Inca Babies!

Check out a brand new interview that we did recently with the uncanny Inca Babies.
There are also 2 new poems by rogue film maker M.A. Littler up on the site!





www.swamplandzine.net

Be the swampiest hag on your block...

Christine, co-collaborator of Swampland makes the most primitive, rockinest, one of a kind jewelry around using antique metals, found animal bones, rusted keys, stones of magnificent colors and a lot of imagination. Made to order! She never makes the same piece twice!

The official jewelry of www.swamplandzine.net

Order from her myspace page:

www.myspace.com/ohwildweed

-Ashlee

Swampland Radio: Podcast 3

And it's a good one if I do say so myself. These podcasts are available for a limited time since the link does expire!

The link:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/jsot89

The Playlist:

Rose Conley- Grayson and Whittier
5 Easy Pieces- Green on Red
Walk N Like a Man- Matty Rue
Evil Hour- Inca Babies
St. James Infirmary- The Standells
Jigsaw Blues- Nikki Sudden
Sea of Disappointment- Mark Steiner
Slip- Tin Hat Trio
Hannah Leah- Rykarda Parasol
Burning Season- Jeff Zentner
Stable Life- John Parish
Pocahontas Was Her Name- Billy Childish and the Singing Loins
Knoxville Girl- The Louvin Brothers
SOS the Better One- Junk
A Chi Sa Dove Sara- Tarantella
One Fine Day- Reverend Beatman

Be Well!

Ashlee
www.swamplandzine.net

New interview with Harry Howard up on the Swampland site!

We had the supreme pleasure of interviewing Australian musical renegade Harry Howard. Check out the interview at www.swamplandzine.net

Swampland Radio: Podcast 2

Hello there!
Christine has created a special, limited time Swampland Podcast that you can download free here:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1b0bui

Und here is the playlist:

1. Zeno Tornado & the Booney Google Brothers – Don’t Fall In Love
2. 16 Horsepower – Scrawled in Sap
3. Nathan Payne – Crown of Spiders
4. The Tuff Monks – After the Fireworks
5. Dream City Film Club – If I Die I Die
6. Hubble Bubble – I’m Not Like Everybody Else
7. Metal Urbain – Snuff Movie
8. The Pogues – My Baby’s Gone
9. Tex & the Horseheads – Border Town
10. Sort Sol (with Lydia Lunch) – Boy-Girl
11. Phantom Chords – Haunted Garage
12. Squirrel Nut Zippers – Ghost of Stephen Foster
13. These Immortal Souls – “Blood and Sand” She Said
14. The Dagons – Kill the Dream
15. Gun Club – Preaching Blues (from ‘Keats Rides a Harley’ Comp.)
16. C.W. Stoneking – Don’t Go Dancing Down the Darktown Strutter’s Ball
17. Flesh Eaters – Suicide Saddle

ENJOY!!!

Swampland Radio

Christine and I are going to start posting podcasts that you can download FREE in the name of Swampland...
This one was created by yours truly. Consider it a radio station for people who hate the radio.

Here's the download link: http://www.sendspace.com/file/7vb4pu

And here's the set list:

The Murderer's Home-Prison recording by Alan Lomax
The World's a Girl-Anita Lane
State Trooper-Bruce Springsteen
Death to Everyone-Bonnie "Prince" Billy
Wildwood Flower-The Carter Family
The Sun Before The Darkness-Crime and the City Solution
You Can't Reach Me Now-The Devastations
Minor Blues-Django Reinhardt
Whisper In The Nag's Ear-Johnny Dowd
She Had An Abortion She Made Me Pay For- The Drones
East St. Louis Toodle-oo-Duke Ellington
Mindless-The Fatal Shore
The Future-Leonard Cohen
A Woman A Man Walked By/The Crow Knows Where All The Little Children Go- PJ Harvey and John Parish
The Black Widow-Link Wray
What Is Memory-Shotgun Wedding
Loom of the Land-Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Plain Gold Ring-Nina Simone
Cold Cold Ground-The Pallbearers
Rake-Townes Van Zandt
She's A Mystery To Me-Roy Orbison


Stay tuned for Christine's podcast, and many more Swampland podcasts to come!

Be Well!

Ashlee

www.swamplandzine.net

The Holy Kiss Interview up on the site!

Check out swamplandzine.net for an interview with Matty Rue of Holy Kiss fame. The interview was conducted by a close friend of Matty's, Seth Miller, so you know it's good! The band has recently come to terms with morality, and has decided to disband. You can just imagine all of the deranged possibilities that will rise from the band's ashes. 

"Lux Interior passed away." I heard those words and wanted to yell across the room. A whaling banshee in heels. A creature from the black leather lagoon. A legend at the top of cult status and here in 2009 he has passed on.

The music of The Cramps made you want to hold on for dear life while each chord made you feel a little closer to insanity. The primal beats raging through your body like a hypnotic time warp. No one was safe from wanting to shake their hips like some cave-dwelling beast just discovering fire for the first time. Lyrics always dirty and devious, dominating you into submission, but never once leaving you wanting to yell any kind of safe word because it always just felt too damn good.

I will surely miss seeing those rockin' bones scream and hiss in the beautiful catastrophic frenzy that was and always will be Lux Interior. I always thought that if there's one thing I'll miss when I die it's definitely going to be the music, but I know Lux will be there waiting for us all for the ultimate and biggest show of all the ages to come.

R.I.P. Lux Interior

1946 - 2009

you'll truly be missed by us all.

Jeffrey Lee Pierce Documentaries

I really wanted to like 'Ghost On The Highway'. The whole experience of seeing the film screened at the Redcat theater a couple years back in LA was all in all a good one. Everyone there seemed to be genuine Gun Club fans, and most people had actually known Jeffrey at one point or another. I went the second night of the screening. I had actually missed a few friends of mine step up to the mike the night before to sing covers of Gun Club songs backed by members of the original line-up; a truly surreal experience for them, I'm sure. The second night brought Kid Congo on guitar and Thalia Zedek on vocals. Zedek couldn't have been a better choice, really. Set aside the fact that I was already an admirer of her work, her somewhat androgynous, world weary voice fit Jeffrey's songs perfectly. Her unpretentious approach also really added to the whole experience. You could easily tell that she wasn't there to do anything but pay homage to the man. (By the way, if you haven't given Thalia Zedek a listen, you really should. She's an oddly overlooked talent.)
The film itself left me feeling unsatisfied. First of all, there was no live footage of the band throughout, nor any footage of Jeffrey, to no fault of the director. They simply couldn't obtain the footage legally. The accounts of Jeffrey from past band mates pretty much ranged from cynical to negative. There were obviously painful memories that had not healed themselves. That's okay, proper documentaries aren't meant to appease the fan. And surely, any aware Gun Club fanatic would know that Jeffrey was a sometimes volatile eccentric.
My problem really lies with the fact that there weren't many contrarian views. I felt like Jeffrey's body of work had taken a back seat to stories of him pissing people off and ego tripping. Luckily I've had the opportunity to discuss Jeffrey with my friend Cypress Grove, who recorded the album 'Ramblin' Jeffrey Lee with Cypress Grove and Willie Love' and who was very good friends with him. Where were the voices like Cypress' in the documentary? People that understood him, and saw his genius?
Cypress sent a copy of "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues" to the Swampland house. It's a slightly less known Jeffrey Lee Pierce documentary that's out now. It's somewhat voyeuristic and subtle. Jeffrey diligently sits at the guitar working on blues songs. His passion shines through. There are scenes where he seems lonely and lost. Others where he's wielding swords and talking history. Cypress and Nick Cave have cameo appearances...two people that were there for him at his lowest points. I get the impression by watching this footage that it's a pretty authentic representation of Jeffrey's character. Of course, he knew he was being filmed, and a certain amount of posturing is expected. However, this film get's Cypress' seal of approval, and that tells me that it's worth watching.
I'm not discouraging anyone from giving 'Ghost on the Highway' a chance. I would however, take it for what it's worth. I definitely recommend "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues" to any die hard fan.

Why Swampland exists

Just a little back story to give you some sense of our intentions. 

There were a small group of us who felt connected by our interests, and some deeper quality. Old, rusty, broken down things peaked our interest. Found bones, stretches of isolated desert, abandoned buildings, books brimming with information, paintings and woodcarvings, words dripping with truth, obsession, love and death. And the music...always the music. No other form of expression seems quite so complete. The words, the moods, the sounds, the phrasing, the energy, the images evoked... music really is the backdrop for it all. 

Our passions were so brimming that they needed an outlet. A place where we could essentially link our interests. Make them relate. Allow artists to find each other. A collective experience, where we could all stimulate each other into realizing our dreams, no matter how chaotic and possibly destructive they might be. In other words, we aim to gather together a community of relentless artists who seek something other than the mundane and derivative. We are all outsiders here, but there might be enough of us to build some sort of shelter.  

Hello from the Swamp

After a long delay and much deliberating over whether or not we should put Swampland into print, we decided on creating this here blog as a way to update all things Swampland on a more consistent basis in between actual issues, which you will be able to view at swamplandzine.net. 

Please keep checking back as we will be updating this page frequently!