and I tell you, baby, that something’s wrong

Ah, the break-up song, the musical accompaniment for punching parking meters and showing up at an ex’s workplace to beg for “just one more chance, baby.” Or one could go the other route, as I once did, and crawl into a dark, dank broom closet of adolescent rage and nurse a grudge with the aid of generous helpings of Black Flag and Ministry.

Magnanimity and equanimity in the face of romantic defeat is hard to come by, and most of us lack the savior faire about such matters that a certain good friend of mine (who suggested today’s topic) possesses.

Oingo Boingo – Goodbye, Goodbye (from the Fast Times at Ridgemont High OST, 1982) – Danny Elfman is a very, very pink and orange man, but I did know a man who was even pinker and more orange. He was the sort of fellow who could contract melanoma by looking at a bottle of Sun Light dishwashing liquid.

Scandal – Goodbye to You (from the Scandal EP, 1982) – Before she shot at the walls of heartache (bang-bang), Patty Smyth and her band recorded this stellar piece of new wave pop. Love that synth organ riff on the bridge. There’s a gimmick just begging to be brought back.

Squeeze – Another Nail in My Heart (from Argybargy, 1980) – For more information, please refer to my forthcoming dissertation, Temptation and Black Coffee: An Examination of the Collapse of Romantic Relationships in the Working Class as Depicted in Blue Eyed Soul Songs of the Late 1970’s and Early 1980’s.

Buzzcocks – What Do I Get (from Singles Going Steady, 1979) – “It’s like fucking bookends,” I told a friend when he asked about a failed relationship. “It started off with ‘Love You More’ and ended with ‘What Do I Get.’ How perfect is that?” Ten years later, I hear the song being used in an SUV commercial, further cementing my hatred of those gas-guzzling, earth-wrecking status symbols for obnoxious assholes.

The Eyeliners – Think of Me (from No Apologies, 2005) – That closet of angst and vengefulness? It’s open to both genders, although women haven’t quite caught up with the guys on the punching parking meters thing yet.

ex lion tamer seeks same

My life has become something of a circus these past few days, what with all the goings on and shenanigans and grease-painted harbingers of pure evil showing up in tiny cars and such. (OK, I made that last part up. There has been no clown invasion, and for that I am very thankful.) Still, when life decides to launch you out of a cannon in the center ring, one has to simply execute a triple somersault and hope that the carnies weren’t too drunk when they set up the catch net.

Keeping with the prevailing situation, here’s a three ring set of festively flamboyant instrumentals for you listening enjoyment:

Bad Manners – Can Can (from Gosh It’s…Bad Manners, 1981) – Kick those legs high, rude boys and rude girls! This is a ska-i-fied rendition of “The Infernal Galop” from Jacques Offenbach’s 1858 opera, Orpheus in the Underworld. The tune was also put to use in the videogame Mr. Do, joining Gyruss (Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor) and Pengo (Gershon Kingley’s Moog synthesizer showpiece “Popcorn”) in the “highbrow musical appropriation by a videogame” club.

Sounds Incorporated – In the Hall of the Mountain King (from Sounds Incorporated, 1983) – Grieg’s legendary piece gets a 60’s surf and sax update from this British Invasion combo. Sounds Incorporated were one of the acts in tone-deaf, homicidal visionary Joe Meek’s stable. They performed a similarly manic version of “The William Tell Overture” in 1964’s Pop Gear performance film, and I was struck by how much their onstage antics (loads o’ leaping) and “nutty” style reminded me of a prototype version Madness.

The Toy Dolls – Sabre Dance (from Covered in Toy Dolls, 2002) – Here’s a plugged-in version of the Fraternal Order of Plate Spinners’ official anthem (originally part of Aram Khachaturian’s 1942 ballet Gayane). While there was an era where a skilled plate spinner could command top dollar at the venue of his or her choice, the cancellation of the Ed Sullivan Show in 1971 proved to be a hit from which the industry would never recover. Is this what we call “progress,” people? If so, then I want no part of it, buster.

we like to throw our bodies around

It’s Friday night, a perfect time to cut loose and go crazy. The question is whether to rock out or boogie down. Both are worthy courses of action, which makes for a really tough call.

Then again, who said it has to be an either/or proposition? Not these folks.

Electric Light Orchestra – Shine a Little Love (from Discovery, 1979) – It seems natural that a rock outfit renowned for its string section would dabble in disco, although said section was dropped from the band at the time of Discovery’s release. Dig the use of sound effects lifted from the Galaxian video game, always a plus in my book.

The song feels like it could have been commissioned by NBC to promote its 1979 fall lineup, and I can’t listen to the instrumental parts without envisioning Eric Estrada and Larry Wilcox using their motorcycles to pull a chain of Peacock Dancers on rollerskates across a soundstage while Conrad Bain gives a big “thumbs up” to the camera.

As a side note, ELO frontman Jeff Lynne reminds me of one of my dad’s old fishing buddies. The line “Hey kid, fetch me a beer from the cooler in my van, ok?” would have made the basis of a superb sci-fi concept album.

Uriah Heep - Whad' Ya Say (from Fallen Angel, 1978) – They once roamed the land like magnificent denim- and fringe-bedecked dinosaurs, the hard rock bands of the Polyester Era, and when the opportunity arose to trade credibility for a chance at megaplatinium “crossover” success, they came a’running, visions of tax exile status dancing through their heads.

Their time has passed. Their few remaining acolytes hunker down in basement apartments, putting the finishing touches on their SCA apparel and next weekend’s Dungeons and Dragons scenario while lambasting the sorry state of modern (i.e. post-1980) music.

Alice Cooper – You Gotta Dance (from Goes to Hell, 1976) – Check out this skeleton I found in a certain shock rocker’s closet. It’s wearing a lovely peach leisure suit and a gold chain, and is that Jovan Sex Appeal I smell?

Alice does disco... only a year after the release of Welcome to My Nightmare and a good year before the runaway success of Saturday Night Fever convinced other rock acts to hop on the bandwagon. The man’s a true pioneer.

though I am poor, I am free

Something of a mixed bag this time out, as I’ve been busy with other things. I largely avoided listening to music while I was ill, well aware of how sickbed associations can linger. Twenty five years ago, a similar bout of the flu made it impossible to this day for me to even think of crème-filled éclairs or roasted peanuts without getting a case of the dry heaves, and any love I had for The Primitives’ debut LP was permanently soured by another bug suffered through in the early 1990’s.

There was the Camera Obscura album my wife had playing in the background while I was laid up, but overhearing from the upstairs bedroom isn’t the same as actively queuing up something to listen to. Those distant snatches and fragments of sweet indie pop could have been lullabies sung by solicitous pixies for how they registered on my consciousness. I spent a morning fixated on that Dead Boys’ song, but its charm wore thin rather quickly as the rhyming of “loser” and “reducer” began to grate on my nerves, and I puzzled in vain to figure out just what the hell a “sonic reducer” was supposed to be, anyhow. A “devil machine?” An “electronic dream?” Fine, fine, but can I see some tech specs, please? Or even a MSRP?

I did think that Bush could have shortened and livened up his State of the Union address if he had just lipsynched to Howard Jones’s “Things Can Only Get Better,” instead of defensively paraphrasing the song’s lyrics. Cheney and the First Lady could have put on oversized pastel sweaters and made enthusiastic hand clapping gestures during the “whoa-whoa-whoa, whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa” parts to complete the effect.

The only other piece of music that happened to dart past my path in recent days was a Lily Allen video a friend posted in her online journal. It was an interesting piece that dared to answer the question “What would happen if one were to mix Len’s ‘If You Steal My Sunshine,’ Bjork’s closet, and an irritating British accent?” (Answer: The undying fealty of hipster music critics and the taste of crematorium ash in my mouth.)

On that pleasant note, here are some ever enjoyable palate-cleansing tracks culled from my favorites folder:

Devo – It Takes a Worried Man (from Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology, 2000) – This lovely, twisted cover of a folk standard was the best thing to come out of Neil Young and Dean Stockwell’s dead-on-arrival 1982 “cult” (read: obtuse and self-indulgent) movie, Human Highway.

The Fall – Victoria (from The Frenz Experiment, 1988) – I’ve never understood the appeal of The Fall’s music. I suspect there must be some recessive gene involved, as several people whose opinions I respect greatly seem to swear by Mark E. Smith’s serpentine musical vision. Perhaps I’ll send an email to the Human Genome Project folks and ask them to look into it for me.

I can appreciate an excellent Kinks cover when I hear one, though, and this certainly fits the bill.

Wolfe Tones – The Foggy Dew (from 25th Anniversary, 1991) – See, Bono, this is a rebel song, and unapologetically so, you pompous West Briton prick. I know it’s easier to champion the causes of people on other continents than of those in your own back yard. That might cause controversy, hurt record sales, and make people realize that your band’s postured idealism is a convenient front to mask the fact that U2 is nothing more than the college rock equivalent to Air Supply.

A note about the song: My wife pointed out to me that you can tell a performer’s politics by their choice of lyrics used in “The Foggy Dew.” Nationalists use the line “fought with Cathal Brugha,” referring to the Irish Republican commander killed by Free State forces in 1922. Fence sitters and/or apologists for the Free State’s brand of church and banker controlled quasi-fascism use the line “fought with de Valera true.” Although Eamon de Valera was also an Irish Republican leader who opposed the Free State, and did much to correct its course as Taoiseach (leader of the Irish government) in later years, the substitution of his name for Brugha’s glosses over the unfinished business of the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War.

I'll be a pharaoh soon, rule from some golden tomb

My four day long (or one month long, if you count the warm up exercises) bout with the flu has ended, leaving me feeling completely exhausted and with an unpleasant aftertaste redolent of a corn starch smoothie in my mouth.

Literary and popcult precedent would have me believe that the extended nightmare of this experience was supposed to serve a greater purpose – a virally-triggered vision quest with the objective of getting me to rethink my ways, burning away the petty flaws and unnecessary fixations to reveal a newfound purity within myself.

It’s not going to happen. The new me is the same as the old me, just a little wearier and slightly more introspective about whether a can of Hormel chili would make a wise recuperation meal. Small changes to be sure, but at least I have no plans to install my favorite horse to a seat on the Imperial Senate, like Caligula did after his bout with a nasty life-altering illness.

Today’s featured track, “If Looks Could Kill,” comes from Scottish indie poppers Camera Obscura. My wife picked up the album a few weeks back and has had it on repeat ever since. It’s sweet, breezy pop reminiscent of the 60’s girl group sound, with some Wilsonian (Brian, that is) flourishes, and a nice antidote to an influenza-induced funk.

Camera Obscura – If Looks Could Kill (from Let’s Get Out of This Country, 2006)

Come to think of it, maybe I have picked up some post-fever megalomaniacal tendencies, judging from the other song that has been lodged in my head during this morning’s convalescence… I wonder how Oscar the Chihuahua-pug would feel about being made a vice consul.

Dead Boys – Sonic Reducer (from Young, Loud, and Snotty, 1977)

and you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone

I did have another topic in mind for today’s post, but that was before Grandfather Nurgle decided to have a little fun at my expense. (Yes, that’s a Warhammer reference. Deal with it.) For the past week or so, I’ve been in a flirtatious little dance with this winter’s new and improved strain of the flu, but it wasn’t until last night that the perky little viruses decided to pull out all the stops and go straight for the jugular.

There’s being sick, and there’s being sick. The former is a minor inconvenience with a silver lining – “Oh, I feel I little shitty today. I guess I’ll have to call in sick to work and stay home and play some Final Fantasy XII -- I mean ‘get some bed rest.’” The latter involves writhing about beneath sweat soaked flannel sheets for a good twelve hours, unable to do anything but shiver uncontrollably and wonder if that cloaked, scythe-wielding gentleman standing at the foot of the bed is another hallucination or not.

I can’t remember the last time I felt that ill. Ok, that’s a lie. I do remember. It was toward the end of 1990, right after the college bursar’s office cut me my first “cost-of-living” scholarship check. With a wad of twenties tucked away in the pocket of my punk jacket, I went on a shopping spree down the length of Newbury and Bolyston Streets. I picked up a new backpack/bookbag and some military surplus gloves at Mass Army and Navy, then hit Mystery Train, where I bought some records I’d had my eye on, as well as an old promo poster for The Go-Go’s Beauty and the Beat (which is now in the downstairs closet, awaiting framing and display in the new house).

When I left the record store, I was already beginning to feel a bit off, gripped by the first stage of that mind-to-body signal distortion that accompanies the most virulent of fevers. By the time I made it to North Station, I was walking around in a dreamlike haze, wondering why the person who was supposed to pick me up at the commuter rail station in Woburn wasn’t answering the phone. She never did, and I ending up staggering the mile home through the sub-zero suburban wilderness. Once there, I did a quick reading of my temperature (103 degrees and change), then went to bed and remained there for two days.

I didn’t bother taking my temperature last night. I remember hearing the digital music channel play “Bloodletting” by Concrete Blonde and feeling my gorge rise. I also remember inexplicably replaying scenes from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome in my head: the feral children chanting “Waaaah-kahhhh” and the line about getting jumped by Mister Death. I remember hearing my wife yelling at our dogs for barking too loud. Mostly I remember the unpleasant sensation of roasting alive in my own skin.

I think I’ve made it through the worst part, although it remains to be seen how tonight’s sleeping cycle goes. One thing I’m grateful for is that this bug never entered a vomiting phase. I’d rather burn from the inside than suffer through a puking jag.

The Pogues – The Sickbed of Cuchulainn (from Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, 1985)

Atari Teenage Riot – Sick to Death (from The Future of War, 1997)

I’m floating in a beam of light

I try to keep my life as uncomplicated as possible, but occasionally I find myself riding a gamma ray laser to the heart of a distant neutron star on a mission of inescapable importance, my head pounding as my relative mass brushes up against infinity. Even though I’m traveling at 99.9999999999% the speed of light, my target is so remote that my custom soundtrack mix CD will loop itself, twice.

Only for you, wife. Only for you.

Class Action – Blast Off (from Tribute to Flexipop, Vol. 7) – More excellent and rare 80’s synthpop culled from the wonderful Flexipop library of bootleg compilations.

Girlschool – C’mon Let’s Go (from Hit & Run, 1981) – My wife, a woman who (rightfully) responds to my residual affection for heavy metal with much eyerolling, is rather fond of Girlschool. I’m not sure if that’s due to a sense of gender solidarity, or because of the MST3K connection (this track was on the Zombie Nightmare soundtrack), or because the band largely avoids the ridiculous genre clichés of their all-male counterparts.

The Pillows – Ride on Shooting Star (from Fooly Cooly OST 1: Addict, 2004) – Has anyone else noticed how much Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. cribbed from FLCL? Consider it noted and remarked upon, then. The lack over overlap between anime/manga fans and superhero fandom works in some writers’ favor.

shall we perish unjust, or live equal as a nation

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." – Martin Luther King

It’s Martin Luther King Day, and as I’ve been checking the various tributes to and commemorations of the man and his legacy, I’ve noticed there is a tendency to gloss over or ignore the more radical elements of King’s message.

The March on Washington and the “I Have a Dream” speech were very important events which have unfortunately been transformed into idiomatic Riddley Walker-esque elements of America’s national mythology. The context has been forgotten or oversimplified into victories over symptoms of a diseased social environment (“Buses and lunch counters are no longer segregated! The battle is won!”) without mentioning that the underlying illness has never been cured.

Prior to his assassination in 1968, King had turned his attention on what he saw as the root causes of inequality. He saw parallels between America’s short-sighted, self-interested foreign policies and the lopsided way wealth was distributed domestically. As long as the system was set up to benefit a few at the expense of the many, there could be no real equality, either inside America or abroad. In speeches like “Beyond Vietnam,” King argued for the nation’s actions to live up to the ideals its leaders claimed to profess.

For his efforts, King found himself accused of being a communist dupe and insurrectionist by the mainstream media. It’s one thing to attack a backwards and ugly regional legal system; it’s another to turn one’s sights on the status quo of the self-congratulatory, “enlightened” establishment. Egalitarian aspirations are fine and all, but any talk of the “s” word (socialism), no matter how mild, is verboten. It reeks of “class war,” don’t you know. Besides, the doorman at my Central Park West apartment building is a Negro, and he gets paid a very fair wage….or he did, until he was fired for passing out union literature.

So on this day let us think of Dr. King, the goodness he helped this nation accomplish, and the greatness we should never quit striving towards.

The Impressions – This Is Our Country (from This Is Our Country, 1968) – Here Curtis Mayfield sings some smooth, sweet soul that carries as much righteous power as the most ferocious Crass composition.

The Rascals – People Got to Be Free (from The Very Best of the Rascals, 1993) – Progress, as illustrated by Billboard’s year-end Top 100:

#5 in 1968 – The Rascals – “People Got To Be Free”
#5 in 2006 – Shakira featuring Wyclef Jean – “Hips Don’t Lie”

a non-consensual hallucination experienced by one

I had the strangest dream. I dreamt that I dedicated an entire week’s worth of posts to monkey-related matters…

…oh, damn.

Classix Nouveaux – Is It a Dream (from La Verite, 1982) – Strange to think this band rose from the ashes of X-Ray Spex. This track has nothing on Classix Nouveaux’s Nu Ro masterpiece, “Guilty” (from 1981’s Night People), but its cheesy, over the top mix of disco and synthpop makes for a fun listen.

The promo video for the song is a real gem, and perfectly captures all that was glorious and ludicrous about the era:


Everything goes better with kendo!

The Damned – Is It a Dream (from Phantasmagoria, 1985) – General consensus states that Phantasmagoria and Anything, the two albums the band released after Captain Sensible’s departure, are inferior products and betrayals of The Damned’s punk roots. To hell with that attitude, I say.

I don’t get punk purists at all. How does one celebrate “breaking all the rules” by yoking one’s self to a rigid doctrine? Some time around my twenty-second birthday, I decided to shelve my punk jacket in favor of a warmer and more practical black overcoat. I also quit trying to find new ways to dye and chop my hair, and opted for an easy to maintain crew cut style. Shortly afterward I ran into a vague college acquaintance of mine who wanted to know the reasons for the change.

“It was too much effort to maintain, and it’s better to let go willingly than hold on until you just look foolish,” I told him.

“Fuck the man. I’d never SELL OUT,” he responded.

Apparently The Man’s schemes are furthered by a skinny guy realizing that a leather jacket with a broken zipper is not the wisest outerwear choice during a New England winter. Such pearls of wisdom are gleaned from a thirty-year old burnout that works splits at a liquor store and spends all his free time hawking demo tapes of his amazingly terrible hardcore band.

As for the song, it’s a nice piece of melodic rock that hearkens back to the 60’s pop and garage rock sound that Dave Vanian (and Captain Sensible) obviously had a huge affection for.

Here’s the (unfortunately poor quality) promo video:

The G.R.O.D.D. Initiative: Day 7 – maybe you’re not the same as me

With this post we’ve reached the end of the G.R.O.D.D. Initiative theme week, and I can’t think of a more appropriate way to close it out than with a track from Sheffield’s Monkey Swallows the Universe. Friend Zartan, the ginchiest librarian in Texas, recommended the band to me, and informed me that their name is a reference to this TV show.

In some ways, the band reminds me a lot of the ultra-minimalist postpunk act, Young Marble Giants. Both acts feature sweet female vocals and sparse musical arrangements, but while the Giants’ material is cold in its flensed-to-the-bone minimalism (their Colossal Youth LP would make a perfect soundtrack for the heat death of the universe), Monkey Swallows the Universe’s acoustic sound is warmer and more intimate.

It’s a cold February night. You’re in a small club, watching the last set before closing time. Most of the patrons have left, but you’ve decided to put off the long slog home over slush-covered sidewalks a while longer. Since the crowds are no longer an issue, you walk up right to the edge of the stage to watch the band play. The music is warm and soothing, the melodies are perfect, and you feel they are performing this set for you and you alone. No matter how much the mercury has dipped or how fiercely the winds outside have begun to gust, you realize that on this night, at least, you will not feel the chill.

That’s pretty much how this track made me feel.

Monkey Swallows the Universe – Martin (from The Bright Carvings, 2006)

The G.R.O.D.D. Initiative: Day 6 – see this cat do the monkey thing

Someone’s a little grumpy about getting the short end of the stick where understanding and utilizing symbolic logic are concerned. My hairy cousin, did you ever stop to consider the details of your plan? There’s a good reason your simian brethren tend to stick to the tropics. Good luck finding an active termite mound or banana-bearing tree in New England in January. (I did, however, hear of a band of Arctic Monkeys who have apparently enslaved the wills of hipster music critics across the globe.)

No political rants or bizarre personal anecdotes today, just a couple more groovy monkey tracks to help ease you into the weekend.

(Note to self: Before diving into a theme week, be sure to have enough commentary ideas to see myself through the full seven days.)

The English Beat – Monkey Murders (from Wha’ppen? 1981) – Wait a minute, you’re thinking, I thought this G.R.O.D.D. Initiative nonsense was supposed to be pro-simian? What’s the deal with using a song titled “Monkey Murders? The object of the crusade is not to place monkeys on an ivory pedestal or insist that portrayals of monkeys in comics be unanimously positive. We just want to see simians get a fair shake, and for writers to put a little more thought into things, rather than resorting to the reductionist clichés of ape virgin or ape whore.

Besides, I really like The English Beat (or “The Beat,” if you’re from the UK), and couldn’t resist using this track.

The Hollies – Mickey’s Monkey (from The Hollies, 1965) – Another day, another cover song by a British Invasion act. Today we have The Hollies doing a fine rendition of The Miracles’ 1963 hit, “Mickey’s Monkey,” one of the all-time classic party songs.

It’s impossible to me to hear this song and not think of The In Crowd, a late 80’s teen flick centered around an American Bandstand-y show airing out of 1960’s Philadelphia. When the show gets cancelled, host Perry Parker (a pre-Sopranos Joe Pantoliano) leads the wild and crazy teens through an excruciatingly embarrassing dance number in protest, while one (I can't remember which) of the versions of this song plays in the background. Just when you think you couldn’t get any more mortified, the film ends with the most ill-conceived nod to the counterculture movement you’ll find outside an issue of Bob Haney’s Teen Titans run. Nothing screams rebellion like two pampered white suburban kids and a copy of Highway 61 Revisited.

The film did star that actress who played Gwendolyn Pierce on Charles in Charge, though, so it wasn’t a total loss.

The G.R.O.D.D. Initiative: Day 5 – ook ook ook

Consider it a testament to my powers of restraint that I’ve made it past the halfway mark of my pro-simian theme week and not used the hoary “G.W. Bush = smirking chimp” comparison….yet.

I’ll admit that there’s a certain resemblance between the head of the executive branch and a shiftless little monkey. (Try a Google image search for “bush chimp” for many compelling visual references.) It’s unfair to chimpanzees, though. I know that chimpanzees, like most other primates, are prone to violent behavior, but name me one example that has done as much harm to the world as “The Great Decider.”

No, Bush isn’t a monkey. He’s a deeply flawed human being who happens to occupy a position where those flaws have had very real and tragic impact on the lives of millions of people. When criticizing the man’s policies and behavior, there’s an odd tendency for pundits and commentators to qualify their statements with “He’s not a stupid man.” Fine, but what difference does that make when he continually pursues courses of action which could only be labeled as stupid? At what point does empiricism trump intellectual credentials? Functionally, there is no difference between being dumb and being smart and consistently doing stupid things, except that the sin is greater in the latter case because they should have fucking known better from the start.

Besides, what evidence have we been shown that Bush isn’t lacking in some critical mental faculties? The man (and, by extension, his administration) is so guarded, so secretive that no illumination escapes that hasn’t been vetted, packaged, and marketed with clinical (or cynical) precision. What’s left for public consumption is the odd paradox of a pampered child of the establishment fronting as some cornpone-spouting evil doppleganger of Will Rogers (minus the sharp wit).

There’s that old story of the monkey that gets its hand stuck in a jar because it refuses to let go of the piece of food inside. Bush’s hand is similarly stuck, clenched tight around what he perceives to be his legacy, pretty much guaranteed to be of dubious value at this point, but that won’t stop him from tossing more bodies into Iraq’s meat grinder if those deaths can salvage his reputation (or postpone the inevitable until 2009, when it won’t be on his watch).

Monkeys may not be perfect, but they are capable of adaptive behavior…unlike the current president.

The Downliners Sect – Too Much Monkey Business (from The Sect, 1964) – This Chuck Berry composition was very popular among the 60’s UK beat groups, and was covered by the likes of The Beatles, The Kinks, and The Yardbirds (among many, many others). This version by the lesser known Downliners Sect is my favorite one, due to its sheer rawness.

Tom T. Hall – The Monkey That Became President (from a 1972 single, collected on Storyteller, Poet, Philosopher, 1995) – Tom T. knows the truth. A real monkey in the Oval Office would be a massive improvement over its current occupant, although certain cat-faced aliens beg to differ.

The G.R.O.D.D. Initiative: Day 4 – hairless apes with technology

Today’s entry is on the short side, due to the fact that I’m writing this at the office, in between work assignments. My home machine has started to act a bit wonky, with XP choosing to revert my display settings out of the blue and my external hard drive forcing a reboot on hot-swapped power ups. I can think of several potential reasons why these things are happening, but in these days of cheap as dirt PC upgrades, it’s easier to swap in a bigger, better boot drive and work from a clean OS install.

In other words, tonight I’ll be too busy monkeying around with the install processes (and trying not to go ape shit over the inevitable complications) to write something more substantial from home.

The crusade must go on, however…

The Hellacopters – Monkey Boy (from Rock & Roll Is Dead, 2005) – Everything I’ve read about this band describes their sound as “garage rock,” but on this track I can hear echoes of Elton John’s rockier material from the seventies as well as snatches of Nick Lowe and Dave Edmund’s style of proto-new wave pub rock. Highly recommended.

Ian Brown – Dolphins Were Monkeys (Single Version) (from The Greatest, 2005) – If dolphins were monkeys, Sea World’s awesomeness factor would increase by a zillion orders of magnitude. I remember Ian Brown’s old outfit, The Stone Roses, being huge among the college set during my freshman year. Then they just sort of vanished off the face of the earth when the grunge fad hit.

The G.R.O.D.D. Initiative: Day 3 – but you’re so damned ugly

See that man in the picture on the right? That’s George Taylor (aka “Bright Eyes”), a representative of the human military-industrial-aerospace complex, and the embodiment of everything a decent simianocentric sentient abhors. Like a human serpent in ape Eden, Taylor’s arrival on the Planet of the Apes marked the end of its inhabitants’ previously carefree lifestyle…and of the planet itself.

Like many of his kind, Taylor could not accept that the world had changed, and the position of privilege he was used to holding was his no more. His response was to initiate a campaign of anti-ape aggression with horrible repercussions. Even the kind but misguided chimp couple who sought to help Taylor acclimate to life among the apes was not spared from the blowback caused by his actions, which allowed the less savory elements of monkey society to seize power under the pretext of “fighting humanist terrorism.”

Reports that Taylor’s anti-ape prejudices had begun to mellow (symbolized by a poignant interspecies kiss between Taylor and chimp scientist Zira) appear to have been premature. Taylor was last seen triggering a planet-wrecking doomsday device, a final act of spite all too typical of his brutish species.

UNKLE – Ape Shall Never Kill Ape (Original Mix) (from a 1998 single) – It’s open season on lemurs and Aye-ayes, though, the sneaky little bastards.

Adam and The Ants – Picasso Visita El Planeta De Los Simios (from Prince Charming, 1981) – Yes, that translates to “Picasso Visits the Planet of the Apes.” This wouldn’t be Adam’s only foray into simian-themed pop. A few years back he got it in his head to rework “Stand and Deliver” into the conservation benefit track “Save the Gorillas.”

I wish I was making that up. Here’s the video, for those brave (or crazy) enough to watch it:

Why, Adam, why?

The G.R.O.D.D. Initiative - Day 2: Anyone can see, she made a monkey of me

While Kevin Church continues his hard hitting series of posts dealing with anthrophobia in comics books, I’d like to use this opportunity to discuss similar trends in music. Case in point: Lancelot Link and The Evolution Revolution.

When the cast members of Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp were offered the opportunity to perform musical interludes between sketches, they had little idea of the creative constraints the network would place upon them. The members of The Evolution Revolution were extremely progressive and eclectic in their musical tastes. Lance drew his musical inspiration from the avant-garde rock of Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa, and Mata Hairi’s love of The Velvet Underground and Nico was well documented. (Some detractors have since insisted that this affection was merely due to the album’s cover art, but their assertions should be dismissed as barely cloaked anti-simian hate speech.)

The fruits of the band’s recording sessions were played to the network executives, who were horrified by the raw, jungle-inspired, primal beats they heard. The suits then went behind the band’s back and called in legendary bubblegum producer Archie Andrews to remix the tapes into something more friendly to middle America’s homo sapien-centric ears. The band’s more experimental sounds (ambient fecal impact noise and atonal screeching vocals) were either buried in the mix or discarded entirely. Legend speaks of a lost acetate pressing of the material from the original recording session, but its existence is still unconfirmed as of this writing.

It would be another three decades before the raw power of simian music would reach the listening public, and it would take a quartet of (non-ape) cartoon characters to make the those infectious beats acceptable to the listening public. While the members of the Gorillaz chose not to incorporate the more radical methods of their simian predecessors (i.e. no ambient fecal noise), one has to admire their rather excellent efforts all the same.

(Editor’s Note: Please do not confuse the above ravings of a fever-ravaged lunatic with anything remotely associated with “the facts.”)

Lancelot Link and The Evolution Revolution – Yummy Love (from Lancelot Link and The Evolution Revolution, 1970) – In truth, this group was pretty close to a Grass Roots (“Midnight Confessions”) side project, using material (including rejected GR songs) by the same songwriters and session musicians employed by that band.

Gorillaz – Tomorrow Comes Today (from Gorillaz, 2001) – When I listen to this track, or anything off of Daft Punk’s Discovery, it triggers bittersweet feelings of nostalgia to the summer of 2001, before 9/11 gave G.W. Bush the opportunity to graduate to “dangerous idiot” from “pathetic joke.” It sad how much this country has changed since then; that horrible tragedy brought out the worst in a lot of people…or rather, it emboldened them to go public with their ugliness and find a receptive audience.

The G.R.O.D.D. Initiative – Day 1: Baby monkey, I ain’t so hard to please

What started off as an online discussion of a bizarre, borderline offensive golden age comic book panel has blossomed into a long overdue, righteous crusade. Too long have our primate cousins been portrayed by the media as monstrous threats or humorous caricatures. Whether they sported diapers and tricycles or city-killing Kryptonite eye beams, the apes in question were reduced to banal stereotypes by an unspoken, anti-simian conspiracy.

It for this reason that I’ve decided to launch the Gorilla Rock On Dubious Demand (G.R.O.D.D.) Initiative, a theme week entirely dedicated to monkeys, apes, and other primates misrepresented by an callously anthrophobic entertainment industry.

Before we begin the show, the management would like to ask that the audience refrain from throwing their feces during the proceedings, and to keep in mind the sacred dictum, “Ape shall not harm ape.” Chimpanzee on orangutan violence will not help the cause, comrades.

The Dickies – You Drive Me Ape (You Big Gorilla) (from The Incredible Shrinking Dickies, 1979) – As my interest in hardcore has waned to near nothing over the years, my affection for cartoon punk, as exemplified by The Rezillos, The Dickies, and the Toy Dolls, has grown. Maturity can manifest itself in the strangest ways.

Toots and The Maytals – Monkey Man (from Reggae Greats, 1984) – The Specials’ version of this track is great, but sometimes it’s best to go back to the source.

is there anyone prepared to tell me why

It was a balmy 70 degrees today in our little suburb northwest of Boston. My wife opened up some windows to let the fresh air in, and I started sweating from the heat while working though my weekend chores, even though I was only wearing jeans and a t-shirt. It was preferable to digging out from under a January blizzard, but it just didn’t feel natural.

A ferocious wind picked up after the sun sank behind the western hills. I was out on the patio just prior to writing this, watching the silhouettes of the trees behind our back fence twist and sway violently against the violet backdrop of the twilight sky. I could hear the dry bone rattles and snaps of their branches even above the howl of the wind. It was muy creepy, and I’m thankful that none of the trees are within falling distance of our house.

(The winds have died down completely since I began typing this, adding another layer of disturbing unreality to this day's meteorological antics.)

Pylon – Weather Radio (from Gyrate, 1980) – A nice bit of instrumental postpunk out of the legendary Athens, GA scene. It’s sad that Pylon’s material is out of print and largely forgotten while R.E.M. went on to become (boring and overrated) college rock legends. (Am I being too harsh again? You try spending a semester in a drawing class where the instructor, an MBA student slumming for supplemental income, accompanies each ninety-minute class session with the Out of Time album on repeat. Yes, R.E.M. is directly responsible for killing my desire to draw.)

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry – Talk About the Weather (from Talk About the Weather, 1985) – A latecomer to the postpunk party, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry sound is an odd convergence of influences. Traces of gothic rock, indie gloom, and an embryonic from of goth metal swirl around in the mix, as if some mid-80’s art student distilled one of her ninety-minute mix tapes into a single four-minute song.

Crass – Dry Weather (from Penis Envy, 1981) – Penis Envy, the Crass album even Grandma enjoys! I kid, but it seems like every time Crass comes up in a conversation, that album is the only work by Crass that people say they’ve listened to. It makes sense, I suppose, since it is about as close as the band ever got to a “poppier” sound, relatively speaking.

The Radiators – Let’s Talk About the Weather (from Ghostown, 1979) – Also known as The Radiators From Space, this early Irish punk band included future Pogue Phillip Chevron. This track is from their second and (until their 2004 reunion) final album, where the band put aside ther punky roots in favor of a mellower, melodic power pop sound.

anything ragged or rotten or rusty

Today’s post was inspired by a pile of cat poop.

When it came to assuming responsibility for household tasks, my wife and I ended up with an Edward Bellamy-inspired socialist arrangement where the odiousness of the task counts as much as its required time commitment. (This is not to be confused with Ralph Bellamy-inspired socialism, which involves wagering Don Ameche a dollar that one can take a Philly street hustler and turn him into a commodities trader while turning a privileged Ivy Leaguer into a common criminal.)

Because I’m a man who values his time more than his sensitivities, I ended up opting for the less time-intensive, yet thoroughly disgusting, set of chores. When the pups have the occasional accident, I’m there with the paper towels and Febreeze. I’ve become a master at changing the cats’ litter boxes, and my special deodorizing formula is a treasured secret that shall be passed by deathbed whisper to the next generation. I spend part of each Saturday afternoon on hands and knees, making sure our bathroom is free of E. coli and wayward strands of hair.

…and I’m fine with that, really, because doing these tasks means I don’t need to learn how to operate the washing machine, dryer, or vacuum cleaner. The only down side to this arrangement comes on garbage collection day.

Every Wednesday (or Thursday, when there’s a holiday) morning is a mad rush to collect, bag, and carry all the household garbage, indoor and out, to the curb before the trash truck arrives. It would be easier if the sanitation folks decided on a set time for swinging through our neighborhood, but they operate under their own mysterious timetable, decided by the gods of refuse and communicated to their mortal servants via the entrails of a virgin seagull ritually sacrificed on an altar of non-biodegradable used diapers. Thus I am forced to drag my sorry ass out of bed at 6:00 AM one day each week in order to ensure that, yes, our trash is out front when the truck passes our house, be it at 6:45 AM, 8:30 AM, or 4:45 in the afternoon.

It’s not an easy task, either. In the summer there are swarms of bloated maggots to contend with. In the winter, I have to fumble around in the morning darkness to liberate the garbage cans from the snow drifts that form along the side of the garage. Some mornings I go out and have to deal with a debris field of banana peels, cat food cans, and other aromatic delights left behind by an itinerant raccoon or skunk (the reason why I don’t simply put the trash out front the night before). Even when I think my task is accomplished, my wife will holler out a reminder that there’s a bag of trash from when she cleaned the rabbit cages the other day hidden behind the weight machine in the back of the cellar, not to mention ancient foodstuffs in the fridge that “really ought to be tossed out, but I’m too grossed out to handle them.”

When all is said and done, when the scrambling and searching and lugging and dry heaves are dealt with, I ought to be able to catch my breath and start to relax, content in my knowledge that I’m free of this burden for another seven days. That is usually the case, but not today. As I was finishing my preparations to head off to work, I looked out the window to see if the garbage had been collected yet. It had been, but during the process the collectors had torn open one of the bags, leaving behind a small mountain of used kitty litter and cat shit on the street in front of our house. Etiquette isn’t really my strong point, but I’m fairly certain that leaving a stinking pile of animal feces and urine-soaked clay by one’s front step is a sign of being a bad neighbor.

As I was clearing away the pile with a snow shovel and push broom, thinking to myself how much I hate trash day, I decided to write a post about it.

Glancing back on what I’ve written, I’d like to say that I’m truly sorry about that lapse of judgment.

The Stranglers – Thrown Away (from The Gospel According to Meninblack, 1981) - The Stranglers are another band where each time I hear one of their songs, I think to myself "I ought to listen to them more often," yet somehow never do.

The Doll – Trash (from a 1978 single, collected on Beggar’s Banquet: The Punk Singles Collection, 2002) - Not the Doll(s) you were expecting and not the "Trash" you were expecting, either. It's because I want to keep you on your toes.

The Cramps – Garbage Man (from Songs the Lord Taught Us, 1980) - Butch Vig? Steve Marker? Duke Erikson? Oh, I know, Shirley Manson in the "Androgyny" video!

Oscar the Grouch – I Love Trash (from Oscar's Trashy Songs, 1997) - Because I'm not afraid of dissenting opinions, as long as they come from green furry puppets that live in garbage cans.

poetic justice will come in time

I had another post planned for today, but after spending the better part of this morning swearing at the TV, the local paper, and various internet newsfeeds, I decided to work out my anger here instead.

What’s got me all riled up? The results of the gay marriage vote in the Massachusetts legislature, which means that a constitutional ban on gay marriage in the Commonwealth is one step closer to becoming a reality. The issue will now be voted on in the next legislative session, and should it pass again, it will be decided by ballot question in 2008.

It appalls me that a question of basic human rights and equal protection by law is subject to a referendum by lumpenproletariat, most of whose members I wouldn’t trust to know how to wipe their own asses. Rights are rights. They are not “earned,” they are not “given,” they should not be subject to the whims of popular opinion…unless we open up the whole shebang to that process. If the government is going to get into the business of legislating relationships between two consenting adults, then I want to be able to weigh in on every pending union, gay or straight. “Sorry. You have a beak nose, and she has beady eyes. Your children will be hideous-looking. Petition denied. And you two? He’s a bore and you drink too much. Denied. Next!”

As committed as I am to the idea of participatory governance, the initiative process of legislating via referendum has been corrupted by the basest, ugliest sort of populism. Originally intended as a way to bypass the graft-ridden political machines and their self-serving patrons of ages past, it has long since become a tool of the same special interest groups it was designed to thwart. The public interest takes a back seat to demagoguery and hidden ulterior motives, and even on the rare occasions when a nobly intended progressive measure passes, it ends its life as an ignored, unfunded mandate or gets reshaped as a post-dated Trojan Horse on behalf of some moneyed concern, at the expense of those it was posited to supposedly benefit.

So a coalition of out-of-state groups working alongside their Bay State counterparts wants to use the initiative process to strip a group of their rights, and for what? To “preserve the sanctity of marriage”? Because heterosexual marriages are special and wonderful and doesn’t crash and burn more than half of the time? What kind of insecure idiot bases the worth of his or her marriage on those of others? I’m a straight, white male who married his partner of thirteen years in 2004. The only parties that matter in our marriage are my wife and I, and rightly so. If the rest of the world doesn’t like it, they can fuck off. There is no just reason why that “club of two” status shouldn’t be enjoyed by same-sex couples.

It’s not about the “sanctity of marriage,” it’s about sanctioning bigotry by enshrining it in the state constitution, and there is no religious sleight of hand that can hide that ugly truth. If people were really serious about “saving marriage,” then maybe they need to start looking into legislation to criminalize divorce, or to rescind tax benefits for anyone who remarries...

…or we as a society could put these useless distractions behind us and get on with living our lives without feeling the need to persecute others. Seriously, this culture war bullshit has gotten tiresome.

In lieu of footnotes, please accept this little sampler of relevant tracks which span several decades and multiple genres. Diversity matters.

Neal Ford and the Fanatics – Shame On You (from Garage Beat ’66, Vol. 1: Like What, Me Worry?! 2004) – This one’s dedicated to all the state reps who voted in favor of the gay marriage ban, including that one asshole from the next town over who was the only rep from this area who cast a “yes” vote.

L7 – The Masses Are Asses (from The Beauty Process: Triple Platinum, 1997) – Indeed they are, ladies. Indeed they are.

Dead Kennedys – Religious Vomit (from In God We Trust, Inc. 1981) – It's a mix of cheap red wine, stale crackers, bile, and half-digested lumps of hypocrisy.

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – Ain’t Nobody’s Business (from Feast of the Mau Mau, 1988) - Damn right. It ain’t.

The Caravans – Know Your Rights (from This Is Rockabilly Clash, 2003) – It started off as just three, but the list keeps getting longer and longer as time passes.

I heard you on the wireless back in Fifty Two

The switch from posting every three days, instead of every two, wasn't intentional, but that's going to be how it is for the immediate future. Because I feel guilty about leaving my regular readers in the lurch, I decided to make use of YouTube's vast resources before their impasse with Warners brings the whole thing crashing down.


Manfred Mann - The Mighty Quinn - I have a really funny story about this song that I can never tell anyone, ever.



Modern English - Someone's Calling - They'll always be remembered for the immortal "I Melt With You" (a song whose magnificence has not been diminished by its use in commercials or by that abysmal 1990 version), but the rest of the material on their After the Snow LP was also exceptionally good.