Byron Coley: remembered & dismembered (He's not dead, it should be noted -- mods)

Yeah, Jesus -- better thread title please! Saw him at Terrastock 6 but forgot to say hi; I've talked with him a couple of times before.

He did some good stuff for Spin in the mid-80s, used to have a two page column there, he devoted one to a Minutemen discography. The highly abbreviated style could strike one as kind of precious, but he was a strong enough writer to make it work. Snarky and finnicky tastewise but also oddly open-minded? Funny as hell, too.

I still have three issues coming to me, dammit!

On Jello Biafra: "Sounds like Sammy Davis gargling "Candyman" through a pint of Joey Bishop's bodily fluids."

Thanks for fixing the title, mods (course the morbid fuck in me thinks it's going to be incorrect once he does kick the bucket).

The Tom Smith sendup of Byron in FE I found hilariously unreadable and probably the point where Tom jumped Byron's shark.

which was really disappointing, as i discovered tons of cool shit because of his late 80s spin column.. would have never explored or attempted to check out Spacemen 3 or Tall Dwarfs in high school had it not been for his underground column in Spin. insert line about meeting heroes, etc.

He wrote for Star Hits in the mid 80s, right? I remember reading a dismissive Bananarama review. (Not mentioning this other than just curiousity. We all have to start somewhere.. especially if you're in the middle of the 80s.)

Anyway, I heart Byron. He definitely mastered the "yr spuzz puh" style o' writing in the '80s.

This kind of meaningless drivel ultimately left me with a violent antipathy toward Forced Exposure and 98% of the music it covered.

You can watch him lose his hair if you watch the Half Japanese, Jandek and Minutemen documentaries back-to-back.

Mind you, I don't blame Coley one bit. I'm sure he could use the pocket money such reviews provide. In an ideal world, HE would be the Wire editor.

See the deluxe edition of Sonic Youth's Goo and Dirty. He wrote the prize pieces in both.

I like some of his pieces on obscuro bands he loves spreading the word about, but not so sure if I like his "why what you bought from this band is IMPORTANT, man" style pieces.

anyway, one of the only four or five writers I could even be bothered to care about in the 90s. I'll never understand criticisms like "heremetically obscure references"; shit is just a guidepost -- if you are not interested in the references just ignore them. for me, he's one of the only guys where I *had* to track down every tossed-off reference to a band ... but it's a measure of the writer.

Also, this: unlike a lot of indie zine writers at the time, he had a real respect for history (i.e. music did not start in '77). It's as if his unstated mission was to document the invisible lines connecting freak freethinkers from the imagists to the beats to the hippies to the punks to the noise rockers. -- is, as they say, urgent and key.

Big ups to him for introducting me to Sun City Girls and Can, both in his 80s SPIN columns. Lots of little Spin reviews come to mind, his Janis Joplin Box of Pearls review, his Jeff Buckley Grace review ... his 'Top 100 independent albums of the 80s' piece, which I used as a buyers/explorers guide when I first went away to college...

His liner notes are always excellent -- for a great recent one, check out the liners to the Girls live CD on Ableton Books...

'A Minute to Pray,
a Second to Die'
'finest album ever'
'cept Fahey when high

////

'he devoted one to a Minutemen discography.' This?

http://sidemouse.com/bcoley.htm

"his 'Top 100 independent albums of the 80s' piece"

shit, sun city girls, forgot about that one too. so many. not so much now though. i read him in arthur and it's fun, but i don't run out and buy the stuff. mostly cuz i'm poor. but definitely in the 80's, his tastes and mine corresponded in a big way. him and chuck! there are two weirdos for ya.

I will have to take a look at it. I definitely remember ripping it out of the SPIN it was attached to before throwing the mag away. lemme look through the archives this weekend...

yeah! one of my dumber ideas -- " hey guys let's get the premier expert on UNDERGROUND MUSIC who doesn't even own any Bowie albums to review new wave bands in a glossy teen magazine" -- but he actually volunteered for duty and contributed some side-splittingly hilarious stuff. even though my taste in music is way different I loved Byron's writing for both his catholic taste and playful love of language. we'd talk on the phone abt jazz, he was a nice guy.

he DID write that Chuck Norris bio using his bro-in-law's name as a pseudonym.

-- Carlos Keith (carlozkeit...), June 22nd, 2006.

Actually it was a different one (had a picture of D Boon mashing a huge inflatable globe, if memory serves), but I remember the one you linked to, too.

Coley on Minutemen, yeah that's good stuff...
Lyrics were composed in a dreamy political shorthand that thrust a naked, pimply rump in the face of that New America taking shape under Reagan's malignant tutelage... Symbol rubbed symbol without the protective casing of articles, verbs, or adjectives; bared nerve touched bared nerve and the listener shivered.

http://www14.brinkster.com/philsoc/toylove/forcedexposure.html

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51z7ROE8ZvL._SS500_.jpg

I just finished watching that Half Japanese documentary "The Band that would be King", and though he came across as an annoying twat..

"and though he came across as an annoying twat.."

nah. geeky and opinionated maybe. but a genuinely decent person with a shit ton of stories. a friggin' repository of knowledge.

he's a really nice guy. super nice, actually

and yeah, "repository of knowledge" x1000

Really lost his mind OR a giant in-joke (and when isn't it?)
http://66.216.125.85/FORCEDEXPOSURE/Reviews/Sun.City.Girls-R.html

this made me lol:

Bub has toured cigar clubs nationwide under the name Sir Bub Bishop, has released a string of cleverly-fingered albums, and joined a Mahavishnu-oriented trio with fellow devotees Sri Chasny and Devadip Corsano. They are called Rangda, after the Egyptian goddess of stringed animals.

Can we talk about his 80 Excellent Records of the 80s list from Spin magazine now? Kind of a C/D thang... dlp9001, I'm looking in your mysterious direction...

Some of these I can't stand: Sylvia Juncosa: Nature went right back to Cheapo's where I hope it's holding open a window or doing something actually useful. I'm trying to make a 'doze' joke with respect to that zzzzz Dos album but you get the point. Thanx to Leonardo, I'm currently/finally listening to Demo Moe: Demolish NYC which is making the unsweetened almond milk in my tummy curdle (which I guess means it's a success on some level but gee my Tums budget is already through the roof nowadays as it is).

But It's Only Right and Natural, Dial 'M' For Motherfucker, and, er, Daydream Nation are in my top ten of the decade. Modern Dances is my fave Sterling Smith. And classics and sub-classics abound. Great writing too. Loooooooove the Giant Sand blurt.

The rest I've at least heard of but a few have escaped my attention completely:

A-Bones: Free Beer For Life (Norton) - maybe saw their name in a Re/Search book?
Al Perry & The Cattle: Cattle Crossing (Addled) - huh?
Psycho Daisies: Sonically Speaking (Resonance) - I'd never even seen the remarkable cover until this very moment. I definitely would've been drawn to it in late 1980s bins. Also, looks as if the title is Sonicly Speaking. Buy today?
Turbines: Last Dance Before Highway (Big Time) - know the label but the band is an epic '?'

And now that all of his Underground columns for Spin are online too, we can talk more in depth about those too!

For instance, I know almost nothing from his "Cassettes, cassettes, cassettes" column from Nov. 1989: Robert Musso? Impossible Years (he really fell for Paisley Underground)? Fuzzhead? Roadkill? Mazlyn Jones?? YXIMALLOO??? Knut Redmond???? Fire in the Kitchen? When Went Wrong (a band not a question...but also a question)?

Let's dive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLnt2nuQErI

yximalloo are available via mutantsounds, seriously whacked and pretty good.

A-Bones: Free Beer For Life (Norton) - maybe saw their name in a Re/Search book?
Norton Records honchos Billy Miller and Miriam Linna; lo-fi garage rock

Al Perry & The Cattle: Cattle Crossing (Addled) - huh?
Psycho Daisies: Sonically Speaking (Resonance) - I'd never even seen the remarkable cover until this very moment. I definitely would've been drawn to it in late 1980s bins. Also, looks as if the title is Sonicly Speaking. Buy today?

Think I've still got both of these in a cupboard upstairs, but I'll be damned if I can remember all that much about either of them. Al Perry & the Cattle was some sort of AZ based desert psych deal, but I think they were ploughing a more 60s oriented groove than folks like the Meat Puppets. I can't really think about Psycho Daisies without the Yardbirds song of that name overwhelming my feeble memory, but I know that there were some other Resonance releases that I listened to a whole lot more - Sister Ray, Viv Akauldren...

The A-Bones were fantastic live, kinda disappointing on record.

Mazlyn Jones??

That's Nigel Mazlyn Jones btw - really good guy to check out if you like visionary English folk guitar expansiveness like Roy Harper.

Thanks for those links, have been reading and enjoying.

And that's Knut Remond above. I copied it incorrectly. Thanks for all the suggestions/info so far, y'all.

Oh yeah, now I remember - Fire In The Kitchen was Bob Bannister's band before Tono-Bungay. Didn't he do reviews for FE at one stage? Wonder what's he up to now...

hey i just met a guy who was in the lyres. and dmz! that's my 80's moment of the day.

or my 70's AND 80's moment of the day.

bob bannister is hanging around brooklyn, going to see experimental music and folk shows.

rip

also he's probably on facebook? i think?

Living the life then. It's not like I know him or anything, just remember T-B for doing good Dead C-ish noise guitar blap.

For anyone who is interested, in addition to la vida loca, I am playing with PG Six and a band called Escape By Ostrich which is me, Chris Nelson (The Scene Is Now, Mofungo), Willie Klein (Mofungo), Robert Dennis (also PG Six Band, ex-FITK, Tono-Bungay etc)

Hooray - thanks Bob! WIll have to do some googling.

on saturday at the record show byron was selling and he spent the whole day putting stickers on the covers of a new borbetomagus vinyl release and he told me he had written 4 reviews that morning. he's an inspiration. cuz i'm really lazy and i can use all the inspiration that i can get.

Anyone got those SPIN columns online somewhere...?

Spoken word album is really good

FYI - Byron Coley and Thurston Moore's Arthur column "BULL TONGUE" has returned as a $5, 50-page quarterly 8.5x11 stapled print publication, edited by Byron solo. 1st ish out now.

Details/order: http://www.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/BTR.001.html

http://www.forcedexposure.com/App_Themes/Default/Images/product_images/close_up/b/BTR001_CU.jpg

^^^This was very enjoyable, just finished reading it last night. They invited all of the contributors to review whatever they felt like reviewing, so in addition to music/film/book reviews there's (part one of) a Steve Albini essay about a visit to a molecular gastronomy restaurant, Bruce Russell remembering Peter Gutteridge, Alan Bishop sharing an apocryphal Sun Ra anecdote...a bunch of interesting stuff, I'd recommend it to anyone who was at all curious.

yeah this is a blast, pretty much what i want out of a music publication these days.
can someone convince byron not to put two spaces after periods though?

Hey, it takes a long time to shake that after its been drilled into your head.

haha yeah, i know. that and the occasional typo may add to the "full zine experience" of bull tongue.

meltzer riting a rock review! yeah, i dug this a lot. hope he keeps doing it. it's totally the kinda thing i would have done if i did a zine and now i'm glad he's doing it so that i don't have to.

speaking of coley, this myriam gendron album on feeding tube is so great (and meltzer does the liners!)
http://feedingtuberecords.com/releases/not-so-deep-as-a-well/

everyone loves that album! it's a hit. which is cool for my pal ted. he had to do another pressing and everything.

my five year old daughter loves it, too! get this lady on letterman already.

supposedly she's french-canadian, but she sings without an accent.

in other news, byron coley's writing is so fucking boring.

TFW you're cataloging boring bottom-tier classical LPs which have never sold on Discogs and considering whether or not to just give it to a thrift store except there's one person on Discogs who has it on their want list and it's Byron.

lolll you should give it to him for sure