VOTD 12/11/2025

 Charles Gross: Blue Sunshine OST (Mondo)

Purchased used at Vinegar Syndrome

Am I writing some spoilers for a movie that is nearly fifty years old? Maybe, should that concern you. It's probably nothing you wouldn't read in a two sentence IMDB description.

Blue Sunshine is a low budget shocker/horror film from 1977. The plot involves several people suddenly becoming bald and going on psychotic, murderous rampages. What is discovered is that five years prior, all of them had ingested a particular batch of Blue Sunshine LSD. The dealer, played by Mark Goddard, was now running for Congress. 

Mark most famously played Major Don West on the original TV series Lost in Space. I know he did other TV work but I can't recall ever seeing him in another film role. As a young child I fanatically watched LIS (in syndication by that time). I guess I wanted to be Will Robinson, played by Billy Mumy. He seemed smart, his home was a flying saucer and his best friend was a robot. Sounded like the life to me! I spent hours doing drawings of, Will, the robot, and of their ship the Jupiter II. 

I haven't seen Blue Sunshine since the days of VHS rentals, so it's been a few decades. I remember liking it. At the time, I don't think I understood that it's probably inspired by the Manson Family murders. If not directly, it's certainly Manson-adjacent. I'm sure there's a list somewhere of post-Manson, hippie-response movies from the 1970s. I Drink Your Blood comes to mind first, Messiah of Evil another, in addition to movies more directly based on Manson. 

I've recalled Blue Sunshine quite a few times in the past five years. Why now? I've been thinking about all the people in the news who are COVID vaccine skeptics and deniers. People who would rather put their faith in medical quacks who recommend ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine than trust peer-reviewed science. (For the record, those are real and useful medications, ivermectin if you have scabies. And I am throughly skeptical of the medical industry but put my faith in medical science itself.) They fretted about what will happen to those who took the COVID vaccine. "What will happen long term?" 

And hence, I would think of this movie. Maybe in about another year, hundreds of thousands of us will all lose our hair and become rampaging murderers. 

Me and my twisted little brain. 

The soundtrack! The music! Some good creepy orchestra, percussion, and synth cues. A few moments of lounge pop music. Though I'm calling out the composer on one cue: it's masked, but one of the selections clearly picks up on John McLaughlin's "Sanctuary" from the second Mahavishnu Orchestra LP. I hear you! 

I wonder if McLaughlin ever saw this? Oh, probably not. 

VOTD 12/01/2025

Lou Reed: Metal Machine Music (RCA)

Purchased used at Sound Cat Records

I never liked the Velvet Underground or Lou Reed's solo albums that much. Which is not to say I disliked them. I admire Lou's dedication to his art. He wrote a few okay songs. But he couldn't sing worth shit, in situations where singing was necessary. On Hal Wilner's Kurt Weill album (Lost In The Stars) Lou sang the title song. Except, he just can't hold a melody on a song that requires it. 

I was barely a teen when I started reading Creem magazine. I recall a back issue I bought at the QMart in Quakertown, that covered this Lou Reed album. There were three columns down one page, the middle of which read "no no no no no no no no no no...[etc]" with Lou's image superimposed on the text. I guess I remember it decades later.

So what to make this record? Its primary purpose is pretty much on the surface: Lou owed two LPs to RCA and devised this monstrosity.

Is this album prescient? I'm thinking both yes and no. Yes in that, there'd be cassette releases by Italian noise artists (specifically MB) that aren't too far astray from this wall of sound, just a few years later. Surely some of them must have known this album.

No insofar as, I don't think Lou was trying to influence anyone. He put this thing out into the world, and accept it or not. 

So what of the contents? It's a wall of sound, more trebly and bass-end. I can't particularly distinguish one side from another, though they're clearly not the same either.

But what of the effort? Maybe Lou didn't take this especially seriously, but he didn't not take it seriously. There's a push here, he wanted to make something. There's an atmosphere, an air to this. That said, while it's clearly not all the same, I can't distinguish one side from another. 

Four sides, and hour + spent with this. What would Lou think? Probably that I was a sucker. 

CDOTD 12/01/2025

Various artists: Hey Folks! It's Intermission Time!Snack Bar Concession Stand Classics & Jazzy Singles From the Good Old Days! (Modern Harmonic)

Purchased at Vinegar Syndrome Pittsburgh

I have an affection for aural ephemera such as this. Sell sell sell! And how do you sell? Optimism! We're upbeat! Make a line for the snack bar now!

At least, outside of politics. MAGA sells a line of pessimism looking back on optimism. Weren't things so great way back then? America was great then. Make America great again!

When exactly was that? Pre-civil rights era? The jazz age? The gilded era?

As you know, there's no answer to that question. It's an elusive sense that things were better back then. But for whom? 

You know, white people. And I don't say that out of misplaced white guilt. For all my enjoyment of listening to these cheerful jingles, it's super-caucasian. How would I feel as an African American, in my car at the drive in? Perhaps I wouldn't think about it at all, accustomed to the majority white presence in culture. Or maybe I'd think....crackers. I'll put up with these crackers. That's assuming Black people attended drive-ins in general, a suburban phenomenon. 

VOTD 11/26/2025

Shirley & Company: Shame Shame Shame (Vibration)

Purchased at Jerry's Records

When I was briefly doing my Nurse With Wound deep dive, I read Steven Stapleton's comments about being a young, obsessive collector of weird records. Among the criteria: the cover art. In his case he sought out psychedelic and surrealist imagery.

There was a time, in my young adulthood, I could look at the cover art or recognize an artist name, and I knew if the record was likely going to be for me. That's not that case any longer. There are a number of reasons. These would include my inability and disinterest in keeping close tabs on current indie and underground trends and artists, and the absolutely glut of product available in a current record store. I'm still willing to drop a few dollars on a gamble if it looks, for lack of a better term "experimental" enough, but I have my limits if I don't know the names involved. Which is most of what I find currently.

It's by happenstance that this record was sitting on the racks of Jerry's Records with the front cover on full display. The image is posted below. It's not the weirdness favored by Steven Stapleton, nor the grimness of early industrial noise LPs I might have sought in my early 20s. But I ask you, how was I to turn up an album with a primitive image drawn in magic marker, depicting (presumably) Shirley next to Richard Nixon, with the title Shame Shame Shame? And for $5? Sold!

The back cover proudly announces "disco dynamite!". Mmmm, maybe, maybe not. This dates to 1975, and disco broke out into mainstream mania in 1977 with the release of Saturday Night Fever. That's not to say disco didn't exist before that year, but this doesn't strike me as a down-the-line disco album. More poppy, funky r-n-b verging on a disco feel. When I think of disco, it's all very close to the same tempo with consistent (or incessant) hits on the snare on two and four. 

Do I recognize the opening title track? I'm not certain. Possibly. As a program I wouldn't have followed the vocal version directly with the instrumental; I would have put them on different sides. Likewise "Cry Cry Cry". Once again, have I heard this before? I remain unsure.

While not as flat and low-quality as the vinyl release of Sex World from my previous blog post, this lacks the high end lush production and arrangements of better known disco albums. It doesn't sound bad, if anything I prefer it less polished.

There are occasional contribution of people playing trombone and soprano saxophone, rather sharp. I'm just as guilty, it's a struggle in my own playing to this day.

The program is pretty good in general. I doubt anyone will claim this is a stone cold classic, but it's a fun listen and end with a strong funky closer in "Keep On Rolling On" with the largest horn section of the album. Shirley, whoever she is or was, has a light but well defined voice. It's been an entertaining listen, and that's not so bad.

$5 well spent, all based on a cover image.

VOTD 11/22/2025

 Barry Lipman: Sex World OST (Vinegar Syndrome)

Purchased at Vinegar Syndrome Pittsburgh

Hello, back to typing my thoughts, for the time being.

There's a new store in Pittsburgh, Vinegar Syndrome. VS is a thriving (I assume) blu ray/DVD label dedicated to reissues of horror and exploitation films. Recently they've taken to 4K hi def restorations. Much of it, if not all, isn't readily available for streaming. I'd love to watch some of them without having to spend, say, $47 just to view the ridiculous Mac and Me. (A cheapo ET ripoff blended with one big McDonald's endorsement.) Plus I don't own a 4K player.

Vinegar Syndrome has opened four brick and mortar stores, the other locations being Toronto, Bridgeport, and Denver. Pittsburgh seems more logical than Bridgeport CT, but then I can't say I've ever been there. The label isn't just for mail order or conventions any longer.

The store is dedicated to physical media: used and new DVDs and blu rays, records, CDs, comics, books, t-shirts. It's mostly horror and exploitation-oriented, though I did find a reasonably priced used double DVD set on Criterion of Stan Brakhage's films. 

Among the new vinyl soundtracks was this, on VS's own imprint. If you haven't already guessed, it's a 70s porn take on Westworld. Maybe even taking the idea to its more logical conclusion.

I can say honestly I haven't seen the movie. The very existence of a soundtrack album from a 1970s hardcore feature is enough to pique my interest. The industry, the stories, the sort of care that was put into some of the movies, the adult industry's own star system and theater circuit, all of that is far, far more interesting than the movies themselves.

Each track is accompanied with a still for the associated scene. (The images don't get any more hardcore than a pair of bare breasts.) The Sex World theme itself is a pretty straight forward disco number. It was 1977 after all. Other cues sound a bit like bachelor pad music. Some lighter, some heavier, but generally trying to evoke that "sexy" mood.

The sound is flat, possibly mono(?), and sometimes choppily edited. Did the label have access to the original master tapes? It's well played, definitely professional musicians involved. I don't find it difficult to believe they skimped on recording fidelity, but I really wonder if this was of better quality out of the studio. 

But it's the fact of its very existence that caught my attention. It's so curious that this much effort was put into a movie for the raincoat crowd. Though, it was the age of "porno chic" I suppose, with an industry vying for more reputability in this most disreputable category. Nonetheless, it's a mark of quality. A real studio band playing well-developed charts. Today, for a cheap direct to streaming film, it would probably all be done on a laptop in Ableton Live. Or worse still, GarageBand. (I swear I've recognized GarageBand loops in Syfy Channel movies.) Even the images on the back make it look as though the movie was well filmed, probably on 35mm. 

Is this any less embarrassing or (I'll use the word again) disreputable than Cannibal Holocaust with its original score by Riz Ortolani? I've commented on it in this forum a few months ago. I've seen its trailer which tells me that I really don't need to watch that movie. I don't necessarily object to movies that are bloody or of questionable themes, but I have a big issue with cruelty and sadism, even if they're fictional. With that in mind, I don't need to see Pasolini's Salo either.

With that in mind, yeah I'd watch Sex World before I'd ever watch Cannibal Holocaust.

VOTD 10/14/2025

 Nurse With Wound: Gyllensköld, Geijerstam and I at Rydbergs (L.A.Y.L.A.H.)

I had on this record a day or two ago, to be honest. It's weird but a good record. More well-realized and  self-assured than any previous NWW record. I'd even say it's at the start of a great period in Steven Stapleton's creative work: this, Brained By Falling Masonry, The Sylvie and Babs Hi-Fi Companion, Spiral Insana, and several solid LPs of compilation contributions. He's doing most or all of the graphics, and the record covers look great. And in part running his own label. It's a beautiful gesamkunstwerk.

But I'm back to the feeling of, what's the point? It's been interesting to revisit where my head was at in the early to mid 80s, what I was listening to, what really excited me. But describing these weird-ass albums? It seems like a fruitless venture, or at least silly. 

Sitting down and listening to an album, really sitting and listening, is a positive thing. Writing is a positive thing. And I appreciate that there are a few people who read my words regularly. 

I might decide to return to this tomorrow, or six months from now, or never. Tomorrow is too soon, six months maybe, never: probably not. For now, I think I'm out. I'll see you when I see you.

VOTD 10/06/2025

 Nurse With Wound: Homotopy to Marie (United Dairies)

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Homotopy.html

What does it mean? I don't know. 

I know this much: this was the first NWW that Steven Stapleton was satisfied with, the fifth NWW LP. Why did it take that many? 

John Fothergill is definitely out of the picture now. NWW is strictly Steven Stapleton's aural and visual imagery at this point. He does the cover art, he produces the sounds.

Like the front cover image, this is largely an austere statement. Most of side one is taken up by the sound of a cymbal, with female spoken voices occasionally and unpredictably entering. If a NWW album should be anything, it's unpredictable. He's definitely not afraid to be abrasive, as side two demonstrates. NWW was never an Industrial band, but these records are no less noisy.

Steven's audio landscapes seem to be clearly cinematic in nature. Aural landscapes. Is he dabbling in sampling on this record? My guess is that he's pulling some voices from extraneous sources, but I can't cite anything specific.

In the end, it breaks into what sounds like a small Balkan brass and reed band. Who'd have thought? 

Oh but wait....leave the needle in the groove...there's demonic laughing and more noise at the end. The CD version lists a fifth track, compared to the four on the LP. This must be the "Astral Dustbin Dirge". We'll come back to that.

This album does feel more accomplished, more self-assured than the previous. Knowing what I do about the NWW discography, Steven's work will hit even higher highs than this in the next few years.