awake unto me

I've started playing Dark Crusade again, which does a pretty decent job at capturing the fun of playing tabletop Warhammer 40k while eliminating the problematic aspect of having to deal with real-life fans of the wargame. Or the scandalous cash outlay required to field a respectable army.

(When I got into the hobby in the late 1980's, you could get a blister of four models for five dollars. These days, a single model can set one back in the neighborhood of ten bucks. And I though polo was the sport of the obscenely wealthy...)

Edwin Starr - War (from War & Peace, 1970) - Contrary to what the song tells us, war is good for many things -- boosting support for an inept president, lining the pockets of defense contractors, generating business for the manufacturers of body bags and prosthetic limbs, and generally promoting an environment of state control that would not be tolerated in other circumstances. It's important to keep a fair and balanced attitude about these things, after all.

John Leyton - Beautiful Dreamer (from The EP Collection, 1995) - Britain's answer to Edd "Kookie" Byrnes (and member of Joe Meek's stable of pop singers) does a swinging take on a Stephen Foster standard.

Tuesday Weld - Are You the Boy? (from a 1960 single; collected on Ultra Chicks, Vol. 3, 1998) - Not The Real Tuesday Weld, but the real Tuesday Weld, the starlet who played Thalia Menniger in Dobie Gillis and the object of one of my hopeless retro-crushes (along with Ann-Margret and Melody from Josie and the Pussycats), here doing her best Shelley Fabares impersonation.

a non-consensual hallucination experienced by one

I had the strangest dream. I dreamt that I dedicated an entire week’s worth of posts to monkey-related matters…

…oh, damn.

Classix Nouveaux – Is It a Dream (from La Verite, 1982) – Strange to think this band rose from the ashes of X-Ray Spex. This track has nothing on Classix Nouveaux’s Nu Ro masterpiece, “Guilty” (from 1981’s Night People), but its cheesy, over the top mix of disco and synthpop makes for a fun listen.

The promo video for the song is a real gem, and perfectly captures all that was glorious and ludicrous about the era:


Everything goes better with kendo!

The Damned – Is It a Dream (from Phantasmagoria, 1985) – General consensus states that Phantasmagoria and Anything, the two albums the band released after Captain Sensible’s departure, are inferior products and betrayals of The Damned’s punk roots. To hell with that attitude, I say.

I don’t get punk purists at all. How does one celebrate “breaking all the rules” by yoking one’s self to a rigid doctrine? Some time around my twenty-second birthday, I decided to shelve my punk jacket in favor of a warmer and more practical black overcoat. I also quit trying to find new ways to dye and chop my hair, and opted for an easy to maintain crew cut style. Shortly afterward I ran into a vague college acquaintance of mine who wanted to know the reasons for the change.

“It was too much effort to maintain, and it’s better to let go willingly than hold on until you just look foolish,” I told him.

“Fuck the man. I’d never SELL OUT,” he responded.

Apparently The Man’s schemes are furthered by a skinny guy realizing that a leather jacket with a broken zipper is not the wisest outerwear choice during a New England winter. Such pearls of wisdom are gleaned from a thirty-year old burnout that works splits at a liquor store and spends all his free time hawking demo tapes of his amazingly terrible hardcore band.

As for the song, it’s a nice piece of melodic rock that hearkens back to the 60’s pop and garage rock sound that Dave Vanian (and Captain Sensible) obviously had a huge affection for.

Here’s the (unfortunately poor quality) promo video: