wake up

Orbital - Choice (from the US version of Orbital, a.k.a. the "Green Album", 1991) - The lines have been drawn. The soul of the nation hangs in the balance. Get off the fence and join the election year rave. The party won't stop until the last ballot drops.

Halloween Countdown: October 29 - think about it

Back in my junior high days, my friend Brian and I would hike up the Middlesex Canal path to the (now defunct) Northeast Trade Center whenever Jolly Jim's Flea Market rolled into town. A three dollar admission fee (if a friend wasn't working the gate that day) would grant one access to a hundred or so stalls filled to the brim with overpriced crap...and the one dude in the far corner who sold comic books.

Brian was an early adopter of the comic collector ethos that stresses bags, backing boards, and buying multiple copies of a book for investment purposes. For him, these trips were joyless exercises in speculative accounting where he'd blow ten bucks on two "hot" comics that he'd never actually read.

For me, though, it was all about the quarter bins, which in those days were packed near to bursting with overstock from the previous decade (i.e. the 1970s). Three dollars would net the ambitious longbox digger a dozen issues of disposable entertainment -- reprints of Silver Age DC sci-fi stories, random issues of Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-in-One, and books involving obscure bits of trivia gleaned from my (then) incomplete run of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.

None of the comics I purchased could even remotely be classified as "money" books -- though that hasn't stopped some of the sleazier comics stores from slapping a ten dollar price tag on the Monark Starstalker issue of Marvel Premiere and seeing if some fool will take the bait -- but I didn't get into the hobby to see a return on my investment. I got into it because it was dumb escapist fun.

That's how I ended up with a complete run of the "It! The Living Colossus" stories from Astonishing Tales. They aren't especially good or groundbreaking or intellectually stimulating, but they entertained me.

It! (the exclamation point signifies a clicking sound, as per the language of the African bushmen, I assume) originally debuted as "The Colossus" in Tales of Suspense #14 (February 1961), back in the days when Marvel's bread and butter were improbably named monsters bent on terrorizing the world. The Colossus was an example of the socialist Realism aesthetic gone horribly wrong -- a hundred foot tall stone statue commissioned (under threat of death) to celebrate the power of the proletariat.

Unfortunately, the Marxist concept of historical inevitability did not take into account the possibility that a crab-like alien creature would appear, merge with the monument, and go on a rampage behind the Iron Curtain...

...which offered Jack Kirby the opportunity to re-imagine The Amazing Colossal Man as Cold War agitprop. Damn cool, indeed.

Though the story ended with the promise of a new age of global peace and understanding, The Colossus returned in Tales of Suspense #20 (August 1961), in which the Soviets decide to ship the now-inert statue to Hollywood as a "gesture of peace." The alien crabmen, having backslid from their previous state of enlightenment into a warlike state, once again seized control of the Colossus, resulting in another stone cold rampage. The American military fared no better than its Warsaw Pact counterparts in stopping the carnage, and even the mighty beatniks were helpless in the face of the stone titan's wrath.

It was left to Bob O'Bryan to save the day, and the unappreciated set designer concocted a plan to lure the aliens out of the Colossus and into a bigger, meaner looking statue loaded with high explosives and a remote detonator. O'Byran's quick thinking earned him the renown long denied him as well as the affections of starlet Diane Cummings.

The Colossus, now sporting the "It!" moniker, returned in the pages of Astonishing Tales #21 (December 1973) as one of Marvel's many attempts to dress up superhero material in monstrous clothing. Bob O'Byran, having been upgraded to a crack special effects man during the interim, decides to put the Colossus to use as the star of a sci-fi blockbuster. His work is interrupted, however, when a ham actor rival for Diane's affections causes an accident that leaves O'Bryan confined to a wheelchair and trapped in a perpetually surly mood.

Bob's rants about the cruelty of fate are interrupted by a bunch of goons seeking to abscond with the Colossus, and in his impotent rage discovers he has the power to telepathically control the statue. He also discovers that animated stone constructs are vulnerable to nerve gas -- despite having neither lungs nor nerves -- and the Colossus is hauled off to the lair of Dr. Vault, a mad scientist of the most generic variety.

Vault has a hankering for a strong, new body and thinks that a bald, granite statue with no genitalia would be perfect for his purposes. He is not as keen about the size, though, and uses his mad science prowess to shrink the Colossus to a more strip club-friendly eight feet tall. The process is interrupted around the thirty-foot benchmark by O'Bryan, who reasserts control and smashes up Vault's hidden lair. Filled with a renewed sense of purpose, Bob spent the next three issues fighting various scale-appropriate fellow monsters from Marvel's pre-superhero days in between indulging in bouts of typical four-color melodramatic angst.

Viewed with a grown up's eye, the stories are pretty bland and predicable, with the beats rigidly mapped to the overused device of O'Bryan losing his connection with the Colossus at dramatically convenient moments. They also suffer from an over reliance on passing reprinted Silver Age material as in-story flashback sequences and Dick Ayers, an artist whose work I tend to like, trying too hard to mimic Jack Kirby's early 1960's style....which was nifty in 1961, but baffling and distracting in 1973.

Yet for all that, I still retain a good deal of affection for the run, because there's a point where you just have to put aside the quibbles and take the concept of a thirty-foot telepathic flying (Did I mention the Colossus can fly? It! can, and why shouldn't It! be able to?) statue that fights Giant Space Gargoyles on top of the Capitol Records building and fights Giant Chinese Kung-Fu Fighting Dragons for the absurd thing of flawed beauty it is.

That would be Fing Fang Foom, Jack Kirby's re-imagining of Godzilla as Cold War agitprop!
It! The Living Colossus's Astonishing Tales run ended on a inconclusive note with issue #24, but the dangling plot threads were resolved a half-decade later in The Incredible Hulk #244 (February 1980). Bob O'Bryan -- successful, married to Diane, and walking again -- comes out of semi-retirement to protect the City of Angels from the fury of the Jade Giant, only to have his control of the Colossus wrested away by the fiendish Dr. Vault.

Having finally gained the perfect body he'd waited so long for, Vault falls prey to excessive euphoria and tries to go toe to toe with the Hulk. It goes about as well as you'd think...

O'Bryan takes the destruction of the Colossus in stride, as he'd already moved on past the animated statue follies of youth into more adult pursuits. Comics being comics, though, both Bob and the Colossus have made the occasional appearances since then, as there is no character so obscure or resolution so final that someone won't resurrect It! out of irony...or even worse, totally sincere reverence.

Alien Sex Fiend - Get Into It (from It: The Album, 1986) - I was really into it for a year or two, then I fell out of it, forgot about it for a while, then rediscovered it.

Halloween Countdown: October 23 - pale shadow of the bat

Longtime AT readers may remember last year's Halloween Countdown post on the subject of Dell's superheroic take on Frankenstein. As I mentioned back then, Frankie wasn't the only public-domain horror icon to be dusted off and repackaged by the publisher to cash in on a hot trend. Dracula, too, got a chance to strut around in spandex and fight the neverending battle for truth, justice, and the Transylvanian way...

I shall become...a bat. Kinda... Sorta...
Putting aside the whole parasitic embodiment of evil issue associated with the brand, the idea of Dracula as superhero isn't that unworkable a concept. After all, one of the most iconic and popular superheroes of all time owes more than a little to the Dracula mythos. Despite being done to undeath, the "benevolent vampire with a tortured soul" trope has proven popular (and profitable) enough to support a whole host of works dealing with the subject.

Not that this has any bearing on the Dell's Dracula comic book series, however, which is by-the-numbers drek of the most shameless variety.

The Dracula in question is not the infamous Count Dracula of novel and film, but rather a modern-day human descendant of Vlad Tepes who has fled the communist oppression in his homeland. As the blurb at the beginning of Dracula #4 (March 1967) puts it: "His family name he wishes to clear from the false legend which surrounds it is little know (sic) here."

While some might see little moral difference between an immortal bloodsucker and ruthless monarch who liked to impale his enemies on sharpened spikes, it is a matter of great import to Drac Junior...and what better way to set the ignorant masses straight about the false rumors of vampirism than to dress up in a vaguely bat-like costume and call yourself "Dracula?"

Upon arriving in the States, Drac Junior assumes the identity of "Al U. Card," a rather obvious pseudonym for someone who is obsessed about keeping a secret identity despite the clever touch of telling folks that the "U" stands for "Ulysses." Most of his time is spent working his comic book science mojo in perfecting the magic formula which allows him to turn into a bat (again, way to buck the stereotype, Al), but his off hours are spent fending off the advances and inquiries of B.B. Beebe (no shame in groaning, dear readers), a jet-setting Nellie Bly of the swingin' sixties...

There's a little bit of Dracula in all of us, my Sterno-eating friend.
After a couple close calls, Al is forced to reveal his true identity to B.B. when he saves her from a skydiving mishap. B.B. turns out to be steadfastly supportive of Al's ambitions, and even helps him set up his "Secret Cave" headquaters/squat in an abandoned military bunker that fortuitously comes pre-loaded with a room full of bat cages.

Al wastes no time getting back to his primate-to-chiroptera transformation studies, which rankles the increasingly clingy B.B., who demands that Al help her drive a minibus full of children to the beach. Al wisely begs off, not realizing that the chagrined B.B. and gaggle of snotnoses are headed right into the clutches of The Evil Piper (as opposed to The Awesome Piper), an evil genius with dastardly ambitions...

When Nickelodeon advertising executives go bad...
B.B. roughs up the Piper with some Judo moves, but is quickly overpowered by the hypnotised kids, who take great pleasure in tossing her into the minibus and rolling it off an oceanside cliff. (Kids. God love 'em.)

A guilty Dracula arrives just in time to save Ms. Beebe from her own personal Chappaquiddick before rushing off to put a stop to the Evil Piper's reign of terror...which largely consists of stealing a red convertible from a nearby gas station. ("Today, a sweet ride. Tomorrow, the world!") It all comes to a head on the cliffside, where Drac finds himself stalemated by the Piper's threat to harm the children.

With neither side able to break the deadlock, it is left to B.B. to resolve the Kobayashi Maru scenario with some out-of-the-box strategic thinking....

The sad answer to "If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you?"
As the little bodies rain from the skies like sacks of wet sand, the Piper gets a taste of the fist (and angst) of Dracula...

A precision fighter, Drac ain't.
...and it turns out that the kids are fine, as B.B. somehow managed to set up a safety net below the cliff's edge. She explains her the reasoning behind her cunning plan thusly...

"I studied child psychology under John Wayne Gacy!"
The exercise in child endangerment leaves B.B. with an unshakable conviction that she is destined for a life of superheroics. Over Dracula's half-hearted protests, she takes a swig of the magic bat transformation potion and is reborn as "Fledermaus," or "Fleeta" for short.

Stepping out for a key party at the Langstroms' place...
EVILDOERS BEWARE!

(Or not, as it was the last issue of the series, not counting some early 1970's reprints of the run.)

Christine Pilzer - Dracula (from a 1966 EP; collected on Femmes de Paris, Vol. 1, 2002) - Les enfants de la nuit...quelle belle musique go-go ils font.

drill baby drill

Tom Smirch is a typical American...

"Fuck you, nanny state jerks! This is the land of the FREE!"
...with a typically American sense of moral obligation.

"Oh, well. If anyone asks, I'll say it was started by illegal immigrants."
Tom's ecological conscience makes him perfectly suited for work in the oil industry, where he can work to generate windfall profits while despoiling virgin landscape to make America independent from foreign oil.

You just know his truck is sporting a "Ron Paul '08" bumpersticker...
Tom is just trying to live the American Dream, but try explaining that to those pointed-headed liberal elitists bent on wrecking our cherished way of life...

Captain Marvel's flagrant disregard for IOKIYAR is appalling.
Because Marvel was too busy saving townspeople from the tar flood instead of rescuing Tom's excavation equipment, the drilling venture goes belly up and Tom is ruined....

...OR IS HE?

You're doing a heckuva job, Smirchy!
(From Captain Marvel Adventures #126; November 1951)

I was watching the fallout from the collapse of Bush's grand corporate welfare plan on the morning news. The network gave a considerable amount of screen time to various stockbrokers and speculators, who were universally unrelenting in expressing their contempt of Congress's lack of action.

I'm not convinced the bailout plan will work, and I'm certain that it won't help those folks who have suffered most from the market meltdown, but the last thing I need to see are the same motherfuckers who lined their pockets during the late smash-and-grab-a-thon bitching that the government isn't riding to their rescue fast enough. To quote Comrade Highlander, "my heart bleeds pish" for them. Let them pray to the trinity of Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman for succor...or is that "suckers?"

Transvision Vamp - Baby, I Don't Care (from Velveteen, 1989) - Schadenfreude loses much of its luster when innocents are caught in the vortex of comeuppance. Transvision Vamp loses much of its indie bubblegum luster when you realize that every song on every album sounds virtually identical.

Future Sound of London - It's Not My Problem (from Accelerator, 1991) - It's not my problem unless it affects me directly, in which case it's the WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED EVER AND SOMEONE NEEDS TO FIX IT RIGHT NOW.

you should want to hide

These are interesting times we live in, capable of turning the most sedate of souls into a honorary urban guerilla. Even if one has no intention of striking a blow against global capitalism by tossing a trashcan through the widow of a Starbucks or by pounding away on one's Authentic Anarchist Tribal Drum^TM at a protest march, there are many instances where concealing one's identity is absolutely vital.

We like to think that the courage of our convictions and righteousness of our actions are strong enough to bear close public scrutiny. However, even the staunchest soul will quail when the cashier at Trendo Records arches a pierced eyebrow in response to one's query about the release date of the new Danity Kane album.

There is no shame in using subterfuge when circumstances demand it. The guerilla is the fish that swims in the sea of the people, and it is crucial to realize that ideological purity must occasionally take a backseat to simple pragmatism.

Yes, you could deliver a stirring lecture on why your longstanding affection for Diane Lane is written in the heavens above, but odds are that your eloquence will be lost entirely on the smirking, pimply-faced goon at the ticket counter, and you run the risk of missing the first twenty minutes of Nights in Rodanthe, to boot.

It is far better to slip in under the cover of an adopted persona, something can allow to glide undetected amongst the masses. Something like a grizzled old prospector, or perhaps even Sir Walter Raleigh. This might seem like daunting undertaking for a newly awakened agent of change, but thankfully the countercultural gurus at 3M have issued this easy-to-follow manifesto on the art of disguise:



Simple, elegant, and most importantly, effective. Trust me on this, I speak from experience.

Ernie Smith - You Won't See Me (from Trojan Box Set: Beatles Tribute, 2005) - It's impossible to top pop perfection, but this reggae rendition of my favorite Fab Four track does a pretty admirable job with the source material...despite scraping up against the pilings during the chorus.

Groove Armada - If Everybody Looked the Same (from Vertigo, 2000) - Try making different tracks yourself -- It's fun figuring out all kinds of samples, fills, loops, and effects. And "Scotch" Cellophane tape holds the sound collage together like magic!

the autumn of my killer robot

He came to us on a brisk October afternoon in 1951. His arrival was heralded by the hum of servo motors and the intoxicating scents of ozone and machine oil.

His name was Timmy Tinkle, he was a robot, and he needed a job.

He was created in the laboratory of Professor Derook, but wanted to leave his surrogate father's shadow and blaze his own path.

Mr. Morris found Timmy a position in the WHIZ-TV warehouse, and he soon proved himself to be a motivated and tireless worker. Many were the days we labored shoulder to mechanical shoulder in the cramped, dusty space, and a bond developed between boy reporter and mechanical man.

Such was the strength of our mutual affection that I failed to see the obvious warning signs -- the failure to properly sign off on shipping manifests, the vicious beating and hospitalization of the night watchman, the way in which the office safe was torn out of the wall and its contents emptied.

I didn't want to believe it. I worked with Timmy. He was my friend. We were closer than brothers. How could such a sweet, gentle construct be a brutal robo-criminal?

In my grief and confusion, I confronted him, wishing more than anything that it was just a silly misunderstanding.

His reaction was terrifying to behold.

I was forced to defend myself, and perhaps the shock of betrayal made me strike back with more force than necessary.

Afterwards, I kneeled over Timmy's inert body and gazed down in disbelief at the shattered remains of my once-close friend.

I prepared to squash his cybernetic corpse into a ball for easy transport to the scrapyard, but my blearly eyes noticed something unusual embedded in Timmy's inner workings.

It was a remote control device planted by Derook. Having managed to create a fully functioning humanoid robot and a complex artificial intelligence unit with vacuum tube era technology, Derook had decided the best way to monetize his discoveries was to use Timmy as a Trojan Robot in order to steal the petty cash box from a minor market broadcast studio.

With Derook in police custody, the refurbished Timmy returned to his job at WHIZ-TV, and put his killer robot ways behind him.

Well, for the most part...

Moloko - Are 'Friends' Electric? (from Random: A Tribute to Gary Numan, 1997) - The sleazy side of future shock.

The Gymslips - Robot Man (from a 1983 single; collected on Rockin' with the Renees: The Punk Collection, 2000) - Not to be confused with the Scorpions track (covered by The Expoxies on Stop the Future) with the same name, this is an infectious piece of punky retro-pop by a quartet of hard-partying British lasses.

(panels taken from Captain Marvel Adventures #125 and #136.)

study in scarlet

Happy birthday, Mr. Sims! I tried to get the Baroness, but she was already booked to appear at a John McCain fundraiser.

808 State - In Yer Face (from Ex:El, 1991) - Techno grooves that hit like unto a thing of iron...or a thrown car battery.

Lalo Schifrin - Main Titles (from the Enter the Dragon OST, 1973) - Facekicking it up old school.

Friday Night Fights: Calling the Shots

It's pandemonium in the pool hall as Sun Girl (a late 1940's Timely comics heroine and occasional sidekick to the original Human Torch) picks her shots wisely and sinks a couple of hoods like a true shark.

(from Sun Girl #1, August 1948)
Orbital - The Girl with the Sun in Her Head (from In Sides, 1996) - Get yer ecologically-friendly rave on.

Slowdive - When the Sun Hits (from Souvlaki, 1993) - ...we'll be too busy gazing down at our shoes to notice.

(Come on, let's all celebrate.)

Schrödinger's landscape

Cambridge Road, Burlington MA, circa 1949
My maternal grandmother grew up in Woburn's west side, three steps from the Burlington line. Her father and grandfather worked at Cummings Farm, long since bulldozed and obliterated to make room for the shopping centers, condo complexes, and office parks that occupy the crowded stretch of Cambridge Road (and it will always be "road," not "street" for me) from Bedford Road to Route 128.

Traces of the Cummings estate still remain, as the bulk of Mrs. Cummings's substantial land holdings were bequeathed to the "children of the City of Boston" in a restrictive trust which eminent domain takings have only taken a small bite out of. Every so often there has been talk by Boston politicians to find a loophole to break the trust and sell the prime real estate, thus securing a huge windfall to fund projects like the Rose Kennedy Greenway or a 1:1 scale replica of the Sphinx -- bearing Tom Menino's face -- to be built on the South Boston waterfront that is Mayor Mushmouth's personal Valley of the Kings.

For now, though, the patches of forest and scrub between the office buildings and used car lots remain overgrown and beyond the reach of deep-pocketed developers. Every time I drive up that way with my grandmother, which is more times than I can count, she delivers the same series of nostalgic rambles about what the area used to be like when she was young.

"We used to race paper boats in that drainage ditch. My uncle drowned in that stream when he was trying out his new galoshes. He was six. I used to babysit for people up this hill. It seemed so steep back then. You could wander wherever, and no one would tell you to get off their land..."

The litany never varied, and became etched in my brother's head and mine through years of repetition. Even when I drive the stretch alone the routine of places and events queues up unbidden, a subconscious mantra and stuff of which family in-jokes are made.

On the way back from our weekly trips to Target, I'll occasionally take a detour through my old North Woburn stomping grounds, though it has become harder and harder to reconcile the visual input with the expectations of decades-old memories. The phantoms retain more substance than the present reality, and I still see the Tomato Hill sandpit or the seasonal marsh/skating pond in the woods in place of the subdivisions that now occupy those spaces.

From my late childhood through my mid-twenties, the pace of development in the area was glacial -- a single-family home here and office building there, but apart from the last lurching encroachments from the local industrial park, there was little in the way of rapid, drastic transformations of the landscape. What did occur was gradual enough to be easily internalized and placed in context. This not only applied to Woburn and its surrounding communities, but to the places in town where I used to spend my time -- Brighton Ave to Kenmore Square, Mass Ave from the MIT Bridge to Porter Square, Cambridgeport to Central Square, Porter Square to Davis.

Then came the real estate boom and tsunami of gentrification that came in wake of rent control being repealed in Cambridge. I also got a car and started driving again, which shifted my axis of operations away from the city and back to the suburbs. I work in Boston, but what I actually see of the city is mostly limited to a stretch of Morrissey Boulevard and the view from I-93. It's no great loss, to tell the truth. In this era of retail chains and global branding, the only difference between city and suburb is that the suburbs have better parking and slightly smaller chance of stepping in a puddle of human urine.

When I do make the rare trip into town, I find a landscape transformed beyond recognition, to the point (as in the time I met up with a friend in Davis Square) where I lose my bearings in places I've walked through dozens of times before. I can deal with the new well enough, but I've yet to encounter an instance of the "new" being an improvement rather than a bland upscale repurposing.

The nature of the changes filters back to me from my wife or from urbanocentric friends. Kenmore Square has been effectively eradicated. Allston has slowly been absorbed into the fiefdoms of Boston University and Harvard. Harvard Square has turned into a strip mall with pretensions of atmosphere and Central Square has gone from the home of radical bookstores and Cheapo Records to hosting The Gap.

There's no real reason to go back anymore, and I prefer to preserve my mental image of the landscape (including the stop sign in Kendall Square my pal Leech walked straight into in a golden moment of unintended slapstick) as it was back in 1994 in a dead/not dead state immune to the quantum flucutations of empirical evidence.

It does make me an unreliable source of driving directions, however.

Duran Duran - Careless Memories (from Duran Duran, 1981) - Infinitely preferable to "Careless Whispers."

Saint Etienne - It's All Gone Horribly Wrong (from The Misadventures of Saint Etienne, 1999) - A Japanese soundtrack album to an English film released only in Spain and which starred an American actress (Parker Posey, as per the Mandatory Posey Appearance Act signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1994).

Svensk - Getting Old (from a 1967 single) - Psychedelic freakbeat is immune to the ravages of time.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Architecture and Morality (from Architecture & Morality, 1981) - Brutalism is maladaptive.

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.

Vacation 2008: Day 2 - The world shines for me today

While the skies above Boston's northwestern suburbs indulged in a pageant worthy of Wagner, the wife and I chanced the torrential rains and thunderbolts in order to indulge in some nerdspicuous consumption at the comic/used book shop two towns over.

I was specifically searching for copies of Twilight Zone Magazine from the early 1980's and the frustratingly elusive issues of Date With Debbi and Debbi's Dates I need to fill out my collection. Though I came up empty-handed on those fronts, I still scored a respectable trove of items of retrological importance -- the Burning Sensations' mini-LP, The Brains' eponymous 1980 album, a vinyl copy of the Xanadu OST in its gatefold cover glory, and a small stack of Dynamite and Pizzazz magazines from the 1970's.

Total price: Just a shade over twenty bucks.

When we got home from our shopping trip, BBC America was playing a block of episodes from the second season of Spaced.

This is what vacations are supposed to be like.

Mint Royale - Space Farm (from On the Ropes, 1999)

Electric Light Orchestra - I'm Alive (from the Xanadu OST, 1980)

Ode to a State of Granite

Let us move to New Hampshire
And get back to nature
In a pre-fab McMansion
built on a clear-cut postage stamp.

Let us move to New Hampshire
Where vanity plates are cheap.
HOTMILF bolted to the bumper of your Ford Galaxy
and RONPAUL1 on my Escalade EXT.

Let us move to New Hampshire,
We will claim to be "independent,"
Make fun of Democrats,
and vote Republican.

Let us move to New Hampshire
Where the finer things can be found
Like fireworks, gun shops,
And cheap crystal meth.

Let us move to New Hampshire.
I will buy a Harley, go to Laconia
and play outlaw biker
instead of graying middle manager.

Let us move to New Hampshire
and be done with Taxachusetts
except for the two hour commute
to our jobs in Boston.

Let us move to New Hampshire.
If the gas prices should beggar us
If the I-95 gridlock devours our daylight hours
We can take comfort in not paying a sales tax.

The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu - It's Grim Up North (Radio Edit) (from a 1991 single) - A different Manchester and an entirely different breed of grimness await those brave enough to tread across the Bay State's northeastern border.

The radio edit lacks the full radiant and terrifying glory of the the full "Part 1" version of the techno/industrial masterpiece, but it still gets the job done rather nicely. The transition into Hubert Parry's hymn "Jerusalem" (based on William Blake's preface to Milton: A Poem) never fails to knock me on my ass with its sheer power. It's one of those instances of brilliance that elevates a good piece into something trancendentally awe-inspiring.

It also doesn't hurt that Blake, loony mystic that he was, has long been a favorite poet of mine....

I shall not cease from casual spite,
Nor shall my ire sleep in my hand,
Till we have built a saner world,
In New England's mean and bitter land.

it's just a passing phase

From the "Dear Josie" advice column in Josie & The Pussycats #73 (December 1973), a poignant look at the problems facing yesterday's youth:


Wow. Josie takes the "tough love" approach to a whole new level. The quotation marks around "groovy" and "bells" give the proceedings a certain Jack Webb je ne sais quoi:

"Flares," "bells," "Bolivian boot-cuts" -- cute "with it" names for something as insidious as communist ideology. You kids need to realize that crimes against fashion are no laughing matter.

While Josie's rather harsh response to poor L.J. overlooked the possibility that kids can be capriciously cruel to their peers, I do concur that wearing bell bottoms is never the solution.

Sparks - Angst in My Pants (from Angst in My Pants, 1982) - This fine slice of quirky new wave pop was inspired by Kierkegaard's Edifying Discourses on the Dread Associated with One's Trousers Tenting Up at Inopportune Moments (itself a response to Hegel's Wissenschaft der Kameltoe).

Orbital - Pants (from The Blue Album, 2004) - This is one of two trouserly tracks featured on Orbital's final album. (The other track, "Acid Pants," was done in collaboration with -- surprise, surprise -- Sparks. Such is the power of pants-love.)

First Choice - Smarty Pants (from Armed and Extremely Dangerous, 1973) - The first days of disco.

touch my garden

Yet another quaint curio culled from Pizzazz, this time from the puzzle pages of the December 1977 issue:

Sweet Christmas in July! I guess it truly is the season for giving...deeply...of oneself. Hopefully Mr. Cage was enough of a "hero for hire" to reciprocate in kind.

(The fact that this ran during the sleazy middle of the Flynt Era makes it difficult for me to believe that it was just another instance of comic double un-entendre. As one of my college literature professors was fond of saying, "All description is necessarily selective.")

Goldfrapp - Hairy Trees (from Black Cherry, 2003) - After five years and countless spins, the bloom has yet to fade from this dark rose of seductive electronica.

a hell of world

There will be no installment of B-Side Sundays this week, as the temperature in the attic is currently fluctuating between "blast furnace" and "stellar core" temperature levels. While there are circumstances where I would certainly risk spontaneous combustion for the sake of my beloved readers, said circumstances do not include "searching through the bins for that one Shakespears Sister twelve-incher I bought back in 1992."

So I'm just going to throw out this Simsean philosophical question...


...and this utterly-disposable-yet-endearing techno-rock musical annotation, instead:

Republica - Kung Fu Movies (from Speed Ballads, 1998)

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.

ain't gonna give anybody any slack

Surfin' the zeitgeist with my homies! Woooo!
...which is why I need your help in getting my old lady's car out of here. I'll pay you ten bucks.
Making the Wu-Tang Clan look like The Lettermen...
Tough, yet with a tender side that yearns for the embrace of a pair of firm, 'roided-out arms...
Of the many words that come to mind when I think "cat," "tall" is not one of them.
So come up with a comprehensive community policing plan, a source of decent-paying jobs, and a midnight basketball program, quick!
...and I won't stop until you get enough! Ooooh! That goes double for you, Martin Bashir!
PROTIP: When pursued by Nigel, take cover behind the sloppily-rendered streetwalker.
I'm (not really) sad to say that I wasn't able to re-establish law and order in Center City's BAD part of town, as the game's shoddy digitized graphics, piss-poor collision detection, and painfully lame attempt to exploit popcult trends were too much for me to bear. Honestly, though, any town that allows itself to be conquered by the Gloved One probably isn't worth saving in the first place.

Back of Tha Neck - Hangin' Tough (from the Rock Vegas Boston compilation, 2004) - In which the local hardcore lads pay homage to Beantown's proud musical legacy.

The Uniques - You Ain't Tuff (from Uniquely Yours, 1966; collected on Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1998) - Yer grammer an spellin iz two gud fer you two be a reel tuff cooky. Mebbe this slyce uv Louisiana garage rok will stiffn yer spyne.

Fluke - Hang Tough (from Puppy, 2003) - But never forget the importance of staying chill. Let Fluke show you how to do so in style.