“Wherein John Zorn, avant jazz classical jack master everything genius type, takes on a few of Ennio Morricone‘s soundtrack epics, succeeds in rearranging the molecules in my then psychedelicized brain, to entirely positive effect. Because it was 1985 and the world needed fracturing, eviscerating, disassembling, rearranging. And it got me seeing the movies again. The Big Gundown indeed.” (Philip Random)
“The first time I heard Wayne (eventually Jayne) County’s Man Enough to be a Woman was at a punk bash, 1979 sometime. It showed up on a mixtape somewhere in and around the Buzzcocks, the Ramones, Devo, maybe some Kinks. It was that kind of scene. I didn’t even like punk rock (yet), but the parties were always good. So here’s a hint, kids. If the party’s good, the music is too, in spite of what your so called ‘taste’ may be telling you, because if you’re anything like me, your taste will be shit until you’re at least twenty-one. But anyway, Wayne County and the Electric Chairs weren’t even punk really, just loud and proud and defiantly brave rock and roll tearing glamorous scars into the fabric of reality. There was also some Abba on that mixtape. I was wrong about them, too, for a long while.”
“A hell of a song from a hell of a band that, for whatever reason, didn’t rise up and become insanely huge. Their first album in particular managed to be heavy and cool and entirely necessary without really sounding like anything anybody else was doing at the time. Which was perhaps the problem. Sons of Freedom were unique … in 1988 anyway. The biz just didn’t know what to do with them. Jump ahead three or five years and I suspect things would have played out differently. But then I would’ve been denied Alice Henderson when I needed it. Winter of 1988 into 89. Did it ever stop raining bullshit? Only when the music played.” (Philip Random)
“A song with the word bitch in the title in 1971!? It wasn’t done (unless you were the Rolling Stones). And to be honest, I didn’t actually hear Queen Bitch until 1973. Just one more element of that tidal wave of brilliance and threat that kept coming our way with Mr. David Bowie‘s name attached in the latter part of the early 70s. Who was this stranger, this alien, this queen, this bitch? What the hell was going on? I was still fumbling around with puberty at the time. I believe it was exactly what I needed to hear.” (Philip Random)
“I hear a Them track and I honestly can’t hear much difference from what the Rolling Stones were up to at the same time. Mid-60s, putting serious electricity to the blues, kicking great and necessary holes in the reality barrier. The weird part is that it’s Van Morrison doing the howling, offering nothing short of everything, which is clearly not enough. Some things never change.” (Philip Random)
“There’s no point in trying to do justice to the universe expanding alien immensity that is the Sun Ra story with a few words. So I won’t bother trying. Just urge you to look into it, please, explore at least some of those extra-stellar regions. As for Nuclear War, I think it speaks well enough for itself. We’re f***ed if we allow for even its possibility in our stratagems. True in 1945, true in 1982, true forever to the ends of the time and space.” (Philip Random)
Randophonic 