Category: Robert’s Blog

Revisiting Old Music Part II (Bu-Ca)

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My overview of my entire CD collection continues. Lots and lots of Cabaret Voltaire!

The Budget Girls – On a Tight Budget Two screaming gals front this wonderfully crude and trashy garage rock outfit.

The Buggles – The Age of Plastic We all know the hit “Video Killed the Radio Star” but there about 2 or 3 more songs on this New Wave disc that are just as good. Some crap too.

William S. Burroughs – Dead City Radio The only way to appreciate Burrough is his spoken word recordings. He could read the farm report and it would seem meaningful. But, let’s face it. His books are well-written but in the end, are just meandering, plotless garbage. In this case, the short format suits him better.

William S. Burroughs & Kurt Cobain – The “Priest” They Called Him Painfully short and Cobain is there in name only. Mostly just feedback. Lame.

Cabaret Voltaire – 1974-76 Cabaret Voltaire at their rawest. Barely listenable.

Cabaret Voltaire – Mix-up A few good tracks, but they hadn’t quite got the idea that music needs some structure to make a person want to listen.

Cabaret Voltaire – The Voice of America The first decent Cabaret Voltaire record. The noise begins to become more musical. Still, not for the feint of ears.

Cabaret Voltaire – Three Mantras 2 Long tracks make up this good early Cabaret Voltaire record. World music has begun to creep up into the noise-scapes.

Cabaret Voltaire – The Living Legends A compilation of early recordings. Pretty good.

Cabaret Voltaire – Red Mecca The best of the Chris Watson era Cabaret Voltaire records. Dark, dense and challenging. Not to be missed.

Cabaret Voltaire – 2×45 Almost as good as Red Mecca with more natural sounding instrumentation and some genuine grooves. A perfect transition into the next phase of their sound.

Cabaret Voltaire – Hai! A post-Watson live recording of some of their early material. Surprisingly improvisational in nature.

Cabaret Voltaire – Listen Up With Cabaret Voltaire A 2-disc compilation of early and mid-career tracks. Highly recommended if you want to hear some of their old material, but don’t want to dive right into the hardcore stuff.

Cabaret Voltaire – The Crackdown This record is the start of the funky, danceable era of Cabaret Voltaire’s records. My favorite of their long career.

Cabaret Voltaire – Micro-Phonies The noisier side of Cabaret Voltaire is almost completely absent from this recording. A solid record that includes the super-excellent “Sensoria” remix.

Cabaret Voltaire – Eight Crepuscule Tracks A dreamy journey back to the noisy-era.

Cabaret Voltaire – The Covenant, The Sword, and The Arm of the Lord Found sounds and noise are brought back into the songs. It’s definitely danceable and funky but the added harshness is a nice change.

Cabaret Voltaire – Code They really lay on the funk on this record, with pounding drums and electric guitar. The sound has once again been cleaned-up and minimalized.

Cabaret Voltaire – Groovy, Laidback and Nasty Another dramatic shift in the direction of the band. This album is filled with traditional Chicago-house electronica and Mal actually sings melodies. In hindsight, a mediocre release, but a necessary transition into their electronica period.

Cabaret Voltaire – Hypnotised (cd single) The best song from Groovy, Laidback and Nasty gets some remixing.

Cabaret Voltaire – Keep On (cd single) More remixes from Groovy, Laidback and Nasty.

Cabaret Voltaire – Body and Soul This record is a great improvement on the previous. Richard H. Kirk is beginning to get a handle on the computer music. The music still lacks some edge but is pretty good nonetheless.

Cabaret Voltaire – What Is Real (cd single) More remixes. Cabaret Voltaire – Percussion Force A few remixes of “Don’t Walk Away” and several new tracks. Highly recommended.

Cabaret Voltaire – Colours The last recordings to feature the singing of Steven Mallinder. Along the same lines as Body and Soul with some further refinement in the style.

Cabaret Voltaire – Plasticity Much of the spirit of the old Cabaret Voltaire has come back in this CD. The music is pure dance electronica, but there is a return to found sounds and exotic world-music samples. Alas, no more singing.

Cabaret Voltaire – Technology: Western Reworks 1992 They dip way back into their catalog to find songs to remix/re-record using the power of computers and such. The result as a dazzling mix of noise and beats. I think this record changed the way Kirk/Mallinder approached electonica. Perhaps one of the earliest examples of I.D.M.

Cabaret Voltaire – I want You / Kino Remixes of the remixes.

Cabaret Voltaire – International Language A collection of new songs continues to refine the electronica meets noise.

Cabaret Voltaire – The Conversation Cabaret Voltaire’s swan song is a sprawling 2-disc masterpiece. It ebbs and flows through various themes and closes with an epic 40 minute track filled with hypnotic sonic beauty. Awesome.

Revisiting Old Music

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The past year or so I have been an iPod owner and have not paid much attention to my wall o’ CDs. Well, the same songs are popping up just a bit too often during shuffle, and I thought it would be a fresh change of pace if I started popping in a good old CD every now again. To make sure not to miss anything, I decided to pull the CDs down for listening in alphabetical order. I happened to be listening to Big Sandy and the Fly-rite Boys when I made this monumental decision, so that’s where I started.

So here’s where I am so far: There’s the aforementioned Big Sandy CD. It’s listenable yet unremarkable rockabilly stuff. Next, a slew of Blonde Redhead records. The first two CDs, when they had a bassist, are the best. They start to get tiresome up until Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons which is when they start adding electronics and some weirdness to their songs. These were followed by my two Blue Hearts CDs. The first is their U.S. release, Blast Off. It’s a collection of some of their best songs from their first 3 Japan-only albums. Amazing. Next is Bust, Waste, Hip which isn’t nearly as good because the punkishness is toned down quite a bit. Moving on we have The Blue Meanies’ Pave the World featuring fellow Nonagon‘er, Tony on drums. Lots of ska rhythms and horns, without being a ska band. Bomboras, Savage Island is next with lots of organ tinged surf. Pretty good but not their best. Bongwater, The Big Sellout: it’s funny, catchy and psychedelic all at the same time—a very good record. The Boogie Patrol Express La Polyester Fantasy is the only(?) CD from this early 90’s Eugene, Oregon band. Straight-forward, ever-so-mildly ironic disco music, played expertly with real instruments by talented kids. Next, I have two wonderful Boss Hog CDs, Boss hog and Whiteout, both of which are great loud . Finally, we have Brian Brain’s Time Flies When You Are Having Toast—A solo effort by then P.I.L. drummer Martin Atkins. This is a weird CD with lots of late 80’s sounding synths in front of Atkins pounding drums. Some of the tracks would be at home on a childrens’ record. It is about as far from Atkin’s Pigface as you can imagine, but, you know what, I love this CD. It was 99 cents when I got it!

Well, that was shelf unit 1 of my big Ikea CD rack. I will report back when I get through the next section.

Move Over OMG, Here’s Something Leaner! Just WTF does BTG mean?

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It’s the latest craze sweeping the nation, and you heard it here first! It’s the meme to end all memes. It’s the acronymiest acronym around!

What is it? It’s BTG! I intended it as a replacement for hackneyed OMG, BTG is my chat shorthand for “By the Gods!” A statement of amazement. A proclomation that you have been witness to the divine, usually in the context of having your ass handed to you by a 12-year-old in Counterstrike.

It’s origin is from the great Harryhausen film, Clash of the Titans. In the film, Burgess Meredith plays Ammon, a Greek playwright and sidekick to Perseus… he is the ancient Greek version of C3-PO (and Bu-Bo is poor man’s R2-D2). Throughout the film, Ammon utters, “By the Gods!” in amazement at the miracles Zues and company lay down on Perseus. Click Burgess to hear more examples.

Here at MoonRock labs we have also been researching other memes to. Here’s a sneak peak: ROTCL, YG and HHJ.

So there you have it. A new thing to SMS to your peeps, BTG!

The Triumphal Return of Robert Gomez’s Unofficial Tribute to Planet Pimp Records!

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Long ago, back in the dark ages of the Internet—say around 1997 or so—I put together a little tribute to one of my favorite record labels, Planet Pimp Records. Planet Pimp was a small label out of San Francisco that specialized in garage rock bands, but each release had a novelty edge to it, much to the chagrin of many a record buyer (and The Car Thieves). For example, at the height of the retro-surf craze in the mid-nineties, they released a 45 by the band The Phantom Surfers. This was one of the best known surf bands of that era, but their release on Planet Pimp consisted mostly of audience banter and a prank phone call. At the most there was about five seconds of actual surf music. Brilliant!

Throughout the twenty-five or so releases, there was a consistent irreverence and flat-out weirdness that really struck a chord with me. This was the early home of Neil Hamburger, and if you get his sense of humor you would also love much of what Planet Pimp churned out. The humor was pervasive not only in the recorded output of the label, but the packaging and marketing. With each subsequent release, you were introduced to the various characters—both real and made up—that comprised the Planet Pimp universe. First and foremost was the president of Planet Pimp Records, Sven-Erik Geddes.

As the nineties came to an end, for reasons unknown to me, Planet Pimp stopped putting out records. I was never able to find the last two Planet Pimp releases (if you’ve got a copy of Neil Hamburger’s Tribute to Princess Di or Sounds of the International Airport Restrooms that you are willing to part with, please contact me!). I don’t know whatever happened to President Sven-Erik Geddes. The closest I’ve come to finding out was an interview with Neil Hamburger in which he says, ” Mr. Geddes has retired from the music business to concentrate on matters closer to his heart. That’s a nice way of putting it.”

Whatever the reasons for its demise, the archeological/vinyl record remains; and I’m here to keep the virtual record of this fantastic moment in recorded music alive as well. I have given the old site a new, more comprehensive coat of pixel paint, gotten rid of the lame frame-based layout, and added tons of scans and samples. I plan to keep updating it with more stuff when I get the time or when readers contribute something worthwhile. So without further ado, here is Robert Gomez’s Unofficial Tribute to Planet Pimp Records!

A Homebrew Atari 2600 Cartridge Design

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Elevators Amiss Maid

Recently, I took the time to enter an art contest. It was sponsored by AtariAge.com—a Web site devoted to the the preservation of the Atari 2600 and other ancient Atari computers and consoles. They also are one of the few places that sell new(!) games for the Atari 2600.

It was one of these new, so-called homebrew games that was the object of the contest. The game is called Elevators Amiss and it involves running a tiny pixelized chambermaid up the floors of a hotel, trying to avoid the elevators that move up and down across your path. Think of it as a less complicated version of Frogger. The winner of the contest was to receive a copy of the game and a credit from the AtariAge store. That was enough to get me to give it a go (I’ve been eying the Joystick to USB converter for awhile now).

My approach to the design was to create an image that was dynamic and made you think you were buying a 3-D video action extravaganza… pretty much like every Atari game box tricked me into thinking when I was a kid. Looking back on past winners, I noticed that there were many entries that used some of the same design and layout of the classic games that Atari put out in the early eighties. In my opinion, such designs go against the spirit of homebrew Atari games. These games are not really about nostalgia, they more are about taking a near-dead platform and breathing new life into the system.

The hardest part about illustrating this game it that the theme of killer elevators doesn’t work well outside of the constraints of the 2-D pixelated screen. My idea was to have the elevators flying through the walls and ceilings, completely dislodged from their elevator shafts smashing everything in their paths. In the image, the chambermaid is sprinting down the hall, just avoiding a crashing elevator car. Originally, I was going to give her a rainbow colored tracing of her movements trailing behind her (ala the Keystone Kapers box) but I liked my elevator painting too much to cover it up with action lines. Anyhow, here’s the final product for your viewing pleasure.

Unfortunately, I did not win the contest. The winner was Nathan Strumm #1. It was one of the better ideas, but to me it doesn’t capture the essence of the actual game play. My personal favorite was Patricio Cuello #1—simple idea, well executed with lots of colors. It seemed very appropriate to me. Check out the contest page to see all the entries.

Champaign/Urbana Music Scene and the Rise and Fall of Der Lugomen

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Last weekend Nonagon took a little mini-tour to play a gig at the Iron Post in Urbana, Illinois. The town was buried, ball-deep in snow and was completely dead. All the old haunts have been sterilized, commercialized and bland-o-fied. From what we hear, gone are the days of Cham-bana’s vibrant music scene. Sure, there are still some good bands down there, Triple Whip for example, and I hear the Poster Children are still alive, but the spark is gone.

All this said, our show was a blast, and we were very thankful to the people who brave the weather to come out that night. But cruisin’ around the town brought back many reminiscences of gigs of years past. For me it was my college-years band, Der Lugomen. We only played out three times, but each show was an event to behold.

Der Lugomen was comprised of Robert Gomez (hey, that’s me), John Burgess, Thom Burbrink (who now goes by the professional moniker of Frank T. Burbrink, PhD.), and an Alesis 16-B drum machine. Our music was much influenced by Big Black and The Jesus Lizard, basically that late 80s early 90s Illinois indy sound.

At the time we all lived in the same apartment and seemed to have endless hours available to us for dicking around and writing songs. We would have full-volume practice sessions in our 3rd floor apartment unit, and the neighbors never seemed to complain (at least not to our faces). All of our work cumulated in the release of 2 tapes full of songs. The first was a patchy hodge podge of songs entitled, “No Rules Barred.” The second was our magnum opus, “Honky Lips.”

I have put together a DVD of footage from our last show. Here’s a clip from it that I posted on YouTube.

Der Lugomen only performed out three times. This show, at Treno’s pizzeria in Urbana, was our first non-house party show and our last show ever. We basically played our songs while Thom sang, threw garbage and terrorized the folks near the front.

For those of you with good eyesight, you may be able to see Jay Ryan taking my shoes off. After us, Jumpknuckle played (featuring John of Nonagon), then Snapcase, and finally Hot Glue Gun. The local bands were all great. Snapcase was awful. Retarded NYC punk–they actually had guys on stage who would accentuate song changes by punching in the air. We theorized that they would have to pull the tour van over every couple of hours so that they could all take punch breaks at the side of the road.

If you are interested in obtaining some Der Lugomen music send me a note and maybe we can work something out.

More Videos from my VHS Archives

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I’m beginning to slowly make my way through my old VHS tapes in search of interesting video to post and have found a couple. First we have a short clip from Ben Stiller’s old MTV show. The MTV show was pretty funny, much better than the Fox incarnation that came along later. He really has the mannerism of Shatner down, but Stiller can’t do the voice at all. That’s basically the problem with most of Stiller’s sketch comedy. He can write good sketches but doesn’t have the impersonation skills (that Zoolander voice was freakin’ awful) that define most of the recent American sketch comedy greats like Mike Meyers. Anyhow, enjoy this high point in his career:

UPDATE: The above video was removed from YouTube due to a copyright violation, but thanks to a glitch in YouTube’s API you can still view it embedded here!

Next we have the legendary performance of 3-D (Douglas Denevio… Denebio[?]) lip syncing to Paul Hardcastle’s 19. I believe he won that season’s competition–I hope he spent his $25,000 wisely. Anyhow, the numbers tell the story 30-30-30. We can only dream that we could as cool as Doug:

You’re the Best of the Class this Year…

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For the past year or so I have been keeping a log of all the movies, books and media I have consumed throughout the year and giving personal ratings for everything. I can now present you with my top ranked items for the year of our Lord, 2006!

My only rule for adding things to the list are that I have to have not seen/read/played that item previously. This means my lists are filled with items that weren’t released in 2006, so don’t consider this a Best of 2006 list like you would see on other, so-called “web sites.” So without further ado, here is Robert Gomez’s favorite media of 2006:

Best of 2006

Movies

  • Deep Red (a.k.a. Profundo Rosso) (9/10)
    • Beautiful horror mystery with one of the best, and fair reveals at the end of the movie. It’s like a live action romantic painting.
  • Wallace and Grommit and the Curse of the Were Rabbit (9/10)
    • Very amusing animation that doesn’t rely on American animation formulas of anthropomorphism. Lot’s of humor for adults too.
  • Frenzy (9/10)
    • Hitchcock does giallo!
  • Rear Window (9/10)
    • What can I say, it’s a classic.

Books

  • And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (10/10)
    • A great puzzle that keeps up its pace all the way to the last page
  • The Fortune of War by Patrick O’Brian (9/10)
  • Desolation Island by Patrick O’Brian (9/10)
    • Both of the above books are part of the Aubry/Maturin naval warfare books. These are (so far) my favorites in the series with strong, over-arching plot lines or espionage and survival and a slightly reduced emphasis on naval tactics and such.

Games

  • Day of Defeat: Source (10/10)
    • My first real foray into online FPS gaming. Fast paced and forgiving for n00bs.
  • Half-Life 2 (9/10)
    • A great game with some nice game play twists. I get a bit boring about 2/3 into it, but picks up again by the end.

Music

  • Hello Young Lovers by Sparks (10/10)
    • A masterpiece of epic, symphonic goofiness and left-of-center pop structuring. Sparks best since Kimono my House.
  • Fear Box Set by Ennio Morricone (10/10)