Salvage Heart

Notice is served that one of the links here now directs followers to a dead end, a cul-de-sac of rock writing. Maybe an apt metaphor for a writer/zinester who at once championed Clawhammer and Dead C in the pages of his Superdope, then later reeled it back around to a briefly existing pre-podcast Antenna radio show, "No Count Dance Party," that heralded the dead-ends of 50s RnR, beforing fumbling into the technoratisphere.

The blog itself, Agony Shorthand, was in many ways circling the drain of his earlier works, reprinting old reviews and articles, living in the past of living in the past. It was fanzine once removed, a retake on the best of the best, a derivative that often found early finds lacking upon further review.

Jay Hinman? We Hardly Knew Ye.

Hinman, like fellow zine scrawler Eric Oblivian (nee Friedl), whose Wipeout! spanned sounds from To Live and Shave in LA (blech) to NRBQ to garage-rock-a-go-go to various Shrimper label cassettes, could take you into some good music, and down some blind alleys. Hinman had more focus, and while Friedl delved (and eventually disappeared) into Record Moguldom, Hinman flared out with a Night Kings LP 7" by the Demolition Doll Rods (marginal post-Gories ensemble) and Monoshock and then nearly nothing else (I'm going from memory here...).

The radio show came out of Seattle; it was really an assembly once a week that you could stream. There was a strong free jazz show as well (Cat Austin's "Nubian Roots"). For those of us already fading into family and jobs and square lives, No Count was a pull back in, seeing some zine punk figure out a next step. It was short-lived.

I found Hinman's blog late in its run. Re-reading some of the old pieces (and new) was good enough...like discovering old Siltbreeze 7"s, once hopelessly rare, now dumped on the eBay $1 rack like so many Mark McGwire rookie cards. It felt good to get them, but time had moved on. (The Siltbreeze blog, ten years too late, feels about the same: both flared like Red Giants with the release of a record by Times New Viking...almost worth getting it all together again for.)

Hinman recently posted a top-100 records list that shows about where he ended up. It's worth copying to take with you, like sunglasses worn for that egregious walk of shame through the racks of a record shop, staring blankly at barely familiar names, looking to see whether there are any used Eleventh Dream Day albums or Pavement singles or uh, Charles Mingus? It's not exactly the Modern American Library, but it's an extraction of paramount taste, aged, with the mold scraped off, readvised, reconsidered, and scrawled again. Early punk, New Zealand, 80s/90s indie, No Wave, and the greatest Giant Sand record of them all, coming in at #76, "Glum."

Now we're left with movies about those wilted salad music days, food-writing-as-rebellion, and boxes of singles we're too lazy to stand over and play one at a time. Red wine and jazzzzzz....are the kids asleep?

Goodbye Agony Shorthand. Good luck.

Post-script reads: not dead yet? Goddamnit--stop moving, I'm throwing dirt here.