Rupert Wondolowski's Blog, page 10

New Baltimore Vinyl Gold

Not since I was a wee lad living on Pennsylvania Ave. during the heyday of Billie Holiday, while my mom was a torch singer at The Ritz slipping around with Sammy Louis, or when I was a middle-aged drunken dockworker spending every other night at The Marble Bar in the Congress Hotel in the late ’70s/early ’80s, have I seen such a rich period of music in Baltimore.

This struck me strongest the other day when I got two new local releases which spent most of the day on the Normal’s turntable.

First was the long awaited Horse Lords lp on mad Dr. Stew’s Ehse label. If you’ve ever been to a show in Baltimore, say an Afrobeat Society night or crunchy sizzly noise jams at The Bank, you have most likely seen a lean balding bespectacled man, whizzing around the rafters like a popped meat balloon shrieking “This is the greatest music I have ever heard in my life! Dear God you are infusing me directly into my heart ventricles with these sounds which have completely changed my life!! Someone feel my leg, there’s an electrified wiggle worm loose in there!!!!”

That would be Dr. Stew (seen at work below), the multi-tasking, word gattling gun, somewhat ADD wunderkind of Ehse.



With the sweet release of the Horse Lords album I am joining him up in the rafters. It’s a strange synthesis of a lost Sublime Frequencies album (one of the smoking West African chugging and skittering guitar ones) with some mean clean saxophone and electronic dynamics blowing up the stew.

For me the heady concoction catches into blazing flames when it goes into what sounds like an electronic bagpipe breakdown. Father Higgs assures me this sound is created by Professor Owen Gaertner and saxophonist Andrew Bernstein playing together in exact note/pitch synchronicity.



And with Owen (above, addressing the Prince Georges County parole board) telling me that these songs and their general music sound even better after they worked on recording together, I will have to dust off my wingtips and catch these lads live.



The second album is “My Society” by Heart of Hearts, which was performed and produced by Greg Hatem. This is a beautiful end of night album or laying late in bed on a rainy Sunday album. Greg is also a member of Mr. Moccassin and Forks of Ivy. “My Society” was just released on Bleek Records, which is based in Brooklyn and also has releases by Nature Boy and House of Wolves.

This imaginative lp sports titles like “Owls Grow Up”, “Grass Mask”, “Goodbye Buttons” and “Feather Fast” and a sound not too far away from the haunted chamber pop of Beach House, but not quite so dreamy and a little more stark and electronic. It focuses on Greg’s experience as an aviculturist, breeding and caring for finches and doves, which is not a topic often touched upon in pop and rock music.

Senor Hatem’s Society is indeed a fine one to join or visit. Thoughtful and sensitive, but resilient, fresh and bound to stay on your mind.

Matt Muirhead Art Snagged on Abell

Taking advantage of yet another incredible crisp, sunny, cool September day, another amazing fall day that actually feels like the falls I remember from my youth before September just became a sequel to squelchy August, Everly and I headed out to catch DJ Mills and the band Black Marks at the Abell Ave. festival.

Last Sunday we hit the Polish Festival at Holy Rosary Church on Chester St. in Butcher's Hill and I was almost weeping with rushes of nostalgia. Potato-laden food! Pierogies! Gawumpkis (which they had labeled as Golabki)! Dancers in bright embroidered garb looking truly ecstatic! A motherfucking money wheel!

The money wheel took me back to elementary catholic school. The nuns knew how to get every last penny from your paper thin uniform pants and plaid purses. Money wheels at every gathering, an invented hot pretzel break strategically placed 15 or 20 minutes before lunch break, etc.



The line for food was a huge U-shape, almost to the entrance/exit. But the 40 minute mouth watering wait allowed us to be sucked into the tables selling all things Polska. I searched the crowd of humble potato faces for the faces of my youth, but no Curtis Bay Wondolowski clan members were spotted. The ghost of Uncle Vernon looked down upon us and said "Where's the damn Whiskey Sour Fountain to go with the Money Wheel?

Everly bought a Polish cook book, I bought a pair of handmade socks (that included a third sock) for friends who just adopted a three year old and we bought Christmas ornaments reppiing the country that Alfred Jarry once used as a setting in a play: The action takes place in Poland, which is to say Nowhere.

The pierogies and potato pancakes were well worth the wait. The best potato pancakes I've had since my granny's, but they were slightly too thick to be as insanely savory and possessing of the perfect crisp texture as hers. She also made a perfect cole slaw that keeps me always trying it in restaurants only to be disappointed.




But today, we had only a short drive and our destination was only a few blocks from Normal's, which just today was name checked in the New York Times Sunday travel section. Bring on the groovy New Yorkers with padded wallets hungry for physical culture!!

I hadn't been to the Abell festival for a year or two and it's expanded. Even saw and visited a booth run by Red Prairie Press, a local press which I'd never heard of. Following the scent of grilling meat and the faroff sound of far too smooth jazz (the kind that frightens off the youth and sends them into the leathery arms of Metal), we stumbled upon the art booth of Matt Muirhead. I had meant to catch his show at a gallery in our neighborhood, but had blown it.

Here is an interview with Matt in Baltimore By Hand

Everly and I were both sucked in by the mixed media pieces (acrylic/spray paint?/collage/stencils) that were bright, color saturated and sharp. Everly was immediately drawn to a piece that utilized a diptych image of her Lord and Savior, Elvis (above) while I perused the incredibly cheap $20 bin. As Matt praised the High Zero show he'd caught the previous night as a deeply religious experience and I traded stories about the sets the I caught Friday, Matt explained that the piece I had become transfixed by had the Harundale Cinema featured on it. The Harundale Cinema! The sacred place of my youth where I'd seen The Cross and the Switchblade, Papillon, Swiss Family Robinson, The Jungle Book, 2001 a Space Odyssey, just to name a few.

Hanging cosmically over the cinema is the unblinking eye of Baltmore writer and musician Dina Marie Varsalone of the band The Daily Lion and the zine "Take Me I'm Yours". This piece is going into Normal's, so beware evildoers, the all seeing eye of Dina gazes upon you and you don't want her to tear you a new one! During her tenure at the Charles Village Barnes and Noble upwards of a dozen headless corpses with copies of John Grisham novels half stuffed into their waistbands were found abandoned in the Self Help section.

After getting a kind, gentle deal from Matt on both the Elvis and the Harundale Cinema piece we continued toward the stage and meats and ran into DJ Mills getting the sad news that he had already gone on from 1 to 2 and was done. Sigh. Then I spotted the swollen pill popping beer swilling swamp grifter lady who'd stolen from Normal's after years of selling her boyfriend's books to us. Time for food and better music!!!

It was a bit of a challenge procuring the humble hot dog and hamburger but they were tasty and then Black Marks featuring Sam Wylie and Carol Menetrez of the dear departed Charles Village People took the stage. Two good singers up front, Sam playing well crafted lead guitar and some very tasty keys being played, plus a ubiquitous Pickled Lawncare Guy playing air guitar and making devil horn signs with his fingers while his trousers slowly, inexorably made their way down his buttcrack.

The Problem of How To Live by Joel Dailey

Even as I type these words,  damp half-chewed gummy bears blocking some of the keys, my vibrant ascot tied a little too tightly by my Japanese man servant robot, Joel Dailey, editor of Fell Swoop Press, is hosting our very own Baltimore's Special Angel Chris Toll in Dailey's hometown of New Orleans. 

Joel is putting out books by Chris and myself, mine being Mattress In An Alley, Raft Upon The Sea, Chris's being, I think - I'm paraphrasing - "I'm a Little Tart, a Fiery Little Tart, I Will Hump Upon Your Leg and Chase After Golfballs, Yes Thank You Please".

While Joel is distracted running a reading at some New Orleans hot spot with Father Toll wowing the boozy N'awlens crowd, I will run this gem of a poem by him.  It will be in Shattered Wig #29, which is beginning to stir like the Baltimore Orioles after decades of slumber.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



THE PROBLEM OF HOW TO LIVE
for Clark Coolidge



Caught a ride on a passing halibut

an ever-present IT Team jogging in place, "hut, hut, hut ...."

Drowsy on the non-drowsy

The ultimate status update

Yellow parasol sustains a straw hat or golden sponge cake with     creamy filling
Often mistaken for Sir Osbert Cribbage, infamous cave ejectee
A strident personality (speed bumps)
Riichly lyrical in nature
Conversant   yet slightly out of tune
Fact is   this here fingerblaster springs leaks

Here's the Complete Dickhead Forecast
Emanating from a testosterone based lifeform (free brochure)
Rapid fire beverage burps
Single out the Destination Oriented
The shift has focused   the focus has shifted

Mark E. Smith Dream

  I haven't been remembering my dreams too well, they are as fleeting as pixie dust of late, but I had an epic crazy one a few nights ago. I was living with Carrie Brownstein (things weren't going too well between us) in a weird cylindrical old tower apt. building.  
I went over to Mark E. Smith of The Fall's house and when he was out of the room grabbed about four tubes of paint from him. The next day I went to see him again and he knew! He knew. 
I tried to return them as if I was just borrowing them, but he was going to kill me. I resorted to my dream power of flying and he chased me all through the streets firing a pistol and throwing soccer balls. 
Finally I snuck back home and sought refuge in some sort of hospice run by elderly Asian women healers thinking it would be like sanctuary. Mark E. then hired a bunch of street thugs to break down the hospice door brandishing guns and began shooting people. I gathered my nerve and gave myself up, saying "It's me they want, then they'll go away."

A New Band Is Born

 I must start this post with full disclosure:  one of the four musicians above is from my same cursed blood line, one - when not foolishly shaving  his skull to the bone - has a lustrous shiny wig that I would go all Wayne Gacey on to have it rest red and gooey on my lumpy head,  a third person here I am happy to work with and the fourth owns a comfy "Campus" zipper sweater of the kind I have been seeking out for over two decades since the breakup between me and the girlfriend who owned a bunch of them and lorded over her collection like King Faruk and his gold toe rings.


That being said, me and my wife came back from the beach to find these four making some refreshing music down in our basement.  Sure, there were Natty Bohs sweating on top of $1,000 books I have up on ABE and Amazon, and with each funky fresh beat of young Amanda of Sea Coucht on the her overturned bucket another one of my priceless Hummel figurines vibrated off a shelf to a fragmented death on the cement floor below and our aged cat Peanut was trapped beneath said bucket, but they were creating a nice concoction that seemed to blend early Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine with electrified country Delta blues. 


Three of the members - Fletcher, Dan and Geff - were part of a long ago big group called The Jumping Off Point and are part of the Soulgasm Records collective, also known as The Pasadena Mafia.  Geff is part of the gritty futuristic mountain punk country group The Baltimore String Felons, which is on hiatus as their percussionist Megan is making field recordings of Gregg Allman's liver.  Dan and Amanda perform together as the wondrously sublime Sea Couch.


This new conglomeration, known as Documents, which sstarted as a way for Dan and Amanda of Sea Couch to get their rock on with their pal, eccentric reclusive author Fletcher, soon began to have a life of its own and ramblng Geff of the Felons got caught in their meticulous whirlpool when he returned from his months long tour.


Look for Documents at a venue near you soon, plus keep an eye out for their zine arm, going on its second issue, which publishes micro-biographies that blur the lines between history, dream and tallish tales.

Ocean City, Greasy Labyrinth Ocean City, Wherefore Art Thou, Ocean City?

My first impression as we pulled up to the inlet proper was being thrust into a human pinball machine with cascading greasy lights everywhere and slick muscled teens and hot binkini girls way out of my league having adventures beyond my wildest dreams.



I have to admit that it would take a while to come down from the initial anxiety enough to let the sweet salty impact of the ocean air hit me.  Usually, first off, me and my brother Ralph would troll the boardwalk for Marvel comics.  It was the mid-'60s to the mid-70s and Iron Man and Captain America and Doctor Strange were taking their fresh plunges into the psyches of Young America.  Between the two of us and our older brother our amassed collection was eventually worth a fortune that could help us all put down payments on first cars. 

Except our mother threw them all away.

Then when I was starting college my fellow collector brother must have needed some cigarette and beer money because he rifled my closet for my teen collection of Jack Kirby's Fourth World series, including all the Mister Miracles, and sold them without speaking a word to me about it.

This is how treasured objects become collectables.  And how shrinks and pill makers still make very good livings.







I remember the beach of the Ocean City of my near blind youth as being a lubed up flesh traffic jam.  Weave through the densely packed blankets and shouting kids and teens acting tough and dive as quickly as possible into the crashing waves to get the instant full body shock.
The beach, especially when our aunt and uncle were along, was the best place for my parents to relax with us.  Especially with my fathers well stocked cooler of adult beverages, which at that time wasn't cracked down on. 
At night, after showering off the sand and salt to expose the new red flesh, we'd hit the boardwalk where it always was nice and freezing with the evening whipping winds.  Something thrilling about pulling on a sweatshirt only a few hours after broiling in sunlight.

Thrashers fries was a must, as was as much pinball in Playland as possible.  There were two different amusement parks, the dark and sleazy Purple Moose Saloon (about the only sleaze that still remains), a born old looking skinny hillbilly guy in a polyester suit holding a boombox blasting Elvis songs that he would dance (kind of) to, the guy who has been doing religious sand art forever, families of all walks of life, bikers, weedheads, beach bums, tacky t-shirts of every variety, hermit crabs, Dumsers ice cream, Fisher''s popcorn, salt water taffy and spin art. 







In my dotage -that started twenty or so years ago - when the sleaze on the boardwalk turned to redneck rage and frat boy hyper-drunkeness and I began to seek out the quieter more nature driven experience, I discovered the sacred Island of Chincoteague and the greasy vomit reak of the old Ocean City became a thing of the past.  Bike riding everywhere, cooking up fresh seafood - purchased at Gary Howard's -  in our rented cottage, swimmiing on a beach where the nearest blanket is usually a good twenty feet away or so and the people tend to be more laidback nature lovers who also come to bird watch at the nature reserve.
But a few weeks ago my wife Everly and I got invited to stay at my sister's beach place up around 70th St. in Ocean City.  Everly, being born and raised in some crazy far off planet named Alabama, had never been to OC.  I got excited relating to her what we'd see there and anticipating what the new breed of third generation biker ocean hippy would be like.

Imagine my surprise when I found a sea of anonymous beige architecture, what you now find in every strip mall, had supplanted a large portion of the old corny but entertaining beach businesses.  Playland still stands, the two amusement parks are hanging tough, sweating zit-riddled teens still labor in the main Thrashers selling product every bit as tasty as the old days, but I didn't see a single biker or fuzzy-haired beach bum or even anyone who looked like they might haven't gotten a wee bit buzzed too early that day. 

There were actually a fair amount of buskers with guitars, but they were all mediocre squeaky clean college khaki boys playing top 4o poorly.  Oh lost youth.  Oh displaced working class!  Where did the funky lower middle class and below middle class take their kids to the beach now?  This used to be the refuge of all who could scrape a few dollars together.  Is the Ocean now, like professional baseball and football, only for the well off? 
Perhaps it was just my imagination or the Limbo Period we had visited - the last week of August a week before Labor Day weekend. 
  The night was saved and capped, though, by my sister's last minute inspiration for us to hop on a ride before we left with our strips of Photo Booth pictures and bellies sloshing with grease and sugar.  Not usually a ride pirate, Everly was coerced onto the deceptively gentle looking Tilt-a-Whirl.  Every other little giant cup looking ride container contained one little 12 year old girl apiece, except for our cup jammed with three screaming and laughing and shrieking adults feeling the veins in their head swell and their aged eyes bulge like Big Daddy Roth drawings.

And as we spun and slid around in the sweet cool night, the middle aged balding, bored carny worker giving us a "come on, you have to be kidding me" look, I spotted a lone dad in plain white t-shirt with an old school camera beaming and waving at his little girl who rode alone in her cup with a shy, sweet smile and I figured sleaze was probably somewhere else and doing fine.

September 6 Release Party for new Artichoke Haircut issue

Very excited about being in the upcoming new issue of this smart young magazine.  These kids know their way around the language and the booze and handle both of them with aplomb, wit and sophistication.

Plus I will be fresh back from the ocean and hopefully rejuvenated from the brutal summer that is on its way out.  The light of mid-August is incredible.  Every year it hits me as if I've never seen it before.  For me it always feels like it holds more promise and excitement than the first breezes and soft light of spring.

Here is the lineup for the Artichoke Haircut reading:


Magazine Release Party
As always, we are featuring some great talent from our brand new magazine:

Lily Herman
Barrett Warner
Carabella Sands
CL Bledsoe
Brooke Carlton
Justin Sirois
Sid Gold
Rupert Wondolowski

and more to be announced.


Doors open at 8:15pm, readings start at around 9.

Mattress In an Alley, Raft Upon The Sea Coming Soon

I am extremely proud to announce that noble and rugged Fell Swoop Press in New Orleans, run by poet Joel Dailey, is putting out a new chapbook of mine - Mattress In an Alley, Raft Upon The Sea -  very shortly unless Joel comes to his senses.

Here is an interview with poet and publisher Dailey in Harriet magazine:



Fell Swoop! An Interview with Joel Dailey, Destroyer of American Literature : Harriet Staff : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation


Mattress In an Alley, Raft Upon The Sea will be a 20 page chap chock full of new soaring absurdo-miserablism.

A Song For Shakemore

There are more storms these days
than I've got dollars
we eat breakfast
off the tree that
fell through our window
and one night when a wind
blew the candles out
Richard Nixon carried
off my woman
saw him eat her head on CNN


Oh Lord take me down to Shakemore
take this devil's grip off my soul
let me sway beneath the big tent
as Liz Downing's angel voice
makes my fried
puzzle pieces whole


Be brains for me Google
Be my energy shiny Starbucks
Hide my shameful secret Depends
Crackle my limbs and be
my forbidden mystic
soul power cocaine
in all your cash making variations
And you are God, Satellite Transmissions
bringing countless broken lives
into my home
I watch them on my box nightly
so I don't have to grow my own


Oh Lord take me down to Shakemore
take this devil's grip off my soul
I would buy me a felafel
but The Tinklers took my wallet
when I was hugging on Chris Toll

Take me down to Shakemore
I want to watch Barbara
buzz like a bee all day
some whisper human blood
from corpses
is her energizer bunny
secret that she passes
on to fans
but I just think she's got
super weird glands


Maybe Randy Austin
will take me
up in his spaceship
but to see heaven
I don't need to be
in the sky
I see the stars and light
in Fair David's dancing
and in my brush with
the crowd that
gives me a contact high




Don Peyton will tell you
he met Jesus
made him a uke
made of palm trees and
placed it in his hands
Well I don't know about Jesus
but Mark Jickling will be playing
in all but one of the Shakemore bands


And are we all a bunch
of misfit humans
who dreamt of Half Japanese
or did Jad and David
dream us
after eating late night pizza
with garlic and way too much cheese

"Everything Is Terrible" -- Episode 5 of 1000Fathoms

 My first podcast!  "My Suburban Home" on Erin Gleeson's 1000Fathoms.

Episode Five