(“Dr. Thrasher,” author of the first and last posts above, is Steven W. Thrasher. His newest book is The Overseer Class: A Manifesto.)

With tears in my eyes and love and joy in my heart,

Jay

Landline is a free (that is: pay what you can), to-the-point email, sent to subscribers on a weekly-ish basis.

As odd and sometimes random as they can be, Landline bulletins are written (or: compiled) with an audience in mind: friends and colleagues, curious sweetfolk and old heads from the days of Arthur Magazine (which I edited), pastoral people and dharma bums, food bank workers and non-public figures doing other righteous activities — those kinds of people, I’m sure you know what/who I mean.

Landline is made up of ideas and nudges; rabbit hole wanderings and silly diversions; recipes, romances and cultural retrievals & such that hopefully add up to form a humble — but helpful? — bailiwick outside the avalanche of cruddiness that grows ever larger.

An archive of previous Landlines — 125 posts, going back to 2017 (!) — exists here.

Landline makes me very little income relative to the time/effort I put into it. But I like to do it, and it currently has 4,926 subscribers, which, gosh, is not nothing, after all. I am grateful for every single one.

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Speaking of which — this Landline is sponsored by our good friends at Fiddler’s Green…

2. FRIENDS SINGING TOGETHER

Via Press Play, Dae!: “Original 1968 promo video for ‘Friends’, along with the [Beach] Boys singing it a capella on a Dallas news station the same year. Dallas news footage owned by Ed Roach. Special thanks to Lee Dempsey.”

3. FINDING WHERE YOU ARE

Via Brian Johnson TV: “Robert Plant greets Brian Johnson in the misty mountains of Wales in his Celtic warrior outfit”

4. WHAT MOVED YOU ONCE CAN MOVE YOU AGAIN

Brian Eno, 1983, interviewed by Johnny Black for Blitz, via moredarkthanshark.org:

“I have a friend in New York, Bob Quine, who is very good at finding really old records. I recently asked him to find Ketty Lester singing ‘Love Letters Straight From Your Heart ‘and to put it in the middle of a blank tape for me, so I wouldn’t know when it would come on. I have a soundproof room in my apartment in New York, and I went in there, turned out the lights and put on the tape.

“While I was waiting for it to start, which took about fifteen minutes, I tried to remember the exact moment when I first heard the song. There’s a long river in Woodbridge, and beside it there’s a bandstand. We used to all gather there with our transistors and listen to Alan Freeman’s Pick Of The Pops on Sunday afternoons. One afternoon, just as the evening light was beginning to change, I heard that song, Love Letters, and I was so moved by it. It was such a huge experience for me. So I sat in my room and when the song came on again, it all just flooded back.

“I can be moved to tears quite easily by music, particularly Gospel songs, which is what I listen to most of all lately.”

Ketty Lester performing the song on television, 1962:

5. A LUMIÉRE UNWINDS IN YOUR HEAD: NIGHT DIVING WITH IRA COHEN

I recently discovered this piece that the poet-artist-legend Ira Cohen1 wrote for High Times 43 years ago, which is beautiful and, for me, haunting. Your mileage will surely vary. If you’re able, leave aside for a moment, any urge to determine how much of the text is dated, or ‘true,’ or romanticized, or based in some kind of (inevitable) cross-cultural misunderstanding. Maybe just let it be an extended, dazzling vision, one human’s attempt to transmit something that shocked him, as best he could.

Majoon, Goblet Of Dreams

By Ira Cohen / published in High Times, Sept. 1983

Majoon, majoun, ma’jun… how soft the word is, how full of magic and jinn, how dark to the imagination! Majoon is the Arabic word for jam, but here in Morocco and all through the Islamic world, everyone knows that it is a special confection with Indian hemp, or kif as its main ingredient. In Morocco it is still as commonplace as fruitcake in England or angel-food cake in the United States. It is usually taken on festive occasions or in the wintertime, when it keeps you warm through the long Moroccan nights; but any time you feel like traveling, or crave some instant magic theater, all you have to do is find your favorite majoon seller and Open sesame! All doors fall down and you are off on a voyage with no turning back.

Eating majoon is like night diving. You descend into unknown depths surrounded by hundreds of shining eyes. Everything is underwater and slow motion. Is that a squid I have in my hand, or is it the head of Medusa turning me to stone? Majoon embeds you in black tar while you glow like sapphires or you leave your body behind and soar through the air, holding on for dear life to the long braid of your jinni.

The effects of majoon are like those of smoking kif or marijuana, but stronger and more commonly hallucinogenic, building up gradually in waves and often culminating in oceans of laughter. You wonder where you are or why everything is so strange, like, you never saw your hand before or heard the cry of the muezzin floating over the city. It may take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour or more before the majoon takes over, before you realize what has happened, and can last for as long as 24 hours. A lumière unwinds in your head, or suddenly a café on the edge of a cliff takes off and sails through the stars. Rooms contract and expand and somewhere from your own most secret places there is a babble of voices made up of old memories and hidden desires asking you to surrender. Each gesture is eternal, for time has nothing to do with metronomes, and minutes have become hours or even centuries. You can feel your heart beating faster and you want something to drink, since your mouth is incredibly dry, or you feel ravenously hungry and can eat for hours on end sampling one taste after another. But sometimes, especially if you eat too much majoon, you may sleep your voyage away.

The Moorish women, although they very rarely smoke kif as almost all the men do, like a nice piece of majoon now and then. It makes them dreamy and sensual, though they say that it makes them want to take off all their clothes and run naked through the streets. But that is the way it is. Sometimes you draw donkey ears, other times it is a command performance between stars and half-spoken wishes.

Continue reading this piece here: High Times

6. TRUE HALLUCINATIONS

Via author Charles C. Mann:

A pal points out the wonderfully bonkers Halupedia, an entire lookalike Wikipedia (same fonts, organization, everything) that consists of 100% AI hallucinations in articles that are made up on the spot. An entire mirror universe of hilarious nonsense, all for free.

One of the top folios at halupedia right now:

7. SIGN UP TO SIGN OFF

From Panda Bear & Sonic Boom:

Change. Exciting & frightening at the same time. The slow slips & the big shifts. Highs & Lows from the distraction of connectivity.
AI slop becomes an AI slope. Algorithm tables & algorithms tumble.
We’re taking things a little off piste.
More rock n’ roll than flick & scroll...
From here on in we’re getting back to a place of real connectivity and as you might have noticed from our new Graveyard/Lucky Charm 7” (only available from record stores) there’s no streaming, no videos, and a minimisation of online everything .
Going forward we’re looking to radio, live shows, listening parties, Q&A sessions & real life interactions to get back to a place we feel makes more sense.

To that end, we’re asking you to join us offline, outside of social media. To meet us in the real world. IRL not URL...

Sign up to sign off via the link in bio. We’ll be in touch soon, the old fashioned way.

Sending love and luck to you all meanwhile.
Panda Bear & Sonic Boom

Love and luck to all you Landliners too,

Jay

Patagonia, Arizona

The Emmett Grogan-themed Landline from three weeks ago, featuring a never-before-circulated interview from 1972 with the legendary member of the San Francisco Diggers — a group of anonymous 1960s street radicals with an outsized cultural footprint — struck a distressing chord for many readers, especially the Gen Xers and millennials.

The sarcasm, bitterness and anger displayed by Emmett in that conversation was bracing and for some, depressing, shocking1, and even, in a way, frightening.

Maybe it reminded us, in a heartbreaking way, that there’s a cost, or a shadow side, to working/living long-term outside of the mainstream, to walking an idealistic, artistic, bohemian or (perhaps) radical path.

Because, for almost all of us, no matter what you’ve achieved, or how hard you’ve struggled, or what status you’ve gained, or what high-minded “our band could be your life” ethic you’ve maintained, there comes a time when things just don’t work out.2 Think: the under-attended gigs… the failed activist campaign… the unreviewed or misunderstood work… the collapsed co-op… the crushed pirate radio station… and so on. The gifts you’ve offered the universe — your energy, your art, your comradeship, your ideas, your time — start to go unaccepted, if they were ever really accepted at all. Whatever momentum you’ve had shifts… declines… maybe disappears altogether.

And then, of course, there’s the poverty and debt. As a long-serving punk legend (KM) once told me in the late-’90s when he was making ends meet washing dishes at Millie’s restaurant: “‘Punk rock fame’ won’t pay my bus fare.”

In these circumstances, bitterness — which I guess you could say is a kind of fixation on an unresolvable (possibly exaggerated or delusional) grievance — is a wholly comprehensible, even predictable, psychological response.

But if that mood of bitterness persists, grows into a phase? Or worse, takes hold, and metastasizes into a condition? Then the rot sets in, and you’ve become a variation of the type that Brando nailed in On the Waterfront: “I coulda been a contender, I could’ve been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”

We’ve all met people like that — often at a bar, or a coffeehouse, or some kind of social occasion. Some of us (like: me!) have been that exhausting person for too-long periods, to the exasperation of friends, colleagues, comrades and family.

How to avoid this? How to get through it?

Obviously there’s no single answer, although “have a sense of humor and try to stay flexible” (JS) is probably as good a piece of broad, simple, secular guidance as any I’ve ever heard from someone who took repeated, unfair blows.3 But we all know that just because advice is eminently sound doesn’t mean it’s also easily followed.

Musician Johnny Angel Wendell’s “The End of the Road,” first published (I think) 28 years ago, remains a fantastic, humble, smell-the-despair piece of writing on what it’s like to realize at age 40 that maybe this thing just isn’t working out. There’s great humor there — solace, even — but it’s a hard piece to recommend to people before they’re really ready for it.

Anyways. How about if we turn our attention for a few minutes to what radical poet Diane di Prima had to say — indirectly — about all of this?

Eight years older than Grogan, already well experienced in enduring the vicissitudes of living a full-on dissident cultural and political life, di Prima left New York City in 1968 to join up with the Diggers in San Francisco. Six years later, in 1974, she did a talk/reading at The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University. In the five-minute video embedded below, she reflects briefly on the larger context of that move to San Francisco, and how, once there, she started generating more direct work for the Diggers’ (now using the “Free City” name) semi-confrontational outdoor public events. Di Prima then reads “April Fool Birthday Poem for Grandpa,” an instructive meditation on the inspiration of her Italian immigrant anarchist grandfather.

Here is the text of that poem, which acts as the introduction to di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters collection, which is still in print:

So much is there in di Prima’s direct, vivid lines. The rich lineage. The transmission of spirit, charisma, ideas, action, beauty. The role of the (non-embittered!) aged in educating the very young directly and by openly passionate example. The way that the right memories, called upon in times of distress, can comfort and inspire across an entire lifetime.

Di Prima sustained the vision, for decades, from what I can tell. In 1982, at age 48, she was filmed for Ron Mann’s Poetry in Motion project, reading two more of her revolutionary letters (#29 and #19):

And then, of course, there is di Prima reading from the stage at The Band’s The Last Waltz in 19764. It’s a concise three-minute performance that hits three distinct notes across three decades, from an outrageously funny/violent one-line poem from the 1950s, to the equally outrageous Diggers-era peace-life-vision that is Revolutionary Letter #4, to a final psychedelic poem of cataclysmic joy:

Can poems from long-ago substitute for, say, the companionship of an Italian anarchist grandpa in early childhood? That’s probably an unfair question to pose, but at bottom, that’s what these poems are supposed to do, in some way. And I think they do — they carry an undeniable spirit.

But it’s that first poem that perhaps offers a lesson that’s especially relevant to the problem of bitterness in the aging first-world bohemian/idealist/activist/artist. Di Prima’s “April Fool”5 grandpa, in old age, outside of his native country, found a new approach to continue his anarchist life/work: the transmission of wisdom, love and example to his granddaughter. In other words: he didn’t (only) pine for what had been lost; he worked with what remained. He kept making himself of use.

And so did she. This is di Prima in 2010, at age 76, making her inaugural address as San Francisco’s official Poet Laureate:

That address included a reading of this poem, addressed to Poetry itself:

Yours in foolishness,

Jay Babcock

Tucson/Patagonia, Arizona

Landline is free but it takes time/energy and yes money for me to produce each week. If you’re able, please consider a paid subscription. $5/month, $40/year. Special discount if you use this button:

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Last week we suddenly lost one1 of the three semi-feral cats we care for, and frankly, no amount of high-powered espresso has helped since then in getting the (ahem) eagerly awaited “Bitterness -> despair -> defiance, Part 2”2 essayette in shape to share.

Perhaps there will be new wind in the sagging sails of the good ship Landline this weekend, or maybe we’ll just stay anchored offshore for a bit longer, nursing our wounds. Hard to say.

In the meantime, though, here’s a parade of a seven videos, recently vetted at various levels, that might intrigue, befuddle, amuse or even elevate the curious viewer. I’ve thrown together a few lines of semi-informed blather about each video below, but if you don’t require any convincing, or prefer no spoilers, simply go directly to the Landline Video Parade 7 youtube playlist and stream these babies in sequence without prejudice.

Also, this is cool: Landline is made possible in part by our friends at Fiddler’s Green. Click the Arik Roper artwork below to check out their green scene.

1. MA’AM, YOUR HOVERCRAFT IS READY

Radiating, spellbinding newie from BCMC, the in-form instrumental duo of guitarist Bill MacKay and organist Cooper Crain (Bitchin Bajas, Cave). I think I’ve listened to this P. Floyd-T. Riley-T. Dream ascending, fluttering beauty two dozen times since it heroically appeared without warning three days ago in the best in-our-time-of-greatest-need style. Gotta double-check with the missus but I’m going to say I will pay good money to roadie for these psychedelic dreamers. Medicinal!

2. GREENAWAY INVESTIGATES THE EMPIRE’S NEW CLOTHIERS

“Savile Row” aka “Cut Above the Rest” (dir. Peter Greenaway, 1976, 4:50)

Emperor Haile Selassie’s Savile Road tailor may have been Henry Poole & Co, but it’s 1976 now and Kilgour, French & Stanbury are tailoring the emperor’s new clothes. Or something. Anyways, come for five minutes of gorgeous Greenaway photography and editing, stay for the paper pattern bag labels, upper class accents, weird daylight party scenes and, most of all, the calming presence of Tommy Nutter, Kilgour’s marvelously smooth creative director.

3. MOON SHOTS

Spike Milligan “First Irish Rocket To The Moon” (3:17)

Incredible documentary/newsreel footage from the silent film era chronicling a little known episode in space exploration history.

4. SUMMIT OF THE LONGHAIRS

Jon Lord, Ozzy Osbourne & Ian Hunter in conversation with Chip Monck (1974, 43:46)

It’s 1974. Grandfatherly Jon Lord (Deep Purple) and a clear-eyed Ozzy Osbourne (Black Sabbath) are joined by Ian Hunter (Mott the Hoople), who has a new book out, for a stateside group counseling session about showbiz pressures with Chip Monck, possibly the most unlikely (read: mellow) pop music show host in Earth history. Monck sensibly diverts the trio into checking out an in-studio performance by Wendy Waldman.

5. HOME BOX OFFICE PRESENTS

Cosmic Slop (various, 1994, 1:26:32)

“You are standing on the verge of getting it on. Beyond the twilight zone. Further than the outer limits. Deep. Deeper than deep. In the Black hole. Free your mind and your ass will follow because once you’ve passed the point of no return, you are caught in the COSMIC SLOP.” Then George Clinton’s noggin, on fire like Arthur Brown, bouncing around a low-resolution computer generated background like Zardoz, welcomes us Rod Serling-style to this three-story, 90-minute science fiction anthology TV show assembled by the Hudlin brothers for HBO broadcast in 1994. “They call me the doctor,” Clinton says. ”I’m the head man around here. I’ll be your seeing-eye guide through the Black hole…” One episode, ‘Tang,’ is adapted from a Charles Himes story!

6. AN ACTUAL, REAL-LIFE VOICE OF A NATION’S PEOPLE

Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt (dir. Michal Goldman, 1996, 1:06:55)

Watch it and swoon, and then weep. Aesthetics plus integrity plus courage in action: a working class heroine is something to be.

7. DARVISH KHAN ESFANDIYARPOUR’S MEMORY GARDEN

The Old Man and His Garden of Stone (dir. Parviz Kimiavi, 2004, 39:49)

An utterly astonishing 40-minute Iranian documentary about a 90-year-old deaf-mute Persian man that floored me, repeatedly. My gratitude to Ben Chasny, who indirectly hipped me to this film.

all the best to you and yours,

Jay Babcock

Tucson/Patagonia, Arizona

Landline is free but it takes time/energy and yes money for me to produce each week. If you’re able, please consider a paid subscription. $5/month, $40/year. Special discount if you use this button:

Get 40% off for 1 year

If you’d like to support Landline but (understandably!) don’t want to do business through Subsuck, here’s two workarounds: buy me a coffee or leave a tip in the PayPal TipJar.

Or: let’s barter!

Advertisers help make Landline feasible. Please email me directly (or simply reply to this email) for advertising rates, which are offered on a seriously sliding scale.

1

RIP Peekaboo, the mercurial semi-feral rascal who adopted us in Tucson almost five years ago. This cat was an intrepid wanderer, had a huge circuit all down the block and through the alleys where he got his eats and scratches and naps. Our neighbors joked, "Peekaboo has four dads" and they weren't wrong. He lived with us, we took him to the vet, etc., but he was never only ours. Wonderful being. May there be endless just-opened cans of Fancy Feast wherever you and your big ears roam now, little guy who stole our hearts.

So, as this film doesn’t really fit in with the subject of the next proper Landline (“Bitterness -> despair -> defiance, Part 2”), here it is now, shared without delay for the many, many generous supporters who make this newsletter possible with their subscriptions, donations and barters. I am grateful to you all.

And my gratitude to Ben Chasny, who indirectly hipped me to this film. Thank you, Ben.

Read more

Heart attack? Accidental overdose? Suicide? The death certificate, dated April 10, gives immediate cause of death as “pending further study.”

Sometime in 1972, or possibly 1973, freelance journalist Linda Gaboriau conducted an interview with San Francisco Diggers member Emmett Grogan in the Montreal apartment he shared with his wife, actress Louise Latraverse.

The conversation, which centered on Grogan’s recently published 498-page third-person autobiography-novel Ringolevio (also: here), was apparently intended for broadcast on CBC radio, which Gaboriau regularly contributed to.1

I don’t know if any or all of this interview was in fact ever broadcast. Some years ago, a member of the Grogan family passed me an audio transfer of the interview, which had been recorded on ⅛-inch tape.

The family has recently given me permission to circulate a transcript of the Gaboriau interview that I’ve prepared.

Emmett Grogan has always been acknowledged by other Diggers as a prime mover in their effort, whose ‘membership’ was intended to be anonymous, open and leaderless. Still, the name “Emmet Grogan” got out there in the underground and mainstream press coverage of the Diggers, and he became something of a notorious, talismanic figure in the exploding ‘60s cultural underground.

Grogan eventually made public appearances and statements, as well as participate in the occasional carefully staged interview. But the 1972 publication of Ringolevio in hardcover by Little, Brown and Company represented something of an abrupt shift in attitude away from anonymity. It was the first instance in which Grogan discussed his life and upbringing publicly, and its second half, written as a third-person roman à clef, featured a host of characters based on real Diggers. Thus, Ringolevio was the first time a Digger talked at any length about who they were, what they did, and why (and sometimes how) they did it.

There is a lot to be said about what Grogan was doing in writing Ringolevio — why he wrote it, how truthful it was, what impact it had, and so on — but this is not the place for that discussion.

Suffice to say that for those who have read Ringolevio — which remains in print 54 years after its initial publication, and 48 years after Grogan’s death — the 5,000-word 1973 conversation with Gaboriau may act as something of a coda, or unpublished afterword. It’s a set of monologues, parables, quips, asides, ruminations and routines, in response to provocative and sensitive questions from a trusted journalist. Whether it is revelatory is up to the reader.

If you are unfamiliar with Grogan, this Gaboriau interview is probably not the place to start. That said, I think the sections in the conversation’s second half involving what he’d learned from his friend Fred Hampton — the brilliant black revolutionary murdered by Chicago police in his bed2 — and the poet Gregory Corso are especially moving. (And then there’s the nickname he says was given to him by Huey Newton…)

Generally speaking, though, it’s a tough read. Grogan is clearly bitter. He’s working through despair. He’s simmering, and defiant, and possibly romanticizing/bullshitting all over the place.

In other words, it scans like an especially candid but sadly typical encounter with an aging, formerly big-time bohemian/revolutionary3… one who’s struggling to find a way forward, some kind of meaningful path that doesn’t betray his past ideals and actions, but also doesn’t doom him to poverty and insignificance. (I will share some of my experiences and thoughts on this seemingly eternal situation in Part 2, coming later this week.)

Go here to read: FAST LIFE: A previously uncirculated 1972 interview with Emmett Grogan by Linda Gaboriau

all the best,

Jay Babcock

Tucson/Patagonia, Arizona

Landline is free but it takes time/energy and yes money for me to produce each week. If you’re able, please consider a paid subscription. $5/month, $40/year. Special discount if you use this button:

Get 40% off for 1 year

If you’d like to support Landline but (understandably!) don’t want to do business with or through Subsuck, here’s two workarounds: buy me a coffee or leave a tip in the PayPal TipJar. Thank you kindly.

Advertisers help make Landline possible. Please email me directly (or simply reply to this email) for advertising rates, which are offered on a seriously sliding scale.

3

Bob Dylan’s album Street Legal, released in June 1978, included the words “IN MEMORIAM: EMMETT GROGAN” on the album’s back cover. Dylan and Grogan had been friends.

Okay! Onward. Here’s a few things as I crawl back to normal mind land…

1. GET OUT NOW

None of what the US is doing in Iran and Lebanon right now has anything to do with legitimate self-defense. This nation’s terrible machinery of death — always something to be troubled by — is in the hands of an idiot president and his host of religious nutjobs, sycophants and enablers, who are operating well beyond law, sense and basic conscience.

We Americans are inside the wrong side of history.

How to make it stop? How to dismantle this horror machine?

I suppose I hold out some weird hope that troops will desert or quit en masse, but it seems so unlikely given the overwhelming psychological, social and (above all) legal barriers. Nonetheless, there may be some people that can get out, and we might as well try to reach and support them and their families.

This seems like a good resource to share:

"Once you have signed on the dotted line and shipped out to boot camp, is it possible to quit the military? Many have tried, and even more have wondered if getting out early is a good option for them. There is no easy answer to the basic question since much depends on when and why you want to quit."

For more, see veteran.com

Another way we civilians may be of immediate use is to counter military recruiting in our public schools. (I have more to say on this subject, but it’ll need to wait til next time out.)

Finally, let’s honestly face up to the new grim reality. The devastation and war crimes being committed or threatened right now by the U.S. and U.S.-supported Israel are increasingly delivered via AI-enabled barrages of missiles and bombs. We must find ways to encourage people of conscience to quit Palentir and all the other parts of the growing techbro-military-industrial Death Star complex that we Americans are all now a part of.

Who knows — let’s try everything. Find the work that you can do. If you need guidance, or inspiration, maybe talk quietly with a veteran. They’re everywhere.

2. SAME HOTEL, DIFFERENT ROOMS, ONE ROOF

Above: Noted weed enthusiasts Joe Strummer (The Clash) and Bob Weir (Grateful Dead) partying together in a Philadelphia hotel room, before taking it to the roof and staying up til 10am.

How did this happen? The bands were on tour (separately) and were booked in the same hotel. Internet says this was on or around April 20, 1984 (4.20, really? okay you stoners).1

If you need it, and I’m guessing you do, here’s a four minute video from a few years ago of Bob giving his account of this impromptu punk-hippie summit/wild night, with more photos.

3. ON DISMANTLING AND RESTORING

Here’s a wonderful recommendation from writer-editor, Landline reader and Arthur contributor John Adamian, who writes, “I send this your way on the off chance you’ve never come across it. I found it captivating for about 5 or 6 different reasons: accents, death-defying labor, scenery, era, antique engine refurbishment, etc.”

4. MONEY’S TIGHT! KEEP A ROOF OVER YOUR HEAD

From officiallangstonhughes.com:

During the Harlem Renaissance period, some Black people hosted rent parties, using the proceeds to pay their landlord on the first of the month, and then hopefully making it another 30 days before scrimping again.

Because of Langston Hughes, there is an extensive record of Harlem’s rent parties.

Hughes saved dozens of invitations, storing them away in a red box that once housed his checkbooks. He held on to them even as he traveled as a newspaper correspondent in the Soviet Union, Haiti and Japan, and a series of rented American rowhouses until he finally settled into his own permanent home in Harlem, on East 127th Street, in 1947.

He would later donate them as part of a much larger collection of his papers housed at Yale’s Beinecke Library, where they have a permanent home in the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters.

“He was doing this for posterity, to let people know that these things were happening,” said Melissa Barton, a curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature.

Rent parties were bawdy, booze-soaked and offered an escape. Outside, there was prohibition and gawkers from Lower Manhattan. Inside, there was beer and bathtub gin. There was live music, including appearances by Duke Ellington and Fats Waller. At rent parties, Hughes wrote, he met truckers, seamstresses and shoeshine boys.

Nearly all of the invitations followed the same format: a clever rhyming couplet at the top offered a snippet of homespun poetry, followed by a euphemism advertising the main event. Most hosts announced their gatherings as a “Social Whist Party,” but some opted for “A midsummer frolic,” “A beer brawl” or even a “Chitterling Strut.” Hosts promised drinks, food and tunes, then listed the date and time as well as the apartment.

More: “The Rent Was Too High So They Threw a Party” by Debra Kamin, NYTimes

5. WHO’S REALLY THERE

Via John Coulthart, a wholly sensible and sympathetic review by writer Joanna Steinhardt of current 'science'/thinking about what those seemingly autonomous discarnate beings that people encounter via psychedelics, spontaneous visionary episodes, and so on, might actually be:

That’s all for now. Take care, be safe and let’s all do as much of the right thing as we’re able,

Jay Babcock

Tucson/Patagonia, Arizona

Landline is free but it takes time/energy and yes money for me to produce each week. If you’re able, please consider a paid subscription. $5/month, $40/year.

Subscribe now

If you’d like to support Landline but (understandably!) don’t want to do business with or through Subsuck, here’s two workarounds: buy me a coffee or leave a tip in the PayPal TipJar. Thank you kindly.

My doctor’s excuse is that I've been very sick since Sunday night. I thought it was severe food poisoning (which I never get) but I’ve come to understand it’s probably the dreaded norovirus (or some bastard stomach bug variant) which has been going around. Filthy, painful stuff. I’ve been getting better each day but here it is late Friday afternoon and it’s still too risky to leave the house, let alone drink a whole cup of holy coffee. Norovirus! Nasty as all hell. Don’t catch it.

As I’ve made zero progress on any of the four longer-form essays I had going prior to the start of this personal horrorweek, we’re just gonna have to settle for a pocket-sized grab bag of stuff this time out. Normal Landline service will resume shortly.

But first, this word from our sponsor from Michigan…

1. RAINBOW BODY TALK

Here’s a new 65-minute video interview with Devendra Banhart by Shambhala Publications’ Ivan Bercholz about his (Devendra’s) path to a sustained Buddhist practice. Very good, very moving, with lots of humor, humility, erudition and grace. Side topics: gods and lamas, skateboarding and solo butthole-gazing, documentaries about fringe cults and books books books, and, inevitably, prostrations in shit.

2. CHUCK NORRIS BIOGRAPHER1 COMMENTS ON HIS PASSING

3. NORAH JONES HAS A FUNNY DEPENDS STORY

This whole episode is great; I recommend it even if you don’t think you care much one way or the other for either (or both) of the musicians. Josh is witty (“silence is the loudest that quiet will ever get”), charming and in good voice; his story about his long romance with the Paris catacombs is fascinating and heavy, as is his revelation about how he was able to start writing love songs. And he gets Norah talking about playing music with her dad and her half-sister. Anyways, I’ve cued up the point where Norah tells her Depends story, leading into a rendition of the 2005 Queens of the Stone Age beaut ‘This Lullaby,’ with Josh singing the Mark Lanegan lead. Gorgeous, eerie.

4. BASIC INDIGNITIES

A 45-minute fly-on-the-hotel wall documentary captures the former rock ‘n’ roll star (age: 35) enduring humiliations, ripoffs and so on during what turns out to be a brief UK tour. Don’t call it a comeback, because it wasn’t. And yet, some of the performance footage finds Gene still summoning the prime spark of rock ‘n’ roll’s first era…

Okay, that’s enough for now. More next week when I’m better.

Your friend,

Jay Babcock

Tucson/Patagonia, Arizona

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1

Here’s ten to help you go, as we descend into World War 2.5 (or worse). Maybe one—or more—will catch a fire.

But first, a word from our sponsor from Michigan…

For more info, and to order, click here: jukeboxgraduate.bigcartel.com

(((Interested in reaching Landline’s 4,941 subscribers?1 Fantastic, I’m thrilled. I offer a sliding scale for sponsors. Simply reply to this email and we’ll make it work.)))

Now, on with the hit parade…

1. AT HOME WITH ÉLIANE RADIGUE

As a follow-up to last week’s salute to the recently passed French composter Éliane Radigue (via the always excellent WFMU digital radio show, Explorers Room With Flash Strap), here’s a link to Éliane Radigue – Échos, a sublime 33-minute film of the great woman reflecting on her work made in 2021 by directors François Bonnet and Eléonore Huisse, who’ve made it available for free viewing right now on Vimeo. Remove distractions; make time and space for this, seriously. Highest recommendation. Click here to absorb. (You may need to sign in — I can’t tell.)

2. HOW TO GET SECOND SIGHT; OR, DINING OUT WITH DR. JOHN

From Robert Sietsema, describing a 2005 meal at A Fan Ti, a northern Chinese restaurant on a Flushing side street:

Read more:

Robert Sietsema's New York

Dr. John, Dining Companion

This is another free excerpt from my forthcoming memoir, tentatively titled Down the Hatch. Four previous excerpts are to be found here, here, here, and here. Another except appeared in the New York Review…

Read more

4 months ago · 39 likes · 4 comments · Robert Sietsema

3. ADVENTURING AROUND THE WORLD WITH MALCOLM MCLAREN

A genuinely ecstatic, generous, full-hearted 47-minute video document from 1983 of, as McLaren puts it, “the mood of the populace, rising up against the bland, boring, redundant sounds of the modern world.”

You probably won’t need anything more after that, but if you do, scroll on, sailor…

4. UP IN THE HOLLER WITH POPCORN SUTTON

Grab a jar of whiskey and sit back. Yes, there’s a bit too many earnest folk music interludes, but that’s what the fast forward and mute buttons are for. Popcorn Sutton! He did the lord’s other work.

5. AT HOME WITH ALEXANDER TROCCHI IN HIS TIMELESS APARTMENT

Four-minute clip from ‘Cain’s Film’ (1969) features a visual tour of his living space (gotta watch it on youtube, it won’t embed here)….

6. AT HOME WITH IASOS, IN OUTRAGEOUS BLISS-LOVE WITH THE UNIVERSE

Is it legal to be this happy on camera? The answer: Well, it was then. Too much!

7. IN L.A. JAIL WITH RICHARD PRYOR IN 1976

The Official Richard Pryor channel has recently started uploading his ‘70s stand-up records, which still…stand up. Okay, I haven’t examined the entirety of “L.A. Jail” yet during my early morning walks in the park, but I can definitely vouch for this other one. Solid gold genius. Even the audience laughter is funny.

8. AT WAR IN ITALY WITH BUNNY ROGER

From “Today There Are No Gentlemen: The Changes in Englishmen's Clothes Since the War” (1971) by Nik Cohn:

Here: Today There Are No Gentlemen: The Changes in Englishmen’s Clothes Since the War (archive.org)

Here: more on Bunny Roger

9. VERY FAR OUT WITH FAR EAST FAMILY BAND

Here: where to go for more on Far East Family Band

10. IN MOROCCO WITH BOB PALMER

From “Into the Mystic” by the music journalist Robert Palmer, originally published in the March 23, 1989 Rolling Stone and collected in Blues & Chaos, the Palmer omnibus (2009, Scribner):

From my hotel window, I hear the dogs—Tangier is known for having more, and louder, dogs than any other city—barking across the distances. The late Brion Gysin—painter, poet, visionary, patron of the Master Musicians who live in the mountain village of Jajouka, and influence on artists ranging from Burroughs to Paul Bowles, the Rolling Stones to David Bowie, Iggy Pop to Patti Smith—taught me to listen to the dogs when I lived here in the early seventies. He claimed he had cracked the dogs’ code and used to provide a running translation: “Everything okay there? Enough food? People good?” And from miles away in the suburbs the responses would come back: “Good food here, but people beat us.” “Out here we’re hungry.”

Now the enormous speakers of the Mosque Mohammed V crackles, and the honey-voiced muezzin’s cantillation of verses from the Koran ricochets off the white walls of the city, quieting the dogs. The chanting forms a sonic grid that focuses, or perhaps completes, the City as Ideal Form: The community of the faithful is being irradiated by harmonics of degree and distance. Tangier’s cunningly balanced architecture of surfaces, arches and crenelated towers servers as a kind of transformer for the spiritual electricity of the muezzin’s call. In Morocco there are different kinds of electricity. This kind is called baraka, a kind of psychic current that certain holy places, sounds and people absorb and hold like storage batteries. The receptive can plug into these power sources—without getting fried, one hopes.

Wishing you the best in plugging into all available positive psychic power sources left to us by our cultural ancestors,

Jay

Tucson/Patagonia, Arizona

Landline is free to everyone, but if you’re able, please help keep Landline from getting disconnected. Simply hover over the button below and click, and enjoy a frankly sensational 40% discount off our regular rate, which works out to about $2/month…

Get 40% off for 1 year

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1. WHY DID WE DO THAT

ArthurBall, a two-day, 1,000ish-capacity, multi-venue music & culture festival in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles, curated by Arthur Magazine and produced by Spaceland Productions, happened 20 years ago this week.

ArthurBall was the second of three Arthur festivals in a period of 14 months: our ludicrous idealism was nearing its peak.

There aren’t too many photos, videos or audio recordings from this event, as it was a bit before camera-equipped cel phones became ubiquitous and changed everything around live performances (mostly for the worse, *sigh*). If you were there, you were there.

Here’s the promotional poster artwork by Ron Regé, Jr.:

ArthurBall was ambitiously — possibly recklessly— booked. It was like the previous Labor Day’s ArthurFest but on two indoor stages…and without ArthurFest’s main stage star power (Sonic Youth, Yoko Ono, Cat Power, Sleater-Kinney, Spoon, etc.). Also, and I think this is crucial/sad, the show was not all-ages, something I regret to this day. Anyways, despite the bargain admission prices, ticket sales were distressingly slow in the weeks prior, bringing us to a borderline panic. I think attendance ended up doing well on the first day, but the second day? Not so much.

Ah well. We tried! Festivals in that period were relatively rare. As lead curator1, I wanted us to push things as far as we could within our budget, to give the attendees a range of performances from artists of different ages and “genres” (sorry) that would be invigorating and stimulating on their own but also in combination with the other. In his review of the weekend in the L.A. Times, Richard Cromelin commented that the music at the Ball tended to be really loud or really quiet, and looking at the lineup today, y’know, he’s not wrong. At that time I’d thought that the extremes (such as they were) complemented each other — that pummeling, fully committed art-prog riff-rock (Pearls & Brass, Earthless, the 5:15ers2 [a one-off project by Queens of the Stone Age’s Joshua Homme and Masters of Reality’s Chris Goss], Tarantula A.D. and of course the perennial Arthur crowd favorite Om), fully committed art-adjacent folk music (Joanna Newsom, Brightblack Morning Light, Born Heller/Josephine Foster, Lavender Diamond, Winter Flowers, Entrance, Mi & Lau) and — yes — fully committed out-there experimental, trance and drone approaches (Growing, Colleen, Town & Country, Indian Jewelry) paired well with each other. I still think that’s the case. Looking back now, I can see how the sheer amount of unfamiliar artists on the bill was probably asking too much of the public, but at the time, this approach seemed like it had a shot at landing.

I was running around the four venues — there was a film/”lecture” space down the block and a psychedelic ambient chillout space around the corner — and so missed out on about three-quarters of what happened. But I did witness an enthralling set from Captain Beefheart alum Moris Tepper’s band, which included an unannounced (and smilin’) Polly Harvey on bass guitar.

Steve Krakow aka Plastic Crimewave set up in the merch area and drew portraits of attendees, as well as doing a set with his band. Town & Country had a working Brion Gysin ‘dream machine’ onstage, which cast off a fantastic, flickering fire-like light: transfixing! I ended up standing next to Joanna Newsom during Born Heller’s set, both of us in awe of what Josephine Foster was doing (“She’s a genius,” Joanna whispered). Kristine McKenna, my favorite culture writer, got her old friend Lewis MacAdams — a post-beat ‘70s Bolinas poet — to go long on his ambitious, decades-long “social art” project to fully restore the L.A. River. I saw Grant Morrison unleash torrents of hallucinatory, comical prose-poetry-commentary at a few dozen freaks of the universe. I finally got to see my brother’s wonderful psychedelic rock jamboree, Society of Rockets, who made their L.A. debut after years of playing exclusively in the Bay Area. Unknown Instructors did a set featuring multiple original SST heavyweights! Citay did their first-ever performance anywhere! Speaking of utter commitment: that Mars Society dude! And there was Meg White wandering around and no one bothering her, and David Sefton, the brilliant artistic director for UCLA Live, and I don’t remember who else. I completely missed Erik Davis, Afrobeat Down, the Sublime Frequencies gang of directors with their beautiful films, my dear friend Jane Paik’s dance troupe… Goddammit! It was all too much.

Most breathtaking was Joanna Newsom’s audacious set. Without any advance notice to anyone, she came onstage, solo, and proceeded to debut the entire cycle of songs that would eventually be released as Ys. These were long, musically and lyrically complex, completely unfamiliar songs, being played to a standing festival audience, who absorbed it all, rapturously. What kind of festival is it where a headliner feels this is the kind of thing they can dare to do? It seemed profound to me. I was awed, gratified, and, honestly, a bit proud. Hooray for Joanna, hooray for the audience, hooray for everybody who helped this thing to happen. Ludicrous idealism for the win!

2. AND NOW A WORD FROM THIS WEEK’S LANDLINE SPONSOR

3. THE LIFE OF A RHYMING, SINGING WITCH-POET OF THE OLD WAYS

Well well well: Helen Adam (1909-1993), the utterly fascinating Scottish narrative poet3 of the eerie who was featured two years ago in Landline, is the (very deserving) subject of a feature documentary in progress from director Tomas Stark. Looks extremely promising. Here’s the trailer:

The Helen Adam-curious are advised to check out Archive.org’s holdings, especially this wonderful hour-long 1977 radio interview with Helen by Susan Howe and Charles Ruas for Pacifica. Then I recommend moving on to recordings of her various talks at Naropa as a guest lecturer for Anne Waldman’s class, with Allen Ginsberg (amongst others) in the audience.

Here’s a fairly representative example of Helen Adam’s work:

4. MUSIC THAT OPERATES AT THE ETERNAL/SUBMOLECULAR LEVEL

Last week I highlighted a setlist/map by Evan Crankshaw for one of his weekly three-hour “Explorers Room with Flash Strap” radio shows on WFMU’s Thursday digital stream. I hope that may have inspired you to check out his show yesterday, which concluded with one of the most radical, moving (and non-moving) hours of sound I’ve ever heard on a radio show4: a 55-minute tribute to the sublime avant garde French composer Éliane Radigue, who died earlier this week at the age of 94. Click here to stream, turn the volume up, and listen as deeply as you can. The loud is the quiet; the quiet is the loud; and neither really exists.

Jay Babcock

Arizona

Landline is free to everyone, but you can help keep Landline from getting disconnected. How do you do that? By making your subscription a paying one, ya goofball. Simply hover over the button below and click, and enjoy a frankly bonkers 40% discount off the regular rate, which works out to about $2/month…

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2

Advance press for ArthurBall's Day Two headliners in the late, truly great L.A. Record:

3

And a wonderful collagist as well!

Landline is back from hiatus. I’ve been doing a bit of a re-charge and dealing with stressful dayjob stuff that's needed [clears throat] an elevated degree of attention. I’ve accumulated hundreds of bookmarks in the last few months—so buckle up, here begins a new weekly flood of silliness, seriousness and the other stuff…

1. BRIEFCASE OF THE GODS

A brief (3 mins 30 seconds) candid film made in 1972 for local television broadcast, or so it says here. In any event: the speed with which Richard Cole, Led Zeppelin's infamous road manager1, reaches over and slams shut the promoter's briefcase before the camera can reveal its contents at 1 minute 30 is double platinum medal level. Olympian!

2. GEORGE CLINTON’S CURRENT OFFICIAL PHOTO: UNTOPPABLE

3. DON MARTIN AT WORK: IMMACULATE

4. DJ’S MAP/PLAYLIST FOR A SINGLE THREE-HOUR EPISODE OF THE BEST WEEKLY STREAMING RADIO SHOW I’M AWARE OF

5. ‘DARK/WELD’? ‘ARK/STAR’? LET THE DESERT BONGRIPPERS DECIDE

“A [28-minute] mashup of the free improv sections from ‘Up On the Sun,’ as performed live on tour, May 2022”

6. ABSOLUTE LEGEND JANE ‘SPIDER’ FAWKE AND FRIEND

7. POETRY IN THE OBITS

8. MONDAY NIGHTS APPOINTMENT JAZZ 78S ZOOM

My Monday evening plan? Get on zoom and watch an archive room full of deep jazz nuts in Manhattan listening to majestic 78s, each slab of vintage shellac introduced by a person who knows stuff. 730-1030pm EDT. Grab your rice and beans and preferred stimulant and get ready for peak culture:

9. OBIT/TRIBUTE FOR LOUIS FAMILY RESTAURANT BY XANDER MARRO

A lovely, wandering tribute to Louis Family Restaurant, a beloved diner in Providence, RI that closed at the end of 2025:

“So many things about Louis’ were odd and neighborly; the photographs on the walls, the opera on the stereo, the beer that you could order at 6am for less than a dollar, the vaguely cryptic hand drawn specials signs that made nods to regulars.”

Read:

Wild Goose Chase

Good bye, Spinach Pie; See you Later Fryolator

The iconic Providence diner, Louis Family Restaurant on Brook Street announced right after Christmas that their last day would be December 31st 2025. No Rhode Islander with any semblance of a heart would not want Johnny & Albert who held this place down for god knows how many years to enjoy a hard earned retirement. And also who that has ever been a reg…

Read more

6 months ago · 24 likes · 8 comments · xander marro

10. AND FOR THOSE IN THE MOOD: A STUPID BUT ALSO INSPIRED, UTTERLY BATSHIT 1975 FEATURE FILM FROM KEN RUSSELL2

11. “OLD FRIENDS KNOW YOU BEST” BY BRIAN CHIPPENDALE (Jan. 27, 2026)

Get a whistle before it’s too late,

Jay

Tucson/Patagonia, Southern Arizona

Landline is free to everyone, but you can feel better about yourself by keeping Landline from getting disconnected. How do you do that? By making your subscription a paying one, ya goofball. Simply hover over the button below and click, and enjoy a frankly ridiculous 40% discount off our regular rate, which works out to about $2/month…

Get 40% off for 1 year

If you’d like to support Landline but (understandably!) don’t want to do business with or through Subsuck, here’s two workarounds: buy me a coffee or leave a tip in the PayPal TipJar.

Or: let’s barter!

Or: sponsor a Landline with a paid ad? Sure, I guess we could do that. Send me a note by replying to this email, and we’ll work something out.

I’d had this bonehead idea for a while, but it was my editor friend Andrew Male who made it happen in the waning days of 2000, hurrahing it into the pages of Mojo where it (appropriately) followed a giant AC/DC feature by Sylvie Simmons.

I got lots of help from all over on this one—especially regarding The Who and (I think?) Manowar—see the thank yous at the end. Of course, quite a bit of material ended up getting cut for space and/or legal reasons; I’ve placed some choice bits (as well as extra Ted Nugent) that were left out below, following the text of the article as it originally ran.

The Grateful Deaf: MOJO’s guide to the Loudest Rock Bands of All Time
[from December 2000, MOJO]

By Jay Babcock

“Marshalls changed rock’n ‘roll as much as any band.” – Lemmy.

Truer words have never been spoken. In 1962, when Kensington drum teacher Jim Marshall began selling 4×12 speaker cabinets from his retail music shop, the history of noise was changed for ever. By 1964 The Who were extremely vocal converts to the Marshall religion and, following the arrival of the 100 Watt amp and the Marshall stack (two 4×12 speakers on top of each other), other artists such as Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience began to define performance as much in terms of loudness as anything else. Suddenly, the size of a band’s rig was as much an issue as its ensemble playing.

But which rock band was the loudest of all time? The poorest stoner rock bands of 2000 are as loud in decibels as most late ’60s acid rockers. MC Hammer caused more local noise ordinances to be passed than MC5 ever did. Also, the perception of volume is necessarily subjective— dependent on each listener’s unique ‘earprint’, noise-encounter history and state of inebriation.

Still, while volume is definitely in the ear of the beholder, in every rock era there have been certain bands—from rebellious savant-morons to sonic thrill-seekers —who earned reputations by being significantly louder than their peers. Those bands (excluding AC/DC, who feature elsewhere in the magazine) have been chosen by MOJO, in reverse order, as the Loudest Bands Of All Time.

10. Manowar
The Conanist American metal band claimed the title of World’s Loudest Band when a 1994 show in Hanover hit 129.5 decibels.

-Equipment
Ten tons of amplifiers at the Hanover concert.

-Why So Darn Loud?
Joey DeMaio (bassist): “Some assholes tried to break our record. Frankly, it can’t be done. The power will kill you. The Guinness Book Of Records wouldn’t list it because they thought it would be dangerous, encouraging people to break it. We are the Kings Of Heavy! That means we make thunder inside a room.”

-How Loud?
DeMaio: “One girl said to me, ‘The reason there’s so many girls at a Manowar concert, more than any other heavy metal band in the world, is because the vibration of the bass travels through the floor, up their toes, up their ankles, up their legs, and hits their fucking clit and they’re just cumming through the whole concert!’”

Helena Solodor (audiologist): “As you’re approaching 140 decibels, that’s the threshold of pain. With noise levels in excess of 140, 150 decibels, things can rupture. Your ear drums can burst. You could have all kinds of bodily functions go… It would not be pleasurable!”

-Pardon?
Eric Adams (vocals): “l don’t wear earplugs in both ears, ‘cos if I did I couldn’t hear any high-end, which I need as a vocalist.” Hearing of the band is reportedly still OK.

-MOJO Loudometer Rating: 6.5 (penalized 3.5 points for pandering)

9. Vanilla Fudge
The Fudge’s over-the-top and through-the-valley psychedelic whiteboy soul didn’t know when to stop – either at a sign that said ‘This Way: Prog Rock’ or at normal concert volume levels. Armed with Mark Stein’s Hammond B-3, a clutch of ridiculously arranged songs and a host of amps, the Fudge gained a late-’60s reputation as one of America’s most histrionic – and loudest – bands.

-Equipment
Tim Bogert (Vanilla Fudge bassist): “The Hammond had two Leslies and a couple of amps that went through several cabinets. It just kept growing.”

-Why So Darn Loud?
Bogert: “We were all deaf and having a wonderful time! It was a period where people were very heavily into LSD so the volume was a tool of the show – if we did something really dramatic the crowd went, ‘Whooooooa’, and we kept it in the show.”

-How Loud?
Wayne Kramer (MC5): “That Hammond B-3 that they had a special rig for? Pretty loud.”

Bogert: “We’d do whisper-soft passages that would crescendo and the audience would literally move to the volume! You could see 20,000 people puff up, move down, swirl…”

-Pardon?
Bogert: “Tinnitus, big time. That’s the price you pay for having a darn good time. Nothing’s free!”

-MOJO Loudometer Rating: 7

8. Hawkwind
The early ’70s live line-up of space bikers on acid, led by guitarist-singer Dave Brock, accessed rarely-traversed parts of the brain. The band’s legendary Chuck-Berry-on-metal riffing and live frequency oscillations were deep-frozen in wax on 1973’s Space Ritual.

-Equipment
The sound oscillators, sound generators and directional electro voice speakers of the evil Dik Mik.

-Why So Darn Loud?
Dave Brock (leader/guitarist): “We used to get quite spaced out, you know, and having these speakers blaring out behind you… well, it was all jolly exciting!”

-How Loud?
Brock: “We used to use oscillators to distort the air. You could actually feel it in your body. At one point we were threatened with being sued ‘cos a lot of people were getting ill…”

Lemmy (Hawkwind bassist): “We used to give people epileptic fits.”

-Pardon?
Brock: “I can’t hear crickets, or certain tones, and when there’s an awful lot of people talking at the same time it’s hard to actually hear what anybody’s saying.”

-MOJO Loudometer Rating: 7.5

7. Ted Nugent / Amboy Dukes
In late ’60s Detroit, Ted Nugent was a young long-hair playing obnoxious guitar in a troglodyte-rock band for stoned, sunbaked hippies. The Nuge turned his Fender louder—to the point that, as legend has it, his speakers disintegrated a poor pigeon at an outdoor concert.

-Equipment
Piles of Fender stacks and one of the most obnoxious ‘characters’ alive.

-Why So Darn Loud?
Ted Nugent (Amboy Dukes guitarist): “It was all for me. I look at my musical adventure like a hunt, a sonic exploration. Fender stacks had such a fuckin’ brittle attack – it wasn’t like that dirty Marshall sound. It was bright and annoying! I got this Gibson Birdland to feed back – outrageous rhino-mating sounds, avalanches.”

-How Loud?
Nugent: “REAL fuckin’ loud. I would challenge anybody to come up with the total hair removal decibels outrage I was capable of! The pigeon story? It never happened. I just knew that if a pigeon flew by [my speakers] I could squawk him if he came by at the right moment! Most of the interviewers were stoned hippies—it was easy to pull their chain. I’d say how when we played Kansas, the dairy farmers would herd their cattle downwind of my amps because butter fat content went up 28 per cent when I performed. I’d say fat girls would come to our show to try to lose weight by getting in front of my dBs!”

John Sinclair (MC5): “Ted Nugent? He wasn’t loud.”

Wayne Kramer (MC5): “We kicked their asses, hundreds of times. They would come up pale.”

-Pardon?
Nugent: “My left ear is pretty much whacked. But I can still hear really good in my right ear. Early on, I would stick shell casings, which I always had handy, in my right ear because that was the one that facing the amp the most. I’m not an idiot! I’d never missed a hunting season in my life, and I was concerned about when October came, would I be able to hear the fuckin’ deer?”

-MOJO Loudometer Rating: 7.5

6. The Who
The Who’s Maximum R&B performance on May 31, 1976 before 50,000 fans at the ground of south London’s Charlton Athletic Football Club earned them an entry in the Guinness Book Of Records as the World’s Loudest Pop Group – the previous title holder was Deep Purple.

-Equipment
100 amplifiers, 76,000 Watts, 120 decibels.

-Why So Darn Loud?
Pete Townshend: “The Who were very zesty, athletic. It stems from the very early days when we had to sell ourselves to the public, otherwise nobody would have taken a blind bit of notice of us.”

-How Loud?
Lemmy: “The Who were the first ones with Marshalls. Nobody’d seen an amplifier bigger than a suitcase before that. And there’s Townshend with this massive fuckin’ thing with 10-inch horns in it.”

Roger Daltrey: “There was Pete, all the way up, only hearing himself and John [Entwistle] playing four times as loud as he needs to, to hear himself with the singer in the middle. A complete nightmare.”

-Pardon?
According to Who scholar Andy Neill, Entwistle is pretty deaf and tends to rely on lip-reading. He doesn’t have tinnitus but still plays bass at his usual ‘everything on 11’ volume. Townshend has tinnitus, resulting from the band’s live gigs and the deafening volume at which he and Entwistle used to listen to playbacks over the studio ‘cans’.

-MOJO Loudometer Rating: 8.5

5. MC5
The revolution, brothers and sisters, will be very loud. Or at least, that’s what stunned audiences figured in the wake of late-’60s agit-rock’n’roll performances by the Motor City’s finest star-spangled be-Afro’d White Panther Party proto-punks.

-Equipment
Four stacks of 100 Watt Marshalls. Attitude.

-Why So Darn Loud?
Wayne Kramer (guitarist): “It was just, I need more. The teenage fascination with power. This was a chance to make sure everybody had to listen to ME, ME and MY guitar.”

John Sinclair (MC5 manager/theorist): “The idea was to involve the entire body, immerse yourself in the sound. It wouldn’t hurt. If you gave yourself up to the music, the loudness would go right through you. If you tried to listen with your ears, it would hurt. The social milieu, everything was so numb so you wanted to feel something, enter a new world – and drop some acid if possible.”

-How Loud?
Ted Nugent (Amboy Dukes): “As far as street fuck-you-ness goes, they definitely had us. There was an energy to the ‘5 that was nothing short of mesmerizing. It was their sheer unadulterated middle-finger quality.”

Tim Bogert (Vanilla Fudge): “I felt them more than saw them.”

Kramer: “There was a point where it was TOO much. If people really wanted to listen to the band they had to go outdoors!”

-Pardon?
Sinclair: “I lost some top end standing there in front of the MC5 for a couple of years every night.”

Kramer: “My hearing’s damaged. I don’t play that loud today.”

-MOJO Loudometer Rating: 9

4. Swans
A typical mid-’80s club concert by New York industrial-rock pioneers Swans featured massively monolithic rhythms, volume cranked up to bowel-loosening levels, and the gruesome spectacle of a near-naked vocalist/leader Michael Gira in orgasmic agony singing “Raping a Slave.” They were soon being touted by show promoters—and the British press—as ‘the world’s loudest band’. Swans’ most infamous performance was a 1985 show in London, at which Gira literally locked the audience inside the venue.

-Equipment
When the PA didn’t blow, Swans were rated at 125-140 decibels.

-Why So Darn Loud?
Michael Gira (vocalist): “It wasn’t about ‘being loud’—that’s moronic. It didn’t have any aggressive intent. It was more about the transportive quality of volume. I wanted it to destroy my body.”

-How Loud?
Gira: “There was one European show in a barn that only held 400 people. The stage wasn’t wide enough to put the entire PA in front, so we put half of it in the front and half of it at the back, so the audience was smashed between! The walls, ceiling, everything was shaking, raining down years of collected dust. That was good.”

Jarboe (roadie, later keyboards/vocalist): “It was like a war, volume as a three-dimensional substance. Sometimes we’d blow the entire circuitry of the club, just on the electricity we were drawing. We would leave town with people running after us, enemies everywhere we went!”

Helena Solodor (audiologist): “If you work an eight-hour day [in the presence of constant noise], over 85 decibels is hazardous. You cut it in half for every five decibels you go up. So with 90 decibels, anything over four hours is detrimental. Two hours, anything over 95. One hour, anything over 100. And if you look at a concert that’s 120 decibels, just an hour is potentially damaging.”

-Pardon?
Gira: “l think my hearing’s good.”

Jarboe: “I finally started wearing earplugs…and I wish I had started a lot earlier.”

-MOJO Loudometer Rating: 10

3. Motörhead
Led by the notorious Lemmy Kilmister, the thrash-punk-metal pioneers have arguably been the world’s most consistently loud live band, laying waste to audiences via piercing air raid sirens and an overwhelming wall of guitar noise, as captured on 1981’s No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith. A 1981 performance at an all-day Port Vale Football Ground metal festival landed Motörhead in the Guinness Book Of Records as the world’s loudest band; they were later unseated by AC/DC.

-Equipment
117,000 Watts of on-stage power at Port Vale.

-Why So Darn Loud?
Lemmy (vocalist/bassist): “It’s not like we were trying to specifically be the ‘loudest band in the world.’ We just like it loud. The thing is with being loud, you’ve got to be fairly good or else it’ll just be a mess, although one man’s impenetrable mess is another man’s pure music.”

-How Loud?
Wayne Kramer (MC5): “Obnoxiously loud. I never heard a note – all you get is this roar.”

Ian MacKaye (Fugazi, Minor Threat): “I was a stagehand for a gig at the Ontario Theater, Washington DC in the mid-’80s and Motörhead were absolutely the loudest band I had ever heard. I felt like I was levitating on the vibrations of the low end. I watched people writhing in front of the stage. Was it ‘We want more’, or ‘Please, no more!’? I had to leave the building because my internal organs felt like they’d been readjusted.”

Lemmy: “At Port Vale, we built the entire stage out of PAs. A guy called up from four miles away while we were soundchecking and said he couldn’t hear his TV.”

-Pardon?
Lemmy: “I think my hearing’s OK. The human body adopts remarkably well to a lot of abuse. I’ve never used earplugs. Earplugs are for Ted Nugent. How could you expect the audience to stand something that you will not?”

-MOJO Loudometer Rating: 10

2. My Bloody Valentine
In December 1991, My Bloody Valentine began a series of European and US shows so loud that they were accused by the press of being criminally negligent. Most notorious was ‘the holocaust’- a noise section during “You Made Me Realise” that maintained the same air-quaking chord for 10 minutes on end.

-Equipment
Evil effects pedals designed by Roger Mayer.

-Why So Darn Loud?
Kevin Shields (guitarist/singer): “People perceive loud music as being confrontational and aggressive, but what you’re really doing is being sensual. When it’s loud, you con see ripples among the people as they all get hit by certain frequencies.”

-How Loud?
Mark Kemp (US journalist): “After three minutes [of the holocaust] people began to take deep breaths, cover their ears and eyes. Anger took over. After four minutes a calm took over. The noise continued. After five minutes a feeling of utter peace took over…”

-Pardon?
Bilinda Butcher (bassist/singer): “I had a punctured ear drum, which they were able to put right but it was very depressing. We all wore hearing protection and encouraged anyone who saw us regularly to do the same.”

Shields: “I did the damage to my ears listening to mixes in headphones at very loud levels without giving my ears time to recover.”

-MOJO Loudometer Rating: 10.5

1. Blue Cheer
Late-’60s San Francisco superpower trio who played so loud that their ex-Hell’s Angel manager Gut claimed they could “turn the air into cottage cheese”. TV host Steve Allen introduced the band to his 1968 national audience thus: “Here’s Blue Cheer. Run for your lives!”

-Equipment
Six stacks of 100 Watt Marshalls.

-Why So Darn Loud?
Bruce ‘Leigh’ Stephens (guitarist): “We just wanted to feel that sound. It evolved to almost cartoon proportions, it blew your hair around.”

-How Loud?
Stephens: “After the first note [audience members] looked like astronauts subjected to +g-force.”

Kadyn Williams (audiologist): “You con feel dizzy or nauseated from loud sound, because everything is anatomically so close; the inner ear and the balance organ intertwine together going to the brain.”

Lemmy: “l saw them at the Roundhouse in London. 1967 or ’68. They were terrible, but they were really loud, fuckin’ loud.”

Wayne Kramer (MC5): “It was a 747 in your face.”

-Pardon?
Bassist/vocalist Dickie Petersen has some hearing damage. Stephens says, “My hearing is intact, nowadays I only use one Fender Hot Rod DeVille.” The story of a dog exploding during a set is apocryphal.

-MOJO Loudometer Rating: 11

Thanks: Helena Solodor, MS, Lic-A, Kadyn Williams, MEd, Lic-A of Audio Consultants of America, Andy Neill, Jon Quittner, Brad Laner, Ian Svenonius, Richard Pleuger, Jim Evans, David Cavanagh.

BONUS MATERIAL

For the introduction:

“When you’re in your early teens, the louder the better,” says 40-year-old Sub Pop co-founder Jonathon Poneman. “It’s an incredibly sensual experience. You just wanna be bathed in volume. An audience wants to be overwhelmed. They’re paying for the sensation of being taken somewhere.”

“When guitars are played properly, hitting the same sound at the same time, a joyful thing happens,” Iggy Pop wrote in I Need More. “You are dangerously abandoned. It is the most honest experience I have ever encountered. Gotta have it…. Just the sheer presence of electricity in large doses…especially the way a very large amplifier with an instrument plugged into it will push air. The way the speakers push air—that’s basically what amps do, they push the air and they push me too.”

re Amboy Dukes

Q: Why so loud?

Ted Nugent: It was all for me. It was all for how I can get that guitar to respond to the threshold of volume and tone that brought about this exciting siren of sonics! Yeah, that’s exciting. I look at my musical adventure like a hunt. It really is a sonic exploration. Because still to this day when I get onstage I’m looking for uncharted territory. And so the volume and tone thresholds that I continue to beat up, are with all due respect, extremely self-serving—but in the final analysis, the customer’s gonna pay you because you’re satisfying your own excellence demand. Fender stacks had such a fuckin’ brittle attack to the sound—it wasn’t like that dirty, distorted Marshall sound. It was just real BRIGHT and real ANNOYING. I was always adding amplifiers, getting this Gibson Birdland to feedback—outrageous rhinos-mating sounds, big roaring feedback, avalanches. Which is what I made a whole career on! So when the bobbies attempted to pull me off the Concorde back in ‘78 and one of the security men said, ‘Hey! I’ll be damned, it’s Loud Man!’ They all knew who I was. They didn’t arrest me, they asked for my autograph.

I was real, REAL fuckin’ loud. Obviously there was an awful lot of drugs goin’ on [in the audience]. And any dynamic would be magnified, at least [chews] the perception of extremes. But [for] sheer decibels outrage, I would challenge anybody to come up with the total hair removal I was capable of in the little convex corner of Hell that I created with my Fender stacks!

re My Bloody Valentine

Jonathon Poneman (Sub Pop): They were the loudest I had ever heard a rock band play. I could not discern what was going on. I literally had to walk out of the venue for a couple minutes to [recover]..because it was such a sonic blast. A squall.

Alan McGee: The Primals are louder these days with Shields in them than MBV ever were.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Pink Floyd (an outdoor 1971 show was reported to be so loud that it killed fish in a neighboring pond); Deep Purple (1975’s “world’s loudest band” in the Guinness Book of World Records; “Ravenously loud. I felt like my chest cavity was gonna implode. My hearing was gone for many days.”-Poneman); Ramones; Judas Priest (“1979: a motorcycle revved up directly into the amplifiers”-music journalist/critic Bob Mack); the Grateful Dead (“Pretty fucking loud”-Poneman); Hüsker Dü; the Dictators (“Insanely loud…fucked”-Thurston Moore [Sonic Youth]); Einsturzende Neubauten (“Fucking painful”-Moore); Non (“People were literally running away from the stage, looking for a place to hide from the onslaught” -music journalist/critic Byron Coley); Mercury Rev (ejected from the Lollapalooza ‘94 tour after violating local noise ordinances in Denver, Colorado); Dinosaur Jr.; High Rise; Earth (“Wicked loud” Poneman); Iron Maiden (loudest band on Earth circa 1990 according to the Guinness folk); Melvins and…Whitehouse (“At the Mudd Club…I can still hear it and it was in 1984”-Moore; “If you stick a microphone up to the amp, it’ll go EEEE. Well, imagine that going on for an hour”—Poneman).

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Had enough of the state of the world yet? Take a break, if you’re able. Go outside, have a ramble, check in on friends, see how a garden is doing, listen to what the remaining wild animals are saying.

Or: stay in. Fully embrace your Covid-era lockdown nostalgia/aspect/persona. Fire up the Roku or your personal confuser and behold this new Landline Video Parade (LVP) comprised of—loosely speaking—counter-doom videos, painstakingly gathered from near and far, and sequenced with your best interests in mind. As always with the LVP, your humble curator1 hopes you will find something of interest, amusement, inspiration or usefulness. Each video may send you down a new, surprisingly fruitful rabbit hole. Or to a nice, deep sleep. Or both. Who knows, just go with it.2

You can view the parade as a riveting continuous Youtube playlist, or check out individual videos below. Beware! Intros are entirely spoilers.

1. The Sumerian Silver Lyre (3:14, 2013?): Archaeomusicology pays dividends once again as our guy here generates gorgeous sounds from a reproduction of a 5,000-year-old “Silver Lyre of Ur.” Hat tip to Bruce Sterling for this treasure.

2. AC/DC pre-show live in Paris (3:50, 1979): Comical holy rockers prepare for group shamanic demonstration to a public in deep need.

3. “Mushroom Hunting Legend David Arora: The Michael Jordan of Mycology” (7:07, date unknown): Too-brief documentary by intrepid filmmaker David Fenster on David Arora, author of All That the Rain Promises, and More: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms and, as you would guess, a genuine charismatic Freak of the Universe. Seven minutes of wild joy.

4. Excerpt from BBC show “Tomorrow’s World” (2:25, 1968) Syd-era Pink Floyd perform an untitled instrumental to accompany a demonstration of their former landlord Mike Leonard’s sound and light experiments. “This new approach could revolutionize the way buildings look at night,” speculates our BBC1 narrator, “with murals made of moving light.” Hat tip to Gyrus for this captivating nugget.

5. Screaming Lord Sutch & The Savages - “Jack the Ripper” (6:28, 1965) A live performance featuring one of the all-time shocking stage entrances3, originally broadcast on BBC as part of a documentary feature on his lordship.

6. Motörhead - “Bomber” live on Top of the Pops (2:25, 1979) Three men in black —Lemmy, guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke and lead drummer Philthy Animal Taylor—making perfect, undefeatable, precise rock ‘n’ roll grease. Inspirational! Clip ends abruptly, which makes poetic sense.

7. Lancelot Layne “Kaisoca Soccer “ (5:13, 1989) An all-aboard music video from the “rapso” superstar cheering on Trinidad & Tobago’s national football (soccer) team, nicknamed Strike Force, who were in the hunt to qualify for the 1990 World Cup in Italy. Hat tip to the great Evan Crankshaw for this piece of extravagant communal optimism.

8. The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau: “Conshelf Adventure” (48:23, 1966): Other episodes in this utterly charming and often philosophical French series, all available on YouTube, are narrated by a post-Twilight Zone Rod Serling. Not this one, in which a team of ’Oceanauts’ are sent to live in a specially designed undersea house 300 feet below the surface of the Mediterranean Sea. It’s all captivating, but nothing beats the continuing hilarity of hearing the undersea explorers’ helium-infused speaking voices. “They sound a bit like Donald Duck,” understates BBC narrator Richard Johnson, “and it will take several days for the oceanauts to understand each other.”

9. “French Bibliomaniacs” (6:33, 2009?) A CBS Sunday Morning report on the book collecting scene in Paris, from a happy hoarder to various specialty collector-vendors to—wait for it—Martin Stone. “I have a background as a kind of rock ‘n’ roll musician—years of that makes me deeply unemployable,” laughs the delightfully rumpled Stone, trying to explain for the CBS correspondent how he transformed from guitarist for beloved but commercially unsuccessful English bands (Mighty Baby, The Action, The 101ers) into one of the planet’s finest rare book hunters. You want a whole documentary on this charming fellow, who died in 2016…

…and this next video is perhaps as close as we’re gonna get.

10. “The Cardinal and The Corpse” (38:20, 1992): Holy shit. Here’s one of those cases where you discover that something you were desperate to see decades ago and then largely forgot, is now, of course, not only on youtube, but double of course, has been there for years, the sneaky bastard. This formally complex ficto-documentary collaboration between author Iain Sinclair and filmmaker Chris Petit, broadcast a single time (I think?) on England’s Channel 4, is nominally about a possible lost Flann O’Brien novel, and features, amongst others, Robin Cook aka Derek Raymond, Martin Stone, Tony Lambrianou, Emanuel Litvinoff, Michael Moorcock and Alan Moore as someone other than himself. Book dealers, criminals, authors, swindlers, fanatics: are they all the same? Requires multiple—possibly infinite—viewings to untangle.

11. Chris Elliott as Late Night With David Letterman bandleader Paul Shaffer (5:26, 1987) Another formally audacious film that rewards undivided attention.

12. Mike Nichols and Elaine May - “Telephone Company Information Operators” (1965) A bit of archaeocomicology: a genius duo on American TV doing one of their most beloved extended routines. Yes, the sketch revolves around ancient near-Sumerian technology, but the underlying situation is (sadly) eternal. Features countless immortal lines including: “Information cannot argue with a closed mind.”

End of parade! If you’d like to leave a public comment on this mess, use this button:

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And if you’d care to send a private comment, simply reply to this email—it works!

More soon,

Jay

Arizona

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October arrives and a 54-…no, wait… a 55-year-old man’s thoughts turn to beer. To drinking it—and, perhaps, to singing about drinking it. To Oktoberfest and all that.

As with most important things in life, I came painfully late to beer. No real quaffing of beer in the high school years. No beer even in freshman year in the dorms at UCLA, when I contented myself with the occasional rather sad ‘wine cooler,’ which engaged the sweet tooth but, of course, didn’t deliver a punch, a warm buzz, or any spark at all, really.1

I may be romanticizing a fuzzy memory, but I think what made me finally come to my senses and want to Give Beer a Chance was music: specifically, German beergarden music, which I discovered via a CD compilation I randomly came across at the Upland public library one bored summer afternoon when I was home from college.

Kind of absurd: why would a teetotalish Jewish-American kid, brought up on extreme Germany-fear, enjoy music celebrating something he refused to drink, that was sung in a language he did not speak, by people one generation removed (if that) from the Nazis, who’d exterminated 2/3 of the ethnic group his mother’s side of the family was part of?

Who knows. Maybe—probably—there was something spicily verboten about the whole thing. Maybe it was just the ridiculousness of song after joyful song about drinking. Maybe it was the semi-professional, drunken massed group singing. Maybe it was the accordion, the horns. Maybe it was the oom-pah polka and waltz rhythms, which I would argue are inherently wonderful for at least the first 45 minutes. I wish I had the CD now to give it a listen, to revisit/re-examine/re-live what it was I heard in summer, 1989.

And which I listened to with my friend John2, maybe my best school mate from grades 8-12, also home in Upland for the summer break after his first year studying computer science at Stanford. John, who was much more worldly than I was at that point, having spent a summer on his own in Spain prior to senior year of high school, didn’t need German beerhall music to encourage him to drink beer—but he did enjoy laughing. And this music was a joybringer.

I suppose what I liked was the sound of people I didn’t know, from a culture I didn’t really understand, having a great time. Conviviality. On a CD, you just get recordings of people singing their devotion to Beer—it’s charming, humorous/evocative (see the translated song titles: “Here’s to Good Old Beer,” “Fill the Flowing Bowl,” “There’s a Hofbäuhaus in Munich,” etc.), catchy, relentlessly upbeat, with a nice propulsive sway to it.3 It’s happy beerdrinking without downsides: no dreary indoor bar, no American sports on the TV, no fratboy boorishness, no hints of violence, no dismal alcoholics, no sad drinking, no hangover. You just feel you’re being welcomed into a culture’s grand, benign, proudly ridiculous tradition. It’s great! Beertopia.

Three years later, I visited recently unified Germany during a post-college graduation 30-day Eurail wander around the western part of the continent. A UCLA friend from Germany who was putting me up took me with a group of her friends to a night out at the local beergarden.

Friends, I ate, I drank beer, I sang. And later that night, I vomited.

It was glorious. I think.4

2. ON A SIMILAR NOTE

My favorite recently released music is West Virginia Snake Handler Revival - ‘They Shall Take Up Serpents, a 27-minute collection of live worship-music recordings from a white Appalachian Christian microchurch5 issued a couple weeks ago by the dependably open-minded Sublime Frequencies6.

A Bluesky friend described the far-hillbilly rock ‘n’ roll played here by these church members as ‘filthy.’ It is that. It is weird and repetitive and drone-hypnotic and some of it is extremely well played rockabilly and the very best of it can absolutely pin you to the wall, even if—perhaps…because?—you have almost nothing in common with this unashamedly backwards backwoods congregation, whose preacher is running around stage with poisonous snakes in his hands, taking sips of strychnine, yelling, “You’ll have to excuse me/I didn’t take none of my ADD medicine/and I stopped at Starbucks and got me two extra shots/It might be a long day, ha!… I feel like I can leap two walls/yeahhhhayyee!” over an endless, zero-irony boogie.

Like a good German beergarden compilation, the track titles here are undeniable, daring you to not listen: “Rock and Roll Was Stolen From God by Satan,” “Maybe I Won’t Do What I Said I’d Do,” “Don’t Worry It’s Just a Snakebite (What Has Happened to This Generation?)”, and so on. What more do you need? Okay, here’s a photo of the church band’s drummer:

Incredible. When it’s 2025, and just about everybody is dead and gone and those who are left aren’t really doing it for you anymore, praise sweet lord Jesus and his snake temple—and producer Ian Brennan and the good people of Sublime Frequencies—that suddenly there’s this insanely elevating, giddy, early rock n roll racket to light a fire in our (perhaps) over-jaded, alienated, areligious ears. I don’t understand these people’s devotion, practices or beliefs at all, but it may not matter: “yeahhhhayyee!!!” is, after all, a pretty universal statement.

To be continued,

Jay

Southern Arizona

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1. BRIGHT, DISTANT TIMES

I’ve assembled a medium-sized archive of images and photos from ArthurFest to assist interested parties in visualizing—or reliving—the weird, ludicrously idealistic two-day music festival we somehow pulled off in L.A. two decades ago, as described in the previous Landline. I’ll post more stuff as/if it flows my way. Bright, distant times.

2. A REVELATION MACHINE

This is special: a new ensemble called The Holy Mountain Orchestra — Al Cisneros (Om, Sleep), Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (Lichens), Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire) and Matthew Tobias — have just released “Song for JW,” a piece of music “in honor of the late John Whitson, who founded and operated one of the world's greatest independently-run record labels.”

Here it is:

Prior to his death from cancer this past July at age 55, Whitson ran the frankly miraculous one-man high-psych record label Holy Mountain for decades, releasing countless now-classic albums from a large, stylistically diverse cadre of adventurous underground artists.1

For those unfamiliar with what Whitson achieved, writer/mensch Dave Segal has put together an exhaustive introduction/primer/tribute/memorial, with videos, over at The Tonearm. He writes:

Whitson had room in his eccentric stable for brutal minimal techno, philosophical heavy metal, maximal shoegaze, subversive New Age, "organic free metal from Malaysia," and the experimental keyboard studies of an eleven-year-old prodigy. And that just scratches the surface. If there was an overarching aesthetic principle guiding Holy Mountain, it was "make it psychedelic—but not in a typical way."

John was fomenting a secret cultural revolution that only a select few thousand folks worldwide would grok. But those superfans would worship Holy Mountain's releases with an outsized fervor, as if they were sacred, life-enhancing secrets to which only elite music aficionados were privy. It was the kind of label that gave you releases you had no idea you needed... until Whitson magnanimously brought them to your attention. He was a revelation machine.

Keep reading: “Requiem For Holy Mountain Records” by Dave Segal

3. UNLOST: JAMES BROWN’S MID-LATE ‘70S HOMEGROWN UHF TV SHOW

Did you know? Do you remember? James Brown produced and hosted his own hour-long ‘Soul Train’-esque disco-funk-soul dance party/variety TV show called Future Shock; for a brief period in the 1970s2. Recorded in Georgia studios on what appears to be Betamax video for local broadcast on a Ted Turner-owned UHF station, and then apparently syndicated here and there across the nation, Future Shock was the stuff of legend3: a low-to-no-budget production succeeding via dancers with style for miles and mustache-era, still-charismatic James toggling between his vintage stage moves and an impulse to interrupt everything with baffling stunts, skits, contests, monologues, countdowns, interviews and whatever else seems to cross his everloving mind.

Wild! And impossible to find. The masters were said to be lost or buried, leaving collectors to trade tapes of tapes of episodes taped off the TV, with the attendant degradation of picture and sound into fuzz and wobble. Wasn’t there a bootleg DVD compilation? Maybe…probably? No one I know can remember.

Anyways, a few days ago, without any fanfare that I know of, the James Brown estate placed a high-resolution copy of the entire first episode of Future Shock on YouTube4. How big a deal is this? I consulted the deepest James Brown enthusiast I knew, who took a look and got back to me a couple hours later, saying, “This is world historic shit.” Could be Enthusiast’s Bias, but let’s let it ride.

Watch it for yourself here:

Gotta hope more episodes are on the way, especially from later in Future Shock’s run, when the show is said to have increasingly featured wave after wave of stunning breakdancing. Not sure why it took 50 years for this to resurface, but whatever, better now than never.

4. HE EXECUTED WITH EXTREME PRETTINESS

This household is still reeling from the news that the utterly shocking soccer commentator Ray Hudson abruptly retired from broadcasting two weeks ago, on the eve of the start of the Champions League’s new season.

Hudson, a Florida-based Englishman and former professional soccer player, made his name over the last three decades covering European soccer for various American outlets. Now 70, Ray is hanging up his metaphorical cleats for reasons he’s keeping private.

Nothing can prepare you for hearing Ray Hudson doing color commentary on a soccer match. He has two modes, each outrageous. The first, which accompanies his broadcasting partner’s conventional play-by-play narration, is a sequence of seemingly involuntary, almost preverbal sounds which escalate to a full-throated joy-scream when any kind of onfield play — especially a goal — is made in a particularly beautiful, or as he might put it, “magisterial” way.

And that’s the second mode: the language. After a play, after he’s recovered from having some kind of hernia over the mic, Ray goes into an improvised retelling of what we’ve just seen, deploying the unlikeliest set of florid metaphors. He speaks as if he is in shock, overwhelmed by wonder, casting far and wide for words, for concepts, for bizarre references, for on-the-spot slam poetry, to somehow do justice to the utter special-ness of what we have just witnessed. To make it even more memorable. To bring us to full attention.

No point in quoting him, no point in writing anything more. Listen for yourself, even if you have zero interest in sports, or in soccer. This guy was the definition of Too Much.

Unfortunately I’m unable to share the unreal 25-minute megamix compilation of his vintage commentary over goals by the great Lionel Messi (click here to go straight to youtube to view it), but here’s a decent highlight reel that’ll give you a feel:

Oh Ray, how can you leave us?

Heartbroken,

Jay

Southern Arizona

This was the first of three festivals that we—Arthur Magazine and our partners, Spaceland Productions—somehow put on in the space of 14 months. Each was ambitious in its own way, but this first one is the one I get the most questions about.

I’ve ruminated a fair bit about what to say on the occasion of this anniversary and…well, I’ve concluded that I don’t have much that really merits sharing! Some things should remain private, not out of secrecy or anything sensational, but just…because. Obviously the event was very personal to me — it was a life/work highlight, for sure! — and maybe I’ll have more to say about that sometime.

For now, though, I’m more interested in hearing what other people remember than having me suck all of the air out of the figurative room talking about the behind-the-scenes of this ludicrously idealistic, imperfect, beautiful, sometimes embarrassing/excruciating event.

And, over time, in exchanging memories with others, I’ve come to the rather blazingly obvious realization that I knew very little about what went on during the festival. After all, I was just one guy, wandering around, obsessively looking for stuff that wasn’t going right. Other people were having much more interesting times! It’d be sweet indeed to have a well reported warts-drugs-‘n’-all collective oral history of ArthurFest from everybody who was there: the audience, the performers, the dozens (hundreds!) of people who made it happen on all the logistical levels, heck even the people who didn’t attend but have some impression or perspective on it.1

So: If you’re so moved, please feel freeeeeeee to DM your thoughts—what you remember about those two days, and how you regard it now, 20 years on—by replying to this email, or push the ‘Leave a comment’ button below and leave ‘em here for everyone to see:

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All of that said… I will now directly contradict myself, and share a few random things about the event, in the interest of setting some records straight:

1. ArthurFest was a small festival. Attendance was probably around 2,000 people on Sept. 4 and 3,000 on Sept. 5.

2. Yes, Devendra Banhart did in fact perform. He was the ‘special guest’ on the Pine Stage on Day 2, backed by Vetiver. Devendra couldn’t be advertised as performing because he had an upcoming headlining gig in the area.

3. Pole, Dos (featuring Mike Watt and Kira), The Night Porter (featuring Carla Bozulich), Fatso Jetson, Young Jazz Giants, The Time Flys, Geronimo and poets Michael Brownstein and Charles Potts were special guests added to the program after the poster had been printed. Deejays included WFMU’s Brian Turner, Steve Krakow/Plastic Crimewave and Piotr Orlov. “Film No. 5 (Smile)” by Yoko Ono starring John Lennon was screened on the main stage, as well as excerpts from Henry Jacobs’ “The Fine Art of Goofing Off.” Yoko Ono’s appearance included a performance of ONOCHORD.

4. Young Jazz Giants—featuring Thundercat and Kamasi Washington—pleasantly shocked everyone present by playing a fusion set on the Pine stage.

5. Yes, the event was filmed by filmmaker Lance Bangs and his large crew. There is footage for most of the acts across all three stages. A rough preliminary cut of a feature documentary exists. I don’t know if or when a film will ever be released, and I don’t know why that is, to be honest. I’m sorry. If you’re curious, I believe some footage can be found online without too much difficulty. Here’s Comets on Fire’s ripping set as filmed by Sunburned’s John Moloney:

Here’s Yoko and her ferocious band, also ripping:

6. Yes, T-Model Ford (RIP) really did permanently borrow a pocket knife from Arthur ‘Do the Math’ columnist Dave Reeves at the event, and Dave still wants it back.

7. I didn’t know it at the time, but yes, Keanu Reeves and someone from Will & Grace really were in attendance backstage or somewhere. Crazy. Here’s the photographic evidence, which I only discovered last week:

8. Yes, Josephine Foster really did have to abandon her Pine Stage set because of overwhelming sound from either the Black Keys or Sleater-Kinney on the Lawn stage.

9. Yes, Jack Rose (RIP) really was clean shaven and short haired at ArthurFest.

10. Yes, ‘Bull Tongue’ co-columnist Byron Coley really did sling weirdo records at his Byron booth. Every time I walked by, people were laughing. And I walked by, a lot. Good zone.

11. Yes, the sound really did fail during the Sunn0))/Xasthur set; yes, speakers really were toppled by somebody in frustration, causing some minor damage; and yes, LAPD really was summoned and questioned various parties over the incident. No, I wasn’t there when it happened.

12. Yes, Sunburned Hand of the Man really did stay at my Atwater bungalow for many days, and yes, it was a colorful scene.

***

Speaking of Devendra. Next week happens to be the 20th anniversary of the release of his Cripple Crow album, the one that marked his entry into a wider, weirder world. Devendra is re-releasing a deluxey version of it on his new Heavy Flowers label on Sept. 12; you can find all the info here.

Regarding the circumstances that surrounded the recording of Cripple Crow, Devendra recently wrote:

“How sweet, loving, dark, adventurous, genuinely non-censored a time it was. How embarrassing a time it was. How the sweet, loving, and adventurous part of that time isn’t so embarrassing.”

Ah!

I know that feeling, exactly.

Keep blooming,

Jay Babcock

Southern Arizona

P.S. A NOTE FOR THE SCHOLAR-TYPES

The complete run of Arthur Magazine’s 35 issues (2002-2008, 2012-2013) has been scanned, OCR'ed, indexed and made searchable by Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) as part of their recently launched Archive of Popular Music Magazines (RAPMM) collection, which they describe as "the ever-expanding full-text compilation of zines that facilitates unprecedented federated searches." Here's the Arthur summary page. Keep in mind that RILM is subscriber-based and is basically oriented towards universities, research institutions, libraries and so on, so it’s priced accordingly.

If you’re one of the thousands of subscribers who’ve been reading Landline for years, please support with a paying subscription so I can afford to set aside more time/energy to do this thing. Click the button below to subscribe for one year at a rate that works out to a modest $2/month:

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Hello friends,

Some quick ones for you.

1. VERY GOOD TIMES SOMEWHERE

Fans of Can (and aren't we all?) should give a listen to the middle hour-long set from Evan Crankshaw's excellent Explorers Room WFMU digital radio show last Wednesday, spotlighting post-Can work from the fellows in a particularly dubby, outre vein. It's all wonderful — of course! — but I was particularly smitten by Evan's two picks from Michael Karoli's 1984 album with vocalist Polly Eltes, which I'd somehow never really checked out. The whole show is archived here: https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/155388

In the week previous, Evan played this mellotron(?)-haunted southern funk/soul workout by Larry Davis. Good lord. Ideally this would go on for at least two hours in the middle of the night but whew, it still gets something wonderful done—especially in the fourth minute:

I had this recording of very good times somewhere in Arkansas in 1974 on loop in my home office for at least a week and am seriously considering putting it on again right now. It may be procured via this 2011 compilation from Now-Again Records.

2. MARC MASTERS ON PAT BLASHILL QUOTING DIANA GARCIA ON THE THING SHE SAW HAPPEN AT A BUTTHOLE SURFERS SHOW AT LIBERTY LUNCH

Book: Someday All the Adults Will Die!: The Birth of Texas Punk by Pat Blashill (University of Texas Press, Sept. 2025)

Marc Masters: https://bsky.app/profile/marcissist.bsky.social

3. SLOW READING

I can't recall reading a nonfiction book as slowly as I have 'Louis Armstrong's New Orleans' by Thomas Brothers (W.W. Norton, 2006)— a book so dense with wonder and incredible detail, about a kind of musical paradise, that I can only read a few pages at a time before I’m overwhelmed.

Details like mobile waffle wagons, each heralded by its own horn player…

…and Mrs. Betsy Cole's lawn parties:

…and jazz band picnics at Lake Pontchartrain:

It goes on and on like this for four hundred pages. I have margin exclams (usually: “WHAT!?!”) and notes on virtually every page. Absolutely mindblowing music/social scene.

This marvelous, complex book about a peak in American cultural history is still in print. I recommend buying two copies—one for yourself, one to donate to your local public library1 or social aid & pleasure club.

4. WELCOME BACK NHKATA

I don't understand too much yet about this beautiful archival album of mid-century country music recordings by Zambian singer-guitarist-bandleader Alick Nhkata (1922-1978) but gosh, it sounds tremendous:

There are some details about Nhkata in this interview with Jamal Khadar, Amsterdam-based journalist and host of Reimagining Country on NTS, who helped assemble the project:

[Nkhata’s music] had yodelling and very strong early country and western hillbilly guitar influences. But he’s also in a suit, and it was hard to tell what was going on. Digging into the history, I realized the guy lived such a life. He was coming up everywhere I looked - he worked with Hugh Tracy, he was there during World War II when there was this exchange of influences and sounds, he was there at the beginning of African radio, full stop, on the continent. He was an independence figure who was there in Zimbabwe during the struggles. There is also this tension with him being involved with the British colonial influence while also being an activist figure, which complicates the easier and more common story we have around that time.

What a story, eh. Read on: mississippirecords.net/the-latest-news-august

5. JUST SAY GNOMES

This Australian kid Jay Millar is making raucous, good humored, insanely catchy rock ‘n’ roll music like England in 1963-66 (Beatles, Kinks)2 never ended. Incredible, tunes for miles. This is a 2024 album he made himself as ‘The Gnomes‘:

Since Cows and Sheep, Millar has released more (great) music, including some tremendous covers, and got an actual four-piece band together. But this is a perfect place to start a dance party of any size.

6. AS ABOVE, SO BE--HEY WAITASECOND!

7. BOHANNON, ALWAYS BOHANNON

More in a jiffy,

Jay

Southern Arizona

If you’re one of the thousands of subscribers who’ve been reading Landline for years, please support with a paying subscription so I can afford to set aside more time/energy to do this thing. Click the button below to subscribe for one year at a rate that works out to a modest $2/month:

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Things are bad here on this planet and look to get much worse in the weeks and months ahead. Let’s be in solidarity with the most afflicted, to the best of our ability and capacity. And let’s keep our spirits up the best we can. Don’t be bummed into submission!

1. YOU’RE GETTING A ROAST BEEF, YOU’RE NOT GETTING A SALAMI

From Stephanie Breijo’s article in the Feb. 28, 2025 Los Angeles Times:

PATRIARCH OF L.A. CLASSIC ‘EASTSIDE ITALIAN DELI’ DIES AT 81

Eastside Italian Deli owner Giovanni “Johnny” Angiuli died at the age of 81, leaving behind one of the city’s oldest restaurants and a legion of fans. Along with his late brother Frank, he ran one of Los Angeles’ longest-running delis and was a stalwart of the city’s since-disappeared Little Italy.

Described as loud, funny and selfless, the restaurateur and singer could often be found working 70 hours a week at Eastside Italian Deli, personally deciding which sandwiches customers would receive and keeping a running tab for those in need. He died Feb. 9 of cardiac arrest after roughly a year of health difficulties that included kidney failure and congestive heart failure, according to one of his sons.

Eastside Italian Deli, his local legacy and remnant of a community and neighborhood of early Los Angeles, is now operated by his three sons.

Johnny Angiuli was nicknamed the Singing Butcher from Naples, though he wasn’t from Naples at all: Giovanni Angiuli was born in 1943 in Bari and before he learned the meat trade as a butcher, he was a touring entertainer. The singer performed in Europe, Australia and England before immigrating through Ellis Island in 1956.

His brother, Frank, died in 1999 and Johnny continued the deli in his stead. When he retired in 2017, he stepped back from operations but remained a presence, occasionally chatting with customers in the dining room.

“There’s something about an immigrant owning a business that people admire when they walk in," Vito Angiuli, Johnny’s youngest son, said. "They feel like they have a special connection with that person because they brought something from their heritage to America. People respect that.”

Johnny’s banter with customers was without filter. Occasionally guests would order one thing, but Johnny would choose another sandwich for them entirely, telling them, “You’re getting a roast beef, you’re not getting a salami.” Bemused, annoyed or simply confused, they would sit down to eat whatever sandwich he gave them.

Eastside Italian Deli is [now] visited by guests who share stories of Johnny: the time he’d say, “It’s OK, you can pay me next time”; the tab he kept for customers in need; the onslaught of free food he would include with catering orders for special occasions like weddings.

Pedro Prado began working at Eastside in 1980 when Johnny heard he was sleeping in a car after emigrating from Mexico. He began by cleaning the restaurant’s walls, then was promoted to slicing ingredients, and today is the deli’s head chef.

“That’s just the person that my dad was, with the immigrant mentality of wanting to help out another immigrant,” Vito said.

“He was a good guy,” Prado said of Johnny. “He taught me everything. I learned to cook, so now I’m the cook.”

2. "IT’S A BODEGA FOR DINOSAURS. IT SELLS WHAT ANY LOCAL DINOSAUR MIGHT NEED.”

Meanwhile, on the East Coast…

Read and learn: 'Snarlboros' and 'The Pangea Post': Inside the MTA-sanctioned dinosaur bodega by Jess Joseph at The New York Groove

3. UMMAGUMMA DOS

Spilled half my coffee the other day when I saw this wonderful prehistoric find, posted on a social media account for L.A.’s greatest band of all time:

4. “DRAGONS’S LAIR WAS JUST A GAME FOR RICH KIDS IN TOLUCA LAKE”

I've been listening to Christian Duguay's magical realist comedy serial VALLEY HEAT for four years now, and I would estimate it is responsible for ~40% of my smiles during that period, which is an astonishing statistic.1

The show is set up as if it were a real podcast. This is the official summary:

Freelance insurance adjuster Doug Duguay uses his self-honed investigative skills to chronicle suspicious activities around his home and neighborhood in the Rancho Equestrian District of Burbank, California. Soundtrack by local Burbank band Cephalopods Are People.

Ep. 1: Doug discusses his suspicion that his swimming pool maintenance man has been using his curbside garbage can as a "drug drop" for distributing to a middle-man late at night before garbage pickup day. Doug also ponders some inappropriate emoji usage by his wife Faye's yoga instructor, Donovan.

It spirals out wildly from there. Honestly, I’ve been trying for some time now and I still haven’t found a way to summarize the joys of this show without spoiling or diminishing them in my inept retelling, so maybe just go here — valleyheatpodcast.com — and give the first few episodes a whirl.

Or, if you prefer unedited conversation podcasts as an introduction to a work of casual but slightly daunting genius, here’s Valley Heat creator Duguay guesting for 2.5 hours on comedian Pete Holmes’ ‘You Made It Weird’ show. Holmes is a Valley Heat recent convert so maybe this could be a good way in for the curious…? I don’t know. Anyways:

5. EUNOIA

"Eunoia is what life's all about, man. Beautiful thinking. There's nothing else worth bothering with." —Henry 'Sandy' Jacobs from "Sunnyside," a superb 2018 documentary film directed by Frederik Carbon

Arthur magazine fans may recall Henry Jacobs from Joel Rose’s memorable profile of the great rascal from Arthur No. 26 (2007), which also featured filmmaker Mike Mills’ tribute to Jacobs’ three-episode 1972 public TV series The Fine Art of Goofing Off (sometimes described as ‘Sesame Street for adults’), which had recently been reissued on a DVD.

Here’s a preview/clip:

Anyways, the narrator-less “Sunnyside” doesn’t mention any of that. Instead, without any real introduction, it simply follows Jacobs, now 90, and his genius/exasperating friend, architect Daniel Liebermann, in their day-to-day life as elderly neighbors in a coastal pine forest near Inverness Ridge (a remote area of California’s Marin County). The film is slow, quiet and lovely, by turns funny and poignant. If you don’t mind spoilers, see Jordan Bowen did a great, sensitive write-up of “Sunnyside” in the Point Reyes Light in 2018:

“Sunnyside” may not give us Jacobs’s left-handed ping-pong tournaments at the Dance Palace or show him chatting up locals at the bygone Blackbird Café in Inverness. However, the choice to stay stranded on the ridge frames the film’s sense of transcendent decay. Jacobs and Liebermann are the last Jedi on an island, awaiting some form of closure long after the world has fallen. Their unspoken love carries this ponderous tale of two old men reckoning with life and mortality.

“Sunnyside” can be rented for $0.99 on youtube:

6. FUNNY BOOKS

Earlier this year I got in the habit of reading blessed comedy genius Spike Milligan's World War II memoir Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall before drifting off at night. I noticed that my dreamlife started to sharply improve: gone were the usual nightmares, gloom and ugliness, replaced by much gentler, pleasant stuff.

I mentioned this to my friend and fellow culture-nut, the scholar Sean Murphy, and he replied that he only ever reads humorous stuff before turning in. Clearly some kind of advanced human! Thinking quickly, I asked Sean if he’d care to compile a list of Suggested Reads in this vein for Landline readers, and boy did he. Seldom has a shared google docs spreadsheet been populated with greater speed, accuracy and compassion. We then roped in Zig Zag author J.D. “Joe” O’Brien for further input, and voila: the 62-book FALL ASLEEP CHUCKLING list.

In a way this follows on from the clip from Lewis Hyde's Trickster book that I included in Landline from two years ago:

Joe said, “I want to go out like Marcel.” Words to die by!

Funny books spreadsheet: FALL ASLEEP CHUCKLING

This document is a work in progress. Recommendations are more than welcome, they’re necessary. Simply reply to this email to get at me directly, or leave a public comment using this button:

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It’s very hot and humid here in southern Arizona right now, the time of year when one only moves if absolutely necessary. The new & old tunes in this playlist are some of the songs that have been calling out to me to be repeat-played during this exhausting monsoon season. Maybe they’ll be of use/interest/comfort to you too.

Following are some brief notes on each track, with Bandcamp links.

And, to reward readers who support Landline via paying subscriptions or donations, there’s a link to stream this playlist on Buy Music Club is behind the paywall below.

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all the best,

Jay

1. JB Paterson - “Another Day”

This beautiful, languorous song, like some shy smiling cousin of Ted Lucas or early Vetiver, got me on first listen when the soothing, out-of-time bridge arrived mid-song and somehow just hung there in the gloaming. That was a few weeks ago and I haven’t really stopped listening to young Mr. Paterson’s three albums since (this song is off 2022’s sublime ‘Springtime Is Coming’). Don’t know much about him other than he lives in rural Australia, outside Brisbane, and gosh, he’s got some tunes and the loveliest vibe.

2. Mohamed Alassane Karzo - “Mafelawen”

A recently surfaced treasure of a 2012 acoustic live recording (reverb, laughs, handclaps, group singing) in Niger from a Tuareg guitarist-singer-songwriter I am completely unfamiliar with, whose approach is much more universal folksong-oriented than the psychedelic trance rock dance party music we usually hear from that region. There’s some helpful background from Sahel Sounds label chief Christopher Kirkley at the bandcamp link, but I recommend listening first and reading later. An immensely moving, quiet anthem.

3. Doug Paisley - “Nothing Is Wrong”

This wry, immediately catchy number is from ‘Rough Master,’ a clutch of raw home recordings self-released a few months ago by this much admired Toronto singer-songwriter. Nothing is wrong: even the imperfection in the song’s rendition is perfect.

4. Willie Lane - “Figure in the Dune”

Mirage boogie by a humble guitar favorite of those who know stuff, stepping out on his recent album ‘Bobcat Turnaround’ with his first-ever vocals. Comfortably blurry.

5. Akron/Family - “Gone Beyond”

The famous mantra from Mahāyāna Buddhism’s Heart Sutra arranged as Led Zeppelin Bron-Yr-Aur-era riverside cosmic-folk, with bursts of those glorious Akron harmonies we all loved. I harbor some residual sadness about never getting this group of utterly committed adventurers properly featured in the pages of ‘00s Arthur Magazine; some things just don’t work out, I guess. My god, what a magnificent, unique band they were. R.I.P. Akron’s Miles Seaton, who died in a car accident in 2021.

6. Espers - “Riding”

An old (2004!) acid folk favorite from Espers’ debut album. Sunny and fried, moody and gorgeous, all in just over four minutes. Espers: another tremendously gifted band I wish we’d figured out a way to properly feature in Arthur during their heyday. Ripe for rediscovery.

7. Alexander Tucker - “Ghost On The Ledge”

A weird soother off 2018’s ‘Don’t Look Away,’ the middle entry in this Englishman’s trilogy of deeply underheard, utterly beguiling albums that might strike listeners of a certain vintage as existing in a wonderfully eerie sonic midpoint between Brian Eno’s early solo albums and Six Organs of Admittance in their ‘poppier’ aspect. Investigate! Hours—days!—of pleasure await you.

8. David Thomas and The Accordion Club (v.4.0) - “Busman's Honeymoon”

The late, peculiar and charming David Thomas (Pere Ubu), live in 1993 at the Knitting Factory in New York, on accordion, vocals and comedic patter, accompanied by guitarist Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo) and cellist Garo Yellin. The whole set is wonderful.

9. Michael Hurley - “1954 Chevrolet [live]”

The late, peculiar and charming Michael Hurley, in 2013 in Brussels, describes the life and fate of one of the cars of his life. One of Michael’s catchiest numbers.

10. Patsy Cline - “Lovesick Blues [Film Version]”

Seems like something Hurley would be listening to in any one of his vehicles, eh. A little yodeling always helps the unquiet mind. Hipped to this wonderful recording by writer-scholar Eddie Dean. Go Patty go!

Stream: Landline playlist 2 (Summer 2025)

This took forever, but I am very glad to be able to write this morning that the entire run of Arthur magazine (2002-2008, 2012-13), which I co-founded and edited, is finally available online as single issue PDFs.

Every page of every issue, either scanned or from the original digital files.

FREE.

Go here: arthurmag.com

That’s all for now. I’ve got a proper Landline or two coming very soon, I swear!1

all the best,

Jay

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