I've made many bad decisions in my life (usually involving proper dental care), but the one I'm currently regretting most was choosing to include this bit of music hall fare repurposed as British Invasion pop...
Herman's Hermits - I'm Henry VIII, I Am (from The Very Best of Herman's Hermits, 2001)
...on a three-disc compilation of 50's and 60's tunes I assembled for Maura a few years back. I found the set up in the attic when I was looking for our copy of Total Coelo's greatest hits . Maura, who is going through an oldies phase at the moment, had gotten sick of Pandora's unusual definition of the genre (REO Speedwagon? Journey? Really?) brought the set into our shared office for workday listening.
It was fine for the first week. When I burned the discs, I slipped in some personal selections amidst Maura's requests, which meant regular doses of Eddie Cochran and other rockabilly artists to balance out the cheesier stuff. Even the shallow hippie twaddle of Friend & Lover's "Reach Out in the Darkness" becomes tolerable when followed up with "Twenty Flight Rock," but there is no mitigating the damage the trauma caused by repeated listenings of that Herman's Hermits track.
It is an earworm of the most insidious order, burrowing deep into the mnemonic pathways and lodging itself as firmly as a deer tick. It haunts both my waking hours and my dreams, its infectious refrain surfaces unbidden during moments of weakness.
Nothing in my archives has been able to exorcise this pop demon. The best I've been able to manage are brief periods of remission achieved through liberal doses of the most potent concoctions in my musical pharmacy -- songs like this incredible slice of New Orleans punk rock...
The Manic Depressives - Going Out With the In Crowd (from the 1980 Silence on the Radio EP)
It's a fleeting, bittersweet respite, but it will suffice for now.
Friday, November 07, 2008
you always leave a stain
Thursday, October 23, 2008
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
...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...
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Halloween Countdown: October 22 - the way of all cellulose
In 1954, horror comics offered the grisly promise of a plague zombie poked by bill hooks and bisected by a rail...
In 1973, horror -- sorry, "suspense" -- comics offered a terryifying promise of a one-page nailbiter narrated in the first person by an oak tree...
The story is titled "DEATHBOX" and comes from DC's The Witching Hour #30 (April 1973), apparently by way of some high schooler's creative writing project...
It's scary because there's a coffin and dead people are buried inside coffins! Somebody call Count Floyd!
I'm not one of those fans who loudly proclaim that Frederic Wertham and the Comics Code Authority ruined the comics industry (mostly because the industry has shown it is more than capable of destroying itself), but the institution of the CCA did deal a blow to the horror comics genre from which it still hasn't fully recovered. Many have tried to recapture that gleefully transgressive EC horror vibe of the early 1950's, but the results have, at best, mimicked the mechanics without capturing the underlying soul.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Halloween Countdown: October 17 - rolling bones
I dunno, I think it's kind of necromantic!
Well, I thought it was funny.
In all seriousness, she is a bit on the skinny side and terrible at making conversation, though I have been told that the sex is fantastic.
XTC - Poor Skeleton Steps Out (from Oranges & Lemons, 1989) - If there's one thing I have learned from a life of popcult immersion, it's that "xylophones = skeletons." Vibraphones, too, though the verdict is still out on the marimba's association with the restless dead.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Halloween Countdown: October 14 - a curious fetish
In today's installment of Armagideon Time's Halloween Countdown, the esteemed Dr. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana reads a passage from the Dictionary of Popcult Shorthand...
Reductive? Certainly. Culturally insensitive? Probably, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a better resource for drag-and-drop plot devices that won't tax your audience's thinkin' muscles.
Leave the detailed explanations of syncretistic religion, the Loa, and their interdependant relationships to the anthropologists, this is what the audience expects...
...so why let a little thing like accuracy get in the way?
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
drill baby drill
Tom Smirch is a typical American...
...with a typically American sense of moral obligation.
Tom's ecological conscience makes him perfectly suited for work in the oil industry, where he can work
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...
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?
(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.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
get off my lawn
So, did you manage to catch last night's presidential debate? No? Well, I don't blame you considering it ran opposite Say Yes to the Dress. If I'm going to suffer through a television-induced optical migraine, I'd much rather it be caused by the diva-tastic antics of a megalomaniacal bride-to-be than by the phony bloodsport of 21st century American politics.
The wheels of the media-established consensus machine are still spinning at this point, so I am forbidden by law to assess which of the candidates "won" the face-off. Senator Obama did well enough in discussing foreign policy issues, considering that such subjects are supposedly where he is weakest. His nuanced approach to American militarism remains troubling, as it is impossible to tell how much of it is pandering to the "kick some ass" demographic and how much of it is sincere.
As for Senator McCain?
Wow, he actually looks better there than he did on the podium last night. (I kid. McCain doesn't look like the Reverend Kane from Poltergeist 2, no matter what my wife might say. He looks like an old school Sontaran. I'd add that Sarah Palin looks like the evil auction house woman from the first season of Charmed, but that would mean letting the world know I watch Charmed and....oh, fuck.)
While I do not believe that appearances ought to be the deciding factor in a political contest (though "Empress Tuesday Weld" has a nice ring to it), I'm pretty sure that looking and comporting oneself like Mr. Neighborhood Crankypants isn't the best way to win votes. The only things he was missing last night were an overgrown hedge, a German Shepherd, and a collection of seized Frisbees and wiffle balls.
When he did exhibit a rare flash of lucidity and substance, it was only to elucidate a more belligerent, if such a thing is even possible, foreign policy platform than we presently have. I don't deny that shit sells to a substantial section of the populace, but "extremist reiteration of the status quo" isn't what I'd call synonymous with "maverick."
The debate was McCain's to lose, despite the backfiring of his economic "white knight" stunt. The expert was supposed to school the neophyte, thus proving the latter's unreadiness to lead. Even if one calls the debate a draw, as the media consensus is tentatively claming it was, it means that McCain was evenly matched by Obama in the one area where he supposedly held a decisive advantage.
They can spin it in the media arena as much as they like, but I'm guessing that whatever pragmatic souls exist in the McCain campaign are currently shitting themselves.
Iggy Pop - Winners & Losers (from Blah Blah Blah, 1986) - Pop goes mainstream! This track (along with two others on the album) was co-written by ex-Pistol Steve Jones, coming on the heels of his stint in Chequered Past and prior to his solo career as a former guitar hero-turned-MOR hard rocker.
Fun Boy Three - The More I See (The Less I Believe) (from Waiting, 1983) - I liked Terry Hall better when he wasn't trying to compete with Robert Smith. One Robert Smith is enough for this world (or rather "too much," since Mr. Smith discovered the magical powers of elastic waistbands). That said, when Hall and company weren't moping up songs originally written by Hall for The Go-Go's, they did manage to record the odd bit of nifty, socially aware pop such as today's featured selection.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
won't be worried long
One of my strongest childhood memories is of my mother relating a bit of family folklore to me. It concerned some great-great-relation of her father's side of the family, a stoically creepy bunch of Old Yankees from Maine's Androscoggin County. This particular relative worked in a lumber mill, and during the course of his duties got his arm stuck in the machinery. As his friends tried in vain to find the best way to extricate the ruined limb from the works, my laterally-thinking ancestor came up with an easy solution -- power up the machinery and let it take the limb off quickly and cleanly. So they did.
I can't help but think that lingering effects of my mother's story somehow figure into the following random, but characteristically "Andrew," autobiographical antidote.
I adopted Mia not too long after Zoe Blackfeet, my previous feline companion, wandered off and never returned. Mia had belonged to some neurotic yuppies from Winchester who had soured on the idea of pet ownership and dumped her off at the vet's office.
Unlike Zoe (or Budwina before her), Mia was not a personable cat. I don't know if it was from poor socialization or abuse experienced at the hands of her previous owners, or a simple matter of temperament. I've lived around cats my entire life; they're capricious creatures. Mia, though, wasn't so much aloof as sociopathic, and able to switch from snugglebunny to psycho-slasher with no warning whatsoever. (She also possessed the ability to shed her weight in long white fur on a daily basis.)
Even if she wasn't the nicest cat, I was still happy to have her around and living in a decent home.
On a lovely spring afternoon in 2002, I was in my bedroom reading a book when Mia hopped on the bed and stretched out beside me. I patted her. She purred. I scratched behind her ears. She viciously bit and scratched my left forearm, and refused to let go until my limb had been thoroughly flensed.
It hurt like hell, but cat scratches usually do, and this didn't appear that much worse than some of the previous feline-related injuries I had dealt with. I washed the arm with some soap and water and let nature do the rest. That the cuts seemed to be a long time in healing or there was a growing burning sensation in the arm didn't worry me a whole lot. Nor did the fact that over the course of the following week or so my forearm swelled up to near-Popeye proportions.
Maura, of course, was concerned, but it's her job to be. Besides, who is more familiar with my internal workings than I am? It wasn't until I had entered the second week following the incident that I was forced to acknowledge that something wasn't right. (Maura's mom was particularly persuasive with her worried stare and repeated use of "Jaysis.") While my co-workers and family (not Maura, because she understands me) chimed in with a loud chorus of "EMERGENCY ROOM," I decided to take matters into my own (swollen and healthy) hands.
Using a sterilized needle, I opened up the bite wounds that were the source of the infection and let the stream of pus drain out. Afterwards I soaked the arm in warm water and Epsom salt for an hour before slathering the area with anti-bacterial ointment and bandaging it up. It took about a week of such therapy before my arm started to resemble its old self (though I still have a few scars), thus proving that not only that am I too laid back for my own good, but that I can occasionally remedy the problems which arise from my complacency (in an extremely painful and disgusting way that could have been avoided with a glimmer of foresight).
Prince Buster - Pussy Cat Bite Me (from Wreck A Pum Pum, 1976) - Felis dentata ska.
Tom Jones - It Takes a Worried Man (from Along Came Jones, 1965; collected on Millennium Edition, 2000) - Devo's cover of this folk standard will always be the definitive version as far as I'm concerned, but Sir Tom's powerhouse vocals and that magnificent horn section are almost enough to make me reconsider my position.
Love and Rockets - No Big Deal (from Love and Rockets, 1989) - True, but a perfectly fine song, nonetheless.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
roll for critical fumble
When I was stuck at my grandma's house a couple weeks back, I unearthed my well-worn copy of the 4th edition of the Trouser Press Record Guide. It was published in 1991, just before the alternative rock scene went mainstream. In those days before information on obscure indie and punk bands was a mere Google search away, the Guide was an invaluable resource when it came to deciding which albums and artists to keep an eye out for at the local record shops.
There was a time (back when I rode the Christian Herter scholarship gravy train) when my mornings were spent copying out promising leads from the Guide onto index cards and my afternoons were spent wandering from one used vinyl store to another in search of the objects of ephemeral desire. As a result, my copy of the guide is, how you say, "beat to shit," missing its cover, its spine bent into a c-shape, and the pages stuffed with clippings and photos of interest to me at the time.
Eventually I migrated to The Guinness Who's Who of Indie and New Wave Music and a number of microgenre directories as my sourcebooks of choice, as they better matched my specific musical interests and covered artists not included in Trouser Press. The fact that the writing in those other directories was a little more even-handed was also played an important factor, because as handy as Trouser Press was for determining release dates and album titles, the commentary and capsule reviews in the book frequently reached toxic levels of "jaded hipster" and "rockist" attitude.
Certain bands were especially singled out for critical maulings in which informational content took a back seat to self-satisfied rants permeated with the phony idolatry of rockist mythology, where the mythic (and false) aura of authenticity is all that matters. I noticed it back in 1993, but it was even more obnoxious to revisit fifteen years later, as my tastes have shifted and broadened and I've gained a bit more knowledge about the artists, the ideologies, and the music involved.
It's all very silly and pointless. What you may claim to be the pinnacle of pop genius, I might find to be kind of pedestrian, and vice-versa. Our individual tastes are our own, and that's nothing to be ashamed about...unless you are a Katy Perry fan, in which case I hope the Fates are kinder to you in your next incarnation. Savaging INXS for not being Elvis Costello might make for some unintentional laughs, but it's also quite pathetic. (Besides. I'd rather listen to Kick than Armed Forces any day of the week.)
Here are some excerpts from some of the more egregious rockist rants from my copy of the Trouser Press Guide, deliberately chosen with certain readers of this blog in mind.
Orange Juice:
Glasgow's insufferably coy Orange Juice, de facto leaders of the Scottish neo-pop revolution, typified a UK trend towards clean, innocent looks that unfortunately spilled over into the music.Orange Juice - Falling and Laughing (from You Can't Hide Your Love Forever, 1982) - It's true. MTV and Smash Hits ruined everything. God forbid that someone who knows how to tune a guitar and doesn't look like a refugee from a Bowery methadone clinic becomes a chart success.
Oingo Boingo:
This eight-piece LA outfit (with three-man horn section) started out trying to be a West Coast answer to XTC and Devo, but suffered from studied wackiness/quirkiness and managed to hide solid cleverness behind overproduction and hamminess.Oingo Boingo - Wild Sex (in the Working Class) (from Nothing to Fear, 1982) - Wow. That's reading an awful lot into what I always thought of as pretty entertaining party music.
Conflict:
In the real/rock world, only the young and the gullible expect their favorite bands to abide by lofty personal standards.Conflict - The Guilt & The Glory (from It's Time to See Who's Who, 1983) - I don't entirely disagree with the above statement (in an otherwise positive write-up) about the stalwart anarchopunk outfit, except that the "real/rock" part makes me want to punch somebody and for the fact that Minor Threat, the most generic-sounding hardcore band ever, was praised for wearing their hearts on their sleeves in their Guide entry.
Pet Shop Boys:
The in-joke references and self-amused esoterica strewn thoughout songs like "West End Girls" and "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" should have precluded their general popularity, but evidently the laxative-smooth synth backing has utilitarian value for clubgoers. Ghastly, depressing and offensive.Pet Shop Boys - Suburbia (from Please, 1986) - Pop sensibility and synthesizers are anathema to rockists....until some cherished rock idol appropriates them for his own use, at which point there's only a 50% chance the purists will howl for his blood.
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In other news, there's a new post up at pronounced WOO-BIN on the subject of local geography.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Friday Night Fights: Rolling Like Thunder
There a right way and a wrong way to woo Jonni Thunder.
That would be the wrong way.
Ever wonder how Moonlighting would have turned out if Maddie had a pet rabbit and power to electrocute people with her touch? Well look no further than Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt #4 (August 1985; by Roy & Dann Thomas and Dick Giordano). Stilted references to Raymond Chandler's works, the cutting edge of 1980's pantsuit technology, tenuous links to a Golden Age superhero, the ever unreliable flexographic printing process -- this underrated mini-series had it all.
Edwyn Collins - A Girl Like You (from Gorgeous George, 1994) - Retro-licious pop without peer, courtesy of the man who gave Orange Juice its distinctive tang. I don't care that it took the excremental Empire Records to bring this gem to the attention of the American listening public; it was a price well worth paying.
(All hail the MC Cosmic!)
Saturday, August 23, 2008
rolling with the years
Pal Ken unearthed a pretty interesting musical meme, and because I have never been one to shy away from a quick and dirty source of content, I've decided to use it as the basis of today's post.
So here it is, an annotated list of the songs that topped the Billboard Hot 100 charts on every March 13 since I emerged from the womb on that date in 1972. It's a countdown to the End Times which offers clear proof that "popular" does not necessarily equal "good."
1972 - "Without You" by Nilsson - And thus I entered this world bloody, screaming, and to the tune of calcium-leeching soft rock.
1973 - "Killing Me Softly with His Song" by Roberta Flack - Even soul was affected by the power of the 1970's.
1974 - "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks - Is it any wonder I took to punk rock as strongly as I did?
1975 - "Have You Never Been Mellow" by Olivia Newton-John - The de facto anthem for the Me Decade.
1976 - "December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)" by The Four Seasons - Attempting to escape the malaise via fuzzy nostalgia.
1977 - "Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born)" by Barbra Streisand - Fuck you, record buying public of 1977.
1978 - "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" by Andy Gibb - And the effects of cocaine abuse are stronger than cardiac muscle.
1979 - "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor - Saturday Night Götterdämmerung!
1980 - "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" by Queen - I can handle a little Mercury every now and again.
1981 - "I Love a Rainy Night" by Eddie Rabbit - "When the stars were right, They could plunge from the C&W chart to the Hot 100; but when the stars were wrong, They would remain in their own genre subdomain. But although They were no longer on Top 40 radio, They would never really pass from public consciousness..." - The Call of Cnt'ry'mu'zk
1982 - "Centerfold" by the J. Geils Band - I've already discussed the personal significance of this song here.
1983 - "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson - It was a given that this musical journey was going to pass through Neverland at some point.
1984 - "Jump" by Van Halen - What fuck is a "record machine," anyhow? Apart from being a way to dodge coming up with a rhyme for "jukebox," that is.
1985 - "Can't Fight This Feeling" by REO Speedwagon - Forget all the talk about Minor Threat and 7 Seconds, this here is the real font from which emo music sprung.
1986 - "Kyrie" by Mr. Mister - No, no.
1987 - "Livin' on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi - I preferred the Swinging Erudites' version, "Livin' on My Hair."
1988 - "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley - Happy Sweet 16, Andrew! We chipped in and got you a rickroll!
1989 - "Lost in Your Eyes" by Debbie Gibson - That's Deborah Gibson now, thank you very much.
1990 - "Escapade" by Janet Jackson - Six of one...
1991 - "Someday" by Mariah Carey - ...and a half dozen of the other.
1992 - "To Be with You" by Mr. Big - Music to peak in high school by.
1993 - "Informer" by Snow - Truly the Falco of his times.
1994 - "The Sign" by Ace of Base - ABBA 2.0
1995 - "Take a Bow" by Madonna - ...and exit the stage, please, before things get any more embarrassing.
1996 - "One Sweet Day" by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men - Honoring the late Steve (Def Leppard) Clark and the late David (C+C Music Factory) Cole in the most insipid manner imaginable.
1997 - "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls - "What I really really want is to host bumpers for the Soap Opera Channel."
1998 - "My Heart Will Go On" by Céline Dion - Never underestimate the purchasing power of teenage girls.
1999 - "Believe" by Cher - The auto-tune effect that launched a thousand shitty Eurodance tracks.
2000 - "Amazed" by Lonestar - Country-fried cheese.
2001 - "Stutter" by Joe featuring Mystikal - If 6 was 9 was a forgettable R&B hit.
2002 - "Ain't It Funny" by Jennifer Lopez featuring Ja Rule - No, not particularly.
2003 - "In Da Club" by 50 Cent - Ugh.
2004 - "Yeah!" by Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris - ...and Bella Abzug and Helmut Kohl and Madame Curie and Jim J. Bullock and that one dude at the gas station with the lazy eye.
2005 - "Candy Shop" by 50 Cent featuring Olivia - Ugh3.
2006 - "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt - Flattery will get you nowhere, James. My affections are not for sale to some next-gen James Taylor who yodels the word "beautiful" like he's just been kicked in the nads.
2007 - "This Is Why I'm Hot" by Mims - "I can sell a mill sell you nothing on the track." How refreshingly honest.
2008 - "Low" by Flo Rida featuring T-Pain - Honestly, this stuff exists solely for the purpose of being licensed into tinny-sounding ringtones, right?
When I embarked on this project, I had hoped that there would be at least a couple tracks in the list that even I wouldn't feel embarrassed posting. As it turned out, there was "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and not much else. (You may beg to differ, but mine is the hand that rests on the tiller.) So Queen it is then, along with an excellent acoustic cover of 1984's featured slice of pop rock bombast...
Queen - Crazy Little Thing Called Love (from The Game, 1980) - The greatest thing composed in a bathtub since Marat's Éloge de Montesquieu.
Aztec Camera - Jump (from a 1984 b-side; collected on The Best of Aztec Camera, 1999) - Maura once suggested that there was some kind of Dorian Gray relationship between Aztec Camera frontman Roddy Frame and Echo & The Bunnymen's Ian McCulloch, where McCulloch staved off the ravages of time by passing them on to Frame. If that was the case, the spell has apparently been reversed, as Roddy has been looking rather spry as of late, while poor Ian appears to be in the advanced stages of mummification.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
what a beautiful feeling
The writing is on the wall for the Summer of 2008, "the summer that really wasn't." Already the leaves on the patio cherry tree are staring to fall, and there has been an undeniable crispness to the air these past few nights. Granted this is New England I'm talking about, so the possibility of a suffocating Indian summer shouldn't yet be dismissed, but the present vibe is leaning heavily toward "autumnal."
I suppose I could lament the passing of the season, which came and went without even registering on my consciousness, but this is the first Sunday in a month that hasn't been marked by the violent thunderstorms which have rolled across the Northeast for the past eight weeks. The skies above the highlands are currently a dazzling blue, the sun is shining through the trees out back, and if there is harvest season tang to the air, it only strengthens the urge to enjoy it while it lasts.
With that in mind, here's a mini-mix of psychdelic pop nuggets ideal for lazy Sunday lounging on the patio, fire escape, or wherever the sun is warm and the breezes are cool.
Donovan - Atlantis (from Barabajagal, 1969) - I'd be able to listen to Coast to Coast AM if sounded more like this. A ladle full of dreamy folk-rock makes the paranormal bullshit slide down easier. My question is: Did Donovan's Atlanteans blaze a trail for the little people of Stonehenge?
Tommy James & The Shondells - Crimson and Clover (7" version) (from Anthology, 1989) - Better than "Strawberry Fields Forever"? Yes, it's the greatest pop song ever recorded and nothing you or anyone else might say will change my mind.
The Byrds - Eight Miles High (from Fifth Dimension, 1966) - Maura on the twelve-string guitar wizardy -- an attempt to emulate the style of John Coltrane's saxophone playing -- employed by Roger McGuinn on this track: "It sounds like the flickering of flames." An apt description, even though she really doesn't care for the song, or psychedelia in general. (It's okay, I knew she was a no nonsense punk/pop purist when I proposed to her.)
Saturday, August 16, 2008
visual synergy: sham on you
Sam the Sham (and the Pharaohs)!
Shampoo!
The Shamen!
Sham 69!
ShamWow!
Sham 69 - Borstal Breakout (from a 1978 single; collected on the re-issue of Tell Us the Truth, 1978) - Sure, it's dumb as hell, but this driving blast of street punk never fails to grab me by the short hairs and set my blood a'pumping...and that's what really matters.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
waiting for the flash
Look at that sunavabitch go! Doesn't it just give you a tingly sensation all over, especially in the thyroid and reproductive organs? Since today happens to be the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, I though it only proper to genuflect a little upon the event and its enduring legacy.
It was the ultimate product of the American "can do" spirit, the fireworks display that kicked off the beginning of the American Century (give or take a half-dozen decades). It showed the world that we had not only developed the means to end human civilization, but were also willing to use it if meant saving "a million lives" (or is that a billion now? Retroactive justifications are not immune to inflationary forces) or intimidating our uncomfortable Soviet allies with a display of overwhelming force upon a civilian target.
That last part worked so well that Joe Stalin's bunch of merry Bolsheviks wasted no time in acquiring some transuranic party poppers of their own, which wagered the future of the human race on a staring contest to end all staring contests. Fun times, indeed, especially for a kid whose global awareness was coming into sharp focus just as Ronnie Reagan decided to escalate the stakes in the name of God, country, and sweetheart defense contracts.
Flipping through issues of Discover and coming across absurdly cheery infographics about the science of the neutron bomb. Sneaking a peek at some of my father's National Guard manuals dealing with post-event assessment and body disposal. Lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling and wondering if I'd be one of the dead or one of the living who envied them. (Knowing what I know now about the target-rich environment of Boston's suburban ring and the power-over-accuracy doctrine of Soviet warhead design, it's clear I'd have been in the dead category, as anything inside I-495 would have become part of Boston Harbor after a full-on nuclear exchange.)
At least it all worked out in the end, right? America won the Cold War, or so I'm told. (How did you spend your promised peace dividend?) History ended, and we now live in a peaceful neo-liberal hegemony overseen by the bestest nation ever. The specter of radioactive annihilation is a thing of the past, a completely justified phase that we've put entirely behind us.
Strongarm sales of ABM equipment designed to provoke the Russians? Official efforts to make the use of tactical nuclear weapons acceptable to the American public? The same conglomerates which are responsible for spiking energy costs attempting to exploit the situation in order to build more nuclear power plants? You must be thinking of some dark alternate universe, friend.
Synch up your Doomsday Clocks, cats and kittens! We're packing a musical MIRV primed and ready to deliver megatons of melodic enjoyment, and you're standing at ground zero! The party doesn't stop until the last payload drops.
Crass - They've Got a Bomb (from The Feeding of the 5000, 1978) - When you've got a massive stockpile of hammers, everything looks like a nail.
Dr. Strangelove & The Fallouts - Love That Bomb (from a 1964 single; collected on Atomic Platters, 2005) - This peppy little track (most likely a Laurie Johnson effort) was released to promote Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece of apocalyptic comedy. Go-go until you're gone-gone.
The Cure - A Strange Day (from Pornography, 1982) - A languid waltz to the shores of the abyss. The view from the edge is fantastic, I'm told.
The Epoxies - We're So Small (from The Epoxies, 2002) - Adieu, my fair synthpunkers! While I'm saddened to see you go, you've left a fine legacy of two outstanding albums, a handful of great b-sides and compilation cuts, and a not-so-good final EP.
Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup - I'm Gonna Dig Myself a Hole (from Gonna Be Some Changes: 1946-54, 2008) - A master bluesman goes underground, twenty-nine years before Paul Weller got the same idea.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Friday Night Fights: The Girls Are Looking Best
Here's a little extra sand and surf greatness, as the reigning Queen of the Beach, Valerie Brown, schools some fools on the finer points of etiquette...
Donna Loren - Muscle Bustle (from Surf & Drag, Vol. 1, 1989) - The rambunctious side of girl pop, as featured in Muscle Beach Party (1964). Brought to you by the fine taste of Dr. Pepper.
(It's ladies' night and I feel all right.)
Monday, July 07, 2008
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.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
do you remember rock and roll video
V-66, "The Beat of Boston," was the short-lived, but sorely missed local music video station that was the only thing that made 8th grade tolerable for this poorly socialized example of nerdy adolesecent angst...
It lasted for little more than a year before selling out to the Home Shopping Network in late 1986, but it was a blast while it lasted. Its playlist was ecumenical, if a bit too skewed at times to the AOR end of the spectrum (though the magic of music video could make the most commercial drek palatable by adding a visual narrative or sci-fi art direction), yet it remained fiercely parochial (sometimes embarassingly so), spotlighting music by a host of local acts of the day.
Some, like the Del Fuegos and Til Tuesday, mananged to register on the national scene. Others, like Ball and Pivot, November Group, and the Dogmatics, never broke free of the Boston-Providence axis. V-66 had a tremendous impact on the youth of this region. Mere mention of it can inspire near-fatal bouts of nostalgia in those who were enraptured by its low-budget UHF spell, yet much (but not all) of the recorded evidence has been lost to the ages. (The same goes for the "I'm Robillard and I'm from Mars" PSA that used to run early weekend mornings on WCVB.)
The music can still be found with a bit of digging (and it would be nice if CDBaby would get around to reissuing the Lizzie Borden & The Axes compilation), and this promises to be a fucking hoot:
Ordinarily, I'd be the last person on earth to defend the use of that particular Starship song, but a Bostonized version of the track did figure heavily into the station's promotional efforts. Hey, it was the mid-1980's, what can I say?
Speaking of awkward memories, there is one track and video that represents the V-66 era above all others. It's the one that inevitably gets mentioned whenever the subject of V-66 is brought up. While I cannot produce the video, which was shot on Newbury Street (and featured a feminist-positive image of woman as the devil), I did recently manage to locate a copy of the LP featuring the song, a dangerously infectious bit of Latin-inflected new wave pop that has been indelibly burned into the brains of a generation of Bay Staters.
New Man - Bad Boys (from New Man, 1986) - Like getting sacpunched by the zeitgeist of twenty-two years ago....
(This post is dedicated to thirdmate and Jack. They know damn well why.)
Sunday, June 15, 2008
und wenn ich heute
B-Side Sunday is back, and featuring 100% more Falcotropic goodness than ever!
Falco - Maschine Brennt (12" Remix) (the b-side of 1983's "On the Run" 12-inch single)
Don't look for an explanation, because there is none -- just some plastic new wave disco from the finest rapper ever to emerge from Austria.
There was a German woman in my extended circle of college acquaintances, and I once asked her if she'd was familiar with the late Johann "Falco" Hölzel's body of work.
"He's Austrian," she answered in voice thick with Teutonic disdain. "I'm German." Before I could apologize for the affront to her heritage, she quietly followed up with "It was the worst concert I ever attended."
Monday, June 09, 2008
the feeling that remains
I tend to get a bit apprehensive whenever I come across a comic purportedly aimed at "adult" or "mature" readers (unless it's a porn comic, in which case I just get incredibly depressed), as the material thus labeled very rarely exhibits any sense of sophistication or maturity. For every work that does meet the actual criteria, there are countless others whose idea of "adult" amounts to little more than the adolescent posturing of a junior high school kid, chock full of the hormonal angst and predictably "shocking" edginess one would expect from a thirteen year old boy who still thinks that Easyriders is a real porn magazine and Boone's Farm is quality hooch.
It's not a phenomenon strictly limited to comics, but the medium's endemic inferiority crisis means that many fans tend to grade on a curve, and material that would be seen hopelessly embarrassing or dodgy in films or prose writing has a better chance of being lauded as "cutting edge" or "groundbreaking" when applied to sequential art. This applies to superheroic fluff with delusions of grandeur as well as onanistic "indie" auto-bio nonsense -- there's more to being a grown up than dressing up in mommy's or daddy's old clothes and dropping some f-bombs.
My quest for suitable panels to use in Bahlactus's current "black and white" incarnation of Friday Night Fights has led me to revisit some of Marvel's magazine format titles from the 1970's. Apart from the Jack of Hearts appearances (in Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, of all places), I hadn't flipped trough these books since 1985, when my uncle discovered Jesus and passed the bulk of his comics collection onto my brother and me. As I mentioned in this post, the more "adult oriented" aspect of the magazines' content fell within the lines described above, awkward half-steps ahead of what was already occuring in Marvel's regular titles in terms of sex and violence, and utterly tame by today's standards.
Well, except for the second half of Chris Claremont and Marshall Rogers's "Daughters of the Dragon" two-parter (from Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #33, February 1977) that is. I mentioned it briefly in last Friday's post, but the mindblasting WTF factor of the story deserves a detailed examination. If you thought, as I did, that Marada, The She-Wolf marked the slimy nadir of Claremont's storytelling tropes, just wait till you plunge headfirst into this sub-basement of sleaze.
Having thwarted the machinations of the sinister Bra-Snap Tong, the two-woman Ebony, Ivory, and Jade team of Misty Knight (being the "Ebony" component) and Colleen Wing (combining both the "Ivory" and "Jade") proceed to....
...hell, why not JUST let the RANDOM caps-heavy RECAP explain it FOR you?
Not only are the pair of private investigators ALIVE, but they've been treated to a scented bath and attended to by a entire harem of scantily-clad women!
The owner of the Evil Mastermind Day SpaTM also happens to be the man behind the arms smuggling operation Knight and Wing busted up in the previous issue. In order to recoup his losses, he decides to sell the women into sex slavery, but not before offering them a taste of Afghanistan's finest...
The ladies resist, but are trumped by a set of electrified bolas, as well as the layout of the arms dealer's secret lair, which was designed along the "random floating platform aesthetic" pioneered by the architectural firm of Ditko, Dormammu, and Strange.
The pair are chained to a wall and shot up with smack. In true Claremontean fashion, it's an experience that the characters learn to "reluctantly enjoy" and leads to this lovely expose of the horrors associated with drug addiction and the writer's personal demons...
...but just so no one gets the wrong idea or anything, Claremont makes sure that we're aware that Colleen Wing is a woman possessing great strength and dignity...
Colleen is saved from the lecherous Dr. Hartmann by Misty. Apparently Hartmann was so preoccupied by his new twist on the "ass, gas, or grass" formula that he failed to notice he'd been tying off and shooting smack into Misty's cybernetic arm, which she uses to break free and crush the bad doctor's trachea.
Misty heads off to do some reconnaissance and find a means of escape, leaving the strung-out Colleen behind to exorcise the monkey from her back via zen meditation...or maybe not...
But if no one is convinced it will work, why would Colleen make the attempt?
Oh, I see now. She's doing it for the fans.
While Colleen gains a deeper appreciation for the music of Lou Reed, Misty tangles with their arms dealing, slave trading captor, now sporting a kicky bondage harness ensemble and a pair of sword canes. She manages to hold her own at first, but the cards are stacked against her, as Claremontean story logic decrees that it must be Colleen who vanquishes the foe, thus mastering her physical and psychic adversaries through three pages of poorly blocked fight, exposition, and flashback scenes...
As for Colleen's smack habit? No worries there, true believers!
In a 1979 interview with The Comics Journal, Claremont stated that Misty's emotional support for Colleen was something that he'd have worked into the story even if had involved two male leads.
What I'm wondering is if he would also have kept the perfumed baths, sexual slavery, and disturbingly eroticized drug addiction aspects of the story if it had featured, say, Power Man and Iron Fist instead of Misty and Colleen.
The Boo Radleys - There She Goes (from the So I Married an Axe Murderer OST, 1993) - The members of The La's, who released the original version of this oft-covered favorite in 1988, claim that the song is not about heroin addiction. A shame, really, because I got a perverse sense of glee over the idea that the nauseatingly precious "Christian rock" outfit, Sixpence None The Richer, stumbled into covering a song about spiking the vein.
Curtis Mayfield - Pusherman (from the Super Fly OST, 1972) - No ambiguity here, just some superlative funked up soul.
The Insane - Chinese Rocks (from the "El Salvador" 7" single, 1982) - Written by Dee Dee Ramone and Richard Hell, recorded by the Heartbreakers, covered by a Wigan-based UK82 outfit, and purchased by me for a fiver from Looney Tunes in Central Square sometime in the fall of 1991.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
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.
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