you always leave a stain

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.

the turd in the punchbowl

It was supposed to be a golden moment in American history, and indeed it was. The realization that I was witnessing something very important happening, on so many levels, managed to cut its way past decades of cynicism born of thwarted idealism and swell my heart with pride.

I went to bed last night giddy with hope and schadenfreude, and though I still feel the warm buzz, it has since been harshed by events in California, where it looks like the ban on and possible nullification of same sex marriage has been approved.

While I was, and still am, thrilled about the symbolic and historical significance of Obama's victory, Proposition 8 is something that has a direct and immediate impact on people's lives. That some of these people are good friends of mine made it especially personal is beside the point -- it's more than a matter of seeing my friends have equal rights and protections under the law, it's a matter of basic fairness for all regardless of my personal connections to the parties involved.

I'm a pragmatic idealist. I am more than capable of bending my principles for the sake of incremental or less than perfect gain, and am willing to hold my nose and play the crooked game if it brings progress in the now, rather than staking my hopes on a millennarian sea change in some imagined future. I realize that might make me look a bit...unsound...to some of my more uncompromising comrades even if I share the same grand ideals.

I cannot, however, bring myself to bend on the subject of egalitarian principles. Everyone should be granted equal rights, responsibilities and protections under the law. That's a no brainer. It's the cornerstone of any just society. So how could anyone with any sense of fairness or justice of conscience presume to dictate something as personal as the bond between two consenting adults?

Because it's an easy target, sanctioned by social, cultural, and theological prejudices and given the opportunity to single out a perceived "other." For what? Smug satisfaction? Anticipation of some spiritual award? Simple mean-spiritedness?

That's utter bullshit. As I said back when similar nonsense was going down here in the Bay State, the only people who can "protect" or "devalue" marriage are you and your spouse. I don't conduct my personal relationship with Maura by looking over my shoulder at what other couples are doing, nor would I even deign to dictate terms of matrimony to other grownups. To think that such deeply personal matters ought to be subject to referendum is obnoxious in the extreme, leaving things in the hands of some petty-minded assholes on the other side of the state to legislate.

Look, folks, if you want to parade around in your vestments of smug righteousness, confident about your reserved place in the heavenly host, more power to you (though I suspect you might be disappointed in the end). Just keep your fucking noses out of other people's personal business, right? Don't you have some quasi-incestuous Purity Ball to plan for or something?

The Adverts - New Day Dawning (from a 1978 b-side; collected on The Punk Singles Collection, 1997) - I had been planning to repost my post-Election 2006 miniplaylist today, because it has been two years and there's no topping perfection. Events being what they are, however, I'm not up for unbridled joy, so we'll go with the most ambiguous (and sinister) selection from that day.

For the record, here's what I had on repeat last night when I was in full-on happy mode...

tired of being upset

It's been a while since we checked up on Senator Psycho Man. I wonder what he's been up to these past few weeks....

Meanwhile, back at the McCain campaign headquarters.....


November 5th can't come soon enough.

The Buzzcocks - Everybody's Happy Nowadays (from Singles Going Steady, 1979) - It must be true, because I saw it in a poll.

Halloween Countdown: October 31 - catch the horror train

We've reached the end of 2008's Halloween Countdown, and all that remains to be done is to crown this year's groovy ghoulish track of honor. The past two winners have been sedate, atmospheric affairs -- "Unexpected Guest" by UK Decay and "A Forest" by The Cure -- but this time I've chosen something a little more uptempo...but no less befitting this day of fiendish delights...

The Damned - Nasty (from 1984's "Thanks for the Night" single)

This hard-to-find gem, recorded shortly before Captain Sensible's long departure from the band, was alone worth the price of The Light at the End of the Tunnel box set. It's a breathtaking roller coaster ride that captures the The Damned doing what they did best -- garage rock-inflected punk with overtones both humorous and horrific.

The track was originally recorded for use in the "Nasty" episode of The Young Ones (a.k.a. "the greatest television show ever"), as seen in this fantastic clip which opens with one of the most quotable lines ever uttered...

Now that, bats and ghouls, is how you end a Halloween Countdown with style.

(If you are looking for a final All Hallows' fix, however, feel free to check out today's special Pronounced WOO-BIN post.)

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...

(From "Forever Ambergris," Tales from the Crypt #44; October-November 1954)
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...

Click...if you DARE!
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.

Halloween Countdown: October 15 - American nightmare

Pick at the scab of American society and you will reap a rich harvest of pus blooms.
Forget ghosts and ghoulies and the other assorted things that go bump in the night, true horror wears a human face and resides much, much closer to home.

Dead Kennedys - Saturday Night Holocaust (from the b-side of 1982's "Halloween" 7"; collected on Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death, 1987) - Every day, in every way, the world lurches a step or two closer towards the nightmare world Jello Biafra envisioned.

At least we're making progress on something...

Halloween Countdown: October 9 - spreading the disease

Sorry, bats and ghouls, but Unca Andrew is feeling a little under the weather today. I have contracted a delightful little virus. It's symptoms are mild enough by day, but turn into uncontrollable shakes and a high fever once the sun goes down. As I have no way to tell if this night will be any different than the previous two, I'm going to make the most of my daylight hours while I can (by napping and playing videogames, naturally).

action breeds reaction

Can you hear it, brothers and sisters?

The Revolution has begun!

Sorry, false alarm.

At least Alexandra has the support of her friends and family...

(from Josie & The Pussycats #53 -- Winner of the 1971 Eagle Forum Excellency in Comics Award!)
The Mo-Dettes - Foolish Girl (from The Story So Far, 1981) - The "old mind bit" is for boys!

three hundred more years

From the pages of Mystery in Space #5 (December 1951-January 1952) comes this prescient glimpse into mankind's glorious future...as made possible by the unmatched killing power of the S-64 Disintegrator Gun:

...and by "Earth," we mean "America."
Thus S'less'thar, revered shaman and a cephalapod of peace, passed from this world. The rest of the I'lloni tribe had little time to mourn his passing, as they sooned joined him in radioactive oblivion. A Space Wal-Mart now marks the place where they died.
"So, any of you ugly motherfuckers know if there's oil around these parts? You've got fifteen seconds to answer."
"...and God help anyone stupid enough to challenge our Divine mandate to rule."
Hey, you can't argue with "Spaceman-ifest Destiny." (Not if you like being non-disintegrated, that is.)

Depeche Mode - Barrel of a Gun (from Ultra, 1997) - Catching up with the Industrial Dance Pop Scene? Or perhaps Music for the Goth Club Masses?

The Flesh Eaters - Disintegration Nation (from a 1978 single; collected on No Questions Asked, 2004) - The Flesh Eaters tend to get lumped in with the L.A. deathrock crowd, but aside from a slight arty inclinations and occasionally macabre subject matter, I don't really hear the connection...just some straight up, rough-edged punk rawk.

coming home to roost

The present financial crisis, as explained and resolved in six panels of a Golden Age comic book:

(from Captain Marvel Adventures #112; September 1950)
A fundamental weakness in the underpinnings of market capitalism? Pshaw! It's all about telepathic waterfowl seeking to undermine our entirely sound and totally rational system of unrestrained greed, long since freed from the petty shackles of effective oversight. Thankfully, we have a government that is compassionate enough to insulate the titans of finance from their own self-destructive tendencies and is willing to commit as much of the taxpayers' money as is required to cover the speculators' losses.

Hey, it's an emergency. We can discuss accountability and regulatory issues later, after the the wheelbarrows full of cash and lines of low-interest credit have been dispensed to the poor, poor plutocrats who have already suffered so much. Please, pay no mind to the restructuring of the banking regulations that were created to prevent commercial banks from dabbling willy-nilly in the investment banking sphere. We need to be grateful that these entities were willing to buy out their failing cousins in a time of crisis, so just put aside any worries that this will pose an even greater economic risk down the line.

When the worrybird cackles, a quick response is required. As for those of you who will ultimately foot the bill for the bailout, and who have been suffering the most from the turmoil....well, you should have been more responsible with your financial affairs. Next time, don't take out a subprime mortgage to buy a home -- buy the firm that uses such mortages as security to game the markets. Then the government might be willing to slip you a share of that sweet $700 billion.

The Rare Breed - Beg, Borrow, and Steal (from a 1966 single; collected on the Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era box set, 1998) - This single was re-released in 1967 and credited to the Ohio Express, one of the many faceless bubblegum proxy groups used by songwriters and studio wizards of the period, though the actual touring line-up of the "band" hadn't yet been assembled. So don't expect to hear any similarities between this respectable slice of garage rock and "Yummy Yummy Yummy."

Action Pact! - Who's to Blame (from Survival of the Fattest, 1984) - It's a shame the 80's Britpunk scene imploded when it did, as there were a number of bands that were on the verge of breaking away from the formula (while not falling into the standard hard rock/metal/grindcore career trajectory) before it all came crashing down. You can hear it in the studio side of The Partisans' The Time Was Right LP, which sounds like nothing else recorded before or since, and you can hear it to a milder extent in Action Pact's second album, from which the above track was taken.

Wire - Let's Panic Later (from an EP included with, and later appended to 154, 1979) - It is impossible to calculate the creative debt indie rock owes to Wire....unless you're talking about Elastica, in which case the exact sum has been recorded in an out-of-court settlement.

Note: My other project, pronounced WOO-BIN, celebrates its second week of existence with a recital of the most sublime verses ever penned by human hands.

at weekends will change their behavior

With all the hoopla regarding the circus of pain and stupidity known as the 2008 presidential election, it's easy to forget that there are other electoral contests being held this November 4.

With that in mind, the two candidates for the state representative seat in my little corner of Boston's northwestern suburban sprawl have been packing my mailbox to the brim with reminders of what's really at stake.

The answer is "not that much." It's a symptom of the problems of living in a de facto one-party state. Not that I'd ever vote Republican, but the presence of an active opposition would at least motivate some of these party hacks to try a bit harder, and not settle for the traditional paradox platform of "lower taxes/more and better services" that the average suburbanite can't seem to get enough of. "I want decent roads and a great school system, but that extra fifteen bucks a year in taxes is too rich for my blood. I have Escalade payments to make, after all!"

I take my civic responsibility seriously, and take pains to vote in every election, no matter how inconsequential. Even if it's a futile gesture, I refuse to cede that marginal say in how things are done. Besides, at least I'm balancing out the vote of one other motivated idiot. The state rep decision is a bit of a puzzler, though, because I really don't care for either of the choices.

No matter how intently they look me in the eye during a door-to-door meet'n'greet and promise the sun, moon, and stars that they won't fuck over civil servants ( which both the wife and I are) on contract, benefits, or pension matters, no matter how much they swear they won't roll over for some out of state developer's plans to drop a massive luxury condo complex in our backyard, their records speak for themselves. (C'mon, I can't be the only person to pay attention to how these folks vote in the legislature and city council. What, I am? Oh.)

In the end, I'll probably do what I always do in these situations: cast a write-in ballot for my dog Oscar. Given the steady decline in voter turnout, I fully expect the little guy to win one of these years, too. He is better qualified for the office, that's for frigging sure.

Here's a sample from today's prodigious haul of eco-unfriendly landfill fodder disguised as campaign literature. See, that One Guy has been hammering that Other Fellow over his blue state bona fides. It's an argument that I'd ordinarily be receptive to, if that One Guy tossing stones didn't have a strong record of DINO tendencies himself:


My initial reaction to this was "Wait, the Catholic Church is allowed to donate directly to candidates?"

The Damned - Anti-Pope (from Machine Gun Etiquette, 1979) - Though quantum theology has predicted the existence of anti-popes, it wasn't until the constuction of the Large Liturgical Collider by Saint Hippolytus in the 3rd Century A.D. that one was actually observed in action.

even though we ain't got protoculture

Setting the mood, the Mekton II way...

...and if they don't, then they really need to.

Or if that's too unorthodox a concept to countenance, perhaps you could stretch the boundaries laterally, and gird your loins for dice-and-tables mecha combat with the stirring sounds of "Danny's Song" or the theme to Footloose. Michael McDonald's discography also makes excellent music to swing double photon sabers to.

Me First & The Gimme Gimmes - Danny's Song (from Have a Ball, 1997) - Cutting the soft rock toxicity to non-fatal, yet still uncomfortable levels.

As for me, however, there is only one track worthy enough to accompany my desperate fight against the sinister forces of the Comet Empire...

Mongo Santamaria - Watermelon Man (from Watermelon Man, 1962) - Jazz standard cartridge -- LOADED! Conga capacitors -- CHARGED TO MAX! On my mark, prepare to unleash the power of the LATIN BOOGALOO CANNON!

nobody's sorry

If the recent events in the Twin Cities have had a certain mephitic familiarity to them, well....


They aren't without precedent.

Oh, I'm sorry. Was that offsides? Too fucking bad.

Yes, the G.O.P. hasn't advocated the liquidation of undesirables...openly, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other parallels.

Claiming a monopoly on patriotism and love of country? Check.

Demonizing the opposition as traitors? Check.

Claiming alliance with the clean-leaving regular folks against the decadent elites? Check.

Stressing ignorance as a virtue? Check.

Sporting perpetual hard-ons for any and all things militaristic? Check.

Emphasis on creepy, necrophiliac rituals of martyrdom? Check.

Led by a jumped up ex-military man with a bad temper and hatful of hollow promises to win the masses over even as he plans to fuck them over? Check.

Still, I suppose that as long as folks aren't being shipped off to death camps, the rest of the disturbing similarties can be overlooked, especially if the bootheel to come rests more heavily on someone else's neck, be they women, gays, blacks, latinos, liberals, foreigners, and the like.

Subway Sect - Nobody's Scared (from a 1978 single) - The death rattle of rationality. I've said it before (in the context of the Dead Kennedys music): When the situation on the ground rivals -- nay, exceeds the most paranoiac of punk prophecies, then we're in dire straits indeed, comrades.

Edit: Before the anonymous faces in the peanut gallery again decide for some cheap point-scoring, I'd just like to say that Godwin's Law can go fuck itself.

strange encounter

In a world where Super-Dads can't understand their Super-Sons....

"Don't blame me, son. Blame Trojan."
...and Super-Sons can't understand their Super-Dads...

Tennessee Williams presents Bat on a Hot Tin Roof!
...there is a place committed to bridging the Super-Generation Gap; a place called...

ENOYREVE
Pronounce it however you like; Enoyreve is a judgement-free zone. (But please spell the name correctly on the check for the non-refundable admission fee. Our accountant is a real hard-ass.)

You will be placed under the singular guidance of resident guru Dr. Timothy Zamm...

Fashions by Desaad, hairstyle by Oliver Queen
...a disciple of Master Bob Haney who has earned non-degree certificates from some of finest community colleges and correspondence schools in the Tri-State area.

Zamm's unique approach to family therapy includes such visionary techniques such as meditative beard-stroking, full immersion bikini sessions of "light as a feather, stiff as a board," as well as the Connery method of backhand faceslapping...

...and later, "White Night" drills and free Kool-Aid for everybody!
...all designed to challenge one's preconceptions in the most uncomfortable manner imaginable.

Subtext, what...ah, you know the drill...
If the Funky Robot group dance sessions or the Joe Besser-inspired pinching encounters...

Therapy or fetish? Only Dr. Zamm knows, and he's keeping it under his dashiki.
...fail to achieve the necessary breakthrough, our radical "killer-android-armed-with-nerve-gas" therapy...

"I respect that it's your thing, brother, but your toxic death cloud is decidedly unmellow."
...is available to those who wish to take things to a higher level. Nothing inspires a little father-son bonding like some rogue WMDs. (They don't even have to be real ones, either. Just ask the Bushes.)

ENOYREVE -- committed to bringing Super-Families together since 1974. Don't take out word for it; listen to the testimonial by these satisfied seekers of Super-Enlightenment...

...and then the acid kicked in.
Sponsored by World's Finest Comics #224 (July-August 1974), purchased by a young Andrew for 35 cents at a local flea market. Some childhood traumas will never heal, no matter how much masculine dance or pinch therapy one undergoes.

The Wipers - No Generation Gap (from Over the Edge, 1983) - In a fair world, The Wipers would be more than a source of esoteric namedropping by music geeks or a reliable source of cover song material. It's not that the Portland indie rockers are particularly unappreciated as they're underappreciated, mentioned with reverence but never reaching the same levels of fan devotion as many other less-worthy objects of college radio worship.

The Ramones - Psycho Therapy (from Subterranean Jungle, 1983) - I got a chance to see The Ramones when they played at (the now long-gone) Citi in the December of 1990. I spent most of the evening in the company of the most annoying twerp ever to crack open a Dungeon Master's Guide. The club was packed with jocks from Boston University who wanted to check out "that mosh pit shit" and my spectacles were smashed during the course of the festivities.

Afterwards, I had to walk a mile in the snow from Mishuam Station to my home. A shitty experience all around, but I did get to see The Ramones play live and up close, which made the plague of hassles entirely worthwhile.

Friday Night Fights: Rush 'N' Attack

It's friday night, cats and kittens, which means it's time for a little realpolitik action with Black Canary, Master of International Diplomacy!

(from Justice League #3, July 1987; by Giffen, DeMatteis, Maguire & Gordon)
Now that's what I call détente....

The Dents - Not Through with You (from Time for Biting, 2006) - Up for some kickass parochial punk rawk? Maura caught them performing at a Boston Derby Dames a couple years back and their album has been on heavy houshold rotation ever since.

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)

hip to be square

In response to yesterday's post, reader Dave L. of Springfield asked "Prexies?"

The etymology of the word is presumably tied to "prexy," a bygone slang term for a college president which ended up being applied to the high priesthood of Pat Boone fandom. The notion that "Mr. Nice" had a large, organized fan following may strike some of you as a really quaint and bizarre phenomenon, but keep in mind that a lot of what we think of the "Fifties" is a artificial construction of post facto nostalgia.

We tend to conflate eras with their associated "hip" fads and subcultures (greasers, hippies, punks, et cetera), creating a skewed image which fails to reflect the historical reality. My father graduated from high school in 1968 and my mother in 1969. A quick flip through either of their yearbooks fails to turn up a single example of freak or flower child, just page after page of neatly groomed lads and lassies at odds with the psychedelic popcult perception of the late 1960's.

Such things did exist, to be sure, but as fringe elements whose disproportionate cultural influence and mediagenic power color our collective historical mythology. It's reductive (as all shorthand is by definition) and it plays toward expected flavor rather than nuance...especially when the nuanced version is perceived to be tres unhip. There are far more people willing to boast about how they bought the original 12" pressing of "Blue Monday" back in the day than there are folks who'll cop to buying Toto IV, despite what the sales figures state. I'd much rather wallow in the warts'n'all version of the past than the rose-tinted and romanticized facsimile passed off as the genuine article.

Besides, who am I to lob stones at late 1950's Pat Boone fans and their byzantine organization? At least there was a manic sense of sincerity in their devotion, which feels quite refreshing in an age when the Hannah Montana and Camp Rock blocks are waging a relentless war for merchandised supremacy in the aisles of every superstore in the country. (The battle will not end until the last tube of hemorrhoid salve has been brought into licensed compliance.)

While the subject of Pat Boone fandom seems ideally suited for the Lilekian "Ha ha! Look how stupid these people were back then" school of mockery, I find it difficult to lob haughty cheap shots at targets that range from quite sad...


...to downright tragic...


See what I mean? Cruel mockery becomes redundant when dealing with those who get squishy whenever they hear "Love Letters in the Sand" or who celebrate their devotion to blandly innocuous pop music through verse...


Okay, that's just fucking creepy.

Ill Repute - Clean Cut American Kid (from Rodney on the ROQ, Vol. 3, 1982) - How about a little Nardcore, prexies?

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Little Demon (from Cow Fingers & Mosquito Pie, 1991) - I find this b-side to 1956's "I Put a Spell on You" serves as a nice vaccine against the ravages of pure strain Boonitis.