{"id":1454,"date":"2008-05-28T10:33:44","date_gmt":"2008-05-28T14:33:44","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-05-28T11:34:54","modified_gmt":"2008-05-28T11:34:54","slug":"winless-streak-comes-to-an-end-townspers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/winless-streak-comes-to-an-end-townspers\/","title":{"rendered":"Winless Streak Comes to an End: Townsperson&#8217;s Recommendation of Amon D\u00fc\u00fcl Finally Pays Off!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/orEI3hUGEKw?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nIn a thread entitled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2008\/05\/13\/band-you-ve-had-no-success-turning-frien\"><em>Band You&#8217;ve Had NO Success Turning Friends Onto<\/em><\/a>, <strong>Townsperson Petesecrutz<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2008\/05\/13\/band-you-ve-had-no-success-turning-frien#c16056\">bemoaned<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I have faced much difficulty in turning friends on to <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.furious.com\/Perfect\/amonduul.html\" target=\"_blank\">Amon D\u00fc\u00fcl<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Amon_D%C3%BC%C3%BCl_II\" target=\"_blank\">Amon D\u00fc\u00fcl II<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I believe this is the band I&#8217;d seen small, mail-order ads for in &#8217;70s magazines like <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2008\/04\/08\/trouser_press_remembers_the_70s\">Trouser Press<\/a><\/em>. Wasn&#8217;t there always something a bit pathetic about this band&#8217;s attempts at selling their music? I seem to recall them having a proto-<strong>Dungeons &amp; Dragons<\/strong> luster that made critics snigger. However, as I often find while reading Comments on Rock Town Hall, I became intrigued by Petesecrutz&#8217;s very personal plight. Shortly thereafter, I figured I&#8217;d give this band another try. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d sampled some of their songs in the past, but they didn&#8217;t click. I can&#8217;t recall which album I started with, but this time I went on <strong>eMusic<\/strong> and started with something called <em>Wolf City<\/em> by version II of the band. <\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/wolfcity.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"155\" height=\"155\" \/><\/div>\n<p>I sampled a number of tracks and, among others, downloaded the following:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Amon D\u00fc\u00fcl II, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/Jail-House-Frog.mp3\" title=\"\">&#8220;Jail-House-Frog&#8221;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s face it, for a fan of <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php?blog=2&amp;s=the%20doors&amp;paged=2\">The Doors<\/a><\/strong>&#8216; &#8220;Peace Frog&#8221;, the title was highly appealing. Before this number peters out into peaceful frog sounds and then an early Roxy Music-style jam, it&#8217;s got that slightly awkward twin-guitar attack I love on <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2008\/04\/05\/triple_play_from_the_pretty_things\">The Pretty Things<\/a><\/strong>&#8216; <em>SF Sorrow<\/em> album. I have a friend who gets mad at me for liking that album. &#8220;They can&#8217;t write a song to save their life!&#8221; he yells at me. I could care less with that twin-guitar fuzztone they get. &#8220;Jail-House-Frog&#8221; was not the revelatory slice of hippie-psych I&#8217;d hoped for, but it was worth trying some more downloads.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Amon D\u00fc\u00fcl II, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/SleepwalkersTimelessBridge.mp3\" title=\"\">&#8220;Sleepwalker&#8217;s Timeless Bridge&#8221;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>All right, now here&#8217;s some of the smelly, hippie, communal-living, psych-rock that I&#8217;d been hoping to hear! Many moons ago, when I dated a hardcore Deadhead girl who surprised me by owning a bunch of <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2008\/04\/10\/perfectly_captured_moments_in_time?page=3\">Gong<\/a><\/strong> albums among her Dead boots and the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2007\/06\/20\/the_grateful_band_music_with_a_big_stink\">Dead Package Deal<\/a><\/strong> of assorted albums by The Band, Van Morrison, and Little Feat &#8211; and James Taylor&#8217;s <em>Greatest Hits<\/em>. I borrowed a stack of Gong albums, certain to find enlightenment. It was not to be. Have you ever heard that band? They&#8217;re all the in-my-face, look-at-the-trails-<em>maaaaaan<\/em>, hackey-sack kicking nonsense that turns me off about the Deadhead sideshow. Gong did not deliver, but had they delivered way back when, they might have sounded like Amon D\u00fc\u00fcl II playing &#8220;Sleepwalker&#8217;s Timeless Bridge&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>For those of you who know me well, as much as I can enjoy the unintentionally funny stuff and guitar tones of such music, these two songs from <em>Wolf City<\/em> did not exactly strike paydirt, but they held promise for getting me to the next level, the Cult Admirer stage of a rock nerd&#8217;s life. The album <strong><em>Yeti<\/em><\/strong>, which I downloaded in full, might be the bridge I sought!<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/Yeti.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><\/div>\n<p>On <em>Yeti<\/em>, the guitars are more slashing, sounding a bit like <em>Piper at the Gates of Dawn<\/em>-era <strong>Pink Floyd<\/strong> and, perhaps not so strangely, <em>New Picnic Time<\/em>-era <strong>Pere Ubu<\/strong> or <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2007\/05\/16\/endurance_the_richard_lloyd_interview\">Television<\/a><\/strong>. <strong>David Thomas<\/strong> and <strong>Tom Verlaine<\/strong> strike me as the sort of loner, weirdo-visionaries who would have sent away for mail-order albums advertised in the back pages of <em>Trouser Press<\/em> by this band. Check out the following tracks from <em>Yeti<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Amon D\u00fc\u00fcl II, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/BurningSister.mp3\" title=\"\">&#8220;Burning Sister&#8221;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Amon D\u00fc\u00fcl II, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/EyeShakingKing.mp3\" title=\"\">&#8220;Eye Shaking King&#8221;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sophomore year in college, right at the end of the year, I made friends with a tall, super-rock nerd guy from somewhere deep in the midwest who, I&#8217;m sure, also sent away for these records. I wish I could remember the guy&#8217;s name, but I left that school following sophomore year, never to return. I can still picture his thick, straw-textured, strawberry blonde hair and British politician\/<strong>Michael Caine<\/strong>-style &#8217;70s glasses. We&#8217;d listen to <strong>The Residents<\/strong>, <strong>King Crimson<\/strong>, and other records that ensured that neither of us would ever get any closer to the lips of (another) Deadhead girl who&#8217;d bravely hang with us during these rock nerd power-lifting sessions than the bong we&#8217;d pass her way. <\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t reasonably expect that the hard-won <strong>Rock Nerd Turn-On Points<\/strong> now due to Petesecrutz will immediately pay dividends for me, but this is my way of saying <em>Mad Props<\/em> to a Townsperson who wouldn&#8217;t give up. Keep on truckin&#8217;, you space hippie freak.<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fJThEDJ5-Y8?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a thread entitled Band You&#8217;ve Had NO Success Turning Friends Onto, Townsperson Petesecrutz bemoaned: I have faced much difficulty in turning friends on to Amon D\u00fc\u00fcl and Amon D\u00fc\u00fcl II. I believe this is the band I&#8217;d seen small, mail-order ads for in &#8217;70s magazines like Trouser Press. Wasn&#8217;t there always something a bit <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/winless-streak-comes-to-an-end-townspers\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}