Stereo Embers The Podcast 0505: Bob Bert (Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore)

“Beach Bongo Bloodbath”

Bob Bert’s Beach Bongo Bloodbath might be the most alliterative album title of the year, but it also happens to also be one of the year’s very best. Before we get to Beach Bongo Bloodbath, let me give you a little Bob Bert Backstory. The alliteration with Bob is seemingly unavoidable. Influenced by the Beatles, the Stones, Andy Warhol and the band’s that packed CBGB’s, the New Jersey-born Bob Bert started drumming as a kid, but put it down for a while and became a fine art silkscreen printer who, speaking of Mr. Warhol, had a job printing paintings and print editions for the legendary artist. Bert moved from New York City to Hoboken in ’81 and perhaps it was the close proximity of the club Maxwell’s or the characters that played there that Bert picked up the sticks again and found himself playing drums for Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, and the Chrome Cranks. Bob’s autobiography I’m Just The Drummer tells his story far better than I can, but good luck finding it–it’s out of print, so you’re stuck with me for the time being to fill in the gaps. Over the course of his career, Bert has recorded and toured with Bewitched, Action Swingers, Chrome Cranks, Knoxville Girls, Five Dollar Priest, Lydia Lunch Retrovirus and Jon Spencer & the HITmakers and in the early 90s he and Linda Wolfe started the awesome fanzine BB gun. Which brings just to Beach Bongo Bloodbath. A joyful sprint of a record that clocks in at under a half hour and has no guitars or bass, Beach Bongo Bloodbath is smoldering collection of covers and originals that’s filled with swagger, groove and delicious percussive stomp. From his take on tracks by everyone from the Modern Lovers to Mountain to his electrifying originals, Beach Bongo Bloodbath is impossibly cool–and so is Bob Bert.

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