Halloween Countdown: October 7 - red corpuscle menace

The American public's interest in superheroes was at a low point in the early 1950's, leaving the fine folks at Fawcett scrambling to keep up with trend curve as it pertained to their flagship character. Horror comics were all the rage at the time, so Captain Marvel found himself pitted against ghosts, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures. The Red Scare was in full swing, so Marvel was sent off to fight communist hordes both at home and abroad.

I suppose it was inevitable, then, that writer Otto Binder would cobble together a story incorporating both elements into a single, racially-insensitive masterpiece of supernatural Cold War agitprop.

It all came together in Captain Marvel Adventures #140 (January 1953), in a story titled....well, check it out for yourselves...

All documented. All true.
It's late 1952 and the Korean War has become a bloody stalemate. The fighting is fierce, as both sides of the conflict hope to turn territorial gains into leverage at the negotiation table. Captain Marvel, the quintessential Truman Democrat, does his part for the global crusade against communism by transporting supplies of blood from the States to military hospitals near the front line.

Marvel's golden opportunity to exchange witty (yet socially aware) banter with the wacky crew of the Four-Oh-Seven-Seven is interrupted by the arrival of a thirsty horde of Mongol bloodsuckers on a whole plasma packie run...

The parties at Vampa Mongol Vampa are wild, dude!
Marvel manages to swat aside the commie bloodsuckers, but not before they cart off most of the field surgery's blood supply. A helpful Corporal Klinger fills the Captain in on the pertinent backstory...

Here Marvel channels both Walter Winchell and Charlie Brown.
Realizing that his presence might deter the Maoist monstrosities from returning for an all-American ass-whooping, Marvel transforms back into boy reporter Billy Batson and waits for the following evening. The vampires return as hoped, but Billy's plan runs into a dirty commie hitch when the devious fiends cart him off, along with the remaining supplies of blood. As per Captain Marvel story conventions, Billy is bound and gagged and brought before the dreaded Scarlet Vampire.

The Supreme Leader of the Vampire Soviet uses the opportunity to explain his nefarious plans, as well as to revel in his status as an racist caricature...

"I considered the 'So solly' approach, but it felt rather gauche."
When the pack of fiends sets out to wreak havoc among the American forces, Billy is left behind to consider his future as a dessert course. Billy's guard, understandably miffed about being left out of the mass exsanguination, decides to give into his cravings for hot teenage boy blood and pounces on the helpless lad.

Luckily for Billy, his captor's fangs were designed more for perpetuating stereotypes rather than piercing flesh, and Billy's gag becomes snared in the vampire's incisors. This stroke of luck gives Billy the chance to utter the magic word and transform into Captain Marvel, who promptly smashes in the vampire's skull with a boulder before flying off to deal with the rest of the commie leeches.

Over at the 38th Parallel, the situation has taken a turn for the dire, with the American forces have been routed by the unholy might of the Glorious People's Vampire Army. Have no fear, true believers, because Captain Marvel is on the scene and prepared to set things right no matter how many laws of physics are broken in the process...

TRUE FACT: The sun is entirely composed of delicious creamery butter. Also, if you cut and paste properly, you can alter a Land O' Lakes package to make it look like the Indian Maid is flashing her boobs.
Marvel's masterstroke of bad science quickly takes care of the rank and file bloodsuckers. When it comes to the Big Vamp-huna, however, Marvel takes a more hands-on approach...

It's moments like these when Marvel realizes how much he loves his work.
What's that you're saying? The story seems a bit violent, jingoistic and racist for a comic book aimed at younger children? Pshaw! Everybody knows that the Golden Age Captain Marvel stories are the pinnacle of wholesome kid-safe entertainment, unlike the drek published today. If it wasn't so, then why would Captain Marvel Adventures #140 carry the following stamp of approval?

The seal doesn't lie, my friends.

Halloween Countdown: October 6 - deader than dead

Zombie Jen and Zombie Maura at yesterday's Zombie Walk in Salem.
No offense to the lovely ladies in the above photo, but zombies ain't what they used to be. Like Dracula and Frankenstein's monster before them, they've become quaint archetypes denuded of much of their shock value by media oversaturation. It has reached a point where even a fan of the zombie apocalypse subgenre such as myself has become jaded, and the shambling hordes of ravenous undead have become a shallow high concept plug-in (see also: monkeys, ninjas, and pirates) or simply locked into a predictable formula.

More so than the various slasher fiends that haunted the screen back in the day, zombies were the true archetype of horror for my generation, which came of age in the rubble of the Grand Consensus and the rise of Reagan. They were creatures born of miscalculation, failure, and/or hubris, a rotted reflection of contemporary society reduced to its basic impulses -- consume and assimilate.

They were an effective visualization of underlying anxieties -- ecological, biological, racial, economic -- reflecting the sense that society was poised to devour itself. It's a concept that can, and did, float a host of metaphorical conceits wrapped in a gut-munching package. And so it played out, with various levels of competence, across scores of low-budget domestic and European films that graced the drive-ins and video stores of my childhood and early teens.

As fringe entertainment, it was great fun, terrifying and amusing in equal measure. Once it came to the foreground of the popcult consciousness, however, things began to fall apart quickly. Blame the popularity of the Resident Evil games or the inherent decadence of the entertainment biz, but once the professional tastemakers turned their Eye of Sauron onto the zombie subgenre, it was a foregone conclusion that they wouldn't move on until it been completely strip-mined.

Sequels, remakes, spin-offs, tributes, parodies, cash-ins -- the whole arsenal of weapons of commercial destruction were employed toward this end. The dreaded "death of a thousand tweaks" tactic of making minor alterations to the established conventions was rolled out as an attempt to stress differences ("Hey, our zombies can RUN FAST!") while wallowing in sameness ("Otherwise, though it's a straight-up zombie flick!"). The gore 'n' metaphor formula, incidental or organic in the source material, became self-consciously codified to the point of absurdity. ("WE SURVIVORS ARE THE REAL LIVING DEAD!" Dude, that's, like, soooo deep. Yawn.)

Such is the way of all corpse flesh. At least we'll always have Louisville...because Return of the Living Dead, no matter how cheapjack it looks to me these days, is still the most depressing and disturbing horror film I've ever seen. Exploitation cinema has never been so unrelentingly Sophoclean.

Halloween Countdown: October 2 - Mockingbird Lane Blacktop

And so we turn to the age-old question, The Munsters or The Addams Family?

Don't worry, there isn't a wrong answer, just a matter of personal preference.

Both shows were blessed with outstanding casts, but Gomez, Morticia, and company will always hold the place of higher affection in my heart, as the unselfconscious eccentricity of the Addams clan makes for better entertainment in my book. The Munsters, on the other hand, came off as a by-the-numbers family sitcom given a Universal monster makeover. The Munsters hewed close to suburban norms. The Addams Family never managed to realize that they were living outside the mainstream, and wore their freakiness on their sleeves.

(It reminds me a lot of my own blue collar bohemian childhood, which is the likely explanation of my pro-Addams Family bias. There were fewer model train explosions and more shouting in my version, though, and my uncle was less into putting lightbulbs in his mouth as he was into using hand puppets to obscenely proposition stewardresses.)

The one area where The Munsters possessed unquestionable superiority was the theme song arena. As iconic as the snap-accented Addams Family jingle is, it doesn't hold a red wax candle to the crypt-surf instrumental that kicked off the start of each new episode....as well as providing inspiration to generations of deathrockers and horrorpunks to come.

the valet of the infantile

It's been an unusally hectic Sunday and yet another massive thunderstorm is bearing down upon the northwest suburbs of Boston, so I'm going to have to leave you to puzzle out this following sequence from "Poison Ivy," a gag strip from the rich vein of material that is Feature Comics #98, on your own...


The Units - Tight Fit (from Digital Stimulation, 1979) - Together in electric nightmares.

Sounds Incorporated - Sounds Like Movin' (from Rinky Dink, 1965) - I have made it clear in my will that this track will be used as my funeral march. Don't mourn, comrades, shake yer tailfeathers!

the root of all evil

The above lesson on the nuances of mythological avarice is the reader's introduction into "Captain Marvel Fights the Menace of Greed" from Captain Marvel Adventures #111 (August 1950). The story is a quaint piece of agitprop crafted to evangelize on behalf of the post-WW2 "enlightened" variety of capitalism while dispelling any lingering spectres of Depression Era socialist agitation.

While popular mythology might lead one to think that the national consensus of the World War II period continued unbroken though the mid-1960's, the truth is that the immediate post-war years were a time of rampant labor unrest. There were a significant number of Americans who remembered the hardship of the Great Depression and who had given of themselves, overseas and on the homefront, during the war years who were determined not to be cut out of loop when it came to sharing the economic spoils of victory. The government's response to such agitation took the form of such draconian measures as President Truman's threat to draft striking transport workers in 1946 and the Taft-Hartley Act, which drastically curbed the power of organized labor.

The mythical and much cited prosperity of the 1950's was an artificial construct built on a foundation of Keynesian economic policies, government subsidized defense spending, a labor shortage, and the efficient application of planned obsolescence to the field of consumer goods -- a short-term balancing act which turned out to be unsustainable in the long run. To get to that point of hothoused (and unequal) prosperity, some socio-economic panel-beating had to be done, most notably through the cynically directed hysteria of the Red Scare and Cold War brinksmanship, but on a less shrill note in the pages of this comic story, as well.

When Mr. Morris, the very FDR-like owner of radio station WHIZ, embarks on a tour of Europe, he leaves the management of his business in the hands of Jason Cox, a individual whose hook nose and pencil-thin mustache came straight from central casting's "shifty character" drawer. Armed with the power of attorney, Cox implements a whole raft of workplace changes. Wages are rolled back, infrastructure and maintenance budgets are slashed, and payrolls moved to a biweekly schedule.

While the business press lauds Cox's "visionary leadership," boy reporter Bill Batson suspects something fishy behind his behavior. Hoping to get to the bottom of things, Billy transforms himself into Captain Marvel, the World's Mightiest Shop Steward, and confronts Cox...

"It's simple capitalism, Captain. You don't have anything against capitalism do you? Your costume does have a lot of red in it..."
Fear of being labeled a godless pinko who hates America and Baby Jesus forces Marvel to stay his hand, so he zips off to Pyramid Investment Corporation's various holdings to see if there really are resources to exploit, virgin wilderness to despoil, and rightfully elected governments to overthrow.

The diamonds, uranium, and oil are present at the sites though the portfoilo had the locations mixed up. A chastened Marvel returns to apologize to Cox for his lack of faith, only to be met by a hail of bullets from two of Cox's business associates. As it turns out, Cox had been moonlighting as the manager of Pyramid even as he diverted funds to the firm as financial manager of WHIZ. (Thank you, financial industry deregulation!)

Not realizing that the mineral investments were actually on the level, Cox's plan was to fleece the station for all it was worth before fleeing with his suitcase full of ill-gotten (but entirely legal, according to revised SEC rules) gains. Marvel wastes no time in giving Fortune Magazine's "Outstanding Executive of 1950" a good thrashing and a stern, yet confusing, lecture...

"'Mixed message?' Whatever do you mean?"
With Cox sent up the river (to a minimum security country club) and Mr. Morris back from Europe, WHIZ returns to its harmonious state as an ideal example of "social contract" capitalism in action...

...until the firm's stocks are downgraded due to Morris's largesse, causing the investors to depose Morris as CEO and sell the station to a national media conglomerate, who promptly lay off most of the workforce and switch the format from local programming to nationally syndicated fare. Michael Savage's show now runs in Billy's old time slot.

Heartbreaking, I know, but you have to stay competitive in today's global economy. Plutus demands it.

The O'Jays - For the Love of Money (from Ship Ahoy, 1973) - Money and I have an open relationship. It comes and goes as it pleases and I enjoy it while it's around.

Lord Sitar - If I Were a Rich Man (from Lord Sitar, 1968) - Hey! There's a sitarist on the roof! (He'd better climb down before the wife sees him. She despises sitar music.)

The Flying Lizards - Money (That's What I Want) (from The Flying Lizards, 1980) - It's a means, not an end unto itself.

Friday Night Fights: Gamma Beach Party

SHARK BITES TEEN HULK
TEEN HULK PUNCHES SHARK
TEEN HULK AND SHARK TEAM UP TO WIN THE TITLE OF 'BIG KAHUNA'
That's the Hulk movie they should have made -- Dwayne Hickman as Ned Talbot, Annette Funicello as Betsy Ross, Jody McCrea as Rick Jones, Vincent Price as The Leader, and, of course, Paul Lynde as General "Thunderbolt" Ross.

I swear, sometimes it's like those studio people are allergic to making money...

Jack Nitzsche - The Lonely Surfer (from The Lonely Surfer, 1963) - MOONDOGGY SMASH!

Joe Harnell - Main Title (from The Incredible Hulk TV OST, 1978) - Strings, horns, and polyester pathos as only a 1970's theme song can deliver. Accept no substitutes.

(The biggest Kahuna of them all.)

Friday Night Fights: Girl Power!

This week's fast and furious contribution to the Battle Cosmic features Misty Knight and Colleen Wing demonstrating the chop-socky bona fides that earned this pair of private investigators the title "Daughters of the Dragon":

(from The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #32, January 1977; by Chris Claremont & Marshall Rogers)
Lesson I learned from this story: In the 1970's, ladies' fashionwear was designed to rip and tear for maximum titillation -- but not to the point of actual nudity -- during martial arts free-for-alls with an army of thugs.

Also, said fight scenes offer ample opportunities to showcase panty shots. Ms. Knight apparently favors thongs, while Ms. Wing is more of a traditionalist.

Convenient and empowering! Tune in next time, when Ms. Wing gets hooked on smack and does naked yoga to exorcise the monkey from her back in another epic tale in the creepy Chris Claremont manner!

Alan Tew - The Detectives (from The Sound Gallery, Vol. 1, 1996) - As featured in the 1977 blue movie, Punk Rock. Pinball machines (back when they used to still make them) and adult films have always had a knack for riding the crest of the popcult trend wave.

spit on your grave

From Yahoo's featured stories box:

Awwwww... Such a shame. I feel so broken up about the news, honest. In fact, let me dig out an appropriate funeral dirge for this somber occasion...

Dave "Baby" Cortez - The Happy Organ (from The Happy Organ, 1959) - The #1 hit that helped convince scores of musicians to start twiddling with their organs.

(Seriously, though, my sense of schadenfreude doesn't extend to the poor souls getting shafted due to plant closures because the captains of fucking industry couldn't figure out the simple calculus that "economic downturn + soaring gas prices = retool the production lines towards smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles." Then again, the suits never feel the pain, so there's no motivation to think proactively.)

ghosts of a dead future

I remember when the future was orange, set to the tune of blip tones and the whirring of tape reels in sterile, climate-controlled rooms.

It was a time when utopian fantasies took a back seat to dystopian nightmares engendered by the collective anxieties of a society trying to find its footing after a period of immense political and cultural upheaval. The only way to escape, if escape was even a possibility, was to return to the green world's ecological alternative to dehumanizing technological processes.

Yet, for all the lip service paid toward a life lived in harmony with nature and the rejection of the synthetic, it was an era marked by contoured plastic, earth-toned polyester, and Brutalist architecture.

It was an interesting time in which to be a kid, that's for sure...



See what I mean?

Raymond Scott - Baltimore Gas & Electric (from Manhattan Research, Inc. 2000) - From the dawn of ambient electronic music.

Gerhard Trede - Technischer Bewegungsablauf (from Electronic Toys: A Retrospective of 70's Easy Listening, 1996) - That's "technical course of motion," for those of you not fluent in deutsch.

Electric Moog Orchestra - Space Symphony (from Music From Close Encounters, 1977) - Ever summer, Maura makes a point of watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I'd rather watch paint dry.

everybody says it's so

Another Sunday afternoon, another set of b-sides plucked from the grooves of Armagideon Time's shared archive of vintage vinyl. Today's featured tracks come from a couple of 12" singles purchased by my wife in her younger days. They were chosen on the basis of shared excellence, as well as the fact that Maura's stack of records were easier to get at in our attic's uncontrolled chaos than mine were.

Nina Hagen - New York, New York (German Version) (the b-side of 1983's "New York, New York" 12") - The record purchase by which a young Maura crossed the Rubicon into punk rockitude. Though my wife has a fierce devotion to Frau Hagen and her body of work (which is why our first daughter shall be named "Nina"), I've never been able to develop the same level of appreciation. Perhaps I'm allergic to Teutonic new wave space valkyries.

Depeche Mode - Any Second Now (Altered) (the b-side of 1981's "Just Can't Get Enough (Schizo Mix)" 12") - Instrumental a la Mode. Maura refers to this track as "The Goldfish Song," based on an interpretive dance routine set to it that her teenaged self and a friend came up with during one of their many silly moments. The bleep-bloops represent bubbles, apparently.

the choice is made with a fresh resolve

It's a beautiful spring day up here on Mt. Misery. Even though I still have a little ways to go before I reach full functionality again, it's time I put aside the emo-rbidity of the past couple of weeks and carpe the diem.

Besides, I can think no better way to facilitate the healing process than with some fresh air and some infectious grooves. The windows have been opened and the playlist has been finalized, arbitrary standards of quality be damned.

Catch you on the dance floor, cats and kittens -- this party is just beginning.

David Naughton - Makin' It (from a 1979 single; collected on Super Hits of the '70s: Vol. 24, 1996) - An American werewolf at the disco! This was actually the theme song to the identically titled and short-lived sitcom (starring Naughton) made to cash in on the Saturday Night Fever craze. The series tanked, but the song was a hit, coming in at #14 on the Billboard Top 100 songs for 1979 and even finding its way into Meatballs, the 1979 summer camp comedy film starring Bill Murray and Chris Makepeace.

Looking back, I kind of regret that I didn't use "I've got looks/I've got brains/and I'm breaking these chains" as my high school yearbook quote.

MiniVIP - Miss Augusta (from Let's Boogaloo: Vol. 3, 2006) - One of the contemporary numbers from the third -- and best -- volume of this excellent series of "lost" and retro-leaning soul, dance, and funk compliations, and it's an absolute stunner, with organ-driven hooks that catch hold of the listener and refuse to let go. (Not that any right-thinking person would want to escape its aural snare.)

Fatboy Slim - Ya Mama (from Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, 2000) - Not to be confused with "Yo-Yo Ma," though considering the Boston Symphony Orchestra's sad attempts to keep up with the trendiness curve (Ben Folds? Seriously?), I cannot rule out the eventual possibility of seeing a bunch of highbrow culture vultures tripping on E and waving glowsticks in time to a Norman Cook performance at Symphony Hall.

Shriekback - My Spine (Is the Bassline) (from a 1982 single; collected on Priests & Kanibals: Best of Shriekback, 1999) - At the present moment, it is my jaw that is pulsing out the beats and acting as my own internal rhythm section, but why quibble over details? Those peripheral axons lead to the same central trunk line, after all.

don't mix with new groups

I'm a bit busy today, but not so busy that I couldn't take the time to post this important reminder....
...that the Good Old Days^TM were actually pretty damn horrifying, and wonder why our society is more germ-o-phobic now than it was back in the days when polio, scarlet fever, and the like were far more widespread and less easily prevented and/or treated.

Rip, Rig, and Panic - Beware (from God, 1981) - I had been saving this short but unsettling instrumental number by the genre-transcending postpunk-jazz-funk collective (which included a couple members of The Pop Group and a pre-"Buffalo Stance" Neneh Cherry) for this year's Halloween countdown, but October is quite a ways off and it fits today's topic perfectly in both title and tone.

here forever in the beauty

Because I had nothing else planned for today and because my brother recently brought the story to my attention, we're going to take a brief guided tour through the acid-eaten pages of Captain America & The Falcon #164 (August 1973). Written by Steve Englehart and illustrated by Alan Weiss (no relation), "Queen of the Werewolves" finds the heroic duo investigating suspected hijinx at a remote prison which, as typical for the genre, resembles a set from a 1930's Universal horror film. Under the management of the slinky (and somewhat underdressed) Nightshade, the facility has embarked on a "rehabilitation though lycanthropy" program for the inmates.

The Star-Spangled Avenger is less than pleased with the results (which the maternally-minded Nightshade calls her "babies") and proceeds to kick some man-beast tail. After witnessing the werewolves' inability to subdue the good Captain, the project's secret backer -- revealed to be the evil mastermind and lemon-hued racist caricature known as the Yellow Claw -- decides to cut Nightshade's funding. Unable to secure alternative financing for her work, Nightshade throws herself off the prison roof in despair.

Based on that brief synopsis, "Queen of the Werewolves" sounds replete with the full complement of drag-and-drop plot elements common to many Marvel superhero stories from that wild and crazy era. It's a reasonable assumption to make, yet an incomplete one, as it fails to consider a few things that push the story out of the pedestrian territory and into the realm of the inexplicably bizarre.

Things like...

HAPPY CAP IS HAPPY!
Cap-life regression captions!
Werewolf BDSM!
Scream, Were-Falcon, Scream!
Nightshade's sexadelic emotiveness!
I'm quite fond of Alan Weiss's art, but I don't think his particular style is a good fit with superhero genre material. It's especially true in this story, where Nightshade's provocative poses are consistently at odds with what's being expressed in the dialogue and captions -- as in the above panel, for example, or when she's sprawled across a computer console like an auto-show model while agonizing over the Claw's lack of support.

Her use of "babies," rather than the standard "pets" or "pretties," in regard to her were-minions is also disturbingly off-putting in a vaguely Freudian manner (though that might just be me). Cap's remark upon meeting her (as she suggestively waves one of Falcon's stray feathers about her person) that "She's a little girl -- posing, playing grown-up" doesn't help matters, either.

As grotty as that aspect of the story is, it still comes nowhere close to the truly inexplicable appearance of...

NICK FURRY, MOUNTAIN MAN OF S.H.I.E.L.D.!
Words fail me.

The Frantics - Werewolf (from The Complete Frantics, 2004) - No, not the folks behind the agressively unfunny "Boot to the Head" comedy sketch, but a Puget Sound rock 'n' roll outfit active during the late 50's and early 60's (and who backed Bobby Darrin on "Dream Lover"). Excellent stuff indeed.

Thom Pace - Maybe (Theme to Grizzly Adams) (from Television's Greatest Hits, Vol. 5: In Living Color, 1996) - This is the short version used in the eco-positive 70's TV series (which I learned was produced by Sunn Classics, of In Search of Noah's Ark and Hangar 18 fame). This song never fails to make the wife a little misty-eyed when she hears it.

Friday (K)night Fights: The Hero You're Dreaming Of

(from Batman #111, October 1957; by Edmond Hamilton, Sheldon Moldoff, and Stan Kaye)
Why is Batman wearing medieval plate armor (complete with bat-insignia) and punching lions in the face? To conceal the radiation-proof suit he's wearing underneath from the crooks he's pursuing.

It makes perfect sense to me. In fact, the sense of causality is positively lucid compared to other comic stories from that era.

Link Wray - Batman Theme (from Rumble! The Best of Link Wray, 1993) - It's those few, brief spoken word parts that really make this version outshine all others. (Well, that and Link Wray's exceptional guitar work.)

(Viva Bahlactus!)

he who waits is lost

So remember I couple of days ago, when I was whining about what I thought was just a bad head cold? I think it has turned out to be something a little more complicated.

Last June, when I made my long-postponed trip to the dentist, I was told that two contiguous teeth on the upper right-hand side were candidates for root canals, due to the fact that both had been cracked open and left untreated so long before being filled. My dentist wrote me up a referral for an endodontist, and was supposed to set me up an appointment for the initial consultation.

The thing is that, for whatever reason, I never got a call back from the endodontist. I didn't pursue the matter, since I had a dozen cavities that needed filling, my dental coverage was scaled back (modestly, but still) when I switched unions, and root canals are expensive. Better to nip the numerous small problems in the bud, I thought, rather than blow the entire year's benefit on a couple big procedures that, let's face it, rank rather low on the "things we prefer to experience scale." (My wife, who has had a root canal done by the same people not too long ago, says that the process is completely different these days, and that she fell asleep in the chair while it was being done. Even so, I notice she isn't hoping to undergo the experience again any time soon.)

Besides, I figured, how bad could things get in the eleven months before the next fiscal year? The rotten chompers were already sensitive, I had lived through the white hot pain of countless canker sores, and I was not going to be intimidated by some bush league toothache. Sure, my friend recounted some over-the-top horror story about a classmate of his whose jaw abscessed due to similar neglect, which made the poor kid hallucinate and speak in tongues, but my friend has similar stories for every health issue from hangnails to cerebral hemorrhages.

Despite all my rationalizations and calculations, the answer to "how bad could it be" turned out to be "pretty damn horrible, actually." I've spent the last 48 hours distracted to the point of near madness by a throbbing, itching ache in my upper jaw, the inflamed nerve endings broadcasting all sorts of nasty sensations through my sinuses, cheek, and throat (which is why I though it was a head cold at first). As much as a canker sore feels like a blowtorch being held to the fleshy tissue inside the mouth, it's an acute pain and can be blocked out with a bit of effort. Until I finally took my wife's advice about the wonders of ibuprofen (O, glorious OTC pain reliever!) this morning, I was reduced to a state where I began to consider the merits of unconventional treatment as practiced by Bruce Willis's character in 12 Monkeys (fortunately I couldn't remember where I put my hunting knife) or by the learned triumvirate of Howard, Fine, and Howard...


Bill Haley & His Comets - (Now and Then) There's a Fool Such as I (from The Decca Years & More box set, 1991) - Tell me about it, Bill.

The Upsetters - Toothache (from The Complete UK Upsetters Singles Collection, Vol. 2, 2002) - The only kind of toothache worth having.

I know just where I stand

It's a new year, children, and so let us start 2008 on a properly groovy note.

To facilitate the cosmic process, I, bitterandrew guru-andrew, have assembled a modest playlist of mod-tastic treasures for your aural enjoyment. Drink deep and let the music set you free.

Alan Moorehouse - Beatcoma (from Let's Boogaloo!, Vol. 3, 2007) - This happening bit of vintage library music is the current frontrunner in the "music I would use for my personal theme when I become dictator of the world" stakes. If you want a picture of that future, imagine a pair of go-go boots doing the frug on a human face — forever.

The Beat Chics - Now I Know (from The Beat Scene, 1998) - An all-female outfit that were contemporaries of (and toured with) a slightly better-known Liverpool quartet with a similar name.

Ennio Morricone - Valmont's GoGo Pad (from the Danger: Diabolik OST, 1968) - I *heart* Danger: Diabolik, and Ennio Morricone's soundtrack for the film is a major factor behind that sentiment.

Camera Obscura - Happy New Year (from Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi, 2001) - This indie pop gem is the only contemporary track in today's featured selections, but it does have a decidedly retro tilt to it while being contextually appropriate, as well.

out with the new, in with the old

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the time is precious I know

A Monday holiday + a data rollover day + an already busy time of year at work + a workplace open house this afternoon = yet another minimal content post.

In the meantime, here's The Clash covering Booker T. & The MG's in a track whose title perfectly sums up my present circumstances.

The Clash - Time Is Tight (from Super Black Market Clash, 1994)

Halloween Countdown: October 18 – his and hearse

"Groovy," indeed...and just one of many reasons to date a lass from Cemetery Heights, despite what the chattering classes (i.e. "Scooter" and "Cookie") might say.

The Ghastly Ones - Haulin' Hearse (from A Haunting We Will Go-Go, 1998) - No need to worry about low gas mileage, because this souped-up corpsemobile is fueled by the hi-test, clean-burning power of surf guitar.

Daniel Ash - Spooky (from Daniel Ash, 2002) - The Bauhaus/Tones on Tail/Love and Rockets alumnus (and male lipstick model) turns in a creditable cover of the 1968 hit by Classics IV (which should not be confused with Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol, an entirely different kind of classic).