Endless Boogie
Nothing For The Water

'Number 1984. Rudolph Lewis, aka Young Rudolph, aka Rudolph Miller.

Shoplifter.

Description. Twenty-one years old in 1886. German. Born in the United States. Single. No business records of him. Average physique. Height, five feet and eight inches.

Weight, 130 pounds. Brown hair, hazel eyes, yellowish complexion. Distinctive marks, three moles on the inside of the left forearm. He has large ears.

Data. Young Rudolph is probably one of the most skilled and cunning young thieves in the United States. Although he has just started, he seems destined to become a first-class criminal. He is quite well-known in all the cities on the east coast, particularly in New York and Boston, where his picture is featured in the Rogues' Gallery. Among his associates are Frank Watson, aka Big Patsey, Little Eddie Kelly, Jack McCormack, aka Big Mack, and Charles Lewis. All known on the eastern part of the country. Especially in the state of New York. Profession, thieves.

Data. Lewis was arrested in New York, on September 22, 1883, charged with stealing silk goods valued at one hundred dollars from Lewis Brothers' retail store at No. 86 Worth Street, New York. After posting his bail, he moved to Boston, where he was arrested for shoplifting and sentenced to eighteen months in prison, on November 19, 1883, under the name Rudolph Miller. He served his sentence on April 25, 1885, but was again arrested at the request of the authorities and taken to New York to answer for the silk theft.

Lewis pleaded guilty to the theft and was sentenced to two years in prison at Sing Sing, on April 3, 1885, by Judge Cowing. His sentence will expire on December 30, 1886.

The photo of him is of good quality, taken in September 1883.

Number 185. George Levy, aka Lee.

Shoplifter.

Description. Forty-six years old in 1886. Jewish, born in Poland. Never engaged in any legitimate business. Average physique. Height, five feet and five inches.

Weight, 135 pounds. Brown hair, hazel eyes, dark complexion, has a mole on the right cheek. Three moles on the left arm. Generally wears a mustache, brown, and a hint of a beard on the chin.

He is ranked number 264 among professional criminals in the whole state.

Data. Levy is a professional and very astute shoplifter, adept at slipping away without drawing attention. He has traveled throughout the eastern coast for years. He's good at stealthily stealing in a bank as in a shop. He is considered smart and is quite well-known in all eastern cities, particularly in New York, where he served time in Sing Sing prison and in the maximum-security penitentiary on Blackwell's Island.

He was arrested in New York City on June 7, 1882, for stealing Japanese goods worth 24 dollars from Charles W. Fuller's shop at No. 15 East Nineteenth Street. He was tried by the Tombs Special Court on June 12, 1882, but Judge Murray, unaware of his true nature, discharged and acquitted him.

He was arrested again in New York on September 9, 1885, at Solomon Kutner's fur store at No. 492 Broome Street. Mrs. Kutner noticed that as he left, the overcoat he wore on his arm was much larger than when he entered. So she immediately closed the door before he could leave. Finding himself trapped, he threw the bundle on the floor, grabbed the woman forcefully, and pushed her aside. At this point, he tried to escape, trying to seize the keys. But Mrs. Kutner's screams immediately caught the attention of her son and employee, who held Levy until a police officer arrived and arrested him. He had attempted to steal a seal-skin jacket worth 170 dollars, a pair of beaver-skin gloves, and a roll of satin lining. Levy pleaded guilty in this case and was sentenced to three years in prison at Sing Sing, on September 21, 1885, by Judge Cowing.

The photo of Levy is good, although he tried not to be photographed. It was taken in June 1882. [...]'

Well. When a few months ago, a couple of months ago to be exact (last September), 'Skeleton Tree' came out, a lot of people were quite puzzled or in some cases even disappointed by the contents and sounds of the album. Those who listened to it couldn't help but notice that the album was what you might call a singular episode in the career of the singer and composer born in Warracknabeal, Victoria, Australia. The reasons for this are varied and also relate to recent events in Nick Cave's private life, with the tragic occurrence that hit him last year. Something that obviously doesn't need much discussion but has inevitably influenced and was pivotal in the writing of the lyrics and probably also in the choice of sounds, which are objectively different from everything he had let us hear up to this point.

Apparently, anyways - and not wanting to delve deep into the discussion - I mean, if you don't like it, don't listen to it - it seems that a lot of people really miss that dear old noisy electric rock blues and those dirty 'murder ballads' that have always been typical of the sound of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. A unique formation for how it managed to innovate that ancient tradition tracing back to the blues of the Mississippi River and American folk music, with elements of rock and roll and the noisy, hallucinatory, disturbing, annoying lesson of no-wave and that of the mid-European anarchist movements, a late rebellious revamp of the tradition of German expressionist theater.

Of course, I don't want to make any direct comparison between the quality of Nick Cave's lyrics and those of this group, the Endless Boogie, the US rock band from Brooklyn, New York, which is certainly not known for its lyrics. I mean, I'm convinced they don't constitute the main element of their compositions. At the same time, it would be equally pretentious and uncomfortable to want to compare the qualities of the individual musicians with those of the Bad Seeds, an ensemble that has probably no equal in the quality and personality of each component. Despite all of this, getting back to what I was saying before, I would have no doubt in suggesting this album to all these poor and desperate rock and roll orphans.

'Nothing For The Water', Endless Boogie's latest record, is not an album of original songs. In fact, to go back to the band's last studio album, you have to go back to 2013, to 'Long Island (No Quarter Records), the album that is probably the one that has given them the greatest notoriety. There are no new songs in this album, which, after all, is what could be called a true 'special release', a CDR made on the occasion of their last European tour and in a limited edition of 250 copies. The content? Material recorded here and there over a variable period of time exceeding ten years. Some things recorded in the studio between 2008 and 2009 and alternative takes extracted from the recording sessions of 'Full House Head', some live recordings and what the band wanted to define as genuine underground jams.

The album includes a version of 'Hispanic Minority' with the participation of His Majesty Stephen Malkmus on guitar, as well as an absolutely unmissable version of 'Rollin' & Tumblin'' recorded live by Ethan Miller in New Jersey at the beginning of this year, a wild session lasting more than fifteen minutes. Personally, I don't consider myself a liar if I say that as far as I'm concerned, this is not only their best record release made so far but precisely because of its strange and anomalous, deformed nature, one of the best episodes of rock and roll and garage music of this 2016.

If you know this band, you can well imagine what we are talking about. Endless Boogie takes its name from the eponymous 1971 album by John Lee Hooker, practically one of the major (the major) figures regarding the 'electric' adaptation of delta blues, the father of talking blues, who developed over time his own peculiar style, precisely by adapting the rhythms and timings of the old boogie to his way. The Guardian defined their sound as something halfway between a hint of the same John Lee Hooker and a blare of Captain Beefheart. Their style is a kind of compendium of the great lesson of bands like ZZ Top, inevitable Iggy & The Stooges, and the usual Velvet Underground. With an eye, of course, to the kraut-rock of Can and Amoon Duul. If I had to define them, personally, I would speak of a band that plays 'Metal Machine Music' as John Lee Hooker would play it. With an incredible eagerness for 'blues' (where blues is not just understood as a musical genre but a proper state of mind, an attitude, a dimension, and a culture) and that rebellion typical of the early Stones.

Yes. Probably now many will say that the sounds aren't too similar to those of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, bla bla bla, but those who make this kind of consideration forget where Nick Cave and his companions actually come from. They've always wanted to play, ever since their beginnings, like the old Mississippi blues played. Nick Cave but even more Blixa Bargeld (this might seem strange to many) have always loved the Stones (okay, who doesn't like them), but they've always been fascinated by the tradition of American music. Nick Cave, once more, at a certain point in his career, when Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds was becoming something too 'institutional', felt within himself that innate wild instinct of rock and roll and gave life to the Grinderman with the desire to finally play electric, noise and garage again. Speaking of citations, the band's name, 'Grinderman', is another homage to a giant of the blues, Memphis Slim, and his song, 'Grinder Man Blues'. If apparently, the two bands have a different sound, it's equally true that they both have the same attitude, the same wild spirit and that's what really matters.

Because the history of the blues is so important. Because the history of the blues and that of the United States are, in a sense, a metaphor for the history of humanity. The history of humanity is a full and charged account of violence. Look at what Hugo Race, Chris Eckman, Chris Brokaw (the Dirtmusic) have done. They wanted to seek the origins of the blues and eventually ended up in Mali, in the heart of Africa. The same place where the life of man was born and from where it began to spread over the entire surface of the planet.

When you leave the place you come from and you do it because you have no other options and maybe you also know that you will never go back, you inevitably leave something behind. It is something painful, you are deprived of something that belongs to you and that has to do with your own nature. Like cutting the umbilical cord? No. Rather, I would say it's the same as cutting off a limb. An arm. A leg... We're talking about being victims of an act of violence and when you are touched by the devil's hand, it eventually ends up nesting within your soul and the depths of your heart. Look at the cover of this album. Rudolph Lewis, aka Young Rudolph, aka Rudolph Miller. Shoplifter. George Levy, aka Lee. Shoplifter. Again.

Jesse James. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Earle Nelson. Sister Amy Archer Gilligan. John Wayne Gacy. Charlie Manson. O. J. Simpson. Crime in the United States has been recorded since its colonization and violent crime rates (including homicide, rape, sexual assault, robbery, assault) are periodically recorded higher in the United States of America than in any other country. Of course, the crime rate is necessarily altered by data such as population numbers and more or less broad population density within each city, before each nation, but this data can only justify so much and still doesn't erase what's an incontrovertible data.

Thomas F. Byrnes was the head of the New York police department from 1880 to 1885. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, came to the United States, to New York, as a child. He was appointed chief detective in 1880. In four years, he strengthened the police forces and made number 3,300 arrests. He managed to obtain legislative approval of several judicial measures that practically gave him carte blanche. He established the 'Mulberry Street Morning Parade', arrested suspects before evidence was gathered hoping these would confess their crimes, leading to the resolution of other cases. He published a book, 'Professional Criminals of America'. He created a genuine book of mug shots of criminals, the 'Rogues Gallery'. His brutal way of interrogating suspected criminals became popular and practically gave life to the expression, 'to give the third degree'. According to many, he himself invented this expression. According to descriptions, 'the third degree', as practiced by Thomas Byrnes, was a combination of physical and psychological tortures. According to many commentators and historians, he was the man who invented today's American investigative system.

Thomas F. Byrnes was an evil man. He was touched by the hand of the devil, and his story is a violent one, which he himself wanted to document through the pages of his book. If you close your eyes while listening to this record, you can probably see him doing his job. The blurred and disturbed image of an insane man snapping and documenting the photographs of all these criminals in his damn archive. The historical testimony of his brutal madness.

'Number 186. William Dougherty, aka Big Dock, aka William Gleason. [...] '

'May God bless the Americans we lost this morning. May He comfort their families. May God continue to watch over this country that we love.' President Barack Obama.