morituri te salutant

"Look what I got at Target today! Let's play!"

"Okay."

"I'm Bob. I'm a Roman centurion. I have a sword."

"I am Vectrix, son of Verucloetius, and was once a reknowned tinsmith of the Volcae. When the Golden Eagles came to take our lands, I rallied to the banner of my chieftain. Our warhost was slaughtered by Centurion Bob's legion. I saw my wife and daughters spitted on Roman spears, and I was taken prisoner. My arms were strong from working my trade, so I was judged fit to join the gladitorial games as a slave. My days are spent sating my Imperial masters' lust for bloodsport. My nights are spent mourning for my family and my tribe, and I await the day I shall join them in the world beyond this one."

"So, Vectrix, do you wanna fight?"

"........................................................

..........................................................

Sure, why not?"

Human League - Circus of Death (from Reproduction, 1979) - As part of its new line of Roman and gladiator-themed toys, Playmobil is also releasing an Emperor figure (with throne) and a giant Circus Maximus playset. I'm half tempted to pick it up, if only to incorporate it with my Playmobil nativity scene.

The song? Oh, it's from the League's creepy, experimental days, as opposed to their coldly romantic new wave era, or their lousy MOR pop nonsense period.

The Jesus Lizard - Gladiator (from Liar, 1992) - In college, my friends and I used The Jesus Lizard as a means of describing certain...eccentrics...to be tiptoed around. For example:

"What's his deal?"
"Oh, he's a big fan of The Jesus Lizard."
"That explains it. Thanks for the warning."

Vacation II: Day 6 - You're driving me insane

It’s human nature to evangelize on behalf on the things we enjoy. A certain thing will strike a chord with us, and we feel the urge to rush off and share the experience with others, whose reactions may or may not match our own. You can lead a horse to water, but often enough the horse is too busy eyeing the low hanging apples in the orchard across the way to care.

And that’s fine, even if there are fewer things more frustrating than when one of the initially nonplussed becomes a convert later on, and attempts to proselytize you with the same damn thing they ignored your original recommendation about previously:

“You’ve got to hear this band. They’re awesome!”

“You mean the band whose CD I gave you as a birthday present last year?”

“Did you? I don’t remem-GAK! Why…are…you…strangling…me?”

Again, it’s all part of the game of social relationships, and not a big deal. Taste is a very personal and a very mutable thing, and responds erratically to the hard sell technique. Individuals enjoy what they enjoy, and despite the best efforts of marketing departments, there are no infallible predictors on what will click with people. As the old saying goes, there is no accounting for taste, and it’s to one’s benefit socially to keep that in mind, even if the various manifestations of the principle are baffling in the extreme.

There are limits to my vive le difference attitude, however, and they mostly center around the ennoblement of one’s personal tastes. It’s been pointed out time and again that just because you like something doesn’t mean that it’s good. I’m willing cut a little slack regarding that, if only because “good” is an entirely subjective term. I can accept that there are people who think Love Story or The Da Vinci Code are “good” for reasons other than their relative quality vis a vis other books, but I draw the line at beatification, where the descriptor takes on an almost religious significance.

There’s a difference between enjoying The Doors’ music (or even holding up Jim Morrison as an important figure in the history of pop music) and treating the band’s music and mythology as the Word Incarnate. I use The Doors as an example because the absurdly hagiographical tenor of No One Here Gets Out Alive, read while I was a teenager, that first brought this phenomenon to my attention. Examples abound, though, including the cults that have sprung up around two of my favorite bands, The Clash and The Pogues, which I believe diminish their legacies through unquestioned superlatives and platitudes.

Apart from the pop music sphere, these attitudes are also distressingly common in the many permutations of the nerd-o-sphere: comics, gaming, sci-fi and fantasy literature. Nerd behavior (and I say this as one of the herd) trends towards the obsessive end of the spectrum to start. The leap from fan to cultist is not an especially long one, but it is discernable. One telltale sign is a reliance on received wisdom over personal insight:

“The Watchmen is the greatest comic ever.”
“Why?”
“Because of Alan Moore.”
“I’m not seeing the logic there.”
“Everyone says it’s the best.”
“Still not seeing your argument.”
“Entertainment Weekly said it was the best comic ever.”

The last bit of that fictional, but reality-based, exchange brings up another factor into the sanctification process: the need of certain nerd-types for outside validation of their interests.

Years of operating at the fringes of “mundane” (and, oh, do I despise that term) society has led to a particular, vulgar iteration of what has been called the “superior virtue of the oppressed.” In the common usage of the term, it applies to the dominant culture’s paternalist romanticization of an oppressed group. “Women are too virtuous by nature to deal with politics, thus we cannot allow them the vote,” and so forth and so on. In nerd culture, it’s applied by the fringe to itself, a consensual self-image mirroring that of the X-Men, super-cool outcasts hated and feared by a jealous world.

Yet for all this pretence of setting themselves apart, there need for validation remains strong, and things like a mention on ET of Nick Cage’s comics collection or some mediocre comedian dropping a nerdy inside reference into his routine gain a disproportionate level of significance. Liking something is not enough, that THEY like it too is what matters, as THEY (be it Wil Wheaton or Vin Diesel) then equal US.

I find this marginalization of a work’s or creative force’s very personal appeal in favor of a declared significance deeply depressing. There should be no shame in just liking -- or even loving something -- for what it is, rather than as a magic mirror by which to define one’s self though reflected light. Or to be comfortable in one’s own skin, rather than living vicariously as an acolyte in a mystery religion dedicated to an entertaining diversion, be it London Calling, Ender’s Game, The Great Gatsby, “How Soon Is Now?” or what have you.

Gerry & The Pacemakers – I Like It (from The Definitive Collection, 1995) – Like eating a large bag of mini-marshmallows and washing it down with a quart bottle of chocolate syrup. So just another typical day round these parts, then. The Rezillos did a scathing, yet no less syrupy, cover of the song on 1978’s Can’t Stand The Rezillos LP.

Gloria Jones – Tainted Love (from a 1964 single; collected on Rude Boy Revival, 2002) – Sometimes, it pays to go back to the source. No bloops, no bleeps, no nasally British vocalist, just pure, uncut Northern Soul.

Friday Night Fights: Iconoclasm 101

With fist, crowbar, and boot, Marshal Law brings low the mighty.
(from Marshal Law #6, April 1989; by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill)

The Stranglers - No More Heroes (from No More Heroes, 1977) - Before punk went from being an attitude to being a musical genre (and fashion statement).

(All hail Bahlactus.)

second-person of the year

Who is Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2006?

You are, my fellow peers of the “new internet,” majordomos of a realm where user-created content is king and proportionality and restraint have gone the way of the passenger pigeon.

I understand where Time is coming from with this selection, even though it seems like the beleaguered Old Media establishment is trying to kiss the ass of the new wave. (On a related note, I can’t tell you how bizarre it was to see a quote from my James Brown tribute used in the print edition of yesterday’s Boston Globe.)

Neanderthal: “Mr. Cro-Magnon, I just want to let you know I have always respected the direction you’ve taken the species.”

Cro-Magnon: “LOL! PWNED! u r teh suxxor!”

Yes, the amount of user-created content has mushroomed in the past couple of years, but the noise-to-signal ratio is staggering. For every item of real value, there are countless examples of trollery, half-assed ranting, and other forms of ugliness. There is a difference between being entitled to one’s opinion and being entitled, period, and that point seems to elude the comprehension of far too many people online. One starts to get the impression that the lunatics (i.e. that one guy who writes long rambling letters about fluoridation and Vatican II to the local paper) have taken over the asylum. Just read the comments section of any given YouTube video, and you’ll get the point. (Nods to Kevin for the link.)

It is very difficult to gauge revolutions in progress. That’s why I prefer to stay one step behind the curve where “Big Things” are concerned. They always start off with a horde of wildcatters staking their claims under the wide open sky, and end with a handful of powerful concerns controlling the field. MySpace was bought up by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in 2005, and Google acquired YouTube in earlier this year. Neither company is likely to piss away their investors' money running a non-profit public service.

The above musings were just an excuse to post today’s featured tracks, three songs sharing the same title, recorded by three female/female-fronted postpunk groups between 1979 and 1980.

Delta 5 – You (from a 1980 single, collected on Singles & Sessions: 1979-81, 2006) – A little relationship advice from Uncle Andrew: It’s always best to keep petty spats localized. If it’s about how you don’t unroll your socks before putting them in the hamper, don’t bring up how you hate the way your partner chews his or her food as a defense. Otherwise you could trigger something like the lyrics to this song, and that is not a place you want to be. Trust me.

Au Pairs – You (from a 1979 single, collected on Stepping Out of Line: The Anthology, 2006) – I wrote about the Au Pairs at length a while back. This track comes from their first single and has a rawer, punkier sound than their more ambitious later material.

Kleenex – You (Happy Side) (from a 1979 single, collected on Liliput/Kleenex, 1993) – From Switzerland, home of the Cabaret Voltaire (no, not the guys behind “Sensoria,” but rather the early 20th century Dadaist hotspot), comes this little gem. I especially love the way they squeal-shout “YOU” at the end of every other line.

One of the difficulties in writing about postpunk stuff is that is atypical song structures don’t lend themselves to standard terminology that well. One could take the Greil Marcus route, and do a free association piece linking the song to an obscure medieval sect of Cathar heretics and a 1930’s circle of Ugandan poets, or just fall back on the tried and true “sounds like Joy Division/Gang of Four”. Kleenex (later “Liliput”, after Kimberly-Clark put its corporate foot down) sounds nothing like either band.

We’ll raise a glass to JFK

On this day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy had his date with destiny (and a rifle bullet) in Dallas, Texas.

I have mixed feelings about the man and his legacy. My parents revered the man, whose election presidency symbolized the unbridled promise of a new decade and a new generation of leaders. My father especially took JFK’s vigorous brand of Cold War liberalism to heart, and to this day will not tolerate any criticism of the man.

As I grew older, and my political awareness developed, the notion of JFK as a saintlike figure I inherited from my parents was gradually eroded away, not from the right, but from the left. I held onto my parents’ progressive idealism, but moved toward a more radical antinomian perspective. The nuclear sabre-waving over a fictitious “missile gap,” the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and the shenanigans that set the stage for America’s futile and protracted engagement in Vietnam -- not to mention the sleazy alliances with corrupt party machines and mob-front labor organizations – paint a much darker picture of a president I had been taught to believe was the Ideal Democrat.

Such is the danger of idolatry; it’s far better to acknowledge the “warts and all” from the get go, rather than deal with the shocking disappointment over clay feet down the road. I had professor in college who tried to reconcile his Chomskean politics with affection for JFK by insisting that had Kennedy lived, he would have turned on the CIA and military-industrial complex. That’s why he was assassinated, according to my professor. His argument struck me as an attempt to buttress a collapsing façade with Popsicle sticks, but it also demonstrated the manner in which JFK captured (and retains a hold on) the imagination of that generation.

The Misfits – Bullet (from Static Age, 1978/1997) – “Texas is the reason that the president’s dead.” It makes better sense than either Oliver Stone’s or James Ellroy’s explanation.

Human Sexual Response – Jackie Onassis (from Fig. 15, 1980) – Yet another band tainted by mental association with a former girlfriend of mine. It’s a shame because they’re really good and they were from Boston (which is always a plus with me, unless the band in question is Morphine or Extreme).

The Pogues - Thousands Are Sailing (from If I Should Fall From Grace With God, 1988) – JFK is only mentioned in passing, but I remembered it’s been almost seventeen years to the day since I first saw the band live at the Opera House in Boston, and felt like commemorating that event.