We are the people of our time – Guilty Pleasures File #2: Eurodance

“O, Goddess of Transitory…” – Raul Julia, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank

The second installment of our sporadic Guilty Pleasures feature spotlights a handful of Eurodance tracks I’m moderately fond of. I first became interested in the genre back in the late 1990’s. At the time I was into collecting videogame music soundtracks, and would visit various sites that hosted sample tracks (the great-grandparents of today’s music blogs) to help me decide whether or not a given OST was worth plunking down the fifty-odd dollars to import.

This was the time when the Bemani craze was starting to take off big-time, and its related music tracks began creeping into the mix of what had mostly been fighting game and RPG musical offerings. Acting on whim, I decided to download a few songs to see what the excitement was about, and to my surprise, I liked what I heard. Gravitas and relevance is dandy, but there are some musical cravings that can only be sated by effervescent fluff sung in oddly accented English. I blame my Scandinavian ancestry.

E-Rotic – Oh Nick Please Not So Quick (from Mambo No. Sex, 1999) – Subtlety is overrated. Think of it as a companion piece to “Come Again”, the Au Pairs’ ode to dysfunctional sex.

Smile.dk – Butterfly (from Smile, 1998) – Familiar to anyone who has ever flailed around like a spastic chimpanzee on a DDR machine, this track upholds the proud tradition of misguided dance pop Orientalism pioneered by such classics as Aneka’s 1981 hit, “Japanese Boy”. Because nothing says “Japanese” like nasally white girl voices.

Rebecca – Young Forever (from In My Dreams, 2000) – From an online review of In My Dreams: “Her style lends itself to a brilliant cross between Britney Spears (with more finesse) and Debbie Gibson.” Wow. And it was meant as sincere praise, raising the concept of the backhanded compliment to a whole new level, intentionally or not. “His people skills are a brilliant cross between Idi Amin’s (with less cannibalism) and Pol Pot’s.” It’s a pretty good song, nonetheless.

Rollergirl – Superstar (from the Superstar CD single, 2000) – Yes, she based her stage persona on Heather Graham’s character from Boogie Nights. She also did excellent covers of the Bangles’ “Eternal Flame” and Madonna’s “Dear Jessie” that completely outshine the originals.

Me & My – Baby Boy (from Me & My, 1995) – Sweet as cotton candy, and about as substantial. Diabetics, you have been warned.

party like it’s 199x

“And remember, my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future.” – Criswell, Plan 9 From Outer Space

“The twenty-first century’s yesterday” – Michael Hutchence, “Need You Tonight”

Few things rot on the popcult vine as fast as speculations regarding the future. Anticipating the world to come is easily enough done; extrapolate some current trends, toss in some improbable visual flourishes (flying cars, personal rocketships, boots with Saturnian ring systems), and presto! Instant futurism! The catch is that these space-casseroles are best eaten hot from the space-oven. Even the most meticulously considered projections appear positively quaint after the space of a decade, or even sooner.

John Brunner’s Shockwave Rider, a fascinating precursor to the cyberpunk genre written in the early 1970’s, features a protagonist who hacks into the government database via dialing on a rotary phone. In William Gibson’s Neuromancer, cyberhustlers deal in whopping kilobytes of “hot” RAM chips. (In the intro to Virtual Light, Gibson admitted that events had outpaced his initial vision, leading to a second trilogy of novels drawing upon revised speculative trends. These, too, feel more out of step with each tick of the second hand.) Blade Runner, the movie that visually defined “the future” for people of my generation, feels more nostalgic than visionary these days, speaking more about 1982 than 2019.

Not that I’m knocking that. Honestly, I’d prefer a neon lit futurescape populated with sculpted Nagel-esque femme fatales and mirrorshaded cyberpunks. Even Nehru jackets with black turtlenecks or shiny silver jumpsuits would be preferable to the shag haircuts, flared pants, and earth tones prevalent in the real 21st century. It won’t be long before I’m rushing through the streets like Chuck Heston in Soylent Green. “It's EVIL. Corduroy pants are made out of EVIL. They're making our clothes out of EVIL. Next thing they'll be making us wear plaid chinos. You've gotta tell them!”

Here are some tracks dealing with futures that never were:

Beck – Diamond Dogs (from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, 2001) – Beck’s music really doesn’t do anything for me, but I do like this cover of David Bowie’s post-apocalyptic classic from 1974. It’s a shame Beck left out my favorite part of the song: Bowie’s opening announcement that “This ain’t rock and roll! This is genocide!”

Hazel O’Connor – Eighth Day (from the Breaking Glass soundtrack, 1980) – Working in the same vein as idiosyncratic new wave divas like Lene Lovich or Toyah Wilcox, but with a more limited musical palette, O’Connor recorded some really great tracks alongside some embarrassingly awful ones. This track is one of her high points. She performs it at the end of the film in a stunning stage performance that visually anticipated Tron by a good two years.

Marcus – 1983 (from Green Crystal Ties, Vol. 5: Gems from Garage Band Vaults, 1998) – This track from the mid-sixties anticipates a future world ruled by an overlord named “Big Daddy”, which doesn’t evoke the same frisson of menace as Orwell’s fraternally-named creation. Instead it conjures visions of a southern-fried dystopia, a Billy-Joe-Bob-ocracy, overseen by a vat-grown hybrid of Boss Hogg and the patriarch from a Tennessee Williams play. “Don’t you know we’ve always been at war with Alabamia, cousin?” The Ministry of Truth would, of course, have its HQ in a Waffle House.

The Red Crayola – Born In Flames (from a 1981 single, collected on Singles 1968-2002) – Krayola? Crayola? I refuse to play their name-changing games. This track comes from the band’s brief period as a post-punk supergroup, with the Swell Maps’ Epic Soundtracks, the Raincoats’ Gina Birch, and Essential Logic’s Lora Logic onboard as members. Logic, also the original sax player for X-Ray Spex, provides her distinctive warbling vocals on this song, which deals with a future America transformed by a communist revolution. Yeah, I’m an unreformed Marxist and that idea made me laugh with disbelief.

The New Age – 2525 (from A Tribute to Flexipop, Vol. 10) – I know nothing about this band or track. It appeared on one of the unofficial “Flexipop” compilations of rare and obscure new wave, and it sounds like it was recorded in a port-o-john. The dismal production is a shame, because it’s an interesting bleepy-synth cover of Zager and Evans’ cheese-tacular “In the Year 2525”.

no mercy for the week

Ah, the theme post, my faithful fallback for whenever my well of inspiration runs dry. Today we're going to take a little journey through the days of the week along the plane of the musically eclectic.

Actually, as cop-out posts go, this one turned out to be a bigger hassle than anticipated. I thought it was going to be smooth sailing once I hit upon the the original idea. Potential song selections popped into my head quicker than bad foreign policy decisions at a Bush cabinet meeting. It wasn't until I started pulling it all together that I noticed that there weren't exactly a shitload of tracks with "Thursday" in the title, and most of the ones I did come up with were ones I wouldn't post even in desperation.

Tin Machine's "Thursday's Children"? Ugh. The Icicle Works' "Sweet Thursday"? Sheol save us. "Rainy Lazy Thursday" by the Peanuts, a Japanese pop duo more famously known as the two tiny ladies who sang to Mothra, was briefly in the running but was so sickeningly 70's EZ listening that even its camp appeal couldn't overcome its power to nauseate.

Then I remembered the Chameleons UK track and all was well.

Lost Cherrees – Pleasant Valley Sunday (from All Part of Growing Up, 1984, collected on In the Beginning, 2003) – A fem-vox anarcho-punk act takes on a bubblegum pop classic filled with simple platitudes about suburban life. The results are unexpectedly decent, although hardcore Monkees fans might disagree.

Duran Duran – New Moon on Monday (from Seven and the Ragged Tiger, 1983) – It was all downhill from here: The video age excesses of “Union of the Snake” and “The Reflex”, breakups, side-projects, and reunions, culminating in a bunch of middle-aged women standing on a desolate beach, poking nostalgia sticks at the flyblown corpse of what once was a standard bearer for colorful, fresh new wave pop.

Yazoo – Tuesday (from Upstairs at Eric’s, 1982) – I wasn’t a huge fan of the Vince Clarke axis of synthpop bands, preferring the fashion-conscious futurism of acts like A Flock of Seagulls or Gary Numan. Not being my thing, however, doesn't mean that Clarke's masterfully crafted pop songs don't get lodged in my skull with frightening regularity.

Fischerspooner – Wednesday (from Odyssey, 2005) – From their disappointing second album. It’s perfectly listenable electronic dance pop, and a fine disc in its own right, but I miss the avant-garde tomfoolery so prevalent on their first album.

The Chameleons UK – Thursday’s Child (from Script of the Bridge, 1983) – Where post-punk fades into what would become labeled “college” or “alternative” rock.

Eek-A-Mouse – Bad Friday (from The Assassinator, 1983) – Is that bad meaning good? Or bad meaning, um, bad? I got a D+ in Traditions of Western Slang, and only because I aced the “Creative Uses of Scatological Terminology” portion of the final.

Eddie Floyd – On a Saturday Night (from Chronicle: Greatest Hits, 1991) – I can’t think of a better way to end a long week than with some smooth Memphis Soul. While Floyd’s work wasn’t as consistently great as Sam and Dave’s stuff, the best of his work handily outshines that of his labelmates.

lo, the video arenas of my youth

There was a time, lasting roughly from 1997 to 2003, where I was obsessively into videogames. I subscribed to EGM. I read all the gaming news websites. I rang up my credit card buying modded consoles to play import titles. My game library was the envy of all my friends, who’d line up three-deep for a chance to play the import versions of Bushido Blade or Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight.

Then I grew up. Adult responsibilities ate away at my previously copious free time and discretionary income. Wasting seventy hours beating an massive RPG became a selfish extravagance, and I found I could get the same satisfaction replaying Jet Set Radio Future, the Knights of the Old Republic games, or one of the Grand Theft Auto titles. I do not mourn those times, because a lot of what I bought in those days was overhyped and forgettable nonsense.

But hey, I was able to sell my copy of Radiant Silvergun for two hundred bucks on eBay a few months ago, so at least I was able to get something back.

Here are some musical selections from that era -- choice cuts able to stand on their own without interactive accompaniment.

Akira Yamaoka – Theme of Laura (from Silent Hill 2, 2001) – This is the track that plays over the opening cinema. It’s a spooky strings-heavy arrangement that is only slightly inferior to the theme of the first Silent Hill game. (Why didn’t I use that track? It’s part of a secret plan I’m hatching which shall be revealed seven days from now.)

Kenichiro Fukui – Capital and Streets (from Einhänder, 1997) – My token Squaresoft selection, and it doesn’t even come from an RPG, but from the firm’s stab at the scrolling shooter genre. The game was more irritatingly difficult than it had to be, but the soundtrack was an exceptional amalgam of various techno/electronic beats. ALL SYSTEMS GO!

Namco Sound Team – Eat ‘Em Up!!! (from Ridge Racer 4, 1999) – Because let’s face it, you’ve been dying to hear a techno track based on the sound effects of the original Pac-Man arcade machine. Now you can die with that wish fulfilled.

Saori Kobayashi and Mariko Nanba – A Premonition of War (from Panzer Dragoon Azel, 1998) – Panzer Dragoon Azel (“Panzer Dragoon Saga” in the US) is one of my favorite games, and certainly my favorite console RPG of all time. It may be on the short side, and it bumps up against the limited graphics processing power of the Sega Saturn console, but it’s power to draw the player into its gorgeous and immersive game world (complete with its own subtitled language) is unmatched. It’s a shame the title came at the bitter end of the Saturn’s lifespan, and only as a limited release.

Sorry about the lack of purchase links in this post. Most of the soundtracks these selections appeared on are long out of print. If you’re interested in hunting them down, I’d suggest checking out eBay.

those songs are second-hand, but something’s missing

I like memes, especially music-related ones. They are a great way to generate plug-and-play posts when I’m too lazy to do my own thinking. This meme comes courtesy of Bully, by way of Kevin Church.

Total amount of music files on your computer:
Currently 46 gigabytes, but the totals are always in a state of flux as I’m constantly shifting things in and out of my archives.

The last CD you bought was:
A used copy of Metro Stylee’s self-titled album from 1998, purchased from a seller on Amazon. It’s enjoyably quirky fem-vox ska from NYC. I made the effort to track the disc down after hearing “Destroy”, the band’s contribution to the Girls Gone Ska compilation album.

What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?
“The Test” by the Chemical Brothers (with Richard Ashcroft), from Singles 93-03 (2003). This track regularly makes it onto my driving music mix CDs, although I’m not sure if my wife is cool with that. (As official co-pilot, my wife has limited veto power over my song selections, and I make sure to always include a minimum allotment of tracks by “her” bands.) I can usually tell if she likes a song by whether or not I overhear her singing along to it under her breath. I’ve yet to hear her sing along to this song.

Write down five songs that you often listen to or mean a lot to you:
As of this moment?

Black Box Recorder – Child Psychology (from England Made Me, 1998) – Luke Haines is a genius. Here’s a song that possesses all the ingredients (including spoken word segments) needed for an overly precious Prozac Nation pity party, and yet he makes it work beautifully. Sarah Nixey’s vocals are ethereal and sweet, but with an undercurrent of weary detachment to keep things plausible.

Teenage Head – Bonerack (from Teenage Head, 1979) – The best punk rock band you’ve never heard of.

Electric Light Orchestra – Hold On Tight (from Time, 1981) – Jeff Lynne doing his best Roy Orbison impersonation. It must be the always-wearing-sunglasses thing. Lest anyone fear that the band has turned its back on their prog rock roots, there’s a verse sung in French, thus meeting the required pretentiousness quota.

Ladytron – International Dateline (from Witching Hour, 2005) – My favorite track from my pick for the Best Album of 2005. Gorgeous and haunting.

White Heat – Nervous Breakdown (from a 1980 single, collected on Shake Some Action, Vol. 5) – Featured in a KBD Records post a few months back, this song is damn near perfect, at least by my esoteric standards. The killer hooks, angry/angsty lyrics, the shouted choruses…it’s power pop’s Platonic ideal, of which all other power pop songs are mere shadows.

let's roll

When I was in junior high school in the mid-eighties, my friends and I would meet up after school and head down to Woburn center and blow rolls of quarters in the game room at the back of the local pool hall. When I say “pool hall”, I mean it in the true old-school meaning of the term. This was not the upscale “billiards parlour” of our present age, but a dark, dingy hole in the wall located on the second floor of a dilapidated retail building. Cigarette burns around the edges of the tables. Industrial carpeting mottled with stains of various origins and discolored by decades of accumulated ash. The clientele mostly consisted of mustachioed upperclassmen, killing time before moving on to either HVAC apprenticeships or lifetimes spent in and out of the Billerica House of Correction. The seediness of the place gave it an air of the forbidden irresistible to fifteen year old boys. Most of my friends weren't allowed to set foot in the place by their parents, which only added to the transgressive allure usually associated with sneaking into R-rated movies.

The game room was small, but stocked with some of the better games of the immediate post-crash era, providing my first experiences with Speed Rumbler, Renegade, Jackal, and the subject of today’s post, Atari’s Marble Madness.

The concept behind the game is perfectly simple; the player must navigate a virtual marble to the end of various obstacle courses within the allotted time. Real-world physical principles, such as gravity and momentum, are in force, and the use of a trackball controller for the interface gives players an immediate, intuitive connection to their spherical game-world avatar. Graphically, the game utilizes an isometric perspective, rendered in colorful detail yet abstractly minimalist; evoking some of the more bizarre Sesame Street shorts from 1970’s.

Brad Fuller and Hal Canon composed the game’s soundtrack, and I consider it to be some of the finest game music of the era. The tracks are very reminiscent of the works by the synth pioneers of the 60’s and 70’s, but with a MIDI kick to them. It may sound a bit primitive to those of you raised on full symphony orchestral redbook sound, but there’s something hauntingly pure and elegant about those old game scores. (I still think the original NES version of the Metroid theme is the best one.)

These tracks from Marble Madness appeared on an import eight-disc box set called Legend of Game Music 2 that I ran across a few months back. Since some of the tracks have very short runtimes, I bundled the entire set together into one .rar file.

Marble Madness Game Soundtrack (1984)

this post is rated arrrrrrr

Today is “National Talk Like A Pirate Day,” an annual event where the easily amused can indulge their inner Blackbeards, much to the chagrin of irritable misanthropes and shallow dig-me types whose ironic hipper-than-thou worldview holds no place for unselfconscious whimsy. The former I can empathize with, the latter can fuck off home to cry into their Snakes on a Plane commemorative pillows.

I don’t understand this fixation on things pirate, myself. Given a choice, I’d rather pretend to be an 1870’s American cavalry officer, minus the genocidal mandate and smallpox blankets, of course. Last Sunday, my wife tagged along with her pirate-loving pal to a “Pirate Event” held up in Salem. It turned out to be less about pirates, and more about how Ren-Faire enthusiasts will use any opportunity to wear their frilly shirts, dance absurdly, and hawk handcrafted leather mugs. Huzzah! I mean, “Avast, matey!”

The Toasters – Pirate Radio (from Enemy of the System, 2002) – American ska that cleaves closely to the UK’s early Two Tone sound. It’s impossible for me to read or hear the words, “pirate radio,” without thinking of this. “Marco is a mailbox-head.”

The Vandals – Pirate’s Life (from Peace Through Vandalism, 1982) – This song is about going to see the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disneyland while zonked out on acid. I’ve never been to any of the Disney theme parks. My parents inculcated a strong mistrust of the House of Mouse in me from a very early age. My ideological stance has slackened a little over the years, allowing both Tron and Beauty and the Beast to find places in my heart, but I still think Mickey Mouse is a creepy little fuck with a stack of bodies buried in his basement.

Thomas Dolby – Europa and the Pirate Twins (from The Golden Age of Wireless, 1982) – Dolby at his early, synthy best, with none of the irritatingly overcooked production that marked later songs like “Hyperactive”. (While “She Blinded Me With Science” is also an outstanding track, its massive success as a pop novelty hit rendered it into audio wallpaper – its ubiquity has made it easy to hear, but nigh-impossible to listen to. )

Johnny Thunder & the Heartbreakers – Pirate Love (from L.A.M.F., 1977) – Sludgy garage punk from the band that brought hard drugs and professional heroin vacuum Nancy Spungen to the UK punk scene.

there’s no point in asking, you’ll get no reply

I was flipping through some old DC romance comics when I stumbled across this page from Young Love #114 (February-March, 1975):

The title, “There Is No Answer”, suggests a fragment of a Zen kōan as posited by Jean-Paul Sartre. Come to think of it, that’s a pretty accurate summation of a 13 year old girl’s take on love. “Like, omigod, there’s know way of knowing if Tyler likes me, and, like merely asking the question fills me with existential dread and stuff! I think I’ll lash out at my mom, then lock myself in my room and do that ‘cutting’ thing I saw on Degrassi!”

(What the fuck’s up with that cutting shit, anyhow? All the self-important drama of the half-hearted teen suicide attempt with none of the, y’know, actual risk of dying. Ah, the mysteries of being a white, suburban, middle-class teenage girl. Granted, self-mutilation for attention is a far cry from school shootings, the disaffected white, suburban, middle-class teenage male’s destructive pastime of choice. )

The title opens a wealth of potentially interesting scenarios--

“Why does he insist I lick his armpits during sex?"
“Why does he cry out Rip Taylor’s name when he orgasms?"
“Why do I occasionally wake up in the middle of the night and find him standing over me, a straight razor in one hand and his penis in the other?”

--but the poem (well, flat prose trying to pass for free verse as successfully as G.W. Bush would pass as a member of Mensa) is your typical “I’d love you even if your shit did stink” nonsense that attempts to put a positive spin on the uncomfortable fact that love can turn otherwise intelligent people into judgment-impaired idiots. “The police were by earlier looking for you, honey, but I told them you moved to Canada. You want my debit card and PIN? Sure, here you go! Smootches!”

This part in particular is just the sort of notion you would want to impress upon a young woman:

I will not say I love you because you are kind,
Even though you are,
For if you weren’t,
Does that mean I would not love you?
(I would love you even if you were mean and miserable.)

That’s not love, kiddo, that’s Stockholm syndrome. Oh, and when someone asks you “Why do you love me?” it most likely means he or she is angling for compliments with a 200 pound insecure-and-needy-asshole nylon line. Bite the lure, and you’ll end up having to stock Lake Reassurance for as long as the relationship lasts.

Let’s see, I’ve mocked the title, the text, and young girls with mental problems. What have I missed? Right, The art, which adeptly straddles the line between work-for-hire mediocrity and “I’m going to see this in my nightmares for months.” I’m not kidding about that last part. Take a good look at the woman’s face down by the lower right-hand corner. One eye is bugging out its socket, the other's screwed tightly shut, and the rose is gripped between her teeth in a manner suggesting a feral beast looming over a fresh kill.

I think the artist was going for “cute and sexy”, but this is how my brain registers the image:

Proof positive that a childhood spent around 1970’s pinball machines and carnival rides can cause lasting damage to one’s psyche.

Dig the ankh on Johnny Push-Ups. (What would push ups have to do with romance? Oh….I get it now.) If that appeared in a girls’ romance comic today – if there still were girls’ romance comics being published by the Big Two today – I bet DC would have gotten angry letters bitching about how they were promoting deviant (i.e. non-fundamentalist Christian) lifestyles in their comics.

No matter what Young Love tells us, the answers can always be found in pop music. You just need to ask the right questions first.

The Animatronics – Room of Questions (from 2000 – Year of the Future, 2000) – Yet another band working the Devo wannabe mojo, although the Animatronics do a pretty credible (and listenable) job of it. It helps that they at least tried to develop their own sound, which retains the synth lines of their inspirations but with a punkier edge.

The Balloon Farm – A Question of Temperature (from Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968) – Pure, honest-to-gosh 60’s garage rock. Toss those Strokes and Jet albums in the trash and graduate to the real deal. You’ll be glad you did.

Advanced Art – No Answers, No Solutions (from a 1988 single) – A pretty good Finnish synth act that reminds me of early Depeche Mode. As they say in Helsinki, “It’s a lot like elämä.”

Bran Van 3000 – The Answer (Latch Brothers Mix) (from the Jet Set Radio Future Unreleased OST, 2002) – In a truly just world, both Jet Set Radio games would have become mega-platinum bestsellers of the Madden and Grand Theft Auto variety.

who needs TV when I’ve got T. Rex

(alternate title: Electric Warrior in Valhalla)

It was on this day in 1977 that former T. Rex frontman and glam rock pioneer Marc Bolan died in a car crash, two weeks short of his thirtieth birthday. While he may not have had fellow glammer David Bowie’s flair for musical innovation and experimentation, Bolan’s pulsating brand of hard rock boogie epitomized the gorgeous excess associated with the genre.

He was a major influence on the punk and new wave movements. In an interview for The Big Takeover a few years back, Captain Sensible of the Damned had nothing but the highest praise for Bolan, who befriended the band in the time just prior to his death. Echoes of T. Rex’s throbbing, sleazy sound can be heard in scores of tracks recorded by New Romantic and dark synth acts. (Soft Cell, I’m looking at you.)

As a tribute to the man and the legend, here are a couple of my favorite T. Rex tracks, alongside some cover versions of the same:

T. Rex – Children of the Revolution (from a 1972 single, available on the 2001 reissue of Tanx, 1973)

The Fast Set – Children of the Revolution (from a 1980 single)

The Violent Femmes – Children of the Revolution (from The Blind Leading the Naked, 1986)

T. Rex – Telegram Sam (from The Slider, 1972)

Bauhaus – Telegram Sam (from a 1980 single, available on the reissue of In the Flat Field, 1980)

Bonus track:

John’s Children – Desdemona (from The Complete John’s Children, 2002) – This is a 1967 garage rock single featuring Marc Bolan on guitar. The line “lift up your skirt and fly” was highly controversial at the time and effectively killed its shot at UK chart success.

Bonus video clip:

T’ Rex perfoming “Get It On (Bang a Gong)” on live TV. Yes, that’s Elton John on piano:

even the parents are beginning to scare

At some point during the process of moving to my new house, I misplaced two of the most valued books in my library, Michael Weldon’s Psychotronic Encyclopaedia of Film and The Psychotronic Video Guide. Ecumenical, exhaustive, and entertaining, Weldon’s guides to exploitation cinema are required reading for the serious popcult archeologist.

I used keep both guides by my bedside at my old place, in easy reach for whenever I needed to double check some bit of trash cinema lore or just felt like some casual browsing. It bothers me that I have no idea where they ended up. I could purchase new copies of the both books, but over the years I’d gotten in the habit of using them as ersatz scrapbooks to store various clippings and photos dealing with cult cinema and camp/pop/junk culture in general, and those can’t be replaced.

I suppose I should bite the bullet and just do a thorough search of the attic, but the idea of digging to the bottom of the fifty-odd metric tons of nerd detritus my wife has stored up there kickstarts my procrasto-powers into overdrive. I think I’ll just mourn my poor lost biblio-friends with a post featuring songs from 60’s cult films.

The Supremes – Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (theme to Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, 1965, included on The Supremes box set, 2000) – The movie is a spy parody featuring the always welcome Vincent Price as the good doctor, and fading teen stars Frankie Avalon and Dwayne (Dobie Gillis) Hickman as the bumbling agents sent to foil his schemes. I have no idea why it didn’t win the Oscar for best picture. Oh, wait, I do – it’s an AIP 60’s “comedy” using the same lame tropes as their beach movies (Beach Blanket Bingo, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, Bikini She-Wolves of the S.S.)

The Tempters – Stop the Music (featured, sort of, The Deadly Bees, 1966, included on GS I Love You, Too, 1999) – Get ready, this one’s a bit complicated. I really wanted to post “That’s All I Need You For” by UK beat group the Birds (not to be confused with the more famous Gene Clark/Roger McGuinn US folk-rock act), featured in this clip from the beginning of the film (keep an eye out for a pre-Rolling Stones Ron Wood):



Unfortunately the track doesn’t appear on the compilation the band released a few years back, so that was a no-go. The whiny blonde who appears at the end of the above clip is the heroine of the movie. She plays a Petula Clark/Lulu/Dusty Springfield-type pop star who takes a vacation on a small island where the death-dealing Apis mellifera dwell. The song she performs in the movie, “Stop the Music”, somehow caught the attention of The Tempters, a Japanese garage band, who released a cover version in 1968. That track is what I’ve posted here for you today. It’s all very simple and straightforward, right?

The Standells – Riot on Sunset Strip (theme to Riot on Sunset Strip, 1967, included on the soundtrack album) – When I was a full-on punk rocker, I used to get irritated by how the punk subculture was caricatured in the mainstream media in shows like Quincy and CHiPs. Now I realize that was merely part of a long, proud cinematic tradition of clueless middle-aged writers attempting to tackle the issues of youthful rebellion.* It’s a tradition that includes this film, in which the mysterious ways of the “hippie” are explored with a nominal degree of sympathy while still pandering to White Suburban America’s prejudices and anxieties.

The theme song is frustrating. The Standells come out swinging with a menacingly promising blast of garage punk which dissolves into painful hippy-dippy nonsense during the chorus. MORE ANGER, LESS WHINING!

Max Frost & The Troopers – Shape of Things To Come (from Wild in the Streets, 1968, included on Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968) – Wild in the Streets was an exploitation flick about “the kids” voting in a rock star president who sends everyone over thirty to psychedelic concentration camps. It’s Animal Farm for folks who think a rock thrown at the head comprises subtlety. When I worked at the university library, I killed an afternoon reading some “sociology in sci-fi” anthologies published in the late sixties and was amazed at the violent reactionary streak of the “old school” writers when it came to the youth culture. The recurring theme in their stories was that the pampered baby boomer generation, with their single-minded pursuit of self-gratification, would bring about the end times.

OK, so their predictions were off by thirty-some years….

Target used “Shape of Things to Come” in ads shilling the chain’s faux-mod brand image, presumably because the Sic Fucks’ “Chop Up Your Mother” cost too much to license.

The Rabbit Habit – Angel, Angel, Down We Go (theme from Angel, Angel, Down We Go, 1969, included on A Deadly Dose of Wylde Psych, 2003) – This song presented a bit of a challenge in that there seems to be no band credit to be found for it anywhere. It’s not given in the compilation tracklist or notes (or label’s webpage). Amazon split the song title and listed the first part as the performer. “The Rabbit Habbit” is the name of the fictitious rock band whose members seduce and terrorize the members of a decadent rich family in the film, so I settled on that.

The Amen Corner – Scream and Scream Again (theme from Scream and Scream Again, 1969, included on The Very Best of the Amen Corner, 2000) – The theme song is the best thing about the film, which is a disjointed mess that squanders the talents of three horror film titans (Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Vincent Price) in a convoluted tale involving a race of psychotic superhumans and Cold War intrigue. It’s pretty much what one would expect from a Gordon (KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, Master Ninja) Hessler film.


*also see Mark Waid’s current Legion of Superheroes run

no one will guide you

This is my 100th post on Armagideon Time.

I began this blog in an attempt to actually do something remotely productive with my time, instead of just coming home from work and playing videogames until I passed out. There were no great ambitions behind my starting it. It just seemed like the easiest of several contemplated projects to do; posting and commenting about various tracks from my collection beats trying to come up with well reasoned commentary about comic books and/or politics on a regular basis. If my writing is shit, at least there’s the music as a consolation prize for the reader. It sure beats a case of Turtle Wax and a copy of Armagideon Time: The Home Game. (“Here’s a random song! You have thirty seconds to come up with a tangential, yet somehow relevant soundbite! Go!”)

I have zero pretensions about my role here. I’m not a bona fide music critic in the commonly understood sense, nor do I aspire to be one. The tenets of that particular mystery religion are incomprehensible to me and, I suspect, most of its current practitioners – a consensual mass deception carried out by scores of would-be Lester Bangs and Greil Marcuses too wrapped up in self-importance to admit they have no fucking idea what they or any of their peers are rambling on about.

Outside the gates of the old North Woburn dump was an old concrete foundation, a relic of the old tanneries, where unscrupulous sorts would dump their junk to avoid dealing with the sanitation authorities. The trash that ended up in there wasn’t of the household dustbin variety. Most of it was shit cleaned out of attics, basements, or gutted and abandoned houses. It was a paradise for a ten year old boy, providing he didn’t poison himself messing around with the sacks of arsenic that occasionally popped up in pile. Old magazines (yes, including porn rags), beat-up toys and games from previous decades, and sleds (plastic and wooden – there were a lot of these in there, for some reason) were the most common finds. Once I found two albums of postcards, used and unused, some with rare stamps attached, dating back to the 1910’s that had once belonged to a family of wealthy world travelers. My mother’s jaw dropped when she saw them.

My intent for this site has been to carry on that childhood work. Think of it as dumpster diving for a digital age. I hope you’ve enjoyed it so far.

it was very enthralling, primordial and haunting

I’m going to take a break from leftist polemics and wrestling with my personal demons, and dedicate a post to a weird and wonderful creature – that marvel of cryptozoology, the coelacanth.

Why? Because it’s my blog, and I effing feel like it.

Besides, what’s not to love about our lobed-finned friends? According to the fossil record, they’ve been around for over 400 million years, the last 65 million of them spent hiding from other animals. I don’t blame them. There’s nothing more irritating than getting a drunken call from a giant ground sloth at three in the morning asking if he can borrow the keys to your Chevy Nova. Shit, by the time he finishes his first sentence, it’s already four in the afternoon. And don’t get me started on brontotheriums, buster.

Another fun fact about coelacanths is that their scales and bodies generate oily mucus that possesses laxative properties. I wish I could do that, although I have been told by certain ex-girlfriends my entire being can act as a powerful ipecac.

You & The Atom Bomb - Behold, Coelacanth (from Shake, Shake Hello, 2006) - Wistful, yet sweet indie pop. It goes a good ways toward restoring my faith in the genre after it had been shaken by hearing too many lousy, over-hyped “next big things.” The link will take you to their label’s download page, where the track is available at no cost.

The Polysics - Ceolakanth Is Android (from Now Is the Time! 2005) - It’s like being run over by a tractor trailer full of old arcade machines. For best results, listen to the track while playing G-Darius on MAME.

Shriekback - Coelocanth (from Oil and Gold, 1985) - An instrumental track that lacks the driving immediacy of “Nemesis” but makes up for it in atmospheric spookiness.

Mr. Children - Coelacanth (from Shinkai, 1996) - It’s uninspired, bland J-Rock, but it fit the theme. Give it a shot, maybe it’s just me.

looking for the writing on the wall

"I vowed that I'm never going to forget the lessons of that day," G.W. Bush said at a 9/11 memorial event on Sunday, and he meant it. The lessons in question being that a weak joke of a president can exploit a national tragedy to reposition himself as a strong leader and be granted a free hand to pursue whatever insane schemes he desires to, as long as they’re parsed in terms of national security and delivered with the basest sort of fear mongering. Bush and his cabal have taken those lessons to heart, using the events of 9/11 to launch a global ideological crusade whose hubristic arrogance would make the most strident Trotskyite blanch.

I knew it would turn out this way the moment my wife told me about the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center. (I commuting to work on the MBTA when it happened, totally unaware of what was occurring.) Talking on the phone to my father that afternoon, I told him I thought we’d just witnessed the next Reichstag fire. He got angry with me, accusing me of not thinking of those killed. He was wrong. My thoughts at that moment were with the thousands of who died, but also with the billions who would have to live afterwards in a world where a cabal of militaristic, intellectual lightweights was in control of the world’s “only superpower”, and preparing to take full advantage of the American people’s rage and horror for their own ends.

They wasted no time in gutting our constitutional protections, pushing through legislation for a pliable congress to rubber stamp, most of which had less bearing on counterterrorism than affirming the unitary power of the executive branch. Dissenters found themselves drowned out by accusations of being “soft” on terrorists, of aiding the enemy, of treason. These charges were echoed by members of the right-wing punditocracy, who make their living pandering to the ugliest aspects of the populist impulse.

And the ringleaders of the criminal gang responsible for the events of that horrible Tuesday five years back? Still at large, lost in the shuffle while America pisses away its resources in a vain attempt to bring “democracy and freedom” to a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11, and has only become the front line of the “War on Terror” because of Bush’s reckless efforts at regime change.

they won’t fade as time goes by

(your author in 1991, 2nd from the right)

Has it really been fifteen years since the autumn of 1991? I was nineteen then, returning to college as an English literature major after an ill-advised freshman year attempt at majoring in physics. In practice, it merely meant I’d be skipping out on Practical Criticism instead of Calculus II that semester.

My college attendance record, at least for the first half of my undergrad career, was dismal. My friend Leech, a fellow punk rocker who dropped out of college the previous year, and I would meet up every morning and spend our days wandering around Boston. Our regular itinerary involved taking the B Line out to Harvard Ave in Allston, then walking down Comm Ave until it hit Mass Ave, which we then followed all the way to Porter Square before crossing over into Davis Square. We’d check out every used record, vintage clothing, and comic book store we passed along the way, making time to grab some greasy Café Aventura pizza in the Garage at Harvard Square.

Thanks to an overly concerned high school guidance counselor, I was lucky enough to have scored a scholarship for “brilliant, at risk” kids (my family sort of imploded in my junior year, which seemed to effect everyone else more than it did the people actually involved) that gave a generous living expense allotment and didn’t set any minimum academic standards. This meant I was fairly rolling in mad money at the time, most of it getting spent on pizza, videogames, and used vinyl.

It was during that glorious fall of 1991, in between the grease-induced heartburn, stacks of rare punk records, and my failing to live up to my potential, I started dating Maura, the woman who I’d end up marrying (in October 2004, after a twelve-year engagement). That story has been written up in various entries on my journal, so I won’t go over that ground again here. Leech, Maura, and I would hang out, his presence helping to take the pressure off as Maura and I slowly built up confidence in our growing relationship. Unfortunately, Leech saw it as a love triangle scenario, leading to some unnecessary unpleasantness the following spring. That golden fall, however, will always invoke fond memories.

In the spirit of those times, here are some examples of what I was listening to at the time.

Black Flag – My War (from My War, 1984) – I try my hardest to separate the Henry Rollins responsible for this searing piece of pure aggro from Henry Rollins, the posturing self-important buffoon. Occasionally, I succeed.

Joy Division – Interzone (from Unknown Pleasures, 1979) – I was walking across campus the other day when I saw a freshman wearing a t-shirt featuring the cover art from Unknown Pleasures printed in neon rainbow colors. Something died inside me at that moment.

Ministry – Stigmata (from The Land of Rape and Honey, 1988) – Listen to this track, then watch this video from 1983:



This concludes today’s lesson in cognitive dissonance.

The Partisans – Anger and Fear (You’re All Alone Now) (from The Time Was Right, 1984) – No matter how much my musical tastes broaden or evolve, this track maintains its position as my favorite song of all time. I couldn’t even begin to tell you why. It simply is.

Throwing Muses – Not Too Soon (from The Real Ramona, 1991) – An excellent Tanya Donelly track that prefigures the deceptively sweet indie pop sound she would explore with her post-Muses band, Belly.

we don’t torture, we’re a civilized nation

…or so claimed G.W. Bush the other day, shortly before he began prodding Congress to enact legislation legalizing secret military tribunals and the outsourcing of prisoner interrogations. Such steps are necessary, we are told, to shield military and governmental officials from being tried as war criminals. This is a war, we are told, and the government needs to use every available tool to prosecute it.

In any case, the definition of torture, as determined by the present administration, has been narrowed to include only those actions which will result in serious injury or death. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in his previous role as White House counsel, worked hard to find exploitable loopholes in the national and international war crimes statutes in order to justify the administration’s handling of prisoners. Concerns about prisoner treatment are shrugged off or derided as being soft on those who would do our nation harm. Fear mongering with a hint of racism always goes over well with the red state crowd.

Our post-industrial society is infatuated with the myth of the “hard man”, the proactive badass unconstrained by petty rules and bureaucratic timidity: someone who provides simple, preferably visceral, solutions to complex problems. In our modern world, where it can sometimes feel like every aspect of one’s life is delimited by external forces, the notion of stepping outside the boundaries to “get things done” has a strong appeal.

The traditional iteration of this archetype used to abide by a code of personal honor and responsibility to the greater good. “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean,” wrote Raymond Chandler in 1945. This character aspect has since been abandoned. Sheriff Kane and Phillip Marlowe have been pushed aside in favor of trash-talking thugs of the Mike Hammer variety, Machiavellian predators whose “goodness” is measured in the rawest utilitarian terms.

That may work in the controlled environment of an artificial universe, but not in the real world. Real-life pretenders to hard man status either find themselves rendered ineffectual by the constraints they vowed to bypass (like two entertainers-turned-governors were), or they resort to vicious and unrestrained methods in pursuit of their goals (like the present administration is currently doing). The allure of the myth is so strong that even when the hideous nature of these actions comes out – waterboarding, anal rape, and torture via attack dogs – there will be segments of the population willing to rationalize the procedures.

“Our enemies have done worse,” they’ll argue, abandoning ideological pretexts in favor of a barbaric race to the bottom. National exceptionalism, that somnambulist sibling to conscientious patriotism, is the only justification they ever really need. America does no wrong, which is fortunate considering the damage it causes in doing "right".

Au Pairs – Armagh (from Playing With a Different Sex, 1981) – The title of this post comes from this track about the treatment of female IRA prisoners by the British authorities. The line has been stuck in my head since Bush made his announcements on secret prisons and torture earlier this week.

Dead Kennedys – Bleed For Me (from Plastic Surgery Disasters, 1981) –You know things have gotten bad when Jello Biafra’s lyrics are more relevant today than they were twenty five years ago. There’s an earlier version of this song, with Carter references instead of Reagan ones, featured in the 1981 film, Urgh! A Music War. You can watch the segment here. “There’s no punk rock in Argentina.”

what about prom?

I was browsing my collection of Billboard Top 100 single sets for post ideas when I ran across this track, number twenty-four from 1988:

Richard Marx – Hold on to the Nights (from Richard Marx, 1987)

Another sappy pop song from an era lousy with them, right? Except this sappy pop song happened to be Woburn High's Class of 1990 senior prom theme, and coming across it triggered a crippling bout of mnemonic nausea. Willful suppression only goes so far where memories of adolescent angst are concerned.

The track’s surface qualities aren’t noticeably different than other works in the same vein – Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is” or REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore” It’s a bit of bog-standard MOR pop nonsense, ideal prom theme material and the soundtrack to countless teenage ass gropes masquerading as “slow dances.”

Musically speaking, I don’t think it’s possible to come up with a worse year to hold a prom than 1990. The DJ’s playlist was etched in blood on parchment made from the skin of a murdered infant. Sure, John Cusack was able to showcase his hipster cred during the Class of ’87 reunion scenes in Grosse Pointe Blank, but anyone who has been on the front lines knows the truth. Instead of Tones On Tail and Siouxsie and the Banshees, the reality would be Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”. It’s the same story throughout history; loads of Baby Boomers claim they were at Woodstock, no one owns up to buying the 45 of “Sugar Shack”.

Here’s what we were treated to on that May evening at the Danversport Yacht Club:

Milli Vanilli – Blame It on the Rain (from Girl You Know It’s True, 1989) – I know it’s an old, old joke, but that album title still brings a smile to my face.

The Bangles – Eternal Flame (from Everything, 1988) – A girl I dated in college dragged me across metro Boston from record shop to record shop in search of this song/LP. A full account of those events will be detailed in my forthcoming self-help tome, Obvious Relationship Warning Signs: How To Spot Them and Act Before It’s Too Late, You Dense Idiot.

I hardly needs to be said, but these are not the sort of tracks likely to impress a alt-rock girl into snowboarding and Jane’s Addiction, i.e. my prom date. As the night wore on, my mulletheaded and big-haired classmates bopped to the gluten-enriched whitebread soul of Rick Astley and the well-intentioned nightmarish teen pop of Debbie Gibson, and I watched my romantic schemes wither and rot on the vine.

“What do you think of the prom?”

“It’s nice.”

What do you think of the food?”

“It’s nice.”

The long, quiet ride back to her house and the quick peck on the cheek as she exited the car was merely a sad epilogue to the evening’s events.

Shit, that was depressing. How about I make it up with some “reel” life prom themes?

Josie Cotton – He Could Be the One (from Convertible Music, 1982) – The not-quite-PC “Johnny, Are You Queer?” (originally written for the Go-Go’s) is the Josie Cotton track most folks remember from the movie Valley Girl, but this is the song that plays as Nicholas Cage and Deborah Foreman flee the prom. It’s a great piece of new wave pop with retro sixties touches.

OMD – If You Leave (from the Pretty In Pink soundtrack, 1986) – This track really needs no explanation. If you’re among the scores of folks who thought Ducky got a raw deal at the end of the film, there’s a new version of Pretty In Pink out on DVD that includes the original ending where he hooks up with Molly Ringwald’s character. John Hughes changed the ending partly because he thought it sent a wrong message that rich kids and poor kids don’t belong together. Fuck John Hughes.

rassling crocs in the great beyond

Steve Erwin, the “Crocodile Hunter”, was killed by a stingray earlier today. Love him or hate him (my wife thought he was great; I thought he was too over the top for my tastes), he brought a infectious enthusiasm to his work that contrasted sharply with the narcoleptic narrative style of old school wildlife programs, as well as a sense of empathy for his subjects lacking in the animal snuff porn that passes for nature documentaries today. (”This young gazelle has strayed from his herd. Watch as he is ripped to shreds by a pack of wild dogs.”) His legacy lives on in a host of imitators.

My deepest condolences go out to his wife and young children.

Rest in peace, Mr. Irwin. I’ll forgive you for the child endangerment thing and the Crocodile Hunter movie, if you’ll forgive me for using “What a steamer!” in a scatological context.

The WTF Files: Volume #2 – And I’m not so sure just where I stand

Celebrity status doesn’t just enable one to get an easy pass for making anti-Semitic remarks while being stopped for driving while intoxicated, or a slap on the wrist for killing a child crossing the street while attempting to illegally pass on the left. It can also mean a record deal, quaint notions about so-called “musical talent” notwithstanding. (It’s an obsolete concept anyhow. The pop music production combines in Stockholm and London run 24-7 these days, turning sows’ ears into…sows’ ears with heavy overdubbing and pitch-shifted vocals.)

Most of these misguided attempts to cash in on reps made elsewhere crash and burn, often finding new life decades later as prized camp collectibles. The TV and movie stars-turned-troubadours featured in today’s post, however, all met with chart success, if only for a brief shining moment. Not included are teen idols of the Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett variety, as their musical careers were part of the total media saturation plans organized by their handlers. Rick Springfield isn’t included because his musical career predated his General Hospital stint by over a decade, and he even had a minor hit “Speak to the Sky” in the early 70’s.

David Soul – Don’t Give Up on Us (from Playing to an Audience of One, 1977) – Who knew Hutch invented emo? Now, Antonio Fargas Sings Cole Porter – that would be worth listening to. (Yes, Soul was a moderately successful folksinger before he landed the Starsky and Hutch gig, but this track isn’t folk, and it rode on the back of his TV stardom.)

John Schneider – It’s Now or Never (from Now or Never, 1981) – Bo (Duke) knows overproduced country music corn.

It’s really hard to explain to someone who didn’t live through the era just how huge the Dukes of Hazzard was to impressionable grade-schoolers in the late 1970’s. It meant making the “Dixie” horn noise when we jumped our banana seat Huffy bikes over the dirt mound by the railroad tracks. It meant slathering a layer of sticky, stinky Testor’s orange enamel paint over our favorite Hot Wheels cars. It meant being too young to notice we were watching utter, utter shit.

Jack Wagner – All I Need (from All I Need, 1984) – Rick Springfield set a really bad precedent for General Hospital hunks, although Wagner’s effort pales in comparison to the horrors of Stamos unleashed.

I admit I have a slight fondness for this song. It reminds me of junior high dances I attended where I’d lean against the cafeteria wall watching various puppy love affairs play out on the dance floor as the DJ cued up some cheesy prefab love song. Depressed and lonely, I’d sulk in the shadows and wonder if I’d ever find a girl that understood me, or whether or not the Fantastic Four would manage to defeat Psycho Man.

I take it back. I hate this fucking song.

Eddie Murphy – Party All the Time (from How Could It Be, 1985) –The album title says it all.

Don Johnson – Heartbeat (from Heartbeat, 1986) – From an Amazon.com user review for this album:

I always keep hearing people badmouth this album and I am sick and tired of it. This is not a bad album! If anything this sure as hell is better than any of today's music...and by that I mean anything made in the last 16 years.

Since the album was released in 1986, and the review was written a month ago, I wonder what 1990 song/album marked the reviewer’s cutoff point for good music. I’m going to make a guess and say Jane Child’s “Don’t Wanna Fall In Love.”

David Hasselhoff – Looking for Freedom (from Looking for Freedom, 1989) – Yadda yadda yadda ironic hipster affection for mediocre faded celebrity yadda yadda yadda the Chuck Norris thing was bad enough yadda yadda yadda just stop it, please.