The Chains Of Hell Orchestra

Today's post is about the Chains Of Hell Orchestra, an Olympia, Washington ensemble that released two cassette-only albums in 1982 and a 12" EP in 1984.  I bought the tapes four decades ago.  Someone digitized them and posted them online.  I'm so happy to hear them again and to share them with you.

The first tape is called Cairo's Ride.  The ten songs are interspersed with bits of dialogue and sound effects that tell a story.  At the start of the first track, a female voice asks, "Und ze wedding?"  A male voice responds firmly, "There will be no wedding." A motorcycle engine starts, and the band kicks into a great surf rock instrumental.  It's P.S. O'Neill on guitar, with Steve Fisk (organ), Walter Singleman (bass), and Peter Blecha (drums).  

Side Two opens with the angry vow, "Nobody steals my daughter," as the motorcycle roars by.  The song ends with the sounds of a crash on the road.  "Ascension To Heaven" and "Last Rites For Cairo" end Cairo's Ride. It's like the soundtrack to a film that was never made.  

A second tape called Doctors Daughter was also released in 1982.  The music leans more toward new wave, with lovely vocals from Judy Schneps and haunting tape effects from Steve Fisk. The storyline is a bit more challenging to follow, as the doctor's daughter seems to lose her grip on reality and identity.  Was she exposed to something traumatic by "Jeff"? Did she really go "Over The Wall" and join the KGB?  I don't want to spoil the ending, but I always found it unnerving when she answers phone calls by saying, "This is the doctor."  Both albums include a reprise of an earlier track, restating its musical themes in a different arrangement, which adds to the impression of a "soundtrack" (or even a concept album).  I believe Judy Schneps later adopted the stage name Linda Lamb.

The Northwest Music Archives lists a third Chains Of Hell tape called Chaque Fois, but I've never found any further information about it.  "Generations Past" (from Cairo's Ride) appeared on the Sub Pop 7 cassette compilation, and Sub Pop 9 included "Theme from Supershaft". Supershaft (aka Aftershaft) was another P.S. O'Neill group.

P.S. O'Neill led a number of bands (among them the Westside Lockers, the Little Bears From Bangkok, and Tse Tse Force).  Some of these bands included musicians from Chains Of Hell Orchestra.  O'Neill released a solo album (produced by Steve Fisk) in 1987.  He then turned his attention to filmmaking. 

"The Fertilichrome Cheerleader Massacre" was released on VHS in 1988, and was sold by mail order through ads in Psychotronic.  It is a low budget B&W full length film, shot in Ellensburg, Washington.  Scott Renderer plays the hero, Christian Cairo.  Steve Fisk plays the evil Dr. Stimson, and members of the band Screaming Trees (including the late Mark Lanegan) are his henchmen.  Fisk also did the soundtrack.  O'Neill has a small role as Peter Carnegie.  No cheerleaders were massacred in the making of this film.  

P.S. O'Neill and his producer Sam Albright reworked and re-released the film in 2020 (this time simply titled Fertilichrome).  Watch it here.  The original (with different opening credits and some scenes and dialogue that don't appear in the 2020 version) is also on YouTube.  O'Neill also worked on Attack of the Hideopod (a film that featured the Young Fresh Fellows), and he directed music videos for Tad and the Geto Boys.  Patrick Shawn O’Neill died in 2021, not long after completing the restoration of Fertilichrome.  

Photo of Westside Lockers onstage with Steve Fisk (keyboards), Nick Lee (drums) Judy Schneps (vocals), P.S. O'Neill (guitar). and Mike Dickerson (bass).

Also in today's comments:  MORE CHRISTMAS MUSIC from Redd Kross and The Ghostly Trio!  Feliz Na Bla Bla!

A STINKY CHRISTMAS 2025

 A STINKY CHRISTMAS 2025

Is it already time, for another STINKY CHRISTMAS?  With just 22 days to go, we may as well pull the dustcover off this years edition.

Garage Rock is one of the five food groups always included in this series, which is served up in steamin’ slabs by; Bill Robin & Blue Jays, The Doll Squad, and Eddie & The Hotrods.

As usual, some of the fare is left of center; 45 Grave, Tav Falco, & Klaus Nomi, and some is more traditional; The Donnas, Aztec Camera, Nick Lowe, Los Straitjackets, and Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons.

There are always lovable weirdos letting their Christmas Freak Flag Fly: The Puppini Sisters, Southern Culture On The Skids, & Jack Rabbit Slim, and something sweet, which is supplied by The Tiny Boppers, Les Paul, & Fats Domino (playing a Casio keyboard!)

And I like to include at least one Craven Christmas Cash-Grab ("Please pass the money").  This year’s is Christmas At The Oasis (Live) by Maria Muldaur.  

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Finley Quaye - B-sides & more + Bonus Live

Late 1997, I’d bought the latest edition of CMJ New Music Monthly Volume 51 at Tower Records in Bangkok! On the way home I browsed through the magazine and looked at the artists/bands featured on the CD, a lot unknown, but also Portishead, The Beautiful South, and Pat Dinizio (Smithereens!), at least some tracks I would enjoy.

Once home I inserted the CD into my player and read more of the magazine while listening to the songs. A lot didn’t do that much, one ear in, other ear out, until I heard something that sounded a bit like an old Bob Marley song!

This turned out to be from a new British artist named Finley Quaye with “Sunday Shining”, based on Marley’s “Sun Is Shining”, the Lee Perry production from 1970.

 

It sounded very refreshing, elements of reggae and pop with trippy lyrics, great.

Later I managed to score the “Sunday Shining” CD single (and another: “Even After All”) which had some great non-album tracks.

His album “Maverick A Strike” got excellent reviews and when I finally heard it I could only agree.

For a while Finley was very popular, but with his second album “Vanguard” things began to spiral downward, both sales wise as well as personal. Further albums didn’t improve this situation…

His last album, “Royal Rasses”, was released in 2014 and since then it has been suspiciously quiet…

My own interest in him faded as well, but those songs from the beginning I remember fondly and still get played from time to time.

 

A quick check on Discogs showed a lot of CD singles in 1997 & 98 and only 1”The Best of Epic Years” compilation in 2001.

Therefore the idea of making an alternative collection of those CD singles and some stray tracks from the same period began to look more and more appealing!

While doing some digital field work I discovered that Finley had recorded already a song in 1995 with A Guy Called Gerald on his album “Black Secret Technology”. This track, “Finley’s Rainbow”, combines a vocal from Finley, the Bug in The Bass Bin drums, nebulous sub bass line and plucked strings: “It feels like reggae, viewed under water and utterly devoid of joy, a psychedelic masterpiece of electronic music”. Oh well, but it does feature elements of “Sunday Shining”!

I also found another anthology (digital only) on Amazon (not on Discogs!) from last year called “Best of the B Sides + Remixes: The Epic Years”, which included some, but not all, of those tracks…

 

No matter that, my final resulting collection is quite different and I’m happy to share it here with you, enjoy!

It features tracks from the 5 CD singles from 1997-98.

These included dubs, acoustic, live versions as well as remixes and non album tracks.

Additional tracks include a cover of Gershwin’s "It Ain't Necessarily So” cover for Red Hot + Rhapsody, the A Guy Called Gerald collaboration, and a 2 Meter Sessies track: “My Cup Is Running Over”.

 

Bonus: FM Broadcast Live @ Glastonbury Festival, England, 26-06-1998

The Best Of Johnny Burnette & The Rock 'N' Roll Trio

The Best Of Johnny Burnette & The Rock 'N' Roll Trio

As respected as they are in rockabilly circles, JOHNNY & DORSEY BURNETTE don’t have the notoriety of their contemporaries like Elvis Presley or Carl Perkins.  While lead guitarist Paul Burlison is nearly as respected as Elvis’ guitarist Scotty Moore—some of the licks on The Trio’s tracks were supplied by session guitarist Grady Martin.   Burlison worked with Elvis Presley at Crown Electric, & the brothers knew him as well, but he never recorded any of their songs.  Sun Records’ Sam Phillips passed on them because they sounded too much like Elvis—but they were all (along with Perkins) experimenting with similar styles of music at the same time.

The Burnette Brothers were rough hewn.  Both were boxers—Golden Gloves Champions—and they weren’t above turning those skills on one another.  The groundbreaking raw and ragged guitar sound on Train Kept A Rollin’ has been attributed to a loose tube in Burlison’s amplifier—and one account claims that what knocked the tube loose was a scuffle between The Battling Burnettes.  

Competitiveness is a large part of any boxer.  Add to that they both wrote songs, and they were both capable singers, & good ol’ sibling rivalry, & it’s no surprise the brother’ relationship was often contentious.  Younger brother Johnny’s name being placed before the band’s original name: THE ROCK AND ROLL TRIO  didn’t help matters.  Dorsey left the group just before their appearance in Alan Freed’s movie; Rock, Rock, Rock, and was replaced by Johnny Black, the brother of Elvis’ bassist, Bill Black.

Upon moving to Los Angeles, Johnny Burnette famously lay in wait in front of Ricky Nelson’s house & sold him on listening to their songs, and the brothers were underway as a songwriting duo.

The Burnette Brothers both had some success as recording artists at the beginning of the ‘60s, with Dorsey leaning toward country and Johnny leaning toward pop.  Johnny died tragically in a boating accident in 1964 leaving behind a son, Rocky who went on to have a recording career.  Dorsey scored 15 minor hits in the country field & had even greater success as a songwriter.  His son, Billy, also went on to become a solo artist and to play with Fleetwood Mac for several years.  Like their famous fathers the cousins relationship was strained.

This compilation shows why Johnny Burnette & The Rock 'N' Roll Trio are on everybody’s short list of rockabilly pioneers.  I’ve listened to most of these tracks a couple hundred times and they still get me amped up.  

In the words of Jerry Lee Lewis: “If God made anything better, he kep’ it fo’ himself”.

 

Grandpa's Whistling TWIST

It's time again for a contribution from our regular visitor, Richard, with his focus on some obscure (but cool) punky tracks from 1970's - 1980's:

These are the first of four collections of music I would call Music From The Old Box, Whistle Along Songs, Grandpa’s Choice. I just named them all in one, Grandpa’s Whistling Things.

Late eighties, I was in a band and we had a lot of fun playing gigs, quite often together with other great bands from The Lowlands. Apparently, in all those bands, there was a music geek. A nerd just like me, someone who had a vast collection of wonderful music.

In this case, the bass player of Buy Off The Bar. Bass players are often funny people. We didn’t have a bass player in our band until I suggested they were weird, promptly the drummer switched to bass, and the drums became a Yamaha.  Look it up: Eton Crop’s Corné was/is an illustrious bloke, Bartje from the Four One and Only’s quit when he learned he’d be seen as weird, Hans took over, and he sealed his fate. Bass players are a weird bunch.

Back to the bass player ‘Cil of said Buy Off The Bar. He had/has an enormous collection of 7’’s and 12’’s filled with punk and reggae. He started to give me, on request, some tapes full of songs that were called as stated above. Wonderful bands I never knew about, and some classic tracks I knew for sure.

In this first collection you will find only happy songs from amateurs. Some would say that they could not even hold a guitar, sing in tune, keep rhythm, etc. In short, they are perfect good-fun examples of D.I.Y.  Some even made it into a career in music, touring the States as if they were real artists. Admittedly, they were. And good for them too.

All four CD’s will contain music from 1977-1989. An era of Innocence and Independence.  First up is Grandpa’s Whistling Twist. 

The Tights were the first band on Cherry Red. Together with TV Personalities, That Man by The Fall and Terry & Gerry’s Clothes Shop, they are the foundation of this series. Groups like Buzzcocks and Undertones do not need much introduction. Others might well have only one single or sometimes even one song on a compilation to their credit.

Apart from the song here Jenny Nowhere, The Clouds only had one other release.  The Tights had two singles, only since 2017 more of them have been released.  Cud and Dog Faced Hermans have made quite a few albums. The Hamsters only made it onto a compilation album. 

The Groove Farm, This Poison!, Protex, Girls At Our Best, Death By Milkfloat, The Great Leap Forward, Rote Kapelle are more examples of forgotten bands, who sometimes only had a flexi disc to their name and whose members have been lost in obscurity.  Which is not all bad, my band also dropped off the radar and we turned out ok. 

And to come back to the bass player of Buy Off The Bar...... A successful deejay and writer of Ajax (Football) club books.  To finish it off, one of my all-time favorite songs, from their Peel Session: Electro Hippies – Sheep.

Comeback Special 2025

 

It’s almost the end of the year, and time for the 2025 Comeback Special.  Artists who haven’t released an album of new music in a decade or more are featured here, just in time for your holiday gift shopping or wish listing.  

These compilations take longer and longer to assemble, as it seems that more and more artists are active again, which can be a good thing.  I listened to over 40 new releases and selected a song from each one.  This year I allowed myself to skip a few: namely, the comeback albums from 38 Special, Doobie Brothers, Spin Doctors, and Counting Crows.  Honestly I don't want to hear a record called Butter Miracle - The Complete Sweets!

The biggest and most anticipated names to stage a comeback in 2025 were Alice Cooper (the band), Chameleons (UK), Pulp, and Stereolab. The ones I was personally looking forward to most were mclusky and Prolapse.   

Several artists didn’t live to see their own comebacks.  Tim Smith (leader of the band Cardiacs) died in 2020, and the album LSD (which he had been planning for years) was completed by Cardiacs bandmates and guests.  Adam Schlesinger died in 2020; his bandmates in the group Ivy completed the album Traces Of You without him.  

The rapper Prodigy (half of the duo Mobb Deep) died in 2017, and the album Infinite was completed this year by surviving member Havoc, their producer The Alchemist, and guests including Ghostface, Raekwon, and The Clipse. 

Speaking of The Clipse, the rapper No Malice returned from his self-imposed retirement to make a new album with his brother Pusha T and the producer Pharrell Williams (who had coproduced the previous Clipse records).  Let God Sort ‘Em Out is also an album affected by death, in this case the loss of the brothers’ parents.  

It has been over 50 years since Alice Cooper (the band) broke up. The new album features the late Glen Buxton on "What Happened To You". 

It's now more than 40 years since the last albums by Atomic Rooster, the Armory Show, and Glaxo Babies.  

At least 30 years have passed since the last albums by the Dogmatics and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry.  

20+ years: 20/20, 38 Special, Black Eyes, the Cardiacs, the Chameleons (UK), the Cruel Sea, Deadguy, Dr. Strangely Strange, Edith Frost, the Mayflies (USA), mclusky, Mobb Deep, Prolapse, Pulp, and Slick Rick. This year's comeback albums by Mobb Deep and Slick Rick are part of the Legend Has It series of new LP's by veteran MC’s.  

Plenty to absorb among these 42 tracks, and hopefully you'll find something to make the yuletide bright.  

FIRST Volume 4 - Rock & Roll Firsts (Demos, 1st Bands, & So On.)

The FIRST series are catch-all compilations with a very wide berth for inclusion.

THE BEATLES usually pop up because they were responsible for so many firsts in rock & roll, but their presence here is secondary.  Volume 4 starts off with a track written & first recorded by CARL PERKINS that most people are better acquainted with as a track on a BEATLES album.  (Carl was actually in the studio when The Fab Four laid down their version).  LARRY WILLIAMS also benefitted greatly from having his song included on an LP by Liverpool’s favorite sons.

THE SHADOWS are more of the focus here, as their first recording (as THE DRIFTERS) makes an appearance alongside the first release by Marvin, Welch & Farrar after the band broke up, & (former-Shadows) Jet Harris & Tony Meehan’s Diamonds--which was JIMMY PAGE’s first session gig. 

Demos are prime possibilities for the FIRST series.  Included is a songwriter’s (BOB KELLY’s) demo for GENE VINCENT, & Gene’s own home demo for another song he had some success with: Lotta Lovin’.  THE RAMONES’ demo for Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World brings it all home—but not before FUGAZI, PAUL SIMON & TAYLOR SWIFT supply more of the same.

First singles or first recordings by acts who took a while to find a national audience are also convenient contenders.  There are first incarnations of THE MANHATTANS, THE DEAD BOYS, and the future JACKIE DeSHANNON recording as Sherry Lee.  FIRST BANDS are fair game, and JEFF LYNNE’s first recording outfit THE MOVE are represented, as are THIRTY DAYS OUT which I dug down deep in my trivia sack for... the band provided THE RAMONES' tour-manager Monte A. Melnick's first touring experience.

GREGG ALLMAN performs Melissa on Late Night With David Letterman & shares that it was the first song that he wrote and kept.  And there’s a dash of ZAPPA in the broth—Baby Ray & The Ferns was one of his earliest recording combos (although there is some dispute).

Some of my selections may have seen the light of day in JONDER’s excellent AS HEARD HERE FIRST series:

https://jonderblog.blogspot.com/2025/04/as-heard-here-first-original-versions.html

There’s a few of those here—tracks rock bands took and ran with that originated with Bullmoose Jackson, Tiny Bradshaw, Lloyd Brown, & Roy Milton.

That leaves only the cover photo—which was taken in Edinburgh—it's the FIRST photo of men drinking!

I urge you to check anywhere in the world for firsts, first, but be sure to check with JOKONKY, last!