Let Us Now Praise Dave Q

Way back shortly after LBJ rescued the US military/industrial/intelligence apparatus from those commie Micks, some greasers and cholos decided they could get more pussy if they copied some Them, Kinks and Animals down at the local roller rink. It didn't work because they were still ugly, so they brought an organ of their own to play with. Some of these bands turned into Count Five, Shadows of Knight, Blues Magoos and Vanilla Fudge, the latter of which whispered little-birdy style into Ritchie Blackmore's ear - "Do this heavy thing, yeah? Except make it silly and fun, with real fast tempos, ditch the Yardbirds' reverential fellating of ancient black guys, and stick ridiculous demi-classical flourishes on it - take all the subtlelty out, like the Chem Bros or something!"
As the Purps' subsequent solo careers showed, the euroclassy-kitchen-sink approach did not require much in the way of 'intelligence' to put together, a fact which didn't go unnoticed by guitar goons like J. Priest, who jumped on the DP's ineffable legacy like Roman soldiers discovering the surviving virgins in the aftermath of Masada. Since these bands never shook off the perception of being poor relations to Zep's wizened enigmas or Sab's space cadets (Sab/Purple = Sun Ra/Steve Allen), they sadly had to settle for selling out arenas in the USA and the then-communist bloc and consoled themselves with state-of-the-AOR production and ever-more-startling instrumental chops - thus POWER METAL! A genre so unfashionable that most people aren't even aware of its existence - mellotrons, sword-and-sorcery, Yma Sumac vocals, pristine production, all stuck onto that "Highway Star" chassis! None of the pretenders have overtaken the mighty Manowar (Americanized Priest, muscles instead of crotchless leather chaps) - ALL MEN PLAY ON 10!!!
-- dave q (scrape10...), October 7th, 2001.

What do autopsy films count as
--dave q (scrape100@hotmail.com), August 22nd, 2001.

Only area of pop music where the continental Europeans produced anything of any worth whatever (pre-black metal/gabba, of course)
-- dave q (scrape10...), April 27th, 2002

-- dave q (scrape10...), December 10th, 2002.

I just wanted to share how momentous I find this. However much people talk about her, and I know it's a lot, it's still NOT ENOUGH. I turned the TV off after the actual show, because there was yet another doc on Madonna-as-ambition etc. Why? Why do the words 'ambition', 'hunger', etc etc keep coming up? When perhaps 'artistic' and 'brilliance' should be thrown into the mix more. Maybe even 'genius'. And I'm not a fucking romantic either, I believe genius is a function/motor/whatever of 'craft'. Another word never mentioned in proximity with 'Madonna', when it bloody well should be. In fact, 'Craft' would've been the PERFECTLY assertive triumphalist album title for her last one, but 'Music' did the job well enough. David Bowie would've called an album 'Music' if he was smart enough to figure out how to keep people interested in his little games - unfortunately, he wasn't. Unlike Madonna. Who's far beyond playing little games anyway.

Don't stop now Madge. But even if you do, you're still the greatest ever!
-- dave q (scrape10...), September 2nd, 2001.

Ye olde R'n'R + FX + 'mannered' singing (just kidding, Crocus! Heh heh)
-- dave q (scrape10...), August 1st, 2002.

Actually, this isn't a real 'TS'. I know that when people lapse into sputtering profanity, they've given up their cred credibility and their cool vanishes in the face of their incomprehension, so it's not really going to make me look any less retarded than I already do, but curiosity is killing this cat so here goes: WHO THE FUCKETY-FUCKING FUCK BUYS THIS GODDAMNED FUCKING SHIT? WHO ARE THESE FUCKHEADS? HOW DID THIS SORT OF FUCKING SHIT GET TO EXIST? WHO THE FUCKETY-FUCKING FUCK IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS PIG VOMIT? HOW WAS IT ALLOWED TO HAPPEN THAT AFTER A CENTURY OF POPULAR AMERICAN MUSIC, YEARS OF FUSION AND UPHEAVAL AND CULTURE AND INEXPLICABLE ERUPTIONS AND EVERYTHING ENDED UP WITH THIS....THIS....FUCKETY-FUCKING SHIT! IS THERE A NAME FOR THIS KIND OF FUCKING SHIT? WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK POSSESSED THESE FUCKERS TO WRITE AND RECORD THIS WORTHLESS SHIT AND WORSE YET, WHAT MAKES STUPID FUCKING ASSHOLES BUY AND LISTEN? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH AMERICANS ANYWAY? EVEN CREED HAS THE CHRISTER THING GOING ON AS THEIR LAME ATTEMPT AT HAVING AN IDENTITY, BUT THESE SHITHEADS HAVE NOTHING GOING FOR THEM WHATEVER! AND I BET THEIR FANS ARE THE SAME! WHY DON'T YOU KILL THEM? FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!

Seriously, I'm curious, what festering, maggot-ridden, loose rectal orifice did these severed tapeworm parts fall out of?
-- dave q (scrape10...), January 15th, 2002.

(For the remainder of this post I will replace the names 'Flipper' and 'Joy Division' with appropriate substitutes)

Band/fans thing solved definitively - who would you rather be stuck in an airline seat next to, somebody wearing a 'Charlie Tuna' friendly line-drawing t-shirt or the ubiquitous jagged-pancake-stack 'Comfort Women' one? (Either that or the Vatican postcard one?) Admit it, by now any sane person will run away from somebody wearing the 'Srebenica Serb Spunk Spitfire' top, even an MSP 'Teenage Revolutionary Glam Suicide' one is less embarassing. It's a mystery why there's so many more of the 'Doctor (Mengele) & the Medics' ones about though - 'Cetacean' invented 'emo' (which I don't care about except in the context of this sentence, i.e. 'it exists') and 'grunge' ("Life" ripped "Spirit of Radio" ten years before "Teen Spirit" did "More Than a Feeling" - important due to suggesting classic rock/underground crossover that was necessary for subsequent alteration of rock landscape i.e. people BUYING stuff that 'sounded underground' even if it was underground stuff that sounded classic and the commercial angle is crucial IMHO because isn't expanding your community enough so that it crosses over or overlaps the whole point of making music that isn't just onanism in the first place? And sadly for some idealists, commercial success [even by proxy] is still the only reliable indicator of this and Brits have a real problem with that because it involves talking about MONEY and that's a sore point as none of them HAVE any, so as a defense mechanism they prefer heroic [ha] failures like Nick Drake or Ian Curtis and use their supposed interestingness to prop up their own fatalism, the socialism of an apolitical age), whereas 'Nazi Sex Torturers' invented - Marion? 'Phlegmish'? (As in 'mucus', not that country that shelters terrorists and pedophiles) (OK there's been enough justified slating of Curtis' hilarious Kermit the Frog singing, so let's look elsewhere for 'Liebensraum''s musical features - hey, y'know those dopey bass players who say, 'They're like guitars but easier - less strings!' And then play like it IS a guitar, i.e. no rhythm whatever, just disconnected notes, like an especially slow and maladroit J Mascis solo, except an octave lower? 'SS Party Squad' made a 'sound' out of it! 'Little Mermaid' OTOH did the grinding thing AND the fast thing [Sequencing "Living for the Depression" next to "Sex Bomb", aside from being like if Coltrane out "Giant Steps" and "Ascension" out on the same album in 1959, presaged both 'hardcore'-via-'mathcore'-to-what hardcore became (i.e. 'space drone' etc.) but as in the 'emo' and 'grunge' things, they can't be blamed for those either if you don't like them but must be credited if you liked ANY of it! Heh] and if you like flawed, imperfect singing and playing (the 'Battery Cage Sex Slaves' fan's last line of defense) then 'Free Willy''s got out-of-tune Harry Partch guitarrs, cacophonous yelling and the least Neil Peart-like drumming since Kleenex but all this is actually mixed in with other stuff ("...Depression" is quite tight high-speed mathcore) and the incompetent bits are done far more energetically and (ahem) HOOK-y than the muffled, it's-COLD-in-here-let's-play-wearing-baseball-mitts stuff on 'Institutional Gang Rape''s records. Energetic maybe because 'Moby Dick' sang "Life is the only thing worth living for", and Curtis said it all with the first line of 'Unknown (ha) Pleasures (double ha)' - "I'M LOOKING FOR A GUIDE TO TAKE ME BY THE HAND" - I see, he wants his mommy. (Or his 'nanny state' - WHOAH! I didn't say that, I get in enough shit as it is, ignore that) Then again, this kind of babyishness isn't surprising for somebody who killed himself rather than face the consequences of abandoning his wife and child, but an artist's moral shortcomings aren't important, it's that he couldn't even transform his inadequacy into one decent line. ("Atrocity Exhibition" - wow, stealing titles from hip books and writing lyrics betraying no reading whatever of said book, that's so Iron Maiden. Actually I think "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" just unwittingly reiterates everything I've ever said about the British but here's not the time or place) And yes I know that 'Miami Mascot''s Will Shatter is a dead junkie, but between him and Curtis I know who would've given a more honest answer to this fabulous couplet question (courtesy of 'Legendary SF punk band named for TV dolphin') - "EVER THINK YOU'RE SMART/ AND THEN FIND OUT YOU'RE NOT?"
-- dave q (scrape10...), July 11th, 2002.

I really fuckin' resent my ancestors (not in a P Larkin way, altho that too, have sex w/ me & I'll tell you all about it). I mean picture the scene 70 skidillion yrs ago somewhere in Africa. "Hey we're moving." "Where to?" "Some GODDAMNED MOTHERFUCKING PLACE WHERE IT'S COLD ALL THE FUCKING TIME! It's great, see, you have to spend loads of money on extra clothes, going out is torture, even staying IN is torture because even though we'll be coming back periodically to raid oil it still won't be enough to keep our fuckin' skyrise jerry-built little hovels fuckin' warm because nothing will be insulated properly! Everybody will be depressed and coughing and frostbitten and just wanting to fuckin' hibernate but instead we'll get to go to work every fuckin' day for the privilege of not fuckin' freezing to death! Cool huh?" "Umm.." "Wait it gets better! Half of the heating budget will go to leaving the water heater on all night and even then come morning there'll only be enough hot water out of the tap to fill a motherfucking piss bottle so everybody will be walking around even more depressed and violent cuz they're unshaven and look and smell like shit all the time!"

Why the goddamn FUCK did these idiots populate this fucking wasteland? Is this any way to live? (OK I'm 1/4 Hungarian which makes me some kind of pseudo-chink or something ["Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid, unhappier than you & me!"] but what's everybody else's excuse? (Embracing-dark-side dept., maybe that's why I don't really 'get' the historically pacifist [heh] Brits mass-demo'ing 'we're sorry about that other shit we won't raid yr oil no more' [not to mention trying to convince the world for the last 50 yrs that you're really a bunch of conscience-stricken commies] - doesn't convince me - it is in your natures. Repeat after me, "We are assholes who want to kill everybody and steal their shit but don't worry we will get our just deserts, ie annihilation, and it was all our own fault for MOVING TO A GIANT MEAT LOCKER" feels good doesn't it but the craven cowering in the face of cosmic destruction doesn't SUIT you, although if somebody can figure out how to keep a cup of coffee HOT for the space of time it takes to drink the fucker then maybe the prospect of WW3 would aggravate me a bit more (World responds - "You NEED more coffee?" Uh, sorry...)
-- dave q (scrape10...), February 19th, 2003

Although, on days when I don't actually have to work, I quite enjoy the place for just wandering aimlessly, you find something new all the time. Every tube stop seems like a different country, which is good, you can escape without escaping. Also, I don't think I could ever live in a monocultural city ever again after living here, it would seem so arid and dull in comparison.

If ILE is to be remembered through the ages, it's most stunning achievement may be that it induced me to say something nice about London. What's happening to me...
-- dave q (scrape10...), August 31st, 2001.

"Two and a half minutes"? Christ, what am I, Superman on Viagra?
-- dave q (scrape10...), August 31st, 2001.

Russia - hundreds of years of perfecting every conceivable sort of human misery, and they're still coming up with new ones, which is some sort of achievement.
-- dave q (scrape10...), September 28th, 2001.

I love his sense of humour too.

I've got a CD by Kelly Chen and the only thing that isn't in Chinese is the release date (1999), it's the one with the poster in it. HK pop ROOLS! Maybe somebody could tell me more about this CD because I can't read Cantonese!

Defn. 'electrobutt' - the ultimate 80s working-class art form. Think Berlin ('Top Gun' period), Pat Benatar, Loverboy, Billy Squier (whose 'Emotions in Motion' is a lost classic for ANY era!) - buttrock for people who actually talked to GURLZ! Syndrums, VERY processed distortion buried in the mix, ballads with piano/synth/gtr lines in unison. This music owed quite alot to Prince (aforementioned buried-metal, the 'squiggly' kybds, electro-slap bass in place of plodding AOR bass), and in turn, was the source of the mesh-top/legwarmer thing that allowed Madonna to burst out of the NYC art-dance ghetto into the hearts of Middle America (from whence she [AND Prince] came) - "Burnin' Up" is a veritable homage to this most forgotten of forms - forgotten everywhere but MTV Asia it seems - I'll get to that in a minute - but first, if Madonna made the style OK, then it was transmuted into ART by...(drum roll)...

BILLY IDOL. The ultimate electro-cruising music with (crucially) cheeze-metal on top - everybody who was raving about crap like 'Graceland' and 'So' and 'Dream of the Blue Turtles' should've moved their Reeboks down to the 7-11 and stuck their ear in the Camaro with the GURLZ in the front seat, because if they heard 'Rebel Yell' they would've heard the most plasticky-beautiful glowing neon fake-genuine rockin' disco EVER! "Flesh for Fantasy", Jesus! And the next album, 'Whiplash Smile', has a six-minute symphony that's the "River Deep Mountain High"/"Stairway to Heaven"/WHATEVER-you-use-to-mean-apotheosis ("Don't Need A Gun") and other stuff that's equally good. But did anyone notice, besides the kids who were too smart for Maiden but still not dessicated/prematurely senile enough for Sting? NO! Because these crits were wetting themselves over the latest David Byrne or Sinead O'Connor atrocity, that's why! Fuck them!

Anyway, Kelly Chen! Here's the info and anyone who knows can tell me more! Track 1 is a Prince-like thing, where Kelly sounds like Sheena Easton. Track 4 is an absolutely swell soft-metal ballad, the only words in English being "You Don't Have to Say Goodbye", with those half-step time changes before the chorus like Erasure, and it's easily as good as if not better than "Take My Breath Away" (Berlin's and possibly Rex Smith's). Track 7 is the contempo one, it starts off with 10 seconds of drum'n'bass, then turns into this Hi-NRG thing that sounds really anguished about I know not what. It's got that mad effect where it pans from left to right with every syn-drum (yes, SYN-DRUM, not 'programmed', this ain't IDM!), like I haven't heard anyone do since some of the mixes of New Order's 'Round and Round'. Then it stops and does the d'n'b thing again. Track 11 MUST be heard. In the only other English text on the sleeve, it's called the "Kelly Mix" of Track 1, and it is weird. A half-assed Casio beat, synth horns, the vocal vaguely shoehorned into this rhythm, and a Devo-like mutant surf guitar louder than everything repeating the same lick all through the song. But all produced IMMACULATELY, which makes all the difference!

If ANYBODY can tell me more about this CD, Kelly, or HK pop, please do so! Even all the websites are in Cantonese. And if you want to discuss the genius of Billy Idol feel free to do that too!

Strangely enough I started writing a story where one of the characters is based on Dave Q, kind of. I don't really think I have captured the essence of Q yet, my writing is kind of disappointing.

If I had the time, I'd compile all his posts and print them out. ULTIMATE bathroom read. (I can't pay a higher compliment.)

dave is so right re. flipper and the crue it isnt even funny

Crystalmethcrystalmethcrystalmethcrystalmethmakesyouwritealotsoifyouwantotengagecreativeimpulsesmotorneuronsfiringsynapsefillserotoninfirste ssentialssunlightNO!WHY!Sunlightagainmarkcalendardaysoffthreeweekswrit eontoiletrollswriteonbutcherspaperwritewriteuntillimbiccorticalamygdal acerebrationretinalpersistencecrystalmethcrystalmethcrystalmeth!YEAH!
-- tarden (scrape10...), July 7th, 2001.

-- dave q, March 2nd, 2003

Have you ever been to Bristol, Dave?

1. They encourage people to use the word 'anal', but not in a 'good' way. Use of the word 'anal' contributes to blind acceptance of bogus Freudian mythology that ppl seem to think is more valid than astrology for some reason.
2. They usually lack annotation. Come on, I want to see ppl 'show their work' as yr math teacher used to say!
3. One always forgets the killer list addition until 20 minutes after they've done it, then gets anxious about having misrepresented themselves.
4. Following on from 3, heavy pot users seem to have more difficulty with this than most.
5. Umm, nothing! List away! (btw I hate threads that criticise thread ideas. No like, no read. Oh wait I just did, shit)
dave q (scrape10...), March 29th, 2003 9:55 AM

I don't smoke alone by choice, I just wake up earlier than most people

-- dave q (scrape10...), January 31st, 2005. (listerine)

Fucking brilliance.

You're all right, that AM review quite simply shone (and had me in minor hysterics). I wish the dude posted more; I haven't really seen him about. :(

Shall now return to the infamous Absolution review with an open mind...

dave q to be interviewed by ME and MARK S on the radio!!!

broadcasting this Tuesday on Resonance 104.4 FM at 10pm GMT

podcast to be available here --> http://freakytrigger.co.uk/slugoftime

this is GO

revive!!!!!

KROKUS - Stayed Awake All Night

The Americans have spoken! The world will not be made smaller by computers but by grinding gears and great oil-burning engines. It’s not about security or secularisation, it’s about keeping the motorik running. The reason electronic pop music never became culturally dominant in the demonised heartland is that synth duos didn’t have large trucks loaded with equipment backing up to venues. The future was not designed by Kraftwerk but by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, although this 1983 BTO cover by a Swiss band incorporates “Metal on Metal”, except with volume-swell mirages evolving into a circular guitar pattern like the lights of the city coming into view after driving through the methamphetamine night. The DEA claims that “methamphetamine is attractive to people in rural communities because labs can be set up in abandoned barns”, when the real reason is that you have to drive about three hours to get anywhere! Those eerie green night-vision Iraq broadcasts are a good approximation of how rural people actually see things, especially during the nocturnal segments of their 96-hour days. The album this appears on is called ‘Headhunter’, and was apparently recorded at ‘Bee Jay Studios’!

--dave q, 2004

missed out on hearing sinker & dave q on the radio???? :(

ysi tracer?

think you have been praising him for some time, geeta

i've enjoyed all these revives

^Yes

hey brodie - it's linked on this page (it's the story called "the red brain") -

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/slugoftime/

got it thx Tracer

re: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/slugoftime

dave q has a great voice. drawly and swaggering, like a literate garfield. id expected a sharp quick snappy voice, quite surprised

(from The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald...)

in a sea of weed/ where everyone/ would love to drown
― dave q, Saturday, 28 August 2004 17:17 (8 years ago)

From Molly Hatchet vs Lynyrd Skynyrd

I think Hatchet made a mistake when they switched producers from Frank Frazetta to Boris Vallejo. Thank God they never sunk to working with the brothrs Hildebrandt

― dave q, Friday, September 28, 2001 5:00 PM (11 years ago)

seriously though what happened to him? we were in touch for a while but that's a lifetime ago now, and he had the Virgin Killer piece in that Marooned book but where is Dave Q anyway

i assume he returned to the q continuum

I'm in very irregular touch with one of his old bandmates, he might know.

DQ on ZZ Top's Mescalero

Todavia Tres Hombres

Filthier than a buck-nekked dip in the Rio Grande downstream from a maquiladora. Filthier (in every sense; there's even a "motherfucker") than XXX, which itself was better than anything to come out of Japan since Locust Abortion Technician, if not "You're Gonna Miss Me." And that's no slight on the honorable Japanese, compañeros. They made cars once, but maquiladora is the new "industry." To quote Pigface—"Welcome to Mexico . . . Asshole!"

Mescalero is structured like a blues show with really old guys—unsurprisingly as the ZZ arc = Stones arc reversed (i.e., Deguello/El Loco/Eliminator = Exile/Bleed/Beggars). Except ZZ aren't "done" yet. (Next album = Reconquista!) The new album's first third is Afterburner-type stuff (i.e., "chords"), except with vocoders. Daft? Zizi! Then just when you're resigned to another Afterburner the constant involuntary-volume-raising starts, and you're like "Master of Sparks" Jeb Bush cranking the lever up and down. Then they bring back Alfredo Garcia's head, then "Dusted" "combines IDM and rock" a lot more effectively than some other popular bands I could name, then you take the Alamo and bless it in the name of the tres hombres and Billy says (over a Don Brewer-type drum solo—that is the genius of this record in particular, in that the '80s bits are like being in the '80s except better, and the '70s bits are exactly like the '70s bits that everybody probably missed because they'd passed out by the time J. Geils or ARS or whoever was opening finished), "Bitch took my liquor."

Jesus was actually going to New Orleans to talk to Mr. Trafficante, by the way. Heard it on the (Camp)X(Ray), when I was swimming to Cuba. From Mozambique. ZZ Frelimo!? How do they know about all this shit that went down, anyway? Well I think it's something sinister. They were the bikers at the Capitol Altamont, and if you don't feed them their liquor'n'dust ("Piece": "gimme a piece . . . gimme a piece . . . of YER LUUUUUUUVE"), the reconquista promised since the foreboding Rio Grande Mud(whose cover shows them wading across it) is gonna be muy ugggly. Quite a lot of Mescalero is in Spanish, which leads me to believe it will play a major role in Project Eliminator in the bloody early days of New Aztlan. Viva la muerte!

Why Gordon Lightfoot continues to captivate us so...

Here's another vote for "Sundown". Poke holes in the stereo speaker cone and you'll hear the missing link between VU and the Stones. Speaking of VU, "Edmund Fitzgerald" is a far more crushingly monolithic droney dirge than they (or Spacemen 3) ever managed, plus it's about Mother Ocean reclaiming us all (the gravitational response to Can that was later adopted by Parliament and Drexciya), proving that Canada has evolved a sophisticated strain of nature mysticism that matches that which appeared in Russia centuries earlier (though entirely dissimilar - N. American variety characterised by a) existential will-to-power v. elements ['manifest destiny' on macro level] b) problems/opportunities of testing Enlightenment emancipation on crucible of 'nature' in purest form [the realpolitik that passeth all understanding] whereas Russian variety = syncretic combination of Orthodox Christianity and Siberian folk traditions/survival strategies [i.e. 'culture'?])

― dave q, Monday, July 8, 2002 5:00 PM (11 years ago)

Defending the As-Yet-Undefended: The Manhattan Transfer

That album's "Java Jive" did for caffeine what VU did for heroin, therefore MT invented DC hardcore

― dave q, Friday, July 11, 2003 3:13 AM (11 years ago)

This can't be Dave, can it? Heavily edited?

http://www.cxmagazine.com/sscxwc-single-speed-portland-dave-queen

Really strongly doubt it.

If that is Dave then well done for getting in shape!