strange encounter

In a world where Super-Dads can't understand their Super-Sons....

"Don't blame me, son. Blame Trojan."
...and Super-Sons can't understand their Super-Dads...

Tennessee Williams presents Bat on a Hot Tin Roof!
...there is a place committed to bridging the Super-Generation Gap; a place called...

ENOYREVE
Pronounce it however you like; Enoyreve is a judgement-free zone. (But please spell the name correctly on the check for the non-refundable admission fee. Our accountant is a real hard-ass.)

You will be placed under the singular guidance of resident guru Dr. Timothy Zamm...

Fashions by Desaad, hairstyle by Oliver Queen
...a disciple of Master Bob Haney who has earned non-degree certificates from some of finest community colleges and correspondence schools in the Tri-State area.

Zamm's unique approach to family therapy includes such visionary techniques such as meditative beard-stroking, full immersion bikini sessions of "light as a feather, stiff as a board," as well as the Connery method of backhand faceslapping...

...and later, "White Night" drills and free Kool-Aid for everybody!
...all designed to challenge one's preconceptions in the most uncomfortable manner imaginable.

Subtext, what...ah, you know the drill...
If the Funky Robot group dance sessions or the Joe Besser-inspired pinching encounters...

Therapy or fetish? Only Dr. Zamm knows, and he's keeping it under his dashiki.
...fail to achieve the necessary breakthrough, our radical "killer-android-armed-with-nerve-gas" therapy...

"I respect that it's your thing, brother, but your toxic death cloud is decidedly unmellow."
...is available to those who wish to take things to a higher level. Nothing inspires a little father-son bonding like some rogue WMDs. (They don't even have to be real ones, either. Just ask the Bushes.)

ENOYREVE -- committed to bringing Super-Families together since 1974. Don't take out word for it; listen to the testimonial by these satisfied seekers of Super-Enlightenment...

...and then the acid kicked in.
Sponsored by World's Finest Comics #224 (July-August 1974), purchased by a young Andrew for 35 cents at a local flea market. Some childhood traumas will never heal, no matter how much masculine dance or pinch therapy one undergoes.

The Wipers - No Generation Gap (from Over the Edge, 1983) - In a fair world, The Wipers would be more than a source of esoteric namedropping by music geeks or a reliable source of cover song material. It's not that the Portland indie rockers are particularly unappreciated as they're underappreciated, mentioned with reverence but never reaching the same levels of fan devotion as many other less-worthy objects of college radio worship.

The Ramones - Psycho Therapy (from Subterranean Jungle, 1983) - I got a chance to see The Ramones when they played at (the now long-gone) Citi in the December of 1990. I spent most of the evening in the company of the most annoying twerp ever to crack open a Dungeon Master's Guide. The club was packed with jocks from Boston University who wanted to check out "that mosh pit shit" and my spectacles were smashed during the course of the festivities.

Afterwards, I had to walk a mile in the snow from Mishuam Station to my home. A shitty experience all around, but I did get to see The Ramones play live and up close, which made the plague of hassles entirely worthwhile.

oh sexy voice

"It's like they're whispering to you, and you alone," says the wife about what she calls the Sexy Voice Men, an exclusive group of vocalists capable of seducing with a song.

I, on the other hand, have been stuck with a not-quite-as-sexy voice -- unless one's turn-ons include a nasally alto overlaid with an occasionally impenetrable Boston accent.

Alex Kapranos: Franz Ferdinand - The Dark of the Matinée (from Franz Ferdinand, 2004) - Yesterday's darlings, long on splash and short on ripples as the critics' Eye of Sauron moved onto a succession of other, fresher subjects to overpraise and subequently abandon.

There's supposedly a new album on the horizon, though I have to wonder if the ship hasn't already sailed for FF and the cluster of other acts tagged with the overreaching "postpunk revival" label. I suppose the label did fit, providing you define postpunk as "overproduced Joy Division knockoffs, countless riffs on XTC's back catalogue, and the post-Japanese Whispers version of The Cure." There were some jewels, such as the above track, amidst the dross of wishfully derivative marketing, though.

Casey Spooner: Fischerspooner - Sweetness (from #1, 2001) - Elaborate prank or work of genius? I'm still unsure what to make of the provocative synthesized pageant that was #1, which was equal parts Marcel Duchamp and Marc Almond. I do know I was resoundly disappointed by the band's 2005 follow up album which jettisoned the confrontational quirkiness in favor of a more sedate dance pop template.

Jarvis Cocker: Lush - Ciao! (from Lovelife, 1996) - Goodbye, dreamy shoegaze! Hello, lackluster Britpop! To prove their trendhopping bonafides the band even enlisted the velvet-voiced Prince of the Common People to join vocalist Miki Berenyi on this iteration of the tired-and-true "He said/she said" formula. Works for me.

Sacred Cow Tipping #1: Take a load off, Spidey

"The Final Chapter!" from Amazing Spider-Man #33 (February 1966) is the appropriately-named conclusion to a three-part story arc that served as a pivotal moment in the title character's Lee-and-Ditko-produced Bildungsroman. In order to save his beloved Aunt May from a severe recurrence of chronic Pestilentia Melodramatica, Peter Parker suits up as Spider-Man and goes toe to toe with Doctor Octopus in order to retrieve the serum that could cure his ailing aunt. Things take a turn for the crappy, however, when Doc Ock's undersea lair collapses, trapping poor Spidey beneath a couple dozen tons of junked machinery with the vital cure just out of the hard-luck hero's reach -- which is where "The Final Chapter!" begins.

Spidey's struggles in the story to find the inner strength to free himself and save Aunt May is considered, rightly, to be one of the finest moments in Marvel's Silver Age output, even by folks who usually cast a jaundiced eye at the superheroic material. In a genre predicated on the illusion of change, the story offers the genuine article -- Peter's transformation from a well-intentioned teen playing at being a hero into an adult who understands and accepts what the job actually entails. It is a work of importance, albeit parochial to the genre, certainly deserving its designation as a "classic" story, and yet....

...once you get past the mythic aura of reverence, what it comes down to is a bunch of pages of Spidey pontificating in eight shades of purple from his pulpit in the rubble, padding out the scene until its foregone conclusion.

Here's the Andrew-edited abridged version:


SPOILER ALERT: He eventually summons the inner strength to free himself, which is why the title of the series didn't change to the Amazing Spider-Man's Decomposing Corpse with issue #34. (Fandom would have to wait four decades and for a hot trend needing flogging in order to witness how that premise would play out.)

Interestingly enough, while the predictably pedestrian (or as the high-brows are fond of saying "like something from a comic book") catalyst for the character's evolution gets the lion's share of attention, the effects of the transfomation don't actually manifest until the end of the story, when a bruised Peter blows off semi-girlfriend Betty Brant's concerns about his safety then proceeds to stand up to J. Jonah Jameson's bullying. These inversions of the standard Spider-Man tropes are the true crucial moments of the story arc, and their effectiveness surpasses the "I can't lift the rubble! I must lift the rubble! I can't lift the rubble! I'll lift the rubble!" hijinx it took to get there.

tired of wasting all my time

Freedom of speech is one of the cornerstones of a just and open society. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but that does not mean that all opinions are equally valid, nor does it place any obligation on me to listen. Decades of bitter experience have caused my subconscious mind to install a cognitive kill switch. It is triggered by certain words, phrases, or sentences that when encountered cause my attention to disengage.

When dealing with written material, it's a simple enough matter to stop reading and move onto something else. In conversational environments, notions of tact and decorum make things a wee bit trickier. In situations where I can't just tell the other party to fuck off and be done with it, my body slips into a automatic routine of glassy-eyed stares and occasional nods while my consciousness scrolls a mental slide-show of Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, and Ann-Margret pinup shots set to the following tune:

Laurie Johnson - Shopping Spree (from Music for TV Dinners, 1997)

The mind is a wonderful and mysterious thing.

Here is a representative sample of some of the trigger phrases guaranteed to land someone on my "please disregard" list:

- "America needs a flat tax."

- "Um, actually..." (It doesn't matter if the pedantic infodump that follows those words reveals the location of a cache of unmarked twenty-dollar bills, the cure for cancer, or a meticulous chronology of Phantom Girl's appearances; once that introductory phrase is uttered, my mental firewall kicks in at full force.)

- "I'm a big fan of Dane Cook."

- "I'm a big fan of Chuck Klosterman."

- "I'm a big fan of Ayn Rand."

- "I'm a big fan of Orson Scott Card."

- "It contradicts my fan-fiction." (Or any statement evoking fan-fiction as something other than a curious hobby.)

- "My psychic told me..."

- "Fight Club is my favorite novel."

- "I pay his/her/their/your salary." (When spoken by an end user, not by the actual employer)

- "...then we'd all be speaking German/Russian/Japanese."

- "Steampunk" (Used seriously in any context outside genre fiction.)

- "...according to Rush Limbaugh/Bill O'Reilly/Michelle Malkin/Ann Coulter/Michael Savage." (As a serious citation, not a negative example.)

- emoticons, IM-speak, or l33t used unironically in ratios greater than one to one thousand words of coherent English

- "Future generations will appreciate Kenny Loggins's immense contributions to rock music."

Hüsker Dü - Never Talking to You Again (from Zen Arcade, 1984) - The sound that spawned a host of inferior imitations.

Bananarama and Fun Boy Three - He Was Really Sayin' Somethin' (from Deep Sea Skiving, 1983) - I wouldn't go so far as to call this the whitest cover of Motown song ever, but it's definitely up there in the top ten percent of its class.

and it opened my eyes

From AT's inbox; the names have been changed to protect the guilty:

In regards to your blog, we would like to ask you to write a piece on PSEUDO-CLEVER BAND NAME's new album "UNINSPIRED TITLE". With a diverse range of influences, from LEGENDARY JAZZ PERFOMER and LEGENDARY REGGAE ARTIST to WELL-LOVED INDIE ROCK BAND #1 and WELL-LOVED INDIE ROCK BAND #2, the band still manages to bring it all together and create something that sounds fresh, with hooks akimbo, and a lust and fear for all things cyber-televisic.

Sweet Providence, where do I even begin?

First up, dropping a fistful of self-consciously eclectic musical "influences" is the quickest way to get on my bad side. I have yet to listen to an artist or outfit which indulges in the practice that sounds even marginally like any of the acts they cite. It's a music marketing tactic that simply doesn't work, except maybe on the morbid curiosity, are-you-effing-serious, let's-stare-at-the-bloody-trainwreck level. Better to be up front and just honestly and simply state the truth: "shamelessly apes Joy Division," "wishes they were The Clash," or "sounds like every other lousy jam band."

The same knee-jerk distaste of mine applies to contrived buzz-words and phrases like "hooks akimbo" and "cyber-televisic," which convey the diametrical opposite of the message the PR flack is attempting to transmit.

The part that really caused me to grit my 75% amalgam teeth, however, was the opening line, phrased as a passive-aggressive corp-speak imperative. I'm sure many of you know the drill: "We would like to ask you to conduct a massive time-intensive revision of the database even though we plan on switching to a new front-end interface in two weeks which will make your revisions obsolete" delivered with a smile and unblinking stare. Do they seriously think I'm going to play the role of unpaid PR proxy in exchange for some weak-cheese ego stroking?

Even if it was a paying gig, I'd still turn it down. And not out of any sense of personal honor, either.

I get a fair number of emails asking me to promote or review songs, albums, or artists on Armagideon Time. It comes with being a music blogger (such as I am), and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't slightly flattered by the requests even though I'm baffled why they put me on the mass email list to begin with.

I have never set out to be an arbiter of public taste here. I'm temperamentally unsuited for the role of a "serious" music critic (if such a thing even exists) because I am able to acknowledge the subjectivity of my views. My concept of "good music" applies to me and me alone, and in truth encompasses a lot of what might be deemed, sans malice, as "utter crap." I can live with that burden without trying to redefine the definition of "quality" to conform to my singular tastes.

What I can't, or rather won't, do is regurgitate PR hype or presume to shatter the dreams of a basement studio auteur because I have a venue to do so and an ego in need of gratification. I'm not a gatekeeper. I'm the eccentric old man who lives in a shack by the junkyard, showing off my collection of mismatched depression glass and spouting off rambling philosophical anecdotes to any person foolish enough to stop by.

It's a narrow niche that I've cut out for myself here, but it's a very comfortable one, too.

Pretty Girls Make Graves - Speakers Push the Air (from Good Health, 2002) - My synesthetic take on this track: The sun setting behind Horn Pond Mountain in October, as viewed through the trees in my backyard.