[Landline] Ashes and diamonds

Housekeeping, playlists, Tim Dundon, James Booker

1. SOME HOUSEKEEPING NOTES

I’ve been trying out Bluesky for a while, and it feels nice and comfortable and I’ll happily vouch for it to those looking for a good, relatively painless (for now) site/app for getting hip to stuff, soliciting help with problems, and, basically, to doing the Tim Leary routine of Finding the Others. So! I am here, often: jaywbabcock.bsky.social

Over at the Arthur Magazine free PDF archive, mentioned in a previous Landline, I’ve been able to add PDFs for two more issues, bringing us to 20 out of 35. I've also added a complete listing of contents for every issue to assist the nerds searching for specific articles. Yes, the formatting is a little rough—sorry. Also, please note: it was a way too much to list everything featured in the Bull Tongue (Byron Coley & Thurston Moore) and C & D review columns, so I've left that out—for now. Donations to help with both archiving and long-ago sunk costs on Arthur have dribbled in and are much appreciated. They serve as an important incentive for me to continue with this often tedious work. The private notes of gratitude have also been a big deal for me. Thank you!

My hope to use bndcmpr as a way to share streaming music playlists with people has not worked out, as it looks like the developer has abandoned the project. So I’m resorting to the simplest solution I’m aware of. You know where this is going — spotify — which is not a place I’m proud of visiting. But what else can I do? (If you know of a better way to do this, please let me know in comments or private reply to this email.)

So, the “Sgt. Papers Picks - ¡Viva Los Hermanos Garcia!” playlist of psych-punk motorik-in-espanol bangers from the Hermosillo brother-duo Sgt. Papers, posted in a previous Landline, is now here.

Speaking of paywalls. Payfences. Paymoats. I don’t like them. I’d prefer for Landline to be sustained by subscriptions and donations—actually, I wish I could offer a sliding scale of my own devising, including offering subs for 50 cents a month, but I can’t, that’s not doable inside the Subsuck.

Landline has been a rickety affair to date—I post irregularly, the subject matter is, shall we say, inconsistent, and perhaps overly eccentric—but still, there’s over 4,500 people subscribed to it. However, only about 250 people have a paying subscription or do some kind of donation or in-kind trade. At this point, under the Accursed Broligarchy, with AARP membership beckoning in the not-too-distant future, I need that number to be higher to justify the time/energy/brainage I put into this thing. So, I guess I’ll try out some incentives, like offering streaming spotify playlists (see below), to see if we can get more paying subscribers—and keep on doing more Landline, more often!—without excluding anyone who’s broke.

2. PROPHET AND LOSS

Tim Dundon, Altadena's legendary rhyming compost king (the 'guru of doo-doo') died in 2019, but it's nonetheless devastating to learn that his boisterous, ecologically rich 3/4-acre sub/urban jungle (and old house) burned in the Eaton Fire.¹

That said, if any place can regenerate itself, it's this one.

Deep Arthur Magazine heads might recall the epic profile of Tim—”The Sodfather”—by Daniel Chamberlin in a 2007 issue, with photography by Eden Batki. You can read it here for free in the Arthur archive. That dude was for real.

3. ONE FOR THE SADNESS: JAMES BOOKER ‘TRUE’ AT MONTREAUX, 1978

More soon,

Jay

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NEW! LANDLINE JANUARY 2025 PLAYLIST

Songs from various quarters and times, near and distant that have been on my mind recently.

A few notes, with links to Bandcamp pages where possible:

1. Swanox - Old World. I could live inside this track, and in fact have, many times in the past few very trying weeks. You will hear what I mean. Hat tip to Jeff Conklin for this one.

2. Bayaka - Women Sing in the Forest. I often think of the late Louis Sarno, an American who heard a Bayaka recording on a radio station while living in northern Europe in the mid-1980s and was so smitten that he packed his bags and went to central Africa to find them. And then he lived with them until 2016. This is one of his absolutely glorious field recordings, from the soundtrack to Song From the Forest, a 2013 documentary about Louis that’s worth tracking down.

3. Manduka - De Un Extranjero. Came across this randomly. Beautiful. Will investigate further.

4. Diles que no me maten - ‘La Vida De Alguien Mas.’ Contemporary death disco from Mexico. The band name means ‘Tell Them Not to Kill Me.’ These guys are playing some USA shows soon. Here they are at KEXP in Mexico in 2023.

5. Sgt. Papers - Cachora Chora. A little bit of rock n roll to pick us up.

6. Ava Mendoza - The Shadow Song. Hat tip once again to Jeff Conklin for this dark stunner from an album released last year. Ashamed and despairing that I was previously unaware of this astonishing artist. Now rectifying!

7. Sonny Smith - Medication. A nice, repeatable interlude from an old favorite (and one-time Arthur contributor).

8. David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights - ‘Coming In From Nowhere Now.’ The title fits the music.

9. Terry Allen - My Amigo. Speaks for itself. I’ve found myself listening more often to Terry recently, after quoting him in a Landline last year about the marvelousness of terrestrial radio.

10. Doug Paisley - Take the Stars Out of the Sky. When I first heard this song a year ago, I assumed it was an old standard. It’s actually a Paisley original. Gorgeous, timeless.

11 and 12. Lee Baggett - Sea Turtle and Get it. A twofer from Lee, a productive West Coast troubadour who’s been around forever. I haven’t listened to him in a while and now (clearly) have a lot of catching up to do. Cracked warble voice melodic wisdom-rock firmly—honorably—in the Neil Young/Crazy Horse lineage. (Bonus: This is also a very beautiful song—with strings!—from another recent album.)

13. See 4.

14. See 1.

15. See 2.

Link to the spotify BuyMusicClub playlist: Landline Playlist 1 (Jan 2025)

1. The rhymes, the legend, live on. Beautiful writing by Mark Arax at the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/opinion/los-angeles-wildfires-la.html?unlocked_article_code=1.p04.sR3G.e4BwdZm5nrX8&smid=url-share