With seemingly every single article written about him for the better part of the past two decades declaring Luke Haines “underappreciated” or referring to him as England’s “best kept secret” or some such, you might be forgiven for assuming that Haines is a bit of a cult figure in his native Britain.

And if he’s a cult figure there, then what does that say about his profile in America? Regrettably, he doesn’t really seem to have much of one here. Not that this is his fault. It’s your fault. But it’s mine, too. I’ll explain.

So WHO, you are (probably) asking, is this Luke Haines character anyway? In the 90s Haines was the leader of the Auteurs, an incendiary guitar-based group (with a “cello player”) who emerged fully-formed with the Mercury Prize-nominated New Wave (they lost to Suede) in 1993. The Auteurs’ high point comes with their Steve Albini-produced masterpiece After Murder Park in 1996, in which Haines perfects the art of softly singing as if he is approaching you slowly and deliberately with a drawn knife and the crack, well-rehearsed band generally blow the doors off of any other rock and roll group making records that year. It’s the equal of any classic album you can name and surely the subject of an upcoming 33 ⅓ series book.

When his interest in his own band waned, Haines formed Black Box Recorder, a sort of archly cynical answer to Saint Etienne, with former Jesus and Mary Chain drummer John Moore and vocalist Sarah Nixey. They had a hit single with “The Facts of Life” and left behind three nearly perfect pop albums and one “worst of” odds and sods collection. After that Haines went on a righteous solo trip, which is now the subject of a new four CD box set from Cherry Red, Luke Haines is Alive and Well and Living in Buenos Aires (Heavy, Frenz - The Solo Anthology 2001-2017) a follow-up volume to 2005’s box set Luke Haines is Dead.
 

 
I caught on very, very slowly to Luke Haines’ work myself. Although I actually bought my first Haines CD in 1996—and absolutely loved it—it was the Baader Meinhof concept album, which was not released under his name and didn’t have especially informative liner notes. I did not delve any deeper into the Auteurs at the time as I had the idea that they were some kinda Britpop group and that wasn’t my cup of PG Tips and stepped-on cocaine. Had I done so, I’d have seriously freaked out and Haines would have immediately entered my pantheon of godlike geniuses. But I did not dabble further despite seriously digging Baader Meinhof and playing the shit out of it. (Frankly as much as I love that album, it’s not something that one necessarily requires more of.)

Several years later I became infatuated with the Black Box Recorder number “Andrew Ridgley” (sic) but I did not make any connection to the Baader Meinhof album. It was only when I picked up Haines’ (must read, utterly essential) autobiography Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall that I finally figured it all out. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone reading that (side-splittingly hilarious) book without wanting to hear the accompanying musical soundtrack. And I do mean ALL OF IT. And this is the musical rabbit hole that I’ve fallen into for the year or so. I honestly don’t think that I have ever listened to (pretty much) just one artist this intently, or for this long. (The only time even close is when I first discovered Big Youth.)

In fact, our puppy basically only heard the After Murder Park album for the first six months of his life and to this day whenever he hears the first chords of the first song (”Light Aircraft on Fire”) he goes absolutely berserk sprinting around the house like a shot, with great violence, like he’s a slobbering cartoon Tasmanian devil. Another Auteurs’ album opener (Now I’m a Cowboy‘s “Lenny Valentino”) has a similar effect on him: First he runs around frantically, and then when Haines starts singing, he stops, points his nose straight up to the ceiling and begins to howl along. Even if his cute canine vocalizing is a bit out of tune, clearly he approves when I slap these particular elpees on the turntable and he lets me know it. (I’ve always wanted a dog with good taste in music. He’s a big Zappa head too, but not the later “comedy” stuff, more an original Mothers fan. Good boy!)
 

Portrait of the artist as a young man
 
So yeah, Luke Haines’ relative obscurity in America is surprising, given not only the stellar standard of, well, just about every single thing he’s ever released (even his mediocre songs—judged by his standards, I mean—are still pretty fucking great) but the breadth of his long career and the depth of his quite extensive and extremely high quality back catalog. You’d surely think that many more people on this side of the Atlantic would have picked up on him along the way, as he’s been active since the late 80s. Haines is the ultimate “rock snob” heroic artist, being an intense rock snob himself, he’s probably the most culturally literate musician of his generation and in my (n)ever so humble opinion, he’s the very best English songwriter of this era, ahead of Jarvis Cocker (not prolific enough) and Momus (too eccentric) who are the sole two I’d place in his rarified company. If you find yourself constitutionally unable to read MOJO magazine—and do not enjoy music made by “the young people”—then Luke Haines is likely to be your savior from all of that.

I mean, someone has to be the best British rock musician. That only makes sense, right? And I happen to think Luke Haines is the very best. Comparing him to most of today’s pop stars is like comparing a master mason to someone capable of building a competent lean-to shack. Like comparing John Dos Passos to Dan Brown or Peter Cook to Dudley Moore. It just took me a damned long time to finally realize what I was missing out on and I’m supposed to know about such matters of cultural importance. [“But it’s my job!” he exclaimed plaintively. On the other hand, hey I got to discover one of the best extensive back catalogs in recent musical history for the first time at my advanced age, so lucky me.]

I took an informal poll of several friends—rock snobs all of ‘em, including record store, recording studio and label owners—to see how many were Luke Haines fans besides me. There was exactly one (and he is by far the hippest guy who I have ever met in my entire life, so this was no surprise). The rest answered as you would doing the “sort of, not really” motion with your hand and squinting or simply ignored the query entirely. (If no less of a maven’s maven than our own Howie Pyro has only recently gotten turned on to Luke Haines’ music himself, well that makes me feel slightly less out of it.)

One friend of mine asked “He’s really English isn’t he?” Well… yes, he is that—which is nothing to be ashamed of most of the time—but it’s not like Haines is a Marmite sandwich either. If you’ve ever dug the Kinks or Pulp (or Monty Python or Stewart Lee), you shouldn’t have a problem with any of it. Admittedly I’m probably the most likely Yankee Haines fan you are apt to find: around the same age as he is, Haines and I clearly grew up listening to the same bands and our pop culture obsessions seem fairly congruent. I also lived in Britain for a while, so a song about Enoch Powell isn’t going to fly over my head, nor would one alluding to the Yorkshire Ripper for that matter (although I did find myself googling “Bugger Bognor,” Kendo Nagasaki and Parsley the Lion, but I promise you that I am better off for it). If “really English” is a problem for you, then don’t start with an album like 9½ Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s & Early ‘80s—which might be described as “really English” to be sure, but mark my words you will get around to that one eventually—and instead dive in with his concept album New York in the 70s, which has songs about Lou Reed, Jim Carroll, the NY Dolls, William S. Burroughs and Alan Vega. (A certain percentage of our readers who have never heard of Luke Haines until today just decided that they absolutely need to hear this album right about fuckin’ now. They are correct.)
 

Haines does paintings of Lou Reed, the Monkees and British wrestlers of the late 70s and early 80s and sells them via his Outside Art website for a reasonable price. He’s currently taking commissions for Xmas.
 
Another pal asked whose reputation would Luke Haines compare to, in terms of other obscure English musicians, for American fans? Andy Partridge? No, not really as XTC had several hits in America and the Auteurs never did. Julian Cope? Kind of, but he’s also too well known here. Bill Nelson maybe? Nope. Gavin Friday? (shakes head, plus he’s Irish). Roy Wood? Robyn Hitchcock? Matt Johnson? (Definitely not Matt Johnson.) He’s got much in common with Elvis Costello, in particular his often bilious and spiteful lyrical content, but Elvis Costello wishes he could write a song like “How Could I Be Wrong,” “Big Daddy Got A Casio VL Tone” or “I’m a Rich Man’s Toy” (and besides that, he’s far too famous). The only one who readily comes to mind (for me) is probably the great Neil Innes. Like Haines, he’s got a very specific thing that he does—brilliant at being himself at all times, even in character—and both men are multi-instrumentalists of the highest order and master lyricists. Both can mimic and ape the style of other musicians with great precision when they want to (Haines’ take on Suicide or the Incredible String Band is every bit as good as Innes’ wicked Elton John or his justly celebrated Beatles pastiche) and they can both make a decent living doing their own brands of “outsider music” and keeping themselves amused. This is not to imply that their music is in any way similar, as that is not the case. (There is no American artist whatsoever—none that I can think of at least—with whom Haines compares career-wise or otherwise in case you are wondering.)

Although divvying it up between the Auteurs, Black Box Recorder and his solo work would seem to make the most obvious sense, Haines himself has further subdivided his solo career into three distinct phases: “professional rock ‘n’ roll,” his “no man’s land” period and his “unprofessional rock ‘n’ roll” period. Professional rock ‘n’ roll would encompass the Auteurs, BBR and his early solo efforts until around 2003, while his no man’s land era might be best described as his “I have no idea about what’s currently going on with popular music and cannot give less of a fuck phase” phase (which included two years working on an unproduced piece of musical theater called “Property”) and this lasted until about 2008. After that comes “the best part of the trip” as per none other than Jim Morrison hisself. This is the bit where the artist is freed from external constraints and does whatever he or she wants to do, i.e. the shamanic stage of rock ‘n’ roll. (Think Robert Calvert’s Captain Lockheed And The Starfighters for an historical example of the blueprint Haines often follows). It was here when Haines recorded his NYC rock ‘n’ roll concept album, his moody instrumental analog synth opus British Nuclear Bunkers and Adventures in Dementia, his fifteen-minute long “micro-opera” about a Mark E. Smith impersonator whose Winnebago vacation comes to a swift end when his caravan hits Ian Stuart of the white power skinhead band Skrewdriver. With the release of last year’s ritual magick agit prop longplayer Smash the System, Haines’ magick Maoist magus initiation was complete. And what have YOU done, lately?
 

 
If I’ve not convinced you yet that you need to take a deep dive into the discography of Luke Haines right now, then buddy, I simply cannot help you. He’s making some of the very, very best (and smartest) music of the past three decades, and most American rock fans—including the very people people who would appreciate it THE MOST (like my own circle of rock snob pals, most who remain indifferent to my insisting they get on the Haines train, stat)—have never even heard of the guy.
 

 
That’s unfortunate, but still it’s an opportunity: When is the last time you discovered a “new” artist with a back catalog of well over twenty stone classic albums going back 25 years? A discography that references by name Peter Hammill, Klaus Kinski, Marc Bolan, ISB, Ulrike Meinhof’s missing brain, Gary Clail(?!), Lenny Bruce, rocker with a messiah complex Vince Taylor, Aleister Crowley, Bruce Lee, Kenneth Anger, the Viennese Actionists, Moholy-Nagy, Roman Polanski, the Monkees and the aforementioned former Wham! guitarist? On one album cover he’s dressed as Hugo Ball. He’s even got a song about the “Silent Twins,” June and Jennifer Gibbons; a bonkers children’s album narrated by Nighty Night’s evil genius Julia Davis (where Nick Lowe is a badger); and a song where he openly fantasizes about murdering British artist Sarah Lucas.

I could go on and on, but I’ve done my bit. Now it’s up to you.
 

”Lou Reed, Lou Reed”
 
More Luke Haines after the jump…

The Meditating Eye Color Infusion Expandable Necklace by David Lynch. A part of the jewelry collection the ‘Meditating Eye.’
 
Director David Lynch is so multi-talented it can often be challenging to keep up with his prolific work in film, TV, music, art and beyond. In October Lynch released the ‘Meditating Eye,’ a line of jewelry inspired by the practice of Transcendental Meditation (known as TM). Lynch has been a practitioner of TM for more than four decades. In 2005 he formed the David Lynch Foundation which promotes the use of TM to help people cope with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and stress-related trauma, and in 2007 he authored a book on the subject Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. Here’s an excerpt from the book in which Lynch speaks to the benefits of TM and its link to feeding artistic creativity he called “Catching Ideas”:

“Ideas are like fish.

If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.

Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.

I look for a certain kind of fish that is important to me, one that can translate to cinema. But there are all kinds of fish swimming down there. There are fish for business, fish for sports. There are fish for everything.

Everything, anything that is a thing, comes up from the deepest level. Modern physics calls that level the Unified Field. The more your consciousness-your awareness-is expanded, the deeper you go toward this source, and the bigger the fish you can catch.”

Right now and through the end of December 2018 Lynch’s online retailer pals at ALEX AND ANI are dontaing 20% of the purchase price of each piece from the Meditating Eye collection they sell to the David Lynch Foundation. Images of Lynch’s thought-provoking charitable jewelry (sold in either gold or siver tones) follow.
 

Men’s cuff.
 

Color infusion charm bangle.
 
More after the jump…

via Sunset Gunshots
 
I thought I had long ago digested every crumb of gossip about the Beach Boys-Manson family connection, but one of the Charlie obits I read this week brought a screaming headline from the December 21, 1968 issue of Record Mirror to my attention: “DENNIS WILSON: ‘I LIVE WITH 17 GIRLS.’”

In the interview, conducted the year before the Tate-LaBianca murders, Wilson muses about turning the Manson girls into a group called “the Family Gems,” and says he’s been writing songs with their guru, “a guy named Charlie who’d recently come out of jail after 12 years.” Charlie, Wilson says, also taught him a dance step called “the Inhibition,” a kind of visualization exercise. (Wouldn’t “Do the Inhibition” have made a boss A-side for the Family Gems’ first 45?) From the interview: 

I still believe in meditation and I’m not experimenting with tribal living. I live in the woods in California, near Death Valley, with 17 girls. They’re space ladies. And they’d make a great group. I’m thinking of launching them as the Family Gems.

How did you come to meet up with no less than 17 girls?

It happened strangely. I went up into the mountains with my houseboy to take an LSD trip. We met two girls hitchhiking. One of them was pregnant. We gave them a lift, and a purse was left in the car. About a month later, near Malibu, I saw the pregnant girl again, only this time she’d had her baby. I was overjoyed for her and it was through her that I met all the other girls. I told them about our involvement with the Maharishi and they told me they too had a guru, a guy named Charlie who’d recently come out of jail after 12 years. His mother was a hooker, his father was a gangster, he’d drifted into crime but when I met him I found he had great musical ideas. We’re writing together now. He’s dumb, in some ways, but I accept his approach and have learnt from him. He taught me a dance, The Inhibition. You have to imagine you’re a frozen man and the ice is thawing out. Start with your fingertips, then all the rest of you, then you extend it to a feeling that the whole universe is thawing out. . .

Are you supporting all these people?

No, if anything, they’re supporting me. I had all the rich status symbols—Rolls Royce, Ferrari, home after home. Then I woke up, gave away 50 to 60 per cent of my money. Now I live in one small room, with one candle, and I’m happy, finding myself.

Below, at 3:38, the Beach Boys play the Manson and Wilson-penned tune “Never Learn Not to Love” on The Mike Douglas Show.

 
I’ve been a fan of ‘70s funk priestess Betty Davis since a friend played me her sophomore long-player, 1974’s They Say I’m Different, in the mid-‘90s. I was hooked by the second track, “He Was a Big Freak,” which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Back then, it wasn’t easy to find copies of her three albums, and I once settled for a mud-covered edition (at least I hope it was mud) of her final LP, Nasty Gal (1975), figuring it might be years before I came across another copy. It would be another decade-plus before Light in the Attic Records began reissuing Betty’s out-of-print platters (as well as albums of unreleased material), though Nasty Gal has yet to be re-released on vinyl. LITA is about to remedy that situation—but more on that in a moment.

Born Betty Mabry, she changed her last name when she married jazz titan Miles Davis. Though they weren’t together long, Betty had a massive influence on Miles, encouraging him to update his look and sound, leading to the monumental double album of jazz-rock fusion, Bitches Brew (1970).
 

 
Betty’s albums are uncompromising works, full of raw, steamy funk. In addition to penning her own tunes during a time when it still uncommon for female artists to perform their own material, she also produced and arranged her records. Songs like the aforementioned “He Was a Big Freak” were sexually frank and presented a woman firmly in charge. Her live act was a funk force to be reckoned with. As P-Funk illustrator Ronald “Stozo the Clown” Edwards tells it:

Betty’s show was burlesque funk. [She was] sexy, bold, provocative, groovy and just down right fine…Long beautiful mesmerizing legs, funky space clothes, and silver leather psychedelic boots that were made for funkin’. Her voice, along with her backup singers and band, roared at you like a pack of lions. (from the reissue notes for They Say I’m Different)

 

“I just can’t seem to keep my tongue in my mouth.”

“Riviera ‘76” was a music festival held in Le Castellet, France, during late July 1976. The event took place on a racetrack overlooking the French Riviera. Betty and her group played on July 25th, dedicating the concert to Miles Davis (Betty and Miles had recently collaborated on the tender Nasty Gal ballad “You and I”). Thankfully, someone in the audience had the good sense to tape it, as in addition to being a stellar show, there aren’t many existing Betty Davis bootlegs out there. It’s also one of the final gigs—perhaps even the last—Betty ever played with her longstanding road band.

Keep reading after the jump…

 
Out there, somewhere, there’s bound to be an apology floating around the Internet from a near-retirement-age record designer fessin’ up to all the bad album covers he was responsible for back in the day when lines were a little more blurred. Now, this guy would tell you (if he could) that he has a lot of respect and admiration for all the hardworking people who design album covers and he’s truly horrified to find some of his worst work that he had honest-to-God deliberately forgotten about is now doing the rounds on the Internet.

Honestly, he really can’t remember ever doing any of these album covers and well, if he did, it must have been down to a tight deadline or a shitload of drugs or maybe perhaps both. However, he sincerely hopes these allegedly inappropriate album covers won’t be viewed as something representative of the kind of stuff he does now. He was much younger then.

Thankfully, due to all the sons of bitches who think it’s funny to share this guy’s shit, he has been encouraged to review his past history with some candor and examine his back catalog just in case there’s any more of this embarrassing shit out there.

Fortunately, for us, it looks like there is indeed plenty of creepy, weird, and downright inappropriate stuff still floating around out there.
 

 

 
More strange and saucy album covers, after the jump…
 

The late David Cassidy on a 1972 cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
 

I understand the rock star deal having been one and still going out strapping my guitar on and performing. Now, I probably do 30 or 40 dates a year, and I get to relive how I felt at 19 when I played in some really bad bands.—David Cassidy

2017 has been another very sad year for anyone and everyone who likes to rock. We lost Tom Petty and Chris Cornell. Just a few days ago we all suffered through the difficult death of AC/DC rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, and yesterday we mourned the passing of teen idol, David Cassidy. As I’m at a loss for words for a change, here’s the mythical Danny Fields, punk rock legend, journalist, and allegedly the first get Cassidy to snort coke moments before his photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz:

“When Annie (Leibovitz) brought that back (the nude photo of Cassidy), it was like, oh my God, if you cut it here and it’s just a little bit of pubic hair, and he’s naked, it’s like a Playboy Bunny.”

Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner recalls Leibovitz’s controversial cover-shot in his 2017 book, Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine saying she had helped define Cassidy as the “darling of the bubble-gum set.” He also compared the teen idol’s nearly-nude shoot to Burt Reynold’s two-quarts of vodka cover for Cosmopolitan that same year.

In the Rolling Stone interview Cassidy talked about his drug use and how well-endowed he was, revealing that his brothers had enviously nicknamed him “Donk.” “Naked Lunch Box: The Business of David Cassidy” was published alongside an interview with the notorious William Burroughs in the same issue giving it an extra layer of WTF for past, current and future generations to figure out. The frenzy over the cover apparently sent Cassidy’s mother Evelyn Ward to Mexico to avoid the rabid press coverage concerning the shoot. Talk about teenage kicks. NSFW images follow.
 

 

A Polaroid shot of Cassidy by Leibovitz.
 

The NSFW shot of Cassidy that launched a thousand ships.

 
Artist Jose Luis Lopez Galván describes his strange, surreal paintings of human-animal hybrids as taking place within “a different dimension” but “not in a dream.” He blends together every kind of element, whether animal, human, or object, to create “a collage that, in its integration, represents a portrait, not of the aspect of things, but of their essence.” Though their meanings are very personal, Galván’s pictures are intended to bring the viewer into a conversation about what is happening within the frame.

They are paintings to be seen not by the artist, but by the spectator, looking for a communication, so somehow the observer is surprised by the different, but feeling familiarity, feeling that behind it there is something that concerns him.

To encourage this interaction between viewer and painting, Galván has explained some of the symbolic meaning he has assigned to certain figures and objects:

When the rabbit appears I refer to innocence; when the mask of Zorro, hypocrisy; machines are cold and human characters live together without problems in a contradictory world of nightmare, that represents the real world without the wrappings that make it more digestible.

Galván was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. He originally trained as a graphic artist but gave it up to become a painter. He cites his lack of formal training in painting as allowing him develop “a more honest voice”—one that was not conditioned by the strictures of an art school. His main influences come from Rembrandt, Picasso, Goya and the Baroque period.

Galván’s weird and unsettling paintings have garnered considerable interest. He has exhibited his work since 2004. Last year, his work was included in the highly accalimed BeinArt Surreal Art Show, at the CoproGallery. Santa Monica. His paintings have also caused a frenzy of interest on the internet with some commentators describing Galván as “set to become one of the greatest artists of his generation.” Recently, his work featured on the cover of Swedish prog rock band Soen’s album Tellurian. You can see more José Luis López Galván’s work here or buy one of his paintings at the Macabre Gallery.
 

 

 

 
More from the surreal and eerie world of Jose Luis Lopez Galván, after the jump…
 

 
Smog Veil Records’ ongoing project of discovering and exhuming Northeast Ohio’s lost proto-punk history is chugging along rather nicely. As a native Clevelander myself, I must confess to having skin in this game—this is the legacy of the scene that mattered most to me in my formative years, so every time another missing piece of that puzzle comes into play, it feels personal to me somehow, though the discoveries of long lost documents like French Pictures in London and Terminal Drive are good for everyone’s souls, really.

The latest item of interest to emerge into the light from this fabled grey city is The Mysticism of Sound and Cosmic Language by Hy Maya, an experimental collective that spawned future Pere Ubu founders Allen Ravenstine and Scott Krauss. Even among deep-digging cognoscenti of Midwestern proto-punk, Hy Maya’s existence has until now been hardly more than a rumor, a footnote in Pere Ubu’s backstory. But that footnote may be where much of the “avant” half of Ubu’s “avant-garage” strategy came from. Per CLEpunk historian Nick Blakey:

Hy Maya’s undeniable and pivotal influence upon Pere Ubu (and, for that matter, related bands that came in between such as Fins and The Robert Bensick Band) became merely an abstract reference. It seems no one had any recordings or photos of Hy Maya, no one could tell you how many shows they had played (if any), and no one could describe what they sounded like. Hy Maya’s legacy appeared to be nothing but some faded and blurry memories in the minds of a handful of witnesses.

 

 
The band/collective/revolving door was loosely “organized” around Robert Bensick, and its core also included bassist Albert Dennis. They performed six shows between 1972-1973, their sets mostly consisting of long freeform explorations inspired by Sun Ra Arkestra, Miles Davis, Islands era King Crimson, the Velvet Underground, and Krautrock artists like Tangerine Dream and Cluster. The Mysticism of Sound and Cosmic Language is culled from recently discovered recordings of live sets, studio tracks, and rehearsal tapes from various Hy Maya incarnations. Several of those incarnations are alluded to in an early Cleveland punk document called “Those Were Different Times,” written by Charlotte Pressler, a CLEpunk O.G. and also the wife of Pere Ubu founder Peter Laughner. The piece is quoted extensively in The Mysticism…’s liner notes, as it’s practically the only extant near-contemporary documentation of Hy Maya’s existence.

…I went in 1972 to a gala art opening at the New Gallery. Among other events there was an electronic band called Hy Maya scheduled to play. Natasha and I were walking along, looking artistic, when suddenly there was a blood-curdling scream from the floor above. We, and everyone else, stopped dead and stared at the tall, beautiful girl who then leaned over the upstairs landing and said in a quiet voice, “The Hy Maya performance will take place in ten minutes.”’

So we, and everyone else, went upstairs to hear them. I liked what they did: broad, free sound constructions flowing into each other. But…the main interest was Cindy Black, the girl who had screamed. I decided to find out how I could get in touch with her, and after the Hy Maya performance, went up to talk to the band. There were two members, one, a tall guy with a long black beard, looked too scary to get near, so I talked to the other one, whose name, I found out, was Bob Bensick. Bensick gave me his phone number, and invited me to get in touch, which I did not do.

Hy Maya seems to have been a very loose band. It’s hard to pin down the membership, let alone the dates. There was an electric and an acoustic Hy Maya; at various times, Bob and Allen; Bob, Scott and Albert; Bob, Allen and Albert were the members of the band. Perhaps it’s truest to say that Hy Maya was Bensick’s name for his way of doing music; and that if you shared his style at the moment, you also were in Hy Maya. It is certainly true that all these people were very adverse to tight formations. They were young, and still learning; Scott Krauss in particular was wary of commitments because he doubted his abilities. They preferred loose jams; they were not anxious to pin down things any further.

Continues after the jump…

 
As much as any band could, the Heartbreakers both aesthetically and individually personified the bridge between proto-punk and punk rock. They coalesced in 1975, when New York Dolls Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan joined forces with Richard Hell, who’d just left Television. The quartet was completed a few months later with the addition of guitarist/vocalist Walter Lure.

The next year, their best-documented lineup was formed when Hell was replaced by Billy Rath (Hell would go on to form a namesake band, and it’s easy to wonder if he didn’t do that to make it difficult to oust him from a THIRD epochally crucial group), and this version of the Heartbreakers would record their lone album, L.A.M.F. (Like a Mother Fucker), which was one of punk’s great letdowns. A terrible mix buried confident performances of fine songs, and the shittiness of the record prompted Nolan to quit the band.

That album has been remixed and remastered a fair few times, and it contains some of punk’s earliest enduring anthems, like “Born to Lose” and “Chinese Rocks.” That latter song was eventually performed by the Ramones on their 1980 LP End of the Century under the title “Chinese Rock,” and the song is partly noteworthy for a years-long dispute over exactly who wrote it. It’s long been accepted that the song was a collaboration to some degree between Richard Hell and Dee Dee Ramone, a reality reflected in the End of the Century credits. But on the original pressing of L.A.M.F., Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan are credited as songwriters—a credit that’s absent from the many subsequent reissues. If that claimed writing credit was an attempted money-grab, karma for that larceny was pretty instant—L.A.M.F. didn’t really generate all that much money at first. According to Dee Dee Ramone in his memoir Lobotomy:

For a while dope was called “Chinese Rock” in New York. When you would walk around the Lower East Side people would smirk at one another on the sidewalk and let you know with hand signals that they have the Chinese Rock. It was supposed to be good luck if someone had rocks. I must’ve had a lot of luck.

Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders used to call me quite frequently. Jerry would come over to my place and pick me up and then we would go cop some dope. The Heartbreakers we’re just getting together with John, Jerry and Richard Hell. I guess those guys were all dope fiends then… Richard Hell had mentioned to me that he was going to write a song better than Lou Reed’s “Heroin,” so I took his idea and wrote Chinese rocks in Deborah Harry’s apartment that night.

I wrote the song about Jerry calling me up to come over and go cop. The line “My girlfriend’s crying in the shower stall” was about Connie, and the shower was at Arturo Vega’s loft. The intro to the song was the same kind of stuff I had put in songs like “Commando” and the chorus of “53rd and 3rd.” I wrote those songs before “Chinese Rocks” and the Ramones had already performed and recorded these tunes.

When Jerry was over at my place one day, we did some dope and then I played him my song, and he took it with him to a Heartbreakers rehearsal. When Leee Childers started managing them them and got them a record deal, “Chinese Rocks” was their first single off L.A.M.F. …but the credits are false. Johnny Thunders ranked on me for fourteen years, trying to make out like he wrote the song. What a low-life maneuver by those guys! By then, I was really too fucked up to care.

Much more after the jump…

 
NYC cab drivers have released their calendar for 2018. Now in its fifth year, the New York Taxi Drivers Calendar features another bunch of hardworking, hunky, and glamorous cabbies photographed in a variety of sexy and amusing poses which should guarantee a smile—if not a lift—throughout the year.

The calendar is a charity project devised by Philip Kirkman and Shannon McLaughlin. All profits from sales go to the University Settlement (“America’s oldest settlement house”) in New York City, which serves “over 30,000 immigrant and working individuals and families every year with basic services like quality education, housing, recreation and wellness opportunities, and literacy programs. immigrant families through education.” Each calendar costs $14.99. Order yours here.
 

 

 

 
More friendly cab drivers, after the jump…