Link My Music

[Chris]

Almost in the same vein as the Hecklehouse CD club, if you come across some good free music links, post them here and feel free to add a little editorial if you see fit. Here is my first contribution:

For those of you who care anything (or know anything, more appropriately) about punk rock, this is cool - the entire legendary We Got Power compilation "Party Or Go Home" available for download, song by song, in MP3 format:

wegotpowerfilms.com/info/party_or_go_home.htm

Seeing El Duce on there brought back some memories. He was one crass sick mother fucker, but a lot of that was shtick, contrary to popular opinion. He was not a rapist, racist, pedophile, sadist, necrophiliac, or any of the other heinous things he'd been accused of from time to time. I actually got to know El Duce very well of the course of about a 7 or 8 year span playing shitty little punk rock dumps in the Inland Empire and Orange County areas. He even emceed a few gigs I played, opening for the Voodoo Glow Skulls, in an old haunt in Riverside known as Harry C's, which doubled as a dance club for UCR students. He was a decent guy in "real life." For those of you who may be familiar with El Duce, I can say that amongst friends, in private, he never wavered from his claim that Courtney Love paid him tens of thousands of dollars to kill Kurt Cobain - money he claimed to have collected although never intending to follow through with the job. RIP Duce:

[$heriff Tom]

He was not a rapist, racist, pedophile, sadist, necrophiliac, or any of the other heinous things he'd been accused of from time to time.

Well, coming from an El Duce / Mentors fan, he sure played the part well. I saw him on one of those Springer sorta talkfests, and he did a pretty good impersonation of a racist. He also had the "pedophelia" thing down, as he had a 15 year old with him that he freely admitted he was coupling with.

So what was the story there, Cho, was he just having a joke at our expense?

I also knew security at SUNDANCE rock club on Long Island and they told me they had to kick some little girls out of the backstage area, in various sorts of undress.

I have heard the Courtney Love story, and the subsequent death by train, and I believe there was something to the story. Although people on the other side have a good time painting Duce as pretty much a homeless vagabond around that time.

[Chris]

Don't get me wrong, Duce was a loser at the end. He was a homeless vagabond toward the end, however he got by on couch surfing and favors from people who knew him well and hangers-on infatuated with the legend that didn't know him so well.

His last breath was taken less than a mile from where I was living at the time, in the La Sierra section of Riverside, CA on the train tracks behind the Stater Brothers market. Witnesses say that watched as this disheveled drunken man step on to the tracks, turned to face an oncoming train and saluted the locomotive with a sieg heil.

I dont mean to paint Duce as a saint. He was, as I said, a very crass person. He said and did inappropriate things all of the time, yet it was not out of any malice. He did it because he had a disconnect in the brain that tells normal people what they can get away with and what they can not. He was a pussy hound and he probably had more than his fair share of unsavory sexual practices, he was a drunk, an addict, and he had a very very foul sense of humor complimented by a complete absence of common courtesy. What I meant to imply was that he was not a malicious person...he just didn't know any better. And he certainly wasn't a sexual deviant to criminal proportions the way some of his music and some of his legend would suggest.

I can't speak on the Springer show...but I can say that El Duce knew that his bread and butter was his on-stage persona and he played it to the hilt. I'm pretty sure that he had enough of-age skanks ready to please his needs that he didn't need to resort to shacking up with a 15 year old in real life. He frequently hung with numerous Hispanic members of the punk rock community as well.

[Chris]

Five free Shattered Faith tunes. Shattered Faith was at some point, in my opinion, the best thing Southern California had to offer in the way of punk rock:

www.shatteredfaith.us/audio

[cactusjames]

They interviwed El Duce for the Kurt and Courtney documentary. He told the entire story of a meeting between him and Courtney(I can't remember if he said there were more people than just Courtney like lawyers etc, I have this thing in VHS so I havn't seen it in years)and the money offered. He called her a crazy bitch, which I liked. He then said he had said no because he didn't think she was serious, and when he wound up dead, he knew she was for real and wish he would have taken her up on it. Just the story he had said, being someone not familiar with him, I can't say for sure what was his act or whatnot, but right after the interview with him the screen goes to black and in print says he mysteriously died by getting hit by a train.It's fucking compelling evidence, and really when I think of it, it bugs me how sloppy the police work was in Cobains case, if they had followed up all leads and looked at details, maybe they could have heard El Duce's story and gone from there. Fucking sad on all accounts.

[Chris]

I think any cop worth his salt would have spent 5 seconds with El Duce and dismissed him as an unreliable source of information.

Duce had claimed he actually pocketed money from Love....which, if it were the 30, 40, 50 grand reported, I wonder why he was living like a hobo in the armpit of Southern California (the Inland Empire) toward the end.

Coincidentally enough, through my pals in Texas I also made the acquaintance of a guy in Dallas named Turner Von something or other , who sang for a band called Pump'n Ethyl (decent enough band) whose real claim to fame was that he is the guy who socked Cobain in the face in 91 at a really cool Dallas club called Trees. I only met him the one time but he was all to eager to regale me with his story about punching out Cobain....I'm sure he embellishes on the story a little more each time he tells it....and I only got the story through prodding from my friends, "Dude ask him about the time he punched Kurt Cobain, ask him, ask him..."

[cactusjames]

If I'm not the mistaken, that video is on the dvd that came with the box set released a few years back. The venue was a small club but I can't remember if it said if it was in Dallas or not. Anyway, if the one I got on video is what you're talking about, it went down like this. Cobain jumps into the crowd during a solo which sonded worse than usual since hands all around him were hitting the strings etc. As he gets back towards the stage, someone was standing to the side of the stage, off to the side by the camera a little bit. He was a decent sized guy, not a mammoth bouncer or anything, but he looked big enough. He grabs Kurt to drag him closer to the stage and help him up. Since Cobains back was turned I can only assume he thought some crazy fan was trying to attack him. Out of instinct, Cobain took the butt of the guitar and just wailed this guy with two or three good shots to the head. The guy finally throws Cobain on stage and before Kurt can even stand straight up, he gets dropped by a right hand and this guy just came right after him and kept throwing shots till Krist throws down the bass and Dave jumped over the drum kit to break it up with a bunch of other guys who gathered on stage from the side. It was just cool in the fact as soon as Kurt got hit, music stopped and there was Dave and Krist to back him up, but music died and just fedback and muffled yelling. Pretty cool vid if you have the time to troll for it on youtube.

I could be wrong since he was prone to getting his ass kicked quite a bit. If so I wasted your time and to that I say tee hee.

[Chris]

Yeah, the club was in Dallas, called Trees. VERY cool club in Deep Ellum....which might be one of the coolest concentrated night life scenes I've seen anywhere in the country.

The guys name is Turner Van Blarcum, former lead singer of Pump'n Ethyl.

[Jackass]

I saw Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper at Trees. Is that the club with the big overhead doors?

I took a picture of myself at the Texas School Book Depository sporting my DK shirt on that visit.

[Chris]

That book depository is a cool museum. I laughed at the sign on the door...

In small font it said, "Please do not bring firearms in the museum."
In LARGE font it read, "NO SMOKING"

Not sure about the overhead doors, but it's the club with the stage-side pillars that are large trees.

[Chris]

I love finding audio gems like this.

From THE CROWD, Orange County's self-proclaimed "first hardcore band" ... great band by the way, you can download their entire "Letterbomb" record gratis, as well as their entire contribution to the classic Posh Boy Records "Beach Blvd" compilation from the early years of OC Punk rock.

www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/9953/sounds.htm

[Chris]

www.mohawkradio.com

This is more or less a myspace of band pages. Every page seems to have at least a couple of full songs for download in mp3 format.

The site hosts bands falling under almost every imaginable sub-genre under the "alternative" umbrella: goth, Oi, grindcore, psychobilly, surf, and tons more.

[Chris]

skinhead moonstomp (old Oi!, original ska, 2-tone ska, reggae, etc...) - oioioi.ru/mp3/skinhead/moonstomp.html