Doom & Gloom Dispatch #33: Flaming Telepaths

Ivan Julian, M. Sage, Neil Young, United House of Prayer, Sonic Youth

Ivan Julian - Swing Your Lanterns

I certainly mention Richard Hell and Robert Quine plenty here. But do I mention Ivan Julian enough!? The Voidoids guitarist was the perfect foil for Quine — and with Bob long gone and Hell retired from rock ‘n’ roll, Ivan is still out here making great music, carrying the torch (or swinging the lantern, as it were). His recent solo LP Swing Your Lanterns impressively captures a lot of that old Voidoids spirit and go-for-broke energy, with Julian’s off-kilter vocals echoing his former boss and his slashing, razor-sharp six-string work as transfixing as ever. There’s a fair amount of polish, too, with some pretty sophisticated songwriting sneaking its way to the surface. Whatever Ivan does, it swings!

M. Sage :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

A couple weeks back, I interviewed Matthew Sage — AKA M. Sage — about his new Paradise Crick LP, which is one of my favorite albums of 2023. Released on RVNG, Intl., it’s a beautiful, strange and, yes, sometimes funny piece of “granola ambient pop” as Matt calls it in our chat. Highly recommended!

“[A]t the end of it, I had this understanding of Paradise Crick being this imaginary place to go visit. I had made my own campground,” Matt says. “Or it feels like I had this model train set in my basement that I meticulously worked on for four years, working on the fine details and the structure of the whole thing. And now that I’ve finished, it’s like I’ve got this amusement park for people to enjoy.”

Earlier this month, I attended the Paradise Crick release show (pictured above) which was a pretty magical afternoon spent high in the mountains above Boulder. The show was also the first event put on by the Floating organization out here in Colorado; they’ve been doing outdoor music in unusual settings for a little bit in Los Angeles and other cities and, under Sage’s supervision, will be doing more in the Centennial State. Which is cool! I think Colorado is ready for this kind of thing, don’t you?

Neil Young - The Boarding House, San Francisco, California, May 27, 1978 (Late Show)

Well, Neil Young is “back on the boards again,” as Mick Jagger said in 1967. After what I think has been the longest break from touring in his professional career, Shakey is hitting the road in a couple weeks for several solo shows on the west coast. And hey, in an unusually extravagant move, I have tickets for one of those shows! YOLO, right?! Neil is promising deep cut heavy setlists … tunes mentioned so far include “Prime of Life,” “Song X,” and everyone’s favorite Trans outtake “If You Got Love.” Personally, I’m hoping for the live debut of “Will To Love.” Neil, I know you’re reading this!

Anyway! To get in the solo Young mood, I’m revisiting these Boarding House shows, which took place just about 45 years ago. To my knowledge, each set (two a night!) was filmed and recorded; of course, other than a few tracks that appeared on Rust Never Sleeps and a recent Archives showing of the acoustic “Shots,” none of it has made it out officially. But Neil has promised that the Boarding House will get its due both visually and sonically on the long-awaited Archives, Vol. 3.

Which is a good thing! These are fantastic performances, filled with new songs and old favorites, Neil prowling the stage in a state of the art wireless set-up (which occasionally sputters — hey, it was 1978). Young rarely played such tiny clubs, but he seems fine with the intimate setting, chatting casually with the audience, reading (and rejecting) various requests being handed to him on notecards. And there are some DEVO references, too.

Paul Nelson: Young stalks the stage like a slightly seedy James Stewart / Henry Fonda type — moving in arhythmic bobs and weaves, he seems to be performing a near-tribal dance — and guides us through a raft of new material: “Out of the Blue and into the Black,” “Thrasher,” “Shots,” “Pocahontas,” “Powderfinger,” “Sail Away,” “Ride My Llama” (“an extraterrestrial folk song”), “The Ways of Love.” Of these, I’d bet at least two are masterpieces.

I Can’t Say A Word: United House of Prayer For All People - Trombone Shout Bands As Seen On YouTube, Vol. 2

Praise God, it’s another hour’s worth of remarkable trombone shout band ecstasy, gathered with care by Michael Klausman from various corners of YouTube. Last year, I proclaimed Vol. 1 to be the best archival release of 2022. And I think I’m ready to say the same thing about Vol. 2 for 2023. This stuff is intense in a way that not much other music is — raw southern gospel, Albert Ayler, the most off-the-rails hardcore band you can think of. Large group improv that seems to surge like powerful waves on a stormy ocean. No matter what your religious inclination may be, I Can’t Say A Word is a spiritual experience. Let us pray.

Sonic Youth - Knights of Columbus Hall, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, November 11, 1986

The Flaming Telepaths Tour! Late 1986 saw Sonic Youth taking EVOL on the road all over the place, with Firehose opening up (that band having just recently risen from the ashes of the Minutemen). You have to wonder what kind of impression these strange bands made on audiences out in spots like Kansas City, Tallahassee and Baton Rouge. They must have seemed like they were from another planet. Or maybe not! Back in those days, weird little scenes existed in virtually every city. And Sonic Youth was eagerly exploring most of them, making connections, absorbing and observing.

This Knights of Columbus tape is great — a SBD / AUD matrix that gives us a very up-close-and-personal capture of the band at this stage in their development. Things are getting a little more pro, but not too much; technical difficulties abound at the beginning. Thurston is heckled during a guitar strap malfunction. (Audience member: “You suck!”; Thurston: “You suck me!”; Kim: “Life sucks, you know?”) A tuning break is soundtracked by Janet Jackson's deathless “Nasty.”

But once things get rolling, Sonic Youth is mercilessly awesome, whether on a vicious “Tom Violence” or the haunting “Shadow of a Doubt.” Steve Shelley gets to shine on the new “White Cross,” powering everything with a Keith Moon-joins-Black-Flag energy level. Best of all is the version of “Expressway To Yr Skull,” wherein Lee Ranaldo conjures up what may be the sweetest guitar tone of the 1980s.

The encore in Baton Rouge adds another wrinkle — Sonic Youth as a bunch of goofballs. Joined by the Firehose dudes (the supergroup is christened Ciccone Life), there’s a skronky rendition of “Starpower” complete with free jazz sax and a rollicking, on-the-verge-of-collapse cover of Blue Öyster Cult's “The Red & The Black.” Make a dash for freedom, baby!

(Oh and I couldn’t track down a tape of Firehose's opening set, but here's one from a couple weeks later!)

Bandcamp | Merch | Concert Chronology

From The Doom & Gloom Archives

Dirty Three - Bluebird Theater, Denver, Colorado, June 7, 1998

Last week, I was listening to this incredible tape that my friend Patrick passed along, and idly tweeted that maybe what the world needs now is a new Dirty Three album. And that sentiment totally went viral! Well, at least compared to my other tweets. It even reached the ears of Warren Ellis, who responded: “Ok believers your prayers have been heard.” So maybe we’ll get some fresh Dirty Three someday. In the meantime, there’s an expanded version of their Ocean Songs masterpiece on the way soon. And take a listen to this show in Denver, too — it is unbelievably good, with Ellis, Jim White and Mick Turner providing the soundtrack for the end of this world and the beginning of a new one. Intense, elegiac stuff that’s lightened considerably by Ellis’ hilarious/surreal between-song banter. Dig some authentic celestial music. 

Currently Reading: Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick