Northampton 2009 Election & Aftermath

The big day of the election. Wasn’t able to go early since I had to do a little shopping, and I saw a few familiar faces in the supermarket who talked about politics, but ended up going there later in the night. I went down w/ Bev after work. Here is the ballot sheet.

Ballot sheet for Northampton 2009 election

Robin is gonna vote for whom?

One of the old guys @ the senior center notice I had a camera and called to “Florence” or “Dot” or whoever to watch me. I ended up seeing Robin on my way out. She wanted me to photograph her voting but I was trying to be inconspicuous. Above is a photo of her checking in. We’ll see who wins this one.

Segue to Wednesday morning….

Well, Higgins won again, as I heard from my grandmother. I also heard Gene Tacy on the news discussing the Landfill vote: Yes 3,107 – No 5, 482 (Tacy woke me up @ 7:30pm).

Landfill sign in closet

Here  is an old Landfill sign I picked up during one of the protests. I keep it in Mimi’s litter box closet. Beside it is a painting I did of the mayor as Joey Ramone performing @ the Transperformance: Look Punk.

The Ventures - TV and movie themes

Grasshopper (soundtrack)

Went downtown to Turn It Up and picked up a copy of The Ventures doing TV and movie themes. It doesn’t say anything about it on the back or front, but w/ titles like “Hawaii Five-O,” Mission: Impossible” and “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” you know what the rest will be. There’s also a version of “No Matter What Shape (You’re Stomach’s In)” which sounds identical to The T-Bones one. I also picked up the soundtrack to the film The Grasshopper just for the cover and insert design.

The day @ the job was quiet and lonely. No one showed up so I was working by myself trying to get some jobs finished ASAP. No focus today since I need life around me to work — most of the time.

Bardsley's headquarters no more

During my break I took some pictures of the old Michael Bardsley headquarters. Everything is down. I saw a guy loading some signs in the back of a truck on my way back to work. Very close and what an interesting race that was.

Mary Clare Higgins wins

After work I headed back to the supermarket to pick up the paper, but they were sold out. I had to get it out of one of those newspaper boxes by the liquor store. Here it is. I notice Sue Stubbs, the CEO of Servicenet, is congratulating Clare on her win. There’s the famous sculptress Lu Stubbs (Sue’s mother) with the white curly hair on the left.

Here’s a video I found on YouTube, part of my subscription updates. A Clare Higgins post-election chat conducted by the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Wish the sound was a little louder, people.

Ellery Eskelin - Green Bermudas

Hung out w/ Niles for a bit, listening to a few CDs. I wasn’t in the mood for anything poppy so I decided to put on Ellery Eskelin’s Green Bermudas. I’ve been listening to this for @ a week now. My favorite track is “Mary Jane’s Dilemma.” I remember talking to record producer/music critic Byron Coley about this album, who told me he produced this CD on his Eremite label. Eskelin is the son of “song-poem” musician Rodd Keith.

Rodd Keith Eskelin

I also put on Anthony Braxton’s “3 compositions of new jazz.” Niles really loved this one. I showed him some of the diagrams Braxton uses for naming his compositions. He doesn’t list them by names, just as symbols and figures.

The night ended w/ another show-and-tell of scrapbooks and Flickr pages. I haven’t done art for awhile but I showed Niles some of the past stuff. Eventually it will all be seen, when I have the courage and energy to scan, upload and post. Until next time.

Not So Very Halloween-Like

Halloween was pretty much a bust. Northampton was very low-key and I saw very few people in costumes. What I did see is Michael Bardsley standing out before the upcoming election coming this November 3rd. I walked by and said “hi.”

Bardsley stands out at Noho intersection

What I did miss, most of the other bloggers got down on their blogs. Check out Nohodome for his Halloween sightseeing adventures in NOHO, MA. In the morning, I woke up w/ the Bill Dwight Show. He had Michael Kirby on discussing the Carney/Vidal-McNair debate that happened this past Thursday.

Carney/Vidal-McNair debate

I watched it on Northampton Community Television and tried taking some notes, getting the gist of it but losing my attention span towards the end. A better write-up can be found on Daryl LaFleur’s Northampton Redoubt.

Backtracking a little bit…..

Florence Inn Skeleton

I notice after work on Friday, @ the Florence Inn, they had a motion-activated skeleton sitting on a chair. I tried videotaping it w/ my Point-and-Shoot camera, but it was too dark. Whenever you moved, he came alive, making a few off-colored remarks to whomever was standing there.

Frogs

Down to Pleasant Street Videos, I rented the movie Frogs starring Sam Elliot. Me and Niles watched it on this low-key Halloween night. Slow moving @ the start but picking up speed toward the middle. The film also stars Ray Milland, famous for The Lost Weekend but was also in another cult classic, X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes. On Friday, trying to get into the Halloween spirit, I watched the film Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things. Bob Clark, the director of the film, later made Porky’s and A Christmas Story — you know, the “Red Ryder model air rifle” one.

Some of my most recent facebook posts that are Halloween related include Halloween Safety Education Film, parts 1 and 2. These were the kind of safety videos released during the days of razor blades in apples and such. Another nostalgic piece I posted was Raymond and the Circle’s “Call The Exorcist.” Whatever happened to Raymond, anyway?

Old Bistro 186

Walking thru the city and seeing the very few sights that day. One in particular that caught my eye was the work they’re now doing on the old Bistro 186. I haven’t heard of any plans yet or read anything in the paper recently. Will this be the same restaurant-performance space it used to be or is their something new on its way? We’ll have to wait and see.

Ended the night talking w/ Niles about traveling to Europe and the things I would do there, while dozing off on my recliner. We just caught another airing of Night of the Living Lush, something that aired on cable back in the late 90s — the way Northampton Community Television used to be like. I almost went completely asleep when the last things I talked about were the parks in Germany and Norway, bringing back memories of Brattleboro and Bill Dwight wearing his speedo. I think we can end on that note for tonight.

Getting Ready For Halloween

wright builders groundbreaking event 10/29/09

This past Thursday, on my dayoff from work, I found out that Wright Builders Inc. was having a groundbreaking event for building 12 townhouses on Village Hill. I unfortunately didn’t videotape the event since I locked my stupid keys and camera inside my apartment and the maintenance men had to let me back in. Instead I got this photograph (seen above) of the mayor and others city officials breaking ground for the new units.

A lot of work had to be done @ Memory Magic this week. Several orders (VHS-C to DVD and cassette tape to CD) have to be finished before next week. The night before I was trying to get some writing together for my Gonzo2000, Halloween zine.

Gonzo2000 (Halloween Issue)

The cover features an image of J.R. “Bob” Dobbs, the icon representing the Church of the SubGenius. On the right side is a picture of Timmy Young. On the bottom left is a picture of Bonnie Ascher.

Bonnie Ascher (photo by Bill Dwight)

Bonnie Ascher obituary in Daily Hampshire Gazette

Bonnie Ascher 61, passed away Sunday, Oct. 25, 2009, at Mass. General Hospital in Boston. In the zine I talk about the day I introduced myself to Bonnie, asking her “What’s your name?” “I’m Bonnie,” she said. “I’m Dann,” I said “Nice to meet you.” Bonnie walked off with her shopping cart, looking as if to say “who in the hell was he?” A simple yet embarrassing introduction that you can laugh at. I remember seeing Bonnie back in the early 90s when she had her bicycle. She used to carry bags full of bottles and cans which she hung over each side of her bike. Later on she lost her bicycle and used a shopping cart instead. My friend Nancy who knew her, told me that she was a hard worker. A hard worker with many a stories to tell. Nohodome has a nice write-up on her. There’s a great picture of Bonnie sweeping the ground outside next to Pop’s Package Store. In the background is that great mural of the man hovering over a tree.

Took a break from Sierra Grille this week. Tonight was supposed to be the Halloween party, but I didn’t have a costume. Hope cherlovestrong got some footage of the show, cuz I didn’t…

Cher made a video last year of the Northampton Zombie Pubcrawl, an annual event that happens in the city of NOHO where everybody dresses as zombies and goes drinking from pub to pub. A put together a clip called “Looking For Northampton Zombie Pubcrawl,” of me and Bev searching for the event (see above). I was planning on airing it on NCTV this Halloween, but unfortunately missed the deadline. I gave them “Night of the Living Lush” instead.

Halloween VCD

You might’ve seen some of these if you went to Turn It Up! Records the day before Halloween. These are some VCD discs that I left at the store, that features short films which aired on Northampton Community Television back in the late 90s. One of my favorite is called “The Warlock Project” or “The NCTV Warlock.” The video is a parody on The Blair Witch Project only it ends on a more sillier note.

Look out for more great zines in your stores and great community access programming on your cable TV station. Let’s see what this Halloween has in store for us and the Northampton, MA community as a whole.

Remembering Timothy J. Young

Timothy J. Young Memorial Show

Last few weeks I attended the Timmy Young Memorial Show @ The Eleven’s. I taped some of it and Ira McKinley did too. Ira just recently aired his on NCTV cable television. I haven’t yet but soon plan to.

Below are some clips from that show:

Here is F. Alex Johnson doing a fine rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s “Castles Made of Sand.” That’s David Hayes cheering in the beginning.

The Danger Birds doing a ruckus performance of the 13th Floor Elevator’s “You’re Gonna Miss Me.” They’re called The Danger Birds, but why is there a picture of a dog onstage.

I came around 8pm and the show began w/ a performance of the melancholy “Maggot Brain,” a song written by The Funkadelics, only here, played alone on guitar by Justin Bard. This lead into The Ray Mason Band, segue to a solo bass performance by Dave Hayes. He said that he never really got to fistbump Timmy, so instead he wanted to play an instrumental in remembrance of him.

Christian William Reader as MC

Christian William Reader was the host for that night. There were many of Timmy’s friends attending that night, some who might’ve been old fellow students from The Clark School For The Deaf. Because of this, The Eleven’s had a sign language interpreter, introducing each band and interpreting anyone who wished to share some memories of Tim. Elliot Tarry, former host of the open mic poetry night @ the old Fire & Water Cafe, talked about how he remembered an elf of a man throwing a paper airplane @ his window. That was the childlike Timmy, as he was remembered way back in Northampton history. Al Houghton of the Iron Horse Music Hall spoke as well. See this clip, courtesy of Cher Love Strong:

I purchased three tapes to record on for that event. This was all on tape one. Other highlights on this tape include The Carolyn Conspiracy performing “I’ll Fly Away” on organ, and Ella Longpre doing “Motherless Children Have A Hard Time/This Train.”

Christian introduced a few of the bands as if they came from around the world, and toured extensively. One of these includes Jason & Michael from The Novels. He also did the same for The Steamrollers, who are not really a famous band from the 80s (as Christian said) but are really a contemporary one. And get this, the lead singer is actually an English professor from Holyoke Community College. Other performers that day were Shawn Fogel, who did a great rendition of the theme song to “Different Strokes,” The Merchant Bankers doing a song about NOHO, MA (“Paradise” they call it), as well as a few more people who shared their memories about Tim. One, a man named “Jimmy” who identified himself as “a black man” (and he truly was) came onstage and did an a cappella version of “My Girl” — the audience later joined in.

I got most of the show videotaped, but unfortunately my tapes ran out. Ira finished for me right after The Swill Merchants played. Here’s a clip:

The show went on from 8pm-2am. Anyway, it was a great tribute for the No. 1 music supporter in the Valley.

Newspaper Article by Bob Flaherty

Here is Timmy’s obituary from The Daily Hampshire Gazette:

Timothy Young obituary

Timmy Memorial Service @ the Iron Horse

The Iron Horse Music Hall later had a Memorial Service for Timmy, on Saturday Oct 24, 2009. Below is a clip of Leslie Fraidstern proposing that the mayor of the city appoints a “Timmy Young Northampton Town Crier;” someone who can let everybody know about shows and events coming up in the Valley.

A lot of people came to this event (standing room only). Eric Suher gave a moving speech as well. At the very end, we all flew paper airplanes as a passing gesture for Timmy. This is now the 2nd memorial and, most likely, final tribute for Timmy J. Young. Maybe we can now put this one to rest.

Tiresome Days

Day off from work & I pretty much crashed the whole day. The day before wasn’t too exciting either. I just had to research some info on 8mm/16mm projectors and parts and supplies. We have a big job coming our way of transferring film to DVD. Hopefully, we can get something decent and not too expensive.

Kirkland Ave. Mural #1

Kirkland Ave. Mural #2

Was hanging out downtown NOHO this Wednesday and got a few photos of street art and window displays. Here is the Kirkland Ave. Project mural. Their blog can tell you more about it than I can. Something about this is very 1970s-like, almost like something you can see in the background on Sesame Street.

On the brick wall next to the mural was a flyer w/ hanging attachments sporting the Kirkland Ave. blog address. I tore one off. Here it is:

(blogspot address)

downtown sounds window display

The next piece of art I saw was the window display @ Downtown Sounds. This was artwork by Greg Stone of different sites in Northampton. I went back yesterday and it was all gone — a window full of flora and plants instead.

It's Alive

On Wednesday before work I picked up some great media @ Turn It Up! Here is the cover for the DVD edition of “It’s Alive,” a film by Larry Cohen about a man-eating baby. Larry Cohen also directed the film Q, about the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, the “winged serpent.” The film stars John Carradine as a police detective and a “method acting” performance by Michael Moriarty. RE/Search’s “Incredibly Strange Films” has an in depth look into his films as well as a great interview.

Larry Cohen from Incredibly Strange Films

Below is the work-safe trailer for “It’s Alive.”

Limbo Party

Also this Wednesday I picked up the incredibly strange record “Limbo Party.” This was also featured on the cover to “Incredibly Strange Music, Vol. 1”

Academy of Music Marquee Lighting

Yesterday, while refusing to attend yet another city council meeting (I was so tired), I heard from the mayor on television that The Academy of Music was having their lighting of its newly restored, marquee letters. This I had to attend. It was only a few minutes walk down from Village Hill. The mayor announced it on television @ 8pm and I got there by 8:20pm. The event began about 8:25pm and I began shooting it. Below is the video of the lighting. A little shaky due to my rushing down the hill. A fleeting moment in Northampton, MA history. This was part of The Academy of Music Marquee Event, Oct 1, 2009.

After the Academy event I headed down to city council meeting to do a little volunteering on camera. The meeting ended early @ 9:15pm, so later on I headed down to Sierra Grille but unfortunately was too exhausted from what happened hrs. before. I left early and called it a night. The lineup for that night was The Accident That Led Me To The World w/ Brooke Brown Saracino & The Sixty One Ramblers. Below is a photograph of one of the musicians that played that night (photo by Mark Sheehan).

Brooke Brown Saracino

No Work And Lots Of Play

Shelter Sunday sign on Lifebuilders' front lawn

Most of this week I was videotaping/editing and journaling. Tried uploading “The Artist’s Corner” onto Vimeo but the sound was too low. That’s okay, we’ll try again @ the end of this week. Things are not going so well for business @ Memory Magic, so my co-workers are taking the time getting ready for Shelter Sunday this weekend. It will be held on October 4^th in Pulaski Park. I’m not sure if Bill Dwight is gonna MC this one as he did last year, but I’m sure Ira McKinley will provide the entertainment like always. Here’s a link all about it. Above is the Shelter Sunday sign on the front lawn of Lifebuilders, in Florence, MA.

Starbucks Coffee @ Stop & Shop

Today Bev and I headed down to Stop & Shop to get some groceries. I notice that the Starbucks Coffee that was being built is now completed and ready for customers. I took a picture and one of the managers asked me ‘what I was doing.” I told him I’m a Northampton, MA archivist and I wanted to get a photo for my archives. He said it was all right (close one).

Village Hill Northampton ribbon-cutting event (flyer)

Village Hill Northampton is having a ribbon cutting ceremony this Friday. It’s the grand opening of the new entranceway of Village Hill Rd. There will also be an announcement on Moser Street. The mayor will be attending this event as well as Bob Culver, the president and CEO of MassDevelopment.

Cracked Magazine (Those Cracked Monsters)

On a side note, I was digging thru my bookshelf trying to find some cool stuff to scan in. I’m getting into the habit of scanning anything in site. Here is a monster issue of Cracked magazine. A guilty pleasure it may seem but not really since I sometimes get tired of all the hype Mad Magazine gets, and hate the fact that they’ve always steered away from the horror films. Attached are some scanned pages from the magazine.

Cracked Monsters

Another favorite but rarity is Crazy Magazine. I remember seeing these way back in the 70s and only buying one or two issues. Their first mascot was a bandit-like character called “Irving Nebbish.” He was later replaced by Obnoxio the Clown; a sleazy, cigar-puffing middle-aged man in a dirty clown outfit.

Crazy Magazine, featuring Irving Nebbish

Another Mad magazine ripoff was called Sick. Their mascot was a demented Ronald McDonald lookalike named Huckleberry Fink (actually, it’s an Alfred E. Newman ripoff), which reminds me of the very first Ronald (sans makeup) played by Willard Scott.

This past Sunday I was digging thru the tapes of old City Council meetings. I found a meeting from 2007 that was held upstairs in City Hall. This was the night for the swearing in of Northampton’s assistant fire chief. The council chambers was being used by the Planning Board that night, so we had to air city council meeting another day, since our room didn’t have hookups for broadcasting it live. Unfortunately, it wasn’t aired, due to technical difficulties @ NCTV.

City Council Meeting 8/23/07

Below are the notes I took on while I was watching it. As you can see these were the days of when the Wetlands and were in the picture. The Landfill was also being discussed as you can see from my notes.

Doodling and Taking Notes

One last thing before I call it a goodnight. ANOTHER ERPLOCO2 MASHUP!! This time it’s Matt Hebert and his band Haunt. I also uploaded this on Haunt’s facebook fan page. This is pretty much the best of Matt Hebert/Haunt. All of the footage was taken off the web, except the Pearl Street Night Club ones, which was videotaped by me.

Home Alone But Still Working

Rainy Day On Village Hill

A rainy day today in the city of Northampton, MA, and on Village Hill it looks pretty bad. Yes, I must say. Niles and I got out for a little bit in the drizzling rain and headed over to Lee’s house but no one was home today. Up all night since yesterday when I was putting together some video clips for the web and uploading more cable access shows to Vimeo. I’m having some technical difficulties w/ Vimeo on my computer since I have very little memory and HD space. The first video I uploaded was “Scrapbook From The Underground.” This was a TV show full of spoken word poetry, music videos and deconstruction, all based on the poems in my poetry scrapbook.

The 2^nd show I uploaded was Videojournal 2008, prt. 1. This was aired on NCTV after Obama was elected for president. The video follows the demolition of Northampton State Hospital, the construction of Village Hill Northampton and the many political meetings that happened in NOHO for 2008. Still looking for Videojournal 2009. Aw, it’s somewhere in the house, most definitely.

NCTV has been having problems recently w/ cutting off programs when they air. Also saw that the fish tank didn’t have anything in it this week. It was dark w/ just a lightbulb shining thru. This was because someone was using their space and didn’t leave the lights on in the studio. Now it’s fine.

No Fish Time Activity

WHAT IS THIS!!! Another Blue Screen of death for NCTV. All I see is the schedule and it hasn’t changed since an hour. They have nothing to air in between – Oh-uh, time to gather some bumper material.

Blue Screen Of Death

I still think NCTV needs programs to air instead of Fish Time. However, some people like Fish Time. The Mousy Mouse Show is no more since Emily Goodwin sold him after she left NCTV for Hollywood. I miss the Mousy Mouse Show.

Niles came by and we watched Videodrome for the 3^rd time – LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH. Like any other Cronenberg film, it goes stale after watching it 2 or 3 times. I wasn’t in the mood for any trips downtown you know, since it’s pretty much a weekend relax @ home day. Still the major creative block for the Yvonne video, yet I don’t have a true deadline to complete it. Is this real work we’re talking about here or can I put it off?

Interesting news this weekend: Susan (Sadie Glutz) Atkins has passed away in prison. The woman who killed Sharon Tate, and a member of the Manson Family, has died herself. This is definitely a small loss as one of my facebook said, although I have to mention it since it’s coincidental w/ something that happened today – the arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland. There’s no arguing what for.

Polanski & Tate

Many coincidences: Roman Polanski’s wife was Sharon Tate, Polanski directed Rosemary’s Baby in The Dakota building where John Lennon lived and was shot. The Beatles, lead by Lennon, wrote the song Helter Skelter – Oh, the list goes on…

A guilty pleasure of mine, here is the Charles Manson Anthology, Vol. 2 posted on the Internet Archive. A must have for 1960s “Days Of Rage” historians.

Charles Manson: Superstar

Here is the video where I got the six degrees of Charles Manson information. It’s called Charles Manson: Superstar. A very good documentary, I must say? Also, a customer friend @ work gave me a copy of the rare film called Manson. – Just that.

The painting on the cover is by Joe Coleman, an outsider/lowbrow artist from Norwalk, Connecticut who was excluded from the Outsider Art Fair in 2002 because he went to art school — most outsider artists are usually self-taught. He was also featured in the book Pranks, part of the RE/Search series. Check out his cool site.

I also uploaded a mashup called “Deconstructing Mahna Mahna.” It’s a comparison of Umiliani’s Mah Na Mah Na w/ The Muppets’ version. Piero Umiliani was known for composing soundtracks for mondo/exploitation films. He wrote the song Mah Na, Mah Na that was used in the Italian mondo film “Sweden, Heaven and Hell.”  I also use the instrumental “Topless Party,” during the scene where I talk about the film’s soundtrack.

Some of the samples I use in this clip are Sesame Street, Seconds starring Rock Hudson, The Twilight Zone’s “The Eye of the Beholder,” and various clips related to Umiliani’s song.

Up and Down Few Weeks

Where should I begin….

Brand New Walgreens

Trapped in the house and having another creative block, Bev got me out of this stinking hellhole and we took a ride down to the new Walgreens. It wasn’t that big of a deal since I’ve seen these places before and when you’ve seen one Walgreens, you’ve seen them all.

Skipped yet another City Council meeting, to my regrets. Here’s what happened.

This meeting pretty much focused on the Landfill Expansion (same old public comment session topic) however, the highlight for that night was Northampton resident Steve Susco angry again about the sewage seeping into his home (however this time he had a little more to say).

Going over his 3 mins limit and angering the Mayor till she stepped out of the meeting until he finished. Sadly, I wasn’t on camera that night as I was when he yelled @ a councilor 3 meetings ago. Do we need more than 3 mins to speak these days? Here’s the clip:

Also, Daryl G. LaFleur wrote a nice article on Northampton Redoubt.

There was also a special City Council meeting that happened this Thursday. I just saw it and Susco was a little more calm and collective, but I only saw it very briefly. Here it is on NorthAssocVideo’s channel: Steve Susco @ special meeting.

NCTV has been airing my “Re-animate The Baystate” show on channel 12 & 15, everyday @ 11pm. Mark Sheehan made an announcement about it on facebook (blush).

Mark Sheehan's Announcement

Here’s a video still of me watching it @ home on my television. These are the Novels and they were the last band to appear in my show.

The Novels on TV

Some trivial stuff: Village Hill Northampton added some new traffic lights @ the main intersection. Will this be the saving grace for all the traffic soon to be filling the roads on the Hill?

Village Hill Traffic Lights

Trucks On Kollmorgen Site

Earl Street is still being worked on, for at least a 2 months now. Trucks and workers on the old Memorial Complex land… Is this the preliminary stages to the building of Kollmorgen company? Also, some repairs and renovations going on on the roof and windows of Northampton State Hospital’s carriage house.

Carriage House Repairs

Backtracking a bit here:

Walked down on Thursday to vote (not saying who), and was surprised that there were only three names on the ballot sheet, those running for mayor, but none for city councilor or school committee member. I guess we have to wait till November for that one.

Ballot sheet for mayor 2009

2 Higgins signs

Took some pictures of some of the signs on my way there. Here are two Higgins for mayor signs. I also picked up some Michael Bardsley gear @ his headquarters in Florence.

Michael Bardsley headquarters

The results came in that Bardsley received more of the votes. I wonder what the results will be in the general election on Nov. 03.

Got a ride down to Sierra Grille and stayed until 11:30pm. The only band I taped that night were The Snizz, featuring Matt Pierce of the Unband on guitar and vocals. Wish I coulda stayed for the whole entire event but I wasn’t able to — maybe it was the fries. Anyway, here’s a clip from that show. This was the opening song of their performance. It’s an instrumental jam w/ some utterance here and there.

Last words for tonight like always — R.I.P. Timothy J. Young. You were a big support for the Northampton, MA music scene. I’ll never forget your famous fist bumps and friendliness. So long, guy.

R.I.P Timmy

A Mix Of Things

This just in! Below is something I put together all about Azwan Badruzaman. It’s a mashup on the best of Azwan. This is on my new YouTube membership, username erploco2. The theme for this channel is everything that doesn’t quite fit on the regular erploco, I will add to this one.

I asked cherlovestrong if she’d been getting the most recent Sierra Grille shows. She hasn’t and the same here, although she did mentioned that she uploaded a video of her playing w/ a fish in a bucket.

Niles came by today, knocking on the door first thing in the morning and me causing a ruckus in the neighborhood, no saying though. I dug out some old files on music and artwork. I wanted to start scanning some stuff in so I began w/ some videotape covers and photographing record albums. I’ve recently been listening to “A Cry From The Earth – Music of the North American Indians” on vinyl.

A Cry From The Earth

This brings back memories since this was an influence on me to create the CD Primitive Vibes, a collection of pseudo-tribal music similar to the one on the record. I played to record for Niles and we’ve been listening to it off-and-on.

Primitive Vibes CD

Most recently, I emailed Al Williams @ NCTV about airing films from UbuWeb on the station. He sent back UbuWeb’s About section detailing that their films are public domain and granted to be used by anyone for educational and noncommercial purposes. That said, I plan to send down a copy of some William S. Burroughs films as well as Bunuel/Dali’s “Un Chien Andalou.” The latter I already knew was in public domain, I was really hoping to get Burroughs’s “Towers Open Fire” aired this coming week. Below is the front of the DVD case for “Un Chien Andalou.”

Un Chien Andalou

Cutting Through The Cinema CD

Below that is a CD I put together for my film class finals. It’s an album featuring songs based on films I saw in class. One of the songs, “Snuff Film Babies,” was about a student who walked out of a screening of Fassbinder’s “In The Year of 13 Moons” after seeing the infamous “slaughter house sequence.” Surprisingly, he was also the film reviewer for the Daily Collegian newspaper and later sent in a scathing review to the TA.

———-

Also, I just recently uploaded onto archive.org an audio recording of The Big Bad Bollocks performing @ The Taste of Northampton in 1995. This was when the Taste had actually been a major event in city of NOHO (this, as well as the Transperformance, Tri-County Fair and the Pride Parade). The Bollocks first performed @ the Taste in 1991, promoting their first album “Hanged At Gibbet Rock.” They also played a show after the 1995 one (see previous post). The Taste is no longer happening, sadly, but these recordings still live on.

Transperformance 19 And More

Look Stock: Transperformance 2009

WOW! What a week. Northampton Transperformance 2009 (LookStock) happened this week, but unfortunately was sold out. I went down there, camera in hand, ready to do a shoot when the guy in the front said I couldn’t get in, since I didn’t have my NCTV pass — Darn It! I wonder if Al & Bryn of NCTV got the thing (since they never did last year and luckily I got some footage of The Primate Fiasco as GN’R and The Novels as The 13th Floor Elevator). Since I never got it, here’s a YouTube clip gweramo posted of Page 6 doing Crosby, Stills and Nash’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.”

Down below is what I really wanted to see: F. Alex Johnson as Jimi Hendrix.

F. Alex Johnson as Jimi Hendrix

This was taken from The Republican, which I thought looked nice (the caption and all) and wanted to post here. I’m not sure if anybody taped his performance. F. Alex even asked the same thing on Masslive: Soundboard Forum, but nobody responded (yet). Hopefully there’s a video floating around out there that’s yet to be on the web.

This just in: it’s finally uploaded. F. Alex just posted it on his YouTube channel.

BTW, here’s some great photographs of the show on in-the-valley blog

Things I bought this week:

Sesame Street and The Archies

A rip-off budget buy record stating that it’s Sesame Street, but really you have to read the fine print. I didn’t and got screwed. It’s a bunch of amateurs pretending to be Sesame Street. A bad imitation of Ernie singing Rubber Ducky didn’t sit with me too well.  I once had an imitation Johnny Cash record that was slightly better, altho there can be some exceptions, even to that.

And more:

The Super Hits

The Super Hits compilation on the Stax label. You can find most of these tracks easily on the web or on other compilation CDs that might be better, but hey, get it for the album cover (ditto the one above).

And the Last Lion passes: Edward M. Kennedy 1932-2009.

RIP Ted Kennedy (cover of The Republican)

Long Masslive article for those who are out-of-the-loop.

THE KENNEDY FAMILY POP CULTURE ITEMS

The First Family

Not trying to be in bad taste, but my grandmother was telling me about Vaughn Meader’s The First Family comedy record that was released in the 60s but was pulled out of circulation following Kennedy’s assassination. I told her about Bill Minkin’s Senator Bobby album, which featured an impression of Robert Kennedy singing the hit song “Wild Thing.” This too was pulled out of circulation after Robert Kennedy’s assassination. Check out this video of the Hardly Worthit Players to see what I mean.

Also, The Fred Hembeck Show has an extensive write-up of the album. It’s probably really the only website that pays close attention to it, detail for detail.