North Fork Sound Top 20 - September 19th 2010

1. Robert Plant: The Only Sound That Matters
2. Ensemble Folklorique Batimbo: Ewe Burundi
3. Dave Alvin: You Got Me
4. Royal Fingerbowl: Sweet Sixteen
5. Macy Gray: Kissed It
6. Sshuu: Khomus Solo
7. Gillian Welch: Look At Miss Ohio
8. Charlie Robison: It Comes To Me Naturally
9. Big Youth: The Killer
10. Judy Henske: Let The Good Times Roll
11. Ray Johnson: If You Don't Want Me Baby
12. Bob Dylan: Knockin' On Heaven's Door
13. Nino Rota: La Dolce Vita
14. Holger Hiller: Cuts Both Ways
15. The Band: Last Train To Memphis
16. John Adams: Common Tones In Simple Time (excerpt)
17. Robyn Hitchcock: Dark Princess
18. Billy Jo Spears: Mr. Walker, It's All Over
19. Curtis Mayfield: Kung Fu
20. Eddie Cochran: Am I Blue

North Fork Sound Alb O' The Week

John Lennon: Signature Box

North Fork Sound Legend Of The Month
Lowell George

Last Week's Listener Favourites
12 Dirty Bullets: Dark Tales Of A Policeman (remix)
Aswad: Your Recipe
The Bellrays: Fire On The Moon
Chuck Berry: One Sixty Nine AM
The Detroit Cobras: Stupidity
Genya Ravan: Sit Yourself Down

Ed Hamell
The Sidewalk Cafe, NYC
photo: ht

Hamell On Trial: The Long Drive
Harry Nilsson: Take 54
Howlin' Wolf: Little Red Rooster
Jerry Garcia Band: Sitting In Limbo
Jerry Lee Lewis: Better Not Look Down (alt take #1)
Jimmy Cliff: Let Your Yeah Be Yeah
Little Feat: Oh Atlanta
Loudean: Wasted
Lowell George & The Factory: Crack In Your Door
Mick Farren & Andy Colquhoun: The Ladbroke Groove

Rich Stim
San Francisco, CA
photo: ht

MX-80 Sound: Man On The Move
Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Over & Over

Tom Phobic
Hammersmith, London
photo: ht

The Phobics: Die Slowly
The Pink Fairies: Well Well Well
The Ronettes: I Can Hear Music
Sarah Silverman: Everybody Sings
The Screaming Blue Messiahs: I Want Up
Sherman Scott: How'd Ja Do
The Small Faces: What's A Matter Baby
The Third Degree: Mercy
Todd Rundgren: Hideaway

Victor DeLorenzo
Milwaukee,
photo: ht

Victor DeLorenzo: Picture Her Blue

I now have a show - 'PURE' - on a GREAT radio station. Find the station and archived shows here: www.wpkn.org or tune in to listen "live" at WPKN 89.5 fm
SEND PROMOS - cds or vinyl ONLY, to Box 45, New Suffolk, NY, 11956
Next show: October 8th, and every second Friday of the month, 12 (noon) - 3pm

A few notes about this week's charters...

Bruce Anderson's 'The Inherent Beauty of Hopelessness' arrived in the mail while I was away. No record company listed, hardly any credits and impossible to find online. It's not listed on the MX-80 site or available at iTunes or Amazon. It is, however, as good as anything I've heard this decade. I thought of editing it down into sections for airplay, but in the end just couldn't bring myself to cut anything. It's a long piece (40' 28") so when it comes on, do yourself a favour; stop what you're doing and let it take you over. You'll thank me later.

Stephen Bruton's 'Fading Man' is another sublime work reminiscent of The Band at their very best. I've been a fan of Stephen's since his last album showed up, unsolicited, courtesy ace promo-dude and southern gent, Jeff Cook. Since then, all his solo albums and his Austin 'super' group, The Resentments have been playlisted regularly here.

Black Joe Lewis was an impulse buy one afternoon at the awful Borders in Riverhead. I'd never heard of him but it looked good and it was on Lost Highway. Turns out the album's fantastic, and this is the second of many tracks we're going to feature over the coming weeks.

I've no idea who The Third Degree are and don't really care. I saw this in the 7" new releases section at Sister Ray in Soho (London) and, since we were the first internet station - IN THE WORLD - to play Duffy's 'Mercy', I thought maybe we'd be the first internet station based in the US to play their version of the song. It's pretty good.

I remember Charlie Gillett playing TG Sheppard's 'Trying To Beat The Morning Home' back in the mid 70's on his Honky Tonk radio show and it just might have been the first country single I ever bought. When I heard a friend was working with TG now and that his new album contained duets with the likes of George Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis, Delbert McClinton and others, well...it's a no-brainer, really.

Johnny Throttle is good ol' punk-rock done proper, like it was '75/'76. Drums, bass, guitar, voice. Featuring the irrepressible Afonso (late of The Parkinsons) on 'voice', Tom Phobic and I caught them in a crummy dive just off New Bond Street and we had a blast. I was worried I'm getting too old for this. Apparently I'm not.

Also, while in London, I wanted to meet Rupert Orton, one of the guys behind NoFoSo fave The Jim Jones Revue, so I stumbled into the sticky heat-trap that is the 100 Club during a Bob Log III show to find Rupert was promoting the show for Not The Same Old Blues Crap. Between mixing the sound and collecting the money, he told me that after the JJR establish a foothold in Italy and the Benelux territories (having already made solid impressions in France, Spain, Scandinavia and the UK), there will be a short US tour taking in Boston, NYC, Philly, DC and hopefully a few other places. ALL my friends who've seen the band rate 'em highly, so this is something to look forward to. Meanwhile one-man-band, Bob Log III is hysterical. He drank nearly a bottle's worth of tequila shots during his set, played one song with a girl sitting on each leg and played filthy, raw slide blues to a hugely appreciative audience.

Bob Log III
100 Club, London April 8th '09
photo: ht

MX-80 Sound

MX-80 Sound
Island Records publicity pic
photo: Kim Torgerson

After reading a review - by Caroline Coon - of their Big Hits e.p. in Melody Maker, I sent the required money to MX-80 Sound in Bloomington, Indiana, for a copy. One duly arrived at the Island Records offices in Hammersmith wrapped in a 'songbook' and enclosed in a customized envelope

The record sounded very different to what was going on in England - anywhere, actually - at the time, so I called Rich Stim, their singer/contact man and after two or three phone calls, got to licence their ‘Hard Attack’ lp for a sum so small that nobody 'upstairs' even asked any questions about the band. Just like that, along with Eddie & The Hot Rods and The Snivelling Shits, they became my 3rd signing. More photos here

MX-80 Sound
Bruce Anderson, Rich Stim, Jeff Armour, Dave Mahoney, Dale Sophiea

MX had been described by Glenn O’Brien as “either the most Heavy Metal Art Band or the most Arty Heavy Metal Band” so when I found myself working for Bronze Records a year later, I thought a second round with these guys might be worth a trip. Asking my boss David Betteridge if he'd "uh, like to go to to Bloomington?" I was, frankly, a bit surprised when he said "yes". So we found ourselves de-planing in Indianapolis and being driven for roughly an hour to a coffee bar/health-food joint (with ashram attached) in Bloomington called Tao. There, we met up with Rich and his wife Andrea. I'm not lying when I say there's no better hostess. Andrea is many things, some of them to be recounted at a later date, but right now, we're in 1978 and my knowledge of 'health food' was pretty much confined to the stuff they served up at Cranks, a funky but pricey veggie restaurant near Carnaby Street where hippies, Cliff Richard, Hayley Mills, the Beatles and a few Scandinavian chicks chewed on the soups of the day. Aside from that, there was a joint we called the Hare Krishna Curry House on Soho Street where orange-draped baldies scooped rice and lentils onto plates (for free, if you were homeless) and that was IT for healthy eating in London. So being offered “bran muffins”, “rice cakes” or “granola” was mildly confusing. Crumpets and corn flakes, I knew. This stuff...wuh? What the hell was a blueberry, anyway? I knew raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries and blackberries. Furthermore, in the UK we had 2 types of coffee...regular or decaf...but at least it was INSTANT! If you lived in the city, you might find a cafe that had a contraption that could (when it wasn't broken) cough out a cappuccino but those places mainly used them to appear more Italian or Continental, which didn’t really cut it in Muswell Hill or Shepherd’s Bush. Anyway, stuff we never saw in the UK was taken for granted here and, best of all, served up by knockouts like Andrea. It didn’t take long to acclimatize and, once again, wish I lived in America.
Despite its relaxed and rather groovy ambience, Bloomington's general population wasn’t very switched-on, musically speaking. Even local boy, Johnny Cougar was deemed too ‘punk’. 'Proper' gigs were hard to come by, so they’d play wherever they could. Like the Munroe County Public Library, for instance, indelibly preserved on the Gulcher CD “Live At The Library”. David and I had to settle for seeing the band in the basement of (bass player) Dale Sophiea’s house.
It’s all a bit of a blur, but I remember how struck I was with Bruce Anderson's guitar playing. His tone was distinctive. I was already a fan from the tapes Rich had sent me but in a live context, he was extraordinary. Possessing a beatific presence, he wrung new notes and chords out of his instrument. He was one of the best guitarists I’d seen and there wasn't really anyone you could compare him to. That was something I tried to look for in my potential signings. He made it all seem so effortless.
I have a tendency to not notice bass players unless they’re Lemmy or Ronnie Lane but you couldn’t miss Dale. He has this zen-like, all-encompassing, gentle giant vibe and, without fuss, he anchored the band with an instrument that looked like a balsa-wood toy in his hands, while Dave Mahoney and Jeff Armour gave it plenty of stick in the back. Bands with 2 drummers? I love ‘em. Since I'd seen The Pink Fairies at Hornsey Town Hall and Ginger Baker’s Airforce at the Marquee, I'd always wanted a band with two drummers. MX employed the idea to great effect and on top of all this was Rich, deadpanning his way through the songs and playing his silver sax. Rich was something else. Talk about a sharp wit. He seemed at ease doing several different things at once. He was the ‘obit-man’ for the Bloomington Herald-Telephone where he'd sometimes embellish the facts about a recently deceased person. He was also in charge of its "Hotline", which found him answering random questions from the paper's readers and printing the best ones. He kept the best voicemails and used to edit them together for the amusement of his friends. One featured a lady who'd called in to report a "whole mess of birds" in her yard acting "doped up". She'd called to see if "somebody that's interested in birds..or...dope - or something like that - might like to notice these things, to act on it." He'd cycle everywhere. He was writing his first novel, "Butterworth" and gave me a manuscript. He was always on top of all the latest technology. This guy just didn't quit. And here's proof.
As always, just as things got warmed up, after 35 minutes or so, the showcase was over. It seemed an awful long way to come for just over half an hour and I could have used a whole lot more, but that's not really how it works. I was very happy to have finally seen them but I could tell this wasn’t really David's cup of tea. It was finished and Andrea, Rich and I walked David back to his hotel in the snow.
At some point, I went to Rich’s house where he and Bruce had painted his wood floor white and, in a Pollock-y style, dripped and splattered black paint over it. I had been invited to stay an extra day or two for a further taste of the Midwest and was totally up for it. The following morning, I met the band’s friends and wives, several of whom turned up bearing gifts. Mark Bingham, the band's producer seemed to have a huge appetite for 'college hoops' and carrot juice. The Hoosiers were his team, and their coach, Bobby Knight, later became the subject of an MX song, 'White Knight'. There was a sack of carrots in the kitchen so he stuffed a huge bunch of them, tops and all, into something called a 'juicer'. Tasted foul. Still, he was friendly and we connected through music and film. He told me about ‘Eraserhead’, a film he’d just seen in Greenwich Village at Cinema Village on E. 12th Street. He spoke of this new director, David Lynch, and described the film in a way that made it sound like either it was the best film ever made, or possibly the worst. It sounded fascinating and I made a mental note to check it out next time I was in New York. When I finally saw it at Cinema Village on 12th St., it gave me horrific nightmares so I had to go back to see it again the following day only, this time, not high.

Dave and his wife, Kim Torgensen, came over and presented me with a 'clay record' she’d thrown with an MX-80 logo stamped into it. For years, my electric kettle sat on it...now, it's in my office.

MX-80 Sound clay record 'award'
by Kim Torgerson

Jeff stopped by to watch the basketball and hang out. Bruce practiced guitar (unplugged) on the sofa and told me about Lonnie Mack, a guitarist from Dearborn County, Indiana, who'd never made it to England. His 'Wham Of That Memphis man' lp (Fraternity Records) is a classic.
A friend of theirs called Steve Hoy showed up. I never really knew what he did (other than appear in a photo on the front cover of Hard Attack) but he was funny, and easy to talk to. Dale’s wife, Elana, gave me a t-shirt that she’d silk-screened.

ht
Bloomington, IN
photo: Andrea Ross Stim

Bruce and Dale both had jobs at the Von Lee, a local cinema, and I was invited to that night's screening of John Waters’ follow-up to Pink Flamingos, ‘Female Trouble’, a film Dale had booked as part of his midnight movie series. Well, everybody knows about John Waters now, but back then he was a tiny cult figure/underground film director, at best. After the initial shock, I thought it was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen. You can make your mind up here. It took a while for (even) Pink Flamingos to make it to the UK but I remember taking a date to see it at The Screen On The Green in Islington. Never saw her again.
That afternoon, I got to meet Gulcher Records owner Bob Richert who loaded me up with Gizmos stuff and Gulcher Magazines. Everywhere I went, people were laidback, generous and extremely friendly. Too bad it wasn't like this where I came from.
Sadly, I never did get to work with the band again. 10 months later, David Betteridge took me with him to CBS, while MX-80 moved en masse to San Francisco/Berkeley where they found a home with Ralph Records. It would appear they retained the rights to most of their releases, so go visit their own Quadruped Media outlet for those, and much much more...

poster for 'Out Of Tunnel' (Ralph Records)

Mark Bingham

Mark Bingham
photo machine, late -70's

I like New Orleans. I like its music, its vibe, the ‘debris’ at Mother’s, the architecture, the crawfish, the Circle Bar and much of what comes out of Piety Street - Mark Bingham’s recording studio in the 9th Ward. If you want Pro-Tools or 2 inch analog, orchestra or solo, modern or vintage equipment, Piety's got it all, plus a squad of in-house talent that help make things sound like records used to, before they all got weedy and naff. Mark’s an accomplished arranger, producer, instrumentalist and writer whose resumé lists stints with The Screaming Gypsy Bandits, The Brain Sisters, The Social Climbers, the Glenn Branca Orchestra, Shannon MacNally and sessions with Natalie Merchant, Jon Cleary, Dr. John, Ed Sanders, Peter Stampfel, MX-80, Hal Willner, Wharton Tiers and the Nevilles to name but a diverse, yet glorious few. The studio’s seen Harry Connick Jr., Korn, Lennie Kravitz, Mudvayne, Ryan Adams, Robin Thicke, Bobby Charles and Ray Davies all pass through its doors in the last few years, though (unfortunately) not all at once.

Natalie Merchant, Mark Bingham
photo machine, 1988

The first time I met him was in Bloomington, Indiana when I flew there to see MX-80 Sound. He was the first person I ever saw drink carrot juice. There, he gave me a couple of albums he'd produced - Caroline Peyton, a sampler of Bloomington artists he'd produced, Bloomington 1 (BRBQ Records), a reel-to-reel quarter-track tape of the unreleased Chinaboise album, featuring MX-80's Rich Stim and Dave Mahoney and Andrea Ross (who went on to become Mrs. Stim and Angel Corpus Christi) and 3 albums' worth of tapes by his own band, The Screamin' Gypsy Bandits - a sort of Tubes-meets-Zappa psychedelic, funk-rock outfit (with marvelous horns) which occasionally featured Bruce Anderson and a terrific Dale Sopheia vocal on 'Foggy Windows' - both also members of MX-80. Tune into the station to hear the 'Bloomington Sound'.

Social Climbers
A. Leroy (Dick Connette), Jean Seaton Shaw, Mark Bingham
Gulcher Records' publicity photo

From Bloomington, Mark moved to New York where partnered with Philip Glass in a downtown loft studio, near the Mudd Club, calling it The Living Room. During an early visit, I was impressed to see Mark actually building the interior walls, hammer in hand.
In the late 80's, I went slightly off the rails and Mark sent me a letter that cut clean to the quick. It told me to shape up and get it together or I'd lose him as a friend. It seems my vices were getting the better of me. He shocked me back to reality. I was grateful for the warning.

Eddie Murphy, Mark Bingham
photo: Patti Perret

Mark always sent copies of what he was working on and I have a ton of tapes containing his own music that regularly gets featured on the station. Now, much of it has been collected onto several cds which will, hopefully, see a release someday. As a rapacious consumer of all sorts of interesting music, he turned me on to Xenakis, Bonerama, Kurt Weill, Morning 40 Federation, Brother Tyrone, Rudy Ray Moore and he introduced me to the considerable delights of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Mother’s Restaurant, the incredible brass bands and fabulously greasy menu at Donna’s Bar & Grill, Ernie K-Doe’s Mother-In-Law Lounge and all sorts of wild hangouts in New Orleans.

Mark Bingham, John Sinclair
New Orleans
photo: Patti Perret

Mark Bingham
New Orleans
photo: ht

MX-80

MX-80's Rich Stim
footage courtesy: Rich Stim