GPG On GG

A Full Disclosure right up front, one and all:

’Way back in the 1980 hey!day of my funzine The Pig Paper, a certain Kevin Michael Allin sent over a sweetly autographed, stuffed-with-promo-material copy of an album called Always Was, Is and Always Shall Be which had been newly issued on none other than David “The Pope Smokes Dope” Peel’s Orange Records imprint. It sounded then, and remains today, a most spirited indeed collection of incredibly powerful pop in that classic Stooges / New York Dolls mold, with lyrics – especially heard in a, shall we say, immediate post-Pistols frame of ear – not really all that “shocking” whatsoever.

Gary Pig Gold’s ALL-TIME TOP TEN CAR TUNES

Once again, Summer’s Here and the Time is Right for Driving in the Streets, with…

Bob Presents Peter Kashur – The Segarini Band Legacy and Bar Tab

Peter Kashur is an annoyingly talented Renaissance Man from the unlikely womb of Thunder Bay Ontario, whose Culinary, Artistic, and Musical gifts cast a pall of inadequacy over his small circle of friends who tolerate his genius because his Oysters Rockefeller, Beef Ribs, and Vesper Martinis are to die for. He is my number one choice as my favourite companion for sitting on the porch drinking Bourbon, complaining about everything, bemoaning old age while being giddily thankful for it, and yelling at clouds. Mr. Kashur (known to his cadre of hooded followers as ‘Shew’) has been whining about the following for years …so I have decided to let him share his rage with you, thinking I would have the day off. Nope. Just repairing his lack of Capital Letters, random punctuation, and libelous rantings, kept me up most of the night. He has been a trusted and necessary musical compatriot and partner for 40 years. This is the least I can do. Seriously. I checked. It is the Least.

Please let me know if all the trouble was worth it. Anyway …here’s Shew.

The PIG and The PAT Part Deux – THE LITERARY BOONE

By way of celebrating the man’s 85th (!) Birthday this month, not to mention picking straight up where we left off last time after breakfast…

The following Christmas a strange package arrived in the mail from a hitherto unknown address in Burbank, California. “Boone Productions, Inc.,” read the label. “Printed Matter Only,” said the customs sticker.

Gary Pig Gold – My Jimi Hendrix Experience

If I can just get my mind together, the first “real” concert I ever attended as a wee young Canucklehead was The Jimi Hendrix Experience at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens, May 3, 1969.

I’d already been a fervent fan for a couple of years, having spent most of my Grade 8 art class making swirly sketches of Jimi in charcoal. Plus the Are You Experienced album was right up there – almost – with Monkees Headquarters on my 1967 Most-Played List.

Gary Pig Gold on THE PHILOSOPHY Of FIFTY YEARS

On an even damper than usual Spring afternoon in 1969, three guitar-and-drum-beating sisters from tiny Fremont, New Hampshire entered an even tinier recording studio and emerged, just a few hours later, with a dozen original rock ‘n’ roll songs on some quarter-inch tape. These twelve songs were then pressed onto one thousand vinyl records, nine hundred copies of which immediately vanished forever off the face of the Earth. Within a year however, no less an authority than Frank Zappa declared that this album, prophetically entitled Philosophy Of The World, was “better than the Beatles,” and a decade after that the similarly inclined visionaries in NRBQ re-pressed Philosophy briefly on their own Red Rooster label.

Chef Tom – Escarole with Italian Sausage and Mongolian Heavy Metal

Escarole is a lovely green from the endive family, slightly bitter with hearty leaves that can stand up to cooking. Although it’s available year round, it can be hard to find in regular grocery stores. Peak season is the spring and summer months. It’s especially popular with Italians, who love their bitter vegetables (think rapinni, or radicchio) because they so deliciously offset rich and fatty meats.