noise number 3

and it still is . . .

background noise

another saturday night . . .
s.a. is chattin' and i am rummaging. . .
in the mid 80's my sis, angel, and her friend tim started this really cool underground mag, 'background noise'. it was written on the fly, printed on the sly, passed out at local gigs, on streetcorners and record shops ... and it carried on for a good couple of years.

everything was fun at that time, the bands in new orleans were many and diverse. and with a ton of great venues like the dream palace and jimmy's it had room to grow, altho like all good things, some good people died and the rest moved on.

but, from the straight-up rock of 'force of habit', the psycotic-pop styings of 'multiple places', the doomed 'outside children', the ex-patriot 'monsters' and the dreaming 'random sample' the whole scene had a very communal feel. everyone playing and writing with everyone else. very intoxicating times...

and not just that, back then the whole music scene was poppin'; the replacements and husker du, the paisley underground bands like the three o'clock and rain parade, the north carolina/georgia connection with r.e.m., let's active and love tractor.

well, i was a contributor for the rag and got to write basically whatever the fuck i wanted; interview bands, record reviews, write bizarre short stories, or anything that filled a space. so my bits were, well, a lot like this blog.
the stuff above is a song-poem that never got to be a song and a drawing i did for the cover of 3rd issue.

i kinda quit doing alot of that stuff, went to college to write for a college paper, then concentrated on music after that.
i should do more of it i know, but i guess it will have to wait for now, til we get back home.

a few mp3s from new orleans bands, 20 or so years ago (via yousendit):
multiple places - fistfull
outside children - no big hurry
the monsters - born erect
random sample - i saw the whole thing
beggarman thief - the black cat
(more about the children and monsters et al later) . . .

oh, i think this is prolly my ex-future-step-son-in-law

the tattered cover

sky - sailor's delight

i saw a post on 'good rockin' tonight' about the knack, ya know, those 'my sharona' guys. i love the knack, the whole beatlesque attitude thing they had going and my lil sis was bonkers for them, i remember her acting knack-maniac when we took her to see them open for the kinks in'79. they were such a teenybopper band, but the songs rocked.
when i found out doug fieger was the leader of the band i started digging in the archives. he was also in a band called 'sky'. i had bought their 1971 lp 'sailor's delight' right around the time i got 'muswell hillbillies' and 'bangla desh'. i got it mainly because it was produced by jimmy miller with andy johns on the board, had ian stewart on piano and used bobby keys and jim price on horns. that just so happened to be the backing line-up for the best set of rolling stones records at the time, ('let it bleed', 'sticky fingers', and the soon to be released 'exile on main st.'). see, this was back in the day when i would buy a record just for the cover, and just loved it when it turned out to be great.
when i listened to it i was blown away. i played it over and over, front to back, made tapes of it for friends and generally spread the word, (it's that good a record).
i never heard from them again, (they broke up just after the release of 'sailor's delight'), and they kinda faded from memory, except the 'sailor's delight' lp, which would always sound fresh when i'd slap it on the turntable.
it is nothing like the knack material. the songs are varied from the stripped down rock of 'make it tight' to caribbean ballads and wonderful epics like 'lowdown', it is a brilliant record, the production is super clean and the songs are very well written and concise. unfortunately, it is unavailable on cd, and it is not even listed in ebay on vinyl, (i prolly have one of the few remaining copies, that sucks, mine is worn and scratchy, this needs to come out on cd!).
so i dusted off my sky lp, ripped and cleaned it up and dumped these wondeful 'lil pieces of bric-a-brac here for your consideration.

the best of the very-hard-to-find 'sailor's delight' lp in mp3 (via yousendit):
bring it on back
lowdown
make it tight
let it lie low

. . .i had nothing to say