Jason and the Scorchers have been working out an equation balancing aggressive rock tones cribbed from seventies bands and traditional country stuff for just about thirty years. For the most part, the band works out what it had in mind – and relatively easily.

Each of the ensemble players possesses untoward amounts of musical ability as recognizable in its rock presentation as its straight country stuff. At times, the band pushes tempo to the breaking point, frequently finding itself referred to as the forbearers of alt country and cow punk. And while that’s well and good, it’s pretty easy to figure out that Mike Ness and Social Distortion were recording in this general arena (that group favored punk over country, but the mix is still there) at least three years before the Scorchers were on fire.

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Mel Brooks has endeavored to entertain Americans for the last sixty years. He’s had his hand in cartoons, skits, theater, film and even did a season of Curb Your Enthusiasm along side his downer offspring, Larry David.

The influence Brooks has on ensuing generations of comedians and actors can’t be calculated. And neither can the quality of his filmmaking. Some might figure that the nineties didn’t exactly count as the highlight of his career. And while that may well be an appropriate summation of the decade, it still found Brooks seeking to expand upon the vast history he’d accumulated by that point in time.

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As crappy as it must have been to be a group attempting to negotiate original music during the early years of the seventies without the support of a major label, it has to be as frustrating for those folks to watch the continual dusting off of old records. Each album touted as the lost link from glam to punk or hard rock to sludge might not really have anything to do with those genres in a conservative sense of the word. But at the time, crossing over into whatever sound was then in a songwriter’s head and moving back towards more distinctive stock was the point. It didn’t frequently result in stardom. But there’s more than a handful of bands being dug up that appreciated prog as much as Zeppelin.

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Recently reissued through Kill Shaman, the same East Bay imprint that brought you the Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin collabo earlier this year, the Moles 1991 album isn’t even tangentially related to garage styles. And for whatever reason, the vast majority of prose spilled on Untune the Sky figures the band as some sort of chamber pop band. There’re problems with that as well, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

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I’d intended to write a bit on the fascination Americans – or moviegoers in general – have with gory/gross, yet unique documentaries. Capturing the Friedmans is an admitted classic in a weird way. And so is Nick Broomfield’s Kurt and Courtney.

It would have been easy to traipse through the organization of Broomfield’s work which makes him not only look like a well meaning, investigative documentarian, but the object of Courtney Love’s misplaced ire. The whole movie goes pretty much like this – “What’s she trying to hide?”

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Everything in life comprises odd timing and weird coincidences. So, my tracking down the first album, Beach Party, by Britishers Marine Girls, released just about thirty years ago, could have only led me to a piece of writing by Tracey Thorn and posted over at Quietus.

One of the group’s two songwriters, Throne runs through a few odd meetings she’s had over time during which famous people expound on their love of all things Marine Girls. She goes on to figure that ending the group so soon and so suddenly was the only end note possible.

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Bo Diddley remains one of the most entertaining, if not most important R&B or rock players in the history of recorded music. The reason for skirting his being ridiculously important (even though he clearly was and is) stems from the huge number of players springing from the late forties and fifties that sought to work in the same aural terrain as Diddley. Of course, no one else has a beat named after him. So, there’s that.

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It’d be cool to uncover some random hardcore band from the second wave of it all and find out that there was some all important group of dudes running around the country doing damage – but for the right reason. Code of Honor isn’t it, but might be kinda close.

Coming out of the same scene that gave the world the Dead Kennedys, Code of Honor were apparently raised on the most visible of punk groups and a huge number of BYO albums. It’s not that Code of Honor apes a Youth Brigade thing – and thankfully, because this San Fran based act is dramatically more entertaining. But it’s not to difficult to hear the same type of hardcore 7 Seconds was working out in Las Vegas all over Code of Honor’s few releases.

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Mothers. Fathers. Gather ‘round. If your kid has some weird tendencies, distract him by purchasing a musical instrument, or three, of his or her liking. You know what? Even if your kid isn’t a psycho in training, dollop musical gear throughout your home. It’ll make that oh so adorable offspring of yours something more than a drone in ensuing years. Really.

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Yes, ‘tis true. There are two bands that recorded under the moniker of the Godz during the seventies. But only one of them didn’t stink.

Based in New Yawk, the Godz (that didn’t stink) had something of a foot in the door at ESP Disk, the imprint that would eventually release music by the ensemble. At the time the label was working with fair as diverse as Ornette Coleman and the Fugs. That latter group, though, shared a bit of its musical terrain with Godz.

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