you’ll find that it’s stranger than known

My headache has finally subsided, thank goodness. I stepped out onto the patio late last night to get some air and to shake the pseudoephedrine phantoms loose, and I saw a meteor streak past the lower part of Orion. It’s odd that even though Mt. Misery is a couple miles closer to Boston than North Woburn is, and suburban sprawl -- and the attendant light pollution -- has swept over the city in the past twenty-five years, the view of the stars up here is so much clearer than it was in my childhood stomping grounds. It must be because our neighborhood lies between Horn Pond and the Middlesex Fells Reservation, and the parks block out much of the light from Boston and Route 93.

I’m a materialist to a fault, and as such, didn’t read any more into the meteor than it being a randomly observed astronomical event. But, y’know, that’s more than enough. It was an excellent way to cap off a pretty painful day.

Portishead – Wandering Star (from Dummy, 1994)

Hüsker Dü – Eight Miles High (originally a bonus single included the 1984 Zen Arcade LP, collected on the the Eight Miles High/Makes No Sense at All EP, 1990)

and all I needed was just a breath of fresh air

A pox on:

- my deviated septum
- airborne pollen and other contaminants
- the canned air at my workplace
- meth heads whose stupid habit made it a hassle to get decent sinus medication
- the nausea-inducing sinus headache I have had for three days now

I’m going to lie down for a while. While I’m going to require silence, you can crank up these rather loud slices of fine punk rock.

The Replacements – I Bought a Headache (from Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, 1981)

Poison Idea – In My Head Ache (from Pick Your King, 1983)

love it, love it, I need to

Appearances and Chamber of Commerce fact sheets to the contrary, there’s a thinly-veiled current of darkness that flows through the tree-lined avenues and perfectly manicured lawns of Riverdale, USA. Pay close enough attention, and you will start to discern the seams where the all-American, squeaky-clean vision of Norman Rockwell has been unnaturally joined to the nightmare world of David Lynch.

Every community has its secrets. In the case of Riverdale, these include a hidden coven of witches, a young man with a horrific eating disorder and a penchant for odd headgear, and some highly unconventional teenage mating rituals.

…and then there’s the secret life of Alexander Cabot. Folks familiar with the character from The Josie and The Pussycats cartoon know him as a cowardly and ineffectual bumbler with a penchant for moddish fashions. His on-screen life was forever stuck in the shadow of his tyrannical sister, Alexandra, whose own dabblings in the dark arts were redacted from the animated record. The real story is a bit more…complicated…

Here Alex expounds his political philosophy; a hard-right mélange of ideas borrowed from Rand, Nietzsche, and Hitler. Notice how women are specifically singled out as being “weak,” and by extention, inferior, and how Alex is willing to use actual physical violence to prove his point. The large dollar sign that adorns the back of his jacket could be interpreted as a symbol of his Mammonesque greed, his commitment to unrestrained captialism, or (most likely) of his lousy taste in clothes.

The forceful manner in which Alex expresses his views is quite remarkable, and it makes me wonder what’s going on inside that head of his…

Oh, it’s one of those scenarios. It’s not that uncommon a situation, actually. I’ve heard rumors that Herman Goering was into that sort of thing, too.

One could also infer that the legs belong to the fresh corpse of an unfortunate streetwalker who has been ritually murdered by Alex, a la American Psycho, with Josie and Melody playing the roles of Patrick Bateman’s friends, oblivious to his psychotic predations. It all depends on how dark one wants to go with it.

Saint Etienne – Stormtrooper in Drag (from Continental, 1997) – I wanted to comment “More than Numan,” but the original version was a Paul Gardiner (Tubeway Army’s bass player) release. (Numan did produce, co-compose, and perform on the track, though.)

The Barbarians – Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl? (from Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl? 2000) – A 60’s garage rock novelty from scenic Cape Cod. The band was best known for having a one-handed drummer (two decades before Def Leppard’s Rick Allen returned to his drum set after losing an arm).

Siouxsie & The Banshees – Metal Postcard (Mittageisen) (from The Scream, 1978) – Inspired by a work by German dadaist John Heartfield, is this track a send-up of fascism along the lines of Spinrad’s The Iron Dream? Or a cold romanticization of totalitatian attitudes? It’s difficult to untangle the knot of fascist influences – aesthetic, ideological, transgressive – that ran through the early British punk scene. (Also see: Sid Vicious’ famous swastika t-shirt and the vile joke that was “Belsen Was a Gas.”)

size doesn’t matter

Brevity is the soul of wit. – William Shakespeare, dead white guy

Who has short songs? We have short songs. Here are five succinct tracks with a total runtime of two minutes and forty-seven seconds.

Before anyone asks: Yes, I am aware of the Dead Kennedys’ “Short Songs” and Napalm Death’s record-setting “You Suffer” (under three seconds in length).

Bikini Kill – In Accordance to Natural Law (from The Singles, 1998) – Kathleen is angry.

Descendents – Weinerschnitzel (from the Fat EP, 1981) – Punk rock guys are hungry.

Phil Hundley – 30 Second Affair (from the Red Snerts compilation, 1981) – Punkabilly heartbreak.

The Raunchettes – What? Scuze Me! (from The Secret Team compilation, 1988) – She’s found out that you are a fake.

Wire – Brazil (from Pink Flag, 1977) – Great art punk did these fellows make.

is truly outrageous, truly truly truly outrageous

This is Jem, who has recently decided that I’m his bestest friend in the whole wide world. Unlike the other members of his extended feline family, who are content to express affection for their humans in a more mellow fashion, Jem is a cat of action and expects “Boy” to respond in kind to his current obsessions.

His name came from the white spot between his eyes, which I thought looked like a diamond when he was a newborn kitten, hence “Gem.” My wife changed the spelling to “Jem” when filling out paperwork at the vet’s office, most likely because she was thinking of Jem Finer of The Pogues. He also responds to Jemma, Jembo, JemJam, and “AAAAARGH! Those are my toes, dammit!”

I’ve seen other bloggers ghostwrite cutesy posts from their pets’ point of view. Since I pride myself for keeping things authentic here at Armagideon Time, I’d be uncomfortable putting words into Jem’s tiny mouth. He’s a very clever cat. Why couldn’t he express himself in his own words?

It wasn’t easy getting the little fellow to the keyboard. The first time I tried, he got distracted by some cobwebs on the ceiling, and proceeded to tug at my shirttails and cry until I lifted him up so he could swat at it.

Then he kept dropping a balled up twist tie at my feet in order to let me know it was time for some cat soccer practice. His goal tending skills are remarkable, and mid-air catches are his specialty. Another couple of weeks of drills, and he’ll be ready to sign with Real Madrid.

When Jem finally made it to the keyboard, he managed to type this:

Fdsifjsojvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

;[ppoo[[[[[[[[[[[

AdsfDSAEDWSADEWFRWFEP;SQW qhasjkfspgspo

…before he somehow stumbled across a hotkey combination that reset all my display settings. While I was trying to fix the problem, he snatched my Iron Fist Minimates figure off of the computer desk and ran downstairs with it. A mad chase ensued, first with Jem, and then with Addy the beagle-boxer, who picked up the figure after Jem dropped it under the dining table.

So ends that experiment. Next time, I’m going to get one of my wife’s pet turtles to co-host instead.

Jem and The Holograms – Theme From Jem – I never even made the connection between Jem the cat and Jem the cartoon until a couple months ago. Since then, I’ve found myself singing the theme to him whenever he’s engaged in his usual antics. Freezepop added a cute cover version of the song as a hidden track on 2004’s Fancy Ultra Fresh album.

The Cure – The Lovecats (from a 1983 single, collected on Japanese Whispers, 1983) – This song is the end of the road as far as my interest in The Cure goes. The Top was an interesting, trippy failure, but it all went careening downhill from there.

for a peculiar sensibility of temperament

He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.

– Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”

Poor Roderick Usher. I empathize with his condition, having experienced bouts of hyperesthesia on several occasions. They almost always comes on the heels of some physical illness, and I’ve learned to accept it as part of the recovery process. Rather than manifesting itself as a languid morbity, in my case it comes in the form of extreme irritability. As I’ve been frequently ill these past few months, I’ve also been frequently irritable.

This morning was exceptionally bad. When these episodes happen at home, I can cloister myself in the bedroom in order to block out all unwanted stimuli (apart from the dogs’ usual rambunctious idiocy) until the feeling passes. I don’t have the same option at my job, however, and though my duties require a minimal amount of human contact, it can be a very noisy work environment (especially on Monday mornings) that will invevitably spill over the partitions and into my cubicle. The fuss and noise and bother got so unbearable at one point that I actually had to plug my ears with my fingers and close my eyes. (That sounds more dramatic than it actually was.)

Fortunately, I have a personal collection of soothing “peculiar sounds” on my portable hard drive that I can queue up in order to get back on a more even keel. It consists mostly of electronic music, but the Suburban Lawns’ self-titled album and a compilation of 60’s Euro-discotek cuts are in there as well.

I Monster – Who Is She? (from Neveroddoreven, 2003) – I caught a Macy’s commercial that featured I Monster’s “Daydream in Blue” the other night, and it made me do a double take. I know it’s common practice in the genre to use electronic tracks to score ads, but no marketing wizardry is ever going to erase my memory of the (potentially NSFW) “Daydream in Blue” music video. “Who Is She?” is a delighfully creepy rendition of Mario Nascimbene’s theme song to the 1969 Hammer film, The Vengeance of She.

Goldfrapp – Hairy Trees (from Black Cherry, 2003) – Black Cherry is right up there on my short list of favorite albums of all time. A friend of mine once dismissed it as being too derivative of Lamb’s material, but I honestly don’t hear it. This track in particular is a thing of ethereal wonder woven around some rather suggestive lyrics.

and I haven’t slept in days

It has dawned on me that I should have come up with some kind of plan before going back to daily posts. Granted, it’s taken me two months before I began to feel the burn, but I am feeling it in spades tonight. For the past hour or so, I’ve been reviewing various half-finished topics to see if there’s anything that could be completed with a minimum amount of effort. Then I realized that the obligation to post every day was self-created, and I shouldn’t rush something out the door for the sake of updating when the topic deserves better than that.

So, in lieu of anything weighty, here’s a much loved track from my library that perfectly captures my current state of being.

Alien Sex Fiend – Now I’m Feeling Zombified (from a 1990 single, collected on Drive My Rocket, 1994) - The undead like to boogie down, too. It's just that the putrefaction issue makes it harder for them to do so.

sitting in a corner in imperfect clothes

I spent most of my Saturday playing the adequate PS2 port of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. It has the same “expansion pack” feel to it that Liberty City Stories had, although I’m enjoying it far more than I did that game. It’s no San Andreas, but it’s a decent waste of twenty dollars nonetheless.

The game also features a return to licensed soundtrack music, a feature sorely missed in the previous game. There’s a very nice spread of retro tracks covering all the expected genres. The pop and wave material is where my interest is greatest, and even though I have most of the featured songs already, it’s fascinating to see what selections Rockstar Leeds picked for use in the game. Three of the big 80’s pop axes are heavily represented: the Vince Clarke faction (with tracks from The Assembly, Yazoo, Alison Moyet, and Depeche Mode), the Trevor Horn combine (with ABC, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Art of Noise), and the extended Human League family (with Heaven 17, Human League, and Oakey and Moroder’s “Together in Electric Dreams”).

While a large portion of the material comes from bands featured on the original GTA: Vice City soundtrack, I was pleasantly surprised to discover “I’m in Love With a German Film Star” by The Passions on the tracklist for the Emotion 98.3 in-game “radio” playlist. It was sandwiched in between Elkie Brooks’ version of “Fool (If You Think It’s Over)” and “I Want to Know What Love is” by Foreigner, but the GTA series has a history of strange musical groupings. (“Sunglasses at Night” on Vice City’s “new wave” station and the Ozzy track on San Andreas’s grunge/alternative station both come to mind.)

Best (and probably only really) known for the ethereal pop of the much covered “I’m in Love With a German Film Star,” The Passions started with a fairly standard postpunk sound that developed into something that could be seen as a precursor to the shoegaze genre of the late 80’s and early 90’s. It’s possesses the same dreamy introspection, without the heavy accent on sonic effects and with a much colder tone. (A new micro-genre, perhaps? Entropic Proto-Shoegaze?) I’d venture to say that if you were to draw a triangle with Songs of the Free-era Gang of Four on one corner and My Bloody Valentine and pre-Lovelife Lush on the other two, The Passions would dangle precariously in the center, depending on which song was being played at the moment.

Here’s the band performing their signature song on Top of the Pops in 1981:



The Passions – I’m in Love with a German Film Star (from 30,000 Feet Over China, 1981)

The Passions – Man on the Tube (from Michael & Miranda, 1980) – This is an example of their earlier postpunk material, which echoes Delta 5, The Au Pairs, etc.

in 1978, an aspiring chef was given a ring of power by a dying alien

A watershed moment in my political education occurred during a protest against the first Gulf War, way back in 1991. People from all around the region had gathered in front of the Federal Building in Boston’s Government Center to express their disapproval of Bush the Elder’s “splendid little war,” and being of the same frame of mind and nothing better to do that day, I joined them.

It was an interesting experience, but in hindsight I’ve realized how choreographed the affair truly was on both sides of the barricades. The police set up a “straw man” line of gates far out from the building with the understanding that the protestors were going to push closer, and so factored a false concession into their crowd control procedure. (Somewhere, in some photojournalist’s file cabinet or FBI anti-subversive database is a picture of an 18 year old Andrew on the verge of doing a faceplant after getting his boot caught on one of the riot fences.)

The protest itself was a tepid mix of warmed over Vietnam Era platitudes and sincere yet inarticulate convictions. For my part, I merely chanted the lyrics to some anti-war punk songs where I swapped in more topical names and places. (I was photographed a lot that day. I don’t know why, except that I was a colorfully costumed punk rocker at a time when that subculture was at its lowest ebb around these parts.) The demonstration may not have been effective, but it was cathartic, and that’s a far better alternative to giving in to despair.

Then the fucking professional socialists showed up and it all turned to shit. Where the gathering had started as an unfocused howl of protest, the socialists brought order, and queueing, and “You people would be more effective over here, and you folks over there, and would anyone like to volunteer to risk arrest on our behalf because we don’t want to miss Seinfel—I mean the 5th Internationalists cell meeting tonight.” I’m generally sympathetic to the socialists’ ideology, although my own views run more toward a pragmatic egalitarian idealism. (Slow trickles of water have brought entire mountain ranges down, while rigidly overreaching dogma about revolutionary change ends up benefiting only vultures and other carrion eaters when put into practice. I won’t compromise on the idea of equal rights, though. That issue is a no-brainer.) That said, I’ve yet to meet a capital “S” Socialist I could tolerate for more than thirty seconds.

After they had insinuated themselves into the protest, the socialist faction had the crowd move away from the federal building so that they could be lectured on a broad series of topics completely unrelated to the present concern. As they launched into their ideological laundry list, I could see a large number of attendees make puzzled faces at each other. The crowd gradually began to disperse, as small groups of folks who came out to express their disapproval of Bush the Elder’s military adventurism drifted off towards either Quincy Market or the nearby subway station.

In hijacking the discussion in order to grind their own axes, the socialists had effectively killed it.

Which brings us to the second issue of Mark Waid and George Perez’s The Brave and the Bold relaunch. The book has been garnering a lot of positive reviews, and quite justifiably so. It’s great to see Perez’s excellent art again on a monthly basis, and the book does capture that old fashioned DC magic that’s been missing from too many of the company’s titles in recent years. At the same time, though, it’s a lot like catching a performance by Midnight Train, a tribute band dedicated to “the magic of Journey.” The songs are played note perfect, but all one is really getting is a hyper-polished simulacrum of familiar material. (Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman, on the other hand, has a Nouvelle Vague feel to it, using familiar material as a springboard to launch into new and interesting directions.)

I cut my comics-reading teeth on Bob Haney’s 1970’s B&B run, and there was a mad sense of “anything goes” to those old stories, logic be damned. The current series, by contrast, feels like a calculated, sterile recreation of the old material along the lines of Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho.

“Wait a minute,” I hear you asking, “how do these half-assed musical analogies tie back to your anecdote about socialists?” By way of this, my friends.

I do get what Waid is trying to do here, Kara’s schoolgirl crush on one of her “big brother’s” cool pals. It’s a plausible bit of characterization, and Green Lantern does a creditable job of setting her straight on why she needs to put a stop to it. What I don’t understand is why Green Lantern has to repeatedly remind himself that Supergirl is “17.” Or rather, “17, 17, 17, 17, 17” as it continues on subsequent pages.

It adds an element of creepiness to the story for the sake of a clichéd comedic trope. The “statutory rape temptation” gag was tired in when it was used in Three’s Company, nearly three decades ago. (Although, I’d love to see GL taking a cold shower, then having a meeting with Superman at the Regal Beagle where he malaprops his way through a series of lame sexual double entendres while explaining what happened on the mission.) It’s time for those kinds of jokes to take their place on the “unpleasant humor of the past” shelf next to quips about women drivers and the entirety of Don Rickles’ routine.

There’s a tendency within the comics internet to use the indignation wagon as a Trojan Horse for less lofty objectives, such as attacking a certain creator or company one has a grudge against. Like with the protest I mentioned, issues that do deserve discussion get hijacked and manipulated, spurring backlashes that toss the babies out with the bathwater. There are also the procrustean beds of the conspiracy theorists, where lines between cluelessness and malice get blurred for the sake of a grand unified theory of that most sexy of beasts, the “hidden agenda.” Ignorance is not a defense, but the remedies are different for deliberate acts and for passive offensiveness. I’m not asserting that broader agendas are a myth, but that aggregated institutional cultures should not automatically be taken as an active conspiracy.

There is a lot that is shitty about comics, especially in the superhero genre these days, but it’s ludicrous to think a bunch of shrill jihads which too often mask personal vendettas or delusions of fan entitlement will bring about change for the better.

Someone who has once had a fork jammed into his or her eye will come away from reading an issue of Jams-Forks-In-People’s-Eyes Man with a completely different take on the subject matter than someone who has made through life without that unfortunate experience. Part of why The Brave and the Bold #2 skeeved me out as much as it did is because I have had the misfortune of knowing too many guys with fixations on teenage girls. I’m not talking To Catch a Predator material either, but men who would otherwise give one the impression of being down to earth and reasonable folks…until the conversation turns to the latest underage starlet, popstar, et cetera, and things get very ugly, very quickly. In that personal context, a lame joke in an otherwise decent comic can feel extremely sinister, especially when it doesn’t even need to be there in the first place. This didn’t help, either, even if it arguably served a purpose within the story, though all description -- or illustration -- is necessarily selective.

Gary Puckett & The Union Gap – Young Girl (from Young Girl, 1968) – I used to have a cut-out bin compilation cassette called The Sounds of San Francisco, which featured a bunch of 60’s acts from the Bay Area. This song was on it, and it stuck out like a sore thumb amidst all the psychedelic rock cuts. To this day, every time I hear it, I feel the urge to fast forward to The Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard.” (The Seeds were actually from Los Angeles, but sell-through cheapo compilations bow to no sense of rhyme or reason.)

Steve Lawrence – Go Away, Little Girl (from Greatest Hits, Vol. 1, 2004) – Years ago, I was as some party and there was a drunken metalhead who could have been Steve Lawrence’s twin brother. This fellow’s version Eydie Gorme was a drunk/stoned/insane (?) stripper, and they spent the evening slapping each other in the face and calling each other rude names. It’s funny; I can remember that vividly, but I can barely recall any lines of any of the plays I was supposed to have memorized in college.

D-Day – Too Young To Date (from a 1979 single, collected on New Wave Hits of the 80’s, Vol. 1) – Offering a view from the other side of the gender gap, we have a raunchy slice of power pop out of Austin, Texas.

-------------------------------

I’m going to pull a Casey Kasem here and congratulate pal Benjamin Birdie for his extra special guest visitor in the comments section of today’s installment of The Rack, the webcomic he and Kevin Church put out every Monday and Friday. Way to go, Benjamin! I’m officially jealous. This track is dedicated to you, my friend.

New Order – Touched by the Hand of God (from a 1987 single, collected/remixed on (The Best of) New Order, 1994) - Is it just me, or does anyone else hear echoes of Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" in those rising orchestral bits of the song?

I know it when I hear it

I mentioned in a previous post that I used to dabble in the visual arts. I had a raw, fairly modest talent for drawing and painting that has long since atrophied into insignificance. Most of blame for that lies with my utter lack of anything even vaguely resembling discipline and my total disdain for repetitive tasks, but the decisive factor that killed any interest I had in becoming an artist was the Drawing 101 class I took as a sophomore in college.

The class was taught by an MBA graduate student who had been an undergrad art major. It would have been just another somnabulatory three-credit cakewalk except for two things. One, the instructor had an insane fondness for R.E.M’s Out of Time, and had the CD on repeat for the entire semester. Prior to this I had no opinion of the band one way or another (although I thought “Radio Free Europe” was rather nice), but over the course of the ten week semester I grew to positively loathe Michael Stipe’s voice.

The second problem with the course was that the instructor set aside fifteen minutes per class for critiquing sessions, and every student was required to contribute their opinions about their classmates’ work. Now I fully understand the importance of peer review, having had my writing (and confidence) picked apart in many creative writing and playwriting classes. In those cases, however, the professors were highly experienced in that sort of activity, and were able to guide the proceedings with subtle, skillful hand, making sure that everyone stayed on target.

The woman teaching the drawing class possessed none of those undergrad wrangling skills, and each critiquing session turned into a community theater production of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” Because it was an intro level class, there were more than a few non-artistic types who took the class because they thought it would be a fun way to earn graduation credits. The poor saps were mercilessly flayed alive by a vocal minority of asshole art majors with delusions of grandeur: “And what, exactly, is this blobby thing here supposed to be?” It was awful to watch, and because attendance factored into one’s final grade, impossible to avoid.

I ended up skirting the issue of my own participation by saying the same thing about every drawing I was supposed to comment on, “Nice use of shading.” The instructor thought I was being a wiseass, but the truth is I registered for Drawing 101, not Advanced Techniques for Destroying Self-Esteem. In an upper level course, where everyone has a shared commitment to the craft and a sense of the effort involved, an open group critiquing process is an invaluable and frequently humbling learning experience. When conducted by an assortment of arrogant and insecure freshmen and sophomores, it inevitable degenerates into a wilding. There’s an inversely proportional relationship in these things where the folks with the biggest mouths end up having the least substance to offer.

Since I put my contact info in the sidebar, I’ve been getting emails from performers asking me to review their material here. I have to say I’m very flattered by this; it gives me an inflated sense of relevance that I’m not certain I truly deserve. The rub is that anyone familiar with what I’ve been doing here over the past ten months should understand that this is not a music blog per se, but rather an ongoing, rambling exploration of my whims and obsessions, which just happens to feature musical annotations. I’m not comfortable in the role of critic, as it is traditionally understood. It makes me feel like I’m back in the Drawing 101 studio, being asked to deliver a sanctioned ego blow to some poor Organic Chem major who thought it would be fun to take an art class.

I do make the effort to listen to all the music sent my way, and evangelize offsite when I think the sound fits the tastes of friends and other acquaintances, but the nature of this site and of my thought processes precludes reviews in the traditional sense. Should one of the tracks happen to fit into a theme post about Arion, Lord of Atlantis, that’s another matter.

Plushgun – Just Impolite (http://www.myspace.com/plushgun) – This is one of the tracks submitted to me for review, and I’ve developed a real fondness for it. It reminds me a lot of something from the soundtrack to one of the lesser known 80’s teen movies, which is a good thing. (I can’t tell you how many of those old soundtrack LP’s I’ve hunted down for the sake of a single, otherwise unavailable song.) Individual mileage may vary depending on one’s own brand pop sensibility, but I think it holds a good deal of promise and I’m interested in hearing the band’s follow-up efforts.

…and now back to our regular scheduled randomness:

Desperate Bicycles – The Medium Was Tedium (from a 1977 single) – Sloppy early British punk rock recorded on the slimmest of budgets. It’s from a subgenre that would later be termed “DIY” or “messthetics” (taken from Scritti Politti, who pioneered the aesthetic style before morphing into a mainstream pop act).

grown accustomed to the daily grind

Spring has arrived!

Up here in New England, it means that we only have to suffer through one or two more surprise snowstorms before the traditional six weeks of rain segue into a three month long heat wave. The five or six non-consecutive gorgeous spring days in between make it all worth it, however. Moderation is important, lest the joys of balmy weather make us forget our hard-won regional survival skills. Imagine the chaos that would result if folks round these parts suddenly began to use turn signals or were to strike up friendly conversations with strangers instead of giving them the customary wary look.

There’s still snow from last weekend’s storm on the ground at the moment, although it appears to be melting rapidly, but I did see a couple of robins bob-bob-bobbin’ along in our backyard this morning. It won’t really feel like spring until the cherry tree on our patio starts to blossom. Eventually its roots are going to take out the retaining wall and the whole tree will come crashing down the hill, but the view from the kitchen window while the tree is in bloom is simply breathtaking.

The Lemon Drops – I Live in the Springtime (from the Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era box set, 1998) – Psychedelic flavor, garage rock production.

Slow Children – Spring in Fialta (from Slow Children, 1981) – Nabokov gets a new wave makeover.

Finally, I leave you with the MST3K version of an educational film created to combat the rampant anti-springitism prevalent in 1940’s America. (Ok, it’s about the object by that name and not the season, but who cares? It’s got Coily the Spring Sprite!)

it's a gas to just imagine....

THE ISSUE

The issue of National Geographic sits moldering on a dusty pile of its brethren in the far corner of a Bay Area used book store. The magazine’s cover is partially obscured by a decades old coating of dust and rodent droppings, yet there’s something about it that beckons you to pick it up. The desiccated binding paste crackles as you flip through the pages. Images of a world that was flash by your eyes, until they settle on a single image from a feature on the petrified caveman found in Java.

It’s of a man in his mid-thirties, the rugged sort of adventurer-type long been supplanted as the architect of young boys’ dreams by the New Frontier stardust sprinkled about by John Glenn and NASA. Dressed in jodhpurs and a worn leather jacket, and radiating a casual confidence that could be mistaken for arrogance, the man bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Burt Lancaster. A pretty young blonde has her arms around his shoulders, and the juxtaposition between his rugged masculinity and her movie star beauty could not be more striking.

Something about the image feels familiar. I should know these people, you think, and check out the accompanying caption in an effort to make sense of the feeling. It reads:

(left) Adventurer Rex Mason and Stagg Industries heiress, Sapphire Stagg, at the expedition’s base camp.

The threads connecting this story of personal metamorphosis stretch not only from the Sumatran jungles to a chamber housing a radioactive meteorite in a lost Egyptian pyramid, but further back, to medieval alchemists and the writings of Franz Kafka in 1920’s Prague. It is a story of miraculous happenings and personal tragedy played out against the backdrop of disposable entertainment.

IT'S 1962

It’s 1962, and a brilliant, but disturbed young cyberneticist has embarked on a radical new voyage. Taking inspiration from both Asimov and Mendeleev, William Magnus finds a means of creating robotic avatars of various metallic elements. It is a quantum leap, yet it falls short of a revolutionary paradigm. Compartmentalized and hyper-specialized, limited to artificial beings, Magnus’s discovery must stop before the gates of a transformed world.

THREE YEARS LATER

Three years later, a strange being shapes his arm into a cobalt hammer. (Cobalt being derived from the German kobold, meaning “goblin,” referring to its toxic effects on miners.) His hairless face is corpse-white, echoing the effigies burned by Moravian heretics during medieval Nachthexen ceremonies. The rest of his body is quartered into gaudily colored, oddly textured sections, and flows and shifts with amazing rapidity. The Element Man has arrived, and the threshold forever denied to Magnus and his androids has been crossed decisively.

A simple utterance passes from his lips, and the entire world seems to pause for a moment, perhaps sensing that a strange new chapter in the eternal struggle between the individual and society has begun. “Holy blue Hannah!” says Metamorpho the Element Man, but the voice is that of Rex Mason.

Metamorpho Theme Song (from a Power Records 7”) – This track has made the rounds of several music and comics blogs already. If you happened to miss it then, here’s your chance to enjoy it in all its bizarre glory.

The Movin’ Morfomen – What’s Happened to Me? (from Flashbacks, 1997) – It’s very rare that I come across a track where both the band’s name and the song’s name match the chosen theme as perfectly as does in this bit of 60’s garage rock out of New Mexico. Ah, sweet synergy.

David Bowie – Changes (from Hunky Dory, 1971) – Part of my quixotic effort to erase this song’s association with a diaper commercial.

UK Decay – Battle of the Elements (from For Madmen Only, 1981) – Rex doesn’t strike me as the gothy type. I picture him as the sort of guy who’d hang out at the Playboy Mansion and swap stories with George Kennedy over shots of fine Kentucky bourbon. His one-time partner, Element Girl, did show up in an issue of Sandman, though, so I guess this track is tangentially fitting.

If you prefer to keep your bizarre 1960's DC comics reading separate from your social/musical history, here's where you can buy the two books that went into making this post:

Showcase Presents: Metamorpho, Vol. 1

Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century

I give both my highest recommendation.

(Today's post inspired by this, this, and this.)

dead girls and enchanted firearms

I see pal CJ has decided to continue what he started over at 8-Bit Gadfly, and I applaud his decision to do so. I’ve reached a point where I’d rather read about lousy old videogames than make the effort to play them myself. (This is not too far from my attitude regarding current superhero comics, actually.)

Elemental Gearbolt is a high fantasy-themed light gun game developed by Alfa System for the Sony Playstation in 1997 and localized for the American market by Working Designs. The game’s plot deals with a rebellion against an overreaching technology-based empire, and unfolds over a series of anime cutscenes which play between the levels. It’s all very confusing, as the plot sequences flip back and forth between different time periods, all of which are wrapped up in the framework of a scholar-narrator’s long extended flashback about the events in question. While it may be tricky to figure out what the heck is going on at times, I appreciate the efforts by the designers to aim higher than the default “kill everything that moves” shooter genre backstory.

The game’s graphics were excellent for its time, although judging the aesthetic merits of old polygon-based PS1 games has gotten more difficult as time and technology progresses. Sprite-based graphics tend to stand the test of time better, either through detailed 2D artistry (Chrono Trigger) or iconic design (Robotron: 2084). In contrast, even the most sophisticated polygon-based PS1 game from a decade ago looks like a rather crude precursor of the fully-rendered, high powered wonders to come. That’s probably why the old PS1 games I still play with some frequency tend to feature prerendered backgrounds (Parasite Eve) or sprite-based graphics (Valkyrie Profile, the Suikoden games, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night).

The gameplay is pretty standard on-rails light gun shooter fare with a couple of flourishes tossed in to freshen things up. The player can switch between multiple fire options (rapid, strong, and spread) patterned on the elements, and the genre convention of reloading by firing off screen has been replaced with preset rates of fire. The player also has the ability to level up and alter character parameters between levels, which adds a very limited RPG feel to the proceedings. It’s a fun game, and has a certain epic quality that no other representative of the light gun genre can match, but in some ways that works against Elemental Gearbolt. It requires an investment from the player that runs counter to the “pick up a gun and shoot stuff” quick and easy entertainment ethos of the genre, best typified by the Virtua Cop and Point Blank series of games.

The game’s soundtrack, composed by Kei Wakasuka is outstanding. It consists of symphonic arrangements with heavy use of choral and wind elements that lend the affair a suitably epic, yet mournful tone. (You have to expect “somber” in a game where the protagonists are executed sisters turned into reanimated angels of destruction.) While this style has become de rigueur for RPG games, rarely has it been done this well. I don’t regret the steep price I paid for the soundtrack at all.

From the Elemental Gearbolt OST (1998):

Shou

Sei

Bu

the ache is in my bones

The head cold I mentioned a few posts back took advantage of yesterday’s round of snow shoveling to insinuate itself into my bronchial passages. As a consequence, I’m feeling a bit lousy today and not up to my customary levels of inspired posting. In fact, I think I’ll just hand things over to Kylie today, with a topically relevant song and its accompanying music video.



Kylie Minogue – Breathe (from Impossible Princess, 1997) – I got a lot of shit from a Diamanda Galás-loving friend of mine for saying I loved this song. Hey, misery and angst are fine, but I wouldn’t want to live in a world where they’ve completely supplanted dreamy dance pop.

One of my wiser drama professors, commenting on the works of Ibsen, Strindberg, and the like, once said “While it’s important to understand the significance of these plays and playwrights, it’s also important to understand that most people do not want to watch three hours of Scandinavian misery when they visit the theater.”

My wife taped the video for “Breathe” (and the one for “Did It Again”) ten or so years ago off of a pan-Asian music show that used to run on the International Channel without first realizing who the singer actually was. Reassessment of our opinions regarding Kylie and some import CD purchases soon followed.

(The show was also responsible for my love of Thai pop, but that’s a matter for a future post. Maybe.)

'twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Never mind the media circus. There’s more to being Irish than shamrocks and boozing; there’s a proud legacy of revolutionary thought, too.

James Connolly: Socialist, labor leader, egalitarian thinker, Martyr of 1916. I wonder how the nation would have developed had he not been executed by the forces of the Crown. His idea for an ecumenical Irish state free of religious interference and equal rights for all, including women, was forward-thinking for its time, although the victory of the Free State forces after his death, meant that -- to paraphrase one disillusioned Republican -- all that blood was shed for the sake of handing over the keys to the kingdom to the priests and the shopkeepers, the very same bourgeoisie elements Connolly considered as much as an impediment to Irish freedom as the British were.

Both my wife’s grandfathers fought in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War (on the Republican side, against Michael Collins’s Free State sellouts). My maternal grandmother’s people were Orangemen from Donegal and Carrickfergus, but radical politics have trumped upbringing in my case. (I’ve been told my mother used to wear orange on St. Patrick’s Day when she was in high school. It’s an ugly bit of spite that I have a hard time reconciling with my memories of her being a kind, good-hearted woman.) My wife thinks it’s kind of funny that out of all the kids in her very Irish, right-off-the-boat family, she’s the only one who married someone of Irish descent, and he turned out to be Anglo-Irish.

Although I oppose actions against civilian targets on general principle, I can at least respect that the Nationalists stand for something other than the Loyalists’ reactionary desire to maintain the institutionalized prejudices of the colonial status quo. It’s amazing how Sinn Féin gets raked over the coals for every misstep or bit of wrongdoing by the I.R.A., but the DUP is pretty much given a pass despite the fact they their armed wings have engaged in nearly an equal amount of violence since in the Good Friday agreement of 1998.

The Pogues and The Dubliners – The Irish Rover (from a 1987 single, collected on The Ultimate Collection, 2005) – Forget the nasally warbling of Celtic Woman or the grandma music of the Irish Tenors, this is real music of the people.

Flogging Molly – Rebels of the Sacred Heart (from Drunken Lullabies, 2002) – It just dawned on me that all of today’s tracks were played at our wedding reception…in between various punk and new wave favorites. Those four mix CD’s are a lovely glimpse into the nature of our relationship.

Wolfe Tones – Rifles of the I.R.A. (from Rifles of the I.R.A. 1991) – Anytime a large enough number of the wife’s relatives gather together for a holiday or whatnot, it’s a given that this song will be given a spin, accompanied by much whooping, stomping, and dancing.

what's a little fallout

1910 Fruitgum Company - 1, 2, 3 Red Light (from a 1968 single, collected on The Best of the 1910 Fruitgum Company: Simon Says, 2001)

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Mike Post and Pete Carpenter - Theme from Magnum P.I.

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(Thanks for the cards, Chris!)

because I hate focus groups

It’s been a while since I engaged some memery, so here’s one copped from Kevin. Set your playlist to shuffle and fill in the categories.

Opening Credits:
“Hebrides Overture” by Felix Mendelssohn. Classy, sweeping, and stark. Not bad.

Waking Up:
“Fireworks” by Siouxsie & the Banshees. Wow, this is shaping up to be a gloomy film. At least I’ll have the moody student demographic sown up.

First Day at School:
“Too Much, Too Young” by Dave Smalley. Filling the “quirky indie pop cover of a new wave classic” quota.

Falling in Love:
“The Man With the Dogs” by The Dead Kennedys. Maybe. I can see the protagonist fleeing from his enemies and dodging environmental obstacles on a suburban sidewalk. He makes it to the corner, where he makes eye contact with the new girl in the neighborhood, an introspective barette-wearing beauty. He is so overcome with yearning that he forgets what he’s doing and trips over a fire hydrant.

Fight Song:
“He Was a Friend of Mine” by The Byrds. Now we must battle, for the whole world is at stake!

Breaking Up:
“The First Noel” by The Moog Machine. Seasonal holiday depression is the best kind of depression.

Prom:
“String Bean Jean” by Belle and Sebastian. Appropriately soft and intimate, but not slow dance material. I like it.

Life:
“The Night” by Lene Lovich. So I guess the film is kind of a hipster reiteration of Mahogany….

Mental Breakdown:
“Don’t Leave Me This Way” by Otis Redding. Perfect.

Driving:
“Mary’s Room” by The Vyllies. The bleak minimalist synth and haunting female vocals would work for a gloomy midnight ride, but it lacks the classic rock je ne se quois needed for a proper driving song.

Flashback:
“Diamond and Loving Arms” by Boytronic. Perfectly fine, if the film in question was shot in 1985.

Getting Back Together:
“Antmusic” by Adam and The Ants. Celebrating a new romantic era, perhaps?

Wedding:
“Missing Missiles” by Slow Children. Oddball new wave as wedding music? Hey, it worked for my wife and me.

Birth of a Child:
“Never Stop” by Echo and The Bunnymen. Not what I would have picked, though the more I think about it, the better I like the idea.

Final Battle:
“Rush” by Big Audio Dynamite. High stakes yet whimsical. Have to be careful not to overdo the CGI goofiness, though.

Death Scene:
“That Neutron Taste” by The Bleach Boys. Claustrophobic, apocalyptic garage punk/punkabilly with lyrics that beg for radioactive annihilation. Way to exit in style!

Funeral Song:
“Thru the Flowers (New Version)” by The Primitives. A little too upbeat for my tastes, but it does fit the theme well enough.

End Credits:
“Outrage” by Booker T and the MG’s. Ah, yes. A playful organ-driven R&B instrumental track to close things out on the right note of absurdity.

I’m the friendly stranger in the black sedan

Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me? I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, Cry "Caesar"! Speak, Caesar is turn'd to hear.

Soothsayer: Beware the Ides of March.

--William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (I, ii)

Such an excellent play, Julius Caesar. Its central theme of noble intentions begetting unforeseen consequences remains as relevant today as it did in the 16th century. If only the unfortunate dictator had the presence of mid to pay heed to the crazed ramblings of a random street person. He might not have ended up the victim of a savage game of “perforate the Pontifex Maximus” on this day in 44 BC.

Back in the early 1990’s, when my punk fashion sense was at its apex, I was walking through Downtown Crossing and passed a homeless man sleeping on the corner of Washington Street. He had a mangy-looking mutt with him, tied to a lamppost, and when I passed by, the dog started barking and growling ferociously at me. The homeless man sat up, pointed at me, and said “Animals and children know him for what he really is.” I’m really not sure what that was supposed to augur, though I’ve been on guard ever since.

If iambic pentameter and Roman political intrigue aren’t your cup of tea, there’s always the farcical tragedy of Cesar Romero, in which a suave, not-so-secretly gay leading man becomes most remembered for covering his trademark mustache in white pancake makeup and acting circles around Adam West while wearing a positively moddish purple and green suit. Like Julius Caesar, it is a story of great relevance, having played a vital part in defining how the world at large views superheroes and comic books for over four decades now.

‘tis a much kinder fate than being stabbed in the gut by a close friend, though many fictional atrocities have been perpetrated in the name of extinguishing that genre's association with goofy disposable entertainment.

The Ides of March – Vehicle (from Vehicle, 1970) – Big, brassy early 70’s soul-tinged rock – another genre in need of a present day revival. The guitarist/vocalist went on to form Survivor, but why hold a grudge?

The Brian Setzer Orchestra – Mack the Knife (from Vavoom! 2000) – The English language “swinging” version of Brecht and Wiell’s “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer” from The Threepenny Opera. The most famous version was recorded by pop star Bobby Darin, who oddly enough died under the knife (scalpel, actually) in an operating room in 1973.

The Swingers – Practical Joker (from Practical Jokers, 1979) – Formed by ex-Split Enz member Phill Judd and two former members of the Suburban Reptiles, The Swingers played tight, hooky, yet often eccentric New Wave pop. “Counting the Beat” was probably their finest moment, although the rest of their material is consistently enjoyable. The band starred, alongside Australian singer Jo Kennedy, in the 1982 movie Starstruck, which will be the subject of a future post (when I finally get around to digitally converting the out-of-print soundtrack album from the original vinyl).

another battle was won and lost

I was going to skip posting anything today. I’ve spent the better part of the day dealing with an irritating head cold while trying to replace a fried hard drive on my work computer. I succeeded on the tech front, but the only person who can get me hooked back up to the shared network drive I need to use for my work duties is out of town until next Monday. Rather than sit around on my hands doing nothing except stifling recurring coughing jags, I went home early and crashed out while listening to Carbon Based Lifeforms’ World of Sleepers. The resulting dreams were interesting, to say the least.

I’m now wide awake, and still feeling, as a medical professional would say, “like shit.” Tomorrow has a whirlwind tour of veterinarian offices – one for our rabbit, Jack, in Wellesley at 11:30 and another for two of the outside cats in Winchester at 2:00. When it’s all over, I don’t think I’ll be able to tell where Super Lumina ends and I begin. We’ll be inseparably bonded in a man/machine gestalt by hours of the nastiest highway and surface road driving Massachusetts has to offer (outside of the Day Boulevard rotary, which is as close as one can get to The Road Warrior this side of the nuclear holocaust).

So in short, I’m feeling restless and sick, my paid work is backlogged by tech hassles, and I have a long day of driving ahead of me. At least I have my music collection to help take my mind off of things.

Generation X – Kiss Me Deadly (from Generation X, 1978) – In which a young Billy Idol and friends serve up the punk rock equivalent of a power ballad. Sure, it’s a little on the sappy side, but it really couldn’t work any other way.

The Hives – A Get Together to Tear It Apart (from Veni Vidi Vicious, 2000/2002) – Has it really been five years since this album was released in the US? Wow.

I should be jumpin' shoutin' that I made it all this way

Guess which reclusive music and pop culture blogger turned 35 today?

Funny, I don’t feel older. A few of my peers have a pathological fear of aging and fight tooth and nail with the process, leading to a series of increasingly ludicrous gestures calculated to fend off the encroachment of the long, gray twilight minute by precious minute. It seems kind of futile to me, this massive expenditure of energy in order to delay the inevitable. My mother spent her thirties engaged in such a struggle, and it killed her in the end. She was 37 when she passed away, two years older than I am now.

It’s a cliché, but true nonetheless: You are only as old as you feel. (High cheekbones do help, though.) Andrew at 35 isn’t much different than Andrew at 25, or even Andrew at 19. I’m a bit wiser…I think. My responsibilities have increased, but they are less a burden than a price willingly paid for achieving certain aspirations. I don’t begrudge the growing cluster of gray hairs in my buzzcut’s little forelock; I’m too busy enjoying what I have while I have it.

The Clash – Gates of the West (from a 1979 single, collected on Super Black Market Clash, 1994) – Equivocation in the face of success, something I’m well acquainted with. “But just like them we walk on and we can't escape our fate.” Perfect.

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Today also happens to be Mike “Mikester” Sterling’s birthday as well. Progressive Ruin has long been one of my favorite comics blogs, an always interesting glimpse into the world of funnybooks from the perspective of a fan and retailer blessed a great sense of humor and ample common sense. Poor Mike has been buffeted about lately by the comics internet peanut gallery over his assertions that basing orders on intangibles like Marvel’s capricious marketing methods and unforeseeable media factors is very a risky business. Seeing as Mike has some affection for Swamp Thing, and Chris Sims has seen fit to resurrect this old meme, I put together this little birthday .jpg for the poor guy:

The Chameleons UK – Swamp Thing (from Strange Times, 1986) – Is it just me, or does that guitar lick at the opening sound like it was cribbed from Jerry Reed’s “Amos Moses’? Next up, Hoyt Axton’s “Jealous Man” and its influence on Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

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I saw that comics legend Arnold Drake has passed away at age 83. He was most famous for his work on the original Doom Patrol, the ending of which became the source code for subsequent superheroic Götterdämmerungs. It’s a shame that the gravitas of tragic heroism Drake bought to the team’s demise seems to have eluded the current generation of imitators, who focus more on shock value than substance. (Grant Morrison being the exception, as Seven Soldiers #0 has shown.)

Drake was also the writer behind one of my all-time favorite series, Stanley and His Monster, a deceptively sophisticated “kiddie” humor strip published by DC in the mid-to-late 60’s, begun as a back-up feature in The Fox & The Crow before taking over the title with issue #109. The series is in dire need of the Showcase black and white “phonebook” reprint treatment.

Here’s Drake’s “ought-to biography” from the letters page of Stanley and His Monster #109, in which reveals he was a man after my own heart, and here’s one of my favorite comics panels of all time, showing that good food and friendship can overcome the differences between a boy, a giant purple monster, and Napoleon’s ghost (not a giant spectral penis, as a certain woman I live with seems to think he resembles) :

Life should be like that panel, don’t you think?

Queen – You’re My Best Friend (from A Night at the Opera, 1975)

broo broo skies

Years ago, before we were married, my wife and I used to kill time on Saturdays nights by watching Medford public access television. In the mid-to-late 1990’s, Medford Channel 3’s offerings were pretty unique compared to what was coming out of its neighboring communities. Where Woburn’s public access programming largely consisted of taped city council meetings and last Sunday’s First Congregational Church services, Medford provided a wide open platform for local auteurs to strut their stuff in interesting, if not always successful, ways.

One could tune in at any given hour and be treated to homebrew martial arts and horror films, sketch comedy of varying quality, a local scenester’s answer to Howard Stern’s and David Letterman’s shows, and my personal favorite, hour-long blocks of karaoke performances taped a local bar the previous weekend.

I have nothing against karaoke, per se, but I’m inflexible in my conviction that it depends on its environs to function properly. Performances that would be perfectly acceptable in the smoky, alcoholic haze of a dive bar or wedding reception become uncomfortably intimate glimpses into the soul when viewed via cathode ray tube in the comfort of one’s bedroom. The clips were presented without any context, which begged all sorts of questions about the folks onstage and goaded us into forensically reconstructing their lives based on their interpretations of popular songs.

What was the story behind the thick-necked, sunburned contractor-type who delivered a pitch-perfect rendition of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”? Was the overly cosmeticized thirty-something who slurred her was through Madonna’s “Holiday” a former Saugus club queen, trying to grasp a bit of the cocaine-and-vodka-fueled magic of her life before marriage, three kids, and mortgage payments brought her crashing back to earth?

We once caught someone my wife and I knew from college strutting her stuff in front of the camera. She was a nerdy, fantasy aficionado, and her choice of song, Joan Osborne’s “One of Us,” sent the pathos meter crashing into the red zone, an unforgettable bit of spiritual voyeurism to which a long painful wince is the only logical response.

That brings us to today’s featured track, one I’ve been waiting to spring on you folks for a while now, but I couldn't come up with the proper context to do so. The song is “Sky High” from Takenobu Mitsuyoshi’s soundtrack for Sega’s 1993 hit videogame, Daytona USA. Although it’s my policy to shy away from describing music in the entirely subjective terms of “best” or “worst,” this song is, without a doubt, one of the most pernicious little earworms I’ve had the misfortune to encounter.

It starts off innocently enough; light, energetic jazz rock of the type familiar to even the most casual j-pop/anime/videogame fan. Then the vocals kick in, and the nightmare begins in earnest. I don’t want to seem ethnocentric here. My studies of the Japanese language were cut short when I realized I had a specific sort of tone deafness that prevented me from grasping the correct intonations and inflections necessary to master it. I knew I was over my head, and chose to bow out rather than to reach for something that would forever exceed my grasp. It’s not just linguistic either, if one’s vocal range is limited, the wisest course is to avoid ever singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” If only the singer on “Sky High” had been as conscious of his own limitations. A singer with shaky grasp of tricky English consonants and lyrics that go out of their way to showcase said consonants is a recipe for aural damnation. “Frying high” and “broo broo skies,” indeed.

He gives it his best shot, however, apparently unaware of the horrors being unleashed by his vocal cords, and feels confident enough to toss in the obligatory “hey, ay, yo” soulful flourishes. I can’t help imagining Osaka’s reigning karaoke champion -- with punch-permed hair, a pencil thin mustache, and the finest fashions 1978 has to offer -- his hands pressed against his headphones and his eyes screwed tightly shut in emotive rapture pouring out his soul in the recording booth.

Wow. Now I feel a bit ashamed for making fun of the song…

All this obloquy might seem a bit much for something created as sonic wallpaper for a racing game, and if the experience ended with the “Game Over” screen I’d agree, but the song lingers, having used the game as a effective delivery system by which to permanently imprint itself upon one’s neurons. Hours, days, weeks later something will inescapably trigger the hard-coded mnemonic sequence, and you’ll find yourself softly humming and muttering “I want to fry, sky high” to yourself as you wait in line at the ATM or local Dunkin Donuts.

Or not. It might just be me.

Takenobu Mitsuyoshi – Sky High (from the Daytona USA OST, 1994)

the rules have changed today

This early start to Daylight Savings Time has played havoc with my internal sense of timekeeping. Seven o’clock sunsets in mid-March? It just doesn’t feel right. I’m sure someone stands to benefit from this hubristic manipulation of the natural order, but it ain't me. Instead I find myself muddling through the temporal dislocation of “The Twenty-Three Hour Day!” like the square-jawed, suit-and-tie-wearing hero of a Gardner Fox sci-fi story from an old issue of Mystery in Space:

“Watches function because of the crystals inside them! If I were to dissolve this quartz powder in a mixture of water and potassium, I should be able to slip into the missing hour that the Venusians have stolen to use as their base to invade earth!”

Editor’s note: Potassium has the atomic number 19! Potassium sodium tartrate is used in baking powder!

I used to love those stories (which were easily available as reprints in quarter bin filler titles like From Beyond the Unknown) as a kid. There’s something wonderfully batshit about the way DC tried to edify its readers as it attempted to entertain them in the fifties and sixties, even though so many of the facts were taken out of context or just plain wrong. Grant Morrison tries to use Fortean pseudo-science to achieve a similar effect, but it lacks the misguided sincerity at play in those old stories.

Unfortunately, there’s no amount of misapplied high school science capable of laying the blame for this mess as the feet/hooves/tentacles of some delightful, yet improbably goofy, aliens sprung from the drawing table of Murphy Anderson, Gil Kane, or Carmine Infantino. An act of Congress is to blame, and that’s something far more sinister and difficult to oppose than the Rocket Tyrants of Jupiter.

The Ramones – Time Has Come Today (from Subterranean Jungle, 1983) – You might think that this is a bit downtempo for a Ramones’ track, but it does clock in at 4m 25s, which makes it less than half as long as the Chambers Brothers’ original version.

The Outsiders – Time Won’t Let Me (from a 1966 single, collected on the Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 box set, 1998) – One of the wife’s all time favorite songs. I think it’s a splendid piece of sixties’ pop rock, but whenever I listen to it, I can’t help thinking how two of the band members went on to record the oh-so-seventies, oh-so-mellow AM gold standard “Precious and Few” under the guise of Climax. (Not to be confused with these ladies.) Another fun fact: For some reason, when I try to recall how “Precious and Few” sounds, it inevitably morphs into The Association’s “Cherish.”

never worry ‘bout the things we were missing

Brad Delp, the lead singer of the band Boston has passed away at age 55.

It may seem at odds with the musical tastes I’ve exhibited here previously, but I have an insane fondness for Boston’s 1976 debut. It’s one of those rare albums that I can listen to from beginning to end without ever feeling the urge to skip a track, alongside The Clash’s London Calling, UK Decay’s For Madmen Only, and The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds.

My love for the band came, like my interest in Captain America, from my younger brother who developed a taste for seventies rock while he was attending college out at UMass-Amherst. He’d make occasional trips back to Woburn on weekends and breaks, and we’d spend the time playing Perfect Dark and discussing (and arguing) comics trivia. We also made a lot of trips to area comics stores in search of back issues, and it was on one of those trips that my enduring love for Boston was sealed.

It was a weekday afternoon in the spring of 2000, and my brother decided out of the blue that we should pay a visit to a store we frequented in Waltham (two towns over, but still a hike). After calling and checking that the place would be still open when we got there, we hopped into his car and made our way down Route 128. He had Boston’s debut album in the car’s CD player, and made a remark that he had recently gotten into the band. It was nostalgia candy to my ears, but I’d be hard pressed to pick out a better soundtrack for a late afternoon drive with the windows rolled down and zero personal obligations for the immediate future.

We cleared the rise overlooking the cluster of hills around the Route 20 exit just as “More Than a Feeling” kicked into full rocking mode. The staid outcrops of New England granite in the distance stood silhouetted against the bruised violet and apricot tapestry of the sunset, and it felt so perfect, that synergy of classic rock, brotherhood, and the glories of a warm spring afternoon.

So thanks, Brad, for the part you played in making it happen.

Boston – Rock and Roll Band (from Boston, 1976)

the stock market for your hi-fi

Rockism is dead. Long live rawkism.

Sure, it dwells in pockets here and there, like Japanese army holdouts in the Philippine jungle, but when the more hardcore elements among the performing set speak of “authenticity” there’s the distinct tang of sour grapes in the air. Someone once said that inside every revolutionary beats the heart of a frustrated civil servant. Given access to a high tech studio and a massive production budget, even the most committed brick tossing rockist ideologue will start making heretical inquiries about overdubs, session musicians, and canned orchestral effects. Even The Clash, “the only band that mattered” (a profoundly rockist description, if ever I’ve hear one) fucked off to L.A. to record their sophomore album, where they conspired alongside Sandy Pearlman to panelbeat their raw sound into a smooth surface lacking anything for a listener to grab hold of (apart from the first three tracks on the LP, which echoed the band’s early fire in a bait-and-switch kind of way).

For the most part, though, rockism has become a convenient shibboleth to dangle whenever someone raises uncomfortable questions about art versus artifice. Besides, what does “authenticity in music” mean these days? Does it mean authenticity of craftsmanship, where performers are expected to “play their own instruments” and eschew technological wizardry? Or does it refer to authenticity of vision, where music acts as the performer’s position statement vis a vis the world at large? I’d argue that the masturbatory -- though musically skillful -- wank of a heavy metal guitar solo is less sincere and more of an assembly line product than the socially aware dance pop of Pet Shop Boys’ “I’m With Stupid.”

The old notions of authenticity are obsolete. What we have now is “rawkism,” a concept less grounded in musicianship than in marketing, the branding and promotion of acts to present an illusion of a way of life to be lived vicariously by the consumer. I was flipping through one of issues of Spin my wife left lying around and came across a writeup on Amy Winehouse, apparently an indie darling of the moment in some circles. Fully three-quarters of the text was given over to a discussion of her notorious, boozy, bad-girl lifestyle, and even the parts dealing with her music were couched in context of her personal life. I’ve never listened to Winehouse’s stuff (and the article didn’t make me feel any desire to), but I was struck by the way the writer foregrounded the aspects of the musician’s “rock and roll” lifestyle.

It’s a common enough occurrence. Watch any VH-1 special on heavy metal (and there are dozens of them, repeated ad nauseum) and you’ll notice that the most insightful remark about the music one encounters is some pudgy hipster comedian hollering “They RAWKED!” before launching into a bunch of anecdotes about the band members sniffing coke off a stripper’s ass in some club on the Sunset Strip. It’s not just limited to the metalheads, either. When I used to read Raygun (I know. I’m sorry.) back in the 90’s, every interview with an indie or alternative act would feature a leading question or three about the performers’ partying or drug use. It’s what musicians do, after all. They wouldn’t seem authentic if they didn’t indulge, you know?

Getting back to Spin, the magazine now features a section dedicated to the various club scenes around the country, complete with MySpace-style photos of pretty people living the wild life. It’s a prepackaged dream of hedonistic adventure being sold with music operating as a mere vector. In reality it’s just a rehash of eighth-graders’ stories about getting shitfaced in the woods, but gussied up with a liberal dose of stardust.

There’s also the “heart on one’s sleeve” school of marketed authenticity, where a posture – real or feigned – of sincerity or compassion provides an aura of marketable saintliness. Try pointing out to a Springsteen fan that the people who made the record a hit largely ignored the message of “Born in the USA”, and how the song became the score for Reagan Era triumphalism. “Oh, but Bruce cares. He’s better than that.” Maybe so, but the man also made a mint off Americans’ reactionary impulses, even if that was never his intent. There’s no excuse for the “Dancing in the Dark” video, either. U2 and The Clash also fall into this category, where rock stardom and religious-like devotion intersect.

I don’t need the people who create the music I listen to be inspirational figures, any more than I need the person who assembled Super Lumina’s manifold to have been an especially upright individual. It’s the quality of the end product that matters. I respect Crass’s politics, but if there wasn’t something about their music that captured my attention, they’d be in the same category with countless other anarcho-punk acts I sympathize with but can’t bring myself to listen to. If the aesthetics and politics align, so much the better, but “authenticity” or sincerity alone is just not enough.

The rockist versus poptimist struggles are like the ant wars that happen in my driveway every summer. They are fascinating to watch, but of little consequence to anyone outside their tiny little world. Should it threaten to spill over into my personal space, a diluted bleach solution puts an end to the matter right quick.

For the record, anyone who thinks Coldplay’s “Clocks” is a better song than The Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday” needs to be shunned.

bis – Action and Drama (from Social Dancing, 1999)

XTC – This Is Pop? (from White Music, 1978)

Carter USM – Do Re Mi So Far So Good (from 1992: The Love Album, 1992)

The Rezillos – Top of the Pops (from Can’t Stand the Rezillos, 1978)