Friday, April 25, 2014

Mirrors - Shirley 7" (Violet Times 104) Cleveland, Ohio 1975. Ground zero pre-punk sounds reissued

Two new reissued releases from VTWrecks available now. 35 years later and both these wrecks still sound timeless. Essential Cleveland, Ohio pre-punk / proto-punk sounds, trax recorded in 1975.

Although these two trax were recorded in 1975, their release would have to wait until two years later when original Mirrors drummer, Michael Weldon facilitated their release on Hearthan in 1977, the label run by David Thomas of Pere Ubu.

VT 104 - Mirrors - "Shirley" b/w "She Smiled Wild" 7" w/ sturdy, color pocket sleeves



















This 45 is now SOLD OUT from VIOLET TIMES.

The Blimp - Not Beer on Violet Times - the Avant-Garage is open once more


“You shouldn’t try to borrow other people’s skin.” - Lucas Gunn


“Inspiration: Petertag and Joshua McSmiles in Cheeseburger, OR”


(choose yr own adventure: read on, or just split straight to the purchase page or at least to the end of this page where the meat tastes best, i.e. a 'simple' description of the sounds)


I just the other nite saw someone ‘online’ sayin' that people need to stop dumping on Eugene, Oh Are once more, but nah, dump away, i say. It’s Oregon. Or-eeee-Gone. Where burnouts and misguided, and/or never guided, hippies and the overly liberal to a fault go to die. False complacency capitol, despite the ever prevalent protest contingent in the PacNW and the ones really making it weird and not just a bumper sticker some businessman swiped from Austin, TX. “Reality is not real and I love this place!” Despite those making it more than just another commodification of culture so the NY Time$ and other$ of that ilk can pretend to have relevance via ‘coverage’ of the cool. Love to the visionaries, misfits and all you protest kids tho, mean it, no shit. - Signed, Vee Tee

If ya already ain’t, start thinking The Blimp here. Don’t forget why ya clicked. Just because it’s the internet does not mean you are not in charge.

Back to the general guh of that map spot tho - the end of the world, where burned out burners go to die. Young(-ish) artsters who cain’t get it up in the ‘big city’ and/or wanna ‘big fish / small pond’ it in the smallville vibe that OR meccas such as (my residence of a few lost years) Portland promote, and also to a less populated extent southward, Eugene, where our heroes, The Blimp, make their residence. Some genuinely righteous, brilliant and artastic souls there, to be sure, but a whole lots o’ desperation, loss, d-runk, and drugged out to a scum-dirt level of dying w/ eyes wide open mis-repped as ‘living’ abounds in that rain-soaked part of the world. Some are simply born there, they had no choice but to deal w/ it somehow.


Beauty abounds in that part of the U.S.A. The ocean is indeed beautiful until you drown in it and trees, they do fall. But that’s nature, not people, and not even my pal, Plate Tectonics, has much to say about the people there, “good and bad, bottom-line like everywhere else”, ol’ P-Tec will tell ya. Fall into the ocean- learn to swim, or die.



Don’t let any of the opening rant get in the way of Good Music, via The Blimp especially, i myself will tell ya. Give ‘em enough rope and they’ll swing. Give ‘em rock n roll and they’ll
swingjump and shout. Hunch about. “Hunchin’ hunchin’ hunchin’ man.” – good ol’ Haze. He's here too in the music of The Blimp, spiritually if no other obvious ways to be heard by the mass ear or that one you may've just turned on with.

Read some rock-write critique amidst Bone-twan’s b-ball speak and see what they is/was sayin’ in ref to his scribble regarding thee almighty Blimp unit and the initial ref sparking this opening spew. FIY and let’s move on to the record and band at hand.


The presumed relevance of the preceding rant in this soft-grey is that astute readers may indeed have noted that this is the kind of environs in which The Blimp have arisen and been operating on a small scale since nearly ten years prior. WHY has there not been a previous vinyl missive from these dudes (and lady) before, you might think upon hearing their brilliance? I have no tangible answer for you, friend. Thinking about knowing and other thoughts people have is not quite in the books I have skimmed looking for pictures or photos, drawings, and crayon-speak. All things will happen “in” their time, as they are meant to happen. It’s already the end of tomorrow, yesterday’s gone and by the way, who are you? (I'm a dropout.)

Think differently
(and don't forget to have fun along the way.)


However, one doesn’t need an occupation to know that everything’s not quite right these days, in the PacNW or the rest of the world. Because, to quote a long-lost friend hiding under her bed, “Monsters are real” and often the best, most fulfilling way to blast away the blues is w/ a full-frontal fucked up and loud, hairy, guitar animal rock n roll band. Which is what Lucas Gunn and The Blimp excel at.

Dance to the music. Get down. Feel it. Crawl. The Beat is hit. Shake yr hips. That’s hot and Rock n Roll is sex. Do it.


This is an ‘ancient’ quote, inked in the year prior to my escape from OH (to my exile on the prison planet PDX) - “C’mon let’s be demon / let’s be demon like the last time”. Most likely wine writ but certainly stained w/ some kind of hope, however lost or desperate, scrawled to a love long expired. I feel that heat now, as then, and that kind of fire also ignites in the sound of The Blimp. --- wait--- This is all making much sense to you, right? Starting back there at the front where it ends? --- Fuck it, let’s talk plainspeak, make it reeeaal eeeeasy on the blind who might still be reading. Let’s get down, done, to the damaged, and let’s get hell, let’s get real gone w/ The Blimp. Starting now, back there at the front where it ends. ("finally")

Here’s what I did write back once upon when asked to provide a preview/bio/whatever when The Blimp was set to perform at the WOW Hall last summer in Eugene, Oregon. It was ‘banned’, refused publication, tho myself and the band both agreed and knew it was good/worthy and described the band and at least part of what that means in no uncertain terms- any half-wit cretin could/would understand. More smrat types might shake their heads disapprovingly, (“what an asshole”) but still ‘get’ it.
Master, Master, it’s The Blimp! That’s what one gang of lysergic magicians foretold in Glendale, CA during one visionary’s acid 60’s. Paint the sound, paint the sound! Van Vliet’s ghost takes a trip on a wild ride to the scumpit oasis of Cheeseburger, Oh-ree-gone - long gone, let’s get real gone, beyond all the Johnnys and Jonies and into the get down gong bong foggy go gone on and on to the bent n busted days and nites of today...

According to Lucas Gunn, the man leading this twisted airship, the music that The Blimp makes is akin to driving a car upside down, and if that joyride is to yr liking, then how’s about you and I go for a spin in his nightmare? Gonna die in a car crash baby, won’t you drive me home tonite? Wild times, Violet Times, Wild Life is gonna run away…

When people ask me about The Blimp, and they don’t know shit from shazam, I tell ‘em that The Blimp is like if Mirrors were perpetually 17 years young but mutated accordingly for the past 40 years, got me? (these same people are usually only talking to me cuz I put out that Mirrors LP to start this label- otherwise i hate to reference other bands and generally steer clear of it ya know.)

The last, only, time I was in The Blimp’s hometown I peed in a trash can bag because the girl traveler was puking in that motel toilet and I couldn’t wait to contribute. Tied and threw it in the slough where my pee piss still floats to this day, many years later.

Lucas Gunn has been known to play in a trashcan, which is where garbage belongs, but I can’t exactly say that I’ve ever known any trashmen who’ve known their way with a song quite like this haunted head.

Finally, just so I know on which side of the line you stand, besides all of this other psychedelic pstuff–and I really do wanna know- when’s the last time you saw Petertag?

"Just watch me now" ((or)) "Listen to this"



“The Blimp, The Blimp, THE BLIMP” – thus spoke Antennae Jimmy Semens


The Blimp
is something akin to all of the above and something else entirely, soaring beyond mere caveman crunch evident in passing, ferociously ripping thru the past and any kind of perceived influences, providing the mass ear w/ a clatterist cacophony of sound/s for now times and beyond. Guitar flight, zig-zag wanderings, warped sense shatterings, spoken/acapella yearnings, theremin derangement, and more -sometimes combine, sometimes crash- wailing high, revealing to the listener a not hardly hidden pop-sensibility evident almost at once to even the most ‘never been experienced’ of ear and/or idea, life or song.

When every single mind in the physical has already been blown, what can ya really say or do? Blast away my blues. This is just a small tasting of things to come from this waking nightmare alive band.


4 song, 12" vinyl only EP w/ pro-printed covers and inner sleeve, recorded by Justin Higgins at Old Standard Sound in Portland, Oregon

The Blimp - Not Beer 12" EP




Where do you live?




RIYL: Mirrors, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band,
The Hunches, good music


The same high quality you've come to expect from Violet Times, it's our first 'modern/current/new/unknown' band release and there's a definite reason for that. The Blimp belongs in this same hi-quality company, no question.


"The Blimp is alright, even if they is just a dream, just a band.” – J. Ames

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

The Cherry Blossoms - Live In Amsterdam LP for sale from Violet Times

This LP is now SOLD OUT from VIOLET TIMES but check out the other items for sale above. 

VT is ecstatic to be helping distribute the new album by Nashville's finest in advance of our very own (slowly grinding into production) Hank Tapes LP release. One of America's secret gems of the Underground, John Allingham, Peggy Snow, and company have been sharing their singular vision in Nashville, TN and beyond for nearly 20 years.  This fine new album on Hairy Spider Legs is further proof and we're ecstatic to help distribute copies far and wide.  Great stuff, kinda like if the Shaggs grew up to make an LSD Jesus LP on ESP-Disk while in Amsterdam, like a funhouse mirror version of a Folkways surf group.  One of the NYC shops we frequent asked if we were getting copies and i suppose that's good enough for us when it comes to sharing the music, art, wisdom and wit of John, Peggy and company from down Nashville, Tennessee way.  We're in.  You may recall our great pleasure when Peggy agreed to be part of our Foggy Notion art exhibition awhile back.  We also have a limited number of additional copies to mailorder as well if anyone out there wants/needs direct from us in lieu of ordering direct from our new pals at Hairy Spider Legs, who released this fine piece of American music.  Either way, or even elsewhere, ears should hear.

Hairy Spider Legs sez:

The Cherry Blossoms
"The Cherry Blossoms are to folk music what the Velvet Underground was to rock n’ roll: anti-commercial, rebellious, pure, and unlike anything else. They deconstruct folk into a a very special experimental music, but they insist they’re a front porch band. Specializing in kazoo, 6-gallon bucket, poetry, carefully awry drum rhythms, guitar, and vocals that span octaves, melodies, and time, the Cherry Blossoms are unforgettable.

Lead singer Peggy Snow has said that “No one tries to control what anyone else is doing when we play.” The result is a sound that is ecstatically free, layered, and ranging. While songs like “Amazing Stars” follow a chorus sung together in sweeping, traditional hymn with a few quirks, other songs skip and spaz into a trance awash with unorthodox folkloristic layers. Their sound is at once elusive and timeless (Have I heard this song before?). It’s a sound they’ve been honing for twenty years. The Cherry Blossoms are sure to go down in history as one of the great folk bands of the 21st century.

With a rotating cast of 3-8 performers, their line-up has changed over the years, but most recently consists of: Peggy Snow, John Allingham, Chuck Hatcher, Taylor Martin, Chris Davis, and Allen Lowry. Ever eclectic, members of the band are talented in their own rights. Peggy Snow is a prolific painter, John Allingham is finishing a rock-opera 10 years in the making, Allen Lowry writes amazing unconventional poetry and played drums in Lambchop, Chris Davis is an incredible music curator/contributor to the Nashville music community, Chuck Hatcher can rock any Zepplin song in existence… the list goes on and on and on. They are local legends in Nashville and sure to make music history." - Hairy Spider Legs

Saturday, August 10, 2013

The Offset: Spectacles 9th February 2009 live at D-22 and elsewhere video footage

Founded in 2006, The Offset: Spectacles were hitting some serious sonic heights by the time of this early 2009 performance at Beijing's since shuttered D-22.  Despite this, most of the Earth world are only recently finding out about our favorite "Canto Psych" band.  Usually due to hearing their great self-titled November 2011 vinyl debut which even more heads got onto when we distributed copies of the LP earlier this year to the US.  
Wait no longer if you want to purchase tho, because Rose Mansion Analog is down to their last handful of copies and Violet Times has no more copies either, so get it direct from the band/label if you want it.  If ya need more Offsets in the meantime, grab one of the brand new All Gone 'Workers' compilations highlighted by a 9 1/2 min live take from 7th of October 2010 at Xisi of The Offset: Spectacles' viola haunted throb, 'The Meat Grinder' - a cassette-only release, sold out any minute from now, most likely before you read this. 
Here's up-to-now rarely seen February 2009 footage of the Offsets in action, one of the great bands of their era, in full flight.  Free in Sound.  The bulk of the clips are from D-22 w/ additional documentary and other color footage showing the band going thru a few different arrangements of tunes and different set-ups of the three in various combinations of viola / keys / guitar.  Any non-believers are sure to be converted and those of you who're already fans are going to receive the top shelf aural treatment that you deserve until the next releases by The Offset: Spectacles, already in the works.  Close yr eyes, look inward at the stars, see the phantom rhythm. . .

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

THE OFFSET: SPECTACLES debut LP for sale + US distro from Violet Times

Have you guys heard The Offset: Spectacles yet?  They're a Beijing / Hong Kong 3-piece, now splintered for the moment, exiled to parts unknown?  I heard this, the band's debut LP, and got in touch w/ them the very next day.  It's an all-analog affair from the recording start to the vinyl pressing finish w/ the Offsets flying to a UK studio to put their sound on reel-to-reel tape as they weren't able to easily do that in their homeland.  Purists.  Sounds great.  Looks sharp as well, with a printed inner sleeve and spot-on liner notes.  Aesthetically they've got it going on as well.

One of the other things i found out upon contact is that they hadn't had any US distribution since releasing this album themselves on their own Rose Mansion Analog label in China.  Knowing that some of you Americans reading also needed to be turned onto this great band like i was, without paying for the higher costs of international shipping, i decided to get copies to sell for a bit cheaper to the people of the USA.  Who's in?  


Buy The Offset: Spectacles 1st LP via exclusive* US distribution from Violet Times. . . 



The Offset: Spectacles "s/t" LP is now SOLD OUT from VIOLET TIMES but check out the other items for sale in the links at the top of the page for OHIO rarities and more...


. . . If you want crazy Lou '67 guitar freek-outs and mind-split-open leads by a band that use no drummer conjuring a 'phantom rhythm' and cite their fave groups as The Velvet Underground, Silver Apples, and The Monks while managing to sound as timelessly out of step as those avant/garage heroes, this is it.  I'd say there's easily also a wide cross appeal here, something for the stoners, droners, rock n roll boners, and more.  Both hipsters and hip replacement recipients can rap it together.

These sounds The Offset: Spectacles make are wild, sometimes dark, noisy repetition riffing jamming hypnotic, ghostly cinematic.  Lots of banging and clanging end of the world racket amidst the guy seemingly on the verge of losing it much of the time there are vocals.  There's a lotta tension.  At any moment throughout, the songs sound like the whole thing may fly apart as the impending doom and dirge of clatterist sound ultimately does combust into the whole thing blowing apart in a frenzied flailing freek-out by the end of side two.  Cataclysmic.  Metal Machine Music.  Shards of sound stabbing the mass ear like a hand grenade gone.

Random initial notes, intact. . . (so you can laugh with, or at, me :)  Both mellow and raucous guitar parts, head splitting flourishes, banging and clanging, then it sounds like sonic destruction stomping, shrieking, really cool guitars and it's the end/beginning of the world and it's really time cuz the universe is splitting open.  end/shredding/beginning .  Red between the lines.  Super jamming and minimal and epic and then the dude starts barking.  Electron burning.  Buzzing buzz buzz.  It sounds really haunted, ghostly.  Timeless travel.  Unravel. .  Cinematic ominous hypnotic open free sounds like Lou 67 and Cale clash shred your mind()rain goes off the rails du b bu d dub dub it's like that.   Lotsa shredding.  Ripping guitars and sounds electronic all over the minimal.

Play loud, they do. 

If ya don't wanna take my words for the silver and gold they are tonite, check the text and video of others below. . .      

"This is the real deal — completely blown out guitars and organ, frantic breakdowns, hypnotic chord sequences, and some of the best Lou Reed-styled guitar I’ve heard in forever. From building repetition to wide open grooves, this thing is pure energy." - Foxy Digitalis.


"The Offset: Spectacles are probably the most stubborn band in Beijing. Their brand of precisely overblown Cantonese rock n’ roll condenses the urban scream of their native Hong Kong into blasting surrealist bangers that are as captivating as they are uncompromising. In concert, the band dispenses with pleasantries like stage banter or directly facing the audience and challenges the clangor of the Chinese capital with their own cathartic racket. Inspired by the massively influential Chinese band P.K. 14, The Offset: Spectacles moved to Beijing in 2009 in search of like-minded musicians. Within two years, they had started Rose Mansion Analog with three other Beijing bands: Soviet Pop, Hot & Cold, and Golden Driver. The boutique label is dedicated to analog recording and reproduction, documenting Beijing’s thriving scene through the lo-fidelity, one-room-and-a-mic tradition of early blues recordings. On stage, Vince Li and Ah Ki’s guitars strut and snarl against the steady pulse of Ou Jian’s bass, producing a darkly cinematic sound that’s forceful and driving. The group aims for what they call “phantom rhythm”: without a drummer, the roaring percussive clash of pawn-shopped 1960s guitars gives the impression of ghostly snare-hits and echoing cymbals." - Noisey / Vice.

Watch a short documentary snapshot of the Offsets below and listen to the whole album at the bottom of the page via Bandcamp- you'll also find their previous cassette-only debut there. . .

* I said 'exclusive' w/ an asterisk above, because i've also sold copies to Fusetron to re-distribute as well.  In New York, i've sold copies to these real world record shops, please support by nabbing a copy from their bins, instead of mailorder:  Academy East Village, Other Music, In Living Stereo, Kim's Video, Generation, all in Manhattan.  In Brooklyn, Academy Annex, Record Grouch, and Deep Cuts bought copies.  Please- no mailorder from me to NYC, support physical record stores. 

Any and all other shops across the states who want to deal direct, please get in touch- my contact email is in the upper right sidebar above.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

The Cherry Blossoms - Here ya go, buddy



The Cherry Blossoms closing performance @ Foggy Notion art exhibition performing "Charlie Primm" and "Rising Tide" in the early evening 6.23.11 - Brooklyn, NY @ Live With Animals gallery space. John Allingham and Peggy Snow, the two main songwriters/voices of this great Nashville, TN group were able to make it to town for a rare out of town performance w/ some local friends augmenting their set on this nite. A pleasure to meet these two in person, i'm forever grateful that they were able to make it here for this special nite. Truly a treat on all levels.

John Morton, Neil Michael Hagerty, Timmy Vulgar art is visible, not shown is art by Peggy Snow, Ju Suk Reet Meate, Oblivia, and Hamish Kilgour.

First time vinyl release forthcoming of The Cherry Blossoms 'The Hank Tapes', their first recordings from 1996.

"Here ya go, buddy."

Violet Times

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Kim Fowley knows about Violet Times & The Blimp...


Met the Living Legend, the Baby Bulldog himself, last evening at the Norton Records 'Kicksville Confidential' comic book release party. GREAT comic too- i say check it out. A true hero of epic proportions in the Violet Times multiverse, he's in town to host Norton's 25th Anniversary blowout (featuring Black Lips, 5.6.7.8's, Sonics, Reigning Sound, Question Mark & The Mysterians, Cyril Jordan & Roy Loney of Flamin' Groovies, and many, many more) as well as read from his upcoming Kicks Books mindbender, "Lord Of Garbage", which will soon join other fine Kicks reads from Nick Tosches, Sun Ra, and Andre Williams on the bookshelf. Congrats to Billy & Miriam on 25 years of debaucherous rock n roll wax greatness.

I gave him a DVD copy of way below ground Psychotronic classic, 'Petertag', made by Lucas Gunn of The Blimp, as well as 'Drano' & 'Shirley' 45s, while wearing my Jimbo Easter drawn & screened Garbage River t-shirt. Epic. Now that the Ultimate Underground Animal knows about us, we can sleep contentedly at nite, right? Let's hope he likes the film too! I think if anyone can or would appreciate this flick tho, it's the Tall Cool One.

Also, in a (perhaps not so) subliminal way, and to bring things full circle, 'Petertag' can be viewed, on some level at least, as a sort of tribute to Hasil Adkins, whose "Out To Hunch" LP started it all for Norton 25 years back. Well, that's at least one potential puzzle piece to this visual vavoom.