sure can have a lot of fun for twenty-five cents

Youth Minister Pac-Man: “Miss, are you familiar with the gospel of Phosphor Dot Jesus? Twelve kilobytes of read-only salvation await the faithful!”

(What the hell is up with the red turtleneck and clown shoes Pac-Man’s sporting in the picture? It’s worse that the Tyrolean hat he later got stuck wearing.)

Black Randy & the Metrosquad - I Slept in an Arcade (from Pass the Dust, I Think I’m Bowie, 1980) - The late Black Randy appeared and performed this track in the 1981 movie Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, and was beaten up by a young Ray Winstone for his efforts. (And I feel obligated to point out that this song is not actually about a videogame arcade, but about peepshow booths.)

Buckner & Garcia - Pac-Man Fever (from Pac-Man Fever, 1982) - The Faustian nature of the novelty hit: Fifteen minutes of ubiquity, followed by a lifetime of obloquy. Desperate attempts to recapture the lightning in a plastic milk jug (“Do the Donkey Kong”) come to naught, and it reaches a point where the band is begging promoters to be booked at state fairs -- as an opening act for a one-hit wonder from the sixties with only one original member left (the tambourine player, of course).

Mi-Sex - Computer Games (from Computer Games, 1980) - Decent Kiwi synthpop from a band that started its existence as a art-prog outfit before catching a ride on the new wave. Listening to it makes me want to boot up some old Infocom text adventure games, even though I hate text adventure games with a passion.

Bobby and Synthia - Video Violence (from None Night of Flexipop, Volume 2) - I know nothing about the artists or release date (early 80’s presumably) for this track. It was included on one of the enthusiast-complied Flexipop compilations of rare and obscure synth and new wave tracks, and the trail ends there.

Eiffel 65 – My Console (from Europop, 1999) – CHEESY VOCODER A GO-GO! I’ve listened to and enjoyed enough Eurodance music to suppress my listener’s gag reflex, but the opening “verse” of this track is just too much to take. “We’ve namechecked the Playstation and a bunch of hit games! Please, Mr. Sony-man, we are eager to have you license our song for your advertisements!” Anyone over the age of 13 who uses the line “we’ve got it going on” in reference to sitting on one’s ass and playing Tekken 3 all day deserves a swift kick to the groin.

Freezepop - I Am Not Your Gameboy (from Fancy Ultra Fresh, 2004) - Quirky neo-synthpop (from Boston!) that’s a bit on the gimmicky side, but not so much to be irritating. Marvel at how thoroughly the band milks the title premise.

the sin also rises

“There was a time when I used to get lots of ideas... I thought up the Seven Deadly Sins in one afternoon. The only thing I've come up with recently is advertising.” – Peter Cook as The Devil (aka George Spiggott), Bedazzled, 1967

Today’s theme was inspired (sin-spired?) by the capital vices, better known as the seven deadly sins. I suppose I could have tried to be extra creative, and built a post around the framework of the seven holy virtues, but how many songs outside of the Christian rock/rap/grindcore/polka ghetto celebrate “chastity” and “abstinence”? There’s Jermaine Stewart’s “We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off”, but that’s a better example why not to walk the virtuous path when mp3 blogging.

Pride - Nina Hagen - My Way (from The Definitive Collection, 1995) - I usually don’t need to ask for suggestions to fill out a themed post, but I experienced a mental block trying to come up with a song representing “pride”. I got several great suggestions, some of them which will almost certainly pop up in future posts, but in the end, Ed Cunard hit it right on the head by suggesting “My Way”. Perfect, in that it allows me to unleash the eccentric, operatic, punk rock insanity that is Nina Hagen on you, my readers. While I’m still slightly terrified of Ms. Hagen, my wife thinks she’s the berries, going so far to declare that our first daughter shall be named Nina Marlene Roxy, in honor of my wife’s musical heroines (the other two being Lene Lovich and Roxy Epoxy). No, we’re still not getting a divorce.

Greed - Daisy Chainsaw - Love Your Money (from Eleventeen, 1992) - I got this CD for $1.99 at Disc Diggers. Mick Mercer had mentioned the band in the same sentence as Carter USM in the intro to his Gothic Rock book, and since I loved Carter…. Katie Jane Garside is one of those “artists” whose art exists solely to promote their public personas.

The music is ok for what it is, sloppy noise rock with pop grafts from a non-matching donor, but the band itself was just another one of those flash-in-the-pan darlings of the moment. The music press goes gaga for these bands while better acts fade away from lack of interest, and folks like me can only scatch their heads and wonder what the big deal is. (The Dresden Dolls, anyone?)

Lust - E-rotic - Do It All Night (from The Very Best of E-Rotic, 2002) - Eurodance that dispenses with coy suggestiveness and double entendres and just cuts to the chase, spelling out “This song is about fucking” in ten foot high neon letters. The overall effect is more cartoony than lewd, like Aqua remixed for late night Cinemax, with song titles like “Willy Use a Billy…Boy” and “Sex Is a Thrill With the Pill”. Several E-rotic tracks, including “Do It All Night”, have been used in DDR games. “Horizontal rumba”, indeed.

Envy - Rick Springfield - Jessie’s Girl (from Working Class Dog, 1981) - Yeah, this track is often lumped into the “Teenybopper Idol Pop” category, but it’s also an excellent and infectious piece of guitar-driven power pop. Seriously, what differentiates this song from Joe Jackson’s critically acclaimed “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” (Answer: Jackson’s song is whinier and sounds like an outtake from My Aim Is True, both dubious virtues, at best.)

Gluttony - Total Coelo - I Eat Cannibals (Part 1) (from I Eat Cannibals & Other Tasty Trax, 1996) – “Boss, you’ve broken the goofy meter!” Like that’s a bad thing.

Wrath - Black Flag - Revenge (from The First Four Years, 1984) - I prefer the pre-Henry Rollins Black Flag. Rollins reminds me too much of a nerd trying to pass as a badass. The way he speaks, his body language, his tendency to verbally flail around when trying (and failing) to be witty – it all screams “nerd” to me. I knew a kid in college who was the exact same way. I couldn’t stand the beady-eyed son of a bitch.

On to the song: There were plenty of tracks I could have chosen for “wrath,” but “Revenge” was the one that kept popping into my head. It’s a quick burst of early LA hardcore agro. There’s no theorizing happening here, just the urge to hit back hard.

Sloth - Lost Generation - Never Work (from the Never Work 7”, 1982, collected on Punk This, 1995) – From Connecticut, this track is solid, fuzzed-out midtempo punk from a time when louder/faster hardcore ruled the scene.

roy-g-ambivalent

I was going to ask Ulu Vakk, aka Color Kid, to guest host today’s entry, but he’s indisposed at the moment, having been retconned out of existence (twice!) to make way for Mark Waid’s grating reboot of Legion of Superheroes. (No one does the “teenage rebellion” thing better than a man whose teenage years ended with the Carter administration, right?)

The Diodes - Red Rubber Ball (from Released, 1979; collected on Tired of Waking Up Tired, 1998) – Between the Diodes and Teenage Head, Canada was doing pretty well for itself in the International Punk-Pop/Power Pop standings in the late 70’s. This great take on an old Paul Simon song (remembered mostly for Cyrkle’s cover version) appeared on the Diodes’ first and second LPs. While it doesn’t totally absolve Canada for unleashing Loverboy, Alanis Morrisette , and Anne Murray, it does knock a couple decades off the nation’s stay in Shit Music Purgatory.

Heavenly - Orange Corduroy Dress (from Le Jardin de Heavenly, 1992) - Despite the title, the song is not about a circa 1974 kindergarten teacher. It’s another bit of sweet, dreamy twee pop from the masters of the form.

Phil Lynnot - Yellow Pearl (from Solo In Soho, 1980) – Nothing like you’d expect from the man behind “The Boys Are Back In Town”. I have a lot of respect for the late Mr. Lynott for his willingness to embrace punk and new wave while other traditional rockers retreated behind walls of disdain. On this track, he (in collaboration with Ultravox’s Midge Ure) dabbles in the synthpop genre, and the results are pretty impressive.

Goldfrapp - Crystalline Green (from Black Cherry, 2003) – I love Black Cherry…a lot. It’s one of a select few albums I can listen to from beginning to end without getting the urge to skip tracks.

Cristina - Blue Money (from Sleep It Off, 1984) - Dissipated party girl dance pop, very nineteen-eighties, indeed. Live fast, die young, and leave a withered corpse covered in needle tracks.

Peter Murphy - Indigo Eyes (from Love Hysteria, 1988) - Doesn’t this sound like it should have been the theme to some 80’s teen flick? It may be a bit on the sappy side, but it’s still better than anything Murphy’s ex-bandmates recorded as Love and Rockets.

Babes in Toyland - Bruise Violet (from Fontanelle, 1992) - I don’t know who Kat Bjelland is angry with on this track (rumor says Courtney Love). I’m just glad it’s not me. “You fucking bitch/I hope your insides rot.” It’s the musical equivalent of watching a death match and getting hit in the face by a stray brick.

a noun is a person, place, or thing

Here’s a simple little theme, inspired by an old Schoolhouse Rock song. (My second one in two days.)

Oh OK - Person (from 1982’s WOW mini LP, collected on The Complete Recordings, 2002) - This is about as minimal as pop music gets, stripped down to bass (played by Linda Stipe, sister to Michael), drums and Lynda Hopper’s vocals. It’s a catchy, yet unsettling track; the Go-Go’s meet Samuel Beckett, playing an outdoor concert to an absent audience in a world gone “corpsed”.

“I am a person/and that is enough.” And in this case, it certainly is.

The Angelic Upstarts - We Gotta Get Out of This Place (from We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, 1980) - Ah, the question of Oi! music. Labeled as a genre by music journalist Garry Bushell, as a way of differentiating his favorite acts from the anarcho-punk and proto-crusty scenes, those promoting the concept tend to cast their nets pretty wide in claiming adherents. Apart from standard skinhead/street punk acts like the Business or Cock Sparrer, I’ve seen the likes Vice Squad, the Partisans, and the Newtown Neurotics incongruously included in lists of Oi! Bands.

Here we have the Upstarts doing a sludgy reworking of the Animals’ classic for the football hooligan crowd.

L7 - One More Thing (from Bricks Are Heavy, 1992) – I really, really hated the whole grunge movement. Nevermind broke into the charts and the fucking floodgates opened, spilling every spoiled suburban brat and clueless trust fund baby into the “alternative scene”. All of a sudden there were frat boys with goatees, turquoise hair, and combat boots looking for pseudo-bohemian co-eds in baby doll dresses to date rape. Hoo-fucking-ray.

I did like L7, however, despite their getting stuck with the “grunge” tag. I liked them even more after I read about this incident in one of the music mags:

The band gained a certain amount of notoriety for their performance at the 1992 Reading Festival, when Donita Sparks removed her tampon on-stage and threw it into the crowd in protest against the missiles being thrown by the crowd. (from Wikipedia)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Brilliant.

the summer's here

Ready to rock the solstice like a druid on a mistletoe high?

I’m more of an autumn man, myself. My Scando-Hibernian-Anglo-Saxon genetic heritage makes summer a three-month endurance trial. I burn faster than butter on a skillet. I sweat off enough water to create a largish saltwater lake. I retreat to the comfort and safety of the air-conditioned bedroom with Oscar, my chubby chihuahua-pug in tow.

The wife loves the season, though, being an avid gardener and excellent preparer of all things BBQ (despite being a vegetarian), so I can’t complain too loudly.

those we miss you'll surely pardon

Anyone up for some yard work? It’s not as “cool” as going to a Death Cab For Cutie show and getting vomited on by a Boston University co-ed, but it’s infinitely more rewarding. After spending a long day pulling weeds and mulching, there’s nothing finer than sitting out on the patio and watching the sun set, the scent of lavender in the air.

The Cure – The Hanging Garden (from Pornography, 1982) – The wife and I disagree on which is the best Cure album. I prefer the stark minimalism of Seventeen Seconds; she makes her case for the oppressive richness of Pornography. No, we’re not getting a divorce.

Manic Hispanic – Uncle Chato’s Garden (from The Recline of Mexican Civilization, 2001) – A clever reworking of Bad Religion’s “Atomic Garden” by an LA-based Chicano humor punk supergroup.

The Darkness – English Country Garden (from One Way Ticket To Hell…And Back, 2005) – As much as I hate acts like Kiss, Ted Nugent, and Grand Funk Railroad, the demise of traditional rock, or “RAWK”, saddens me. Like non-superstore department stores, trad rock just kind of faded away while we weren’t looking. The older bands have retreated to the depressing purgatory of the summer reunion tour circuit, coasting on past glories for the benefit of a fanbase looking to fend off the long gray twilight of middle age.

At least there’s the Darkness to keep the fires lit a while longer. I appreciate how the band chooses to maintain their coy “are we sincere, or are we spoofing” stance regarding their music. There’s too much facile irony these days, either from college rock hipsters doing piss takes of classic rock songs or from emo-fied pretty boys wearing vintage band shirts as they warble out their whiny cookie cutter product.

The Toy Dolls – Up the Garden Path (from Dig That Groove Baby, 1983) – If you can get past Michael “Olga” Algar’s idiosyncratic (think cartoon chipmunk) vocals, you’ll find a first rate band playing revved up punk rock with a great sense of humor and an eye for the often poignant details of everyday life.

give it to me, it won't be abused

Poor "it", always getting poked, prodded, and otherwise manhandled by musicans....

Wanda Jackson - Rip It Up - I was torn between using Little Richard's version (which I think is better) or this one, but in the end I went with the Queen of Rockabilly's raspy rendition.

The Colors - Rave It Up - It seems like someone really loved the Undertones, eh?

The Damned - Smash It Up - Wrapped up in my mother-in-law's freezer is a banana that Captain Sensible gave to my wife in exchange for a slice of pizza. How many other folks can make that claim?

The Cramps - Tear It Up - One of the highlights of Urgh! A Music War was a sweaty Lux Interior, shirtless and with his latex pants down halfway over his ass, doing horrible things to his microphone while performing this song.

The Violent Femmes - Add It Up - Not a big fan of the band. Not a big fan of this song. Even less of a fan of it after Ethan Hawke butchered it in Reality Bites.

Sam and Dave - Wrap It Up - My musical diet the mid-to-late eighties consisted nearly entirely of 60's R&B and soul music. My favorite artists tended to be from the Atlantic label, specifically the ones who recorded through Stax Records during the Memphis label's partnership with Atlantic. Twenty years of punk fandom has not diminished my love for The Best of Sam and Dave LP in the slightest.

I could have made a 4 CD box set of "---- It Up" songs, although I still would not have included "Lick It Up" by Kiss.

Because Kiss is shite.

gonna rock it up, roll it up, do it all, have a ball

Here's a little musical salute to the best damn day of the week. So toss a couple of steaks (or tofu patties) on the grill, break out some ice cold drinks, kick back, relax, and enjoy this themed montage of music and personal anecdotes.

Bay City Rollers - Saturday Night - In my second grade class at the Linscott-Rumford elementary school, this 45 and the Grease OST alternated endlessly during indoor recess periods. I should really hate this song because of it, but I can't. The nostalgia fumes overpower my critical faculties.

David Bowie - Drive In Saturday - The fifties retro craze addressed through a glimpse at a post-apocalypse seventies retro revival. Bravo, Mr. Bowie.

Sometime last year, my wife and I commuted to work in silence, pissed at each other over something I can't even remember now. Near the end of our drive this song popped up on the driving music mix CD. My wife muttered under her breath "I hate this song, by the way." We both started to laugh and all was well again.

Ultravox - Saturday Night in the City of the Dead - I'm not exactly sure where this City of the Dead is located, but it's light years away from Vienna. The original John Foxx incarnation of Ultravox was a bona fide punk band, and sounds nothing like the synthpop act it would become under Midge Ure's direction.

The Specials - Friday Night, Saturday Morning - It's not my favorite Specials track, but even the worst Specials song sounds better than most bands' best efforts.

Rational Youth - Saturdays In Silesia - Excellent Canadian 80's synthpop. I don't really get the reason behind the Eastern Bloc references, but that doesn't diminish my fondness for this track by one iota.

Guadalcanal Diary - Always Saturday - A catchy bit of melodic alt-rock with cliched anti-suburbia overtones. I'm no big fan of urban sprawl, provinicialism, or social conformity, but these types of songs tend to irk me. Because if there's one think I hate more than soccer moms, it's forty-something hipsters with ponytails who live in rent-controlled apartments and use their sketchbooks and notepads as props to hit on twenty-something women at the local coffeehouse. There's also the fact that I've seen many a "hardcore" 1990's alterna-scenster come shuffling off the present-day subway at State Street station dressed in standard-issue business wear, odd pits and scars on their faces where their piercings used to go. Fight the power! Or barring that, fight for stock options, you useless fucks.

This will be the last of the daily updates. Now that I've proven to myself I can update daily for a period of five weeks, I'm going to loosen things up a bit before I get burned out. I'll try and post every other day or so, working with a themed format along the lines of today's entry.

nobody believes in mystery religion

When I did the post on German new wave a while back, I intentionally omitted one sing that I felt deserved a write up of its own. That song was Peter Godwin's "Images of Heaven", a cult favorite that I consider to be the purest realization of 80's synthpop futurism.

The imagined future of a quarter century past made an indelible mark on my developing psyche. I can still call up crystal clear memories of being eight years old and sitting in the back of my father's T-Bird as we drove through Boston at night, the elevated expressway threading through the flourescent- and neon-lit towers of the financial district and Blondie's "Heart of Glass" playing on the radio. It was at once both fascinating and terrifying, and I flash back to it every time I watch Tron or Blade Runner, read Neuromancer, or hear certain old pop songs.

Ogilo released a collection of Godwin's material on CD titled Images of Heaven: The Best of Peter Godwin in 1998.

There were two versions of the "Images of Heaven" video made, one featuring nudity and one safe for MTV. Here's the safe for work version:

wah wah wa-wah

I'm taking a little break from the punk and new wave stuff today to discuss Ennio Morricone's Danger Diabolik soundtrack. Most famous for his much imitated spaghetti western film scores, Morricone also composed the soundtracks for dozens of other 60's Italian films, where his distinctive musical stylings add a level of value to even the shittiest low budget Euro-quickies.

Not that Danger Diabolik is a shitty film, notwithstanding its dubious distiction of being used for the final episode of MST3K. Based on an Italian comic, the film has supercriminal Diabolik (a very trim John Phillip Law) and his lover/partner-in-crime Eva Kant (Marisa Mell) tangling with both the authorities and the mob in their pursuit of the good life. A thrillseeking hedonist as opposed to a would be worldbeater, Diabolik makes for an interesting anti-hero. Pulling a heist in order to have sex under a pile of banknotes? That's slick, indeed.

(My wife, who has little tolerance for this sort of Euro-schlock, actually enjoyed this film. She really appreciated how the relationship between Diabolik and Eva was depicted -- as equal partners, rather than as a masculine hero and his vapid eye-candy escort.)

So enjoy these wonderful slices 60's Euro pop. Black skintight supervillian suit not required.

Ennio Morricone & Christy - Deep Down
Ennio Morricone - Under Wah-Wah (Extracted Au From H2O)

SPECIAL BONUS TRACK:

The Italian-language version of the theme to Operation Double 007. The cool kids will know what this is.

Ennio Morricone & Christy - O.K. Connery

she don't try to be like a TV star

It's spring cleaning day here on the mountainside. I haven't even begun my half of the chores list, so let's make this short and sweet. Here's two tracks from early Scottish pop-punkers the Rezillos.

The great thing about early punk was that it was truly a movement, opening new musical possibilities and vistas where anything could (and often did) happen. Decades after punk music has calcified into three-minute bursts of guitar rock tarted up with studs and leather, it's all too easy to lose sight of what made the initial punk explosion so wonderful and terrifying. It meant a band like the Rezillos, more inspired by 60's eccentric Screaming Lord Sutch than by the Sex Pistols or the Clash, could rise up out of nowhere and not only be heard, but meet with a degree of chart success.

The band's nearly entire output can be found on Can't Stand The Rezillos: The (Almost) Complete Rezillos. (It's short a few tracks, but worth getting all the same.)

Finally, here's a clip of the band lipsynching "Destination Venus" on Top of the Pops in 1978.

where there are no waves

A local obscurity for today's post, "No Surfing In Dorchester Bay" by the Gremies from their 1980 7''. It's a goofy little dose of garage punk that had been on my want list since I came across an entry for it in a new wave discography fifteen years ago.

Beautiful Dorchester Bay! From the picturesque grandeur of the Keyspan gas tank and its rainbow mural (look close and you can spot Ho Chi Minh's profile in the blue stripe) to the brutalist edifices of the UMass Boston campus, it's urban shoreline at its most depressing.

So come and take a walk along the Columbia Point causeway. If you're real lucky, you might not be hit by a rotting crab carcass dropped by one of the seagulls circling overhead.

your sky all hung with jewels

There seems to be an inevitable pattern at every wedding reception I've ever attended. Prior to the event, the prospective bride or groom promises that "our reception music won't suck, like so-and-so's did" and that they're going to have the DJ play this song and that song and so forth.

Two hours into the actual reception, however, the playlist has segued from "The Macarena Song" to Sinatra's "Summer Wind" to "My Humps", suggesting the guiding hand of some cosmic entity has once again taken control of the situation. (My guess would be Inebrius Spasmodicus, Lord of Drunken Gyrations.)

I'm proud to say that that did not happen at my own wedding back in October 2004. Thanks to affordable CD ripping/burning technology and the reception hall's excellent sound system, my wife and I were able to take direct control of our reception music destiny. Four CD-R's packed with only the songs we chose, no filler and none of the usual embarrassing DJ bullshit.

It kicked off with "Pretty Vacant" by the Sex Pistols and from there went through a killer selection of Irish rebel, punk, new wave, and classic 60's tracks. It's a mix CD box set chronicling our relationship as a whole, and it's 100% macarena-free.

it's another way to fake

Two tracks from the Au Pairs today. Formed in Birmingham, England in 1979, the Au Pairs were a post-punk band along the lines of Gang of Four (minimalist deconstructed funk with scratchy guitar work), whose work has a strong feminist bent.

In other words: It's some excellent stuff.

The feminism at work here is more than simple punk sloganeering; there's a wider critique of societal structures happening in these songs, one that questions the validity of accepted solutions that merely exchange one restrictive dogma for another or that change the words but keep the old patronizing tune.

"It's Obvious", from the 1981 Playing With a Different Sex LP, finds vocalist/guitarist Lesley Woods examining her new equality with a tone of detached irony. The cleaning duties are now shared and her partner offers to wash her back. "It's paradise," Woods sings as if attempting to convince herself it's true. "You're equal/but different" states the chorus, echoing a post-feminist mantra.

"Come Again", from the same LP, icily dissects the sexual egalitarianism of the "sensitive male" and reduces it to a mechanical exchange of acts devoid of passion. "Yes, thank you, I've got one/Yes, it was nice," Woods states matter-of-factly about her orgasm. The ongoing back-and-forth (no pun intended) between Woods and bandmate Paul Foad as the partners in the coupling is priceless, perfectly capturing the awkwardness and frustration in trying way too hard to make things happen.

Amazon has a UK import Au Pairs anthology featuring both LPs, plus singles tracks and rarities. Highly recommended.

UPDATE: Here's a clip of the band performing "Come Again" for the 1981 film Urgh! A Music War.



SECOND UPDATE: Corrected the title quote from "fail" to "fake", which I knew (having checked out the lyric sheet a while back when discussing the band with my wife) yet somehow managed to screw up anyhow.

that zero is too cold for me

Poor Billy Preston, dead at age 59 from complications due to kidney failure. I'll leave the detailed eulogies and in depth discussions of his musical legacy to others, and remember the man through one of his finest songs, "Nothing From Nothing".

A freewheeling slice of 70's soul, this track proves that the Me Decade wasn't all about terrible fashions and gas shortages. Listening to it today evokes bittersweet memories of lying on the gooseshit brown carpet in my parents' living room and reading a battered Spider-Man comic. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise: it was great being a child in the seventies.

Rest in peace, Mr. Preston. I forgive you for appearing in the Sgt. Pepper's movie.

Deviled eggs? Deviled ham? This is Satan's buffet!

It's 6/6/6, a perfect date to market even shittier remakes of shitty 70's horror films as well as another reason for the born-agains to act irrationally (as if they needed another excuse). I'm certain that even as I type this, there's a group of Christian Identity cultists huddled in their underground bunker in Montana, nibbling on pemmican and crackers in anticipation of their imminent battle with the hosts of the Antichrist. Ah, the glories of being batshit insane.

Although I'd normally be the first to point out that the "Number of the Beast" is actually 666, and not 06062006, the erroneous diabolic interpretation of today's date gives me the opportunity to do something I would normally never, ever, consider doing on this site -- spotlight a track by thrash metal gods Slayer.

The song, "Tormentor", isn't about the Horned One per se, so consider it a case of Satanism by association. (Some of my ancestors were Massachusetts Puritans, so I can do that.) It originally appeared on 1983's Show No Mercy LP and was later comped on the wonderfully idiosyncratic soundtrack to The River's Edge. (Agent Orange, Burning Spear, The Wipers, and Slayer together on one album? Brilliant!) The track is worth a listen for the opening bit alone, a perfect little fragment of heavy metal bombast.

and now there is no afterlife

Today we close out the "Last Days of New Wave" series with a couple of tracks from We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It (or simply "Fuzzbox" on this side of the Atlantic), an all-female punk-pop quartet from Birmingham, England.

Although they had better chart success in their later, slicker dance-pop days, scoring hits in 1989 with "Pink Sunshine" and "International Rescue", I prefer the earlier, rougher cartoon punk look and sound they debuted with in the mid-80's. They remind me of a live- action version of the Misfits from the Jem cartoon.

Here's the video for "Love Is the Slug":

There was a great retrospective compilation, Look At the Hits On That, released in the UK in 2005. It spans the group's entire career and even throws in a DVD of their videos. Amazon has it, even though the price is a bit steep.

the history book on the shelf is always repeating itself

This penultimate installment of the "Twilight of the New Wave" features Doctor and the Medics, a colorful, over-the-top London band who crested and crashed on the strength of their gimmickry.

Remember when I said how the music press panned these later new wave acts for relying on style over substance? That might have been an unfair assesment of the other bands, but it's spot-on in regards to Doctor and the Medics. Take away the novelty of their visual component, and there's nothing really there. (And I like the band.)

So instead of trying to come up with something interesting to say about them, how about we just cut to a video that pretty much sums up their appeal. It's for their 1986 cover of Abba's "Waterloo":




See? Fun, but as substantial as a cobweb cassarole.

when tomorrow comes you'll wish you had today

Part two of the "The New Wave's Last Roundup" series, featuring the Glaswegian pop duo Strawberry Switchblade. The group, consisting of friends Rose McDowall and Jill Bryson, had actually been around since 1981 (as part of the Scottish regional scene that produced such indie pop darlings as Orange Juice), but it wasn't until their second single, 1984's "Since Yesterday", that they caught the public's attention. (In the UK, at least, where the song made it into the top ten.)

Strawberry Switchblade is often referenced as an example of new wave bubblegum, a facile bit of pigeonholing that overlooks the generally melancholy outlook expressed in their lyrics. Even their bounciest pop tracks are tinged by undercurrents of sadness and loss. It's a strange dichotomy, but one that gives their music a unique charm.

Their self-titled 1985 debut LP failed to build on the buzz generated by the "Since Yesterday" single, and never saw an American release, although the duo was huge in the Asian markets. This was especially true in Japan, where their "cutesy gothic" costumes helped inspire the "loli-goth" fashion scene.

In 1993, I willingly plunked down $25 for the Japanese import CD release of their first album. Since then, WEA International has released a collection of all the group's album and single tracks, titled Since Yesterday. Nah, I'm not bitter or nothin'. I understand the "early adopter surcharge" concept.

Here's the video for "Since Yesterday":

this is a new age of television

Popcult anomalies fascinate me. For example, there's the small cluster of visually flamboyant pop bands that made a brief splash in the mid-1980's. New Wave (meaning the loose conglomeration of dozens of wildy different musical styles that emerged in the wake of the initial punk rock explosion) had pretty much subsided by 1985, and the surviving bands once associated with it had either mutated into standard Top 40 pop acts (Duran Duran, Human League), moved onto the "college radio" circuit (Echo and the Bunnymen, Siouxsie and the Banshees), or simply up and vanished. (Or became Adam Ant, who should have vanished gracefully after 1983, the poor bastard.)

The music video outlets that had given New Wave acts a leg up over less savvy (and less visually attractive) performers in the early eighties became colonized by a new breed of telegenic superstars, as the record labels caught on to the power of the format in making or breaking popstar careers. The early Video Age, where the scarcity of content worked to shape tastes, was over. In this new age Jacko, Prince, Madonna, and Springsteen, backed by massive PR combines, reigned supreme.

So how and why did a handful of colorful pop acts, throwbacks all to the visual novelty of early eighties New Wave bands, suddenly crop up in the period from 1985 to 1986? Very different from each other musically, these bands did not comprise a "movement" in any shape or form. Apart from the striking visual components, the other thing these groups had in common was disdain from the music press which panned what they saw as more instances of style over substance.

The gist of this all is that I'm going to feature some of these acts over the next few days. Today let's take a look at Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

Founded by Tony James (ex-Generation X), working some Malcolm McLarenesque huckster mojo to create the worlds first "cyberpunk" band. And it worked, if only for a short while. Sigue Sigue's first album, Flaunt It (1986), is an entertaining post-modern concept album. Japanese and Soviet imagery is mixed and matched with sampled dialogue and sci-fi themed lyrics, all set against the backdrop of canned (and heavily recycled) synth lines and drumbeats. In an odd but fitting touch, ads for Loreal, iD Magazine, and the Sputnik Corporation fill in the spaces between tracks.

Yes, it's a "love it or hate it" kind of record. I think it's swell, if repetitive.

Here's the video for "21st Century Boy", a nod to Marc Bolan: