Dennis Wilson was cool as fuck
Above these stupid words is the 2nd coolest looking guy on an album cover ever ( I will brawl with anyone who says the boss on darkness on the edge of town isn’t the crown prince of cool)
It is the weather beaten, world weary fizzer of Dennis Wilson. A quick look into those eyes tells you this is a man who has been through a lot. The Inglewood boy was part of the Beach Boys along with his brothers Brian and Carl, but I’m not going to give you a potted history of that most famous of bands…
It was a BBC radio 2 documentary that hipped me to Dennis. The most headline grabbing period of his life was the association with Charles Manson. The Manson family moved in with a not entirely compliant Dennis and used his wealth for their own benefit. Not least for curing their rampant Clap. From what I can make out Dennis became increasingly wary of Manson and started to distance himself. Looks like the final straw was when Charlie sent Dennis a bullet…… Understandably Dennis was always affected by his relationship with the guy who turned out be one the most infamous figures of the 60’s.
‘Pacific Ocean Blue’ was his first solo album, released in 1977, and reissued in 2008. Whilst not having the notoriety of Brian’s lost/delayed ‘Smile’ it nonetheless is a fine piece of work. In todays media Brian hogs all the limelight, and perhaps fair enough, but I’m glad I was tuned into the tranny the night Dennis’ story was told. And what became of this bearded wild man? On december 28 1983, Dennis went swimming in the ocean at Marina Del Ray, and didn’t come back out.
They say I live a fast life. Maybe I just like a fast life. I wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world. It won’t last forever, either. But the memories will.
I am an alien, I am from Mars
So read the sleevenote on a 7” vinyl platter that arrived unannounced in 1977 on Virgin Records. A single by Roky Erickson, Texan psychedelic frontiersman and victim. If you were into music (and particularly if you were a fan of Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets compilation) you knew the story of Roky and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Lysergically charged they blazed through Texas and San Francisco in the sixties until Roky copped a drug charge and pled guilty but insane. Ending up in a state mental hospital all accounts said that if he wasn’t insane when he went in he certainly was when he got out.
So like Barrett and Spence, Erickson was consigned to that bin of burned out acid casualties, never more to be heard from again. It was a bolt from the blue to hear him again, not only on the Virgin single but even more so on a French import single that had four songs that grabbed the listener’s brain in a vicelock. “Bermuda” was a song about the Bermuda triangle that incorporated the devil and had Chinese Alien guitar and electric auro harp backing Roky’s frenzied vocal.
Unhappily, although Roky went on to record several albums he never again caught the feral ferocity of these releases. Subsequent albums found him mining a comic horror vein with songs about zombies and other horror staples. Rerecordings of some of these songs were cool but lacked that killer touch. The eighties and nineties found him continuing to be troubled and it is only in recent years that he has seemed to hopefully put his demons behind him.
Hasil Adkins
Hasil Adkins was a one-man blizzard of weird American music. A firm favourite of the Cramps (who covered his song “She Said ”) he threw everything but the kitchen sink into his demented recordings and sounded like nothing heard before or since.
Everything about him is weird including his death, mown down by a rampaging adolescent on a killing spree atop a quad bike. He made his first guitar from a bucket and although he eventually moved on up to real instruments that bucket always made itself heard.
T Model Ford is a crazy bastard
There can sometimes be an image of the bluesman being a kindly old gent who is a bit too partial to wreck the hoose juice, always down on his luck but generally satisfied with his poor lot in life.
Screw that, Claude.
T Model Ford plays filthy scuzz blues meant for drinkin’ dancin’ fuckin’ and fightin’ The 84 year old (or 85, he cant quite remember) ex trucker, ex farm hand and ex con (Murder. 10 years. Out in two, if you’re wondering) didn’t start playing till he turned 58 and started recording at 74, on fat possum records. By all accounts this hard livin’ pensioner still plays for hours outside his house and on Nelson Street, Greenville Mississippi. “People were rough on Nelson Street. I fought a couple of times up there, but I didn’t get whupped. I win!”
Check out his page at fat possum for details of the 5 releases so far. T Model reckons he’ll keep going till 110 years old, so there’s plenty of life left in the Old Taildragger yet!
Click Play to hear She Asked Me So I Told Her