HAMMERDOWN TURPENTINE NEWSLETTER
"The Saloon Tribune"
JUNE 2004 Vol. 3, No. 3
Forward to a friend. This is not the "dead fussbudget Felix Unger."
CALL TO ACTION: Hammerdown Turpentine is playing with Virgil Shaw at the Make-Out Room on Thursday, June 10. (3225 22nd St. near Mission) There is another band playing called Tracorum. I think we’re the middle band but who knows? $6.
Dear cultural elite and inebriated slobs,
Shall we not look back but drink and when the glass is empty smash it to the ground? Does every asshole in San Francisco have those dumb white iPod wires dangling down his shirt? That means, "Hell yes!"
Dull boozing witless porkers! I know this world is horrible. All I like here are the artichokes and women. So join Hammerdown Turpentine in a night of self-destructive yet always polite behavior. Like a trip through hell, Virgil will be there.
One day we might have that "common ownership of the means of production" thing and that "approximate equality of incomes" thing and that "living forever" thing and then we can stop all this escapism. Until then, we’ve got to rock out with our Spock out. Broken jardy, cardy, smoocho!
Go in peace to love and serve me drinks.
Jif Johnson
Member in Good Standing:
P.P.S.
STORYTIME Beware the mustachioed woman at the end of this story. Once there was a skedaddle-in, unsuccessful by its very nature, to protest the spread of arms in sorority houses (the spreading of legs was thought to be something to work up to). Various fathers and Fathers found themselves all over town. One such father was Mr. Ron Palillo.
Muddle Instead of Music (MIM)
Hillbilly Countersmut Psy-Ops (HCPO)
Well put a hood on my head and point at my genitals! Attention: Khaki-wackies, victory girls, and good-time Charlottes. I’ve been thinking. My wife’s got it bad. Not Mrs. Christopher Reeve bad but bad. That’s why I’m dedicating this show to all the ladies. Hell, her included. Hammerdown Turpentine is a big supporter of women. Is that respect in our pockets or are we glad to see you? You know, June is the Month of the Woman–or at least the Month of the Belly-Shirt–so get out and celebrate! As the shoeshine guy always yells at me on the corner of Market and 2nd, "Where’s the PRIDE?!"
I hate to talk about myself in these newsletters–it’s about the BAND. But. This show is the day before my birthday so you can buy me a ride home at midnight! I’m almost too old to be in a band! And being too old’s not something you can hide with a baggy shirt. I can’t believe I’m going to die. I hope the band goes on. They can get some asshole to sing the damn songs and write the damn newsletters. I bet they already know who it’ll be! The NERVE!
Ron didn’t much care for politics so he made the most of having skedaddled and kept on until he found a bar just outside Roanoke where mourners from the funeral of a Mrs. Runella Mae Lawhorn were talking trash. One thing led to another and some gal with a mustache came out the john and hit Ron over the head with a muffin tin yelling, "Delta" after every bloody smack.
HANK WILLIAMS POEM
Hunched over the mic,
Decked out in Audrey’s trimming,
Pulling off the whipsaw voice
And pawing with his feet,
He’s still playing every barn-n-seed.
Hank’s on his way again,
Across a world of one-lane-ways
And roadside ads for Burma Shave,
Fishtailed Caddies,
And a million singles sold:
A million yellow labels turning
With a little lion on each side.
Hank’s woods-animal distrust of people
Sends him crappie fishing, something to like
Alone; but you know he likes the girls
A million miles from big A,
With their tight-lipped smile
He’d open with a well-cast song
To reveal the most sweet
Missing teeth.
SIBILANCE ANONYMOUS
Plan: Critique bands solely by their soundcheck. Write up in the paper.
ZAGAT’S REVIEW OF HDT
(3225 22nd St. near Mission, reservations not accepted)
"Nothing compares" to this "grand high poobah" of rock, a San Francisco "temple of testosterone" (and "shrine to productive practices") that's voted the top show in this Survey for the 5th year running; look for a "glorious performance" that you can "drink yourself drunk to"; in sum, Hammerdown Turpentine’s "right on the money" when it comes to the "best shit in the known world."
**** $
HDT ART INSTALLATIONS
Note by translator.– Tu mettrais l'univers entier dans ta ruelle.
THE GERMAN H CHORD
Believe or disbelieve any part of this submission as your own faculties and proclivities dictate. I'll be sleeping contented and vindicated regardless.
When I had attained the age of seventeen my parents resolved that I should become a student at the University of Ingolstadt at Rückspuleinrichtung.
There I found an underground music scene secretly in control of world events, operating as an omnipotent and evil cabal like a certain small group of Bavarian anti-monarchists that briefly flourished during the late 18th century.
I spent days in their coke-filled libraries. There on pages that fell apart in my hands I first read of the German H Chord.
I found an old banjo in a Heidelberg thrift shop amid silverware of unmentionable origin and bits of sausage some vague evil protected from decades of mice and twisted my fingers as I had studied. With a strum I discovered the Frankenstein sound. Oh, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance…
And soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose: to pickle cabbage. Wherefore not?
Auf Wiedersehen.
Ask whiteaxxxe:
http://www.guitarsite.com/newsletters/010122/12.shtml**UPDATE**BREAKING NEWS** UPDATE**BREAKING NEWS**
The San Francisco authorities raided singer Jif Johnson’s ranch on May 18. During a search of the property, the police seized more than a dozen computers as well as numerous videotapes, letters, business records and a digital camera, according to court documents.
Two days later, Mr. Johnson was arrested and booked on multiple counts of playing and conspiring to perform the dread German H chord. He pleaded not guilty at his first appearance on June 3 and afterward caused a ruckus outside the San Francisco courthouse when he jumped onto the roof of a blue van and exhorted a large crowd of fans to cheer him on.
Earlier that morning, Judge Booker Noe of San Francisco County Superior Court chided Mr. Johnson for arriving 15 minutes late to the hearing.
"Mr. Johnson, you have started out on the wrong foot with me," Judge Noe told the defendant, who wore oversized aviator-style sunglasses and a silver armband. "I want to advise you that I will not put up with that."
CALL TO ACTION
Virgil Shaw. Hammerdown Turpentine. Make-Out Room. Thursday. Put it together and what’ve you got? Bippity-boppity-boo.
By the by, being the hotsy-totsy globetrotters we are, Hammerdown Turpentine’s playing a show in Reno on Saturday, July 24. So if you know anyone in Reno, tell them to look out for us: Zephyr Lounge (1074 S. Virginia St.) We’ll be sweaty.
While I’m wasting my time telling you about things in other cities, if you’re in Chicago between June 19 and July 24, you can see two pieces of Art I submitted under my secret name:
http://www.westernexhibitions.com/this_thing/index.html You’ll know which one is me. Thanks to Paul of jibangus.com.
TO UNSUBSCRIBE
Reply to this e-mail with the phrase: "James Inhofe (R-Okla.) is an asshole and admitted Presbyterian." in the subject line.
CORRECTION: My last newsletter should have mentioned that Gil Gerard went out of his way to diminish Erin Grey's role. Originally, the credits of the pilot were going to say "Starring Gil Gerard and Erin Grey," and Gerard demanded that her name not appear alongside his.
NOTE: At the sender's request, this e-mail was edited for grammar and punctuation. Although Clint might have fucked it up.
BONUS: INTERVIEW WITH JIF JOHNSON
President George W. Bush: Do you see Hammerdown Turpentine’s representation of musical transgression as a singularly provocative prosthetics of the Self?
Jif Johnson: What?
Bush: What are your songs? They seem to embody a desire to jettison themselves beyond pre-conditioned boundaries required by normative behavior. What are they running from and where to? Besides alluding to instability, vulnerability and mortality, your catchy ditties seem to suggest an anarchistic unleashing of forces capable of intense transformation. Is your playground of images a metaphorical flight from various authoritarian enclosures?
Johnson: Ha! I can’t believe I’m talkin’ to the President of the United States!
Bush: Do you wish to propose the excessive image as a revolutionary efflorescence of identity, a kind of post- humanist revolt, a jouissance?
Johnson: What’s jouissance?
Bush: In other words, it seems that you're proposing a profligate ethos as an efficient, forceful and above all engaging communicative structure. In Hammerdown Turpentine’s new album, "Ain’t No Grave," you propose a wonderland of stigmata, deformities of all kind, to fascinate, to aggressively and openly seduce the ear. Do you think, or do you even take into account the question of whether your representations are discontinuous enough to disengage from the objectification of exploitive fetishism and what are your thoughts on the question of alcoholism, trundling, and on the imposition of limits on form or on artistic self censorship?
Johnson: Uhhhhhh.
Bush: So, like Plato's demon that existed between the human and the monstrous, you want to locate your representations in a synthetic intermediary realm.
Johnson: Sure. You should talk to Sam.
EXTRA BONUS: WHY IS JAMES INHOFE SENDING ME HATE MAIL?
Name: SexxxyJames457
Name: SexxxyJames457
Hometown: Tulsa, OK
I have no words to comment on your opinion, it is so unbelievably full of nonsense. I don't know how an 'intelligent ' person can be so ignorant. I'd be happy to pay a one-way ticket for you to leave this great country of ours for good...and go live wherever you think it is so much better, Jif Johnson. You discust me. I don't consider you an American.
Name: SexxxyJames457
Hometown: Washington, D.C.
Whose side are you on? Your an idiot and so are the people the read your crap! Happy to see our forces lose people? bet you are, I only wish you had the balls to come over here and spout your BS with your friends, maybe you could pick up an Ak47 with our enemies (or mine) and I could enjoy putting a round right between your pathetic eyes. Your a piece of shit!
PLEASE NOTE
We are now in the process of our annual Performance Reviews, and all HDT Army members are being reviewed at this time. I will be performing all reviews for our department.
The steps are as follows:
Supervisors meet with each member individually to discuss his/her evaluation.