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Buy me a X-Mas gift here ... FIENDISH CURIOSITIES!

TRACTOR SEX FATALITY

Local Seattle noisemakers that I'm going to interview tonight for Resonance magazine ... finally shoving some truly ugly rocknroll into those limp-wristed pages.

Dig "Rot Macumba" first, and if it sounds like music to you, keep on truckin'. And if you happen to be near the Lobo Saloon tonight, stop by and buy me a drink. See you there.

Donna Wilkes Unofficial Fan Site

What? You've never seen Angel? Or Blood Song? What about Hello, Larry ? What the hell have you been doing with your time?

Mexican Rock and Roll Rumble!

One of my favorite bootlegs comps, all on line as MP3s courtesy of this cat what calls himself RecordBrother. You'll dig this, no doubt.

I recommend starting off with track #8, "La Noyia De Mi Mejor Amigo" (translates out to "The Girl of My Best Friend") by Los Sinners, a band name I've contemplated stealing many times. Includes the best version of "Hello I Love You" ever recorded, bar none.

Michigan Chillers!

Who knew such a thing existed? My 11-year old nephew Anthony, for one. I just learned today this is his favorite series of books, as I'm sure it would be for me if I was his age. The puzzle of how to make Alpena, Petoskey and Gaylord seem like exciting places to kids weaned on video games and gory prime time television has finally been solved.

Anthony just started guitar lessons too, which means he has a head start on me, development-wise (I didn't actually "learn" anything til I was 15 at least). I plan on sending him an Apollo 9 cd as soon as he learns three chords, just to reinforce how much can be done with them. Younger nephew Brandon (seven years old) is enrolled in ballet right now, and reportedly he's already the most advanced in his class. Unfortunately, I have no wisdom to pass down on the dance front, but I'm proud nonetheless.

The Damned Damned Damned project was anticlimactic, of course, but a purely positive experience and that's all I can ask for in this life. Everyone at the Fun House was on their best behavior, I got to play as loud as I fucking wanted, earned a small amount of free bourbon and ten bucks to boot. Jeremy made me proud by declaring onstage that "everything the Damned did after this record sucked ass," thus alienating 75% of our potential audience and driving many of them to the back porch area of the bar to ignore us.

I broke a string on "I Fall," just three fucking songs in and wham, right during that great bridge ("I'm a fallin angel, fallin down, be a fallin angel, wontcha come on around"). Luckily, the crestfallen look on my mug drew a good samaritan to my side, a bass player from a suburban-Seattle Oi band who offered to help and changed the string in about a quarter of the time it would have taken me. I admit that threw me off my groove and there were some tuning problems that I had to finally just ignore, but for the most part I kept it together and there were a few transcendent moments where we were all playing the same thing at the same time. Unfortunately, now I want to buy a bass amp, which will be hard to pull off without some sacrifices ... I should never have sold the Sunn.

Brother James did a fine job as Brian James, and I'm glad to report that I resisted his insistence on all of us dressing up in "punk" costumes. "You gotta get in the Halloween spirit," he said, "come on, that's what punk is all about!" I disagreed with calm ferocity even as he taunted me, but he just couldn't understand that what he interpreted as a fear of letting loose was simply my innate sense of dignity ... so James spray painted his hair an egg-yellow color, wore white lipstick and convinced drummer Vic to mascara on a pencil-thin moustache (which I have to admit looked awful cool). A pair of pink sunglasses was my only concession, so when the moment of truth onstage came, I got looser than anyone in the room and looked sharp doing it. Baby, these Seattle cats need to relax and get righteous ...

Fluctuations

One of the stranger films of the pre-hardcore era, Fluctuations is a unique collusion of underground art sensibilities and crass smut appetites. Non-narrative sex films aren't entirely unusual, but this baffling softcore feature doesn't appear to be a patchwork of outtakes like more cynical exercises, so perhaps director/screenwriter Leo J. Rhewdnal had a method to his madness. Fluctuations flits from one strange image to the next, occasionally capturing a physically alluring moment, but more often simply gaping at the strangely passionless clutches of two, three, or more writhing bodies. The photography isn't entirely flattering to its subjects; stretch marks, cavernous pores, and tummy rolls figure in nearly every frame, as the decidedly ordinary cast casually simulates a variety of positions, obsessions, and kinks. Scab fondling, simulated "water sports," and shaving cream warfare figure in the bizarre displays, with occasional interruptions from a kung fu demonstration in someone's living room. Fluctuations' out-of-sync soundtrack, filled with raspy, distorted panting and scatological dirty talk, helps plunge some of the sillier scenes into an eerier place, turning two nude, giggling young people into figures from some disturbing wet dream. Perhaps this is a bold, honest attempt at boiling the skin flick down to its basest elements, discarding silly stories, cardboard characters, and other filler for a stream of sexually provocative acts. Most likely there's something more pretentious at work in Rhewdnal's concept, but luckily whatever it all means has been lost to time. Fluctuations is probably too abstract for most viewers to stay interested for its entire 69-minute run, but there's no other film quite like it, and that's high praise indeed. — Fred Beldin