Thursday, April 16, 2015

MAGAZINE REVIEW! BULL TONGUE REVIEW #2 (www.bulltonguereview.com...Forced Exposure has 'em as well)

Remember them days, y'know, them days when you'd wait patiently for whatever fanzine you had sent away for to finally show up at your doorstep and you'd eagerly (if carefully) open the manila envelope, remove said not-so-periodical from its sheath, and then lock yourself in your fart-encrusted bedroom and read the whole dang thing cover-to-cover until it was either time to relieve your number one or mom was calling for you to come eat supper?

Yeah them were the days...and now you can relive them about as well as you can here in the tepid teens with the latest issue of BULL TONGUE REVIEW! Yes, with those sixties/seventies/eighties underground thrills just slipping away faster'n hair from Eno's scalp a mag like this comes in mighty handy! For not only do editors Byron Coley and Thurston Moore round up just about whatever's left of that once-blazing underground and report it all to you in a nice, concise and ya-just-gotta-get-hold-of-a-copy-even-if-the-thing's-been-sold-out-for-months sorta way, but they got a whole lotta stragglers from said underground to tell us about their recent fave books, activities, recordings, tee-vee programs and other things you didn't think pseudo-boho types cared about one bit! But these people ain't pseudo-bohos so once again you don't know what you're talking about and why are you reading this nize li'l downhome blog of mine in the FIRST place you "poseur" you!


All kidding aside, Byron and Thurston do a pretty spiffy job of layin' on the line what has popped up in what's left of underground punkdom. The A MINUTE TO PRAY period Flesheaters reunion review that was undoubtedly Byron's bailiwick read grand especially from a guy who had been all-out supportive of the group ever since the day (or actually, long before) "Chris D's Carnal Knowledge" (a whopper of a piece if there ever was one) appeared in the pages of THE NEW YORK ROCKER. It's kinda like he was born to write about the Flesheaters in any way shape or form and hey, I'd rather read about his personalist opines on the guy than I would some certain West Coast tinytoon's given the fact that here it is 2015 and just about anybody can come off looking like a total asshole given they got the right technology in their hands.

However, to be honest I think I'm gonna pass on trying to get hold of most of the wares Coley and Moore were pitching to us this time, perhaps except for a new Rolling Stones fanzine out there called what else but STONE AGE! Yeah I know what yer thinking---who'd wanna buy let along read yet another Rolling Stones 'zine these days?!?! Well, this one's different since it features nothing but various celebs (big name or not) writing about just how much Mick Jagger and company have influenced their otherwise pitiful lives! The thing comes outta London England, but it might be worth the pences to pick up especially if you wanna read the personal Stone takes of such big names in the rock 'n roll biz as Sylvain Sylvain, James Williamson and Henry Rollins?!?!?!??

The main meaty portion of the rag is boffo enough for my tastes as well. Some new additions to the growing cast of characters (welcome aboard Eddie Flowers!) join the reg'lars, and for the most part the reading is just as swell as you'd find in just about any down-to-earth fanzine of the early-mid-seventies that dared to mix its Genesis with its Seeds. Once again Donna Lethal cracks me up with her spin on "Youtube Tutorials" while Richard Meltzer (remind me to do a seventieth birthday trib to him onna blog) does a moom pitcher-tee-vee roundup that reminds me of those columns he used to do for FUSION and RAUNCHY ROCK way back when! Only it's in the here and now and the landscape has changed but fortunately not the prime oomph!

Other personal faves include Lili Dwight on belly buttons (a current subject swirling in my mind because I have come under attack for saying that the navel on a nize looking lady is just as va-voom as her bullseyes and the mounds they rest upon), Charles Plymell on the recent rash of Norton Records/Books output, Joe Carducci on Sam Peckinpah's short-lived WESTERNER series (with Brian Keith long before the days of FAMILY AFFAIR, caught an episode when the Western Channel was being shown free for a week and it was almost as boffo as the early-hour-long GUNSMOKE that sure made the later ones TV Land run look pale) and Ira Kaplan on "37 Birds I Prefer to THE BIRDMAN (2014)"! Loads more too, but I'll let you pour your peeps over your own copy and decide what pieces you think make this 'un a magazine to be dealt with.

Oh yeah, and the art is fantab, especially the Savage Pencil drawings that pop up throughout this potent periodical. Reminds me of those little cartoons that Jonh Ingham and others used to do for NEW HAVEN ROCK PRESS and WHO PUT THE BOMP! which only shows that the more things stay the same, they change, or something like that.

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