The Voluptuous Horror Of Karen Black 04/20/91 07/04/92 New York City

There are, you know, times where shit gets so crazy that you don't really know where you are or what you are doing.











You try to make sense of life- but is the sense you've made really anywhere close to what the fuck is really going on?


You step outside of your understanding and feel like something broken that was in the way has been removed. Is that the aim of a rock concert- of people getting up in front of others with guitar, bass, drums, and making music for them? Not necessarily no. In fact, not generally, no... I would say, however, that this is certainly the majestic aim of The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.

Words fail to do this video justice. Can you honestly tell me what any of it means or why any of it is happening? I leave in on for hours at a time to distractedly look at whenever I'm trying to get something important done. If somebody tells you they don't like it, you can fairly well safely assume that you don't want them around when you're trying to have a good time. I do have to confess that I generally leave the sound off- for in and of itself it's basically some competantly performed metal....And while it's beyond question to us that Kembra Pfahler is the extraterrestrial emissary from the one of the most genuine civilizations that has ever existed, we do also have to admit to ourselves that she was not gifted with perfect pitch...It's all of a piece, of course- the Gods have reasons that mortals can't understand.

There are songs from three shows on this disc. The first is a single camera shoot by someone who does an almost totally perfect job of keeping as much of the awe inspiring festivities in frame as possible. The second, at CBGBs, is multiple camera and is edited together with primitive effects and is of slight better audio quality. All of this documentation was done with prosumer gear, so it's definitely has the same look as somebodies high school graduation or wedding circa 1990. But probably all the more perfect for that. Finally, after a little clip of Karen Black herself good-naturedly attempting to come to grips with her confusion about the group...there is some even better quality multicamera footage of a somewhat more restrained performance of two and a half songs .

If you were wondering what do get me for Christmas, Kembra Pfhaler's recently released book Beautalism, would do just fine. You should buy one for yourself as well, as I'm sure many secrets of the universe are revealed therein. In other where are they now news, lead guitarist Samoa recently put out a disc of country music.

In a perfect world, this VHOKB video would be sold with LSD and Bodypaint at every 7-Eleven across the globe. But really, what is to be done? Fuck it. I don't want to talk about it anymore...Me, I'm going to Alaska...

Nirvana 10/19/1991 Dallas

Can you really take it with you? What's the real basis of the difference between something that is really happening, and something that is only on the screen, something that is only on a record or on a page?

This review entry is going to veer away from the rock focus of the blog and talk a little bit about the concepts of the dead and the image. One of my interests, fairly well unrelated to bootleg music DVDs, is a five year and counting attempt to make any sense out of the Spanish language. I was reading a text by Carlos Fuentes on the death of Hemingway, and figured that I could hit two birds with one stone by translating it for this blog. This arose from the consideration that Hemingway, for those of you not big on the stuff that they forced you to try and read in high school, ended his very successful career as a entertainer in the very same way as Cobain- by blowing his brains out with a shotgun. Now, from certain perspectives, when you draw parallels between the two suicides, or any two suicides for that matter, the lines are false. What could be more unique and personal than all of the private contradictions for which suicide is the inescapable conclusion? Nevertheless, we, the living, project upon these figures a sort of myth or cliché that is part of the general idea of rock and roll: the hero dying at the peak of his powers- their devotion to them is so strong that they are unable to exist after their disappearance.

If you have a better grasp of Spanish than I do and you discover some errors in what I've done, I'd appreciate it very much if you'd let me know. If you're some sexy Spanish speaking muchacha who is willing to give me some private lessons, that would be even better...

.....A year before dying, Ernest Hemingway finished, in his country estate on the Cuban coast, A Movable Feast, the title comes from an expression coined by Hemingway himself:
'If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast.' The words not only express the nostalgia of a writer affirming the vitality of his vocation in the Parisian twenties, it also reveals the conscious of a man in search of his true image. A Movable Feast is the tragic document of Ernest Hemingway in search of Ernest Hemingway. The result, with respect to literature, is happy: the hard, brilliant, and austere style of the old author bridging the distance in order to discover another man- in order to create an objective personality. From a human viewpoint, the result is saddening: Hemingway knew that that Hemingway, the young, true Hemingway, was not the emasculated Hemingway that a year later would commit suicide. Are we only that which we truly are that single day, that day in which will, necessity, and chance: the sum of our destiny- unite themselves in order to offer us our greatest possibility? Can we- or should we -continue living after this moment? When we have arrived at a compromise with life that permits us to repeat the old gestures and maintain with them the illusion of a lost authenticity. "My new theory (was) that you could omit anything if you knew what you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood." The familiar style is present, I daresay like never before- In the posthumous book, that which is unspoken, doubts, terrible and solitary, are the material for memoirs that achieve the level of great literature.
-casa de los dos puertas p. 105 bold italics mine


Un ano antes de morir, Ernest Hemingway terminò, en su finca de la costa cubana, A Movable Feast. El tìtulo deriva de una frase dicha en conversaciòn por el propio Hemingway: " Los que tuvimos la suerte de vivir en Paris nuestra juventud, sentimos que permanece dentro de nosotros furante toda la vida y a donde vayamos, pues Paris es una fiesta en movimiento."
Las palabras no sòlo expresan la nostagia de un escritor que en Paris de los años vientes afirmò su vocacion vital. Ademas revelan la conciencia de un hombre en busca de su verdadera imagen. A movable feast es es documento tràgico de Ernest Hemingway. El resultado, literariamente, es feliz: el estilo duro, brilliante y austero del viejo escritor aprovecha la distancia para descubrir el caràcter de otro hombre, para crear un personaje objectivo. Pero, humanamente, es doloroso: Hemingway sabe que aquel Hemingway, el joven, el verdadero, ya no es el Hemingway enmascarado que un ano despuès habrìa de sauiciarse. Somos sòlo lo que fuimos un dìa, el dìa en que la voluntad, la necieisidad y el azar- la suma del destino- se reunieron para ofrecernos nuestra màxima posibilidad? Podemos o merecemos vivr dispuès ese momento? Hemos de llegar a un compromiso con la vida que nos permita repetir los gesos, y con ellos mantener la ilusiòn, de una autenticdad perdida? Mi nueva teoria- escribe Hemingway en este libro - " Mi nueva teorìa- escribe Hemingway en este libro- (era) que uno podìa omitido cualquuier cosa si uno sabìa que la habìa omitido, y la parte omitida reforzarìa la historia y harìa que le gente sintiera algo màs de lo que entendia."El famoso estilo de Hemingway està presente- me atrevo a pensar que como nunca- en esta libro pòstuma: lo no dicho, preguntas terrìbles y solitarias, son la materia de unas memorias que alcazan el nivel de la creacion literaria.



The image seems like a rather casual aspect of the world- all the more so now given that it's all just pixels raining down across the heavens. Do non-famous people even have an Image?....You and I...We post our images. Our acquaintances pretend to be interested in them for a few moments, but soon there will be mountains and mountains of digital videos and conversations...and we and our acquaintances will all be forgotten...All the words and images we post...grains of digital ones and zeros that no one will ever bring up on a screen again...

Theme From Carmen
Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam
Aneurysm
Drain You
School
Floyd The Barber
Smells Like Teen Spirit
About A Girl
Polly
Breed
Sliver
Love Buzz
Pennyroyal Tea
Negative Creep
On A Plain
Blew
Lithium
Rape Me
Territorial Pissings

Those of you with a little intuition should be able to conclude by now that this Nirvana concert rocks out pretty hard...Nevermind had been released, but the momentum of its popularity was still building and the band is only playing in a medium sized club. It's single camera and not pro-shot- but the shooter is actually on stage with the band in front of the drums and facing the crowd: the chaos at the edge of the stage. A front line, really, manned by a few bouncers and steadily assailed by crowdsurfers. Sometimes. the rowdy audience gives the songs more energy. Other times, it forces the band to fuck them up- but the fact that it's not all scripted and done before it began is what makes it such an enjoyable show.

The height of the show's mayhem is included in thirty seconds of the Nirvana: Live! Tonight! Sold Out!! vid. During "Lovebuzz", Cobain surfs the crowd. When he makes it back up on stage, one of the bouncers punches him in the back of the head and sends him sprawling. The crowd chants "...bullshit...bullshit...bullshit..." and tense confusion takes place for a good four or five minutes. The possibility of a riot crosses everyone's' mind. The band gets back up and plays for another half hour with nearly the same intensity as before.

I watched the Nirvana: Live! Tonight! Sold Out!! thing again in order to get in the right frame of mind for doing this all justice. This bootleg looks a lot better than how the video appeared on that product. Whoever mastered it for the bootleg did a hell of a job. As for Live sold out, if you find Nirvana even tolerable, I'd say that it is essential viewing...Again and again, you see television hosts and programs, malicious facades of human beings and life, all trying convey their only real message: that one must remain convinced of how important television is. Sometimes, the band finds it easy to make it all look stupid by not taking it seriously. Other times, they only pay some poorly thought out cliché lip service to objecting to it -winding up in the vague paradox realm of the famous Rolling Stone cover. How do you control your image and make it say what you want to say what you want it to say? What other forces threaten to take control of your image?



.......It isn't paradoxical that Hemingway, who ended by sacrificing his literary talent to his public image, is now made complete by encountering, in the lost Hemingway, his greatest fictional character. The concision of A Movable Feast, direct and realistic, effectively hides an uncanny scaffold of corridors extending by means of a game of infinite mirrors. Who is Ernest Hemingway? That is the enigma of this novel of memoirs. Old friends of Hemingway told me recently, in New York, that in his last years the writer had arrived at a total confusion of personality. Hemingway did not know if he was Lieutenant Frederick Henry, the guerrilla Robert Jordan, or the actor Gary Cooper.

No es paradójico que Hemingway, que terminó por sacrifcar su literatura a su imagen personal, acabe ahora por encontrar en el Hemingway perdido su mejor personaje. La concisión de la escritura en A movable Feast, directa y realista, esconde efectivamente un andamiaje fantástico de corredores alargados por juegos de espejos infinitos. Quién es Ernest Hemingway? Tal es el enigma de esta novela de memorias. Viejos amogos de Hemingway me decían recientemente, en Nueva York,, que en sus ultimos años el escritor habia llegado a una confusión se personalidad total. Hemingway no sabía si era el teniente Frederick Henry, el guerrillero Robert Jordan, o el actor Gary Cooper.


...So which image belongs to who? And how is it decided? By the real people beneath them all? What do they look like?




There are other aspects to move onto here, other thoughts and remarks...but they are far from Cobain, now long dead. I've no motive to omit anything, my friends, for any reason, literary, or otherwise. It's just that this disc has stopped turning in my player. Time permitting, we will return to this inquiry by means of some other rock and roll occasion.

And P.S.
Big up http://www.nirvanaarchive.com/ which looks like a nice overview of the nirvana boot universe.

PPS if what brought you through here was an interests in literature of the Spanish language - I've got another blog which is more related to this theme...some discussion of Octavio Paz and other authors: check THIS

Skinny Puppy 6/26/1992 Dallas

Tried to write this several times but, bottom line: either I don't get S.P. or they're not any good...I used a sound effect off of The Process once...but the other recordings, nothing I've heard did anything for me and this live show video didn't change my opinion of the group.








This youtube post is a fair representation of the quality of the files I found in the torrent, and will perhaps allow you to conclude with me that it doesn't make for very interesting viewing. Its youtube uploader has also put up some skinny puppy material that is a little more engaging: some of the backing videos that the group edited together for rear projection at their performances. There are some very visceral sequences that occasionally crop up throughout the montage, and it's a damn shame that it's all so terribly fucked up by compression artifacts. It's all of a sort of material that prompted me to collect video in the first place; once you do violence to images themselves it sometimes reminds you that not all control of them is official and has to be outside of your hands...
++++++++++++++

here's an excerpt from a text file bundled in the torrent:
setlist: Addiction Love In Vein The Choke Harsh Stone White Interlude Tin Omen Worlock Knowhere Anger Interlude2 VX Gas Attack Second Tooth Killing Game Circustance Left Hand Shake Dirty Tricks Testure Janitor's Nightmare

===================== The stage show of Last Rights tour (North America, 1992) was built around a detailed narrative that involved Ogre interacting with a backing film, a "virtual reality" machine, a bleeding crucifix, and a large, rotating device called "The Tree of No Cares" from which dangled severed heads and pornographic magazines

========================================================================================== video info : MPEG-2 Program Stream Sys Bitrate: 10080 kb/s VBR Frame 720 x 480 4.3 NTSC audio : AC3 48000Hz 192 kb/s total (2 chnls)

Turbonegro 05/29/2005 Birmingham

Mom and I watched this on Xmas day together- this cock rocking performace of God's favorite rock and roll band: Turbonegro. I know that Jesus loves the Negro because I got this disc from Bishop O'Leery right after midnight mass, he patted me on the ass and squeezed my hand a little when I reached out to take the DVD. Boy, was I excited.


What's really exciting is that I couldn't find a post of this on you tube. Whereas everything else I've reviewed you pretty much could just as well look at it yourself why-the-fuck-you-care what I got to say, this is a performance of Hank & the boys you're gonna have to find somewhere else or rely on me to tell you how good it is. So here goes:

Vid is a single camera audience at a fair distance from the action. The captures above right are as close as the zoom ever gets and that picture where you can hardly make anything out shows you the scene from the distance of the shooter. It's a little bit dark when the lights are blue or green and sometimes a little shaky...about 3/4 of the time there's something easy to watch. Whatever camera is in use here has got a very sharp resolution. Sound is average...a lot of hall reverb but fairly good balance of instruments and no distortion...

I could go on and tell you how Turbonegro is destined to become the biggest band on the planet...how "I Got Erection" is my ring tone...how my sweat soaked denim dreams involve sailing the high seas with Happy Tom and Euroboy. I could tell you all that but... fuck, it's getting hot behind the keyboard and I've gone more than a few hours without some barefisted buggery...And so if you'll excuse me, I've got a Boy Scout meeting to get to...





All My Friends Are Dead
Back To Dungaree High
Sell Your Body (To The Night)
Don't Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker
Blow Me (Like The Wind)
Selfdestructo Bust
City Of Satan
Get It On
Wasted Again
Fuck The World (F.T.W.)
Age Of Pamparius
Prince Of The Rodeo
I Got Erection

Filmed by Mickie Rockchick & P.J.Peanutz.
Audio: Codec MPEG-1 Layer 2 Bitrate 256 CBR
Video: Codec MPEG2 Resolution 720 x 576 Framerate 25.000 Bitrate 4379 Format PAL Aspect 4.3

Prince and The Revolution 08/03/1983 Minneapolis

Benefit Show for Minnesota Dance Theater - First Avenue, Minneapolis. Putting this in into context: "When Doves Cry" was the #1 single in the US for five weeks, from July 7, 1984 to August 4, 1984... Six days earlier, July 27, 1984 was the release date for the Purple Rain movie. During Prince 's next tour, in November of 1984, the band was doing three to five night runs in north american arenas:

1. Let's Go Crazy
2. When You Were Mine
3. A Case Of You
4. Computer Blue
5. Delirious
6. Electric Intercourse
7. Automatic
8. I Would Die 4 U
9. Baby I'm A Star
10. Little Red Corvette
11. Loyce Houlton Speech
12. Purple Rain
13. D.M.S.R.

# Prince: Lead vocals and guitar
# Wendy Melvoin: Guitar
# Brown Mark: Bass
# Matt Fink: Keyboards
# Lisa Coleman: Keyboards
# Bobby Z: Drums

3.36 GB....mpeg 2...720X480
snatched this description from the internet nether regions:

the classic First Avenue 1983 concert which spawned the Purple
Rain album versions of 'I Would Die 4 U', 'Baby I'm A Star' and of course
'Purple Rain'. The recording has been sourced from the circulating video
footage, and because of this the audio suffers from the same glitches the video
footage does. These are slight, very minor and affect only a small part of the
show. They are most obvious during the opening 'Let's Go Crazy, 'When You Were
Mine' and again during the intro to 'Purple Rain'. Sabotage have attempted some
repair work on the tracks, and have done a pretty decent job of patching up the
incomplete parts with a different source recording. As this is sourced from a
video recording it has a slightly gritty feel to it and is certainly not as
crisp and clear as one would like - that said it is an improvement over the
various other releases this show is circulating on and is undoubtedly the best
we have to date. The show has quite rightly earned itself legendary status for
reasons including the birth of many Purple Rain tracks and Wendy's live debut as
a member of The Revolution - however mention must also be given to the
performance which is inspired and amongst the best of Prince's career. Full
length live versions of tracks such as 'Computer Blue and 'Purple Rain' are
special enough however add to the mix the only live performance of the
unreleased 'Electric Intercourse' and it's quite impressive how many unique
moments are stuffed into the 65 minute concert. And I shan't even mention the
closing funk jam of 'D.M.S.R.'.

Here's what came to mind as I was watching this: first of all, it is pro shot multicamera for the house video...It was hard to get screenshots of anyone other than Prince. He's basically on screen for the duration of the whole show. Highlights include a very rocking "Computer Blue"...and fantastic spacey keyboards throbbing away at the ending to "Delirious"...The drums could have been miked louder...the picture could use some saturation and contrast...but it's all generally noise free. The disc can hold the interest of casual viewers for a few songs or so.


. I imagine you can't find this stuff in youtube because of Prince's well publicized antagonism to the network. I wonder if there's some lowly websurfing Google employee whose job description is whack-a-moling Prince videos.

Sex Pistols 01/10/1978 Dallas 07/21/1977 Stockholm

One week after the Zeppelin show I just finished reviewing, the Sex Pistols took the stage in Stockholm. I'm not going to go any further than that. There are plenty enough books to tell you what it all means. The horse has been flogged to nothing but a stain in the road.

4.05 GB mpeg 2... 10800 kb/s vbr... 29.970 fps...NTSC... 720X480... DVD_LPCM_AUDIO

The disk I got has three things on it.
36:30 of Dallas 3:41 of "anarchy" from the So It Goes TV show(i think) and 20:16 of Stockholm. The quality of the footage is pretty good...Both shows are multi-camera with pretty much clean sound. There are upgrades of all of this, if you get this and want better...The Dallas has some occasional vhs farty tape rolling that came about in a generation loss. The European stuff is NTSC on my disc, so that tells you right there you can probably see this stuff a little more cleanly in boots from the original format. In fact, I have a whole disc of Tony Wilson doing a greatest moments retrospective TV special somewhere- pretty hazy memory but I think it's pretty sharp disc.
Strictly speaking, this Dallas show is not a bootleg. It's been released on VHS and DVD a couple of times over the years. The official Sex Pistols site mentions it as official product and offers a link to an amazon page. This DVD is, however, out of print- at least the region 2 north american version. Getting a new copy could set you back $100. While that's a little out of my price range, I would like to have a cleaner copy of this show. The quality of the you tube embedded below is a dozen times better than the disc that I possess.



Both of the shows are interesting to watch. The Stockholm is the better filmed of the two. The crowd is eager to get swept up into the phenomena and the camera operators run about the stage framing all the expressionistic camera angles that would become MTV ten years later. The colors are kind of fucked up. It took all my resolve to keep from photoshopping the screenshots to look better. The Dallas gig is sort of like watching a sporting event. You kind of only can see it once: all the while, you're wondering if the band is going attack the audience or the audience is going to attack the band. There's three cameras, but they are all cautious and distant.


The official fan site has a list of all the fifty or so shows that were done. I wonder exactly how many total minutes of Sex Pistols on camera there is prior to their split in 78? It can't equal more than a few hours. I've only seen bits of the many documentaries. Watching those with a paper and notepad would probably be the best way to get started answering it. For other full shows, there's Winterland, of course. Not much else seems to be traded. One of the heavyweight hoarders on tapetrader is the exclusive owner of three other gigs: 11/22/1976 Fagons,/07/15/1977 Beach Disco Halmstad, 12/11/1977 MAF Centrum Maasbree.



Came across THIS interesting bit of parasitism on the first google page for "Sex Pistols Dallas"...It's apparently some sort of aggregator of postings of concert videos-damn if people aren't working overtime trying to regurgitate content in order to funnel the surfers over ad links .

Led Zeppelin 07/17/1977 Seattle

As far as bootlegs go, in and of themselves, there are three recording artists whose identity as musicians really go hand in hand with the existence of unofficial recordings. the first of these, obviously, is the Grateful Dead. During the last dozen years of the band's existence, if not longer, you were not even a real fan of the Grateful Dead unless you exchanged live show cassette tapes with your brethren. Another is old Bob Dylan. Not long after he killed folk music and plugged into celebrity, he kick started the black market recording industry by simply being fascinating enough to his fans that they were interested in every stray word and note that could be captured from him. Coming in at third place is Led Zeppelin.

I'm talking audio boots here. There is an industry of Zeppelin bootlegs. As recently as 2004, Page was in a courtroom wringing his hands over people selling this stuff. There's an audience for it. Unlike a lot of acts, the songs sounded a little different every time they were played.

Preparing to write something about Zeppelin, I gave another look to their fairly recently released 2 DVD set, and felt kind of relieved. Famous rock and rollers lost their appeal for me a long time ago. And writing a blog about them is more than a little tedious. But I have my vague reasons. And so yeah, I'd rather be listening to nose bleed techno, or folk crunk grime fusion, or 1910-era gamelon recordings or anything that I couldn't have imagined yesterday. But frankly, I had the damn thing on in the background while I was working through some internet or another and I have to confess it didn't bother me one bit. Some of the Earl's Court acoustic stuff, in particular, comes across really well.



Beyond what the group put together to create the DVD set, there is really not a wealth of unseen video out there. The fan has three things to chase down. First, there apparently are more complete versions of 3 of the 4 shows that comprise the official release. Traders have assembled and reassembled the footage for them multiple times. And will go on upgrading them long past our lifetimes, seeing as the analog materials can be tweaked for hi def...higher def....3d def i.e. whatever consumer electronics is going to string us out with....Second, there are snippets of things, a few tv appearances- super 8 concert footage etc. Third... I believe that there are a few complete shows on the 1977 North American tour that cameras happened to be rolling for. I asked one of my Zep collector friend for a copy of one of them and wound up with the proshot Seattle kingdome






DVD 1: 1. The Song Remains The Same 2. Sick Again 3. Nobody's Fault But Mine 4. Over The Hills And Far Away 5. Since I've Been Loving You 6. No Quarter 7. Ten Years Gone 8. Battle Of Evermore 9. Going To California 10. Black Country Woman 11. Bron-yr-Aur Stomp
DVD 2: 1. White Summer / Black Mountain Side 2. Kashmir 3. Out On The Tiles Intro / Moby Dick 4. Guitar Solo 5. Achilles Last Stand 6. Stairway To Heaven 7. Whole Lotta Love 8. Rock And Roll


Now, my review of what I have is not going to be as useful as it could be. Apparently, someone has taken a disc that a bootlegger has professional mastered and played it back while copying it with a stand alone burner...Hence the menu that I snapped above. Automatically we are faced with a lack of quality from what was originally made. I can tell you that the original bootlegger, Celebration, had enough cheek to place their own logo in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. It appears there through the entire show. This automatically tells you that the Celebration release is not the one that you want. The video is grainy but watchable, the audio however, occasionally has split second drop outs and warbles that are very grating. Once again, I don't know if this is because of the Celebration title itself or the way my copy was burnt...



As far as the performance itself, there are arguments among the fans about how this rates compared to all the other dates for which there are recordings. I feel it's pretty fair. I was really impressed with Jones improvising all his little nuances and variations at the last half of "Stairway". Bonham really puts his all into the rolls on "Sick Again". But the encores are half-hearted, shortened versions of the songs. The "Moby Dick" straight into theremin wankery part of the show goes on for a seeming forever. People must have been climbing the walls.