marble stature

In case you are still in the dark, my pal Doug Elliott has recently started up a blog, which is aimed at documenting the great stuff coming out of Ohio, and some of the sounds of Ohio's past (and, I'm guessing, a whole lot more). He has done some great writing for the Vertical Slum in the past, but with Population: Doug he finally has finally secured a forum for his insight, which is as gloriously one-sided as ever. To save you from scrolling down to the bottom of the page, here's the link. Visit, visit.

The Geeks Too Fat Pig/Visiting Day at San Quentin 7" (S-S, 2006)

A few months ago, Scott Soriano sent me this along with the new single by the Nothing People, and asked if I would mind writing honest and accurate reviews of them. Luckily both were nothing short of fantastic, but I still felt a bit weird revieweing these for The Z Gun, because I think that Soriano has to be applauded for his ability to dig through the dirt and time-after-time come up with pure fuckin' gold (and it'd be a hard pill to swallow such lauding in his own zine)... but this Geeks single has been on my mind since I first heard it a couple months ago. While there are a lot of bands out there that claim to be channeling the soul, spirit, spit, and ideology of Coltrane's Impulse universe, there is almost always a off-putting discord between the sound and the vision. Off hand, there’s only one band that could ever pull it off with exhilarating results and that would be the almighty Numbers: 15-30-75 (read about them here) but I’m pleased to hear what I like to think of as the Numbers Band of the West Coast: The Geeks. I guess that The Geeks were around as far back as ’65 and made music until the 80’s. Based in and around San Francisco, they survived long enough to see two full-length albums released. While them collector scum hold onto those LP's until their dying days, The Geeks, who had kept an expansive archive, thankfully opened it up to Soriano... and while I missed out on S-S’s first archival reissue of The Geeks three years ago (Dreamland in Machineland/Hey Wreck), I did finally hear it this past summer and it sure sounded like a more askew Numbers Band. With this release, however, the group really takes it down a few notches, emanating from the vinyl with a cool, late-nite sexiness.

The a-side reminds me a bit of Bongwater (you know, those great sultry Ann Magnuson vignettes), but a little creepier considering that our soft-voiced chanteuse is fifteen-year-old Lydia Kindheart (exquisitely backed by a meandering swells of guitar leads, stumbling drums, saxophone, and some stand-up bass). The b-side is an Iggy-voiced account of visiting day at San Quentin (The Geeks used to live in a house across the street); lead by a simple driving bass-line and intense but desperate vocal chanting, and accented by bellowing horns, the track is the true showstopper of the pair.

I was pleased to read that The Geeks were great to work with and these two archival reissues have been seen the light of day without a hitch, because I would give my right arm to hear more where this came from. Definitely secure yourself one of the 500 pressed before the window closes, because this S-S stuff don’t stick around for long.