I
really gotta be in the mood for this kinda stuff, which is to say, like,
if I met some painfully fashionable, Jean Harlowe blonde, world traveling,
college babe with an Edie Sedgewick fixation, who really digs stuff like
Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee, and she's providing me with alot of magic
mushroom spiked hot tea, from an Alice In Wonderland antique tea cozy, at
her rich relative's loft, like, on Newberry Street, in Boston, in a room
full of old tubas, and banjos, and accordions and artfully-framed, 60's
Fillmore East psychedelic posters that are starting to go a little fuzzy
while she bores me deliciously, with that cute but hard to decipher,
thick, I dunno - Polish (?) accent of hers, and her gigantic eyes and
overstuffed lips, are makin' me feel like I've been here before, and the
whole apartments starting to melt into bubbling, green lava, maybe
then....
JEFF WARD used to play guitar for my favest English rose, glam rockers,
GUNFIRE DANCE, in the Flash Metal glory days of yore, whose garage-y soul
music, and trashy pop elegance, preceded all of today's trendiest
innovators, by like, 17 odd years. GUNFIRE DANCE just smoked, the whole
band rocked like devils, but especially J.W., and the unforgettably star-like, ANT,
their sneeringly poetic vocalist, never to be confused with that gay
celebrity fatclub host "Ant", from cable TV in America.
I
hope some kinda deluxe GUNFIRE DANCE retrospective someday sees the light
of day.
After conquering
C.B.G.B.'s and making D-Generation look like
hairsprayed, motley-crude idiots, the Gunfires split up. Jeff Ward stayed
in
NYC, and the others went back to Birmingham, and reformed as the STEPPIN'
RAZORS, appearing on the essential I-94 Recordings FLASH METAL TRASH PUNK
compilation, "DRUNK ON ROCK PART2". Check E-Bay for it.
Jeff's solo stuff is a lot of mixed-bag, spaced-out, low-fi, wiggy,
experimental "Head music" full of trippy whimsy that reminds you of
Donovan, the Pink Fairies, Marc Bolan, Tom Waits, the Soft Boys, Nick
Drake, and any
five obscure 60's bands you just read about in the latest issue of MOJO
magazine.
I'm listening to it on a snowy day when I haven't had enough sleep, it's
cold in this room, I got problems, AND there's no Eurpean chick, no
shrooms,
or banjos, or framed handbills of any kind, but I'm actually still diggin'
it alot. For when you wanna get mellow yellow, can you dig? Farout, dreamy
folk-rock and eccentric English balladry for fabulous furry freak brothers
who've no desire whatsoever to beat up Andy Partdridge, or Robyn
Hitchcock,
ever, which, I suppose, even includes me, at this point....must be the
season of the witch...