out with the new, in with the old

From the "in" column of the "what's in and out" for the upcoming decade feature from the January 1980 issue of 3-2-1 Contact:

Startling in its prescience, isn't it? It makes me wish I could locate my copy of the "Welcome to the 1990's" special edition of the Tanner Banner, Woburn High's school newspaper, to scan -- specifically the prediction a classmate of mine made for the funky-fresh new decade where he decreed that there would be no new developments in the field of communications technology, as humanity had achieved all it could ever hope to achieve in that field.

Bright kid. I heard he's working for the Federal Reserve now.

So we bid adieu to 2007. This is supposed to be where I list the bests and worsts of the previous three-hundred and sixty five days and offer up my predictions about what lies in store for the upcoming year, but seeing as how the majority of my time is spent hip-wading through the sewers of retrological backwash, it would be a pointless exercise. I'm still too busy catching up with stuff from 2006...and 1993...and 1979 to even think of any 2007 releases that caught my attention.

Wait, no. There was The Hives' new album (which was dire), Kylie's highly-anticipated X (which was a mixed bag), and The Kind of Goodnight by Tiger! Tiger! (which was great fun). Otherwise, my plate has been full with reissues, rediscoveries, and collections of material from yore, and that applies to the realms of videogames, books, and comics as well. I'm sure there are some things I'm forgetting, but the fact they're not springing to mind with ease speaks for itself.

As for predictions? I dunno. The human race will continue to respond to serious long-term problems with convenient-yet-insufficient short-sighted fixes? The antics of an over-privileged celebrity will take media precedence over issues that actually impact our lives? The upcoming presidental election season will succeed in revealing that all the candidates are power-hungry cretins? That I will continue to muddle along here at Armagideon Time, alternating my self-conscious ramblings with gimmicky paeans to rightfully forgotten fifth-string comic book characters?

As if you needed me to tell you that. At least I can nod off to sleep at night with a conscience clean of having ever made hyperbolic claims -- which I've seen in several places already -- that prog rock is poised to make a huge resurgence in 2008. Sweet fucking Providence, isn't the world in rough enough shape without evoking the spectre of greasy-haired hipsters unironically rhapsodising about Keith Emerson and Yes?

Lord Sitar - I Can See For Miles (from Lord Sitar, 1968) - I accept no other lord but Big Jim Sullivan and his sympathetic strings.

Gleaming Spires - The End of All Good Things (from Songs of the Spires, 1981) - Why? Because I didn't think you were ready for the sex girls. The "right-right ultraviolet real nice girls", I mean.

(I suppose I could have gone with "I Predict" by Sparks, but as the Spires were affiliated with the early 80's version of the band, you've got your ration of Mael by proxy.)

bard boy in the space age

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
-- William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 76"; with a side helping of Metal Men v1 #1 (by Kanigher, Andru, and Esposito)

Sing-Sing - Far Away from Love (from The Joy of Sing-Sing, 2001) - Some indie-pop wistfulness from Emma Anderson's post-Lush outfit.

Inspiral Carpets - This Is How It Feels (from Life, 1990) - It's good, but Carter USM's cover (from the 1993 "Lean on Me, I Won't Fall Over" single) is outstanding.

gurgle hiss glurp

Up from the depths...
...seven stories high...
...puking toxic waste...
...pointy head in the sky...
CHEMO!
CHEMO!
CHEMO!
...and Chemzookies?
Dead Kennedys - Chemical Warfare (from Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, 1980)

Blur - Chemical World (from Modern Life Is Rubbish, 1993)

The Chemical Brothers - Chemical Beats (from Exit Planet Dust, 1995)

(Confused? Bewildered? Perhaps this will explain things.)

entertainment through pain

A glimpse into the state of "rawk" criticism twenty-five years ago, courtesy of the November 1982 issue of Creem (the gift that keeps on giving). It's an excerpt from that issue's "Letter from Britain" column, written by Cynthia Rose (on loan from NME):

Rose's argument is that the New Pop aesthetic, as personified by ABC singer Martin Fry, is representative of British mass culture's emphasis on style over substance, where the then-current media fixation on Prince William's birth obscured Thatcher's circus of petty cruelties. Of course, lamenting the focus on appearance doesn't rule out directing catty barbs at Fry's complexion.

Oh, dear. I'm going to make a point of stating, whenever someone complains about the present state of political/social/cultural affairs, that things were better in the good old days, before the one-two punch of "Stool Pigeon" and "Endicott" shattered our previously idyllic paradise. "We lived happily and simply in those days, unaware that we would soon be overrun by slavering hordes of videogenic back-up singers."

At the risk of sounding reductive for the sake of argument, I'd venture to state that novelty is a core principle of "pop." Pop is ephemeral. Pop exists in the "now." Good pop songs can transcend their moments in time, but that is incidental to their initial purpose. Pop's purpose is not edify, not to uplift, not to bear the weight of the human condition on its shoulders, but simply to entertain. One could argue that a good pop song requires a certain level of substance and I wouldn't disagree; given the choice, I'd rather listen to Carter USM's "The Only Living Boy in New Cross" instead of Gary Lewis and The Playboys' "This Diamond Ring." "Good" is a different concept than "effective," however, and even the most banal pop confections can succeed in their momentary purpose by virtue of a catchy hook, a sublime harmony, or clever turn of phrase.

...and the manias over Elvis and the Beatles and the Stones and the other members of the sacred pantheon didn't involve commercialism or me-too behavior in the least. Nor do the countless photo-features, puff piece interviews, and band merchandise ads featured in every issue of every rock magazine ever published, apparently. The big chested blonde ladies modeling Creem t-shirts in an ad a couple pages after this column? They're making a statement of rebellion, honest.

Rockism is prone to a form of myopia which confuses personal sentiments with universal truths about "the music." It takes the shape of a cranky evangelism (with Calvinist overtones) that stresses the chimera called "authenticity." The problem is that authenticity, when used to separate art from product, is a subjective concept in objective clothing, and is applied unevenly based on pre-existing biases. The closer a performer hews toward those biases, the more authentic he or she is deemed.

In the article, Rose singles out Marianne Faithfull and Tom Verlaine (ex-Television) as examples of authenticity in contrast to the New Pop's superficiality. The choice of Faithfull stuck me as interesting as her persona as fallen angel of the 60's Modtopia has generated as much, if not more, ink than her music (which to be honest, I've never seen the appeal of). Though rooted in Faithfull's real experiences, it has become part of the packaged persona of the entertainer -- except the "sex, drugs. and rock and roll" template fits better with the rockist party line than shiny gold sport coats and back-up singers do.

(The Tom Verlaine bit didn't surprise me, since it's standard practice for rock journalists to fawn over anything that ever played CBGB's in the 70's. Expect a gooey retrospective on the importance of the Tuff Darts to appear in the pages of Spin any day now.)

It's not a matter of dismissing the concept of relative quality. There is a world of difference discernable between Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" and Kajagoogoo's "Too Shy" or Anthrax's "Among the Living" and Manowar's "Guyana," even after accounting for differences in individual tastes. It's the imposition of manufactured, mythical standards in place of an empirical personal relationship with "the music" that irks me. I have far more respect for someone who can plain out admit he or she listens to Hoyt Axton because they like his music than for someone who launches into dissertations about historical relevance and "importance" which fairly reek of received wisdom.

If you find pop music too superficial for your liking, then fair fucks to you. Don't, hovever, curse apples for not being more like oranges. Or hold new wave disco-synth bands up to a mythologized standard that doesn't even apply to the purist acts you cite as examples.

When it comes to enjoying music, the only honesty that really matters is in regards to one's own tastes.

Shallow new wave glossiness, uncompromising anarcho-punk convictions -- I adore them all.

ABC - Poison Arrow (from The Lexicon of Love, 1982)

Crass - Don't Tell Me You Care (from the How Does it Feel? 7", 1982; collected on Best Before...1984, 1986)

the past is so bright...

...I gotta wear shades. Thankfully this ad from the October 1982 issue of Creem magazine features a veritable bonanza of hip eyewear suitable for all your fashion subgenre needs:

(click to gaze upon its full-sized glory)
I wonder what the demand was for the "Poindexer" (a.k.a. "The Trevor Horn Signature Edition") model.

Ian Fleming's suave cold warrior is doubly represented in eyewear form by the "James Bond" and "007." I assume the different models were intended to reflect the two actors who best personified the character on the big screen. (I mean, of course, David Niven and George Lazenby.) For those not up on their gridiron history, "Broadway Joe" refers to Joe Namath, the legendary QB for the New York Jets and occasional pantyhose model who did wear a pair of shades kind of similar to those depicted. "Rotten" is self-explanatory, but many of the other model names seem to have been chosen by some form of popcult buzzword free association, a move apparently inspired by the surrealist branding practices of the automotive industry. (Tiburon? Murano? Equinox? WTF?)

One of the things I regret most about having no-so-great vision is that my need for corrective lenses precludes my dabbling in the world of fashion accessory eyewear. Sure, prescription sunglasses can be had for a quasi-reasonable cost, but I don't want just a tinted pair of my pedestrian workaday spectacles -- I want to revel in the retro-futurist sleekness of a wraparound "Spectrum" visor (despite the inevitable Geordi LaForge jokes it would invite).

During my brief and disastrous flirtation with contact lenses (which just happened to coincide with the high water mark of my punk fashion period), I wore sunglasses regularly, as I discovered that semi-permeable contacts made my eyes hypersensitive to sunlight. My shades of choice during that time were a variant of the "Rotten" style, as seen in this infamous photo.

(On a side note: I wonder what happened to the tie I'm wearing in that picture. It was an antique silk schoolboy tie that resembled a British flag and it cost me a dollar at a consignment store. It was also the only non-string tie I could ever bring myself to wear, even after I evolved past the need for overtly punk trappings. I suspect my grandma tossed it in the trash, which saddens me a great deal.)

My contact lens era didn't last, and when I switched back to spectacles eighteen months later, I put my beloved shades -- and my dreams of accessorized hipness -- away permanently. No, no, I'm not misting up about it. That's the sun shining in my eyes. Seriously. I can't see a goddamn thing though the glare.

Dwight Pullen - Sunglasses After Dark (from a 1958 single; collected on Sunglasses After Dark, 2005) - Fuck Corey Hart. The rockabilly kits and cats know where it's really at.

Cloudwalkers - Sunglasses (from a 1965 single; collected on Pebbles, Volume 8, 1996) - How did a Brooklyn band end up on a compilation of SoCal garage rock? Because it's Pebbles, that's why. They're the Dr. Bronner of garage rock compilation albums.

Tracey Ullman - Sunglasses (from a 1984 single; collected on The Best of Tracey Ullman, 1992) - After the Ronettes and before the Pipettes...

listen to me, listen to me

When I was eight years old, my paternal grandmother and my father's youngest sister moved in with us. The reasons for it were kind of complicated, but can summed up by saying that my grandfather wasn't nearly as good a scam artist as he thought he was, and when the bill for his various hustles came due he fled the state rather than face the music. It was left to my parents to pick up the pieces, which included cramming two more bodies -- an addle-minded stroke victim with delusions of misremembered grandeur and a teenage girl -- into our already cramped North Woburn apartment.

Though my parents' clashing insanities were the ultimate cause of my familiy's implosion, I've long held it was that fucked up domestic paradigm shift that sent things teetering down the path to disaster.

But the the point of explaining that chapter of my life was not to induge in a round of Dysfunctional Family Follies: The Weiss Edition, but to bring up an incidental aspect of the period. As I said, the new arrangement brought an instant older "sister" into my life in the form of my aunt, five years my senior. Prior to her arrival in the house, my musical tastes reflected those of my parents and childhood peers, which meant the Beatles, too much 70's singer-songwriter and soft rock, and AC/DC. Oh, and the Grease soundtrack, which was nigh-unavoidable in schoolyard circles back then.

My aunt was not a punk rocker or new waver by any stretch of the imagination, but she was a teenybopper who listened to a lot of rock radio at a period when bands in those genres could be heard fairly often on either the local mainstream rock stations or the fledgling local "alternative" station, WFNX. Because I was young, impressionable, and sharing the same confined space with my aunt, the songs and bands I heard then imprinted themselves indelibly on my subconscious mind. Not in a radical life- or taste-changing way -- I was too busy obsessing over X-Men comics and Dig Dug, and my punk fandom wouldn't begin until my late teens -- but in a true IPCRESS fashion, unexploded mnemonic ordnance lying dormant in anticipation of the correct trigger sequences.

It's why, when I bought a copy of The Clash's debut album in the late 1980's, I discovered that I already knew the lyrics and chord progressions by heart. It's also why, when listening to my custom new wave playlist on Christmas Eve, I felt like someone tossed me under the suppressed memory train after hearing these two tracks back to back:

The Swingers - Counting the Beat (from Counting the Beat, 1981) - Oh, what glorious cocktail of backbeats and understated elegance. Formed from the Phil (ex-Split Enz) Judd faction of New Zealand's Suburban Reptiles, The Swingers also appeared and performed in Gillian Armstrong's 1982 new wave musical Starstruck (which will be spotlighted in a upcoming post now that I have my USB turntable).

Fischer-Z - So Long (from Going Deaf for a Living, 1980) - One thing that's great about pop music is that a skilled performer can take a perfectly obnoxious concept like self-pity and turn it into a thing of genuine pathos and beauty...

...which a less musically talented person feeling similiar emotions can listen to while sobbing into his pillow, punching parking meters or writing incoherent, wounded screeds on his MySpace page.

12 Days of Christmas - Day 12: the last noel

(l-r, Buttons, young Andrew, little brother)
Christmas Day is finally upon us, and to say that it feels profoundly anti-climactic would a large understatement on my part. It's to be expected, I suppose. Nothing drilled so loudly and incessantly into one's consicence over the space of eight-plus weeks is ever going to live up to the expectations. I'm told it's different when you have kids. Even so, I'm in no rush to find out empirically.

In the "plus" column for today was this present from my wife...


...a USB-ready turntable. 2008 bodes to be an interesting year for Armagideon Time. I spent some time in the attic this morning sifting through my record collection, my mind fair to bursting with potential post ideas. (It also means I'll need to purchase a better computer desk to accomodate my new toy, but that had been on my to-do list for a while already.)

Of course, Providence is notorious for caressing with one hand and sucker-punching with the other, and today was no exception. I was out back walking Oscar the Grumpy Pughuahua, distracted by thoughts regarding what record I should rip first, when I slipped on a patch of ice and came down hard on my left (dominant) wrist.


I should be happy I didn't end up with a compound fracture, but it's hard to accentuate the positive when it feels like I've arm-wrestled a belt sander (and lost).

Even given the painful abrasions and the underwhelming feel of this year's festivities, Christmas 2007 did turn out to be rather decent day. I scored some very nice and desired gifts, which also included slick Penguin editions of Fantomas and M. Lupin material, a Blue Devil JLU figure, and the DC Showcase collections of the Metal Men and Aquaman (and few things alleviate the tedium of family gatherings like Ramona Fradon panels of bank robbers getting bit in their asses by telepathically controlled sharks and/or pufferfish).

And so concludes our holiday countdown. Our final musical selection falls outside the expected genre boundaries, but I'm sure the handful of you that are still reading to this point won't mind too much. It's a track which has the capability to slide past my formidable barriers of cynicism and cleave directly and unerringly into the nostalgia cortex. Not nostalgia for the Christmas holiday season, mind you, but for summers spent reading comics while hanging upside down from the tire swing in my back yard -- a perfect refuge from the junior high blues.

I have no idea why I felt like posting it today of all days, but here it is just the same:

General Public - Tenderness (from All the Rage, 1984)

12 Days of Christmas - Day 11: I can see a better time

I put in a couple of hours at the office this morning and did a little last-minute shopping with the wife this afternoon (which wasn't nearly as crazy as I had been expecting, despite the desperation-level markdowns in the stores). Now it's time to settle in and enjoy the quieter aspects of the holiday.

As per our usual tradition, Maura will head out in a couple hours to spend some time with her relations before attending the annual Christmas Eve party at her best friend's family's house. As for me, I intend to celebrate in my own introspective fashion by playing X-Men: Legends 2 on the living room TV, surrounded by a host of sleepy kits and pups. It doesn't sound like much of a celebration, but it's exactly where I want to be.

Later, when the wife returns home, we'll exchange gifts and catch the first of too many viewings of A Christmas Story. (Familiarity breeds what, now?)

The Pogues - Fairytale of New York (from If I Should Fall From Grace With God, 1988) - Yeah, I know what I said before, but if the song is good enough for a couple dozen other bloggers to post this time of year, it's good enough for me as well. Besides those other bloggers don't have what I have -- a keen fashion sense. (Yes, that is a reference to what you think it's a reference to. And I'm sorry.)

12 Days of Christmas - Day 10: wake me when it's over

'Twas the night before the night before Christmas and all though metro northwest Boston not a creature was stirring....unless you count the hordes of last-minute shoppers clogging the surface roads and making the simple task of picking up a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper and some trashbags from Target a maddening ordeal.

At this point I'd be content to just flop down on the bed and snooze straight through to Boxing Day. ("But Americans don't celebrate Boxing Day," I hear some of you saying. My point exactly.)

John Baker - Christmas Commercial (from BBC Radiophonic Music, 2002) - An interesting rendition of "O, Come All Ye Faithful" that concisely and uncomfortably captures the contemporary essence of the holiday. It's a product of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a now-defunct branch of the government-funded broadcasting firm whose other pioneering work in the field of synth and electronic music included the legendary Dr. Who theme (a Ron Grainer composition "realized" by Delia Derbyshire).

Milton DeLugg - Horray for Santa Claus (from The Golden Turkey Album, 1985) - Some of you will recognise this as the theme to Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, the 1964 film that set the precedent for other cinematic holiday treats such as Santa Claus: The Movie, Jingle All the Way, and Fred Claus. Milton DeLugg, besides being the man responsible for this aggressively chirpy ditty, was an industry veteran who produced Buddy Holly's immortal classic, "Rave On" and served as the bandleader (and an occasional comedic foil) on The Gong Show.

12 Days of Christmas - Day 9: 20 minutes into the Christmas future

Today's installment of Armagideon Time's ill-conceived holiday countdown features a heartwarming piece of retro-futurism in the form of Max Headroom's 1986 single:

Max Headroom - Merry Christmas Santa Claus (You're A Lovely Guy)

Lovely, isn't it? It makes me want to twitch my head and weep virtual tears each time I listen to it. I'm no expert in audio issue troubleshooting for futuristic artificial intelligences, but it seems to me that Max's sysadmins could probably clear up that stuttering problem by uninstalling the sound card drivers, disabling the onboard sound from the BIOS menu, then getting the updated drivers from the manufacturer's website.

Despite the character having reached a toxic level of overexposure in his mid-eighties heyday, I still retain a certain fondness for Max. As a synthetic personality for a synthetic age, he not-quite-successfully tread a very thin line between satire and symptom of that era's style-over-substance ethos, making subversive wisecracks one moment and serving as a pitchman for New Coke the next.

Such ambiguity was to be expected, I suppose, from a faulty personality simulation based on an investigative reporter from a cyberpunkadelic future, especially one created (by the same people who did the Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love" and Elvis Costello's "Accidents Will Happen" videos) using a be-latexed Matt Frewer and 1980's video editing wizardry with the purpose of hosting a UK Channel 4 music video program. According to a 1985 interview with one of Max's creators, the original intent was to weave the sci-fi backstory in segments between the music videos, but the concept proved too unwieldy to manage and was spun off into a separate project.

As is usual with my retrologistic obsessions, my affection for Max Headroom is best kept at nostalgic arm's length. The specials and miscellaneous host appearances starring the character simply feel dated and only interesting as historical curiosities. My first exposure to the Circle Jerks came via a Cinemax showing of one of the specials, where the band's "Junk Mail" (or a lousy cover of it) was used as a bumper for a "letters to the host" segment. Max's Christmas Turkey special (which includes a performance of today's holiday track) features appearances by "Saint" Bob Geldof and a very Auntie Entitized Tina Turner, and mostly serves to remind me that, yes, 1986 really was that long ago.

The British TV movie, Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future, still holds up pretty well after all these years, and is a minor classic of the presciently quaint genre the kids call "cyberpunk." (One of my more fortuitous popcult finds was a copy of the oversized and photo-heavy "novelization" of the film, purchased at a dollar store in the early 1990's.) The film also featured a great synth-instrumental end theme courtesy of Ultravox's Midge Ure. I had planned to post the theme, but the extraction program I use keeps distorting the sound beyond use.

As a teen, I loved the American Max Headroom television series, which was based on the film but featured different actors (except for Frewer and the lovely Amanda Pays). Having watched it again when it played on Bravo a few years back, I found it to be rather flat and oddly preachy -- the kiss of death, given the cynical basis of the cyberpunk genre. (I could honestly live happily without seeing another attempt to directly reference Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 in a quasi-serious work of sci-fi. The novel only really succeeds as a broad parable, where the threshold for suspension of disbelief isn't as high as it is for similar elements used as ongoing plot points in a less abstract piece.)

To be fair, it's a case of the series being of its era and excelling in that stratified context. Compared to then-contemporary fare like Small Wonder or Full House, the American Max Headroom series seems like high art, and Grand High Poobah of Cyberpunk William Gibson's praise for the show makes a lot more sense. Viewed today, isolated from 1987-88's topographical map of banality, it resembles nothing so much as Lou Grant if filmed by Ridley Scott.

Special bonus: Since I'm already on the subject of Max Headroom, and I doubt I'll ever do another post about it, I figured I might as well toss in Max's other bright shining musical moment:

Art of Noise - Paranoimia (from a 1986 12" single; collected on Best of Art of Noise, 1997)

12 Days of Christmas - Interlude: A Winter's Tale

It's the last Friday night before Christmas. For too many people, the next three days will be a screaming tinseled nightmare of last minute shopping, travel hassles, and event planning...

...and that's exactly why it's important to take a little time to kick back, relax, and appreciate the little things that make life worth living.



The Cattanooga Cats - Sittin' by the Fireside - This cozy little bubblegum pop gem didn't appear on the cartoon felines' 1969 LP, but came from Mondo Daddykin's meticulously compiled collection of the music used in the show. (Oh, how I miss MD's blog...) The male vocals for the Cats were handled by Michael Lloyd of The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (and later a superstar producer).

12 Days of Christmas - Day 8: meow bless us every meow

Another Thursday, another snowstorm. The commute this time out was a breeze, as everyone took the lessons of the previous Thursday to heart and stayed home -- an idea I could totally get behind, if it wasn't for my wife's troubling work ethic. As it was, we made better time getting home last night than we do on a snow-free evening commute, meaning that we got back to Mt. Misery with time to spare...time which was spent shoveling out the driveway and steps from the foot of snow dumped since we left yesterday morning, but still...

I was clearing off the path down to the backyard when Scraggly mysteriously appeared at my feet. Scraggly (a.k.a. Mr. Scraggles) is a solitary soul who belongs to none of the local feral cat colonies, but chooses to go it alone. He's a frequent enough visitor to our house, as he knows we can be relied upon to provide him with a heaping bowl of dry kibble, chicken, and Fancy Feast whenever he turns up.

Unfortunately he's a cagey bastard with an intuitive knowledge of when the folks who spay and neuter ferals make their rounds, though that has been mitigated by our success in getting the female feral population in our vicinity successfully spayed (but not before he put Nubby, our feral-turned-house cat, in the family way a couple of years ago. CooCoo the Marshmallow Ninja is a dead ringer for her deadbeat dad. Jem, not so much.)

I was surprised by Scraggly's appearance last night because he tends to lie low during bad weather, especially when the snow blocks the gap in the back fence he uses as an access route. (We try to keep it clear, but it's difficult to do during ongoing storms. The other day my wife had to walk around the other side of the block to guide one of our lost and crying feral colony members home.) He watched me shovel out the path while waiting for my wife to bring him out his dinner. Once he was finished filling his belly, he turned and headed off down the hillside, leaving behind a trail of footprints in the snow (but no pregnant female cats, thank Providence -- or rather "Thank the Woburn Feral Cat Coalition").

Stiff Little Fingers - White Christmas (Live) (from a 1980 single; collected on Punk Rock Christmas, 1995) - The first time I tried to buy this compilation (at the late, lamented Disc Diggers in Davis Square) I opened up the case in the Papa Gino's down the block only to discover that the disc inside was a Mariah Carey holiday single. A chunk of coal would have been preferable.

My first experience with SLF's material came from an import compliation of live punk tracks. I can't remember the name of the album, but it was pressed on what was intended to be multicolored vinyl, but instead looked like someone puked a mass of half-digested gummy bears on the turntable. While most of the material on the collection was of pretty lousy aesthetic and sound quality, the live version of "Alterative Ulster" included on it was nothing short of outstanding -- rip-snortin' agit-prop punk that held together beautifully in a live performance (a sad-rarity, I hate to say). I shortly afterward picked up the band's Hanx LP, which offered more in-concert punky goodness.

I eventually located a copy of Inflammable Material, the band's debut LP. I expected the world of it based on my previous experiences, but it sounded oddly flat to me; overly produced and studio laminated, possessing none of the jagged yet focused rawness that originally attracted me to SLF. It wasn't that the album wasn't good, but my frame of reference for hearing the songs was centered around the live renditions, and couldn't be budged.

So in honor of Irving Berlin, Mr. Scraggles, and the ghost of Punk-mases past, here's a bit of live holiday cheer for your seasonal enjoyment. It starts rather shambolically, but pays off in spades by the song's end.

12 Days of Christmas - Day 7: a warm winter stoat

I can't begin to express my disappointment upon discovering (a couple of days ago) that "wassail" was not an archaic spelling of "weasel," and that the act of going "a-wassailing" did not involve sneaking into chicken coops to steal eggs and/or the occasional plump fowl while justifying the act with vague quantifiers. ("Many people agree that poultry theft is an acceptable means of spreading holiday cheer.")

It does explain why my family got such a cold shoulder from our neighbors when I was growing up, however. Some folks just don't appreciate the true meaning of the season...

Mike and The 'Bots - The Wassail Song (from MST3K Episode 908: The Touch of Satan, 1998) - While "The Wassail Song" has long been one of my favorite Christmas carols -- despite my discovery that it deals with warm, spiced punch and not mustelid-related hijinx -- my wife dislikes its demanding tone, which she says is "rude." I think she's just mad that she didn't pay attention to the fine print.

Philadelphia Brass Ensemble - The Wassail Song (from A Festival Of Carols In Brass, 1967) - I was surprised at first to see that Jeff from AM, Then FM had posted "The Twelve Days of Christmas" from this very same album yesterday. Then I realized that this album (and others in the same vein) has probably reached quintuple-platinum status due to decades of holiday season sell-through. I don't think I've ever come across a stack of used vinyl at a flea market or estate sale that didn't include a significant percentage of Christmas-themed material.

12 Days of Christmas - Day 6: I dreamt unhappy things

In 1966, The Sonics, one of the finest garage bands to come out of the Pacific Northwest, asked "Santa Claus, where have you been?"

The belated answer to their query is:

He took a nasty fall from a third-story window.
He was coldcocked with a telephone by some mobsters after overhearing their nefarious plans.
He was busy helping Sandman (no, not that one, nor that other one, either) fight off an army of invading seal men.
So you see, fellas, Santa has got a lot on his plate at the moment. Don't take it personally if he happened to forget your requests for a brand new car, a twangy guitar, a cute little honey, and lots o' money, okay?

The Sonics - Santa Claus (from the 1999 reissue of 1965's Here Are The Sonics LP)

(Panels courtesy of Christmas with the Superheroes: The Best of DC Digest #22, March 1982 -- a cornucopia of reprinted holiday joy that I loved immensely as a lad, even though the Jack Kirby Sandman story confused the heck out of me.)

12 Days of Christmas - Day 5: polar opposites

BALI, Indonesia - The initial high hopes of those committed to resolving the global warming issue experienced an embarrassing setback at the U.N. climate change conference last week, as sibling rivalries led to an intractable deadlock between two delegates whose cooperation has been deemed vital to establishing an effective policy.

(An artist's rendering of the confrontation.)
The sibling delegates in question are the Miser brothers. Mr. Snow Miser has long been a staunch supporter of the Kyoto Protocols, as the accelerated shrinking of the polar ice caps directly affects his traditional standard of living. However, previous statements by the self-proclaimed "Mr. Icicle" that he "never wants to know a day that's over 40 degrees [Fahrenheit]" has caused some concern even among other Kyoto supporters, and provided his estranged brother, Mr. Heat Miser, an opportunity to dismiss the treaty as the work of environmental extremists. "I'd rather have it 80, 90, 100 degrees!" he shouted across the conference hall floor. "Oh, some like it hot," he continued, flanked by a small phalanx of supporters and the delegate from the United States, "but I like it really hot!" He then melted a pen in his clutch and added, "Besides, the science behind global warming theory is still unproven."


An attempt by the conference's organizers to negotiate a compromise between the Misers failed miserably, despite the intervention of Mother Nature. On previous occasions Ms. Nature had been able to rein in her squabbling sons, but at last week's conference it was clear her formerly commanding presence has been gravely diminished by her declining health, which took a pronounced turn for the worse after January 2001. It was all Ms. Nature could do just to keep the Misers from engaging in physical violence during the fruitless negotiations to reestablish a previous quid pro quo arrangement between the two elemental beings.

A spokesperson for the United Nations expressed disappointment, but not surprise, at the outcome. "We had hoped that Australia's decision to sign on to the Kyoto agreement marked a push toward a new consensus, but unfortunately politics and personal grievances got in the way," she stated. When specifically asked about the behavior of the Miser brothers during the conference, she simply responded "They're too much."

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Another Christmas countdown, another post featuring these climatically oppositional classics from 1974's The Year Without a Santa Claus (along with a quite excellent medley version by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy). I've found that they make perfect bookends for my annual holiday mix CD's.

As I stated last year, nothing says “Merry Christmas” quite like high camp lyrics and music lifted from a Gypsy Rose Lee performance.

George S. Irving - Heat Miser (from Nick At Nite: A Classic Cartoon Christmas, Too, 1997)

Dick Shawn - Snow Miser (from Nick At Nite: A Classic Cartoon Christmas, Too, 1997)

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - Mr. Heatmiser (from Everything You Want for Christmas, 2004)

12 Days of Christmas - Day 4: goofs of the magi

There are a few reasons why Halloween gets an entire month's worth of posts on Armagideon Time and Christmas gets a measly week (and change). The primary explanation is that Halloween's spooky vibe appeals to me more than the retail industry-driven insanity that Christmas has become. There's also the fact that the Yuletide holiday season has long-since bled through the Black Friday (and, oh, how I hate that descriptor for the day after Thanksgiving) boundary, so that candy corn and toxic light-up skulls immediately segue into artificial evergreen trees, NASCAR^TM ornaments, and Christmas music played 24/7 on the local "oldies" (if by the term you mean Billy Joel's body of work and "Muskrat Love") station.

Too much of a good thing is bad enough. Too much of something that is already ambiguous in nature (not so much Christmas, but the foul dust that preys in its wake) is nigh unbearable. I'm hardly a standard bearer for traditions, but there was a natural, comfortable cadence to the flow of fourth-quarter holiday celebrations -- Halloween's ghoulish revels, Thanksgiving's harvest-tide feast, Christmas's whatever, topped off with New Year's clean break. I'm aware of the cui which bono from the present extended yet accelerated arrangement, but the net effect has been to utterly leech whatever charm the season once possessed.

Yes, I know there are movements to reclaim the "true meaning of Christmas," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean, but the omnipresent crush of marketed holiday cheer is capable of insinuating its way through all petty boundaries. Even the tinkle of my piss off the porcelain plays out the tune of Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time," such is the season's insidious, unrelenting ubiquity.

The final reason why I keep the Christmas holiday festivities here limited to a shorter period of time compared to Halloween's is because of the dearth of material, or rather a dearth of material that hasn't already been posted recently elsewhere. Finding unique Halloween-related material was easy, even with a couple dozen other folks out there working in a similar vein. There's a greater latitude for selecting "spooky" -- which encompasses entire genres -- than for Christmas music, especially after I add the "I like enough to post" qualifier and my desire not to poach on others' turf. So no "Christmas Bop" by T. Rex or Oscar the Grouch's sublime "I Hate Christmas" this time round, even though both tracks made the final cut. I won't even bother with The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York," because it's almost a given that the song will occupy at least half the slots on the Hype Machine's Top 50 as the 25th of December draws closer.

I was horrified to discover that The Damned's "There Ain't No Sanity Clause" had already been posted last Monday over at the always excellent Planet Mondo, which I would have known if I hadn't fallen behind in keeping up with my favorite blogs. Sorry about that, PM. Your write up was far superior to mine, if it's any consolation. John over at Punks on Postcards has also put up a rather nifty Christmas Oi! compliation, which I had debated picking up at a used vinyl store back in the day, but the extortionate price and the presence of tracks by Splodge and The Gonads caused my to stay my hand. AM, Then FM, Mostly Ghostly and Wonderful Wonderblog are all presently offering excellent selections of music from Christmases past, and are well worth checking out, as well, because the odds of seeing OOP Perry Como holiday material here are pretty much nil...

Guys in luchador masks working elements of The Chantays' "Pipeline" and Del Shannon's "Runaway" into a surf instrumental version of a holiday standard? That's more my speed, by far.

Los Straitjackets - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (from 'Tis The Season For Los Straitjackets, 2002)

12 Days of Christmas - Day 3: la imagen pública se limitó

I've said it a couple times already, but I haven't been really feeling the holiday spirit this year. It's not from a lack of trying or some halfhearted salvo in the War on Christmas (which seems to only exist in the heads of attention-starved culture warriors); it simply is, without any reason apart from these past weeks being so aflutter with other issues that I haven't had the time to stop and smell the balsam.

Maybe I should whip up batch of gingerbread and queue up a playlist of some perennial holiday favorites -- like today's featured track, a festive little number which combines equal parts Jose Feliciano and John Lydon to excellent effect...

El Vez - Feliz Navidad (from Merry MeX-Mas, 1994)

12 Days of Christmas - Day 2: joy to the world

Today we have a little nugget of holiday cheer, in the form of "A Slay Ride with Santa" which appeared in Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #15 (February-March 1974).

Ten-time loser Bill Digby ekes out a marginal living as a street corner Kris Kringle...


The pay might not be the best, but the job does make things easier for him in his other profession...


...as a murderer of children. (Feeling the Yuletide joy yet?) Given Digby's propensity of leaving the corpses of his victims hanging from the rafters of his flophouse apartment, it's only a matter of time before Johnny Law brings the hammer down...


...so he seeks refuge in a conveniently-parked sleigh (left with the reindeer idling) in a dark alleyway. (Gee, I wonder what's going to happen next.)


The real Santa Claus, having taken a quick pit stop for a large coffee regulah and a couple of Hark the Herald Angels Scratch lottery tickets, hops back into the driver's seat and jets off to attend to his yearly gift-dispensing rounds. The perplexed stowaway fugitive stands up in an attempt to get his bearings...


...only to discover that the someone has left a neatly-wrapped package full of ironic justice for him under the tree this year.


It's a Christmas miracle! Though I pity the poor family that wakes up on Christmas morning to find Digby's battered and frozen corpse draped over the inflatable snow globe in their front yard...

The Damned - There Ain't No Sanity Clause (from a 1980 single; collected on Eternally Damned, 1994) - Barnstorming punk with Marxist (Chico Marx, that is) overtones? Just the thing to kick the holiday festivities into gear, I've discovered. (Well, that and stained glass cookies, but those are a hassle to make.)

Friday Night Fights: O Holy Night, Batman!

For this week's contribution to Bahlactus's Friday Night Fights, I opted for something with a little Yuletide flair.

(from The Best of DC Digest #22, March 1982; by Bob Rozakis, Jose Delbo, and Vince Colletta)
..because it just wouldn't be Christmas without a little seasonal holiday aggression. (I hope Robin kept the receipt for that kick to the face, just in case the recipient wished to exchange it for a different cause of severe head trauma.)

Bad Manners - Christmas Time Again (from a 1989 single) - Yet I haven't been feeling it at all this year. O bittersweet holiday-themed ska song, can you help me rediscover the Christmas spirit?

12 Days of Christmas - Day 1: the weather outside is frightful

We begin our holiday countdown with a yet another example of why Andrew should not be allowed access to Items of Ultimate Power^TM.

I think it would be for the best if everyone could just disregard the Ultimate Nullifer at the top of my holiday wish list.

The Brian Setzer Orchestra - Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! (from Dig That Crazy Christmas, 2005) - I have nothing but respect for the talent Mr. Setzer and his body of work -- so much so, in fact, I even named my constant feline companion after him -- but after yesterday's hellish experience, I cannot agree in any shape or form with the sentiments expressed in today's featured holiday musical selection.