Thanks to everyone for the kind words after the last post, that was very nice.
My plans to eventually shutter this blog in its current form remain, but it might take a bit longer than I first thought, because I don’t want to shut this down without something else ready to replace it. Since my HTML and website building knowledge is forever trapped in 2002, I won’t be doing that on my own. I’ll need to use an external company/person. And I don’t want to screw it up. Don’t worry, all the old posts will remain. However, setting it all up how I want it to be is going to take time. So, my original plan of a Lost Turntable “reboot” by the end of the year probably isn’t going to happen.
Don’t worry, in the interim I’ll continue to write new posts, just don’t expect too many, this once a month schedule is working out well for me at the moment so I might stick with that.
In other “things I’m doing” news, I have ramped up my newly revived YouTube channel considerably since my last post. I’m putting up videos almost every week! Right now, I’m mainly focusing on videos about record stores and things I see in second-hand shops here in Tokyo, but I plan on expanding to videos about items in my collection soon. Be sure to subscribe!
And Cinema Oblivia is still going too, now on a bi-weekly schedule. Since my last post here I’ve uploaded three new episodes, including one about Urgh! and my legal nightmare around that! So check those out too!
Now for hyper-obscure new wave music from the early 80s.
The Zarkons
Screams In The Night
White Rabbit
Queen Of The Jungle
I’ve shared a song by The Zarkons on this blog a long time ago. The Zarkons are in Urgh!, back when they called themselves The Alley Cats. I have no idea why the band changed its name. Maybe they figured that since they weren’t exactly lighting the world on fire as The Alley Cats, a complete reboot couldn’t hurt? Regardless, I love that they went from “A” to “Z” when they renamed themselves, although it makes hunting down their records in the bins a bit tricky.
The Alley Cats were great and so were The Zarkons. These tracks are all taken from The Zarkons’ debut album, Riders In The Long Black Parade, which came out on Enigma Records in 1985 and has never seen the light of day digitally or on CD. That’s crazy, because this album is fantastic. I get big X vibes with them, and I’m sure they were an influence on the group, as they’re both LA post-punk bands with dual male and female singers. But The Zarkons have their own sound, They have this dark edge to them, very goth, almost horror-punk even. The main singer, Dianne Chai, has a great warble to her voice and it gives her an other-worldly, slightly creepy quality. It totally makes sense that they’d cover “White Rabbit,” her voice is perfect for that type of song.
Again, this is a great, amazing, fantastic album full of killer tunes. I cannot fathom why it has never been re-issued. I hope that it gets picked up by Red Cherry, Wounded Bird, or Esoteric at some point, it deserves a wider audience.
The Books
Metaphysic
When I was researching Urgh! for the previously mentioned podacst, I found some flyers to the concerts that were filmed for the movie. Those were really fascinating because it showed me that there were bands filmed for the movie that never even made it into the final cut of the film. Did you know that U2 were filmed for Urgh!? They weren’t included int the final product because the band wasn’t happy with the performance. Other bands cut from the movie include The Human League, Delta 5, and The Mekons.
Another band cut from the movie was this group, The Books, who I had never heard of before. After I sought out their debut (and sole) effort, I’m surprised that the group never came into my purview before. They’re an early synth-pop group, but a bit off-kilter. They’re kind of a gross between Gary Numan, pre-“Don’t You Want Me” Human League, and Echo and The Bunnymen. The album is a little all over the place, for every radio-friendly potential single, like “Rain” or the title track, there are bizarre, more punk-adjacent numbers like “Dusters” and “Spillane,” which have that rapid-fire staccato deliver that makes me think of Devo or even Polyrock.
The album is uneven, but overall it’s quite good and I hope that it gets a proper re-issue someday, which is why I’m only sharing the one track. The group was the brainchild of Steve Betts, who also was a member of The Assosciates, and he has shared the entire album on his Soundcloud. I hope he can put the album up for sale on Bandcamp sometime, I’d buy it for sure.