still that it was compiled by Atlantic Records (and not lead Lemonhead, Evan Dando): tonight's set would have made an epic greatest hits tracklist. Tunes from Come on Feel laid like cozy bed buddies with favorites off It's a Shame About Ray ("Turnpike Down," "Alison's Starting to Happen," "Rudderless") and Car Button Cloth ("If I Could Talk I'd Tell You"), saving just enough room for new numbers like "Become the Enemy." That it all fit together so well—and without, it seemed, too many problems—was a bit surprising, given that this night was Dando's kick-off on a national tour supporting the first-in-almost-a-decade album The Lemonheads, and also that the new album, depending on who you ask, is either a pretty strong comeback album for the Lemonheads—or a pretty decent tribute to its frequent guest star, J. Mascis. With Mascis (and guitar) absent, Dando's new stuff came off a little softer, slipping away from Rock-with-a-capital-R back down toward a more comfortable pop sound, which is to say it sounded more like the old stuff—nice and easy, like listening to best Lemonheads mixtape ever. And yet, even with the band in good form, and the audience alarmingly polite and respectful, there was one person who appeared anxious for the show to be over: the onstage security guard, who kept stepping in front of the bass player to check the set list. Maybe there was a time constraint; maybe he's just a weirdo. But next time? Just a tip: it would help to be a tad more discreet. Photo by Jennie Warren

AND IN OTHER NEWS: Mike Watt teams up with Kelly Clarkson.

Jimmy Breslin on the assassination of Robert Kennedy in the Times today here. Say Brez:

You couldn't get the gun out of the hand of the shooter. Hands grabbed and yanked and twisted but could not get it. The gun waved and people jumped away from it and now Roosevelt Grier, the immense professional football lineman, grabbed the shooter and got this huge arm around his neck from behind, and somebody screamed, "Kill him!" and Roosevelt just stared. All he had to do was tighten the arm and the guy is gone. Somebody else screamed, "No, no! Keep him alive!"

Very great piece. You'll be down after reading that so let me give you something nicer from that same year: crummy cars, cheap guitars and the system you can't beat live in Detroit below.

One of our photographer friends Dan Monick did an installation for this one-night-only show at Gallery 1269 at 6th and Alameda in LA. Did your car blow up? No? You should go. It will be extremely rewarding.

Rousing soundtrack for Samsung's new DMZ sentry bot reported by vnunet.com:

Samsung's Techwin division will shortly begin selling heavily armed robot sentries that can identify and shoot a target automatically from over two miles away.

The Intelligent Surveillance and Guard Robot was jointly developed with a South Korean university, and is designed to replace some of the troops guarding the border with North Korea.

The robot will be available next year at a cost of $200,000 per unit, and the company expects to sell 1,000 in the first year.

The system uses twin optical and infrared sensors to identify targets from 2.5 miles in daylight and around half that distance at night. It has a microphone and speakers so that passwords can be exchanged with human troops.

If the password is not accepted the robot can either sound an alarm or fire at the target using rubber bullets or a swivel-mounted K-3 machine gun.

Completely froolpoof. Korea is also working on eight-legged combat robots (version pictured here) and apparently already has little robot armored cars with guns on top (this via Selectroclash?). More video below:

Buck Owens is Black Sabbath and Totimoshi knows why: distinctive guitar tone and songs about Satan make a boy from Bakersfield do good, and Totimoshi guitarist Tony Aguilar learned the necessary lessons from both. Central Valley-raised—where he grew up on country/western as much as rock & roll and Mexican corridos—Aguilar and now-wife/always- bassist Meg Castellanos have been the Rose and Buck of Oakland's noted heavy-rock scene for almost 10 years, nosing their band Totimoshi through a disruptively unreliable rotation of drummers toward latest album Ladron, which is metal-meets-Morricone with production by Helmet's Page Hamilton and bitter what's-wrong-with-the-world? lyrics that could be from the last years of any of America's failing wars. As a kid, says Aguilar, he used to put on Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys' "Machine Gun" and listen over and over and over, "and it used to kill me. You can read any book or any well-written novel about the times when Hendrix was living, or you can understand it subconsciously by listening to that song—one song that tells the story of a million things going on."

Ladron—Spanish for "thief," picked to suggest "you stealing from yourself, or society stealing from you," says Aguilar—is Totimoshi's album for troubled times, a nihil-political record that follows up the more personal Monoli and Mysterioso with credit to the menacing mood and loose, open feel of "Machine Gun." Ladron takes a traditionally heavy '70s-scum-'90s chassis—Hamilton's influence might explain the Bleach/Meantime moments; the title track could fit with dirthead worthies like Mad Dog or JPT Scare Band—and then piles on stranger and quieter asides from a winding line of influence, looping in short snippets from Beatles (just a few seconds of the intro to "Gods of Earth" or maybe Neil Young (something about the guitar on the acoustic "These Meanings") or even a string section to match a scene from El Topo (the final suite of the instrumental "The Drunken Sun Forever Watching"). Since we're both serious grown men, we can straight-facedly discuss things like the qualifications for heaviness: Aguilar says to him it's his lyrics, which he spins out in unconscious freewrite and then edits back to reveal some kind of coherency, but besides the fearsome low-end—Castellanos and new drummer Luke Herbst—that Totimoshi honed to stand before tourmates like Mastodon and the Melvins, you could also credit Ladron's weird sense of weight to the band's weird and wide-open sense of dynamic. Aguilar even sings—nice notes and everything—on this album. It's like they do when they load their van: "You gotta be careful how you dispense the weight," he says. (CZ)

TOTIMOSHI PERFORMS WITH FU MANCHU AND GUESTS AT DETROIT, 843 W. 19TH ST., COSTA MESA, (949) 642-0600. THURS., NOV. 16, 9 P.M. $10. 21+.

Abstract Workshop's flagship rapper Jud Nester debuts magic track "U Shoulda Seen Her On Myspace" at #4 (!) on this week's Billboard Hot R&B/Hip Hop Singles Sales chart way above other new singles by Young Jeezy (#17) and Eminem/50 Cent/Lloyd Banks/Cashis (#26) and Fat Joe (#36)! Plus Jud comes in at #15 on Hot 100 Singles between the Arctic Monkeys and Diddy and at #84 on Hot R&B Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks. Lots of congratulations to Jud and Abstract for pulling this off. When I talked to Jud for the cover story on Abstract Workshop in March this is what he said:

"I don't want to come out typical OC style, like get a couple million behind it and look like I'm a rock star already—though I am a rock star; I've spent more time in the studio than any rock star I've ever known. I'm a moment capturer. That's it. I don't want to have a finished product coming out. I want it to be from the bedroom, glitchy, with the grit; I want them to listen to the bullshit to get to the point! I wanna put the baby pictures out. I don't consider us huge talents. I consider us capable of capturing inspiration. And that's beyond talent!"

And now you can see what he meant at #4 on the charts. Listen or get a copy for yourself at www.judnester.com or Abstract Workshop or www.myspace.com/judnester. And see Jud live at next weekend's Abstract Workshop at Detroit with excellent support from Freestyle Fellowship's Myka Nyne and Trek Life.

In honor of Dr. Meth Luther King, Jr.:

Related: download this from here for more music inspired by Dr. Meth King's good works.

Via excellent WFMU and others: Faust was one of the definitive Krautrock bands (up with Kraftwerk/Can/Neu/Harmonia) even though they started a little late (early '70s instead of late '60s like much of this stuff) and if you haven't heard their actual songs at the smarter bars you frequent, then you've heard their weird after-effects. I always thought Pixies should have covered "Sad Skinhead" (from Faust IV), and if you have space between Velvet Underground and Eno to push in a few more records, Faust would fit in well.

Anyway, they'd signed to Richard Branson's Virgin but there was a disconnect between what Richard Branson expected from a band and what Faust wanted to do as a band so eventually... the expensive studio sessions collapse and Faust decides to save their tapes, but a car chase and a little jail time later, they're out and down in southern Germany eating dog food and drinking schnapps, per this. Further quotes from member Jean-Herve Peron from WFMU:

Who is to pay this huge bill? Panic. Faxes to Virgin -- because we were, in a way, still under contract. They should be pleased that we offer them a master tape of our genial music. But no, Richard didn't even want to listen to our genial music. More panic. Kurt had already discretely left. So, let's rescue the equipment and the tapes at least. We sneaked the equipment and tapes out into the BRS and Ruud and Günther hopped in and... go... run for freedom... speeding gangster-wise through the Arabella grounds, knocking down the closing gates of the parking lot and -- yes, hurrah, they were through!

Like captains in a sinking ship, Joachim, Rudolf and I (where the hell is Zappi?) stayed back to do battle. We were arrested, humiliated (how could anyone not realize the importance of these recordings? Pah!) and no, we none of us had one single pfennig, neither in our pockets nor in the bank, so hang us, torture us, sell our bones to our fans, do what you want with us, but -- please, we're hungry and can't we just talk about this over a nice bottle?

The non-funny, non-heroic end of this story was that Joachim's and Rudolf's mamas bailed us our and paid the bills to save their cherished progeniture. Thank you Mrs. Irmler, thank you Mrs. Sosna.

So thanks to understanding German moms and to the Internet hive mind too: now the tapes have resurfaced -- sourced from a promotional cassette Virgin sent out before relations deteriorated. It's the Faust album no one but the band and a few sympathetic media people ever heard. Read more and scout MP3s at WFMU here.

..for honorable nominations in this year's Plug Awards. Wha Plug? Indie backpatters sez:

PLUG is different from all of the institutional accolades for the music industry – the American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, Radio Music Awards, GRAMMY Awards, Teen Choice Awards, MTV Music Awards, etc. etc. Those are all devoted to recognizing the mainstream hits. Very rarely do these honors reach, let alone embrace, independent music or the community of artists and fans who now represent more than 25% of the global music market. We're a community that thinks for ourselves – we don't take our cues from mainstream media or marketing.

PLUG is about the independent music community coming together to recognize our own. We're fans from every walk of the music world who gather together each year to celebrate these artists who live and flourish in the margins. PLUG is about the artists who inspire and the music that disrupts the artistic and corporate mediocrity that dominates our culture. Some of the artists on the ballot each year are well known to us, but most all are no where close to the household names we wish they were.

We've discovered these records on blogs, in magazine blurbs, fanzines, recommendations from our local record store, in IM conversations, in links from friends and passionate testimonials overheard in line outside a club... PLUG is the experience of trading mix tapes with friends. The most satisfying thing for us is to see how often fans of one artist become new fans of another during each year's get-out-the-vote campaign.

Aw, so anyway: KUCI is up for "college/non-comm station of the year" and "online radio station of the year (with terrestial counterpart)" (or something) alongside LA stations like KXLU (cool) and KCRW (weak) plus nationals like KEXP in Seattle and KALX in Berkeley plus intimidating monstercaster WFMU. And Cold War is on for "new artist of the year" against Arctic Monkeys, Black Angels, Tapes 'n' Tapes and other stuuuuuffffffff. Can't really tell what you actually win but probably at least a nice little graphic to paste on your Myspace page. Vote local and vote often here.

Scientists testing/messing with dolphins at Disney EPCOT have taught them to sing the Batman theme song:

"The dolphin was reinforced for producing a specific rhythm to a specific object," says Harley.

"For example, when we presented him with a Batman doll, he received a fish for producing a specific rhythm, in this case, a short sound and then a long one."

"If you recall the original Batman TV series musical intro you'll probably remember the way they sang 'Bat-maaaaaaaan'," she adds.

The dolphin spontaneously vocalised to the rhythms, so the researchers started to reward the male with fish whenever it matched its 'singing' to the rhythms.

By the end of the studies, the scientists could show an object, such as the Batman doll, which represented a certain rhythm-vocalisation combo to the dolphin, and it would create the correct sounds both vocally and using the switch.

More on non-stupid non-human tricks here. Shocking footage here.

Via the excellent BLDGBLOG: German artist Florian Dombois translates the subaudible sound of plate tectonics into something the human ear can hear, revealing unique geological characteristics of brewing earthquakes around the planet. Says Dombois:

Usually seismic waves have a frequency spectrum below 1 Hz and therefore cases are rare where earthquakes are accompanied by hearable sounds. The human audio spectrum ranges between 20 Hz - 20 kHz which is much above the spectrum of the earth's rumbling and tumbling. This is one of the reasons why seismometric records are commonly studied by the eye and visual criteria. Nevertheless if one compresses the time axis of a seismogram by about 2000 times and plays it on a speaker (so called 'audification'), the seismometric record becomes hearable and can be studied by the ear and acoustic criteria.

Of interest to us locally is audio of the 1994 Northridge quake sourced from a string of stations between Santa Barbara and Victorville and a global comparison sampling faultlines in California ("SLAM!") and Hawaii ("errrrrrPLOOP!") and Japan ("THROOOOoooom") and more. Complete study of Auditory Seismology starts here. Further fans of Earth music please visit here and here and don't forget here if you're interested in the Next Big Thing.

Reportishes the News Of The World:

SUPERSTAR Britney Spears is facing a mega divorce payout because she did it again and again and again...on a HONEYMOON sex video. Dumped husband Kevin Federline has been touting the four-hour tape for sale and has already been offered £26 MILLION.

Federline, 28, has bragged to pals that his X-rated tape shows the 'Oops, I Did It Again' singer performing a series of explicit sex acts.

The home-made video is believed to show the naked couple enjoying an uninhibited range of love-making and sexual games.It was made during the first weeks of their relationship two years ago when they were holed up in one of the exclusive bungalows at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles.

The source close to Federline said: "At the time the two of them were in the honeymoon stages of the relationship and couldn't keep their hands off each other.

"They did nothing all day but have sex—and play the odd game of chess."

Alleged clips in the usual XXX-pixel-mess places if you'd like to get fired from work today. Pre-porn analysis by ever-erudite Sam McPheeters here. Plus congrats to Federline for eliminating the usual time lag between "porn star" and "blackmailer"--we salute ten pounds of shitbag in a five-pound bag!

Out in three mos. on Mute: Nick Cave plus Warren Ellis (Dirty Three) and Martyn Casey (from the Triffids, one of my favorite Australian bands besides X) and Jim Sclavunos (Bad Seeds plus Panther Burns and 8 Eyed Spy and more) are Grinderman and this is pretty great very best shit. Press release says:

Grinderman - Debut Album Out 5th March 2007

Foul-mouthed, noisy, hairy, and damn well old enough to know better, Grinderman are Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos.

Born of babbling lyrics hatched from Bosch eggshells in the Hyde-bound apocalyptic margins of the Cave brain, the Grinderman sound is an instinctual yawlp that also resurrects the demons of each musician's past: the trashcan proselytising of Birthday Party-era Nick; Sclavunos' late 70s New York no-wave noise wisdom; Martyn Casey's ominous Triffids bass reverb; plus Ellis' avant-garde soundtrack work and his teenage love of Black Sabbath. Destination: Out!

Warren: "It was meant to be really open liberating thing, push those elements where we'd normally say 'I don't know about that' and push on, relentless."
Nick: "We're just searching for a bit of freedom"
Jim: "Ceaselessly banging away." Warren: "Having Nick on the guitar changed the whole dynamic of the thing and threw us into a much more rudimentary ballpark."

Nick Cave - Vocals, Electric Guitar, Electric Organ, Piano
Warren Ellis - Electric Bouzouki, Fendocastor, Viola, Violin, Acoustic Guitar, Hohner Guitaret, Backing Vocals
Martyn P Casey - Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Backing Vocals
Jim Sclavunos - Drums, Percussion, Backing Vocals

Grinderman sound different from everyone, including themselves. As Memphis Slim put it back in 1941, "While everything is quiet and easy/ Mr. Grinder can have his way." It's a new day. God help you all.

Can't beat cave brain. "No Pussy Blues" waits for you here.

Top noisy British shoegaze/etc. band on their first US tour ever! Cannot indicate correctly how good this band was/is/will be and how much you should go. Any fans of Jesus & Mary Chain/Spacemen 3/Loop/Spiritualized/Ride/etc. need to be at this. Telescopes were contemporaries and easily equals but never hit it in the US due to label/bureaucratic bullshit. This tour should be hitting El Rey for like $50 and instead it's cozied up in Long Beach for practically nothing. I can't find anyone else's reviews that adequately adore this band but trust me like hell that you need to be at this, and we'll cut straight to the audio here and here and vid below. Openers Fuxa and LSD and the Search For God at good ol' Prospector!

Late notice for a Long Beach appearance by brown-eyed soul star Brenton Wood, fixture at New Orleans' world-class rock & roll fest the Ponderosa Stomp and lots more. Says Ponderosa:

Brown-Eyed Soul isn't about color. It's a way of life—music that is passed from generation to generation like a family heirloom…the Latino culture is like one big family." So says L.A. soul singer Brenton Wood, and he should know, for his songs rank right alongside those of thee Midnighters, Billy Preston, the Shields, Ron Holden and the Thunderbirds and Rosie and the Originals as enduring East L.A. low rider classics. Wood is feverishly popular in the Latino community, and is part of the continuum of artists—the aforementioned along with many, many more—whose songs and reputations have risen to mythic proportions wherever Pendleton shirts, pachuko crosses and massive hydraulic systems are seen.

Born Alfred Smith in Shreveport, Louisiana, his family moved to the Los Angeles area when he was still a boy. He became interested in music during the late '50s, first joining the Dootones and then forming the Quotations while attending Compton College, where he also took up piano. Like many West Coast teenagers of the day, Wood's biggest influences were Sam Cooke and Jesse Belvin. After working with Little Freddie and the Rockets, who released "All My Love" b/w "Too Fat" on Chief Records in 1958, Wood signed a song writing contract with the company that would become Double Shot Records, but spent the entire decade of the '60s writing and awaiting a hit of his own. That hit came in 1966 with "The Oogum Boogum Song." As good—and popular—as "Oogum Boogum" was, his next outing, "Gimme Little Sign"—with its bluesy, reggae-esque backbeat, rhythmic vocals, killer breaks and ingeniously simple Farfisa organ solo—was truly mesmerizing. To this day, it can fill virtually any dance floor, no matter what crowd happens to be present, within seconds.

Tonight at Rhythm Lounge in Long Beach. Related: Brenton Wood Home Page; Ponderosa Stomp review though I didn't mention how Alex Chilton quietly sat in on guitar when Wood played "Oogum Boogum." And if you are thinking of visiting Brenton tonight then make sure you save some time on the way home to stop by the famous Good Foot soul club at the Que Sera.

Scanner Darkly score composer Graham Reynolds leads his Golden Arm Trio through movie compositions and other original music at Open in Long Beach. Read how polymath Reynolds got to make the music for the most faithful Philip K. Dick adaptation yet or just take the teaser:

The best thing about playing drums is you get to hit things a whole bunch of times and you can hit them as hard as you want. I don't think John Williams would sit down on the drum set and start bashing.

MP3s: The Duchess; Little Blue Flowers; The Tick Tock Club. And P.S.: that photo by the outstanding Aubrey Edwards, the best Texan I've ever met.

Courtesy tar pit:

Rapture are never going to untangle from the bubblegum of "House of Jealous Lovers" (best rollerskate jam of my legal drinking years) even with new album Pieces of the People We Something Something Something, which is considered/literate/produced so sharp as to cut glass but still sounds like it's chasing the stuff LCD Soundsystem did and dumped after their last record. Sort of a shame because Rapture was pretty early to the game and Mirrors/Out of the Races were post-Pop Group before Pop Group became the newest noodlehead namecheck—for how much longer must we tolerate mass culture?—but after "Jealous Lovers" it's been lonely ever since. As always I blame England and New York. At the Glass House.

SEE ALSO RAPTURE ON MYSPACE; RAPTURE HOMEPAGE WITH VIDEO/AUDIO.

You've probably seen Borat, and if so you've probably seen Borat drunk, and you may actually be drunk now, and that puts you in a good state of mind to process this scene-by-scene dissection from Salon. Philosophical guy, the Borat: not many other movies this year have everybody asking questions like, "What is real?" Says Salon:

With few exceptions, the real folks featured in "Borat," the movie, have been happy to talk about their experience, and outing them has turned into a mini-media craze, with tons of news outlets trying to sniff out the stories behind the making of the film. To save you time and satisfy your curiosity, we tracked down some of Borat's victims on our own and also compiled a guide revealing which figures were in on the joke (Pamela -- say it ain't so!) and which weren't.

Pamela exposed in greater detail here by staff Pamela correspondent Steve Lowery. And interviews with a veteran New York feminist here and a producer at that TV station here with this sad story:

"Because of him, my boss lost faith in my abilities and second-guessed everything I did thereafter," she writes in Newsweek's most recent issue. "I spiraled into depression, and before I could recover, I was released from my contract early. It took me three months to find another job, and now I'm thousands of dollars in debt and struggling to keep my house out of foreclosure."

Great success! And plus those frat boys have also filed suit and South Carolina doctor says he's lucky he didn't make the cut, though he'll probably start calling lawyers when the DVD comes out. And Detroit Free Press diligently reports that "the other day" a "Turkish journalist" "claimed" Borat was stolen from him--and yes, as detailed here, it IS Mahir "I Kiss You!" Cagri, fighting the good fight from the fringe of the Internet. Mahir tells AP:

The world knows he is copying Mahir. I am not saying this - the world is. I have received so many e-mails from people in the United States who tell me he is imitating me.

And from Mahir's home page, possibly the first of the great Internet haw-haw sites:

I like music , I have many many music enstrumans my home I can play I like sport , swiming , basketball , tenis , volayball , walk ......... I like sex I like travel I go 3-4 country every year I went , Germany , Nederland , Belgium , Austria , Denmark , Sweden , Hungary, Moldovia , Ukraina , Bulgaria , Romania , Macedonia , Azerbaijan , Georrgia , Iran ..... My profession jurnalist , music and sport teacher , I make psycolojy doctora I like to take foto-camera (amimals , towns , nice nude models and peoples)..... My tall 1.84 cm (6.2 feet) My weight 78 kg. My eyes green .. I live alone !!!!!!!!! I have home - car ......... I like to be friendship from different country .. I live in TURKEY -town IZMIR ...( 4 million peoples - near the sea - old history)... Who is want to come TURKEY I can invitate ..... She can stay my home ........

Damning evidence, to be sure. But not everyone is mad at little Borat. Jewish ("WHAAAAT?") bed-and-breakfast operators Joseph and Mariam Behar tell Salon:

Speaking on the telephone, Joseph, with Mariam chatting in the background, says they saw the film and thought it "was not anti-Semitic at all. It was outstanding. I think [Sacha Baron Cohen] is a genius." Though Borat never broke character, and no one in the production let the Behars in on the joke, Joseph found Borat to be "very lovely and very polite, very attractive."

Also isn't this a music blog? Sure it is! Cold War Kids make music and they're labelmates with Borat. Downtown Records is putting out their this and Borat's... this:

after many laughs over the original $32,000 ticket price listed for the cold war kids' upcoming dec. 16 show at detroit bar, a final ticket price has been settled upon: $8 (presale, plus service charge); $10 at the door. this show will sell out, so scoop up tickets while you can via the detroit bar website beginning monday, nov. 13 @ 10 a.m.

meanwhile, hit up stereogum to download and hear cwk covering tom waits and fiona apple (!).

back down from san francisco and ready to make you smile: mr. blank tapes himself, matt adams, performs tonight in long beach at portfolio cafe. if you haven't heard the blank tapes, don't miss out--dude writes some of the most sing song, lovey-dovey songs since stephin merritt started making music for movies instead of broken hearts. think magnetic fields structure with some vague v.u. rock and a wee bit of neutral milk and happy thoughts and you can get the idea. also playing is the simply gorgeous (and so so friendly) ghost town jenny, another member of the blank tapes/part the clouds collective, and creative genius matt mccluer. these folks are putting out some seriously great stuff. grab a coffee to make you perky and start your partying early.

the blank tapes and ghost town jenny (and matt mccluer!!!) @ portfolio coffee house, 2300 e. 4th st. (that's 4th and junipero), long beach. 9 p.m. if there's a cover, it'll be cheap.

SPEAKING OF LONG BEACH: weekly co-worker/fielding guitarist/promoter kevin poush, who throws pull your pants up every first and fourth tuesday at the prospector, got a nice write-up from la underground. read here.

VVoice reports:

Groundbreaking feminist author, activist, and academic Ellen Willis died Wednesday. Willis had been sick from some time. Born in 1941, she served as the first pop music critic at the New Yorker, and later worked as an editor and writer at the Village Voice, on and off, until the mid 1990s.

I'm at the office away from my extensive reference library but you music people will remember Willis from her essay in Greil Marcus' desert-island-disc book Stranded: "Velvet Underground" is one of the finest Velvet Underground essays ever written, right up there with Wayne McGuire's famous piece on drone and transcendence and if I can get a chance tonight I'll find her essay collection and maybe transcribe a tiny bit. Or you can just trust me. Related: I quoted about three words off her here but I don't think that really gets much at all across.

Updated:

From the book Beginning To See The Light: Sex, Hope, And Rock-And-Roll:

What it comes down to for me--as a Velvets fan, a lover of rock-and-roll, a New Yorker, an aesthete, a punk, a sinner, a sometime seeker of enlightenment (and love) (and sex)--is this: I believe that we are all, openly or secretly, struggling against one or another kind of nihilism. I believe that body and spirit are not really separate, though it often seems that way. I believe that redemption is never impossible and always equivocal. But I guess that I just don't know.

Also see obit in The Nation; Ellen Willis' homepage at NYU.

Via WFMU: Good-lookin' weirdo comix mag from North Carolina that sells to you the weird consumer for cheap. Routinely featured...

Robert Crumb, who designed our logos, Kim Deitch, Frank Stack, Robert Armstrong, Carol Tyler, Spain, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Justin Green, Bill Griffith, Peter Poplaski, Billy Childish, Simon Deitch, and many other amazing artists.

... and they've also had Phoebe Gloeckner too. Visit here.

SIR RICHARD BISHOP: THOSE SECRETS WILL NEVER BE REVEALED

Sir Richard Bishop might be a gypsy jazz guitarist because he could probably and sometimes does play like Django, but he's got gypsy restlessness in more than his fingertips; he's the Indiana Jones of the fingerstyle guitar, taking research excursions—sure they are!—to least-visited places to scout music for his brother Alan's superlative Sublime Frequencies label (home of the hits from Iraq, North Korea, the Far East, Africa and more) and to scout pure technique from the odd oudist on the street. Now in his cheerful prime, Bishop is pushing past hummingbird fingerpicker—evidently champion John Fahey even told him that he plays like the devil—to some sort of cosmic guitar archetype. Eight-armed Bishop and his undulating improvisations: Sandy Bull ducks his banjo in respect, Jimmy Page touches his temple, Ennio Morricone makes a private note and even Ravi Shankar dips an ear. He's an undisputed world-class performer making an intensely rare stop at our own modest Koo's. Up north this show will cost $100 and have a line pushing all the way to the horizon, but tonight we get the intimate sort of experience Bishop probably reserves mostly for visitors to his own living room. Couldn't urge you to get this more strongly. Bishop delivers this interview between visits to occult booksellers—he trades in forbidden texts as a day job—and overseas tour stops. Full text below.

GO TO SIR RICHARD BISHOP WITH TARA JANE ONEIL AND ONE AM RADIO AT KOO'S, 540 E. BROADWAY, LONG BEACH; WWW.KOOS.ORG. TONIGHT: THURS., NOV. 9, 7:30 P.M. $8. ALL AGES.

LISTEN TO SIR RICHARD BISHOP ON MYSPACE; SIR RICHARD BISHOP ON YOUTUBE; MORE SIR RICHARD BISHOP ON YOUTUBE; 'SKULL OF SIDON' MP3 DOWNLOAD.

SEE ALSO SIR RICHARD BISHOP FEATURE; KOO'S UPDATE; SIR RICHARD BISHOP HOME PAGE.

What specific books do you trade in? Particular selections from the Miskatonic University reading list? And though it may be a trade secret, where exactly does one tend to locate these sorts of books? Are you visiting lost temples between tours?

Well, the bookselling seems to have taken a back seat as of late. I have been spending so much time on tour (and gladly so) that I have been neglecting the books. However, when selling, the majority of my offerings are in the field of rare occult books: specifically (but not limited to) Ceremonial Magic, Demonology & Witchcraft, Alchemy & Hermeticism, serious Tantrik studies, mysticism, etc. In the past, I also specialized in weird horror fiction and was (and still am) a huge H.P. Lovecraft fanatic. I find the books wherever I can. It's not as easy as it used to be. Sometimes I will try to acquire private collections, but most of my inventory over the years has come from other booksellers and collectors. And of course, any lost temples I come across will be duly explored.

Roughly speaking, it seems like your solo records (and live performances, I