Friday, July 9, 2010

fetch me a rickshaw | our bed is on fire



arson scare. adpapted from a photograph by grey villet, 1960.

This post is a week behind schedule; the agony prolonged by the arrival of a mail order bed and the dismantling of the old. A brand new futon to be exact.

The sagging fold down sofa which formerly occupied house room grew just too torturous. Full of ominous creaks and organ jarring spills. Like a decrepit family pet dragging its belly across the floor, ultimately euthanasia came a shade too late.

In canine years, it had the stuffing knocked out of it before it could walk.

Cole from Max & the Wild Things emailed me last Sunday that their - equally - long overdue album is at last in the bag. And very fine it is too.

Where some of the songs should be familiar to long-term aficionados and regulars on the bleachers - in various incarnations, not least live from The Basement - the execution here is taut and farther refined. Tracked and mixed at Welcome to 1979. Mastered in Ohio.

More importantly, while the brothers Traynor and Clint 'Max' Wilson step up a gear with Sam Stewart on guitar, as a unit they shed little in the way of disrepair and attitude. The edges remain mercifully ragged; its volatile core undoctored.


100% analogue and 90 US proof.

From the outset I warned of "concrete evidence that Tennessee continues to distil raw proof talent of the calibre of a first rate Jack Daniels".

Well. The vat has merely matured.


I would have been forgiven for dragging out that old sofabed and shooting if full of holes. Instead, I almost broke my back hauling it away to be disposed of humanely.

I ought to have set it on fire and partied. Sitting on an upturned crate, licking the flames. Well. The walls around here tilt too close to boogie, wholesale arson was never on my mind. Still. I would have liked to watch it burn. Crackling with resignation; roaring without a sound.


Recorded & Mixed by Chris Mara @ Welcome To 1979.
Assistant Engineers: Bert Stone & Brandon Jaehne.
Mastered By Tommy Wiggins.

Produced by Mikie Martel, Chris Mara, and Max & the Wild Things.



MAX AND THE WILD THINGS: GOT NO MONEY from "Max And The Wild Things" CD (WT1979) 2010 (US)

GET IT HERE

2 comments:

Löst Jimmy said...

Futons are wonderous things, I long ago traded up my decrepit old bed for a foldathon that is a sofa-futon. Works wonders in my flat - where every square inch is a premium.

Pity you were unable to deliver the old bed the Viking funeral it deserved or perhaps better seen as a burning at the stake?

My old pit went to the Corporation dump to languish for eternity amidst the slow death of manmade decay

ib said...

A Viking funeral would have been fitting. Valhalla for the imprints of brave souls and fornicators.

Apologies for the delay in any reponse.

Corporation dumps. The landscape round here is only gradually improving from fly-tipper's first port of call to seasoned landfill.