MEDICATION: A BUDDYHEAD BLOG

Lothar And The Hand People

I woke up this morning thinking of a record that I had in storage. This record an obscure release on Capital Records by a band called 'Lothar And The Hand People'. Considered as the band who introduced synthesizers into rock and roll which also had a trusty theremin called "Lothar". I love a band with theremin! According to an article from westword.com the band had a series of near-misses in the music-world. One story goes that, "[Jimi] Hendrix and the Hand People (particularly [the member] King) became buddies, jamming together on a regular basis and earning a reputation that caught the attention of Linda Keith, a talent scout for Chas Chandler, a member of the British act the Animals as well as a budding entrepreneur. Chandler arranged to catch Lothar and Hendrix during one evening, but he arrived at the Nite Owl just as the Hand People's first set was ending. Conly says Chandler chatted with the musicians during the break, promising to catch their second set of the evening after eyeballing Hendrix. "Then he left," Conly allows, "and never came back." The reason? Chandler was blown away by Hendrix, whom he took with him to England, remade as a psychedelic guitar god and set on his way to international acclaim." A series of unfortunate events? Perhaps. At any rate, enough music blahblah... just listen to their songs starting with the wonderful "MACHINES"!

[DOWNLOAD "MACHINES"]

[DOWNLOAD "COMIC STRIP" ]

[DOWNLOAD "THIS IS IT"]

[DOWNLOAD "THATS ANOTHER STORY"]

Official(?) website with show list and a few psychedelic posters.

Bob Dylan - "Modern Times"

The new Bob Dylan record came out today, but I got it last night with a few bonus videos cuz I'm a dork and preordered it on itunes. I've only listened to it twice, but it sounded pretty damn good at 2am baked. It's certainly a lot better than I thought it'd be. Yes, it's true... he does mention Alicia Keys in the first song, which is both lame and bizarre at the same time. But Bobby can do pretty much whatever he wants cuz like he said in his new interview in Rolling Stone: "I own the 60's. who's gonna argue with me on that? I don't even want them, you can have em." With that said, even if I figure out I'm not into this record after I listen to it a few more times... "bad" Dylan is way better than "good" anything else. Check out this video of "Things Have Changed" that comes as bonus material if you buy it on itunes (prolly comes with the cd/dvd version too). Does anyone know if this song is on any thing else Zimmerman put out aside from a few best of albums? Here's another good quote from that Rolling Stone interview:

"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really. You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like … static… Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded 'em. CDs are small. There's no stature to it."

Kasabian - "Empire"

It took me a while to get into Kasabian and their first record (mostly because the singer guy kinda raps sometimes and for the most part rapping totally bums me out), but now I'm fully backing these brits. And after seeing/hearing their new video/single "Empire", I can't wait to hear their follow up record of the same name. If the rest of the record is only half as good as the single, it'll still slay that new pile of shit Primal Scream tried to pass off as a record. Supposedly these dudes kicked out one of the guitar players recently but I dunno if he was one of the main songwriters or not. At least the crazy tall dude with the weird hat is still in the band, not enough bands have dudes who can pull off the bizarre hat look. I guess there's a cd single out in the UK of this song but even if we do have that shit over here it's gonna be way too expensive so I'm gonna have to wait for the full length. If someone wants to email me the mp3s from the single, I'll post em up here. Either way, check out the video below below and hit up their myspace page to stream some more songs. DO IT!

(Download - "Empire" single edit)

Thanks to "Anshuman Iddamsetty" for submitting this mp3...

The Kinks - "20th Century Man"

Been getting a lot of emails again lately telling me I'm lazy and I need to update this page (and the gossip) a lot more. Sorry dudes but I've been busy trying to run a label. We had five records come out yesterday, one even has a drawing of a boner on it! If you like what we do here at Buddyhead, the best thing you can do to support us is to go to your local record store and buy one (or all) of them. If they don't have em in stock, tell em to order them through Red Eye. Check the label page for more info on our new releases... blah blah blah...

So anyways, back to me... I've been on a "Muswell Hillbillies" kick lately. I don't have much to say about this jam aside from this later-era Kinks record has been on my stereo at least twice a day the past few weeks. I can't get enough of the first song, "20th Century Man". Ray is kickin' ass on this one with his lyrics! Fuck man, I don't wanna be here either!

(Download - "20th Century Man")