Watch Andy Warhol Eat a Hamburger

What, do you have something better to do? Don't be an asshole. Watch it. You could learn something from this!

Destroy the Nuge

Some people like to make Turducken for Thanksgiving, which is a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey. Other people prefer the Jimmy dean breakfast sausage on a stick surrounded by a chocolate chip pancake. One thing is clear: If you can put something made of food inside something else inside of food, it makes everything better.

Recently, a friend sent me this recipe:

Whole Stuffed Camel

In a cookbook called International Cuisine, presented by California Home Economics Teachers, 1983 (ISBN 0-89626-051-8), you will find:

Stuffed Camel

1 whole camel, medium size
1 whole lamb, large size
20 whole chickens, medium size
60 eggs
12 kilos rice
2 kilos pine nuts
2 kilos almonds
1 kilo pistachio nuts
110 gallons water
5 pounds black pepper
Salt to taste

Skin, trim and clean camel (once you get over the hump), lamb and chicken. Boil until tender. Cook rice until fluffy. Fry nuts until brown and mix with rice. Hard boil eggs and peel. Stuff cooked chickens with hard boiled eggs and rice. Stuff the cooked lamb with stuffed chickens. Add more rice. Stuff the camel with the stuffed lamb and add rest of rice. Broil over large charcoal pit until brown. Spread any remaining rice on large tray and place camel on top of rice. Decorate with boiled eggs and nuts. Serves friendly crowd of 80-100. —Shararazod Eboli Home Economist, Dammam, Saudi Arabia

I guess what I mean to say, Ted Nugent has released a new album, and the truth is that he hasn't had a good song since "Journey to the Center of the Mind" when he was in the Amboy Dukes. Also, I hate Ted Nugent.

XXXL Guitar: Pig Champion

You know what? Guitarists . . . guitarists are important. It's important for a rock and roll band to have a guitarist, most of the time. A good guitarist can help a band out a whole lot, whereas a shitty guitarist can ruin a band. But we're not going to talk about guitarists, we're going to talk about fat guitarists.

Having a morbidly obese guitarist in a band is a calculated risk—they can save a band, or destroy a band. And believe you me, they will always do one or the other. Bands with fat guitarists—or fat guitarists in and of themselves—are either among the greatest guitarists in rock and roll, or the worst.

In the interest of arming you, the reader, with the proper information by which to determine which records featuring fat guitarist you're going to buy, the writing staff of Danger is My Beer will, in the upcoming weeks and months, gently summarize the talents of both the greatest and most despicable fat guitarists in rock and roll.

Let's start with the greatest. The greatest being, in this writer's humble opinion, the late Tom "Pig Champion" Roberts, of the band Poison Idea.

Here, Mr. Champion is covered in blood, as is Poison Idea singer Jerry A., as they destroy the audience with what is no doubt a bone-crushing song of destruction

At his heaviest, Pig Champion was clocking in at nearly 500 pounds. But despite (or because of) his hefty carriage, this Portland, Oregon behemoth was one of the most nimble-fingered, face-melting guitarists in punk rock history.


Out of all the bands that attempted hardcore/metal crossover, Poison Idea among the select few that pulled it off. Champion was good at editing down what would be excesses in lesser guitarists, and every Poison Idea song was a hyper-kinetic vortex of awesome, misanthropic, frightening, and most of all melodic rock and roll assault. He excelled at guitar solo ass kickery, as well as mega-fast right wrist rhythm workouts—see "Plastic Bomb" offa PI's seminal Feel the Darkness, which is knocking on the door of Black Flag's Damaged when it comes to best American HC LP.

Pig Champion was an avid record collector, spending tons of dough on vinyl every month. In fact, the story goes that he scheduled a Poison Idea tour to follow the footsteps of an 80s hardcore band whose records he was looking for—this being before the internets and the CD reissuing craze. Poison Idea played every town this band had played a decade before (The Freeze, maybe? I read this somewhere but forgot) so Champion could go to all the record stores and look for their records.

This obsessiveness is reflected in his guitar playing—he sounds like a guy who has absorbed at ton of music and knows exactly what he's doing, and exactly what tone he wants. You'll find no aimless wheedly-wheeing in the Poison Idea catalogue, friends. It's all destruction, all the time. Which is why Pig Champion rightfully assumes the mantle of Lord Imperator of heavy guitar players the world around. Mr. Champion, we salute you.

Happy Halloween, Jerks

Let's hope Don Dokken is there to save your life.

An Avalanche of Mountain

Founded in NYC, 1969, Mountain was one of the bands that defined the heavy, riff-packed sound of early '70s hard rock/heavy metal, but were often overlooked as their peers in Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin received more than their fair share of the limelight.

Classic line-up:
Lead Vocals/Guitars: Leslie West
Lead Vocals/Bass: Felix Pappalardi
Keyboards: Steve Knight
Drums: Corky Laing


OK, here's the thing. To the uninitiated, looking at the cover and track listing of a Mountain album might give one the idea that they were looking at some sort of folk-rock side project that David Crosby brain-farted up during a bad acid trip. There's a lot of swirly pschydelic shit with flowers and rainbows and hairs from Odin's beard all over the front panels. A lot of the songs have titles that have a very laid back, almost country-bluegrass quality to them; "Never In My Life,” "Nantucket Sleighride,," "Theme For An Imaginary Western." But then you play the record and all of the songs get shifted into the context of the only name/phrase/word you need to know about when discussing this band: "MOUNTAIN!"


The whole sound of the band IS their name; it's as fucking gargantuan as the Alps crammed next to the Himylayas, stuffed inside the Pyrenees and dumped on top of the Rockies. It's so goddamned loud, punchy and wailing, that you want to BE a Mountain Man; a huge, hairy guy who brushes his teeth with a pine tree after eating lightning and crapping thunder. Now, as you might have guessed, I love this band for its bludgeoning riffs and all that, but there's lots of band out there that have bludgeoning riffs. Mountain had several tricks up their collective Nehru jacket sleeves that set them apart from the rest.

First, there's Leslie's guitar tone, which for all the images of this band as one who liquifys pigeons that fly in front of their speakers, is quite pure, sweet and most importantly, warm.

Second, there's Steve Knight's keyboards which glue most of the songs together so well that you almost don't realize that he's even playing at all. Simplicity is key here.

Third (and my favorite): the cowbell. Anytime a riff is in danger of collapsing under its own weight, Corky's bouncy bovine locator grabs it by the scruff of it's neck and punts it back into the Realm Of That Which Kicks Ass. Case in point: "Mississipi Queen" which is probably on my top five or ten greatest songs of all time list. Too much cowbell is never enough.

Oh yeah, they also played so goddamned loud that their bass player became legally deaf by 1974. And then his wife shot him dead nine years later.


Ugly band members? Pretty much batting 1.000 here. Leslie West is/was the main focal point of this band and he really had no other choice than to be just that due to the fact that he weighed in at anywhere between 250–350 pounds during the height of the band's popularity in the early '70s. (Legend has it that when Mountain went up to Yasgur's Farm from NYC for the big show, they had to take two helicopters—one for Leslie and one for the rest of the band.) Add a 'fro and and fringed buckskin vest that claimed the lives of many, many whitetails and you've definitely got one of the most, er, um, "distinctive" looking rock musicians of the era. Felix Pappalardi was even once described by Leslie as looking like an organ grinder, and I have to say that's a pretty accurate description. One look at his huge schnozz and ape-hanger handlebar mustache and you'd be forgiven for wondering where kept his monkey on stage and if he was going to bust out an accordion solo during "Nantucket Sleighride."

How Mountain offended rock critics: Usually, the length of their songs puckered critic's collective assholes, and as I'm not a fan of "jam" bands I'd be inclined to agree, except that Mountain never really trailed off to far from the song structure during their live shows; it was more like they were taking a second or two to breathe before they came thundering back into the main riff or another one just as cool. That, and critics would say they sounded like a shittier version of Cream, which is fine in my book, because Cream probably had nowhere to go but into the toilet had they not broken up in '68.

--(Greg P.)

All Hail Danger Is My Beer

Dear Readers,

In the interests of basking in glory, we would like to share with you one of our most recent accolades. From our good friend Garth:

Rick, Greg and Matty have started probably the only blog in existence where you can find a review of an EP by folkster Joanna Newsom together with a tribute to ultimate fighting hero John Hess. It’s like Spike TV for artsy college types.

In order to share the warm glow with you, the reader, we've decided to bump the font size up a point around here.

Glory be to us.

Important Questions About Our Future

The best American movie ever made is Don Coscarelli's Phantasm. It asks important philosophical questions, such as how one deals with the knowledge one's deceased parents have been stolen from their tomb, placed into armored cannisters, and shrunk down to dwarf size because they are forced into indentured servitude on a barren desert planet with higher gravity than ours. Also, it features chrome spheres with spikes that drill into people's heads, and an undertaker who is very frightening because he's always weirdly taller than anyone else in the room.

What most people don't know is, Don Coscarelli also made the best music video in the history of the world. It is for Ronnie James Dio's song "Last in Line." It's about how "we're" the last in line. What does that mean? Well, it seems to mean that everyone who is last in line has metal shit coming out of their head for starters.



This video raises important questions as well. For instance, why is there a weird space tentacle? What was in the package that guy was delivering? Who needed it delivered? Or was is just a ruse to lure messengers into this place where they're the last in line? Why is the drummer a cave man? Whose side is Dio on? Etcetera.

I afraid that, much like zen koans, these questions are not meant to be answered. Instead, Dio and Don Coscarelli are offering these rhetorical questions to the void. They are totally extreme philosophers that will melt your face off, and musician-philosophers of Our Present Age would "do well" to take a page from their playbook.

—(RKS)

Joanna Newsom - The Ys Street Band EP (Drag City, 2006)

Long ago, in the land of fairies and unicorns, there lived a happy, jaunty people, with jingling bells on their shoes and broadswords in their knickers. Now, I wasn't alive then, but I can say with 100% certainty that they listened to music like this. In case you live in a hole filled with feces, you've likely heard a thing or two about Ms. Joanna Newsom. Maybe you heard that she sings like a 4-year old girl, or that she has very precise enunciation on certain consanants, or that she plays the harp, or that she's a member of the national front. Well, all of those things are true. Except the part about the national front. Which led me to say, upon hearing this information from my feces-hole, "man, that sure sounds like something that I don't need to ever hear." Well, maybe it was the excrement in my ears, but the second i climbed from my hole and put this cd into a cd-playback-device, I was proven wrong, more wrong than the TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11TH.

Now, I've heard the Ys LP, which preceded this by a few months, and was not particularly impressed. Yes, the songs were pretty good, and this chick can write one heck of a melody, which she piles one after the other throughout each song. But the sound was marred by lots of incidental and unnecessary string arrangements and a very shiny veneer. Which, thankfully, the EP lacks.

In Ireland, apparently, "Colleen" is a name given to your everyday generic female-type, like Jane Doe here in the civilized world. Coincidentally, it is also what the first track of this EP is called. It's rife with banjos and accordians and such, and is what we in the industry call "a rollicking abstract story-folk song." Ms. Newsom squeaks and wails about some whales (ha! I'm a fucking genius!) and baleen, and falling into the ocean or some shit. Well, it all spells a big heaping pile of REPEAT LISTENS!!! This is the centerpiece of the disc, being the only new song in the bunch, but...

"Colleen" is outshined immediately by a stripped-down rendition of "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie" from the "Milk-Eyed Mender" LP. This is the kind of song you play for a girl you just met and you want to show your sensitive side before you fuck her and give her a fake phone number. The tune itself is reduced to a duet between Joanna and some guy in her band, who sings kind of like a male Joanna Newsom, and what sounds like the ol' harp and maybe an acoustic guitar.

When one steers their musical ship down the Tunics-and-Pantaloons River, you can't begrudge them for crafting EPIC songs, like the closer, "Cosmia." A leaps-and-bounds improvement over the original (from the Ys LP), this track stretches to almost 13.5 minutes. Now I know that may seem like a long time to sit on your thumb and listen to a song, especially in these POST SEPTEMBER 11TH times, but i swear if you just stop looking for osama for about 13.5 minutes and listen to this song you won't regret it.


Hey, now you should go out to your local MEGAstore and but it. It's only an EP so it won't cut into your skag budget too much. And you know what they say: "Fuck you!"

--(mk)

Joe Pullum (1935–1951) [including Andy Boy]

In the 30s, you could perform under a name like "Andy Boy" and nobody would pay any mind. I could change my name to Crossroads Sam, and people would think I'm an idiot. Joe Pullum is on this album, too. Not much is known about these randy ole blues-sters, other than they played blues music. For a young boy of 5 (as I surmised him to be, based on various assumptions), andy boy sounds quite assured, with a reedy tenor that nicely compliments his dextrously mellow ivory-ticklin'. This kid probably liked jazz, too. just remember that jazz in the 30s was much different than this new-fangled stuff all the kids are listening to today, the Leons and Paul Hardcastles of the world, electrifying the airwaves night after sensuous night.

The Pullum segments (one covering two sessions in the late 30s, the other a 1951 Los Angeles date) are more orchestrated than the Any Boy selections, utilizing the odd trumpet, even a string bass and drums in the later tunes. Joe possesses a haunting, high-range voice that is probably the most interesting feature of this disc.

this is one of the exhaustive reissues released by the Austrian Document label, which blows my god damn mind on a consistent basis. Many of these discs are more for posterity than actual listening, but this one has all the excitement you'd expect from long-dead bluesmen who more than likely died of a sexually transmitted disease. fuck yeah.

--(mk)

Blackfoot

Southern Rock at its toughest and speediest, Blackfoot came out of Jacksonville, Florida on the heels of more popular bands like the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd, the latter with whom founding member Rickey Medlocke used to play with.

Classic line-up:
Vocals/Guitars: Rickey Medlocke
Guitars: Charlie Hargrett
Bass: Greg T. Walker
Drums: Jakson Spires.


Blackfoot kinda made up their own lingo with a lot of their songs: "Reckless Abandoner", "Fire Of The Dragon", "Left Turn On A Red Light." They play tight, they play fast and there's a ton of hollerin' and whoopin' and bellerin' in almost every song. Think Lynyrd Skynyrd, whom I also love, but with dumber, more muscular songs. This music is such a perfect soundtrack for driving fast and doing Rockford turns out of parking lots that when I listen to it, it almost makes me angry that I'm not driving the General Lee, or at the very least, a mildly souped-up Camaro. To put it another way, I drive a big red Chevy pickup with 31 inch tires and flat-black "deer guard" on the front and I STILL don't think it's enough of a Redneck vehicle to properly honor a songs like "Diary of a Workingman" and "Dry County" (which contains the lyric I kick myself everyday for not working into one of my own songs: "the sign says liquor in the front, baby, and poker in the rear!").

Another huge bonus is that on 90% of the albums, there's at least one song that has a harmonica or banjo intro part played by Rickey Medlocke's father, Shorty Medlocke, who was a serious bluegrass musician. Shorty will mumble something about hound dogs or rattlesnakes or trains through the last of his front teeth, play a couple of bars and then be summarily crushed by the pounding drumbeats of "Dr. Jakson Thunderfoot" Spires. I'll comment further on how I love of the use of nicknames in bands later on, but let me say that Thunderfoot was a well deserved nickname for a drummer of Spires' caliber. I think he might have pounded those skins a little to hard though, as he died in 2005 of a brain aneurysm at the age of 53.

Blackfoot were not a horribly ugly band physically, but the individual member's stage clothes were, ahem, "studies in contrast" to say the least. Spires and Walker took to showcasing their American Indian heritage by wearing armbands, buckskins and moccasins, while Charlie Hargrett usually looked like he parked his Kenworth rig outside the venue and Rickey Medlocke, though only half Indian, preferred a combination of black Stetsons and long blue coats that made you think he should be a Georgia pimp named Vanilla Bean. The 80's didn't treat Southern Rock well, and when the genre died, Blackfoot's look was probably one of the reasons that MTV threw them in the coffin first. Fuck MTV.

I've read one review where the critic refered to their music as "unassuming garbage lifted from the dustbin of routine by its slobbering lack of fashion sense." Enough said.

--(Greg P.)

DANGER IS MY BEER

You are reading "Danger Is My Beer"