chainsaw massacre mon amour

From the letters page of the October 1983 issue of Fangoria magazine on comes this transatlantic appel du coeur:


I wonder if any of Fangoria's three or four female readers (which, like dark matter and the Higgs boson, are a purely theoretical supposition) took this Charles Boyer du cinéma d'horreur up on his offer, and exchanged passionate letters about their shared love of The Beast Within and I Spit on Your Grave.

"Oh, mon ami, when saw I the photo of you in red food coloring and corn syrup covered, my heart, it lept. Someday soon together shall we be, Basket Case watching and searching Fulci zombie films from street vendors du bootleg video...."

Les Beatlettes - C'est Grâce À Toi (from Girl Group Power, Histoires de Filles: Quebec 60's Go-Go Music) - If I hadn't posted a Me First & The Gimme Gimmes track recently, I'd have gone with their cover of Johnny Lee's "Lookin' for Love" in a heartbeat. As it is, you'll just have to settle for this Francophone rendition of a Supremes classic, which shows that it is possible to have some infectious girl group fun without diluting one's sense of cultural identity.

Comix - Touche Pas Mon Sexe (from BIPPP: French Synth Wave 1979-85, 2008) - I learned about this compilation of vintage French synth wave from Joe over at Last Days of Man on Earth, and I owe him big time for the heads-up, as it has become my hands-down choice for favorite album of 2008. (Its melancholic electronic futurism was also responsible for dislodging the "Philadelphia Freedom" earworm I picked up during my second dental abcess of the year.)

Erasure - Oh L'amour (from Wonderland, 1986) - There's nothing Gallic about this one apart from the title, but we could all use a bit more confectionary synthpop in our lives. (If you responded to that with "not me," then I especially mean you, buster.)

Note: There's a new post up at the other blog in which I tackle a work of classical literature at the behest of a friend.

children of the counter-revolution

Buried somewhere in my attic archives is a copy of the January (February?) 1978 issue of Creem, which features a cover story on the Sex Pistols' disastrous American tour and subsequent break-up (wedged in at the end of the piece as a "breaking news item"). The issue also features a list of recommended punk records, with a mention of The Clash's debut LP being considered "too rough-sounding" for an American release by CBS and a review for The Jam's The Modern World.

The punky buzz was in the air at the time, with nuggets of punk news and rumors liberally sprinkled amidst the premature optimism for the Frampton/Bee Gees Sgt. Pepper movie's prospects and record labels playing both sides of the street with full page ads for The Vibrators' Pure Mania ("You've been conned! This is real rock and roll!") run back-to-back with ones for the various corporate rock gods punk was supposed to displace.

All in all, it offers an amazing glimpse at the rock'n'roll zeitgeist at a watershed time, the crossroads of millennarian rhetoric and sobering realizations. Which is why it pains me that I can't locate the damn thing after four years of searching through my boxes from the move to our house on the hillside. I suspect that I packed it, along with my Psychotronic film and video guides (which doubled as scrapbooks for the better part of a decade), into a "special" box for easy retrieval, providing yet another example of my being tripped up by my own clever thinking.

Oh, well, I guess we'll just have to settle for this unexpected find from the August 1978 issue of Pizzazz:

That's right, Mighty Marvel's mag for swingin' teens paid a visit to a Bowery dive bar in order to rake the cooling embers of the New York punk scene.

It starts off with some speculative junk food for thought...

...or will the "punk" tag be so freely and nonsensically applied that it becomes reduced to meaningless marketing jargon?

The writer then spends a while discussing club's overall ambience (i.e. dive bar chic) while unsurprisingly omitting any and all references to dirty needles and hepatitis infections. (Remember, kids: A 2% bleach solution is your friend.) As for CBGB's clientele...

Oh, so it's a downmarket version of Studio 54, then? Anyone care to wager if the dog collar and leather jacket kids mentioned in the article ever attended the venue before the media buzz began? Here's the accompanying photo of the tragically hip crowd...

One of these people is not a music critic for the Village Voice! Can you tell which one?
Tell me, Mr. Pizzazz Staff writer, how loud was it?

Loud enough to evoke a baffling Peanuts reference, apparently. Here's something I never understood about outsiders' descriptions of punk music -- music played in club venues is always too goddamn loud, unless the artist is playing an acoustic set. That's not something limited to just punk acts. If the music requires any sort of amplification, it's a given that the person in charge of the PA system will crank the volume up to "head inside a jet turbine" levels.

No vintage mass media depiction of punk rock would be complete without a taste of some representatively "punky" lyrics, and the article does not disappoint:

The members of Flip City were apparently alumni of the University of New Hampshire.
There is no entry for either Flip City in the International Discography of American New Wave. (Shrapnel, the other band cited in the article, has an entry in the listing of New Jersey acts.) By the time the article was written, most of the founding members of the Bowery scene had moved onto bigger venues, broken up, or slid into the "no wave" or "mutant disco" scenes, leaving an assortment of wannabes and bandwagon jumpers to occupy the field.

I'm kind of curious about Flip City, though, with its pair of female vocalists and the somewhat new wavey description of the band. Shrapnel, whose act centered around dressing up like Vietnam vets and engaging in mock firefights, sounds like yet another example of the novelty shock punk buffoonery that has glommed onto the scene since its inception and rarely lives up to its over-the-top promise. It's a lot easier to be loud and obnoxious than it is to be loud, obnoxious, and clever...

...which brings us to this mindboggling inset featuring one of the "really big American punk groups" of the era:

What the fuck, Pizzazz?
There's no Flip City, no Shrapnel, and definitely no goddamn Kiss in today's musical selections, just a swell pair of cuts from the golden era of the NYC punk -- off-kilter rock romanticism by Television and Suicide's sweetly sinister brand of synthpunk. I'm quite fond of a lot of the music that came out of the 1970's NYC punk scene, but I'm less charitable regarding the scene itself, which spent decades trying to distance itself from "punk" before rushing back to assert its primacy once the label had come back in vogue.

Television - See No Evil (from Marquee Moon, 1977)

Suicide - Cheree (from Suicide, 1977)

when you put it that way

Scholastic's Dynamite used to run a regular feature titled "Super-Heroes Confidential," much adored by my younger self yet completely forgotten about until I flipped through the recently purchased stack of mid-1970's issues of the defunct kiddie magazine.

It was a pretty nifty (and corporately ecumenical) method of genre evangelism from a time when kids were still the primary target audience for superhero comics. Each installment spotlighted a specific superhero -- mostly Marvel and DC characters, though I vaguely remember some representatives of the King Features comic strip stable getting face time -- with a smartly recolored reprint of the character's origin story followed with a single page FAQ covering other details and semi-pertinent information.

In a time before The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe or Who's Who in the DCU and the ready availability of comprehensive reprint collections, it offered the tykes a handy little infodump (and an opportunity to read otherwise unavailable material) to kindle the flames of nacent fandom...even if for only a short while.

The FAQ sections are especially priceless, as they attempted to distill months and years of often slapdash sequential storytelling into a couple of sentences of kid-friendly plain text. It may have escaped my notice at the time, but these nuggets of continuity-laden (and now, thanks to the endless circular grind of the medium, mostly out-of-date) trivia highlight the stupidity and absurdity of the genre in a manner that surpasses works such as Watchmen or Marshal Law.

For instance, check out this explanation of Captain America's romantic take on "family values," from a 1974 issue of Dynamite:

Naturally!
Jeepers, Cap, she's only (Agent) 13!

Roger McGuinn - American Girl (from Thunderbyrd, 1977) - I have nothing but the utmost respect for Roger McGuinn, both for his role in The Byrds and his subsequent solo career, but this baffling take on a Tom Petty classic is just wrong.....though not nearly as wrong as fucking the sexy younger sister of your middle-aged former flame.

Dead or Alive - Brand New Lover (from Rip It Up, 1987) - Don't look at me like that. Claim as much indie/punk rock cred as you want; we all have dance pop skeletons in our musical closets.

role perversal

The blurb on the cover of Marvel's Savage Tales #1 (May 1971) reads:


...and the editorial explanation reads as follows:

"The result is, perhaps, something just a wee bit new under the sun. Not quite sword and sorcery -- certainly not science-fiction -- and not exactly a political polemic. Robin Morgan clobbers Buck Rogers in the 25th century! Kate Millett zaps both Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless -- then takes Mongo over for good measure."

Or, y'know, it's a hamfisted-yet-titillating look at the women's liberation movement -- by way of John Norman's Gor novels and Planet of the Apes -- crapped out by a past-his-prime Stan Lee and adequately illustrated by John Romita.

"The Fury of the Femizons" takes place in a future world run by the U.S.A. -- the United Sisterhood Alliance, that is -- a gynocracy established after the women of the world had enough of males' oppression, belligerence, and inability to put the toilet seat down after use. The women of the Sisterhood spend their days engaged in gladiatorial combat or culling the herds of feral males and spend their nights being, ahem, "entertained" by domesticated sex slaves -- all in accordance with the established principles of radical feminist theory. ("Objective #1: Overthrow the partiarchy. Objective #2: Get fitted for metal corsets that expose maximum cleavage.")

"...and Sex in the City marathons!"
Lyra, an esteemed warrior of the Sisterhood and the in vitro sister of Queen Vega, pays lip service to the realm's guiding principles, yet feels unsatisfied with her way of life. This is not lost upon Syrani, the queen's advisor, an ambitious woman who combines the looks of Lieutenant Ilia with the political ethics of Karl Rove.

The steamy side of Machiavellian politics.
Lyra's dissatisfaction is partially due to to the fact that she has read, or rather "viewed," the forbidden headband-powered "mind tapes" which document how life had been before the feminist revolution. It is Lyra's hidden stash of those recordings that leads Mogon of the Hills, a male sleeper agent posing as a sex slave, to confront Lyra in hopes of recruiting her to his cause.

Mogon hails from a tribe of "noble" men, which unlike the feral wildmen, have learned from their gender's previous mistakes and want to establish equality between the sexes. (I can only imagine how it was done: "Mogon, come forth! For your trial into manhood, Kelpor will tell you what he did today and you must stay attentive through the entire tale!")

Lyra hesitates about helping Mogon carry out his plan to destroy the sperm banks the Sisterhood uses for replenishing its population, but comes around once she realises the other reason for her recurring sense of dissatisfaction...

This man, this monkey lovin'! Excelsior!
...the need for a lover with both a slow hand and an easy touch. After the pair are done mutually exploring the Forbidden Zone, they ride out to a secret camp in the ruins to meet up with Mogon's compatriots to plot the raid on the baby-making factory. (No, not China, you silly infertile yuppies!)

What they discover upon arriving, however, is a trap laid by Syrani's secret police force, which are dispached in an orgy of violent innuendo...

"I shall slide this unyeilding blade in and out until you beg for mercy."
Having killed a dozen agents of the state's security apparatus, Lyra and Mogon return to the royal palace and pretend that nothing ever happened. This incredibly cunning plan fails to work, and Lyra is brought before Queen Vega to answer to charges of treason. To spare Lyra from execution, Mogon decides to take the fall, and provokes the warrior princess into killing him in front of the royal court.

Though the exonerated Lyra puts on a brave face, even going so far as to demand some sex slaves for a threesome in order to give horny fanboys some wank material maintain appearances...

Breaking up is hard to do.
...she still longs for a man like the one she publicly eviscerated.

"A truly egalitarian world is a dream worth fighting for! Oops! I better get changed, this trois ain't gonna menage itself!"
After reading this story, the whole Striperella thing makes a whole lot more sense to me now...as does the theory that Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby deserve a lion's share of the credit for the genius of Marvel's Silver Age output. As terrible as "The Fury of the Femizons" was, I still found it to be far superior to Y: The Last Man on the subject of gender politics.)

Screamin' Sirens - Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad (from Hell Comes to Your House, Vol, 2, 1983) - YEEE-HAW! It's cowpunk time!

Jan Panter - Put Yourself in My Place (from That's How It Goes: The Pye Anthology, 2003) - Maura's been rediscovering her love of 60's girls groups (and 50's & 60's pop in general) after discovering the oldies music channel on digital cable. Here's a favorite of mine from the UK scene, released in the musically golden year of 1966.

a champion of fools

A letter to the editor from the July 1983 issue of Blip ("The Video Games Magazine"):


A news item from the August 1983 issue of Blip:


Moebius - Video Soldier (from Video Soldier in a Radio War, 1982) - Martial chants for a digital age, an era when the battle lines were rendered in monochrome vectors set against featurless black voids and winning meant staving off inevitable oblivion for one more level.

(More on Moebius here.)

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.

your chariot of the gods awaits

The Chihuahua Men of Sirius-7 walk among us! (At least the caption writer had the integrity to make appropriate use of quotation marks.)

It's one of the oldest tricks in the Handbook of Lazy Journalism: Take a current hot trend or media property, find a way to tie it back to some tangentially-related wire story, and from there stitch together a Frankenstein's monster consisting of equal parts press release and "news of the weird" item:

Joe Q. Jackson's skin has a pronounced greenish hue -- not because of gamma radiation, but because he has a rare skin disease. Few sufferers of the excruciatingly painful disease live past the age of thirty, but analysts are expecting Universal's The Incredible Hulk to break box office records when it premieres this Friday!

I know. I missed my true calling in life, but I take comfort in the fact that when I go to sleep each night, I do so free of the shame of trying to use war orphans and progeria victims to promote Sex in the City or the latest biblioturd squeezed out by Dan Brown.

If one were to take the tried and true formula outlined above and apply it to the slow-pitch softball arena of tweener mags at a time when the collective popcult consciousness was hyper-saturated with all things paranormal, the results would most likely resemble "Space: The Final Frontier" from the April 1978 of Pizzazz Magazine.

The article is a undercooked shepherd's pie of science fact, pseudo-scientific braggadocio, and a host of facile sci-fi references designed to kickstart the atrophy of the younger crowd's critical faculties, thus preparing them for the coming Reagan years and beyond...

(I've been referred to as "the Lysenko of retrologists.")

Dr. Hynek, whose twin careers of astronomer and "ufologist" can best be described as a long quest to have one's cake and eat it too, is absolutely right. It is far easier for me to imagine having my mind blown by some childlike alien Moog-and-laser-show enthusiasts than it is for me to imagine living under a militant imperial regime built on the ashes of a great republic.

In the year 2000, you will commute to work in your own personal Death Star! (Until the Alderaan branch office gets draconically downsized, that is.)

The musical portion of today's program is the stuff that myths are made of...

"There came a time when the Old Rock Gods died! The prog set died with the boogie rockers! The coked-out corporate behemoths perished, locked in battle with the flowers of anarchy unleashed! It was the last days for them! An ancient era was passing to the polyphonic waves of synthesized sound! Thus the New Wave of Gods were born!"

Nina Hagen - Gods of Aquarius (from ...in Ekstase, 1985)

Tubeway Army - Praying to the Aliens (from Replicas, 1979)

comedic pyrite

HAHAHAHAHA!
HAHAHAHAHA!
HAHAHAHAHA!
Uh, I don't get it.
Killing Joke - We Have Joy (from Revelations, 1982) - Or a synthetic substitution thereof. At least the music is the authentic stuff of which postpunk nightmares are made.

(The above pun-related tragedies were plucked from the "Dr. Doom Cracks Up" feature in the January 1978 issue of Pizzazz Magazine. Terrible as they may be, they're still funnier than any given Cracked article.)

feels so right it can't be wrong

Here's a look into the happier days of the Marvel Universe, as drawn by the late, great Dave Cockrum for a 1978 issue of Pizzazz Magazine...

Unfortunately for Ol' Jade Jaws, it doesn't matter how many gamma rays one has been belted with, there's no competing with Burt Reynolds's dark forest of chest hair and roguish grin.

It's hard to explaining to the post-Fonz generation just how huge a phenomenon Happy Days was with kids back in the day. Seen today, outside of the historical context, the show comes off as a typical hackneyed 70's sitcom (complete with canned catchphrases and a requisite "cool" character able to warp plot logic though the power of pandering to the audience's affections).

In the late 70's, though, it was a religion, practiced in playgrounds and lunch rooms across the nation by Garanimalistic or OshKosh B'Goshed child acolytes who recounted, discussed, and acted out scenes from the most recent installment of the faux-retro scripture. The Mallachi brothers (featuring former Sidehacker Michael Pataki) ...the fire at Arnold's... the Fonz on waterskis episode that spawned the term "jump the shark"...fucking Chachi for chrissakes... were all the subject of much nail-biting speculation and wonder.

It seems so quaint (and embarrassing) in retrospect, but it was the type of viewer-targeted submission hold that studio execs and television producers would sacrifice their first born children to replicate.

Dinah Shore - It Had to Be You (from Holding Hands at Midnight, 1955) - Because no one else but Stroker Ace would do.

Nuclear Assault - Happy Days (from the Good Times Bad Times NA EP, 1988; collected on Assault & Battery, 1997) - Because I need something soothing to act as a counterwight to the fist-pumping aggression I feel whenever I listen to Dinah Shore's music.

never mind the mammary papilla

Hey, have you heard the news?

Truly a sad day for anarchists and enthusiasts of visible nipples alike.

While Farrah-mania never recovered from the Crash of '78, gossip columnist Cindy Adams's hyperbolic pronouncement of punk's demise in the June 1978 issue of Pizzazz Magazine turned out to be somewhat exaggerated.

During the anemic days just prior to punk's commercialized resurrection in the mid-1990's, my friends and I used to joke that "punk is dead...and we're maggots feeding on its rotting corpse." Punk music and fashion may have become codified and commodified, but the underlying philosophy -- the demystification of process and rejection of authority -- remains valid despite decades of exploitation and misappropriation.

Crass - Punk Is Dead (from The Feeding of the 5000, 1978) - Representing the disgusted anarchopunk perspective.

The Exploited - Punk's Not Dead (from Punks Not Dead, 1981) - Representing the tribalist street punk perspective.

The Vandals - The Day Farrah Fawcett Died (from Fear of a Punk Planet, 1990) - I'm more of a Cheryl Ladd guy, myself.

doesn't mean it's understood

Do you hate traffic jams? Sure, we all do!

But did you know that congested highways are just one symptom of a larger problem?

Now while some would blame overdevelopment and poor civic planning, the willingness of health care providers to boost profits at the expense of patients, and the widespread reluctance to invest in public transportation and infrastructure, others see a different cause...

Yep, overpopulation is the problem, but lest one misconstrue this as advocacy of a pro-choice, pro-contraception platform, some clarification is in order...

It's not a question of too many people, but of too many of the wrong type of people. While it would be gauche to state outright the definition of such, there's a reason the Pew Hispanic Research Center is cited in the body of the text, and not relegated to an asterisked footnote like the other data cited was.

These veiled words of caution came courtesy of the following coalition....

...consisting of various interrelated "astroturf" organizations and a publishing house (whose biggest claim to fame is releasing an English-language edition of this charming piece of psuedo-literary agitprop), most of which are linked to this bunch of fun lovin' folks.

Interestly enough, this attempt to put a more socially and environmentally palatable face on nativism and xenophobia ran in the June 23, 2008 edition of The Nation, the venerable progressive periodical which claims to be "a wholly owned subsidiary of [its] own conscience." I guess the question is "at what point does the need for advertising revenue override moral integrity?" Especially when one considers that this isn't the first time the publication has cut such a deal.

The Specials - Doesn't Make It Alright (from The Specials, 1979) - At least I can depend on these purveyors of fine two-tone not to disappoint.

it's not animosity

From the March 1978 issue of Pizzazz, Marvel Comics' attempt to crack the tweener mag market:

Writing music reviews is easy when your target audience is a bunch of starry-eyed twelve-year-olds who think that a Big Mac constitutes haute cuisine. Nice work, if you can get it, though I suspect the psychic toll involved in writing lines like "an infectiously appealing little charmer that rocks, rolls, shakes, and boogies" in regard to such musical luminaries as Jimmy Osmond, Leif Garrett, and Cassidy the Younger on a regular basis would inevitably lead to a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the roof of one's mouth and parts beyond.

Here's the "smash single" that the reviewer issued the severe groove damage warning over...

Shaun Cassidy - Hey Deanie (from Born Late, 1977)

This Eric Carmen cover (three words I never imagined having to string together) did peak at #7 on the Billboard Top 100, though my wife, who briefly participated in the Shaun-o-mania craze, claims that she doesn't recall it at all. That's not surprising, as the music, along with running around in the dark with Parker Stevenson on prime time television, was just one facet of the teen idolatry package -- scaffolding by which best to display the dreamy, marketable image.

What shouldn't astonish me so much, but does, is that the song and album were released around the same time (the second half of 1977) as this track:

Wire - Mannequin (from Pink Flag, 1977)

It's a loaded comparison -- disposable teen pop product versus a phenomenally influential piece of art punk -- but it amazes me how well "Mannequin" has retained its freshness over the past three decades while the shelf life of "Hey Deanie" can be measured to the picosecond. It's as quaint a historical artifact as a shellac 78 RPM recording of Flip Pringle and His Liberty Orchestra's "Let's Set Fire to the Kaiser's Mustache," while the hooks and jangles of "Mannequin" retain a sense of immortality.

It's not simply a matter of being a work "for the ages." There are many classics pop songs -- including quite few songs I like more than "Mannequin" -- that have endured, yet operate within clear historical moments. "Mannequin," apart from its association with the early British punk scene, exists outside history. It could have been released in 1983, 1995, or five minutes ago and still sounded fresh and of the present age, immutable, eternal, and radiant.

though I love you unclean

From the January-February 1988 issue of Nintendo Power comes this token effort toward music journalism...

(Click to be like Wham! and MAKE IT BIG!)
It's written in the same hyperbolic hard-sell tone employed by the periodical to foist such quality gamepaks such as Ghost Lion and the California Raisins game onto the impressionable youth of late 1980's America, which is quite disconcerting considering the choice of artists featured. Of the three, only Debbie Gibson was an actual chart success at the time (though I still am unable to understand how that came to be). Huey Lewis and the News had already taken the first steps on the road to state fair appearances, and Julian Lennon, living proof that talent (unlike appearance) can't be genetically transmitted, had already basked in his necrotic fifteen minutes of public fascination a few years prior.

I assume the decision on which artists to spotlight came down to least offensive denominator, so as not to scare off the parents who actually paid for the games pimped in the pages of Nintendo Power, hence no South of Heaven or Locust Abortion Technician. I can understand that line of reasoning, but there must have been other acts able to meet Nintendo's vetting process, ones with proven tweener appeal and whose hypetastic "Sound Waves" blurb didn't require committing "...and clearly shows he is following in the footsteps of his talented father (late Beatle John Lennon)" to immortality via the printed page.

Or involve Huey Lewis at all

It's not like I would have noticed, anyhow. The period from roughly 1985 to 1989 was something of a pop interregnum for me, a time when I effectively unplugged myself from the contemporary music grid. My burgeoning appreciation for 60's pop, rock, and especially soul music, combined with the death of V-66, a local music video station and my main means of keeping up with music trends, worked to suspend my interest in anything recorded after 1972.

I apparently didn't miss much, either:

Granted, the pop charts are inherently weighted toward the crap end of the spectrum, and show only the narrowest view into an given era's musical legacy. There was plenty of outstanding stuff released during those years, but even if I wasn't bopping to the backbeat of some mid-60's Stax recording, the chances I'd have discovered gems like XTC's Oranges and Lemons or New Order's Technique or Billy Bragg's Worker's Playtime on my own back then were pretty much nil.

My peers at the time were either budding juvenile delinquents or (worse) Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts. The musical tastes of both groups ran the wide gamut from hard rock to heavy metal, and took every iota of willpower I possessed to resist indoctrination. Seriously, I was this close to thinking that Rush was a brilliant band before I managed to pull myself back from the all-consuming abyss. The handful of kids in Woburn who were hep to what was then called the "college rock" scene didn't run in the same circles as I did, and, truth be told, they also tended to be pricks and not really the type of folks I'd take listening advice from.

It wasn't until I got into punk (by way of thrash metal) that I again started listening to music that wasn't recorded before I was born. The ready availability of cheap used vinyl made it easy to play catch up and discover most of what I missed out on the first time around (and then some) and take chances on things that I'd have otherwise passed up on checking out. I don't regret the hiccup in development of my musical tastes at all. If anything, I appreciate the advantage in approaching commonly known material as a outsider has conferred on several occasions. Nostalgia's lens flare tends to throw off one's ability to focus properly.

For the musical portion of today's program, here are three tracks released in 1988-89 from bands that did not earn a blurb in Nintendo Power, but have earned my (belated) Seal of Approval:

Babes in Toyland - He's My Thing (from Spanking Machine, 1989) - If Siouxsie Sioux fronted the Cramps...

My Bloody Valentine - (When You Wake) You're Still In A Dream (from Isn't Anything, 1988) - Spike-heeled shoegaze.

Orchids - If You Can't Find Love (from Lyceum, 1989) - Live twee or cry.

just another story

Normally, a day off work would mean an opportunity to work up a longer and more substanital post, but since this particular day was spent shoveling a couple cubic tons of heavy wet snow, I'm going to take easy way out.

Here's a little gem culled from the "Chatter" column of the November 22, 1982 issue of People magazine (cover story: "Mick and Jerry Split"; the mag's previous owner drew a mustache on Ms. Hall, along with an "I love fat old millionaires" heart tattoo on her arm.)


As a bit of dated celebrity gossip, it's amusing in it's own right. More importantly, it also serves as an appropriately depressing and absurd obituary for the last moribund vestiges of the 60's counter-culture.

You say you want a revolution? Sorry, chum, I'm too busy practicing my backhand swing and moaning about the generation gap. Besides, my portfolio of assets isn't going to manage itself.

The Clash - Death or Glory (from London Calling, 1979) - I struck my bargain with the world for a complete collection of Animotion 45's. I don't want to boast or anything, but it's easy to see who got the better end of that deal.

The Dishrags - Sold Out (from Love/Hate, 1997) - Femvox punk from the early Vancouver scene. Joe Strummer liked them. I do, too.

back at the start, so far to go

Marvel at the cutting edge of personal audio technology circa 1982, as presented in this magazine ad for "The Way," Panasonic's answer to the Sony Walkman:

(click for full optical effect)
Some things worth noting here:

1. Nine ounces is over half a pound.
2. The folks depicted in the ad were representative of the era's fashions, no matter what the rosy tint of media-driven consensual nostalgia would have you believe.
3. What's worse than either zombies or ski-bums? Zombie ski-bums. "Must have brains...and freshly packed powder...."
4. Seriously, what's up with that ski guy? His facial expression is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen (and this is from a man who keeps a folder of war atrocity photos for archival/historical purposes).
5. The businessman in the last photo on the right is listening to Rick James' Street Songs.
6. The name "The Way" seems better suited for a cyptofascist new age cult than for a portable cassette player.

Violent Femmes - American Music (from Why Do Birds Sing? 1991) - Gano bless the Adenoidal States of America.

The Pulsars - Technology (from Pulsars, 1997) - It's all explained here, my children.

left alone and blue

...and here I was feeling all self-conscious about what I write for public consumption.

Clair Obscur - Smurf in the Goulag (from a 1986 12" single) - Papa Smurf always says that traitors to the Smurfolution should be forced to work the smurf mines in Outer Smurfberia. Or stripped naked, forced to kneel in a roadside ditch, and smurfed in the back of the head by an agent of the SGB.

Ann-Margret - It's Not So Funny (from the Ann-Margret: 1961-1966 box set, 1999) - Fierce retro-crushes seldom are.

entertainment through pain

A glimpse into the state of "rawk" criticism twenty-five years ago, courtesy of the November 1982 issue of Creem (the gift that keeps on giving). It's an excerpt from that issue's "Letter from Britain" column, written by Cynthia Rose (on loan from NME):

Rose's argument is that the New Pop aesthetic, as personified by ABC singer Martin Fry, is representative of British mass culture's emphasis on style over substance, where the then-current media fixation on Prince William's birth obscured Thatcher's circus of petty cruelties. Of course, lamenting the focus on appearance doesn't rule out directing catty barbs at Fry's complexion.

Oh, dear. I'm going to make a point of stating, whenever someone complains about the present state of political/social/cultural affairs, that things were better in the good old days, before the one-two punch of "Stool Pigeon" and "Endicott" shattered our previously idyllic paradise. "We lived happily and simply in those days, unaware that we would soon be overrun by slavering hordes of videogenic back-up singers."

At the risk of sounding reductive for the sake of argument, I'd venture to state that novelty is a core principle of "pop." Pop is ephemeral. Pop exists in the "now." Good pop songs can transcend their moments in time, but that is incidental to their initial purpose. Pop's purpose is not edify, not to uplift, not to bear the weight of the human condition on its shoulders, but simply to entertain. One could argue that a good pop song requires a certain level of substance and I wouldn't disagree; given the choice, I'd rather listen to Carter USM's "The Only Living Boy in New Cross" instead of Gary Lewis and The Playboys' "This Diamond Ring." "Good" is a different concept than "effective," however, and even the most banal pop confections can succeed in their momentary purpose by virtue of a catchy hook, a sublime harmony, or clever turn of phrase.

...and the manias over Elvis and the Beatles and the Stones and the other members of the sacred pantheon didn't involve commercialism or me-too behavior in the least. Nor do the countless photo-features, puff piece interviews, and band merchandise ads featured in every issue of every rock magazine ever published, apparently. The big chested blonde ladies modeling Creem t-shirts in an ad a couple pages after this column? They're making a statement of rebellion, honest.

Rockism is prone to a form of myopia which confuses personal sentiments with universal truths about "the music." It takes the shape of a cranky evangelism (with Calvinist overtones) that stresses the chimera called "authenticity." The problem is that authenticity, when used to separate art from product, is a subjective concept in objective clothing, and is applied unevenly based on pre-existing biases. The closer a performer hews toward those biases, the more authentic he or she is deemed.

In the article, Rose singles out Marianne Faithfull and Tom Verlaine (ex-Television) as examples of authenticity in contrast to the New Pop's superficiality. The choice of Faithfull stuck me as interesting as her persona as fallen angel of the 60's Modtopia has generated as much, if not more, ink than her music (which to be honest, I've never seen the appeal of). Though rooted in Faithfull's real experiences, it has become part of the packaged persona of the entertainer -- except the "sex, drugs. and rock and roll" template fits better with the rockist party line than shiny gold sport coats and back-up singers do.

(The Tom Verlaine bit didn't surprise me, since it's standard practice for rock journalists to fawn over anything that ever played CBGB's in the 70's. Expect a gooey retrospective on the importance of the Tuff Darts to appear in the pages of Spin any day now.)

It's not a matter of dismissing the concept of relative quality. There is a world of difference discernable between Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" and Kajagoogoo's "Too Shy" or Anthrax's "Among the Living" and Manowar's "Guyana," even after accounting for differences in individual tastes. It's the imposition of manufactured, mythical standards in place of an empirical personal relationship with "the music" that irks me. I have far more respect for someone who can plain out admit he or she listens to Hoyt Axton because they like his music than for someone who launches into dissertations about historical relevance and "importance" which fairly reek of received wisdom.

If you find pop music too superficial for your liking, then fair fucks to you. Don't, hovever, curse apples for not being more like oranges. Or hold new wave disco-synth bands up to a mythologized standard that doesn't even apply to the purist acts you cite as examples.

When it comes to enjoying music, the only honesty that really matters is in regards to one's own tastes.

Shallow new wave glossiness, uncompromising anarcho-punk convictions -- I adore them all.

ABC - Poison Arrow (from The Lexicon of Love, 1982)

Crass - Don't Tell Me You Care (from the How Does it Feel? 7", 1982; collected on Best Before...1984, 1986)

the past is so bright...

...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:

(click to gaze upon its full-sized glory)
I wonder what the demand was for the "Poindexer" (a.k.a. "The Trevor Horn Signature Edition") model.

Ian Fleming's suave cold warrior is doubly represented in eyewear form by the "James Bond" and "007." I assume the different models were intended to reflect the two actors who best personified the character on the big screen. (I mean, of course, David Niven and George Lazenby.) For those not up on their gridiron history, "Broadway Joe" refers to Joe Namath, the legendary QB for the New York Jets and occasional pantyhose model who did wear a pair of shades kind of similar to those depicted. "Rotten" is self-explanatory, but many of the other model names seem to have been chosen by some form of popcult buzzword free association, a move apparently inspired by the surrealist branding practices of the automotive industry. (Tiburon? Murano? Equinox? WTF?)

One of the things I regret most about having no-so-great vision is that my need for corrective lenses precludes my dabbling in the world of fashion accessory eyewear. Sure, prescription sunglasses can be had for a quasi-reasonable cost, but I don't want just a tinted pair of my pedestrian workaday spectacles -- I want to revel in the retro-futurist sleekness of a wraparound "Spectrum" visor (despite the inevitable Geordi LaForge jokes it would invite).

During my brief and disastrous flirtation with contact lenses (which just happened to coincide with the high water mark of my punk fashion period), I wore sunglasses regularly, as I discovered that semi-permeable contacts made my eyes hypersensitive to sunlight. My shades of choice during that time were a variant of the "Rotten" style, as seen in this infamous photo.

(On a side note: I wonder what happened to the tie I'm wearing in that picture. It was an antique silk schoolboy tie that resembled a British flag and it cost me a dollar at a consignment store. It was also the only non-string tie I could ever bring myself to wear, even after I evolved past the need for overtly punk trappings. I suspect my grandma tossed it in the trash, which saddens me a great deal.)

My contact lens era didn't last, and when I switched back to spectacles eighteen months later, I put my beloved shades -- and my dreams of accessorized hipness -- away permanently. No, no, I'm not misting up about it. That's the sun shining in my eyes. Seriously. I can't see a goddamn thing though the glare.

Dwight Pullen - Sunglasses After Dark (from a 1958 single; collected on Sunglasses After Dark, 2005) - Fuck Corey Hart. The rockabilly kits and cats know where it's really at.

Cloudwalkers - Sunglasses (from a 1965 single; collected on Pebbles, Volume 8, 1996) - How did a Brooklyn band end up on a compilation of SoCal garage rock? Because it's Pebbles, that's why. They're the Dr. Bronner of garage rock compilation albums.

Tracey Ullman - Sunglasses (from a 1984 single; collected on The Best of Tracey Ullman, 1992) - After the Ronettes and before the Pipettes...

ridicule is nothing to be scared of

The state of the American rock scene circa November 1981, as recorded in the pages of Hit Parader magazine:

(clicking makes things bigger)
I recently uncovered my small but extremely fascinating stash of early 80's rock magazines while digging around in my attic in search of something. (The something in question, I'm shamed to admit, happened to be a double-bladed lightsaber accessory needed to make my new Darth Revan figure better match the version I play in Knights of the Old Republic. NERD POWER!)

The majority of the mags were gifts from my wife, who found them and a DJ's crate of matching 45's at an estate sale a few years back. They're exclusively American periodicals -- mostly Hit Parader (before it became a heavy metal-specific venue in the mid-80's) and Creem with a few random issues of Us and People tossed into the mix -- and are invaluable artifacts from a retrological standpoint. These assorted periodicals present the era as it was, when it was, warts and all, instead of through the idealized rosy tint of collective mythologizing and nostalgia.

And as that table of contents shows, the reality was depressing indeed. It's heavy on the RAWK, with a couple new wave acts (Split Enz coming off the success of "I Got You" and Squeeze, who were only "New Wave" by historical accident), and a then-popular country crossover artist. It may not jibe with the memories of the Anglophile set, but it accurately reflects both the US top 40 charts from the period and Us magazine's 1981 year in review, which officially pronounced the new wave dead in the water. It really wasn't until MTV (launched in the summer of 1981) began to take off in earnest that the video-ready (and more importantly, video-friendly) descendents of the punk revolution cracked the North American market in earnest. (Check the top 100 charts for the years 1980 through 1983 for an excellent look at the radical taste shift in action.)

It's not just the choice of featured bands, but the overall tone of the magazine that is striking to behold. My wife described it as "fanzine-like," but that only partially describes it. There's a weird fusion of 70's rockist and Reagan Era attitudes in play, streamed through a starfucker filter. The "At Home With REO Speedwagon" interview with Neal Doughty ("Part Two of a Series") is the best example of this, in which the interviewer attempts to spin, sans irony, Doughty's affection for good room service (it helps if you don't trash the hotel room, Doughty states), home electronics, and Wizard of Oz memorabilia as "rock and roll" behavior. It presents Rotarian as rock star, and the dissonance is staggering. (Not that I fault Doughty, who is straightforward in reconciling his stardom with his interests, unlike the folks who show up on MTV cribs who present a "punk" or "gangsta" persona while showing off their custom made golf clubs or antique Persian carpets.)

Other highlights include a "sports challenge" where the magazine's staff members try to beat Rick "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo" Derringer's score on a Phoenix pinball machine, a pin up of Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen, and the letters page -- which proves that Kiss fans have always been a little touched in the head. "Kiss is the best damn group today that's worth a shit," says Phillip Box of Picayune, Mississippi, leading to me to wonder what is the best damn group of that era that wasn't worth a shit. Sukiyaki? The Dixie Dregs?

One of the trademark features of Hit Parader back in the day was that it included lyrics to the the popular songs of the day in each issue. For November 1981, we have "(The Theme to) Endless Love," "Slow Hand," and "We Can Work It Out" (as recorded by Chaka Khan). Also, "It's Now or Never" (as recorded by John "Bo Duke" Schneider) and "Too Drunk to Fuck" (as recorded by Mitch Miller and the Gang).*

The types of ads a publication runs is usually the best indicator of its intended target demographic, so what do the dozens of ads offering quick stardom via mail order to aspiring singers, songwriter/poets, and musicians (for a nominal fee, of course) tell us about Hit Parader's readership at the time? Before you answer, be sure to take into account the numerous ads for bodybuilding and weight loss plans, "magical" charms and formulae, and, yes, the glory that is DISCO TV. There are also plenty of ads hawking these dubious passkeys to glory for the under legal age crowd...


Seriously. I counted eight before I got bored and gave up halfway though the issue. It certainly explains the spike in Boone's Farm and peppermint schnapps consumption during that bygone era. The crackdown on fake ID's dealt a near fatal blow to the low grade pop alcoholic beverage industry.

To be fair, the issue isn't all dodgy product ads and rockist wankery. There were a few things that did manage slip past my retro-sarcasm catch nets, such as:

- a short blurb about Rick Ocasek of The Cars handling production duties on the New Models' "Permanent Vacation" single, a quite excellent bit of forgotten Beantown new wave which can be nabbed here.

- a piece about "new wave rock band" The Clash filming footage in New York City for a planned "modern western" where gunfights are replaced with "rap fights." I'm assuming, since the dates coincide, that the end product ended up being the video for "This Is Radio Clash."

- a mention of a Birmingham new wave outfit named after a Barbarella character whose single, "Planet Earth," had been getting major club play stateside. Also mentioned was Cold Chisel, an Aussie rock outfit deemed "likely" to follow in the footsteps of AC/DC and Air Supply.

And so we conclude our rambling retro-broadcast day with a Mr. John Lydon's after-the-fact take on that glorious year..

Public Image limited - 1981 (from This Is What You Want...This Is What You Get, 1984)

...as well as two tracks from 1981 that did not appear on the U.S. top 40 charts:

Adam and the Ants - Prince Charming (from Prince Charming, 1981) - Before she was a punk, my wife was an Antperson. I occasionally tease her about it, but then she brings up my heavy metal past and it stops being fun.

Red Rockers - Peer Pressure (from Condition Red, 1981) - Before they had a modest new wave hit with "China," the Red Rockers were a straightforward, Clash-inspired political punk outfit and just one of several excellent bands in the early New Orleans punk scene.

* I'm joking about one of those.

when you're unwanted

One of the things I picked up on yesterday's trip to the comic shop was a copy of the July 1985 issue of Starburst, a UK sci-fi fan mag. The initial draws were the photo-heavy feature articles on Max Headroom and Robin of Sherwood (a pagan-slash-crusty 80's retelling of the legend). In typical fashion for these kind of purchases, however, it was the odds and ends material, written up in a breathy excited twenty-years-gone now, that ended up fascinating me the most.

Things like advance speculation on the "forthcoming" Pluto Nash film or the announcement that Tobe Hooper's next project will be the Spider-Man film (wrong horror film director, wrong decade), seem rather poignant and quaint when taken in from a present-day vantage point, not to mention the fact that the tone and tenor of these speculations and teasers haven't changed at all over the years, only the names of the individual franchises. ("Did you hear? Tobey Maguire has been linked to the 'forthcoming' Robotech movie!")

...and then there's the letter page, which offers the armchair pathologist ample material for their study of the fan subspecies. Here are a some choice excepts, featuring annotations compiled by yours truly:

Here we have an excellent example of the bottom-feeding connoisseur at work. While it is possible (and frequently rewarding) to clinically dissect trash culture artifacts in search of hidden meanings and evidence of historical trends, what sets the bottom-feeding connoisseur apart is an intrinsic inability to separate the forest from the trees, and are quick to expend hundreds or thousands of words expounding with a total lack of self-awareness on such matters as how many Daleks coud fit on the head of a sonic screwdriver in terms similar to those used in a doctoral dissertation, and yet utterly miss the point through their obsession with minutae.

In almost every case, their elaborate theses end with an unintentional punchline that serves to verify their status as bottom feeders. For example: "...and this is why I find Crisis on Infinite Earths to be a creative endeavor in all aspects inferior to Dragon Ball Z."

Above is a classic case of dysmorphic proportionality. My father once stated that "the most important thing that ever happened to you is the most important thing that ever happened to you," meaning that significance is subject to a personal frame of reference. Being the first human to set foot on the moon or enrolling at UMass Boston -- the actual scope of such actions for the individuals involved lies within each person, and in that aspect does not lend itself to quick objective comparisons.

That said, most people do have a sense (to varying degrees) of proportionality about such things, understanding that what they strongly value might not be what the next person does, be it pomegranates, cats, or Firefly. Those suffering from dysmorphic proportionality are unwilling or unable to acknowledge conflicting views regarding their own hobby-horses, and when confronted with dissenting opinions turn very nasty, very quickly. This is often because those suffering from the syndrome have chosen to structure their personal reality around the contested subject. Calling its validity into question is therefore seen as a personal attack on their core being, thus calling for a all-out response, ad hominem attacks and all.

When practiced in a casual environment, the act of fan-casting, matching actors to roles to an imaginary film based on some property or other, can be a highly entertaining and frequently amusing activity. (I'm rereading The Count of Monte Cristo currently, and I keep thinking "Armand Assante" in mental picture of Edmond Dantès for some reason.) The inveterate fan-caster, however, has overindulged in the process to a point where their palette of potential choices has narrowed so as as to only include current "hot" actors or operates on overly facile typecasting.

Having entered the terminal phase of the syndrome, the inveterate fan-caster finds his- or herself unable, even in the most ironic or comedic contexts, to proffer selections such as "Gary Coleman as B.A. Baracus in The A-Team movie," but will instead fill every role with either "Samuel L. Jackson" (tough guy), "Scarlet Johannson" (female lead), "Johnny Depp" (male lead),or "that guy who was in that one episode of Farscape who played an android because the character in the imaginary movie is an android."

Also, regarding the above letter: I've read it a dozen times, I have it in front of me printed out in black and white, but I am still having extreme difficulty accepting the fact that anyone, at anytime could have possibly written "I'll be looking forward to the film Santa Claus coming up."

Echo & The Bunnymen - People Are Strange (from The Lost Boys OST, 1987) - The only thing I actually liked about Joel Shumacher's extended vampiric remix of INXS's "Devil Inside" music video. (The wife thinks the film is pretty swell, but there are plenty of iffy patches in her usually unquestionable tastes.)

(Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident.)