The King Khan and BBQ Show

Reprinted from the Hic-Up Issue #6.

Could I believe it? NO! Wait up, maybe Todd wrote it, but... No, he didn't! Honest to goodness post 9-11 rock and roll! There has been a small bit: the Exploding Hearts, the Soda Pop Kids, but it seems that the only BEST of it is made by none other than the King Khan and BBQ Show. Why they're the best? The same reason any band's ever the best, a la THE RAMONES, they have the best songs. Sure, that's e-z, but WHY are their songs better? Better than the two previously mentioned top-notch current-ish bands and better than the oblivious score of other music that we don't even mention or care for?

Now, while this is certainly an official endorsement, let me be clear: I am not saying you shoud just go out and listen to KK and BBQ, because, frankly you have done nothing to prove to me that you can handle it. Even worse, if you didn't get it, or didn't like it, I would be very frustrated. They carry the esoterism of authenticity, which, in music, is rarer than EVER. They lack the pretentions of the Hearts (who are power-pop with punk tendencies), and the Kids (who are VERY aware of every step they take musically, which is hard to fault them for, since it comes out SO good). KK and BBQ seem to come from a place of unashamed sentimentality, the mark of a natural, that no force on Earth or elswhere could stop them from rock and roll. Hence the two-man line-up that plays like a five piece. King Khan on lead guitar and vocals, and the heart of the group is BBQ on vocals, guitar, tambourine, bass and snare drums.

The authenticity issue: KK and BBQ feign force of nature, as in they are merely conduits for the music. It is a clear cut rock and roll/garage mix, but no listener could question the punk rock pedigree behind it. Re-inventing the wheel is estupido, and for those who don't love the wheel, for those whose lives have never been saved by the wheel, perhaps without lives to save? The Ramones played the Beach Boys played Chuck Berry. The New York Dolls played Chuck Berry and improved upon his genius by TURNING IT UP and playing it even meaner. In a way the Yardbyrds even did this earlier. KK and BBQ know this good stuff in their hearts and have stopped thinking about it, allowing it to come naturally.

The family tree is thus: Kind Kahn and BBQ played together in the mid-late 1990's as the Montreal based super-boys the Spaceshits, with whom BBQ sang and wrote songs under the name of Creepy, and King Khan (a Canadian of Indian desent) played bass as Blacksnake. The Spaceshits released two LP's "Winter Dance Party" and "Misbehavin'" and even recorded a record with Greg Lowry of the great Rip-Off Records that never saw the light of day. The Spaceshits played a super-cranked fifties style rock and roll filtered through sixties garage and seventies punk, pretty much the best of all worlds. They ran afoul of their native Quebec, with a combination of over-the-top shows involving fireworks and food-fights, a phony feud perpetrated by some wannabe band, and a besmearched and violent images on what Creepy said were trumped up charges led to them being blacklisted. They took the show to Germany where Blacksnake decided to take up residency, and The Spaceshits broked up.

Here's a nice Spaceshits extended local TV appearence on Montreal Today back in the 90's.



Back in Canada the show must go on, and Creepy/BBQ (aka Needles, Krebs, Von Needles, Skutch, Bridge Mixture, Kib Husk, Noammnn Rummnyunn, Blortz, Celeb Prenup, Mark Sultan, etc...) formed Les Sexareenos, further developing his trademark sound. Adding a keyboarder (Annie Sexareeno) upped the ante and made the rock and roll even more thorough, with BBQ (as Bridge Mixture/Noammnn Rummnyunn) behind the drums and on lead vocals. Les Sexareenos can stand proudly next to any great lo-fi or Rip-Off or Radio X band of the previous decade, such as Supercharger or the Problematics, as well as fellow Canadians super-rockers the Smugglers, who trademarked fun rock and roll in the late nineties. Most impressive about the two Sexareenos LP's "14 Frenzied Shakers" and "Live! in the Bed" is that America had already tired of good and authentic punk over the previous five years. Scream-O and the slow Grunged-Out "punk" of Hot Water Music was hot. Les Sexareenos didn't just keep it real, they helped evolve rock and roll by playing it right. Again, it's all in the songs... personal perserverance is great, if yer Oprah... I wanna dance!!!!

A freakin' awesome Les Sexareenos video.



While Mark Sultan was a Sexareeno in Quebec, Blacksnake became King Khan (whose sister, by the way, is Cocobutter Khan, the keyboarder for another terrific rock act, the Del-Gators (what a talented family!)) and formed his band King Khan and His (Sensational) Shrines. The first album "Mr. Supernatural" is an intense James Brown, through garage rock, through Motown killer and the second album 2007's "What Is?" is much more pure garage love. Soon, Sultan would be touring Germany with his one man band under the new alias of BBQ. Before long, the two reformed, practicing in an old Nazi bunker, and what came out was pure Twizzlers, baby. The first eponymous KK and BBQ record disallows those with a rock and roll ear/heart from not falling in love from the get go. The one-two punch of album openers is like mana from Dion. The #2 track "Waddlin' Around" is hands down the most beautiful thing I've heard in years and BBQ's voice makes me melt like a popscicle on the Fourth of July. It's clear that one is listening to an epitome. KK's guitar sounds so natural an organic (to the situation), like early Keef Richards. The impression that I get is that KK's songs are more garage oriented while BBQ's are more rock and roll, doo-wop, and blue-eyed soul. The division is even clearer on the second album "What's for Dinner?" which is thick and heavy with garage and punk, but the more straight-up rock and roll sticks out and complements beautifully. Hits include "Too Much in Love" the second album's coup de gras. They utilize almost every good thing about music and none of the bad.

So, the Exploding Hearts had the songs, definitely, but! They never bit the apple of PUNK ROCK fully. They had the pretty boy image, but rarely made the fist to back it up. I did adore the Hearts (still do) but when three fourths of the band died in an auto accident in 2003, Terry Six started the Nice Boys with the guys from the Riffs, they could never seem to be as good as the Hearts and Riffs were seperately, far too glam and sweet, even less able than the Hearts to explore the romantic side of things, paint that picture of life = good, while tempering it with authenticity or strength. The Soda Pop Kids have it all, from content to execution ("Soda Pop Sting" says IT ALL), but! Their transparent consiousness of what thy're doing is off-putting. The Ramones and the Dictators were smart guys playing dumb. Admitting knowledge of what yer doing implies an aknowledged importance to yer work that MAY detract from it. No post-moderism in rock and roll. I said it. Thankfully, right now, King Khan and BBQ are the second coming, so let us all kneel.

Words from BBQ/Mark Sultan:

"I don’t know a lot of that stuff, and I’m probably wrong in saying this, but who gives a fuck. For me, real rock’n’roll is important. It has shaped everything we have now culturally and even socially. To me it’s a tradition, but it’s also something that has to be kept alive. I want to be part of it. I want to keep it alive. I want to trace myself back through the ages to a direct line that I can feel proud of. I don’t think playing ‘rock’n’roll’ is being retro. I consider the 50’s and 60’s to be its heyday, yes, but I think that I have a natural tendency to write music like that because maybe I share the same influences as those guys or whatever. It really isn’t a conscious effort to sound like whomever or whatever. That happens to be the music that comes out of me, even if it’s years later, maybe due to the same choices I’ve made in life or the same ideas or whatever. So when I hear bands doing new-wave or 80’s shit or whatever, it kinda bugs me. It seems like it’s an effort to be ‘different’ or to start or be a part of something ‘new’, but it seems ultimately to be just a desperately manufactured trend that won’t last, created for the jaded. Rock’n’roll isn’t a trend to me. It’s a very important legacy that isn’t about being cool or conversely derivative or whatever. It is possible to do THAT blues progression and STILL be fresh and exciting or at least to be proud of what you have done. It’s celebratory and vital. Aged and young at once. I can understand that people wanted to turn their backs on rock’n’roll when it became mainstream, but that shit will pass. To peg a couple of years of pop music history and base a ‘scene’ out of it in any way is weird. My personal influences run from early gospel to R&B vocal groups to juke-joint shit to doo wop to rockabilly to country to rock’n’roll both white and black to soul to garage punk to beat to psychedelic to early 70’s raunch to punk to hardcore to modern garage. Those are just my influences. I listen to other things, too. The real shit will always still be there and I will always love it."

Interview excerpt from www.blankgeneration.com.

"Waddlin' Around" from September 30, 2006 in home-turf Montreal. Kinda crummy sound but great show.

"Waddlin' Around" in Paris. Great sound, a little less energy.

A look through the fourth wall: BBQ/Mark Sultan solo doing the Rolling Stones' "Out of Time." We saw BBQ at Johnny Brenda's in Philly and he played this shit and we lost it. These kids are lame! He was super nice.

King Khan and (His) Sensational Shrines doin' "Land of the Freak" on his current summer tour which Grant was lucky enough to catch.

The Headies! Live at the Frottage Cottage (Last Winter)

Hot Damn! Here they are, your fabulous Headies! These are from last winter at Ian and Jordan Rash's Frottage Cottage venue on White Clay Creek Road in Newark. Photos taken by the dude Kevin Riley from Northern Liberties out of Philly. He took mad of 'em, and those, along with shots of Tragic Johnson, Grave Mistake and random Newark/Philly dweebs can be found on his site: http://www.cleanandsolid.com/. I think he used some kinda "trick photgraphy!"

The N.W.O. and You

Reader discretion advised: the following is an amalgamation of fact, opinion, and theory. I make no personal claims to the validity of the less verifiable portions. It is merely a version of the truth, as valid as any other.

In the beginning, man created god. Then right after that he made money, and the two biggest control oriented institutions had been established. Money being the idea that product for product trade could be bypassed if something of "inherent" value could be used instead. What they used, of course, was precious metals - gold, silver, bronze. These worked because people would do damn near anything to get that gold, as it is rare and shiny. By the transitive property, gold is sometimes know as "yellow oil." So they spent a few thousand years convincing people that shiny metal was worth something, and everybody "bought" in. Now, we know that everybody agrees on it's worth, but how would we get it out of the people's hands but make sure they still want it? Step one: keep the gold and issue "tickets" that are worth so much gold. This started in the renaissance, and soon after the system was officially in place - if you hold one of these tickets, the state was committed to give you as much gold as it represented at your demand. This was the first step in abstracting world currency.

Who's behind it? Oh, the same ol' boys, controllers of the world bank... the New World Order. a powerful and secretive group is alleged to be plotting to eventually rule the world via an autonomous world government, which would replace sovereign states and other checks and balances in world power struggles. (Much like DC Comics ill-fated Armageddon 2001, which actually came out in 1990, and was awesome.) In this theory, many significant occurrences are said to be caused by a powerful secret group or groups. Historical and current events are seen as steps in an on-going plot to rule the world primarily through a combination of political finance, social engineering, mind control, and fear-based propaganda.

They are said to have funded and in some cases caused most of the major wars of the last 200 years, primarily through carrying out false flag attacks to manipulate populations into supporting them, and they have a grip on the world economy, deliberately causing inflation and depressions at will. Operatives working for the New World Order are said to be placed in high positions in government and industry. The people behind the New World Order are thought to be international bankers, in particular the owners of the private banks in the Federal Reserve System, Bank of England and other central banks, and members of the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group. The New World Order is also said to control supranational and global organizations such as the European Union, United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the proposed North American Union. So, how did they do it, who are they, and what are they planning next?

Well, after about five hundred or so years, the abstraction of money was pushed even further with the use of credit cards. It's not metal or paper, but a series of numbers on a magnetic strip. And soon after, the credit card itself wasn't even necessary. With internet commerce, etc... money is literally data shifting from file to file, which like the gold standard, you can trade in for paper currency, for now.

We all know that the New World Order existed in some form, be it the Bavarian Illuminati, the Freemasons, or unknown previous big-wigs, and has for nearly ever, financing both the French and Bolshvik Revolutions, starting the fire at the Reichstag, attempting a coup on FDR, probably staging Jesus and Muhammed's miracles, and of course introducing the Federal Reserve Act (1913) in America, in which the Federal Reserve System is designed to transfer wealth from the poor and middle classes of the United States and to the international bankers of the New World Order. They've been particularly active in recent history. In 1935, the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States with the Eye of Providence above the pyramid appeared for the first time on the back of the one dollar U.S. dollar bill, including the words "New Order for the Ages." In 1944, the Bretton Woods Agreement was signed, outlining a regime for the post World War II world economy. In 1945, the United Nations was founded. In 1954, the Bilderberg Group was founded. In 1957 the European Economic Community (European Common Market) was formed, which in 1992 changed its name to the European Union. Currently, the EU has 27 member states, 15 of which use a common currency, the Euro. In 1963, the Codex Alimentarius Commission was established by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization, later to be backed by the World Trade Organization. In 1973, David Rockefeller organized the Trilateral Commission. The Club of Rome issued a report entitled the "Regionalized and Adaptive Model of the Global World System," which proposes that the world be divided into ten regions. In 1995, the United Nations' International Trade Organization's (ITO) General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) group was renamed the World Trade Organization (WTO). In 2002, the FDA approved the manufacture of the VeriChip microchip implant. Much more intrusive than the UPC, this aroused people's fears that some future totalitarian governments could enforce the implanting of these chips. In 2004, the Independent Task Force on North America, a project organized by the Council on Foreign Relations, proposes the establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community, generally referred to as the North American Union. It has been proposed by Robert Pastor, a vice-chairman of the task force, that the North American Union would have a common currency, the amero.

Stepping out of the shadows, the secrecy aspect was officially affected by Cecil Rhodes, the scholarship guy, who in 1901 advocated that the British Empire and the United States should jointly impose a Federal World Government (with English as the official language) to bring about lasting world "peace". In Gerald Ford's 1975 "Declaration of Interdependance" he states, "We must join with others to bring forth a new world order....Narrow notions of national sovereignty must not be permitted to curtail that obligation." And then famously by George H.W. Bush in his speech to Congress on September 11, 1990, in which he actually spoke of his "dream of a New World Order" (eleven years later a blip on history's map occurred) and by David Rockefeller in a statement to the U.N. Business Council in September 1994. Most prominent families such as the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Bush family, the Morgans, Warburgs and Du Ponts, as well as European monarchs, and Saudi Royal Family are claimed to be important members. Some modern Popes and Roman Catholic Church Hierarchy are also said to play a role. A slightly different version of the N.W.O. theory goes as far as saying that these families and persons are all part of the same 13 bloodlines.

The Bush family seem to be either the highest ranking N.W.O. fam in America, or they are the front for it. They are all dirty-dripping with it, Prescott Bush provided the steel that built Auschwitz, and DuPont didn't supply the gas. They came up through the junior league of evil gentlemen, the Ivy League's Skull and Bones, which, in order to gain initiation, George W. Bush had to dig up the skull of my main-man Geronimo and... well... jerk-off into it. The founding of Skull and Bones at Yale University in 1832 marks the official beginning of the modern era New World Order as it is more or less formulated today. H.W. is the smartest, best/worst of 'em, an expert in empire building/destroying, and probably pulled the trigger on JFK for not signing off on false flag operations that would have facilitated U.S. invading Cuba. Another prominent suspected N.W.O. organization is the Project for the New American Century, a conservative think tank that argues for increased American global leadership, whose former members include ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and several other key Bush administration figures. A 2000 report from the group stated that "some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor" would be needed as a pretext for carrying out their plans for "United States global hegemony" (hegemony - the predominant influence, as of a state, region, or group, over another or others) in the 21st century.

It is centuries in the works, documented in N.W.O. literature that "A tremendous disaster will take place when, after a great electrical blackout on a planetary scale, the data of all electronic accounts erase simultaneously. After this event, chaos and poverty will immediately ensue throughout the planet; and civilization will revert to its primitive forms of slavery to survive." This is the last aim of the "secret organization" which has spent centuries guiding this process. They wanna erase your electronic money and make you their slaves, turning a complicit American populace over to the world-government. "The worldwide blackout will be preceded by partial blackouts that would only be tests and "signals" to communicate that different phases of the process are being fulfilled." An example of these partial blackouts would be those that have been produced almost simultaneously in different parts around the world; and, at the beginning of the 21st century, shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks: the blackouts in the U.S, Canada, Australia, and London.

In recent times, wars in the Middle East such as the Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq have been described as wars for oil. In many cases, critics have accused the U.S. of engaging in realpolitik in the cynical sense of political action without regard for principle or morals. A war planned for economic gain can be seen as a conspiracy in the conventional sense of a secret plot — particularly when the public is presented with false pretexts for war, i.e.- false/exagerated connections between Iraq and al QONT class=blsp-spelling-error id=SPELLING_ERROR_29>aeFONT>da, thFONT>e W.M.D. lies, false blame on Middle East factions for the Anthrax scare (which we know came from within the U.S. system, either by self-operating crazies or government order), etc...

With all this in mind, no one president should be able to stop the war in Iraq, it's just a part of a milennia old scheme. So, either Barry ObamT class=blsp-spelling-error id=SPELLING_ERROR_32>a wil</FONT>l win the election and not be able to end the occupation, or some seemingly unconnected event will cause him to not be president, or (god forbid) a Manchurian Candidate, or (god forbid) he is in on it, or the N.W.O. will continue it's plan in a different fashion without direct U.S. military involvement in the Middle East for a minute. Man, if John McCain had won the Republican primary in 2000, I, and every other chump-ass, would have voted for him on the pretext that he was seemingly so anti-N.W.O. Who would have thought he would become their puppet eight years later?

One of my favorite tautologies is: if you continue to be complacent to lie after lie told to you, you are either an idiot, or you are in on it. American conservatives are implicitly in on it, the right-wing agenda mirroring the N.W.O.'s. I am hereby indicting Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingrahm, Sean Hannity, pervayors of sarcasm as fact, or worse, as wit, and the rest of their ilk for crimes against the American people, brainwashing the poor and religious into coughing up more and more of thier electronic data currency. Whatever the reptillians promised you is not enough! Here is a little truth: war is just a tool that makes billions or more for your secret masters. (This fact is not mutually exclusive to a war being just, but that is damn irrelevant in this case). Who benefits? You? NO! Middle East Citizens? NO! Israel? NO! Who benefits is oil-men, and military-industrail complex men, and the damn world bank we have to borrow off of to pay for all this shit! Do not get me wrong: I am not saying the U.S. government did this. I am saying that N.W.O. operatives within the U.S. government have used a spectrum of brainwashing tactics to gain office and manipulate legislature and, if necesarry, ignore legislature in order to ceaselessly rob their marionettes of dignity and cash. Of course, the right-wing media spins everything until it's unrecognizable. Knowing the truth makes you unpatriotic, and most recently realizing that America is the most racist country that "God has ever created on God's Earth", somehow makes you a racist. Wow, that is amazing! Wanting to stop American soldiers from dying in the sand makes you anti-troops. Realizing that a Christian God shouldn't be the crux of legislation makes you an idiot heathen, and realizing that homosexuals are people JUST LIKE YOU who deserve every damn right that you have makes you anti-family. The N.W.O. don't want you to have rights, rights like habeas corpus, the right to privacy, the right to free speech, the right to religious choice, the right to regulate your own body, and the right to not have a full-scale military attack launched on your peice-of-shit desert when you didn't attack the U.S.

In 2000, the N.W.O. thought they had hit it big. With that numb-nuts in office, it was party-time and the "New Pearl Harbor" could be okayed. In 2007 U.S. president George W. Bush signed into effect the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive which grants him (the president) broad powers during a time of "national emergency". This directive grants unprecedented power to the Commander In Chief of the US Military (the president) without any type of overriding checks and balances from Congress. What they didn't count on was the INHERANT REBELIOUSNESS of the American people. Sure, many American's are stupid and lazy and violent, BUT we don't like to be told what to do. Treat us like children and we will act like children. Allowing any populace a decade of shock following something so cataclysmic as the WTC attacks, we are poised to return to track, if not an age of enlightenment, an age of lightening up. Summers were far fairer in the 1990's, just ask the bees. Since the beginning of time the shadow world-government has considered it a forgone conclusion that they have won, just because they have been winning, accomplishing their goal of two plus two equalling five, all for them. I, personally am either their worst nightmare (or their goal achieved): I have absolutely NO money and consider no bullshit. Even if the N.W.O. built America, and framed it to slowly eliminate the middle class, we could be Frankenstein's monster, the creation which destroys it's creator.

Another popular New World Order occured around the same time when Hulk Hogan split off from WCW, triggering one of the best pro-wrestlin' storylines ever, in which I was pro-Goldberg.

And While We're At It... II

Skinny Dick Jones and His One Man Band doing "Butter That Biscuit" in the Headies-Cave. Look for Skinny Dick's first full-length CD "Urban Hillbilly" out soon on Madison Underground Recordings!



A Billy Frolic Production.

Hot Toddy's BBQ Bash

AHA! I lifted these pics from Billy Frolic's http://www.scribald.blogspot.com/,

Behold: Hot Toddy and His Wilmington Wastoids in all their glory. Enjoy!