No nostalgic or philosophical musings today, just a tip of the hat to one of the Great Moments in Comic Book HistoryTM: Captain America engaged in a life and death struggle with the VW Beetle that crashed though the window of his third-story Brooklyn apartment:
Ain't that the way of things -- just when you think everything is going to be all right, the fates take a carefully aimed Parthian shot just to keep things interesting. If there is a higher power, I suspect that it's a really big fan of William Sydney Porter.
Even if my present setback amounts to a inconvenient short-term prelude to better days, I'm having a hard time looking past looking past the excruciating now...mainly because it's difficult to see the grand horizon when one is bent over the bathroom sink in a state of intense pain.
Teenage Head - Bonerack (from Teenage Head, 1979) - A repost, but this masterpiece of Canadian punkabilly is always worth hearing.
...I gotta wear shades. Thankfully this ad from the October 1982 issue of Creem magazine features a veritable bonanza of hip eyewear suitable for all your fashion subgenre needs:
We begin our holiday countdown with a yet another example of why Andrew should not be allowed access to Items of Ultimate PowerTM.
I think it would be for the best if everyone could just disregard the Ultimate Nullifer at the top of my holiday wish list.
The Brian Setzer Orchestra - Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! (from Dig That Crazy Christmas, 2005) - I have nothing but respect for the talent Mr. Setzer and his body of work -- so much so, in fact, I even named my constant feline companion after him -- but after yesterday's hellish experience, I cannot agree in any shape or form with the sentiments expressed in today's featured holiday musical selection.
The latest addition to my wife's collection of spooky ephemera, purchased yesterday at the local Target store for a buck and a quarter:
When a button on the side of the skull's jaw is pressed, its eyes light up and it emits a tinny OOOO-EEEEE-OOOO noise that freaks the shit out of our house's resident pet population. Mildly creepy, I suppose, but the back of the skull's packaging is where the real terror resides:
I'm well aware of the long-standing relationship between skulls and heavy metal, but never have I seen it manifested quite so literally...
The "recycle or manage as hazardous waste" line makes me wonder if there's an abandoned salt mine beneath the Nevada desert packed to the gills with concrete-entombed dry storage casks full of spent Skulls With Sound & Light from Halloweens past.
The Misfits - Skulls (from Walk Among Us, 1982) - I'm not one for compiling lists of "desert island discs," but if I were to dabble in such maddening pursuits, Walk Among Us would be right up in my top five choices. The album serves up some often imitated, but never duplicated, first-rate melodic punk rock dripping with retro-macabre goodness that crams more high points into twenty-five minutes than most bands manage in their entire careers.
Sparkle Moore - Skull and Crossbones (from a 1956 single; collected on Good Girls Gone Bad: Wild Weird & Wanted, 2004) - WARNING: This track is classic female-fronted rockabilly, a genre known to Armagideon Time to knock the unwary listener onto his or her ass with its sheer awesomeness.
It might seem odd to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch in a Halloween countdown, but, hey, if it's good enough for Stephen King...
In the opening chapter of Danse Macabre, King's ruminations on the history and mechanics of the horror genre, he recounts his childhood memories of the announcement that the Soviets had placed the first artificial satellite in orbit. From his perspective, it was an event as momentous and harrowing as the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Kennedy assassination, which may seem a hyperbolic reaction to a polished sphere containing a simple radio transmitter, but historical context is key here.
The terror wasn't about the crude device lofted into orbit as much as the delivery system that put it there. The Soviets had proven they had the means to successfully launch a ballistic missile, and so quite literally seized the tactical high ground in the Cold War arms race. Jet bombers had limited range and could theoretically be intercepted. (There was a Nike anti-aircraft missile site not too far from my grandmother's childhood home on the Woburn/Burlington line at the time.) An ICBM, on the other hand, could hit Muncie, Indiana just as easily as it could hit Seattle, with a next to zero chance of being knocked from the sky en route.
(This hasn't stopped the military-industrial complex from pissing away billions in trying to create a "missile shield", even though anything short of a 100% success rate would be fundamentally pointless. A successful interception would be poor consolation to the residents Hartford if both the Boston/Route 128 region and New York City had been transformed into fallout-belching radioactive craters.)
The Sputnik launch did mark the crossing into a new frontier, but intertwined with the visions of jet cars and lunar vacation excusions was the notion that Cold War geopolitics and the associated anxieties thereof had extended their reach across the entire planet -- an additional sense of dread in an era rife with panics, moral and otherwise.
Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Rockit Miss USA (from Flaunt It! 1986) - The launching of Sigue Sigue Sputnik caused much dread in those concerned about CFC's and the hole in the ozone layer.
Skip Stanley - Satellite Baby (from a 1956 single; collected on The Ultimate 50's Rockin' Sci-Fi Disc, 2003) - SHAKE YOUR ASTEROID!
...and just so no one accuses me of straying from the musical aspect of the Halloween theme month:
dok-u-ment - Live in Fear (from New Wave Complex, Vol. 9) - Nearly ten minutes worth of oppressive and dark synth. Googling turned up next to nothing on dok-u-ment, except that they were probably from Germany or thereabouts and that this track came from a cassette release, which would explain the why it sounds so muddy. (Personally, I think it just adds to its claustrophobic atmosphere.)
(This is a slightly tweaked version, featuring different songs, of last year's tribute to The King. I'm not reposting it out of laziness, but because I found myself writing the same damn thoughts down on this year's anniversary of his death. I also have a dentist appointment today, and while being doped up on painkillers might give me insight into the man and the legend, it's not really conducive to well thought out writing.)
Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Aaron Presley’s death. On August 16, 1977, the King’s heart, weakened by years of drug abuse and too many deep-fried sandwiches, gave out as he squatted on the toilet in his palatial estate; an absurd yet mythic death for an absurd yet mythic figure.
It is Elvis’s role as a mythic figure that fascinates me. It is a tragic tale of celebrity and success, ruin and rebirth set against the backdrop of the American Century and the concurrent rise of mass consumer culture. A talented poor boy makes it big, only to fall prey to his own voracious appetites, the destructive counsel of self-interested handlers, and a hunger for wholeness that could not be sated by conspicuous consumption. Elvis’s story serves as the Platonic form embodying the distorted sense of perception which accompanies the loftiest peaks of celebrity status and amassed wealth.
I wonder how things would have turned out for the King he hadn’t spent over a decade tied up (thanks to his predatory manager, Tom Parker) making progressively awful films with even worse musical numbers. Set free from the stifling confines of his marketing-dictated persona and given access to some the first-rate songwriters and innovative musicians of the sixties, who knows what direction his career could have taken?
While he had no particular love for the Beatles (and bitched about their “anti-American” attitudes to Richard Nixon), Elvis saw Welsh crooner Tom Jones and Brill Building alumnus Neil Diamond as his rivals in the mid-to-late 60’s, suggesting grand pop inclinations consistent with his marvelous post-Hollywood output (“Suspicious Minds”, “Burning Love”). Despite being the seminal figure in the creation of rock’n’roll, Elvis never inextricably locked himself into the genre that way other early rock’n’roll and rockabilly artists did, preferring to see himself part of the broader tradition of pop vocalists.
Today's featured musical selections feature The King at his trancendent best and embarrassingly worst.
Elvis Presley - Trying to Get to You (from The Sun Sessions CD, 1990) - The Sun Sessions is the Elvis album, as far as I'm concerned. It's a series of historical moments (and outstanding songs) captured on acetate, refreshingly free of the foul dust that floated in the wake of his dreams.
Elvis Presley - Dominic the Impotent Bull (from the Stay Away, Joe OST, 1994) - "Milkcow Blues Boogie," it ain't. Hold it, fellas. That don't move me. Let's get real, real goofy for a change.
There's some question as to the actual title of the song. The soundtrack to 1968's Stay Away, Joe remained unreleased until 1994, when the film's songs were tossed onto the collected rerelease of the music from Kissin' Cousins and Clambake, where "the Impotent Bull" (really, the best thing about the song) was shed in favor just plain "Dominic."
The whole point of this stay-at-home vacation was to relax and recharge, so why do I feel more tired today than I did a week ago?
M'n'M's - I'm Tired (from a 1980 single) - I could have sworn I've posted this track already, yet a quick search of the archives turned up no evidence that I had. It's a rather nice, if slight, bit of new wave girl pop that all the cool kids seem to be into.
Eddie Cochran - Twenty Flight Rock (from Somethin' Else: The Fine Lookin' Hits of Eddie Cochran, 1998) - As featured in the 1956 sex comedy, The Girl Can't Help It. Jayne Mansfield and a roster of early rock and rollers? That's cinematic perfection in my book.
(Although the film snob in me would argue that Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is the apex of Frank Tashlin's work in the genre, it's hard to top a movie that, while a retread of Born Yesterday, captures Little Richard, Fats Domino, Gene Vincent, and Eddie Cochran in top form and in glorious Cinemascope.)
The synergetic entertainment/marketing blockbuster that is the Transformers movie opens today. While I have no desire to submit myself to a widescreen assault of Michael Bay-isms and blatant product placements, the film’s premiere does present me with the opportunity to spotlight my affection for the gloriousness that is Cosmos.
I was twelve years old when the first generation of Transformers debuted in the States, which meant I was old enough to achieve escape velocity from the multimedia hard sell surrounding the toy line. Though I didn’t care about the ready-made Transformers mythos, which seemed rather puerile even from a kid’s eye level, I was fascinated by the sleek, angular designs of the toys themselves which dovetailed nicely with my growing appreciation of giant robo anime (where many of the early Transformers designs were “borrowed” from). I was especially fond of the Mini-Bot figures at the low end of the line’s price range, which combined affordability with an inspired sense of oddness, and none were as delightfully odd as Cosmos.
The extremely retro flying saucer vehicle mode…
…the awkward-looking (Maura says “absurd”) robot mode…
…and the garish red, green, and yellow color scheme that evokes both an Eastern Bloc design aesthetic and a commitment to pan-Africanism… What’s not to love? It’s as if some cheapjack Japanese toy from the early 1960’s managed to sneak its way into a hip, happening American franchise of the mid-1980’s, and I can totally get behind that concept (being somewhat unstuck in time myself).
When I went of a vintage robot toy buying spree in the late 1990’s, Cosmos was at the top of my wish list. (My original toy had gotten lost, along with most of my childhood junk, during the Great Upheaval of 1988.) The replacement version now occupies a place of honor on my computer desk, and it occasionally moonlights as a kicky chapeau for Oscar the Pughuahua.
Concept sketches for a deluxe edition update of Cosmos were displayed at Botcon (an event I envision resembling the circle of hell reserved for thirty-something victims of arrested childhood), but the newfangled designs lacked the simple appeal of the original’s and resembled a cross between a paramilitary Frisbee and a next-gen anti-personnel mine. (I still would have bought one, though.)
Billy Lee Riley and His Little Green Men – Flyin’ Saucers Rock & Roll (from Red Hot: The Best of Billy Lee Riley, 1999) - Take me to your juke joint, earthman. I feel the urge to wail on my space-sax. Update: Because I was behind in my blog reading, I didn't realize that AM, Then FM posted Sleepy LaBeef's excellent 1979 cover of this song on July 1st. Great minds think alike, yadda yadda and so forth.
Violent Femmes – Eep Opp Ork Ah Ah (Means I Love You) (from Saturday Morning Cartoons’ Greatest Hits, 1995) - Jet Screamer! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
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