JEFFREY MORGAN’S MEDIA BLACKOUT #656.318!

Jersey – Generation Genocide (Republic) :: Joe Strummer liked the Clash, too. But he didn’t make a career out of copying them for the rest of his life.

The Cooper Temple Clause – Kick Up The Fire And Let The Flames Break Loose (RCA) :: More proof that you should never let kids play with matches.

SIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: Sheesham & Lotus & ’Son – 1929: The New Kings Of Old Time (Sepiaphone) :: The problem with the past is that it ain’t present no more—but if you’re half the shellac supporter that I think you are, then there’s reason to tip your battered fedora and hoist a bootleg bottle of hooch ’cause Sheesham Crow (fiddle - harp - kazoo), Lotus Wight (banjo - kazoo), and ’SonSanderson (sousaphone) are here to transform your day from dreary to cheery with the hottest and heppest halcyon happening since R. Crumb’s pioneering Cheap Suit Serenaders musically paved a path to the past back in the ’70s.

And for those of you not in the know, it behoves me to point out that Robert Crumb is nothing less than the 20th Century’s greatest and most influentially cogent comix creator that the world has ever seen; a modern man cursed with a perverted poet’s soul who, incongruously trapped in a world he never made, perpetually pines away for a simpler day in a barely electrical era.

Well, what with it being recorded by one measly old two bit dime store microphone and all, 1929 is the kind of bracing monophonic tonic that’d make even an old curmudgeon like Crumb sit up and smile. For not only does this twelve track treasure take you back to those bygone bucolic days of yesteryear, it’ll jostle your overloaded brainpan into fondly remembering how much better yesterday’s music was compared to today’s complex caterwauling.

But don’t you go thinking that 1929 is some kinda misplaced nostalgia act like Tiny Tim warbling “Tiptoe Through The Tulips” or the New Vaudeville Orchestra doing the megaphone bit on “Winchester Cathedral” ’cause it’s as vibrant and vital as a headline torn from last night’s All Star Final or this morning’s Bulldog Edition—and if you don’t believe me, just give a listen to such timeless cautionary tales as the double-dealin’ wife-cheatin’ original composition “Drunken Nights” or the Jaybird Coleman classic of lust on the loose “Giving It Away” with its cautionary lyric: “Well a nickel is a nickel and a dime’s a dime. I got a house fulla children; ain’t none of ’em mine!”

Bonus points for having a retrographic album cover design that peerlessly promotes the era in question and has a label design that’s suitable for framing and worth the price of admission alone. On second thought, mebbe you’d best buy two copies: one for your doll’s wall and one for y’all the next time you’re having a rent party.

R. Crumb And His Cheap Suite Serenaders – R. Crumb And His Cheap Suite Serenaders (Blue Goose) :: Exactly!

Be seeing you!