The News Review:
- Cornelius – Gig Reviews – Music – Entertainment – smh.com.au
- Author thoroughly examines the Jewish roots of punk rock
- Magical Meteorite Songwriting Device by Exene Cervenka < Books |...
- Punk producer thought everyone could be a star
Cornelius – Gig Reviews – Music – Entertainment – smh.com.au
Sydney Morning Herald – Dec 4, 2006
An electric live performer he has on past tours employedeverything from dancing apes to laser light shows and classicalinterludes and he will debut his stage show The CorneliusSensuous Showcase in Australia. yamada says without elaboration that his latest albumSensuous is the product of “various experiences out ofthe ordinary” and it won’t disappoint fans captivated by the magicgenius of Fantasma or the more introspective atmosphericPoint. Two years in the making Sensuous invites comparisonsto the Beach Boys Japanese punk music Supertramp electronicmaverick Herbert ambient music styles and traditional Japanesemusic pieces. Tracks such as the dream-like Like a RollingStone the fragmented modem feedback of Scrum and theriff-heavy garage squall of Gum demonstrate yamada hasn’tlost his fondness for genre-hopping experimentalism. Then when the folksy Music and the chugging discogroove of the wonderful Beep It have died down yamada’sversion of Dean Martin’s Sleep Warm a dozyeffects-drenched 21st-century lullaby closes the album withtypically illusory ethereal splendour. “When I was cleaning up my father’s records an album (with thatsong on it) came out” he explains. “It was Frank Sinatra’s versionactually but my parents used to play that kind of music in the carwhen I was a child.
Author thoroughly examines the Jewish roots of punk rock
Boston Globe – Dec 4, 2006
)Central to Beeber’s idea of punk’s inherent Jewishness is the Holocaust. He even goes so far as to declare “No Holocaust no punk. ” Yes the roiling anger and dark humor of punk was a reaction to lingering feelings of victimization. Yet Jewish punks also adapted Nazi slogans and symbols both as a shock tactic and a campy send up. Songs like the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop ” and the Dictators’ “Master Race Rock ” weren’t celebrating Nazism as much as mocking its ignominious defeat the author maintains. With more than 125 sources interviewed “The Heebee-Jeebees at CBGB’s” is the best account of punk’s nascent years since Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s seminal “Please Kill Me. ” With equal parts spirit and scholarship Beeber succeeds in placing this still-influential music within a broader historical and cultural context and assures that punk’s “secret history” is a secret no more.
Magical Meteorite Songwriting Device by Exene Cervenka < Books |...
PopMatters – Dec 4, 2006
Her public career from the beginning in 1977 upon the formation of the seminal Los Angeles punk band X has been defined by a healthy irreverence for boundaries between art literature music poetry fashion and performance art. Cervenka has been credited in popular culture for insinuating the vintage-gothic-dolly fashion so enthusiastically and sometimes ill advisedly repeated over the decades since her pioneering ensembles. With band mate John Doe she has been given the nod of incorporating poetry and spoken word into the American punk music scene of the 1970s. Music continues to be made boundaries continue to be defied and Exene Cervenka has lost none of her drive to express create and move forward musically artistically and as evidenced by her soulful collages personally. Pushing boundaries has been part of Cervenka’s agenda since the beginning of her public career. Magical Meteorite Songwriting Device fulfills expectations and excitement of long-time fans and can also stand alone as a solid representation of mixed media art today. The content of the collages as noted in the introduction by longtime punk chronicler Kristine McKenna has a less than mysterious origin.
Punk producer thought everyone could be a star
San Francisco Chronicle – Dec 4, 2006
Another friend recalled Dirksen encouraging him to finish his book by phoning him every morning. “I’m going to work this morning — what are you doing?” he would say. It wasn’t a crowd full of big time music scenesters and there wasn’t a lot of musical star power at the memorial unless you count an impromptu reunion of the all-female punk rockers the Contractions guitarist Mary Kelley seated on a chair drummer Debbie Hopkins playing softly on a modified kit and vocalist Kathy Peck sobbing her way through the sing-along folk song “Down In the Valley. ” Peck previously recalled Dirksen coming over every day after her pet Chihuahua was diagnosed with diabetes to give the pooch its shot because Peck couldn’t quite handle it herself. He was a surly curmudgeon all right until he got around animals or small children. In the end he couldn’t even afford to pay for his own funeral. Benefits are in the process of being organized to help pay his debts… Another friend recalled Dirksen encouraging him to finish his book by phoning him every morning. “I’m going to work this morning — what are you doing?” he would say. It wasn’t a crowd full of big time music scenesters and there wasn’t a lot of musical star power at the memorial unless you count an impromptu reunion of the all-female punk rockers the Contractions guitarist Mary Kelley seated on a chair drummer Debbie Hopkins playing softly on a modified kit and vocalist Kathy Peck sobbing her way through the sing-along folk song “Down In the Valley. ” Peck previously recalled Dirksen coming over every day after her pet Chihuahua was diagnosed with diabetes to give the pooch its shot because Peck couldn’t quite handle it herself. He was a surly curmudgeon all right until he got around animals or small children. In the end he couldn’t even afford to pay for his own funeral. Benefits are in the process of being organized to help pay his debts.