Supreme greetings of love to you all!
Welcome to the May or May and a half or whatever it is AotM during one of the stranger stretches of your life - corona-time.
May 1 we gave you Dante and Eros – Mirage - now May 15 it is time an All-New AL BLOCH. As you know, Al is not as famous as Taylor Swift, Willie Nelson or Foo-fighters. Nonetheless, I must tell you good and true readers, that if you put Al head-to-head, one-on-one, mano-on-mano with any of them in a knuckles-bared Battle of the Bands, Al would win. EVERY TIME.
What? What? Yes! This is the True Story of Al Bloch.
First off, let’s just say Al has a whole new CD of all new Al-tunes - It Was All Once Bright Jewels, all recorded in Seattle, Washington in 2-0-2-0. It has all new songs with Brother Kurt Bloch of ye olde Fastbacks on guitar and knobs. It goes all the way from two-minute smash to sorta prog-rock epics. It has an outer space cover done by daughter Olivia. Two fantastic Al BLOCH videos (so far). That is a pretty fine reason to celebrate don’t you think?
However, this is not the only thing Al has done lately. In October 2019 Al snuck out a hip little EP “Fifth Dimensionality”. In December 2019, Al and brother Kurt released a ‘77/’78 love fest as Bad Scene – Hate The World It’s So Romantic, paying tribute to the UK Class Of '78 STYLE. Last January he was the instigator and bass player for his daughter Olivia's debut, Georgy Girl. In May 2019 Al was the wheel-driving curator for Al Bloch's Summer Of Fun Super Party Mixtape. In 2018, he jumped in the wayback machine and surfaced with his teenage pop band, Wenis - The Donut House, Seattle 1980. Delightful! In 2009 we put out his collected My Favorite Martian recordings. What a busy beaver!
Growing up in Seattle in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Al played in a few really good bands (Cheaters, Wenis, Deans) and was featured as a solo artist on the first song of the first release ever by Green Monkey, the Local Product compilation. Al moved to Los Angeles with Seattle favorites the Bombardiers in 1985, who fizzled later that year, and played in a handful of forgettable LA bands before landing the bass job in Concrete Blonde in 1988 and toured a bunch with them.
At the dawning of the 1990’s Al Bloch was suddenly without a band. He was introduced to DC hardcore legends Pete and Franz Stahl (Scream), and Pete Moffett (Government Issue), thus Wool was born in 1991 - they put out a couple fine albums and recently released a singles comp. In the Summer of 1993, My Favorite Martian was born with Al as the lead signing star for the first time since Wenis in the 80's. You can read all about My Favorite Martian right here - and hear 'em!
Read Al’s own deep thoughts on this record right here! https://greenmonkeyrecords.com/artist-al-bloch-2/
What else?
I have just release a new Tom Dyer single, “Plague Songs”. There are two songs, “Plague Song #1” and “Plague Song #2.” Both are sixty seconds long. A third 60 second masterpiece, "The Glass Cowell", appears on the just released Ball of Wax Audio Quarterly #60, where it is described thusly, "When Robert Fripp is your grade one math teacher and Keith Emerson accompanies on piano." Concise!
Everything else I told you two weeks ago remains true. And we still don’t have Truth or Consequences discs, though the manufacturer finally making them. I’ll keep ye posted.
I now have 19 songs written for the True Olympians’ Olympia album. Now we just need to come up with a plan to record them without dying.
In a final bit of nonconformist news, I have change the header from Northwest Underground Rock 1980 to 2021 to Northwest Underground Rock 1980 ‘til The End of Time. Eternity beckons.
td May 2020