Pee-Pee Soaked Heckhole

Various Artists - O Brother Where Art Thou? Soundtrack

2012-02-01T11:23:00.013-05:00

Hold onto your hats, folks - this is gonna be a long one . . .

I've found that the best times in your life are usually not the ones you plan, but the ones that just sort of happen. The great thing I've discovered about being alive, of being able to walk around on this nutty planet, is that even during the most mundane, ordinary days, there's potential magic and amazing experiences tucked away around every corner. Most of the time, we fail to see these opportunities, or we don't move fast enough to take advantage of them. But when that special thing actually does happen, seemingly from out of the blue, it reminds you that the possibility of magic IS out there. I have had some unique and interesting experiences in my life, and this is one of the best of them - moreso because I didn't really go looking for it, but it just sort of found me just the same.

One Friday in June of 2001, while I was living in Providence, Rhode Island, I took the day off of work to run some errands. None of the things I needed/wanted to do that day were of any major consequence - I needed a couple of things from the Stop & Shop grocery; I had to pick up some bits and pieces of dry cleaning; I needed to buy myself some new pants - typical stuff. As I was walking out of my apartment that morning, I remembered that I had a roll of undeveloped film sitting around, taken during a recent trip to California. So I turned back to grab it, figuring that I could head over to nearby Providence Place Mall and drop it off to be developed while I visited the clothing stores there for my slacks.

The mall was fairly deserted when I got there - since, of course, most other people besides me were at work. I left my film at the camera store, then wandered around the center for a bit, enjoying the sensation of not being cooped up in the office during a weekday. As I roamed, I happened upon two women sitting behind a small folding table set up in an out-of-the-way corner of the mall. It looked sort of like one of those temporary setups that insurance or credit card companies put up in shopping centers and airports - you know, the "Sign Up Today And Get A Free T-Shirt!" sort of things. This particular table didn't quite have that particular sort of vibe coming from it, but I still began to steer clear of it - I didn't feel like being hassled that time of morning.

But with no one else in the immediate vicinity, the women started waving me over, with a little more urgency than I thought necessary. My "No" radar was still flashing red, so I can't tell you why I stopped and turned back to respond to them - I suppose continuing to move away would have been impolite on my part. But in hindsight, I'm glad I did, for as I approached, one of the women greeted me with "Hi! Would you like to try out for a TV game show?"

It was then that I noticed the banner draped across the front of the table - "WEAKEST LINK SIGNUP HERE".

For those of you who may not recall, "The Weakest Link" was an NBC game show which had been airing in prime time since April of that year. It was the American version of the hit British show of the same name, and it even had the host of the UK version, the acerbic Anne Robinson, as the host of the U.S. show. In many ways, the show was NBC's answer to ABC's wildly popular "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?", which had been running on that network for the past couple of years to great acclaim (and great profitability for the network).

In the first couple of months after its springtime debut, "The Weakest Link" experienced the same sort of huge popularity and success as its competitor. But with all of the hype and buzz surrounding it, I still had not bothered to watch the program. Game shows (especially prime time game shows) weren't really my bag, to be honest - I had seen "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" only a couple of times, and never all the way through. To me, all game shows just seemed so contrived and phony, with intellect not exactly being the determining factor in winning or losing. Every once in a while, I thought about trying out for "Jeopardy!", since it seemed like you had to actually have (and use) some real smarts to succeed on that show. But overall, these contests weren't really the sort of thing that interested me.

I confessed my ignorance of the show to the two ladies. But they said that didn't matter; I should try out anyway, especially since I was the first one there and thus would be guaranteed a chance. Since I was going to hang around the mall anyway until my film was finished, I finally agreed. They had me sign my name to a register, and gave me a ticket with "#1" printed on it, and told me to come back in an hour or so.

I went up to the third floor food court to grab some lunch, and by the time I returned to the area where the "Weakest Link" table was, there were literally HUNDREDS of people gathered there, all vying for a chance to be a contestant. They only took a certain number, something like the first 300 or 400 - since I had ticket #1, I was good to go. At the appointed time, they trooped the vast lot of us through the mall, up two escalators and into a barren area that used to be a former store, now filled with folding cafeteria-style tables and benches where we all could sit.

Despite the vast size of the applicant pool, the "Weakest Link" folks were very efficient in their duties - it was very apparent that they had done this type of thing before, in cities all over the U.S. After greetings and preliminary remarks, they handed each of us pencils and a four-page "Biographical Questionnaire", on which we provided them with our names, addresses, education, occupation, hobbies and any other pertinent facts about ourselves. They gave us about 20 minutes to complete that. Then everyone's forms were gathered up and replaced with a single sheet of paper, with the numbers 1 through 20 listed along the left-hand side. This was the "testing" phase of the application - a staff member stood up in the middle of the room and shouted out twenty questions, one at a time, while we quickly scribbled our answers down on the sheets provided.

- "What is the capital of Wisconsin?"
- "What does DNA stand for?"
- "How many sides does a Rubik's Cube have?"; etc.

The game show recruiters then gathered up everyone's test sheets (we all put our names at the top beforehand), and took all of these papers back to another part of the room, closed off from the rest of it. In there, there appeared to be a couple of dozen additional staff members sitting, waiting to grade the exams and match them up with the bio sheets. Apparently, they were looking for both the smartest and quirkiest/most interesting personalities to be on the program. We (that is, myself and my fellow contestant applicants) sat in that room on those hard benches for what seemed like an eternity, until the group leader finally reappeared and announced the names of the applicants who would move on to the next round in the process. Out of more than 300 people, they selected about 20-25 of us for Phase II . . . and, lo and behold, I was one of the selectees.

After dismissing the others, they took my selected group back to yet another part of the store, which had been set up to vaguely resemble the actual game show set. There, we were told that we were going to assemble in groups of eight, and play a quick version of the game, all of which was to be filmed by several cameras set up around the room and "sent back to Hollywood" for the show's producer's to make the final determination as to who would and wouldn't be invited to be on the actual show. After a rapid run-through of the rules of play, we began the mock competition. While the cameras rolled, the stand-in for the show host lobbed questions and insults at us, and we all tried our best to answer/respond in kind (they claimed beforehand that it didn't matter if we answered a question incorrectly; they were just trying to see how we looked and responded on camera. Whether that was true or not, I know for a fact that I didn't miss a single question - a factor that played in my favor, as I learned later on).

After about 45 minutes of that sort of nonsense, that was that. The crew thanked us for our time, and said that they would be in touch with us soon. It was late afternoon when I finally left that store, so I went down to get my developed pictures before walking home (never did get those new pants that day, however . . .).

I didn't tell a lot of my friends about my experience that day, because despite assurances from the production staff that we would "hear from them", I honestly didn't expect to. I figured that that team had been doing the same type of recruiting all over the country, and as such there were scores of other applicants for them to choose from besides me. I was semi-hopeful to get a call from them, but I wasn't really banking on it.

However, to my surprise, an associate producer for the show contacted me in less than a week. The top-line producers, she said, were impressed with how I presented myself on camera, and they liked my background, etc. She also mentioned that, during the filmed portion of the process, I was the only one to correctly answer a question that had stumped every other applicant in the country (this is no bullshit). The question was, "Which Milwaukee band was discovered by the Pretenders in 1981?" At the time, I knew from the moment they said "Milwaukee band" that the answer was "Violent Femmes". No one else nationwide provided the correct answer - including the applicant group FROM Milwaukee (See - vast and obscure musical knowledge IS good for something!)!

The bottom line was they were very interested in getting me out to California immediately to participate in a real taping. She told me to stand by for further details, which would be coming in the next few days. I was jazzed to hear this news, but also a bit nervous, since I still had yet to actually WATCH the program. I thereby began a crash course in "Weakest Link"-ology, watching every episode I could and trying to discover its flow and nuances.

[For those of you who don't recall, here's a rundown of how to play "The Weakest Link" (I edited this down from what I found on Wikipedia - sorry, but this is as brief a description as I could put together):

"Essentially, a team of players tries to reach and bank a set target within a time limit by compiling a chain of correct answers that would be broken with an incorrect answer or if a player decided to bank the money that was already in the chain. On NBC, the team was composed of eight people looking to win up to $1,000,000. One player would be eliminated after each round until two were remaining. Each round is reduced by 10 seconds thereafter (with the first round lasting for 2:30). Contestants who are eliminated in the rounds leading up to the final round are told by the host: 'You are the weakest link. Goodbye!'

The final vote occurs prior to the penultimate round, after which the two remaining players compete in one more round together for double stakes (with the round lasting for 1:30). The final round is a head-to-head five-question competition between the two finalists, with the contestant who answers the most questions designated the winner, or 'The Strongest Link'. The game show is winner-take-all, with the Strongest Link received the entire amount of funds banked during the show, up to a maximum of $1,000,000.

Prior to the start of the show, a random draw backstage is held among players to determine order, and the player who draws the first position starts the first round. Each round thereafter begins with the strongest link from the preceding round (or if that player had been voted off, the second strongest). For the head-to-head round, he or she also has the option of going first or passing play to the other finalist."]

I received my first "Weakest Link" callback in mid-July, early on in my efforts to study the game. The producers wanted me to fly out to L.A. for a taping in early August. But at the last minute (and fortunately for me, in hindsight), the show I was supposed to be on was replaced with a 'celebrity' edition - they decided to tape an episode featuring the former cast of "The Brady Bunch". I wasn't too disappointed - they assured me that I would be tapped for another taping "very soon", and I hadn't finished with my observations of the program yet. So it was all good.

I watched every episode of "The Weakest Link" that summer, and it didn't take long for me to discover one constant in all of the shows - the smartest person in each group of contestants rarely if ever won it all. That person would do well in the early rounds, then would be voted off late in the game as the others perceived him or her as a threat to their acquisition of all the money. That's when I began to realize that not all TV game shows were fake and moronic . . . and I started to understand and appreciate just how evilly well-constructed this particular game show really was. The winner-take-all aspect of "The Weakest Link" was both ingenious and insidious - ingenious in that it forces team cooperation in what is essentially a non-cooperative, cutthroat competition; insidious in that it seduces individual players to go all-out to win the money for themselves, thereby attracting undue attention to their efforts that ultimately cost them a chance at the prize. The show was more than just a trivia challenge - it was a very complex psychological struggle between eight people, with Anne Robinson's role being that of a gadfly, using insults and putdowns to ratchet up the already-present internal and external tensions within and between the contestants.

Once I figured out the show's structure, the WHY, I next had to come up with the HOW - how would I actually go about winning this game show? After a few more days of observation and thought, I came up with what I thought was a good plan:

In the first couple of rounds, I would go all out, answering as many questions as possible and trying to build up the overall bank as much as I could. Then beginning in the third round, when there are six players left, I would begin dumping questions; that is, purposely answering some questions incorrectly. Not all of them, mind you - just one or two per round, hopefully in spots where my breaking the answer chain wouldn't result in a large loss of money to the team. The goal was to be very subtle about it, and refrain from antagonizing my fellow contestants - not so that they would like me, but more so that they would forget about me when it came time to vote a member off at the end of each round, and focus on one of the louder, "smarter" contestants.

I didn't consider things like stage fright (I'd been the frontman for my band for a while by then, so being under lights in front of everyone didn't worry me a bit) or being unable to answer the questions (I'm sorry to say that I have a vast knowledge of useless trivia contained in my head) would impact the execution of my game plan. I figured that if I focused on the "timely dump" plan, I would at least make it to the final three contestants. At that point, I would trust to luck to get me into the finals.

At about the time I finished formulating my plan in late August, I began hearing from the "Weakest Link" producers again. They claimed they were done with "celebrity" editions for the time being, and were ready to start shooting some "regular people" shows. There were solid plans to tape a block of shows near the end of the following month, and the word I received was that I would be included in one of the early productions. I received several calls from them in the days that followed, and finally they locked down the time and date with me. I was told to expect a call from the "Weakest Link" travel coordinator that following Tuesday, to discuss flight schedules and hotel reservations.

I arrived in my office on the sunny, beautiful morning of the appointed day full of anticipation, looking forward to what was undoubtedly going to be a great day. At just before nine, I received a call on my office phone with a Los Angeles-area area code. I had a fleeting thought that it was odd to get a call from the West Coast so early (it being six a.m. there), but quickly chocked it up to studio efficiency as I picked up the phone. However, the call wasn't from NBC at all. It was from my sister in L.A., who was calling to tell me something about a news story she just heard, an unusual aircraft accident in New York City . . .

That was the morning of Tuesday, September 11th, 2001.

. . .

I think that it goes without saying that, in the immediate aftermath of that horrific day and week, I never received a call from the game show producers. I didn't bother to contact them either; somehow, my appearance on network TV just wasn't that important all of a sudden. Finally, after a week or so, I got a call from my contact there. The word I received was that, with the events of 9/11 still fresh on everyone's mind, NBC was going to curtail producing new episodes of "The Weakest Link" that involved 'regular' people, and concentrate on the exclusive production of 'celebrity' editions - the obvious but unspoken implication being that they were leery about flying people across the country, and would instead use the local talent pool. The network rep made the usual mouth noises regarding "In the future, if we decide to resume normal production, we'll keep you in mind, blah, blah, blah . . .", but I figured that I'd missed my opportunity, and my chances of ever appearing on the show were over and done with. It was disappointing, but what could you do? After a few weeks, I sort of put it all out of my mind, and by the early fall of 2001 I'd moved on with my life. I still watched "The Weakest Link" from time to time. But the shows became less interesting after 9/11, as the network trotted out "special edition" after "special edition" episode, featuring washed-up actors and other pseudo-"celebs" playing for charity. As the quality of "celeb" contestants began sinking further and further (pro wrestlers, redheads, Anne Robinson lookalikes, etc.), the show's once-high ratings began sinking as well. In my opinion, the producers forgot the golden rule - people watch game shows to see people like themselves win life-altering prizes - NOT to see some Troy McClure clone playing for some obscure animal shelter in Tarzana.

Unlike NBC, my company had no intention of curtailing business flights, and as such, I spent the latter part of that year flying to places like Buffalo, San Francisco and Cleveland for work. In November, we began a project with a large bank in Canada, and in support of these efforts I began making regular visits to Toronto. In early January, I was standing in line in Customs at the Toronto airport when my phone rang. I was surprised to be greeted with the excited voice of my old "Weakest Link" contact, who I had not heard a peep from in almost four months. The network, she told me, had decided to resume regular production, and I was at the top of their contestant list. Would I be available at the end of the month? Hell yeah, I would be!

This time, there were no hitches - a little more than three weeks later, I was using a NBC-paid ticket to board a plane bound for Los Angeles.

They pulled out all the stops for me upon my arrival that Friday evening, with a limo waiting at LAX to whisk me over to the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Universal City, where all of the next day's contestants were staying. I was pretty psyched for the show taping the next morning . . . but there was another event that weekend that shared space in the forefront of my mind - Super Bowl XXXVI, between the St. Louis Rams and the New England Patriots, was being played that weekend. And while I had no special affinity to either team (I'm a longtime Saints fan, and frankly couldn't (and still can't) STAND the Pats), the fact that I was in close proximity to Las Vegas on perhaps the biggest sports betting day of the year was too great an opportunity to pass up. I had already made plans that, regardless of the outcome of my game show experience, my ass was going to be sitting at a poker table in Sin City, with sports book tickets in my hand, by no later than Sunday morning. The Rams were heavy favorites that year, and the thrilling possibility of making a twin killing in both LA and Vegas that weekend kept me awake far into the night.

I had to be up early the next morning - there was supposed to be a shuttle bus waiting for us at the front door of the hotel at 7:30. I was knackered due to my late night, but I made it on time, and clambered aboard the ride with about a dozen other folks. The contest instructions we had been given prior to our arrival stated that we were not supposed to engage with one another prior to arriving at the studio, so the ride to Burbank was made in stone silence - an eerie silence, albeit we were all sitting cheek-by-jowl with each other.

We soon arrived at NBC's Burbank Studio complex, a rather non-descript row of gray warehouse-type buildings, where we were met by "Weakest Link" assistants and herded into a receiving area in Studio 1. It was here that I learned that my show auditions were not yet at an end. Like I said earlier, there were about a dozen of us on the bus - but the show only has spaces for eight contestants. So there was some final winnowing-out to be done. One by one over the next couple of hours, we were led into a room to face a panel of three or four show producers, who took turns asking us questions like "Why do you want to be on the show?" As opposed to my earlier audition in Providence, this one was a lot more serious - not a lot of smiles or nods coming from that grim group of execs. These were the gatekeepers, the guys in charge of making sure the show was entertaining and good, so the production company and network would make money. So they were keeping a keen eye open - not for weirdoes (because the show benefited from having interesting personalities on), but for boring, 'blah' people. So I went into my final interview with the whole 'happy face', "Hey, great to be here!" sort of attitude - and it worked. I made the final cut.

They moved the final eight of us into another room for a late brunch, and a chance now to finally speak to one another, as the restriction on contact was now lifted. My fellow contestants included a college student, a former beauty queen, a psychologist, a probation officer and a small town mayor. All in all, almost everyone was pretty cool. Since they were anticipating having us indoors for the taping for the next several hours, the show runners also gave us a little time to roam around outside in the parking lot for some fresh air. Studio 1 was the same studio where "The Tonight Show" was filmed, and we all admired Jay Leno's car parked outside in his own special spot - a spotless old-fashioned car (looked possibly like a Duesenburg to me) painted a shiny sea green with immaculate white-wall tires.

It was during this break that one of the contestants recommended a unique strategy. Apparently, she had also been watching the program, and was struck by how little of the potential $1 million grand prize was won (on average, the Strongest Link took home somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000). Her suggestion was that in the first round (when the questions were generally easier), NONE of us would 'bank' the money until we had correctly answered eight questions in a row, giving us a maximum payout for that round of $125,000. If it worked, it would instantly make our episode one of the most lucrative in "Weakest Link" history. Everyone immediately agreed to give it a try.

After that break, things began moving very quickly. We went back inside Studio 1, and were herded into wardrobe and makeup. We had to bring a couple of extra outfits, which were reviewed and critiqued by the producers. A couple of the female contestants were told (make that 'ordered') to change into one of their alternate ensembles, which pissed them off to no end.

After everyone was powdered, primped and kitted out to the satisfaction of the powers-that-be, we were led into the back of the studio, the place where they would actually be filming us on the show. We spent a few minutes in a dingy area behind and underneath the audience seating area. It was here that we finally met the host, Anne Robinson, for the first time. Our encounter with her was brief. She was dressed in her trademark style, completely in severe black with evil-looking steel-rimmed glasses. I don't remember her offering us any pre-show words of encouragement; she did say "This is the LAST time today you will see me smile!", apparently her stock phrase to contestants. I don't recall her actually smiling when she said that . . .

We were then moved to another part of the studio, where they had us all sort of mill around and pretend to chat with one another while they filmed us, for part of the opening sequence. From there, they led us across the floor, stepping over cables and around TV cameras, and onto the main stage, which looked like something out of Close Encounters.

I was placed in position 8, the last place to Anne Robinson's right as she faced the audience. As I walked to that spot, I quickly glanced ahead, to get a glimpse of the studio audience. But they were very difficult to see - it was like an audience full of undertakers or ghouls; they were all either dressed completely in black, or draped in black blankets. All in all, it was a very freaky effect. But before I could fully process my surroundings and get settled to everything else that was happening around us, I found to my mild shock that the filming had begun. I thought there might be a couple of practice shots or something . . . but no. One second, we were sort of milling around on stage - the next second, music was playing, lights were flashing, and I was staring into a TV camera saying my name. And off we went. I quickly put everything else out of my mind, and tried to concentrate on my "questions dumping" plan developed months earlier.

But first, we had to get through the initial round and see if we could max out our winnings, according to the plan we agreed to earlier that day. The play clock showed 2:30, and Ms. Robinson spun towards the player in position 1 to start.

Q. "For $1,000, what legendary Scottish sea creature is nicknamed 'Nessie'?"
A. "The Loch Ness Monster"

"Correct!"

And on it went around to each of the first seven players, each one of them answering without banking, with the money meter highlighting our current level rising incrementally - $5,000 . . . $10,000 . . . $50,000 . . . $75,000. I could almost FEEL the audience holding its collective breath, as the money and tension level rose higher and higher. It finally came to my turn, as the eighth player - my correct answer would be worth $125,000 and would end the round, a feat never before accomplished on the U.S. version of the show. Even with so much at stake, surprisingly, I didn't feel the least bit nervous.

Q. "What 'A' is the superhighway in Germany with no speed limit?"

I instantly responded - "Autobahn". And with that, the crowd went wild, as did all of us there on stage! A $125,000 round! Holy smokes!

After all of that excitement, it was time to vote one of the contestants off the show. The first one to get the ax was the young college student, who was frankly sort of an arrogant douche to everyone that morning, an attitude that did him no favors once the taping began. During the first round of voting, I was happy to see that no one voted to put me off the show. So far, I was flying under the radar, just as I had hoped. Things were going well.

And so the show went. Round after round progressed, with the overall bank building and contestant after contestant being voted off (After being relieved, the dismissed contestant was taken to another part of the studio to film a brief valedictory segment, then immediately taken back to the hotel in a waiting limo). Beginning with the third round, I started intentionally dumping a question or two per round, at times when it wouldn't hurt the team (i.e., cost us money) - and to my delight, my plan was working like a charm. Players kept leaving, but I survived, time and time again. There were little breaks in production every couple of rounds, so the cameras could be reset and things moved around, stuff like that. I remember standing there during one of those breaks in the middle of the taping, quietly laughing to myself in incredulity - I couldn't BELIEVE that things were going the way I hoped they would!

Finally, it came to a point where only three of us remained - the small-town mayor, a woman from Texas and me. The woman from Texas had been gunning for me for the past couple of rounds, voting for me to be removed, so I knew she was a threat I had to neutralize (in addition, she was clearly the smartest remaining player - besides me, of course!). The mayor was visibly nervous as the show wore on, but was holding his own. I knew that at this point, my 'question dump' plan had to fall by the wayside, and I needed a little bit of luck to make it to the championship rounds. At the end of that round, we all had to vote for who to remove - and the audience gasped as our votes were revealed - the three of us all voted for a different contestant!

In situations like that, the contestant who had the highest number of correct answers during that round won the tiebreaker, with the opportunity to choose the member to be removed - and by the barest of margins, the strongest player for that round . . . was me. I quickly voted the Texas woman off. With a little strategy, and a heaping dollop of luck, I had made it to the penultimate round and the finals.

"The final vote occurs prior to the penultimate round, after which the two remaining players compete in one more round together for double stakes (with the round lasting for 1:30). The final round is a head-to-head five-question competition between the two finalists, with the contestant who answers the most questions designated the winner, or 'The Strongest Link'."

The penultimate round was a chance for us two remaining players to really stack some cash onto our already sizable winnings. But as I mentioned earlier, the small-town mayor was clearly rattled, especially so at nearly being eliminated the round before. So the guy kept missing question after question, limiting our take for that session. I, on the other hand, tried to remain calm and focused, particularly with the best-of-five championship round coming up.

As the strongest player from the previous round, I had the option of choosing who would go first in the final round. I told Ms. Robinson that I chose to go last, and as I did so I glanced at my opponent and watched the blood drain from his face. Wow, I thought; this guy is seriously in bad shape. And it showed - he missed his first question, a relatively easy one, as far as I was concerned. I answered mine correctly, so the score was now 1-0 in my favor. From that point, we both went on a tear, each of us giving correct responses to our next three questions. With only one question apiece left, the score stood at 4-3 for me. Still, I felt surprisingly calm.

Anne Robinson asked my opponent his fifth question - if he missed it, I would win automatically. But he nailed it, tying the score at 4 to 4. Fine - no problem. My last question was coming up - if I answered it correctly, I would be the Strongest Link, and the victory would be mine. Even with all that, I remained cool as a cucumber.

Then Ms. Robinson said " . . . if you answer this question correctly, you have won. So, for . . . ", and she said the amount of the grand prize.

THAT'S the moment when I got nervous. Really nervous. Really, REALLY nervous. I could feel the tension and panic building inside my stomach - up to that point, I really hadn't thought about the money, per se; I was just concentrating on trying to win the game. But when she stated what exactly was at stake for me, well . . . My heart started pounding like a jackhammer, so hard that I could feel it shake my body, so loud that I was sure the folks in the audience could hear it. A low buzz started building in my ears, increasing slowly in volume - I later determined that what I was hearing was the sound of blood rushing through my head. And I got a mild case of tunnel vision - I couldn't see anything to my extreme left or right - just Anne Robinson's face right in front of me, as the Moment of Truth arrived, and she asked what hopefully would be the Final Question:

"The soundtrack of what George Clooney film - "

The answer that instantly came to my mind with those words was Out Of Sight, a recently released George Clooney/Jennifer Lopez vehicle. I instinctively knew that it was the WRONG answer . . . but that was the one that lodged in my head. And, truth be told, I almost blurted it our spasmodically. But I forced myself to calm down, and listen to the rest of the question:

" . . . won the 2001 Country Music Award for Album Of The Year?"

The answer was then obvious (at least to me), and I took several moments to compose myself. I looked away and took several deep breaths while I locked the words into my head. I then looked up, straight into Ms. Robinson's eyes, and slowly enunciated every word in my response:

"O . . . Brother . . . Where . . . Art . . . Thou?"

There was a soundless pause in the studio, then Ms. Robinson intoned these words: "That . . . is the correct answer." I was the winner!

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! The word "relief" does not do justice to what I felt at that moment! I wanted to laugh and cry and faint and jump and hug everyone and slap five with Jesus, all at the same time! I barely heard the rest of what Ms. Robinson said, about me being the Strongest Link, and the money I had won! It was truly a mind-jolting, ecstatic experience!

They wrapped the taping on the main set shortly afterwards, and audience members came rushing up to congratulate me. I then had to go up to the little room to film my own final segment, like everyone who had gone before me. After that, it was back to the production offices to sign a shitload of paperwork, before climbing into the waiting limo that took me back to the Sheraton (now, THAT was an uncomfortable, awkward journey - as my fellow passenger on that trip was the small-town mayor, the guy I just defeated on the show. He was miserable about losing his chance at all of those winnings - understandably so. But still, for that short time, he was killing my buzz).

When we arrived back at the hotel, we found all of the other previously dismissed contestants waiting for us in the lobby. They had all gathered there that afternoon, one by one, as their limos returned them there. The word had already been passed to them that I was the winner, so when I walked through the hotel door, I was greeted with applause and a loud cheer. That was intensely gratifying - I didn't want those folks to hate me; my desire to win the show wasn't a personal issue - it was just business. I herded everyone into the nearby hotel bar, where we all partied together for the next several hours - all on my tab, of course! But early on during our blowout, I excused myself to head up to my room for a couple of minutes, to drop off my extra show outfit and to have a moment to myself to contemplate the enormity of what had just occurred. That was the point when it all began to sink in . . . and as I looked out of my window over the smoggy San Fernando Valley, I could see the reflection of my big smile in the glass as I thought to myself how great it was to live in times like these, to revel in the unexpected, and to see a plan succeed beyond my wildest dreams. I allowed myself those precious few seconds of private, unbridled joy and satisfaction . . . then I changed my shoes and went back down to the party I was hosting.

So with all of this, I present to you the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack album to the movie of the same name, released on Mercury Records in December 2000 - the album whose name was worth six figures to me, ten years ago on this very day, one of the better days in my life. As I have stated earlier, I have no special affinity for country music. And truth be told, I have never actually seen this movie (although I should - I understand that it's excellent). But I felt that I HAD to purchase this album, if only for what it brought to me on that fine L.A. afternoon. I hope that it provides you with just as much joy and delight. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

(And thanks for reading this thing all the way through - I apologize again for the length. Pretty good story though, eh?)

Various Artists - O Brother Where Art Thou? Soundtrack

Various Artists - Christmas With The Rat Pack

2011-12-21T22:16:00.005-05:00

Sorry I've been so quiet recently, gang. For some reason or another, I just seem to have lost my writing mojo for the time being . . . I can't explain it any other way. There are several music features and stories that are in various stages of completion, but due to a combination of several unrelated (or possibly interrelated) factors (including lack of time, general malaise, and other things I need not go into here), I just can't seem to bring them to a finish. When I do, I'll probably be backfilling a lot of the weeks since my last post in mid-November. So check the monthly indexes to the right from time to time, to see if there's anything there that hasn't been there before.

So again, sorry. I get this way from time to time - the words don't flow the way I'd like, and so I just shut down for a bit. But not to worry - I'll be back at it again soon, with more tunes for you to enjoy, coupled with my rambling, interminable stories that you all have learned to tolerate(!). See you all in 2012. Until then, when I get my act together . . .

Here's a holiday offering for you all - Christmas With The Rat Pack, featuring Yuletide favorites from Dino, Sammy and Frank (apparently, Joey Bishop can't sing, and Peter Lawford was too drunk to participate). I got this for Christmas in 2002, and initially didn't think much of it, since I didn't have a great affinity for the whole "Ring-A-Ding-Ding" era and its trappings. But I must say that over the years, this album has grown on me, and I play it quite a bit over the holidays. Here's the song lineup:

1. Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow - Dean Martin
2. Mistletoe And Holly - Frank Sinatra
3. Christmas Time All Over The World - Sammy Davis, Jr.
4. The First Noel - Frank Sinatra
5. Baby, It's Cold Outside - Dean Martin
6. I Believe - Frank Sinatra
7. Silver Bells - Dean Martin
8. The Christmas Song - Sammy Davis, Jr.
9. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing - Frank Sinatra
10. Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer - Dean Martin
11. The Christmas Waltz - Frank Sinatra
12. I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm - Dean Martin)
13. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Frank Sinatra)
14. Peace On Earth/Silent Night - Dean Martin
15. Jingle Bells - Sammy Davis, Jr.
16. White Christmas (Reprise) - Dean Martin
17. It Came Upon A Midnight Clear - Frank Sinatra
18. Winter Wonderland - Dean Martin
19. I'll Be Home for Christmas - Frank Sinatra
20. Marshmallow World - Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin
21. Auld Lang Syne - Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin

Say what you want about The Rat Pack and their hokey '60s Vegas trappings - these guys could SING. Hope this CD grows on you all as well. Enjoy, and thanks again. See ya next year!

Various Artists - Christmas With The Rat Pack

Sinead O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (RS500 - #406)

2011-11-09T12:05:00.010-05:00

I've been checking back over the posts - it's been months since I did a Rolling Stone 500 album. That's inexcusable on my part! So here goes . . .

I first became aware of Sinead O'Connor in the late fall of 1987, when a good friend of mine (that girl I referred to here) clued me in to this great new Irish artist and her debut album, The Lion And The Cobra. I quickly ran out to the local music store in Athens, GA, where I was living at the time, and picked up a cassette copy. The cover art featured a pale, demure-looking girl dressed in blue, strikingly beautiful even with her shaved bald head. As soft and gentle as she looked on the cover, the music inside The Lion And The Cobra was anything but - every song (even the more 'gentle' ballads) was filled with tension and power; you could tell Ms. O'Connor threw herself into every note. The juxtaposition between the image and the music couldn't have been more stark. Still, this album quickly became a favorite of mine, and I brought it along with me everywhere.

I left Georgia a couple of months later, moving up to Norfolk, VA, and in the summer of 1988 found myself briefly in London, England, my first visit to that country. I was excited about checking out all of the music shops and venues there, and at one point found myself at the old Virgin Records at Piccadilly Circus, going through the stacks (this was the place I saw the 'CD factory' in the basement level, mentioned here). There, I came across the original British release of The Lion And The Cobra, and was somewhat shocked to find that the cover art was totally different from the American release. The UK album showed a much more threatening, aggressive O'Connor - frankly, she looked a little like the Devil . . . which, in my mind, makes the album that much cooler.

I did a little research, and learned that Chrysalis Records, the US distributor, was worried that O'Connor's 'look' would scare Americans away from buying the record. So the label, seeking to protect 'sensitive' Yankee minds from harmful, disturbing images, purposely replaced the original album art with a softer, less threatening pose . . . thus continuing the long and ignominious tradition of bowldering and homogenizing British releases for American consumption (with examples including Capitol Records issuing reordered (or in some cases, totally different) early Beatles albums; the censorship of the covers of Blind Faith's debut album and Roxy Music's Country Life; changing the name of Nick Lowe's first album from Jesus Of Cool to Pure Pop For Now People . . . the list goes on and on).

Anyway . . .

A year and a half later, I was back in the States, back in Virginia, and started seeing a girl I met at an Awareness Art Ensemble reggae show at the old King's Head club near Old Dominion University. My brother, an ODU student at the time, invited me to check the band out, and she caught my attention when I sensed her eyeballing me from across the bar. She was cute, small with short bobbed hair, and we seemd to have a lot in common, despite her (for me) 'unconventionality' (for example, she usually dressed all in black - not completely goth, per se, but not in a style that I was used to with my other girlfriends).

We went out quite a bit during the spring of 1990, hitting the bars in the Virginia Beach area, or grabbing a bite to eat at the Jewish Mother deli or Waffle House, or hanging out in her room until the wee hours (she still lived with her folks, so I had to be SUPER quiet . . .). With all the time we spent together, I gained a clearer indication of some of the issues and hangups that were obviously tormenting this girl - and there were many (which I need not go into here). Actually, I kind of sensed that something wasn't quite right with her from the first conversation we had; it wasn't anything specific, just little stuff - the way she moved her head, a telltale lilt in her voice. I should've cut and run early on, but the girl was intriguing, and fun to be around. And despite what was swirling around her her noggin, she seemed to enjoy my company just as much as I enjoyed hers. Shoot, I LIKED this girl, quite a bit. So I hung in there, hoping against hope she would - I don't know, "snap out of it" or something (yeah, yeah, I know - but I'm a guy, and that's how we think. So sue me).

The same month I started hanging out with her, MTV started airing the video of "Nothing Compares 2 U", the first single off of Sinead O'Connor's upcoming album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got. The setup for the film was simple enough - a closeup of the singer, tightly focusing on her face while she sang the tune, intercut by moody, brooding shots of O'Connor wandering morosely around Paris. It's been over twenty years since this video debuted, but to this day it still retains much of its original impact and power. Sinead sings her heart out; you almost feel like a voyeur, watching this girl sing through what apparently was genuine anguish and pain (the tears falling from her eyes near the end just completely hammered that sense of loss home). And yet, you couldn't help but continue watching - she was just incredibly beautiful in the film; you couldn't take your eyes off of her:

My girlfriend and I were both big fans of this song and video, and watched a lot of MTV together, hoping to see it as much as possible. Of course, as new couples are wont to do, we strived to relate this song to our own relationship - I recall us many times staring dewy-eyed at one another while "Nothing Compares 2 U" played in the background (and yes, that is exactly as sappy as it sounds . . .). In addition to the music and atmosphere of the video, another thing that jumped out at me was the long coat that O'Connor wore during the "walking through Paris" portions. I thought to myself, "I gotta get me a coat like that!" After weeks of searching, I finally found the perfect one at a nearby Burlington Coat Factory - as black as midnight, and reaching practically down to my ankles. I wore that coat constantly, even with the weather beginning to warm up in the Norfolk area - apparently, I thought I looked cool in it.

O'Connor's LP was released in March (of course I snapped it up on cassette immediately). By the end of April/first part of May, both the album and the lead single were topping not only the American charts, but music charts worldwide. At around the same time, my ship was preparing for another six-month deployment, this time to South America. I was bumming about being away from this chick for so long, especially as she had also made plans to leave the country during that time, heading over to Europe and the Middle East for several months. I spent as much time with her as possible in my last few days in Virginia, then left one morning in early June for parts south, a very unhappy hombre.

The first month of our cruise was spent in the Caribbean, in places like Puerto Rico and Aruba. It should have been a lot more fun for me than it was. But I spent much of my time in the tropical paradises brooding over the girl I left behind. "Nothing Compares 2 U" was a big hit as well in all of the countries we visited, so it played constantly everywhere, always reminding me of her. I can recall riding in a shuttle bus in Aruba with a bunch of other shipmates, headed to Oranjestad to check out the signts and nightlife there, when suddenly this song came over the bus radio. It depressed me so much that I almost returned to the ship.

But as the cruise progressed, I began to enjoy myself more and more, and revel in all that the Caribbean and South America had to offer in terms of nightlife and danger. I attended a swank outdoor party at a naval base in Cartagena, a function quietly guarded by scores of rifle-toting Columbian Marines patrolling in the shadows. In Peru, in the midst of a martial law crackdown by the new Fujimori government, I went to a reception at the U.S. Embassy in Lima on a bus with blacked-out windows and armed guards stationed fore and aft, and during the party spoke at length with an affable embassy official who I realized much later was probably a CIA operative. I played roulette in a beautiful old casino in Valparaiso: got to wear my cool new long black coat out in Punta Arenas at the bottom of the continent: danced the lambada (badly) in Recife: and partied hard in Rio, one of the few cities in my experience which totally lived up to its advance billing.

As for my girl back in Virginia, I heard less and less from her as the weeks progressed and she was off on her own overseas trip. As my ship moved counterclockwise around the continent, the intensity of the feelings I had for her, nearly overwhelming at the beginning of the journey, began to subside. In mathematics, a standard equation is "rate equals distance over time". I discovered, as the months passed, that that numerical relationship also generally holds true for personal relationships - the rate at which I thought less and less about her increased with the length of our cruise and the time spent away from Norfolk.

By the time of our return to the U.S. in early December, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got had faded from the charts. My girl, back in the States ahead of me, was there to greet me as we pulled into port. But the thing we had had faded as well. We had a half-hearted reunion, then called it quits a couple of weeks later. I guess I knew early on that our thing wasn't built for the long haul - just like Sinead O'Connor's career. This LP and her hit song was her U.S. peak. A series of bad career moves, including two poorly received albums (1992's Am I Not Your Girl? (a set of jazz standard covers) and 1994's Universal Mother) combined with a disasterous appearance on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" in late 1992, seriously derailed her career. She wouldn't make another album until 2000's Faith And Courage. Despite her still-considerable talents, none of her efforts over the past 20 years have came close to the heights she reached in 1990. Too bad - for a short while in the music world, nothing compared to her.

Anyway, here's the album, released by Ensign Records in 1990 and distributed in the U.S. by Chrysalis Records. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think:

Sinead O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got

And here's a special bonus: Sinead O'Connor's stunning cover of "Sacrifice", from a 1991 tribute album devoted to the songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin. After I heard this the first time, I felt that no one should ever be allowed to cover this song again. See if you agree:

Sinead O'Connor - "Sacrifice"

(And, by the way - I still have that coat.)

A little help requested from my blog viewers

2011-11-05T22:26:00.002-04:00

Mediafire has been doing something funky with my files - unbeknownst to me, it appears that some of the music files that link to my posts here have mysteriously disappeared for no apparent reason. I was doing a review tonight, and found that both the Kiss Alive! and The Stone Roses albums are no longer in my Mediafire files, and are showing as "deleted or unavailable" when you click on the link here.

All of the files for all of the posts I've made here since the start of Pee-Pee Soaked Heckhole should be fully available, except for the ones that the DCMA forced me to delete, due to copyright rules. So, in the future, if you happen to click on something and a message pops up showing that it is not available, let me know ASAP, and I'll reup the file.

I just shitcanned one carrier (Rapidshare); I'm really not in the mood to get dicked around by another one. I'm hoping that the problems I'm having with Mediafire are isolated. As such, I will say no more about them until circumstances force me otherwise.

Thanks for your help. And please keep coming back.

Bernard Herrmann & The National Philharmonic Orchestra – Psycho (Complete Music For Alfred Hitchcock's Classic Suspense Thriller)

2011-10-31T01:11:00.009-04:00

And finally this month, a special treat for this Hallow's Eve - the complete score to Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock's terror classic, released in 1960 and still just as creepy and scary as hell over fifty years later. This is arguably the greatest movie score of all time, in terms of its originality, lasting impact, and direct effect it made on the viewer's reaction to the film - Hitchcock himself was quoted as saying that "33% of the the effect of Psycho was due to the music" (a modest understatment, in my opinion). Hard to believe that Bernard Herrmann's participation in this movie, and the sounds he created, almost didn't happen.

Paramount, the studio producing the movie, lowballed Hitchcock on the production costs, forcing the great director to make Paycho on the cheap - utilizing his "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" TV crew instead of a real film crew, cutting corners and toning down a lot of the lavish aspects and touches that graced his classic films of the 1950's (like Rear Window and North By Northwest). Hitchcock had worked with Herrmann on five of his previous films, and wanted him for Psycho as well, but Herrmann was intially reluctant to do so, as Hitchcock offered him a lower fee than before due to the film's lower budget. When he finally signed on to write music the movie, Herrmann took advantage of the limited funds available to score the music for a smaller string ensemble, instead of the full symphony orchestra used in earlier Hitchcock films. He also (wisely) blew off Hitchcock's request for Psycho to have a complete jazz score. The results of Herrmann's work speak for themselves. The "shower scene" score is, to this day, still considered the most frightening theme from any movie:

This recording was made on October 2nd, 1975, with Herrmann conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra at Barking Assembly Hall, London, England (just a couple of months before the great composer's death). It was originally released on vinyl that year, and later released on CD by the Unicorn-Kanchana label in 1989. This is considered to be the best of several Psycho soundtrack recordings currently available. I've had this thing for forever - I'm pretty sure I bought it at the late, lamented Olsson's Books & Music at their Georgetown, DC location. That place always had interesting, off-the-wall music available, not to mention outstanding books and a laid-back atmosphere. The demise of that small but important bookstore chain a couple of years ago was a heavy loss to the DC area. Outside of Kramerbooks in Dupont Circle (the only halfway decent indie bookstore left in DC), no one has been able to completely fill the void left by Olsson's - sadly, Kramerbooks doesn't have a music section. Oh well.

If you want to really scare yourself tonight, turn off all the lights, then play track 17 in the pitch dark - I guarantee you'll be creeped out for the rest of the evening. Whether you do so or not, I wish all of you a safe, scary, bloodcurdling Halloween! Enjoy, and I hope to see you all here next month!

Bernard Herrmann & The National Philharmonic Orchestra – Psycho (Complete Music For Alfred Hitchcock's Classic Suspense Thriller)

Various Artists - Revenge Of The Killer B's, Vol. 2

2011-10-24T02:21:00.003-04:00

For all you completists out there - here's the follow-up/companion volume to my previous post - Revenge Of The Killer B's, Vol. 2, released by Warner Bros. Records in 1984, in the wake of the superb and successful Attack Of The Killer B's, Vol. 1. Just like its brother, Revenge . . . contains rare b-sides and unreleased material from some of that era's top bands.

Unlike Vol. 1, this album was issued in both vinyl and cassette, although like the previous disc, it has never been released on CD. This post was burned off of my cassette version; the tape differs from the record in that it contains one 'bonus' song, NRBQ's collaboration with 1980s wrestling impresario Capt. Lou Albano. Here's the lineup:

1. Fleetwood Mac – Cool Water
2. Marshall Crenshaw – Somebody Like You
3. Depeche Mode – Sometimes I Wish I Was Dead
4. Rank And File – Post Office
5. The B-52's – Moon 83
6. The Pretenders – Money (Live)
7. NRBQ w/Lou Albano - Boardin' House Pie
8. Talking Heads – I Wish You Wouldn't Say That
9. Echo And The Bunnymen – Way Out And Up We Go
10. Tom Verlaine – Your Finest Hour
11. Kid Creole And The Coconuts – You Had No Intention
12. Madonna – Ain't No Big Deal
13. Aztec Camera – Set The Killing Free

Some of my favorite songs off of Vol. 2 include Depeche Mode's surprisingly peppy and upbeat tune "Sometimes I Wish I Was Dead", Echo & The Bunnymen's "Way Out And Up We Go", and the excellent and funky "You Had No Intention", by the now-woefully unappreciated and nearly forgotten Kid Creole & The Coconuts. But every song here is great and a rare gem . . . even the one with Capt. Lou!

So, there you go - now you have two discs of classic '80s rock and new wave b-sides to enjoy! And I hope you do - as always, let me hear what you have to say regarding this album.

Various Artists - Revenge Of The Killer B's, Vol. 2

Various Artists - Attack Of The Killer B's, Vol. 1

2011-10-19T01:30:00.003-04:00

Okey dokey, gang - here's a real rarity for you . . .

I got this one at the old Strawberries record store in Downtown Crossing, Boston during the summer of 1984. I was in the midst of my Naval Academy summer cruise, travelling up and down the East Coast in a small flotilla of YP (yard patrol) craft with several other classmates. The first place we stopped on our journey that summer was Bath, Maine - not high on my list of places to visit, needless to say. The locals there were jazzed to have actual Annapolis midshipmen within their midst, and pretty hospitable, throwing us a pretty lavish Independence Day picnic party. But it was one of the coldest Fourth of Julys I've ever experienced - we had to wear pretty heavy jackets during the outdoor festivities that afternoon. And the drinkers in our group (which were many, but did not, at the time, include myself) were grumbling under their breaths, because the only suds made available at the party was watery, cheap-ass Red White & Blue beer (it pains me to point out this egregious example of Boat School snobbery and entitlement - hell, it WAS free beer). Other than that, there wasn't much for us to do up there. With that grim combination of boredom and chilliness, we were all ready to move on to the next destination as soon as possible.

Boston was to be the first big-city stop on our journey; we arrived there a couple of days later, and docked in Charlestown, close to the berth of the historic USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides"). I had spent some time in Boston in earlier years, when I was a high school student in a small town on the South Shore. But this visit was the first time I really had the opportunity and freedom to do pretty much what I wished. I rode the T all over the city, went out to Cambridge to visit some friends attending Harvard, hung out on the Common and at Fanueil Hall Marketplace. It was all pretty fun.

One night during our stay, a couple of shipmates and I decided to head out to catch the recently released Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom at a theater in Park Square (now long gone, replaced by a huge parking garage and a couple of upscale restaurants like Fleming's Steakhouse and Legal Sea Foods). We took the T to the Downtown Crossing station, and started walking.

Back in the mid-80s, even though Downtown Crossing was a major shopping area in Boston (the late, lamented Filene's and Jordan Marsh department stores were going strong then), it was still a sketchy area. It was sort of dirty and disreputable, especially as the evening hours came on - after all, the Combat Zone, the city's old red light district, was only a couple of blocks away down Washington Street. It wasn't the sort of place you thought about hanging around once the sun started going down. But that's where we were, on foot, with the Combat Zone between us and our destination. I wasn't worried - just a little leery. But that leeriness dissipated when we came upon Strawberries, a big music store that used to stand in the area right across from the big department stores. We had to sidle by a couple of gangs of toughs hanging out in front of the place, but no matter - back then, I'd walk over hot coals to get inside a decent record store!

The movie didn't start for a while, so we spent some time going through the stacks at Strawberries. The store was built on a deep but rather narrow plot, so it was sort of hard to get around its multiple levels, most of which were accessible only by elevator. There weren't a lot of CDs available in 1984, so the majority of wares available were records and cassette tapes.

I stumbled across Attack Of The Killer B's in the vinyl racks almost by chance; at first glance, it looked like nothing more than a chance for Warner Brothers to make a few dollars off of old rags and bones from their vaults that they didn't deem worthy enough to release on proper albums. But then I looked at the song list, and the first one that hit my eyes was "Love Goes To A Building On Fire" by Talking Heads. I had long been a big Talking Heads fan, so of course I had heard of this legendary unreleased song, but at that point had never actually heard the tune. So seeing it finally available here was pretty exciting to me. I started looking over some of the other songs on the compilation, and noted that almost all the them were hard-to-find rarities by some pretty big-time bands. Here's the lineup:

1. Marshall Crenshaw – You're My Favorite Waste Of Time
2. The Pretenders – In The Sticks
3. The Blasters – What Will Lucy Do?
4. The Ramones – Babysitter
5. John Hiatt – Take Time To Know Her
6. Roxy Music – Always Unknowing
7. Peter Gabriel – Shock Den Affen
8. The Time – Grace
9. Talking Heads – Love Goes To A Building On Fire
10. Gang Of Four – Producer
11. T-Bone Burnett – Amnesia And Jealousy (Oh Lana)
12. Laurie Anderson – Walk The Dog

To my chagrin, the album didn't appear to be available on cassette. But I was damned if I was going to leave it behind. So I purchased the vinyl copy, which I carried around with me for the rest of the night in a red plastic Strawberries bag. It sat on my lap during the entire movie as well. Since there wasn't a record player on board the YP, I had to wait several weeks until we got back to Annapolis to listen to the record, and I was not disappointed. Every song on the album was superb, and as such, Attack Of The Killer B's was a great addition to my collection.

[I still kick myself about one thing from the evening I purchased this record. As we were coming out of the shop and headed to the movies, I noticed a flyer attached to a light pole, advertising the only Boston appearance - that very same evening - of Gang Of Four on their 1984 "farewell" tour. I wasn't as big a fan of Go4 then was I would be later, so I didn't really consider blowing off Indiana Jones and checking them out that night. Looking back, I wish that I had - I've seen the band a couple of times since their reformation, but it would have been awesome to have seen them live in their heyday. Oh well.]

This album was released only on vinyl, and to date has never been released on either cassette or CD. I honestly forget that I had this disc until just recently, when I was going through some boxes in the basement and stumbled over it. As happy as I was with my find, I wasn't very happy about the condition I found this record in - I like to take care of my stuff better than this. As such, the burn from vinyl to MP3 was not without its challenges - you'll find that the quality on the Roxy Music song is pretty scratchy. And I finally just gave up with the Peter Gabriel song, and replaced the vinyl version with an identical one I had on CD. Otherwise, the burns are pretty good and cleaned up, and every song is here.

I hope that you all enjoy this album as much as I have over the years. Check it out, and let me know what you think:

Various Artists - Attack Of The Killer B's, Vol. 1

Various Artists - Punk Rock Baby

2011-10-10T16:53:00.002-04:00

It's true what they say - a baby changes everything. The birth of the first child is a very traumatic experience for new parents. Everything you've ever taken for granted in life, all of the relative freedoms and spontanaity you've enjoyed up to that point, is gone forever. While that sounds like a bummer, it really is not, because believe me, what you get back in return when you see that little person for the first time is worth a million times more than the things you think you're "losing" in your life. The arrival of Number One causes you to begin to think outside of your needs and the needs of your partner, and start thinking more about and preparing for the future, not just for the child, but for yourself as well. It's not just the immediate and long-term material needs - cribs, diapers, baby food, Christmas toys, Halloween costumes and college funds - but intangible things as well - "How can I bring this kid up to be happy and well-adjusted?" "How do I teach her right from wrong?" "What can I do now to influence his life in a positive way?"

Thus, one of my main priorities was to ensure that my firstborn was exposed early on to cool, non-commercial, non-crappy music.

Now, I wasn't about to pull a B. F. Skinner with his box, or John Watson with his Little Albert experiment, on my baby girl (look it up if you don't know what I'm referring to) - I wasn't that nutty about it. But it was my hope that by feeding my daughter a low-volume dose of stuff like The Clash, The Specials, and The Smiths from time to time, that somehow this 'good' music would sort of imprint itself in her brain, so that later on in life she would know enough to reject junk like The Spice Girls, Hannah Montana and the rest of the Disney kid bands. I swear I wasn't trying to turn her into some sort of weird preadolescent goth kid - I just looked down the road into a possible future with she and I living in a house where the walls of her room were plastered with Jonas Brothers and Hanson posters, and the insipid strains of neo-bubblegum dead-eyed 'rock' would come wafting nonstop out from under her door. And I didn't like what I saw. I was intent on altering that timeline!

My efforts started long before the due date. Around six months prior, I began playing a lot more music around the house, putting on as much Cocteau Twins, Lisa Germano and Liz Phair as I could get away with (my wife was tolerant of most of my musical choices, but not a huge fan of most of my favorite groups). I dragged her pregnant self along with me to see bands like The B-52s and The Pretenders when they played at Fair Park in Dallas, hoping that some of the tunes were "sinking in" down there. And after the birth, on the day mother and child were released from the hospital, I made a point of ensuring that the very first song our newborn would hear on the ride home was Stereolab's "Lo Boob Oscillator", my favorite song at the time - I had it cued up and waiting in the CD player.

Now I knew that I couldn't very well have the stereo piped up into the baby's room - it wouldn't have been good for her, and I don't think her mother would have allowed it anyway. We did put a music player in her room, but all it played was stuff like The Best of Elmo and The Little Mermaid soundtrack, at very low volume. Cutting-edge music was all but completely shut out! So I secretly searched for a viable alternative, and found it online on a website based in London, England - Punk Rock Baby, a CD of classic punk tunes reimagined as lullabyes. My problem was solved! I quietly ordered the disc, which was quickly shipped to me, and one evening just before the baby fell asleep, I surrepticiously slipped this album on while Mama wasn't looking.

Actually, the concept was pretty ingenious, and I stood in the baby's room for a while, listening and trying to guess the identity of each song as it came on. Here's the song lineup (all 'lullabyed' by an in-house group led by a musician named William South):

1. Down In The Tube Station At Midnight (orginally by The Jam)
2. Ever Fallen In Love (orignally by The Buzzcocks)
3. Smash It Up (originally by The Damned)
4. London Calling (originally by The Clash)
5. Teenage Kicks (originally by The Undertones)
6. Sheena Is A Punk Rocker (originally by The Ramones)
7. Pretty Vacant (originally by The Sex Pistols)
8. White Riot (originally by The Clash)
9. No More Heroes (originally by The Stranglers)
10. Into The Valley (originally by Skids)
11. Sex And Drugs And Rock 'N' Roll (originally by Ian Dury & The Blockheads)
12. Sunday Girl (originally by Blondie)
13. Hong Kong Garden (originally by Siouxsie & The Banshees)

These are not hard-core punk tunes at all, but very light, soft, delightful renditions perfectly made for the ears and brain of a newborn. My favorites on this disc include "Pretty Vacant" and "Sex And Drugs And Rock 'N' Roll", both of which are shockingly well suited for the lullaby treatment. It took my wife a while to catch on to what was being played, but in the end, due to the nature of this music, she acquiesed.

And how, you may ask, did my efforts turned out? Is my now-tween-aged daughter an aficionado of Sonic Youth and James Chance? Can she speak knowledgably about Bob Marley and Prince Buster? Can she spot the influence of Johnny Marr's guitar work in the music of The Wedding Present and Oasis? Well . . . frankly, no. Nowadays, she loves Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and the Black Eyed Peas . . . she never misses an episode of "Glee" - I was even coerced into taking her to the Glee 3-D movie (a waste of depth perception if there ever was one) . . . and on the wall in her room, there's a giant poster of Lady Gaga.

Damn . . . Oh well - I tried.

If you'd care to make the effort with your own youngsters, or if you'd just like to hear these off-kilter renditions of old classics yourself, here's the disc. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

Various Artists - Punk Rock Baby

Various Artists - Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Halloween

2011-10-02T21:14:00.004-04:00

More upcoming-holiday-themed madness for you - the final volume of Rhino's classic Just Can't Get Enough series, compiling New Wave hits from 1979 to 1985. Rhino originally released fifteen volumes in this series between June 1994 and June 1995, then in following years releasing discs containing New Wave selections based on particular themes (New Wave Xmas and New Wave Women, for example). I bought every one of these albums religiously when they came out back in the mid/late 90s, and own the full set.

The entire Just Can't Get Enough ouevre is a must-have for any true connoisseur of Eighties music. Each and every disc contains not only classics from that particular period, but also have at least one or two New Wave obscurities, songs that may have flown under your radar back then. As such, each album is full of "ah ha!" moments, and this one here is no exception. There will be songs here that you immediately recognize (like Ministry's "Every Day Is Halloween" (in my opinion, the peak of the band's "pop" period, before moving on to their more groundbreaking industrial sound) and Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party"), along with unfamiliar gems like the "Halloween"-titled tunes by Dream Syndicate, Sonic Youth and Siouxsie & The Banshees.

Rhino has no plans to release any additional compilations in this series, or for that matter to rerelease the original volumes (reportedly due to licensing issues). And frankly, they don't need to put out any new ones - for a nearly complete overview of the entire history of New Wave music, these albums are hard to top. And New Wave Halloween is a fine addition and fitting coda to this set.

So, enjoy your soon-to-be-with-us Hallowed Evening with some fine left-of-center music! Here's the album - as always, let me know your thoughts on it. Boo!

Various Artists - Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Halloween

Hall & Oates - Ultimate Daryl Hall & John Oates (Discs 1 & 2)

2011-09-20T01:16:00.007-04:00

In July 1983, I returned to my old hometown of Annapolis, Maryland, and began my plebe (freshman) year at the Naval Academy, a lifelong dream of mine. Plebe Summer is a time-honored tradition at USNA, a time when inductees are tested, trained and molded into military officers. The (all too true) joke about Plebe Summer is that they take away everything you're accustomed to in life, and slowly give them back to you as 'privileges' during your remaining four years at the Academy. And that's EVERYTHING - freedom, civilian clothes, music (the hardest blow for me), sleep . . . (and some would say 'dignity' as well . . . but we'll just move on). That summer is designed to be demanding and rough, both physically and mentally, and many don't make it through these first few weeks. A few plebes excel, but most just grit their teeth and slog their way through it; I was one of the latter.

So I presevered like the rest. We were up before the sun every morning, and every minute of every day was tightly scheduled and fully utilized, with marching, three-mile runs, close-order drill, uniform and room inspections, sailing instruction, ship and aircraft identification, and a million other things to do before lights out. In the midst of all of this intensive training, physical exertion, spit-and-polish and military pride and tradition - I met a girl and fell in love.

Near the end of the summer, the authorities began giving us . . . well, not exactly free time, but the opportunity to choose for ourselves what we wanted to do during sports period in the late afternoon. We were free to try out different intermural activities, and one day, on the recommendation of a friend, I decided to look into the fencing class over in Ricketts Hall. I'd seen it on TV, and it looked like fun. It was in that class that I saw her close up for the first time. She was a fellow plebe in a different company from mine, and as such her living quarters were far away on the other side of Bancroft Hall. I had noticed her during marches and morning runs, but until that point I'd never been within 50 yards of her. A buddy of mine was in her company, and as luck would have it, he was also in the fencing class that day, and introduced us. We had the chance to talk a bit between waving epees around, and seemed to connect somewhat. Even wearing the drab Academy-issue athletic gear, I thought she was gorgeous.

Plebe Summer finally ended, and the upperclassmen returned for the start of the Academic Year. Even with the start of classes, a plebe's time was still tightly scheduled, but in a different way than in the summer. But with all that we had to do, I still made the time to cross the huge Bancroft Hall dormitory (I was in 7th Wing, she was in 4th) - down the center of each passageway at a dog trot, arms close to my body, shouting "Go Navy" or "Beat Army" when making a sharp 90-degree turn - to see her as much as I could. I was taking a risk seeing her so much - Academy regulations strictly forbid relationships between first-year students, so I had to play it uber-cool. Besides, early on I wasn't quite sure where I stood with her; I believed that she thought of me more than as a fellow plebe, but I couldn't get a sign from her either way. So I had to lay back, and see what happened.

In October, the Naval Academy Drama Club ('The Masqueraders') put on a multipart production of Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2, calling the whole shebang Kings. I had a bit part in the first portion, but nothing in the latter parts. So on the second night, I invited her to attend the show with me. We sat side by side in the audience of the darkened Mahan Hall theater, the only lighting illuminating the stage. At one point in the play, Sir John Falstaff was parleying with his boon companion, the wastrel Prince Hal, and said/did something particularly uproarous. As I laughed with the rest of the audience, I brought my hand down on the armrest and, to my surprise, found it resting on top of hers. She instantly grabbed mine, and it was as though an electric shock ran up my arm! We sat there in the dark for the rest of the play, holding hands secretly, down low so no one would spot us. That's when I knew for certain how she felt about me . . . that is, at least I thought I did.

The next few weeks were . . . trying, to say the least. I wanted to see as much of her as possible, which of course wasn't much time at all. We began scheduling "study" sessions together in empty classrooms in Michelson and Chauvenet Halls after evening meal, but soon had to stop doing that after nearly getting busted by one of the upperclassmen patrolling these buildings one night. But finally, a rare and unique opportunity presented itself.

That November, for the first time (and as it turned out, for the ONLY time) ever, the annual Army-Navy football was played not in its usual Philadelphia location, but on the West Coast, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. And thanks to the efforts of Academy boosters and private contributors, the ENTIRE Brigade of Midshipmen and West Point Corps of Cadets would be in attendance.

For us plebes, this trip to California was to be a rare taste of freedom from Academy regulations for a couple of days. While many mids and cadets were going to be housed in various area hotels, the majority of us were put up, in twos and threes, with local families (from what I heard later, many more people volunteered to host us than were required - say what you want, but the L.A. area is pretty hospitable). As such, restrictions on civilian attire for all midshipmen, including plebes, were lifted - only on the day of the game would we be required to be in uniform. The game was also our only official function during that period; prior to that, we were on our own and could do what we wished. Needless to say, I was REALLY looking forward to this trip - not only for a mental break, but as a rare opportunity to spend some serious quality time with my girlfriend.

In California, I was going to stay with a sponsor family along with my buddy Jim, a fellow plebe in my company. We had been in touch with our temporary landlords in the week prior to the journey - they lived in Pasadena, fairly close to the stadium. My girl was staying with her roommate with a family in Torrance, California, which on a map looked reasonably close to Pasadena (I'd only been to Los Angeles once before, so I was clueless about the distances between places). At that point in my life, I still didn't have a driver's license (don't ask why - long story), but Jim was fully on board with hooking me up with her, with the nebulous promise of a double-date with her roommate as his reward. We arranged for the rental of a vehicle to tool around in during our time there.

The main body of midshipmen flew out of BWI to LAX on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (I still marvel at the logistics of moving 4,000 mids and 1,000 other related officers and staff - it all went like clockwork, without a hitch). We landed in LA that evening, and our host family met Jim and I at the airport. We immediately changed into civvies in the bathroom, then they took us over the rental car lot, where we found to our surprise and delight that the agency had upgraded us to a hot-looking red Mustang convertible. Jim put the top down, and we drove to Pasadena up the 110 through the relatively warm evening breeze, feeling on top of the world.

Having no access to my own music since the summer, my main preoccupation during the drive was finding a decent radio station. I settled on a station playing a new Hall & Oates song called "Say It Isn't So", released by RCA the previous month as one of the two new songs (the other being "Adult Education") on their greatest hits compilation album, Rock 'N Soul Part 1. "Say It Isn't So" was a continuation of Hall & Oates' evolution from a soft rock duo into more of a neo-blue-eyed soul, almost power pop band - a move that began in 1980 with their hit "You Make My Dreams", and continued through the early 80s with huge hits like "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)", "Maneater", "Private Eyes" and "Family Man". This latest song was filled with echoing vocals, syncophated electronic drums and synths, cowbell and wood block accents, and enough hooks to hang a full set of Calphalon cookware off of it. That ride to Pasadena that evening was the first of many times I heard that song that week - it quickly became the unofficial theme song to my California adventure.

"We like to be the strangers at the party, two rebels in a shell.
You like to move with the best of them you know we move so well.
Don't need someone to lean on. I know that there's an open door.
But if I'm faced with being replaced I want you even more so baby say it isn't so...."

The next day was Thanksgiving Day, and as such we were obliged to spend the day with our host family. I was itching to get down to Torrance, but it just wasn't happening that day. Friday was planned as the Big Day of Freedom for the visiting academies - the only things planned for us that day was a special evening at Disneyland, with admittance only for mids, cadets, and their families and guests. I finally connected with my girl over the phone, and the plan was that Jim and I would drive down to Torrance that evening to meet up with her and her roommate, and from there we would proceed in a two-car convoy to Disneyland. Upon arrival there, we would pair off and go do our respective things.

Well, the first thing I discovered on our trip south was that Pasadena to Torrance was a hike, at least 35 miles, a trip made even longer by the standard Friday evening L.A. traffic. So we had several opportunities to hear "Say It Isn't So" during the drive down, since it seemed every radio station in the Los Angeles Basin had the song on heavy rotation.

"Who propped you up when you were stopped low motivation had you on the ground.
I know your first reaction you slide away hide away goodbye.
But if there's a doubt maybe I can give out a thousand reasons why.
You have to say it isn't so..."

By the time we finally got to the place where she was staying, Jim and I were both frazzled. But I perked up immediately upon seeing her - it was the first time I'd ever seen her out of uniform (so to speak), and she looked GOOD. We said a quick hello-goodbye to her sponsor family, then we all hit the road. It was at that point that I learned that she didn't have a valid license either, so we couldn't ride with one another to Anaheim. She hopped in their rental car with her roommate, while I somewhat dejectedly climbed in beside Jim, and we began another 30+ mile drive in the dark to the park.

The traffic to Anaheim down Route 91 was pretty heavy, but for some reason, despite my protests, Jim insisted on driving like a maniac. He was weaving in and out of traffic like Mannix, music blaring ("Say It Isn't So" was heard at least once more during that drive), and soon the girls were nowhere in sight. I was plenty pissed, but fortunately she and I had made plans for this contingency - whoever got to Disneyland first would wait for the others by the front gate. So when we arrived, I immediately stationed myself by the ticket entrance near Main Street, U.S.A., and waited for her . . .

And waited . . . and waited. For nearly 2 hours. Jim waited with me for a while, then I released him from his unspoken obligation so that he could enjoy himself while I waited alone. There were thousands of people, military academy members and their guests, who streamed into the park during that time. And I'm pretty sure I eyeballed every single one of them on their way in. But somehow, someway, I missed seeing her arrive. Whether it was accidental or deliberate on her part didn't cross my mind at the time; all I could think about was how I missed my one big chance. I met up with Jim again as the park was closing, and we drove back to Pasadena, with me slumped in the passenger seat as, sure enough, "Say It Isn't So" played in the background.

The next day was the football game at the Rose Bowl. Due to my state of mind, I remember very few details of that day. We formed up into companies a couple of miles away from the stadium, and marched through a couple of Pasadena neighborhoods on the way there. Navy stomped Army, 42-13, a score that at any other time would have given me a great deal of satisfaction - but not that day. I finally met up with her late in the game, behind the stands. Couldn't get a clear explanation as to what had occurred the night before; in my mind, Jim and I were to blame for losing them on the highway. I was hoping to set up some time with her that evening, after the game, but she claimed she had other plans she couldn't break - which only added to my dejection. Overall, I was getting a weird vibe from her, and I didn't like it.

However, I saw her once more in California, in the airport waiting area the next day, just before we flew back East. In full view of other mids, she was overtly affectionate to me, in a near-blatant-disregard-of-Navy-rules sort of way. So that cheered me somewhat, and I felt pretty good on the flight back.

"Say it isn't so painful to tell me that you're dissatisfied.
Last time I asked you I really got a lame excuse.
I know that you lied.
Now wicked things can happen...you see 'em goin' down in war.
But when you play in a quiet way that bites it even more."

Back at Navy, we again carried on as before. But the rendezvous quickly became shorter and farther between. Finally, a couple of days before Christmas break, in an empty classroom in Michelson Hall, she lowered the boom on me - we were through; she was seeing someone else. Whether this new thing had begun prior to or after Pasadena, I never got an answer to. But I was devastated, and went through the holiday back home and almost the entire second half of Plebe Year pretty much in a depressed daze.

"Why you gonna go do you hafta say you wanna go ooh ooh baby say it isn't..."

Say it isn't so, indeed.

"Say It Isn't So" should have gone to Number One. But it had the misfortune of being released the same week as Michael Jackson's and Paul McCartney's "Say Say Say", off of the latter's Pipes Of Peace. The two songs battled for the top spot all through that November and December 1983 and into January 1984, with "Say Say Say" coming out on top. The Hall & Oates song was second-best every time - a ranking I suddenly could relate to.

For the next 3 1/2 years, she and I attempted to studiously ignore one another, a task made difficult by the fact that a) the Brigade of Midshipmen is fairly small; b) we were both English majors, a fairly rare breed at Navy, and as such were in several of the same courses over the years; and c) after graduation, we both chose the same speciality within the Navy, so we were in school together for almost another year after Annapolis, and encountered one another regularly since then. But in the past 25 years, we have only spoken together twice, very briefly, both times initiated by her, in a spirit of patently false bonhomie. While I was polite to her, both times I refused to be sucked in - some hurts never fully go away.

I used to be a pretty big fan of Hall & Oates back in their '80s heyday, but their appeal has definitely waned for me as the years have gone by. I don't have the same sort of nostalgia for them that I have for other bands from that era. Nowadays, I regard them more as "the Seals & Crofts of the 1980s" or "the American Wham! with a bit more testosterone". Yes, I know that sounds harsh, especially in light of all the hits they had - Billboard still regards them as the most popular duo of all time, beating out such acts as The Everly Brothers, Simon & Garfunkel, Steely Dan and Ike & Tina Turner, among others. But for me, this band will always be associated with "Say It Isn't So", the song that played continually in the background in the Navy-themed, unhappy-ending version of my own personal John Hughes movie in the late fall of 1983.

But for those of you lacking the same sort of visceral reaction to this band's music, here's an excellent two-disc compilation, Ultimate Daryl Hall & John Oates, released by RCA in 2004. Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

Hall & Oates - Ultimate Daryl Hall & John Oates (Disc 1)
Hall & Oates - Ultimate Daryl Hall & John Oates (Disc 2)

Halloween Horror: Scary Sounds From The Hex Files

2011-09-18T02:50:00.002-04:00

With October 31st just around the corner (relatively speaking), here's a silly post for you - one of those "spooky" sounds effects recordings, the kind usually played on Halloween Night by the neighborhood house that always seems to go all-out for the holiday . . . You know the house that I mean; every neighborhood has at least one - where the yard is filled with fake tombstones, "ghosts" hang from the trees, and the man of the house is usually lurking in the bushes, wearing a Frankenstein or gorilla costume, ready to jump out and scare the bejesus out of unsuspecting trick or treaters.

I was never into Halloween as much as that. Therefore, for the life of me I can't figure out when, where or why I purchased this CD. I must've seen it in a cutout bin somewhere in the late 90s/early 00s - the come-on line of "More That 73 Minutes Of Continuous Scary Sounds!" on the cover must have enticed me to pick it up. Still, the sound effects contained on it are pretty good, and if anything, it'll get you in the mood for Halloween. I wouldn't recommend playing the entire 73 minutes while you're sitting around the house, however . . .

Anyway, here you are - Halloween Horror: Scary Sounds From The Hex Files, released by good ol' K-Tel in 1997. Hopefully at least one of you out there could use a record like this. Either way - enjoy!

Halloween Horror: Scary Sounds From The Hex Files

Another milestone reached

2011-09-14T10:44:00.004-04:00

At around midnight my time last night, a visitor from Hayward, CA came to Pee-Pee Soaked Heckhole, looking for an old Starbucks Christmas compilation. That person was the 20,000th unique individual to check out my blog - which I think is pretty amazing! To all of these new visitors, and to all of you who continue to come back again and again to read my meandering screeds and check out my music, I just want to say "thank you" once again. I'm glad that you all like my little corner of the blogosphere, and I enjoy the kind comments regarding my efforts here that some of you have left. I'm still having a lot of fun with this, and don't intend to stop any time soon.

[While I'm here, a couple of quick administrative notes: Some of you may have noticed that I'm in the process of changing the music links so you can click directly on them to reach the downloads - just trying to make it easier for you all! And I received a notice from Rapidshare that since I'm not a Premium member, they will be deleting my uploaded files (beginning with the first one I posted there last year, The Crabs' Sand And Sea). So I'm phasing out all of the Rapidshare links on my earlier posts - it's all Mediafire, all the time now (Mediafire is better anyway).]

Thanks again - more to come!

Poll Results - "Who Destroyed Van Halen?"

2011-09-03T00:49:00.008-04:00

Well . . . that was an easy question, wasn't it?

Here are the results:

- Eddie Van Halen: 7 votes (46%)
- Sammy Hagar: 3 votes (20%)
- David Lee Roth: 1 vote (6%)
- Gary Cherone: 1 vote (6%)
- Michael Anthony/Alex Van Halen/Wolfgang Van Halen: 0 votes
- This question is bullshit - they STILL rock!: 3 votes (20%)

Look - no one outside of Van Halen is ever going to know the FULL story of their breakup in the wake of their 1984 tour. The 'public' reason was the usual one - "artistic differences"; namely, control over the band's sound and image. But every band member from that era has a different story as to what really went down, and each gives a different reason - Eddie Van Halen was a dick and a control freak, David Lee Roth was a prima donna who "got too big for his britches", etc., etc. Throw in the pressures of humongous fame, shitloads of money, plenty of booze and pharmacological mind-benders to go around, and the age-old power struggle between "the guy who created the band vs. the guy who is the front man/public face of the band" (see "Rolling Stones, The", re: Brian Jones), and anyone could see that there was bound to be a flare-up within Van Halen sooner or later.

But my personal feeling regarding all of that is this: Eddie is one of the greatest guitarists in rock history, and the awesome licks he laid down over the years served as the foundation of Van Halen's sound. But Roth was the guy in charge of building an edifice on top of that 'rock'-solid base, and he infused the band's music with color, excitement, 'zazz' - things that rock fans look for in their favorite bands. Those two guys (and I'm not discounting the excellent rhythm section of Michael Anthony and Alex Van Halen, who were also integral parts of the band) were a unit, and without them working together, playing their particular roles within the band, Van Halen simply was not and would never be "Van Halen".

With that in mind, and in light of the fantastic success they had during their long time together with those two guys laying the musical smack down, both Eddie and David should have worked harder to find some common ground, or at the very least 'sucked it up' and stopped bitching about it. I mean, hell, we've all worked with people we don't particularly like. And there are plenty of relationships out there that aren't exactly Ozzie and Harriet. But most people find ways to work around or through situations, without stomping away in a huff. Bands are no different, and when the albums are flying off the rack and the money's flowing in, and you're driving a friggin' Lamborghini to your gigs, that's incentive enough to make things work.

In my opinion, Roth was better at finding and accepting those compromises than Eddie was. For example: for their 1981 album Fair Warning, Dave wanted to continue the rocking, poppy sound (where his vocals were the prominent feature) found on the band's previous two successful albums, 1979's Van Halen II and 1980's Women And Children First. Eddie, on the other hand, wanted the new album to showcase denser, more complex structures (that, coincidentally of course, made his innovative guitar work the album's focus). Roth didn't like it, but he acquiesed to Eddie - the result being that Fair Warning was the band's worst-selling album of their early years. In this case, Dave put the band, and overall band harmony, ahead of his own interests (although the fact that the album underperformed and he was proven right must have been sugar on his tongue . . . ).

I think that, for all of his antics and silliness, deep down, David Lee Roth knew the 'secret' of Van Halen, which was that the sum of him and Eddie together was much greater than the two of them apart. And frankly, it seemed that Eddie Van Halen never understood that, and he operated under the assumption that since the band bore his name, that he WAS the band. I think a lot of his dissatisfaction and frustration stemmed from not having the other band members, especially Roth, acknowledge this - and that's what led to their breakup.

[In many ways, the situation within Van Halen in the early/mid-80s is similar to the situation within The Smiths around that same period. Johnny Marr is one of the greatest guitarists of the past 30 years, and the music he made with The Smiths will live on long after we are gone. But without the combination of his talents with those of Morrissey, Johnny Marr is just another sideman - a superb one, but a sideman nonetheless.]

Now, as for Sammy Hagar . . .

A lot of people say a lot of bad stuff about Sammy, the circumstances surrounding his entry into the group and the nature of the band's music during his long tenure in Van Halen. But say what you will about him, Sammy's a smart guy - he saw his opportunity and he took it. I mean, honestly - what would you have done in his place?

Say you were a middle-aged rock 'n' roller with a small amount of success and a couple of fairly big hits (nothing major) in your solo career. But with your fortieth birthday fast approaching, it seemed that your chances of becoming a headliner were rapidly fading. One day out of the blue, some guys you barely know, members of one of the biggest bands in the world just coming off their second 10-million-plus selling album in five years, give you a call and ask you to join up. Would YOU have said "No"? Hell NO you wouldn't have.

Sammy might appear to be an 'all rock and roll, party-hearty'-type of guy on the outside. But as he's definitively proven over the years (through his profitable bike shop, nightclub and tequila enterprises) - he's a businessman, pure and simple, with a keen eye for the bottom line. Sammy is not an innovator, per se. In all of his business ventures, he has taken existing concepts and products and successfully managed them, without really improving on them or bringing any new, unique ideas into the mix. That's not a critique of his operating style - it's proven to have worked for him time and time again, so more power to him. But you could argue that Sammy approached his tenure in Van Halen the same way. Hagar was never going to out-gonzo Roth - it would have been foolish for him to even try, and he knew it. His job in Van Halen was to keep the band going as an operating concern, and that was it. And in that regard, he was successful - every VH album he was involved in reached #1 US, and the band's singles still made regular appearances on the Billboard Top 100. So what if album sales were way off from the Diamond Dave days? And who cared if the live shows weren't as exciting, or Van Halen didn't seem as 'larger than life' than they were in the early 80s? Sammy did his job; by the measures that matter, Van Halen was still a headlining band. So Hagar shouldn't be "blamed" for the demise of Van Halen; in many ways, Sammy saved the band.

I've attached Van Halen's career-spanning 2-disc compilation album, The Best Of Both Worlds, released by Warner Brothers in 2004. It is, in my opinion, both the best and the worst VH compilation available. How can it be both? Well, I don't have the words to tell you - but fortunately, someone else already took care of that. If you have the time, please read Stephen Thomas Erlewine's superbly well written review of this album in Allmusic.com. I agree with every word he says here.

As always, enjoy - and let me know what you think (I have a feeling I'm going to get a fair amount of comment on this one . . . but I've been wrong before!)

The Best Of Both Worlds (Disc 1)
The Best Of Both Worlds (Disc 2)

Jim Croce - Bad, Bad Leroy Brown & Other Favorites

2011-08-26T01:11:00.006-04:00

When I was eight years old, my dad was accepted into a graduate study program at the University of Wisconsin, so that summer our family moved from Norfolk, Virginia to Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, a small town just outside of the state capital and university locale, Madison. Being a military family, we had already moved a couple of times before when I was younger, but this move was really the first one I was fully aware of. At that point, everything within the scope of my young awareness had been formed while I lived in Norfolk, and now that place was no longer to be my base. It was sad leaving behind friends like Ricky, Craig & Paul, and Warren & Wendell - kids who had lived in that neighborhood just as long as I had. It seemed that they were not only the best friends I ever had, but the best friends I'd EVER have in life - that's the sort of stuff you think about when you're eight. But even with all of that, I was still excited about the move. It was going to be a change, an adventure, a chance to see a new place and meet new people. I was looking forward to getting to Wisconsin and seeing what it had to offer.

And what it had to offer was plenty. Being fully immersed in the rural Midwestern experience was quite a change to a little boy who was used to "city" living (Norfolk wasn't a huge city, but it WAS an urban area). But for the most part, I found life in Wisconsin to be great, and in many ways idyllic; almost a living, breathing stereotype of what life for children was supposed to be like back then. Our new home was on the edge of the neighborhood, with a huge cornfield immediately beyond our backyard. In summer, the six-foot stalks would stretch behind us as far as the eye could see, and my new friends (the place was full of kids) and I would play hide-and-seek amongst them all day (never going too far inside, of course - the LAST thing you wanted to do was get lost in a big cornfield). My first winter there was the first time I'd ever seen snow piled so high - seven/eight foot drifts, a welcome sight to a little boy's eyes (the all-too-true 'joke' at the time was that you built a snowfort there by getting a shovel and digging straight down . . . ). Sun Prairie (BTW - what a great name for a Midwest town!) was the sort of place where the arrival of spring was heralded by boys and girls getting their marbles out of storage and having intense playground marble competitions; a place of spelling bee champs (the 1974 state champ came from my school), annual corn festivals, variety stores, tetherball and four-square, free milk & peanut butter sandwiches in the lunch room, and fresh air and good churchgoing people (we attended every Sunday, and practically every family in our neighborhood was there; I was even an alter boy for a time). It was sort of geeky, and completely "small town" . . . but nice. And I loved it.

But with all of the carefree, sun-drenched atmosphere of the place, there was a sort of dark undercurrent running below the surface appearances of country good times and happy, sunny days. Not a Blue Velvet-ish version of crime and menace, mind you, but a new feeling that became a significant part of my awareness just the same. It was while I was in Sun Prairie that I first became fully aware of the concept of mortality.

The first time I can recall a death even remotely touching my life occurred during fourth grade, my first year of school in Sun Prairie. We arrived back in school after the Christmas break to find that one of our classmates, a girl who lived on a farm just outside of town, was absent from class. Our teacher told us the reason why she was missing - her younger brother, a second-grader at our school, had been killed in a farm accident just after the holiday. I knew the boy (it was a small school, so pretty much every kid from kindergarten through 6th grade was acquainted with one another), but not that well. Still, it was shocking to know of someone who had actually died, who no one would ever see again on Earth. I remember when the girl came back to class a week or so later, and seeing her sad, pale face. I felt horribly sorry for her, but of course I wasn't old enough to know the right words to say or the right things to do. Before her return, our teacher had advised us to treat her as we did before the tragedy. But that was a difficult task - the death was always there, sort of like a grey mist floating all around us.

Later that same winter, the skeletal hand appeared once again. A man who lived in the circle across the street from our house, the father of two boys my brother and I played with quite a bit, was killed in a car accident on a snowy Madison highway. This time, the death felt a little closer - I knew this man and his family very well, a lot better than that girl in my class and her brother. They had his funeral at our church; my siblings and I didn't go, but my parents did. A couple of weeks later, compounding the tragedy for me, those two little boys moved away from Sun Prairie with their widowed mother, and we never saw or heard from them again.

Even with the poppy, lightweight stuff on the radio in that era (Three Dog Night, Seals & Crofts and Chicago were huge in those years), the music of the time also seemed be taking on a darker tone. The big hit of my first summer in Sun Prairie was Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)". I used to think this song was profoundly sad; the part near the end, when the singer sings about his father and mother dying, always made the 8-year-old me cry. When Casey Kasem would play this song on American Top 40 on Sunday nights back then, I would run out of the room, so my parents wouldn't see me break down. Another monster maudlin hit from around that time was Terry Jacks' "Seasons In The Sun", a similarly depressing tearjerker about someone kicking the bucket. Despite the morbidity of this song, for some reason it was hugely popular with kids; I recall at our school spring pageant later that year, it was one of the songs sung by the 6th grade class. I could give you many more examples - Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door"; Don McLean's "American Pie" (which I understood early on was about the death of Buddy Holly, although I didn't hear his name mentioned in the song) . . . shoot, even Loudon Wainwright's "Dead Skunk In The Middle Of The Road" - behind the bright, sunshiny appearance of my life in Sun Prairie, death seemed to be infusing everything around me.

So when Jim Croce died in September 1973, I was very much aware of it; it was really the first "celebrity death" story that I followed closely.

Jim Croce was born in South Philly in 1943. After his graduation from Villinova in 1965, he busked around the Philadelphia area for several years, first with his wife Ingrid as a duo, and later as a solo act. The couple parlayed their hard-earned local recognition into a one-off deal with Capitol Records, releasing Jim and Ingrid Croce in 1969, and over that year traveling hundreds of thousands of miles across the U.S. and Canada in support of the album. But both the tour and the record were not as successful as the label or the Croces wished, and by 1970 the couple was back in Pennsylvania. Jim took odd jobs in construction and trucking to pay the bills, and it seemed that his hopes of becoming a successful musician were dead.

However, later that year, an old college friend introduced Jim to a guy named Maury Muehleisen, a talented pianist/guitarist from New Jersey whose first album, Gingerbreadd, was about to be released on Capitol. Maury was looking for a backup guitarist for some scheduled gigs in the Philadelphia area, and Croce jumped at the chance. The Gingerbreadd concerts weren't all that successful, but Croce and Muehleisen instantly bonded, and together started creating a sound that quickly caught the attention of their record producers. Although Jim initially backed Maury, eventually the dynamic was reversed, with Croce's extensive catalogue of songs (many written in off hours from his truck driving work) and outgoing personality making him the front man and driving force of the partnership.

In 1972, Croce and his partner signed a three-record deal with ABC Records. His first album, You Don't Mess Around With Jim, was released that April and met with gradual but widespread success, spawning two US Top 20 hits ("You Don't Mess Around With Jim" and "Operator (That's Not The Way It Feels)"). Croce and Muehleisen immediately embarked on months of nearly nonstop touring all over the U.S. and Canada.

The buzz around and about Jim Croce began slowly and steadily growing - a whirlwind of traveling, television appearances and concerts in front of crowds of more than 10,000 people. Recording sessions were sandwiched in between tour dates; in late 1972 the pair recorded the follow-up album, Life And Times. The lead single, "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" was released in April 1973 and became Croce's biggest hit, reaching #1 by the end of that spring and remaining on the charts all summer. The album, released a couple of months later, was as successful as its predecessor, making it into the US Top Ten by the end of August.

Croce's songs were very popular with children back then; the words and harmonies were simple enough for kids to get the gist of them. And of course they were all over the radio. "Leroy Brown" was a special favorite that summer; I can once recall walking back home from the nearby school playground, arm-in-arm in a line with my friends, singing "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" at the top of our lungs, and thinking it was the greatest song in the world.

Meanwhile, the pressures of being a suddenly-popular musician began mounting for Jim Croce. With a Number One song on the charts, the tour schedule became even more hectic. ABC Records had scheduled studio time for Croce and Muehleisen at the Hit Factory in New York City that summer to record the third album (I Got A Name) under his current contract. The label was anticipating even greater success with this upcoming release, and was preparing a new contract far better for Croce than his initial three-album deal. The future looked pretty rosy from Jim as he recorded his final song for the new album on September 14th, then headed out on the road again with Muehleisen for a scheduled tour of the South and Southwest . . . a tour they never completed.

The plane crash in Natchitoches, Louiaiana that killed Croce and Muehleisen, along with two other people, was front-page news across the country; I recall picking up the local Star Countryman newspaper on the evening of September 21st and being so shocked and stunned by the news that I immediately burst into tears. For someone who had made such an impact in the music world in so short a time, to be suddenly and cruelly taken away - that seemed so unfair to me. I was too young to have lived through or to recall the plane crashes of Buddy Holly or Otis Redding, which occurred under similar circumstances and at similar points in their careers. But with Croce's death, I began to understand the profound loss behind those earlier tragedies.

I guess the thing I began to feel from these three recent events in my life was that death appeared to be random and arbitrary. That no matter how young or old you were, how good or loved you were, or how much you had accomplished or had yet to accomplish in your life, the Grim Reaper didn't care. This was an absolutely chilling concept to an eight-year-old boy, and it took a long time for me to come to grips with it, and work out in my own mind what life and living is all about. I still haven't got it completely worked out yet . . . but who amongst us has?

I hate to play upon this "loss of innocence" thing too heavily . . . but really, when I look back on it, Sun Prairie was the last chance I had to really be a kid, before moving again (after two years in Wisconsin, we moved to Maryland) and facing all of the pressures involved with moving out of childhood, leaving elementary school, and taking more and more responsibility for my life. And a significant part of that change can be traced back to that cool autumn evening, when I picked up the paper and saw that something and someone I enjoyed no longer existed.

I got this attached compilation, Bad, Bad Leroy Brown & Other Favorites, from my younger sister a few years ago. Frankly, it's really not a very good overview of Jim Croce's brief career - it's missing some significant hits, including "I Got A Name" (his first posthumous hit) and "You Don't Mess Around With Jim". I've included both songs in separate files here along with the album, released in 1994 by CEMA Special Markets. Enjoy, and let me know what you think:

Jim Croce - Bad, Bad Leroy Brown & Other Favorites
Jim Croce - "I Got A Name"
Jim Croce - "You Don't Mess Around With Jim"

New Order - Fine Time 12"

2011-08-18T12:20:00.002-04:00

"Fine Time" was the lead single and (in my opinion) best song on what I consider to be New Order's last decent album, 1989's Technique. The album came out shortly after I returned from six months in Europe, where I became a big fan of acid house music. I was stunned and happily surprised when I first heard Technique and found that New Order had heavily coopted that sound. What I learned much later (partly through Michael Winterbottom's 2002 film 24 Hour Party People - a great movie about the Factory Records/Manchester scene, by the way) was that soon after recording 1986's Brotherhood, the band went on vacation to the Mediterranean island of Ibiza, off the coast of Spain, a renowned European club and party zone. While there, they first came in contact with the rising acid house sound and with Balearic beat, a style of electronic dance music pioneered on the islands. The band fully immersed themselves into the music of Ibiza, and came away from their trip committed fans of that sound. They were determined to have their next album reflect this new musical sensibility.

New Order took a longer-that-usual amount of time to record Technique - almost three years, much to their label's chagrin. By the mid-80s, Factory Records was bleeding money all over the place, but especially through the Hacienda, the Manchester nightclub and music venue jointly financed and built by Factory and New Order. Although popular, the majority of the Hacienda's patrons preferred taking ecstacy and other drugs to buying drinks at the bar. This, coupled with generally low admission prices, led to spiraling debts at the club. These debts were usually covered through revenues from New Order's record sales. By 1987, the Hacienda was costing Factory (or more specifically, New Order) nearly a quarter million dollars a year. So a quick turnaround on a new New Order record was necessary not just for the band, but more importantly for the label in keeping its various enterprises afloat. But New Order would not be rushed, and Factory was in no position to force the issue (especially since the band, not the label, owned all of their music). So all Factory could do was sit and stew as New Order flew back and forth to Ibiza month after month, tinkering with their new sound.

The long wait was justified when Technique was released in January 1989 and became an immediate hit, the band's first UK #1 album and their first non-compilation disc to go gold in the US (the Substance compilation went platinum in 1987), reaching #32 on the US album charts. Two album singles, "Fine Time" and "Round and Round", made the UK Top Twenty, but had even greater success in America, with both songs reaching the top five on the national dance and modern rock charts.

Being a long-time New Order fan, I bought Technique on cassette practically the instant it came out, and played it to death while driving around Virginia that winter. I especially liked "Fine Time", so much so that when I spotted a 12" disc of remixes available at the George Washington University branch of Tower Records that March, I immediately snapped it up. It's such a well-constructed song, that it can withstand the manipulation of several different mixes and still sound fresh and exciting each time.

So here you are, burned off of my still-mint condition vinyl copy - New Order's Fine Time 12", released by Factory Records in 1988 and distributed in the U.S. by Quincy Jones' Qwest Records (BTW - out of the 37(!) different versions of this record available internationally, this one is one of the few that have all five remixes available, along with the b-side "Don't Do It"). I think the quality of this burn is exceptionally good - if you feel otherwise, let me know and I'll rescorch it. Either way, let me know what you think:

New Order - Fine Time 12"

The Fall - Kimble EP

2011-08-10T14:30:00.005-04:00

Another part of my ongoing fetish to collect anything and everything related to my favorite band, The Fall . . . I picked this one up in the spring of 1993, the last music purchase I made in the US before leaving for New Zealand a week later. I lived in a hotel for my first few weeks in Christchurch, waiting for my household goods to arrive by slow boat from Baltimore. The only goods I brought with me were a bunch of clothes, my CD player with a little set of attachable speakers, and a pile of CDs, including this one - which I played to death during that time.

The four songs on this disc - the title cut (a great cover of a Lee "Scratch" Perry reggae classic); "Gut Of The Quantifier"; "Spoilt Victorian Child" and "Words of Expectation" - were all taken from a live 1992 John Peel session. As such, they have all been included on other Fall anthologies and compilations, including and especially The Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004 box set from 2005. But if you don't feel like shelling out the big bucks for that set and running through six discs to find these tunes, here they are, all together in one place.

(And that's not to disparage the Complete Peel Sessions set - it's a simply superb compilation, and a must-have for any diehard Fall fan.)

So, for your listening pleasure - the Kimble EP, released by Strange Fruit Records in 1993. Enjoy, and let me know what you think:

The Fall - Kimble EP

Hetch Hetchy - Make Djibouti EP

2011-08-05T19:23:00.003-04:00

Oh-OK is one of the great forgotten bands from the early days of the Athens, Georgia music explosion, the movement that brought the B-52s and R.E.M. onto the world stage. The band formed in the spring of 1981, and originally consisted of David Pierce on drums, Linda Hopper on vocals and Lynda Stipe on bass. If you're thinking "Stipe, Stipe - now WHERE have I heard that name?" - the answer is "yes"; Lynda was Michael Stipe's younger sister.

Oh-OK's star rose and fell very quickly. Within two years of forming, the group had toured with Pylon, released an EP and full album, added (and lost) new members (including a pre-solo Matthew Sweet) and broke up by the end of 1983. At that point, the band members scattered. I got into Oh-OK long after their breakup, when I lived in Athens during during the late 1980s. They, like Pylon, were (and still are) revered in that town, sort of as the pioneers who fell off the trail. I was interested enough to track down bits and pieces of their music while I was there, and the little I heard was enough to make me a fan.

But unlike Pylon, who remained in Athens after their heyday and were still somewhat semi-visible, a lot of ex-Oh-OK members disappeared for a time - except for Matthew Sweet, of course. Linda Hopper quickly moved on to Holiday, which released an obscure EP in 1987, then formed the more successful Magnapop, which is still performing and putting out records (the latest being 2005's Mouthfeel). Lynda Stipe fell off the musical radar for a couple of years. But she resurfaced in the late 1980s fronting a new band, Hetch Hetchy, and sporting a new name, Lynda K. Limner. The band's first release was the Make Djibouti EP, produced by Lynda's brother (hmm - I guess there ARE benefits to having a sibling in R.E.M.) and put out by Texas Hotel Records in 1988.

I honestly don't know what to make of this disc. I purchased it because of the fond memories I had of Oh-OK, and seeing Michael's name in the credits didn't hurt either. But its sound is far different from the simple, almost-childlike melodies of Lynda's previous band (or anything related to R.E.M., for that matter). The six songs on this EP are heavy - and I mean HEAVY; even what could be considered to be the lighter, poppier attempts on this disc (such as "Present" and "Hard On Lynda") just feel wrong, dragged down by the weight of too much instrumentation. And the slower ones (like "Retarded Camel" and "Sad Song") are even more leaden, with plodding rhythms supported by a thudding bass drum. in addition, it sounds as though Hetch Hetchy hired the old keyboard player from Berlin to sit in on this session - every song seems to contain some version of that weird "doo-doo wah-wah" synthesizer riff from "The Metro" - which is NOT a good thing, especially in 1988.

All in all, the Make Djibouti EP was not a promising start for Hetch Hetchy. As for who to blame for the weakness of their debut, well . . . far be it from me to point fingers, especially more than twenty years down the road. I'll hold my peace. But I will note that prior to recording their first full album, 1990's Swollen, Lynda got rid of most of the original band, and instead of using her brother again, enlisted the production services of former Hugo Largo bassist Tim Sommer. The resulting album was a lot better than the EP, but that didn't save the band - Hetch Hetchy broke up in 1991. Since then, Lynda has been part of a few obscure bands, like Flash To Bang Time, and is still involved in the Athens arts scene.

I guess in hindsight, I should be writing about and posting Hetch Hetchy's more superior Swollen, rather than gassing about this thing. Screw it - I'm almost done writing this, and don't feel like starting over. So what the hell. Maybe I'll post the other album sometime later. Until then, have a listen to the EP, and as always, let me know what you think.

Hetch Hetchy - Make Djibouti EP

D-Mob (feat. Gary Haisman) - We Call It Acieed/Trance Dance 12"

2011-07-26T23:13:00.020-04:00

In the summer of 1988, six weeks after I arrived on board my ship in Norfolk, VA, I began my first long deployment as a young Naval officer. We headed over to Europe for a six-month stint as the American participant in NATO's Standing Naval Force, Atlantic (otherwise known by its abbreviated name, STANAVFORLANT). STANAVFORLANT (now known as "Standing NATO Maritime Group 1") was established in 1968, at the height of the Cold War, as an immediate reaction force. Just in case the Warsaw Pact countries decided to get a little frisky, our force was designed to be the "first responders", in the forefront of protecting and defending Europe from attack by sea. The force was (is) made up of frigates, destroyers and cruisers from the NATO countries, with the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands always having at least one ship in the fleet, and the smaller NATO countries (such as Belgium, Norway and Denmark) contributing a ship periodically.

Now, while being part of this first-reaction force may sound a bit hairy and Dr. Strangelove-esque to you, by 1988 glasnost and perestroika were in full swing in the Soviet Union. While the Western countries and Eastern Bloc weren't exactly bosom pals yet, the competitive tensions between the free and Communist worlds were considerably toned down. And accordingly, the formerly deadly serious nature of STANAVFORLANT was also ratcheted down. That is not to say that there wasn't serious work to do or a sense of purpose present during that deployment. There were still a lot of joint training exercises between the NATO participants, and on occasion we shadowed (or were shadowed by) Soviet ships coming out of the Baltic and traveling through the North Sea. And at one point early in the cruise, the group was diverted from its planned route to assist in the immediate aftermath of the Piper Alpha oil rig explosion, a horrific disaster that claimed 168 lives.

But for the most part, the deployment was pretty cruisey (so to speak). The ship I was on was the last one built in her destroyer class, relatively brand-spanking new, and as such it sort of served as a "showboat" for the US Navy with this group, showing the European countries what was then considered our maritime best. While the work at sea was intense, the frequent port visits were great, as the hosting port cities and the participating ships tried to outdo one another with the parties, dinners and functions (official and otherwise) they organized.

[Quick aside: Our ship was the only one in the force that was "dry", i.e., carrying no beer or liquor; the other nations' ships had no such restrictions regarding alcohol on board, which led to some wild times in port. Almost every participating ship (except for the US) had a signature booze they carried aboard to offer to visitors. The Norwegians, for example, kept iced aquavit in a locked safe in their officer's wardroom; one sip of that stuff would knock you flat on your ass, but those guys gargled it like it was water. The West German vessel carried the most outstanding beer I've ever tasted, served in big stoneware schooners specially made for the ship (I still have the one they gave me). But of all the countries, it was the Canadians who were particular hard-core party hounds. In port, they occasionally used to invite the crews from the other STANAVFORLANT ships over for what they called "Moose Milk", a potent and evil concoction they brewed up and always seemed to have plenty of. The antics that went on aboard the Canadian ship on Moose Milk nights would put the wildest college fraternity to shame. But at sea, those guys were the most professional, competant sailors I've ever run across. So go figure.]

I saw and did a lot of new and cool things during that cruise. I visited London, a place I'd always dreamed of seeing, for the first time on that voyage (met some great people, went to a couple of clubs and even made it to Brixton, homebase of my beloved Clash). In Germany, I checked out the nightlife in Kiel and took a tour through Hamburg's red light district; I was in Antwerp at the peak of the Belgian acid house wave, and danced until the sun came up at clubs all over that city; I partied all one July night in Narvik, Norway, a town above the Arctic Circle, and was completely thrown off when I emerged from the club at 3:30 am to find the sky as bright as noonday. And one calm, dark night, far out in the North Atlantic, I stood out on deck for hours watching the aurora borealis dancing like a weird curtain of light over my head. It was all quite an adventure, and the months away from home passed very quickly.

By late October, we had less than two months left in our deployment. We were making another transit across the North Sea from West Germany to Scotland, and one evening en route, the force was practicing refueling operations with a West German replenishment tanker. While that exercise was going on, I was down in my midships office, a couple of decks below topside, doing some paperwork. At one point, the ship took a hard and unexpected starboard turn, sending all of my paperwork crashing to the floor. I was like, "what the heck?", and reached for the nearby phone to call the bridge. The officer of the deck (OOD), the person guiding the ship at the time (as opposed to the ship's captain), was a buddy of mine, and I was going to call him up and give him some good-natured shit for making such a wild maneuver. Just as my hand touched the phone, there was a loud and violent CCCRRRAAASSHHH!!! which shook the ship from end to end, sending everything not bolted down flying and me and everyone else in the room sprawling on the floor. I looked up at the person next to me on the floor, and half-asked/half-exclaimed, "We ran aground?!?!" His response was, "No, I think we were just hit!"

His word "hit" was sort of floating in the air, like in a balloon in a comic strip, when at that very same moment, every alarm on the ship went off in sequence - Collision, General Quarters, Man Overboard - and the emergency lighting immediately kicked in, bathing everything in an eerie and ominous red glow.

In a nutshell, what had happened was, due to a conflict between the OOD and the captain, and some miscommunication on the bridge, our ship had somehow placed itself directly in the path of the tanker we were trying to take station around. The tanker couldn't swerve, because of its size and speed, so a collision was imminent. What SHOULD have happened was, the way we were positioned in front of the German ship, it should have come straight on and sliced us neatly in two right at amidships, exactly at the point where my office was and where I was working at the time, unaware of what was about to transpire. But in the last few seconds, the OOD made a desparation move, kicking the rudder over hard right in an attempt to swing the stern out away from the oncoming ship and hopefully avoid a collision by mere feet. That was the turn that knocked my stuff on the floor, that I was going to call to complain about. It was also the turn that probably saved my life . . . although it wasn't completely successful. Instead of whacking us right through the middle, the tanker delivered a heavy but glancing blow on the starboard side, about ten yards forward of the stern.
It put a hole in our ship you could have driven a minivan through, destroyed the after steering compartment and sheared off the starboard screw and rudder. And we started taking on water - a LOT of water.

Through the diligent efforts of every member of that crew, damage control stabilized the ship's wounds within the hour. It was still pretty bad; the ship's maneuverability was gone, and with the water we had taken on, the ship had developed a not-insignificant starboard list of about 7 or 8 degrees.
The Man Overboard call turned out to be a false alarm; the splash the lookouts heard was the sound of chunks of the ship falling into the water (thank God for that - no one could have survived for long that night in those icy North Sea waters). But the ship was a mess. We limped across the rest of the North Sea and made it to our intended destination, the shipyard in Rosyth, Scotland. But instead of the planned five-day stop there, our ship was immediately put into drydock for weeks of emergency repairs.

Although the long stay in Rosyth was unexpected, life there quickly settled into a routine. I still had plenty of work to do in port, so my days were pretty busy. The major city of Edinburgh was about 15-20 miles away from the shipyard. I planned to visit the city later during my stay, but in the meantime I spent many of my nights in the nearest town of any consequence, Dunfermline, about 3 miles up the road.

Dunfermline, with a population of about 40,000 people, was a former seat of the Scottish royal family, and as such was the de facto capital of Scotland from the 11th through 15th centuries. It is renowned for containing the historic ruins of the old Royal Palace of Dunfermline. and Dunfermline Abbey, one of the most important cultural sites in Scotland and the burial place of several Scottish kings. It was also the birthplace of 19th century industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who left the town as a boy, but never forgot where he came from and later in life donated large sums of money to his hometown. I, of course, didn't know any of this; the only thing I knew about Dunfermline at the time was that the band Big Country came from there.

For a relatively small town, Dunfermline had an OUTSTANDING nightlife. There were a number of bars and decent dance places, all of which were jam-packed every single night in the weeks we were in the city (although that may not normally have been the case; a local bloke told me that when the word came out that "the Americans" were going to be in town for a while, the women "came out of the woodwork in droves"). My favorite place in town was a gleaming dance palace called Lourenzo Marques on St. Margaret Street, directly across from the abbey. The place had great music (house and dance music ruled there back then) and an even better crowd, and I quickly became a regular.

Lourenzo's was the first place I ever heard D-Mob's tune "We Call It Acieed", released earlier that year on FFRR (Full Frequency Range Recordings), a subsidiary of London Records. I told this story in an earlier post, but will repeat it here:

"One of my most vivid memories from that time is sitting in a seemingly dead and half-empty disco in Dunfermline, Scotland one chilly October night, waiting for something to happen. The DJ there put on D-Mob's "We Call It Acieed", and it was like a bomb went off - people came from everywhere, and in an instant, the place was packed with wild, gyrating Scots shaking the dance floor with a frenetic, tribal stomp that left me sitting there with my mouth wide open . . ."

And with all of the adventures and fun and danger I experienced during that deployment, in Dunfermline an additional wrinkle was added . . . a bit of romance.

I went to Lourenzo's one evening after a hard and frustrating day of work aboard ship. I was in a foul mood and it showed. I shouldn't really have gone out, but I was damned if I was going to sit on board and stew all evening. So the plan was to head out, alter my attitude with a drink or five, then stumble back to the shipyard in a different frame of mind. I was standing at the bar, clutching a glass of cider (the first and last time I drank any of that stuff in any quantity) and scowling to myself, when a female Scottish burr, full of smiles and promise, softly purred into my ear, "Why don't you smile more?"

I turned to look upon one of the most amazing girls I've ever laid eyes on - simply breathtaking in the best sense of the word, with long honey-blonde hair, a lovely face and an outstanding smile. And the voice - ah, that voice! All these years later, and I can still remember the way her Scottish accent surrounded and caressed every word. And not in a Groundskeeper Willy-sort of way, either. It was something altogether different - and vive la difference! That's what shook me out of my funk.

I quickly bought her a drink, and we stood at the bar and just talked for a while. I found that her name was Margaret, and she worked at the Royal Bank of Scotland branch in the center of town. Despite the noise, the people around us and the booze, we managed to carry on a lengthy and fairly serious conversation, touching on a variety of subjects - at one point, I recall we were discussing the IRA. The music and crowd just sort of faded into the background for me. I kept expecting her to walk away at any time, but she seemed to be enjoying my company as much as I was enjoying hers, and we remained together at that bar until last call.

I then made one of the stupidest, most lunkheaded moves I've ever made in my life. They flipped on the house lights, signifying closing time. I turned to Margaret, thanked her for a pleasant evening - then I whirled around and headed for the door, leaving her standing there. I know, I know . . . I don't know WHAT the fuck I was thinking - I'll use the excuse that I was half-drunk (God, I still cringe when I think about it . . .).

I was standing outside the place in the cold, queued up for a taxi, and somehow still oblivious to the humongous mistake I just made. But apparently, God smiles on idiots from time to time - I suddenly felt an arm slip into mine, and turned to find Margaret next to me, inviting me to her place for a nightcap . . . Thank goodness for small miracles.

I spent a lot of time with her over the next couple of weeks, both out at the clubs and at her place. She showed me the town, and I took her on a tour of the drydocked ship. I had so much fun with her in Dunfermline, I never even bothered to go to Edinburgh. But we both sort of knew that time was short, and whatever we had probably wasn't built to last. The repairs on the ship went quicker than they anticipated, and just before Thanksgiving we were back in the water and ready to rejoin the rest of the STANAVFORLANT force in southern England.

I spent my last night in Scotland with Margaret at her house, saying goodbye. I gave her some pictures I had taken of us and our time together, some other mementoes and other stuff to remember me by. She gave me her picture and address, and promised to write. And that was that. It was a sad group of sailors that left Rosyth on that snowy November morning, myself included. I think that everyone enjoyed their extended time in Scotland, an unexpected silver lining to the near-tragedy that almost sank our boat.

I sent Margaret postcards from every remaining stop on our deployment: Portsmouth, England; Zeebrugge, Belgium; and the Azores. We returned home to Virginia just before Christmas, and I wrote her a couple more times in the months that followed. But I never heard from her again.

Later that winter, I found a vinyl copy of various mixes of "We Call It Acieed", along with three mixes of "Trance Dance", at 12 Inch Dance Records in Washington, DC. It took America a year longer than Europe to get into this song, but our country managed to catch on in the end - "We Call It Acieed" topped the US dance charts for several weeks during the spring of 1989. I still have this record, in its original sleeve and all, and once in a while I still do the "old school" thing and play it on my turntable. And every time I do, I think back on that cruise and on my time in Scotland so long ago, and wonder about Margaret, whatever became of her, and how her life turned out.

Such is life.

Here's the music, cooked off of my meticulously maintained vinyl copy. Enjoy, and let me know what you think:

D-Mob (feat. Gary Haisman) - We Call It Acieed/Trance Dance 12"

Betty Boo - Boomania

2011-07-17T20:37:00.008-04:00

Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia is one of the largest universities in the Tidewater area and one of the top institutions of higher learning in the state. It boasts superb facilities, nationally ranked athletic teams, a decent financial endowment and a loyal alumni fanbase. The only knock I have against the place is that, in terms of nightlife and activities, it's dull as dishwater.

I got to know ODU when I lived in nearby Virginia Beach about 20 years ago. My brother was a student there, and on occasion I used to head down into Norfolk to hang out with him. But when I say "hang out", I use that term loosely - in regards to decent bars/clubs/social amenities in close proximity to the ODU campus, the area was sorely lacking. Back then, there were three locales of any distinction close to the school - the 4400 Campus Club and another bar (whose name currently escapes me [addendum - was just informed that the other bar was called Friar Tuck's]) directly across the street from the main quad, and further up Hampton Boulevard, the King's Head, which showcased decent bands from time to time. That was it. Hell, even my alma mater, Navy, had a PUMPING nightlife just outside its gates, with the bars of downtown Annapolis a mere stagger away. The lameness of the area around ODU made Annapolis look like Las Vegas, comparatively.

Still, the ODU area had its attractions - mainly, the college girls who drank there most evenings. The 4400 Club also used to host a great DJ one night a week; the guy would play some pretty decent cuts - everything from Ministry, Nine Inch Nails and the Screaming Blue Messiahs to Madonna and the Cure. The guy also had little contests he ran during his set - trivia questions and "Name That Tune" sort of stuff. It was pretty enjoyable, and I usually ended up winning something on those evenings (due to my profound musical knowledge - ha ha), so I began making a point of going to the 4400 Club on nights this DJ worked,

One night, he was having a "Name That Tune" competition with random CD giveaways as prizes. He put the first song on, which I instantly recognized as Suidical Tendencies' "I Shot The Devil". My prize was a mixtape of various obscure songs and remixes the DJ had put together (it was actually pretty good - I still have it, all these years later) and a CD, Betty Boo's Boomania.

I listened to the Betty Boo CD the next afternoon, and initially I was convinced that the DJ was taking the mickey out of his audience (and me) by having this disc as a "prize". Englishwoman Betty Boo (real name: Alison Clarkson) was an eighteen-year-old sound engineering student in London in 1988 when she hooked up with a band of female rappers called the She Rockers. The group busked around London, and one day were noticed by, of all people, Public Enemy's Professor Griff, during one of their impromptu performances at a McDonald's in the city. Professor Griff produced the group's first single, "Give It A Rest", He also convinced Betty Boo to leave the group, as it appeared to be going nowhere; after little more than a year with the She Rockers, Boo went solo.

Betty's solo break came mere months later, when she guested on The Beatmaster's hit single "Hey DJ! (I Can't Dance to that Music You're Playing)", which went to #7 in the UK in late 1989. She quickly followed up with a debut single of her own, "Doin' The Do", in early 1990. The song also went to #7 UK and topped the dance charts in the US. She spent the spring and summer of that year writing and recording songs in her bedroom for her first full-length release, which turned out to be Boomania. The album went to #4 in the UK, spawned two more UK chart hits ("Where Are You Baby?" and "24 Hours"), and at the BRIT Awards the next year (the British equivalent of the Grammys), it helped her earn the title of "Best British Breakthrough Artist". She was still only 20 years old.

The majority of the songs on Boomania are a strange hybrid of dance music and pop-rap, sort of a slightly 'harder', less trippy-dippy version of the stuff that Deee-Lite (whose album World Clique and lead single "Groove Is In The Heart" were big US/UK hits) was putting out during the same time period (Deee-Lite's album was released two months earlier, in August 1990). A lot of Boo's music sounds like the template the Spice Girls used to "create" their hateful pop-rap-dance sound ten years later - not a good thing (I'm sorry, but the British can't do rap to save their lives). Another analogy (I've got a million of 'em tonight) - Betty Boo was like Peaches with a lot less sass and a lot more accent. Which is why after that first listen, I thought the DJ gave out this disc as a joke.

However, once I delved deeper into the album, I found some gold there, once you got away from her formulaic "hits". "Valentine's Day" is an unheralded but superb tune, with Boo's voice exploring a more R&B direction. But the best song on the album in my opinion is "Shame", with Boo's excellent vocals backed by a nagging, incessant bass 'n' drum rhythm that drives the dancable groove along. "Shame" should have been a huge club hit, but I don't think it even made the charts.

Betty Boo's fall was just as rapid as her rise. She began a world tour on Boomania, but during a concert in Australia in 1991, the audience discovered her lip syncing over taped vocals, and mass derision ensued. She cancelled the rest of the tour and stayed quiet for the rest of the year. Betty also left Rhythm King for Warner Music Group in 1991, and the next year Warner released her sophomore LP, Grrr! It's Betty Boo. The album charted in the UK, but nowhere near the heights of her first album. In 1993, she left Warner and took time away from music to care for her terminally ill mother for the next several years; this effectively ended her singing career. In the past fifteen years or so, Betty Boo regrouped, and has carved out a niche for herself as a songwriter, writing tunes for British teen pop groups and the like.

As for the "scene" around the Old Dominion campus, the block containing the 4400 Campus Club was completely demolished at the end of the '90s. The area is now the site of the Ted Constant Convocation Center, the university's multi-purpose arena. I have no idea where the students go to hang out now - I guess they have to drive into the downtown area. Oh well.

Anyway, here, for your listening pleasure, is Betty Boo's Boomania, released in October 1990 by Rhythm King, and distributed by Sire Records. Have a listed to the cuts I mentioned above, and as always, let me know what you think:

Betty Boo - Boomania

The Fleshtones - American Beat '84 EP

2011-07-02T15:27:00.009-04:00

I was browsing through the online version of The New York Times back in late May, and came across an obituary notice concerning the passing of actress Barbara Stuart. Ms. Stuart had a long and varied career, for over fifty years appearing frequently on the big and small screen, but mostly in supporting roles on television. For all of her longevity, she never quite made it big. It seemed that she lived out her career as one of those "oh yeah" faces, someone who you've seen before on TV without quite remembering where, or what her name was. According to the article, her big claim to fame was appearing as Miss Bunny, Sgt. Carter's girlfriend on "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.", which really didn't ring any bells with me. There was also a picture of her - she looked semi-familiar, but still not wholly recognizable.

I kept reading through her list of obscure TV series appearances, such as "I Led Three Lives", "T.H.E. Cat", "The McLean Stevenson Show", and forgettable B-movie roles in stinkers like Marines, Let's Go! and The Pterodactyl Woman From Beverly Hills (no, I'm not shitting you - that was a ACTUAL movie). The penny finally dropped for me with these words at the end of one paragraph: "She was Tom Hanks’s future mother-in-law in Bachelor Party (1984)."

YES! Of course! Bachelor Party! Tawny Kitaen's mother! She was the one who grabbed Nick The Dick's 'foot-long' ("and then some", as he quipped) in the strip club scene, a comedy classic!

I've always loved Bachelor Party. Yeah, I know - the thing was no Oscar winner; critics have called it "vulgar" and "sophomoric", descriptions I really can't argue with. And I'm sure that if you ask Tom Hanks (who appeared in an early-career leading role), I'll bet he wishes he never starred in this admittedly juvenile farce. But for a flick filled with bad acting (this movie killed dead any hopes Adrian Zmed had for a substantial movie career, dooming him to supporting roles on TV forever and anon), generic '80s movie cliches (Exhibit A: the blond Aryan preppy antagonist (a "Zabka-ite", if you will)), and a warmed-over plot line (i.e., the nerdy/weird/unacceptable guy wooing and winning the girl of his dreams - gee, they've never used THAT before . . .), Bachelor Party has shown surprising resiliance over the years. The movie resists being ignored, or relegated to the dustbin of forgotten '80s 'junk' films of its genre like Just One Of The Guys, Better Off Dead or Hot Dog: The Movie.

In a way, Bachelor Party is like a minor-league Caddyshack, in terms of funny scenes and quotable lines that guys remember fondly. The "Nick The Dick" scene is a stand out (heh - so to speak); along with scenes and lines like:

- Rick (Hank's character) is enticed by his naked ex-girlfriend Tracey (played by the brick shithousedly-built Penthouse Pet Monique Gabrielle), and has a guilt trip about it (complete with the faces of a nun, his fiancee, and his friends appearing on Tracey's shoulders and counseling him);
- Gary (the nerdy guy) making a bad deal with a sinister pimp when arranging for hookers to attend the party, walking away and mumbling to himself, "I just bet my balls - and shook on it."
- "Pain . . . is SUCH a rush!"

As for the movie soundtrack, New Wave is well represented, with cuts by Wang Chung ("Dance Hall Days"), The Police ("Rehumanize Yourself") and Oingo Boingo ("Who Do You Want To Be" and the movie theme song) featured prominently. Bachelor Party does make some musical mistakes, in my opinion - the producers were obviously featuring/pushing two songs for radio airplay and chart recognition, Adrian Zmed's "Little Demon" and Angel & The Reruns' "Why Do Good Girls Like Bad Boys?". But both songs were annoying, for different reasons: Zmed's song, because it sucked REALLY badly, and the Reruns' tune because they just played it too long/too many times in the film, and after a while you just got sick of it.

The best song in the movie came early on, in the scene in the jeans shop that introduced Debbie, the main female character, played by Tawny Kitaen. In this part of the movie, the entire store (clerks and customers alike) is jamming out to a great horn-and-snare-driven Hi-NRG tune. The whole setup is hokey and contrived, a Hollywood version of what a 'cool' New Wave clothing store is supposed to look like . . . but the song is still amazing, so much so that the first time I saw the movie, I stayed for the closing credits so I could find out the name of the song. I discovered that it was "American Beat '84", by a band called The Fleshtones.

The Fleshtones were formed in 1976 in Queens, New York when two roommates renting a house in the neighborhood, Keith Streng and Marek Pakulski, came across some musical instuments that a previous tenant had abandoned in the basement. The two recruited a couple of local friends, Manny Calderon (on drums) and Peter Zaramba (on keyboards and vocals) to fill out their new band, with Streng taking up the guitar and Pakulski on bass. Although the Ramones formed two years earlier in the same neighborhood as the Fleshtones, there wasn't much cross-pollination between the two bands - probably because the members of the Ramones were significantly older than Streng et al., and their music styles were totally different. While the Ramones pursued a purely punk path, the Fleshtones mined a sound that was more rock and power pop than anything else.

Whatever their differences to the Ramones, the Fleshtones also quickly found success on the New York club scene. They made their first appearance at CBGB's in May 1976, and became regulars at the top local clubs of that era: the Irving Plaza, Max's Kansas City and Danceteria in NYC, and Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ. The band built up a strong local following, and expanded that fan base with club visits up and down the East Coast, making stops at places like The Ratskeller in Boston and the 9:30 Club in DC (in fact, they were the first band ever booked at 9:30).

In 1978, the Fleshtones signed with Red Star Records, recording an album's worth of material and releasing their first single, "American Beat b/w Critical List" the following year. But Red Star dicked around with the band, never releasing the album and only giving token support to the single. So in 1980, the Fleshtones left the label and signed with New Wave giant I.R.S. Records. As opposed to their previous label, head honcho Miles Copeland put the full weight of I.R.S. behind the band. He teamed them with the label's best producers (Richard Mazda and Richard Gottehrer, among others), featured them in I.R.S.'s signature concert film from that era (Urgh! A Music War), and even got the band a gig on "American Bandstand" in 1982. Copeland also had them rerecord their debut single, which was rereleased as "American Beat '84". Overall, this new version crushes the first one, in terms of beat, energy and overall coolness.

But for all of that support, all of their gigging and despite their large following, the Fleshtones couldn't find a national audience. None of the band's four albums I.R.S. released between 1982 and 1985 were hits; only the first one, Roman Gods, managed to scrape the bottom of the Billboard 200 chart. They were dropped by I.R.S. when their final label album, Speed Connection II, tanked in 1985. Since then, they have soldiered on, gigging constantly and releasing a series of albums either independently or through small labels. After 35 years, Streng and Zaramba are the remaining original members, but even with their lack of mainstream success, the Fleshtones refuse to give in. They're like the poor man's Dramarama - a band that had lots of talent, but never quite got over the hump.

Still, I'm glad they have at least one great song like "American Beat '84" in their discography. Here are the American Beat '84 EPs (both the U.S. and European versions, with similar "A" sides but different songs on the flip), released by I.R.S. Records in 1984. This tune made a movie that should have been forgettable that much more memorable (for me, at least). As always, let me know what you think.

The Fleshtones - American Beat '84 EP (US version)
The Fleshtones - American Beat '84 EP (European version)

Poll Results - "Best 'Worst Album'"

2011-06-28T15:13:00.013-04:00

Well, not surprised at the overall top choice. True Stories wasn't the greatest film in the world, and it got some pretty bad reviews in some quarters. But I (and many others) believe that the muted response to Talking Heads' album True Stories was due to the film's negative reception, with most people assuming that the disc was a movie soundtrack album (which it wasn't - it's a Talking Heads studio album featuring recordings of songs from the film rather than songs sung by the film's cast). Even with the huge hit "Wild Wild Life" (#4 US) on it, True Stories only made it to #28 on the US album charts, significantly lower than their previous (and in my opinion, musically weaker) album Little Creatures. There are plenty of other great songs on this disc, including one, the name of which was eventually appropriated by one of the greatest bands of the past decade - "Radio Head".

But enough of that - here are the Best Worst Albums, as selected by you all:

True Stories (Talking Heads) - 6 votes
Presence (Led Zeppelin) - 4 votes
Dirty Work (The Rolling Stones) - 2 votes
Good Stuff (The B-52's) - 1 vote
Cut The Crap (The Clash) - 1 vote
Hard (Gang Of Four) - 1 vote
One Hot Minute (The Red Hot Chili Peppers) - 1 vote
Halfway To Sanity (The Ramones) - 1 vote

And the rest, which apparently have no redeeming qualities whatsoever (0 votes):

Mad Not Mad (Madness), Around The Sun (R.E.M.), The Woman In Red (Stevie Wonder), Goodbye Cruel World (Elvis Costello), Give My Regards To Broad Street (Paul McCartney), Never Let Me Down (David Bowie), Dylan & The Dead (Bob Dylan), Total Devo (Devo), Packed! (The Pretenders)

I'm afraid to say that I own all of the albums on this List of Shame. But I must say that there are particular ones that have incurred the majority of my wrath over the years. The ones on this list that pissed me off the most, in no particular order:

- Good Stuff - The B-52's: As I've mentioned before, I was a Bee-Fives fan from waaaaaaay back. So no one was a pleased as I was when the band finally broke through in 1989 with their hit album Cosmic Thing. Sure, I was a little put out when all of those neophyte B-52's fans came out of the woodwork in its wake, shouting "Tin roof - rusted!" at the top of their lungs at every one of the band's now-packed concerts, but who generally were unfamiliar with the group's earlier songs. But that was OK - I guess when a 'cult' band goes big-time, the original fans will always sort of feel that way. So no worries there. But I was shocked to see how quickly this newfound critical and commercial adulation tore the band apart. Cosmic Thing was the first LP that the band made any serious coin on; Cindy Wilson took the money and ran, quitting the band in late 1990. With both Wilsons gone (Ricky died in 1985), it should have been time for the band to call it a day. Instead, the remaining trio (Kate Pierson, Keith Strickland and Fred Schneider) decided to soldier on, releasing Good Stuff in 1992. Good Stuff is a classic 'cash in' album, with the remaining members of the group milking their now-humongous fan base for one last big paycheck before pulling the plug. I remember buying this disc that June just before going on a road trip, so I could listen to it in the car on the way down. I thought the first song, "Tell It Like It T-I-Is", was a weak opener, but I expected the album to pick up as it progressed. No such luck. Every song on that album was weak, and WAY too long (average of 5:30 per song, with "Dreamland" clocking in at over SEVEN minutes). And frankly, the band sounded sort of worn out and jaded. It seemed that the band was going out with a whimper, instead of a bang . . .

- Cut The Crap - The Clash: I thought Combat Rock was brilliant (as I wrote in an earlier posting), so I was champing at the bit for The Clash's next release. However, I wasn't fully plugged into the whole music scene at that time, specifically the alternative music press. If I was, I would have heard more about the tensions within The Clash, specifically between Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, which eventually led to the latter's departure from the group in late 1983. You would think this would be a problem, since Jones essentially wrote all of the band's music up to that time. Undeterred, Strummer teamed up with controversial band manager Bernie Rhodes to co-write a bunch of new material, recruited a bunch of no-name musicians, and with them released these cowritten songs on Cut The Crap in November 1985. I bought this album on cassette the weekend before I headed up to the U.S. Military Academy, as part of a 7-day exchange program between the academies, ostensibly so Navy could see how Army lived, and vice-versa [quick aside: a VERY grim week there - cold and grey, in the middle of fucking nowhere. And EVERY cadet I spoke to there was hating life, rueing the day they ever HEARD of West Point . . . ]. During the bus ride from Annapolis to New York, I listened to this entire album a couple of times, and couldn't believe how bad it was. It was all just tired sounding sloganeering, a lame attempt to get back to The Clash's pure punk roots. Also remember that Mick Jones' new band, Big Audio Dynamite, put out their first album, the outstanding This Is Big Audio Dynamite, the month before this travesty came out - if Clash fans needed any further evidence as to the relative talents of Jones and Strummer, all they had to do was compare the two releases. Apparently I'm not alone in this assessment of the 'final Clash album' - the original band themselves (including Joe Strummer) have disowned this album, and its songs have never appeared on any official Clash compilation or retrospective. Cut The Crap is the Rocky V of Clash albums.

- Total Devo - Devo: I was as big a Devo fan as anyone, back in the day. But I can tell you quite frankly that Devo was D-O-N-E by 1982. Their first trio of albums (Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, Duty Now For The Future, and Freedom Of Choice) are pretty much unassailable, and even New Traditionalists, while somewhat weaker than the first three, is still a quality album. Their fifth album, 1982's Oh No! It's Devo, with its near-total reliance on synthesizers, was the first Devo album to completely splash the bowl. The follow-up, 1984's Shout, was another synthy stinker that ended my Devo fandom. But still the band soldiered on, essentially becoming embarrassing parodies of themselves. Some band members were smart enough to realize that the ship was dead in the water and sinking rapidly - longtime drummer and stalwart Alan Myers left the band around this time. He was replaced by former Gleaming Spires/Sparks drummer David Kendrick, who manned the kit for the next release, 1988's Total Devo. This album is crap, crap, crap, with Devo still concentrating on an electronic sound that had run its course five years earlier. There were no memorable songs or moments on this disc, which barely entered the Billboard Top 200 before quickly fading away. Even with the public making a loud and clear rejection of the band, Devo STILL had the gumption/wherewithal to release one more album, 1990's Smooth Noodle Maps, before the band finally, mercifully collapsed.

And so much for that. Thanks again to all who voted. I'll try to think of another poll question soon.

. . . Well, hell - since I brought this album up, I might as well have the damn thing available here; here's True Stories, released in 1986 on Sire Records. Bon appetit!

Talking Heads - True Stories

Trona - Trona

2011-06-12T11:35:00.001-04:00

Trona was one of the three bands I saw at that epic (for me) show at TT The Bear's Place in Cambridge, MA during the summer of 1996 (the other two being The Laurels and The Kelley Deal 6000, both of which have had their albums previously posted on this blog - so now you have music by all three bands from that evening). Trona was the opener, a local band fron Boston. A four-piece, with two guys and two girls, they belted out their songs with energy and abandon, with a sound that immediately caught my attention.

For all I knew at the time, Trona was made up of neophytes to Boston's rock landscape. But as I discovered, most of the band members had been kicking around the Hub scene for years. Christian Dyas, the guitarist and one of the lead singers, had been a member of the popular local band Orangutang (they released only one long-player, 1995's Dead Sailor Acid Blues). Pete Sutton, the bassist, was formerly a member of the indie group The Barnies. Drummer Nick White had also made the rounds with a number of small Boston-area bands. The only music newcomer to the band was Mary Ellen Leahy, who shared guitar and vocal duties with Dyas; she was a former publicist for Taang! Records when it operated out of Boston.

Trona's sound was . . . well, I won't say "generic Boston indie rock" (first, because that's sort of an oxymoron; and second, because such a description sounds like a disparagement of a style of music that I enjoy immensely) . . . but there was definitely more than a small tinge of early Pixies/Throwing Muses/Mass. Ave.-type inflection in their music. Atop this 'indie' foundation, the band had erected a strong Western (in some cases, almost country-Western) sound into many of their songs, usually by juxtaposing Dyas' and Leahy's twangy voices. And this construct seemed to work - In describing this band to a friend later, the best way I could think of to describe them was that "they were what The Pixies would sound like if they were fronted by John Doe and Exene Cervenka [the lead singers of X]". And that was A-OK by me - I thought every song they did that evening was superb. I went to the show that night to see Kelley Deal's band, but of the two openers, Trona was the one that made to biggest impression on me at the time (not to say that The Laurels weren't bad either).

I didn't pick up their self-titled album (Trona, released by Cosmic Records) at the show that night; I waited a day or two, and found it at the Newbury Comics in the basement of the student union at M.I.T., close to where I was living that summer. I was really looking forward to getting into their CD, and once again hearing those great songs they played at T.T.'s earlier that week. But when I played it, I remember feeling VERY disappointed. The songs on the disc didn't seem to approach the quality of the sounds I heard and recalled from their live gig. At the time, it all just seemed sort of . . . blah. Outside of an unexpected and pretty good cover of Stereolab's "Wow And Flutter", there was nothing on the album that really held my attention. I regretfully chalked that purchase up as once of my occasional mistakes, and stuck Trona on the shelf, where it sat unplayed for several years.

As for the band: Trona's second album, Red River (released in 1998 on Cherrydisc/Roadrunner), shifted them more firmly into the countrified roots rock X vein. By then, even the critics were openly comparing them to X and the X countrified side project, The Knitters. Not a good thing, when you're trying to blaze your own musical trail. And it did nothing for band cohesiveness - Trona broke up in August 1998, when Leahy quit the band over the usual reason, "musical differences". Chris Dyas and Pete Sutton moved on to join the Ray Corvair Trio, a 60's lounge/surf revival band, for a time. Dyas now fronts a band called The Lingering Doubts out of New York, recording on L.E.S. Records. Oddly enough, a couple of members of Trona later found themselves involved with, of all things, Blue Man Group. Drummer White played in the Las Vegas version of Blue Man Group for a while during the mid-2000s; Dyas became musical director for the New York BMG immediately after Trona broke up, performing live with them and cowriting thair Grammy-nominated album Audio in 1999.

It's only been within the past year or so that I've revisited Trona's first album. And I have to say that, upon hearing it with ears fifteen years older, I can't understand why I dismissed this disc the first time I heard it. I made a mistake. The entire album - not just "Wow And Flutter", but all of it - is actually pretty doggone good. Sure, Trona probably isn't ever going to be considered for the Pantheon of Great Boston Indie Bands - they really weren't at the level of the aforementioned bands. But Trona had enough chops and execution to at least allow them to look groups like The Pixies square in the eye. Although their time on the scene was short, they have nothing to hang their heads about.

Don't take my word for it - have a listen yourself, and (as always) let me know what you think:

Trona - Trona

One Year

2011-05-25T09:48:00.000-04:00

A year ago today, I finally made the effort to put together my own music blog. I'd always wanted one, but at the time the process of establishing one seemed like something exotic and difficult, a thing that only truly savvy technogeeks did. When I finally made up my mind to give it a try, I was surprised at how easy making my own blog turned out to be.

I cannot tell you how much fun it has been, sharing my stories and music with you all over the past 365 days. I initially assumed that no one would take the time to find or read my words, or have any interest in this little corner of the Web that I designated my own. But over the past year, almost 15,000 people have taken a chance, and come to check out what I had to say. Some folks just passed through; some have lingered a while; and many have left comments with me, sharing their own thoughts about the things and events I've written about. To all of you, I just want to say "Thank you".

While my output has slowed in recent months, that does not mean that "Pee-Pee Soaked Heckhole" will be ending anytime soon. I have many more stories and tunes to share with you all (in fact, I have a number of posts that are currently in progress - just looking for the right words and the right time to finish them). I hope that you all keep on coming back here in the weeks and months to come, and please keep letting me know what you thing of my funny little blog.

This thing turned out to be a lot more fun that I ever thought it would be.

Thanks again!

Poll Results - "Assume that the Beatles stayed together through the 1970s; which songs by the solo Beatles would have appeared on group albums?"

2011-05-02T11:28:00.002-04:00

Had a lot of response to this poll question; I appreciate all of the participation. For my hypothetical Beatles greatest hit album 1971-1979 single-disc release, I used your votes - any song getting more than 50% (8 or more votes) was automatically included.

Generally speaking, Paul and Ringo's solo output, while successful in its time, appears to be poorly regarded in terms of the complete Beatles ouevre. A lot of the later stuff McCartney did with Wings, especially his pop hits "Let 'Em In" and "Silly Love Songs", were deemed unworthy, as was much of Ringo's 1970s stuff, most of which was lightweight at best. And generally, I agree with this assessment. Could you imagine Paul showing up at the studio and attempting to press John and George into recording something like "Coming Up"? Neither can I - they would have laughed him out of Abbey Road studios.

That being said, there were some songs that didn't make the 50% threshold that I feel the group would have definitely considered recording together. "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey", an early solo McCartney number, would easy have fit onto a Beatles album coming immediately after Abbey Road. And "Photograph" was the kind of song the band would throw at Ringo for his traditional one-song-per-album lead vocal. I've always thought that the boogie-woogie 4/4 beat of "Helen Wheels" would have been a logical followup to the stripped-down sound the Beatles showed on Let It Be. And I can't understand why "Give Me Love" didn't gain enough votes here - it's also one I thought would be right in the band's wheelhouse.

So, without further ado, here's the greatest hits album that never was, The Beatles' 1971-1979:

"Maybe I'm Amazed"
"Imagine"
"My Sweet Lord"
"Jealous Guy"
"It Don't Come Easy"
"Give Peace A Chance"
"All Things Must Pass"
"Love"
"Mind Games"
"Jet"
"Give Me Love"
"Helen Wheels"
"Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey"
"Photograph"

For those of you keeping track, that's five Lennon songs, four McCartney songs, three Harrison songs, and two Starr songs. The complete vote breakdown is below:

"Maybe I'm Amazed" - 13 votes
"Imagine" - 13 votes
"My Sweet Lord" - 12 votes
"Jealous Guy" - 10 votes
"It Don't Come Easy" - 10 votes
"Give Peace A Chance" - 10 votes
"All Things Must Pass" - 9 votes
"Love" - 9 votes
"Mind Games" - 8 votes
"Jet" - 8 votes
"Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" - 7 votes
"Photograph" - 7 votes
"Whatever Gets You Through The Night" - 7 votes
"Power To The People" - 6 votes
"What Is Life" - 6 votes
"Give Me Love" - 5 votes
"My Love" - 5 votes
"Oh Yoko!" - 5 votes
"Oh My My" - 4 votes
"Blow Away" - 4 votes
"Helen Wheels" - 4 votes
"You're Sixteen" - 3 votes
"Silly Love Songs" - 3 votes
"Coming Up" - 3 votes
"Crackerbox Palace" - 2 votes
"Let 'Em In" - 2 votes

Top Lennon solo song - "Imagine", 13 votes
Top McCartney solo song - "Maybe I'm Amazed", 13 votes
Top Harrison solo song - "My Sweet Lord", 12 votes
Top Starr solo song - "It Don't Come Easy", 10 votes

Again, thanks for voting. I'll post another poll soon, when I can think of a good topic. If you have anything to say regarding this survey, I'm always happy to hear your comments.

[ . . . and (finally) acting upon a great recommendation from a friend of mine here on this blog, here is a a faux-greatest hits compilation based on the selections above (with a couple of bonus tunes added):

The Beatles - 1971-1979

Enjoy, and let me know what you think.]

The Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Plasma Shaft

2011-04-27T23:28:00.001-04:00

A moment of silence, please, for the old Echo Records store in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Back in the day, Echo was the greatest record store in all of New Zealand, in my estimation. When I lived in Christchurch, the shop was located in the Cashel Mall area on High Street, facing the now soon-to-be-demolished Hotel Grand Chancellor. Echo always had a great stock available of indie/alternative CDs from U.S. and British bands, and their local music selection (stuff like JPS Experience, Tall Dwarfs, The Clean, Chris Knox, etc.) was superb. There was another record store, Galaxy Records, further down High Street, only a few doors away. Galaxy generally had cheaper stuff available. But in terms of size and selection, Echo ran circles around this other shop. I didn't purchase many tunes in New Zealand; I've mentioned before in previous posts how ridiculously expensive CDs were in Christchurch. I preferred to buy the discs I wanted during my visits back to the States or over to Australia. But whenever I did want or need something, Echo was the venue of choice.

They used to have a frequent purchasers promotion there, that came with a little card you got punched every time you bought a full-priced album; after ten purchases, the eleventh album was free. Shortly before I left New Zealand for the first time in 1995 for grad school in Virginia, I found that I needed only two more buys to get my free CD. So, about ten days before the movers came to box up my stuff, I went downtown for my last visit to Echo.

I went into the record store with one goal in mind - I wanted Nirvana's MTV Unplugged In New York, released in November of the previous year to rave reviews, to be my free album. Other than that, I had no real idea of what else I wanted, or really any real desire to get anything else. But I hated the thought of being on the cusp of receiving my 'free' music and leaving it on the table (yeah, yeah, I know that 'free' is disingenuous, since you had to buy something to get it - but, still . . .). So I started browsing the stacks, looking for stuff even remotely interesting. I recalled recently hearing and enjoying on the University of Canterbury's indie radio station RDU the song "Diamond Shine", a cut by the New Zealand band The Clean (which had recently reformed). So I went looking for that album, Vehicle, and quickly found it. One down, one to go. But the second one to complete my set of ten was going to be tougher. I started running through the stack alphabetically, hoping something would jump out at me.

I got to the "R"s, and into the Red Hot Chili Peppers rack. Now, when the Chili Peppers first came on the scene, I thought they were the Second Coming. The first I'd ever heard of that band was on Christmas Day, 1984, when I saw the video for "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes" on MTV, and practically levitated off of my chair - they were THAT awe-inspiring. I woke up early the day after Christmas and drove through a snowstorm to the local record shop to pick up a cassette copy of their first album, featuring that song. I played that album to death, and initially became a devoted fan. Over the next couple of years, I picked up their follow-up albums (Freaky Styley (1985) and The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987)) practically the moment they came out.

But I quickly began to notice that, beginning with Freaky Styley, the RHCP began to sound a litte repetitive and formulaic to me. On their first album, the band put out what, in my mind, was a very original and exciting sound - hard rockin', with a big dollop of punk and a measured dose of funk mixed in. With Freaky Styley, and especially on The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, the band seemed to radically skew that blend, heavily emphasizing the funk sound to the detriment of everything else (I guess the move to heavier funk on the former album should have been any surprise, considering that it was produced by legendary funkmeister George Clinton). I didn't want to give up on them, and I tried really hard to like the latter album. But songs like "Fight Like A Brave" and "Funky Crime" just sounded tired and contrived, and did nothing to draw me in or retain my interest. In my opinion, the Chili Peppers were trying too hard to be something they weren't, and it was a turn-off. By the late 1980s, I had pretty much thrown in the towel on the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Of course now, looking back, I see that I made a mistake in writing them off so early. Their very next album, Mother's Milk, was the record that really began the Chili Peppers' ascent into superstardom, a rise completed by 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik, in many ways their artistic and commercial peak. I missed out on pretty much all of that as it was happening, since I had all but written the band off years earlier. But the thing about good music is that, sooner or later, it makes itself known to you. By the mid-1990s, songs from BSSM (such as "Breaking The Girl", "Give It Away" and "Under The Bridge") were in heavy rotation on radio stations around the globe, and by then even I couldn't avoid hearing them and acknowledging the greatness of this music.

So in Echo that day, I decided to get my own copy of Blood Sugar Sex Magik. I picked up the standard CD copy in the bin, and noticed a black, red and blue box directly behind it. It was for something called The Plasma Shaft, a "Special Limited Edition" two-CD set that included not only a copy of BSSM, but also an additional CD containing eight songs, including "Soul To Squeeze" (another RHCP song I'd recently heard and enjoyed as well). The price for the special edition was about NZ$35.00 (about US$20.00 at the time - I told you these friggin' things were expensive in New Zealand), slightly more than the regular BSSM copy (priced at NZ$29.00). I figured what the heck, that was a good deal for some extra songs, so I put down the disc I had and picked up The Plasma Shaft instead. That made ten (finally). I gathered up a copy of the Nirvana album on my way to the register, paid for my music, and vamoosed - my very last visit to a fine music store.

A few years ago, Echo was bought by a North Island record store chain called Real Groovy, and moved to a new location on Manchester Street. The new location was badly damaged by the February earthquake, so much so that at the end of March, the company put out a press release stating that the store would not reopen. A sad and unexpected end to a city icon. I wish the employees and customers all the best in the future, and want to just say 'thanks' for hooking me up with so much good music when I was there.

I owned this double-disc set for years before I learned that The Plasma Shaft was considered to be a Chili Peppers rarity. Apparently, this set was only released in Australia and Japan in 1994, and has never seen the light of day in the States. It has been out of print for many years; copies regularly sell for $50 to $100.

I'm not going to bother providing Blood Sugar Sex Magik, the first part of the set, here. I'm sure that should be easy enough to track down. Here, however, is the second part, containing hard-to-find outtakes and B-sides from the BSSM sessions, including "Soul To Squeeze", one of the all-time great Chili Peppers songs. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think:

The Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Plasma Shaft

Love Tractor - This Ain't No Outerspace Ship

2011-04-21T09:47:00.002-04:00

As you can probably tell from my posts, I was (and am) a big fan of the old Athens sound, beginning with the B-52's and R.E.M., and branching out to less-well-known but still vital bands from that era like Pylon, Oh-OK and Buzz of Delight. Love Tractor was an Athens band that appeared very late on my radar, probably because what they were initially into was a bit removed from the other local bands of that time.

The band was formed in April 1980 by two local guitarists, Mike Richmond and Mark Cline, more as a way to alleviate the boredom of living in the one-horse town Athens was back then, rather than creating/joining a new musical movement. The two began gigging around Athens as a duo, accompanied at first by a drum machine. But along the way, they began adding members on bass and keyboards, and shed the drum machine for a succession of flesh-and-blood drummers (including, briefly, a pre-R.E.M. Bill Berry) before settling on Kit Schwartz behind the kit.

The major difference that set Love Tractor apart from the other bands vying for stage time at the 40 Watt Club and Tyrone's back then was in their sound - Love Tractor was a TOTALLY instrumental folk-rock band; no vocals whatsoever in their performances.

Now, I'll be honest, with very few exceptions, instrumental bands bore the shit out of me. Instrumental rock is no picnic in itself, but of all the genres, instrumental jazz ensembles have got to be the worst and most ennui-inducing for me. For example, I've recently been frequenting a local Cuban restaurant here in a sketchy part of town that features great food, dirt-cheap beer and some of the best, most eclectic live music performances in the city every weekend. In the couple of months I've been a regular at this place, I've been treated to superb groups offering up rock, big band, world music [quick shout-out on this one: the excellent band I saw there under this genre, Copal, came all the way from Brooklyn to our little burg, and featured a stunning redhead fronting the band on violin(!) and a weirdly hypnotic classical/Middle Eastern/gypsy/hip-hop sound - if that sounds like something you'd be into, run, do not walk, and pick up their latest, Into The Shadow Garden], what have you.

However, the worst band I saw there was a couple of weeks ago, when I went to the restaurant for a bite to eat and a couple of drinks. I got there fairly early in the evening, and while I ate I watched the band set up - just a quartet of nondescript young guys, sporting the apparently de rigueur look of torn jeans and scraggly post-secondary school goatees. I was looking forward to some decent music, but these guys completely disappointed me. Their entire set consisted of fifteen-twenty minute-long meandering "jazz explorations", with each player seemingly just doing his own thing. There was no visible connection/acknowledgement between the players, and as such, their music did nothing to draw the audience in. After a very short while, their music moved from boring to annoying, and I fled the venue much earlier that usual.

So, I can sort of imagine what Love Tractor was facing during their early years of playing in Athens. Cline has admitted in interviews that his was never "the most marketable band". With its shows, the band never really built up the sort of buzz and mythology that surrounds the early efforts of the B-52s (i.e., the legendary Valentine's Day party) or R.E.M. (practicing in the abandoned church). It seems that they were more admired than loved in town.

It took a while for them to find a recording contract, but Love Tractor was finally signed to DB Records in 1982. They released their first album, an all instrumental self-titled effort, later that year. Love Tractor received decent reviews, but sold poorly. For their second DB Records album, 1984's Till The Cows Come Home, the band began experimenting with actual words, adding a couple of songs with lead vocals by Richmond.

The relative success of this record, coupled with DB Records' increasingly shaky financial posture, led to the band's move to the larger Big Time Records (America) label in 1986. Their first release on their new label was 1987's This Ain't No Outerspace Ship. This album was Love Tractor's first full-scale foray into vocal rock, and in my opinion they pull it off with great success. Their sound on this record can be described as sort of a funkier R.E.M., with Richmond's twangy voice well suited to songs such as "Beatle Boots" and "Outside With Ma".

As fortune would have it, I moved to Athens shortly after this album came out, and the record was being championed by WUOG, the local independent college station. They played "Outside With Ma" to death, so much so that I fell in love with it. If I recall correctly, I bought this album on vinyl at either the Wuxtry, the famous local record shop, or at the local college co-op/music store located just down the street. It wasn't until years later that I replaced my vinyl copy with a CD version.

Love Tractor released one more album on Big Time, 1989's Themes From Venus, before breaking up later that year. The band members went on to join several other bands, but they all remained friends, and every year or so they would all get together in Athens to reconnect and write songs together. Seven years after breaking up, they reformed, and after touring around the country for several years, released a reunion record, The Sky At Night, on Razor & Tie in 2001. They broke up again shortly afterwards.

So, here's what in my opinion is Love Tractor's best album, This Ain't No Outerspace Ship from 1987 (distributed by RCA). Be sure to check out their covers of Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up" and The Gap Band's "Party Train"! Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

Love Tractor - This Ain't No Outerspace Ship

Thomas Mapfumo & The Blacks Unlimited - Corruption

2011-04-12T13:23:00.005-04:00

Looking back at some of these posts, it's amazing how much of the music I enjoy was discovered on road trips to/from the casino tables in Connecticut and New Jersey (OK, so I'm a degenerate gambler - what can you do?). Here's another artist I came across during one of those trips.

I was on my way back from Atlantic City during the spring of 1992, a fairly lucrative year for me up until then. At the time, I had reached a fairly proficient level of expertise at blackjack, and had expanded my gambling repertoire a couple of years earlier to include craps, a game with only slightly worse odds than blackjack, but demanding a heck of a lot less concentration from a player [in blackjack, to reduce the house edge, it was necessary to 'count cards'; that is, keep track of certain cards as they come into play, in order to maximize your advantage when the remaining deck is rich in higher-ranking cards (tens, face cards and aces). Done right, it's very profitable - but it's hard friggin' work]. That winter, I'd been hitting places like Caesar's and the old Atlantis casino and cleaning up. Suffice to say that I was eager to visit A.C. as much as possible that year, to keep my winning streak going.

This latest trip was no different from the rest, although it started out on a down note. I made about $150 playing blackjack at Ballys, then on a whim, walked next door to the old Claridge House Casino (at the time, the smallest casino in Atlantic City - it has since been purchased and folded into the Ballys organization) to try my hand at their craps tables. The Claridge had long been a bad-luck spot for me; I don't recall ever having a winning session in the place, and as such, I tended to avoid the facility during my trips to the city. I guess that this time, I wanted to see if my luck from the place next door would carry over there.

In a word, it didn't. I got ripped for about $350 in record time on Claridge's cursed dice tables, before I wised up and staggered out of the joint. I was ticked off at my bullheaded stupidity, and went off to lick my wounds for a while before giving the tables another go. After a fortifying meal (Mr. Ray Kroc was my chef that evening), I went down the beach to the Tropicana, and over the course of the remainder of the night made back all I lost and moreso. I departed Atlantic City in the wee hours of the morning, headed back to the DC area a very happy man.

I really didn't feel that tired leaving town that night; I'd made that late-night drive many times before. It's not the most exciting drive there is, especially the portion down the Atlantic City Expressway and down I-295. The ride that night was especially boring for some reason - pitch black, and few if any other cars on the road. About an hour into the trip, I began to zone out . . .

By "zone out", I don't mean that I was falling asleep at the wheel. I was - well, "zoning out". I determined later that I had reached a state where it was as if I had two brains working separately from one another. One side of my brain was in charge of the driving, making lane changes, using turn signals, etc. - doing everything normally. The other half of my head was . . . somewhere else. It was like the road was hypnotizing me; I guess I reached a state of what some truckers call "White Line Fever". And it all seemed hunky-dory to me, as I drove on and on . . .

When I finally snapped out of my daze (God knows how long later), I found myself zipping down a secondary road in the midst of one of those big industrial areas scattered throughout southern New Jersey, filled with giant chemical and petroleum-processing plants. There wasn't another car to be seen on the road ahead of or behind me, and although I couldn't see the factories on either side of the road through the black night, I could see the lights - weird yellow-orange ones, covering the buildings, smokestacks, loading docks, etc. Although the car windows weren't open, the stench of the area was filling the car - a miasma of chemicals, toxic waste, and decaying vegetation from the swamps surrounding this godforsaken place. I had absolutely no idea where I was or how I got there; I had somehow gotten off the main highway. The overall effect of all of this was extremely spooky and disorienting. To "wake up", as it were, from a trip you've made a thousand times before, and suddenly find yourself in what appeared to be The Last Place on Earth . . . well, to say I was freaked out was an understatement. I drove on for another mile of so in a sweat, clutching the wheel, searching frantically for a place to turn around. When I finally got to one of those dirt-packed median service roads, I made a veritable 'Dukes Of Hazzard'-style high-speed U-turn, and high-tailed it out of the area as fast as I dared go.

By the time I got back to I-295 South about twenty minutes later, I was completely shaken. I felt like I had returned to Earth from Pluto, seeing the taillights and headlights of cars ahead of and behind me once again. I had been driving in silence all the way from A.C., and as I figured that might have contributed to my earlier highway stupor, I switched the radio on. It took me a while to find something listenable, but I finally landed on a tune that caught my attention; I think it was on the Philadelphia independent station, WXPN, which can usually be counted on for interesting music.

This particular tune had a weird little syncopated tempo, dominated by electric guitar and what sounded like a xylophone-type instrument, offset by hand claps between the beats. I immediately pegged it as being either Caribbean or African pop, and yet there was an underlying familiarity in the music that made it readily accessible to my Americanized ears, even if I couldn't understand a word of what the singer was saying. The song was long, over five minutes long, yet it retained my interest, especially in the superb guitar work being done on it. In my enjoyment of and concentration on the song, I gradually relaxed, letting go of the tension from my recent Mystery Drive into Chemical Horrorland. As it ended, the announcer provided the music's details: it was "Moyo Wangu" by Thomas Mapfumo & The Blacks Unlimited. I made a note to look into this band later that day, after getting home and resting up from my trip.

Thomas Mapfumo, born in 1945, was (is) a native (one of the Shona people) of what is now known as Zimbabwe, but what was then known as the self-governing British colony of Southern Rhodesia, and later as just Rhodesia. As such, he has had a lifelong front-row seat to the turmoil in that region, living through the area's evolution from colony to federation to independent state, and through white supremacist rule, civil war, and the quasi-dictatorship of its current ruler, Robert Mugabe. Initially apolitical, Mapfumo grow up in the rural part of the country and aspired to be simply a musician; he joined his first band in his home country at the age of sixteen. For years, he crisscrossed the country as a member of one of several bands, playing American rock and soul covers.

However, in the mid-70s, he began to take an interest in the indigenous Shona music of his people and country. Shona music is traditionally played on something called a mbira, which resembles a small, finger-plucked xylophone. Mapfumo began transcribing this mbira sound to the electric guitar and other modern rock instrumentation, retaining the Shona language in the lyrics, slowly creating a new style and type of music. He was doing this work at the height of native Rhodesians' resistance movement against the country's apartheid regime led by Ian Smith. Smith's government openly repressed and denigrated native culture; Mapfumo began to realize that his work with Shona music was not only an artistic statement, but a political one as well. Without quite meaning to, he quickly became a major voice in the resistance movement. He named his new music Chimurenga, a Shona word meaning "struggle", and his lyrics began to openly advocate the violent overthrow of the white-minority Smith government.

It took a while for the apartheid government to catch on to what Mapfumo was doing/singing (apparently, none of the white leaders understood Shona), but eventually they figured it out, banned his records from state-run radio, and threw him into jail without charges in 1979. But all of this was occurring just as the white supremacist regime was on its last legs. By the end of the year, Mapfumo was out of prison, Smith was gone, and a popularly-elected black-majority government led by Mugabe was installed in the newly-renamed country of Zimbabwe. The musician emerged an immensely popular hero, hailed as the "Lion of Zimbabwe" and the voice and moral conscience of the country.

However, as the 1980s wore on, Mapfumo became more and more disillusioned with the Mugabe regime and its abuse of power. In 1989, with his band the Blacks Unlimited, Mapfumo released Corruption, a searing and none-too-subtle critique of Zimbabwe's government, with incendiary song titles like "Muchadura [You Will Confess]" and "The Kupera Kwevanhu [Perishing to the People]" ("Moyo Wangu [My Heart]" was also included on this album). Needless to say, Mugabe and Co. were none too pleased at this criticism from a once-ally, and they began making life difficult for Mapfumo, making him the target of endless government harassment and phony accusations of wrongdoing. Finally, Mapfumo could take no more, and fled with his family into exile in the United States. Today, he lives in Oregon, and continues to make music and speak out again the abuses of Mugabe's government against Zimbabwe, the country he loves.

So, here it is, a superb example of African pop and music that helped unfreakify me on a late night drive long ago, Corruption by Thomas Mapfumo & The Blacks Unlimited, released in 1989 on Mango Records. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

Thomas Mapfumo & The Blacks Unlimited - Corruption

Belly - Slow Dust EP

2011-04-06T21:11:00.021-04:00

When I worked for a large financial institution in Rhode Island back in the early 2000s, I became good friends with my boss's administrative assistant, Sue. Sue's husband, a former newspaperman, had recently died, and she was left on her own to raise a teenage son. Despite this adversity and these setbacks in her life, Sue was just about the nicest, sweetest person you could ever want to meet in a corporate setting. I sometimes felt bad for her, because her (that is, our) boss was somewhat of a dick, and kept her jumping with demands that were sometimes frivolous. I guess technically she was my admin too, but I made a point of rarely asking her to do anything for me - I was a big boy, and was old enough at that point to do my own copying and stapling.

By the middle part of the decade, both Sue and I had left the company, but we remained in touch over the years. She continued working here and there, and ended up putting her son through college and grad school (he's now a Boston attorney). She also remarried, this time to a droll, charming older gentleman who is her perfect match. Over the years, she settled into a new life of semi-leisure with her new husband, living the genteel Newport lifestyle and doting over her now-extended family, which included several grandchildren on her husband's side. She also retained the media and political connections she made when her first husband was alive, so she was fully plugged into what was happening in the state. I left the state for a time, all the while hearing from her every so often and getting the news regarding our old office mates and whatever else was happening up in Rhode Island.

A couple of months ago, Sue extended me an invitation to the Providence Newspaper Guild Follies, an annual affair where the state's media community roasts Rhode Island's state and national government officials and lampoons the political stories that made regional headlines over the past year. From what I understood, it was to be a pretty hoity-toity affair, with most if not all of the state's leading politicians in attendance, so generally it's pretty hard for the average Joe to get into. But Sue was able to use her late husband's connections to get an entire table in her name.

Now, stuff like this is generally not my bag. I figured it was going to be pretty snobby, and very "deep politics"-oriented, referring to people and events here that I knew little if anything about. But I hadn't seen Sue in a long time, and I assumed that she wouldn't steer me wrong and invite me to something that I would find miserable and stultifying. So I accepted her invitation. At the very least, I thought, they'd probably have some decent grub.

So on an icy, snowy Saturday night in late February, I drove to the venue, the Venus De Milo banquet facility in nearby Swansea, MA (I guess there was no place in Rhode Island large enough to handle an event like this). I arrived to find the place packed with what I assumed were Rhode Island's elite, most of whom were distinguished grey-haired hawk-eyed gents in tuxedos, escorting their bejeweled blue-haired wives. Not a lot of younger 'talent' in evidence, but I figured as much before I got there. There was a period of mingling/glad-handing before the actual banquet and show. So I got a drink at the bar, then made my way to the edge of the crowd to observe the human sideshow. I spotted the new governor, Lincoln Chafee, fairly quickly, and during the course of the night I saw, and spoke with, both of Rhode Island's U.S. senators, Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse. After a time, I tired of hobnobbing, and went in search of Sue's table.

I found her seated in the banquet hall with her husband and two other couples she had also invited to share her table. I settled into my place as Sue introduced me to her friends. She motioned to the older couple sitting next to me as a "Mr. & Mrs. Gorman, from Newport". I nodded politely and shook hands with them. Then Sue added this little bombshell, "Their sons used to be musicians. Have you ever heard of a band called Belly?"

I was jolted, and whirled toward the Gormans. "You're Chris and Tom's parents?", I all but shouted. They were obviously extremely pleased that I knew of their children and that band. Shoot, way back when, I was a BIG Belly fan.

Belly was formed in 1991 by Tanya Donelly and Fred Abong, both Newport natives and former members of the critically-acclaimed Throwing Muses. Donelly co-founded Throwing Muses as a fifteen-year-old high school student in 1981 with her half-sister Kristin Hersh. Ostensibly equals within the group, by the time the Muses released their fourth album, The Real Ramona, in 1991, Hersh's prolific songwriting output and overall aesthetic were almost completely eclipsing Donelly's role, relegating her to that of little more than sideman to Hersh's vision. This led to rising tensions within the band.

Actually, the tensions within Throwing Muses were evident way back in 1988, soon after the release of the band's second album House Tornado. In support of this album, the Muses went on a European tour with a band recently signed to 4AD opening for them - The Pixies. Over the course of that tour, Donelly and Pixies bassist Kim Deal began bonding, as they were both in similar circumstances within their respective bands - reduced to supporting a dominant frontperson's sound and vision. The two began discussing a side project to work on together during their bands' recording hiatus, the result of which was the formation of The Breeders and the subsequent release of Pod in 1990.

But with The Breeders, Donelly once again found herself in a familiar role - second banana to someone else. Donelly only contributed to one song on Pod; the rest had been penned by Deal during and just after the 1988 tour. Although critically acclaimed, Pod was not a strong seller. At the same time, both The Pixies and Throwing Muses were gearing up for their next albums (Trompe Le Monde and The Real Ramona, respectively), forcing the Breeders to go on hiatus. Dispirited with her experience working with/for Deal, Donelly halfheartedly rejoined her band for the recording session, a group which now featured Fred Abong on bass, a replacement for the recently departed founding member Leslie Langston. Once again, Donelly's contributions to the new Muses album were minimal; she received writing credits on only two ("Honeychain" and "Not Too Soon") of the twelve album cuts (however, "Two Step" is credited to "Throwing Muses", so I guess she gets partial credit there as well), all of which were buried on Side 2.

Apparently, these twin disappointments within a year in getting her music released were the last straw for Donelly. The Real Ramona was released in March 1991; she left both The Breeders and Throwing Muses that summer, taking Fred Abong from the latter band back to Newport with her. There, she reconnected with the Gorman brothers, childhood friends who had become musicians themselves, playing in a regional hardcore punk band called Verbal Assault. The four united as Belly, and quickly signed a recording/distribution deal with 4AD, her previous band's label.

Belly entered the studio in Warren, RI in the spring of 1992; their first release, the four-song Slow Dust EP, came out in late June of that year. Donelly wrote every word and note of the EP, and she had to feel some sort of vindication when the EP became a sensation and smashing success in the UK, where it reached Number One on the country's indie charts. It also received significant airplay here in the States; my local alternative station, WHFS, had it on heavy rotation during the summer of 1992. I bought that EP the moment it came out here, and played it to death on my car's CD player.

On the strength of the EP, 4AD rush-released Belly's first full-length album, Star, in January 1993, again with all songs written by Donelly (three of the songs off the EP were included on the album). 4AD's optimism was rewarded - Star was an unexpected hit in the U.S., garnering Gold record status with over 800,000 copies sold (2 million + worldwide), spawning three Modern Rock chart hits ("Feed The Tree", "Slow Dog", and "Gepetto") and later being nominated for two Grammy awards. The album also reached #2 on the UK album charts, thrashing anything the Muses ever put out over there (or The Breeders, for that matter). Donelly had to feel on top of the world at that point. Belly was so huge in 1993 that, for their tour that summer, their opening band was Radiohead.

Unfortunately, 1993 was Belly's peak. For some reason, Fred Abong quit the band shortly after the release of Star, altering the band's overall sound to something 'rockier' and more mainstream. Belly's sophomore effort, 1995's King, was not well-received due to this change in sound, selling only a fraction of what Star did. Donelly broke up the band soon afterwards.

Since then, Tanya Donelly has released several solo albums of middling success, and even reconciled with Kirstin Hersh, since 2000 appearing on stage and on record occasionally at Throwing Muses reunions. Fred Abong dabbled around with music for a while, then went back to school. He recently received an MA in Humanities from Salve Regina University in Newport. And in chatting with their parents, I learned that the Gorman brothers now have a photography studio in Brooklyn, and apparently are doing well with that. It was weird but cool talking to the Gormans at that event. Here I was, in the midst of some pretty "inside" political discussion and bantering, listening to them talk about heading over to Europe with their sons for part of their band's tour, hanging out backstage at their concerts (yes, she actually met Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood during the '93 tour, and said they were "nice boys"), and having Kristin Hersh over at their house for lunch. It's funny who you end up meeting, in the most unlikely venues, eh?

Anyway, here's Belly's first release, the Slow Dust EP, put out by 4AD in England and distributed in America by Sire Records. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think:

Belly - Slow Dust EP

Various Artists - Entertainment Weekly Presents Maximum Dance (Discs 1 & 2)

2011-03-26T23:31:00.008-04:00

In the mid-90s, I was a loyal subscriber to Entertainment Weekly magazine. Now normally, I'm not a committed reader of media/music rags. I have been known to pick up the occasional British music magazine (Uncut, Mojo, etc.) from time to time, but it's not like I'm pacing in front of the bookstore every month, breathlessly awaiting the next issue. I've never had much use for periodicals like Rolling Stone, TV Guide, Creem, Hit Parader or mainstream mags of that ilk.

The only other entertainment magazine I ever made the effort to subscribe to was SPIN, back in the early days of its existence (i.e., the late 1980s). In its early days, SPIN's music coverage was consistantly great, a lot better than the middle-of-the-road music dreck that Rolling Stone was putting out. The magazine was so good, in fact, that Mark E. Smith went out of his way to give a positive name-check to SPIN in song (in "Oswald Defense Lawyer", on the 1988 Fall album The Frenz Experiment). When Mad Mark is singing your praises, you KNOW you're doing something right.

But unfortunately, grunge came along and destroyed SPIN magazine. Not that I have anything against grunge - it's just that, suddenly, SPIN became the house organ for the whole movement, and the magazine's coverage became all-grunge, all the time. I liked SPIN for its FULL coverage of the alternative music scene, not just that tiny sliver. After a couple of years of this sort of tedium (I mean, hell, how many times can you write about Mudhoney and Pearl Jam, seriously?), I finally threw in the towel and failed to renew my subscription.

Now, Entertainment Weekly wasn't a substitute for what SPIN used to offer. The magazine wasn't exactly on the cutting edge of what was happening in music and movies, and I didn't have any burning love for Entertainment Weekly's prose either. The only reason I kept getting this periodical year after year was that, as part of your renewal, the magazine would provide free music compilations as part of your paid subscription. Sometimes the compilations were rock; sometimes they were disco; other times they were country. But all of them were superb overviews of their particular genre.

This compilation, Entertainment Weekly Presents Maximum Dance, was mailed to 1995 subscribers. I personally feel that this was the finest of all the magazine's music sets, as it provides an excellent overview of the state of dance music in the late '80s/early '90s. Most of the major hits from that period are included on this two-disc set: Haddaway's "What Is Love"; "I've Been Thinking About You" by London Beat; "O.P.P." by Naughty By Nature; and many, many more.

I'm not embarrassed to say that, back in the day, I spent many an hour getting down to these hits in dance clubs from Narvik, Norway to Valparaiso, Chile and points in between. Yeah, a lot of these tunes seem cheesy now (especially the ones that have moved into the realm of parody, like the Haddaway song and Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy"), but it helps to remember that, in their time, all of these songs were HUGE hits and dance-floor staples. Here's the lineup:

Disc 1:
1. What Is Love - Haddaway
2. A Deeper Love - Aretha Franklin
3. Don't Turn Around - Ace of Base
4. All Around The World - Lisa Stansfield
5. Ride On Time - Black Box
6. Flava In Ya Ear (Easy Mo Mix) - Craig Mack
7. I've Been Thinking About You (Eclipse Mix) - London Beat
8. Just Another Dream - Cathy Dennis
9. Whoomp! (There It Is) - Tag Team
10. Every Little Step - Bobby Brown
11. I'm Gonna Get You - Bizarre Inc.
12. O.P.P. - Naughty By Nature

Disc 2:
1. Mr. Vain - Culture Beat
2. Good Vibrations - Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch
3. I'm So Into You - SWV
4. Movin' On Up - M People
5. I'm Too Sexy - Right Said Fred
6. Summertime - DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
7. Jump Around - House of Pain
8. Show Me Love - Robin S.
9. keep It Street - R. Kelly
10. Humpty Dance - Digital Underground
11. Big Poppa - The Notorious B.I.G.
12. Froggy Style - Nuttin' Nyce

If you're still a fan of this sort of music, this compilation is a one-stop source for all of the good stuff from back then. If you're not a fan, then hell, at the very least this set is good for a laugh, and hearing what people thought was cool at that time. Either way, here you go. As always, enjoy, and let me know what you think.

Various Artists - Entertainment Weekly Presents Maximum Dance (Disc 1)
Various Artists - Entertainment Weekly Presents Maximum Dance (Disc 2)

Imperial Teen - What Is Not To Love

2011-03-22T01:53:00.006-04:00

For my birthday in 2002, my girlfriend gave me two tickets to see The Breeders play at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City later that month. Rob, one of my New Zealand buddies, was over in the States that summer, working as a swim instructor at a summer camp for underprivileged urban children in Vermont (his normal gig is as a print and TV model in NZ - here's his website if you're interested: http://www.robertfaith.com). So I invited him to come along (my girl wasn't a big Breeders fan). Rob was pretty psyched to learn about our upcoming trip; he'd been stuck up at that ramshackle camp for weeks, and was itching to get away and get back to New York, a place he had visited only one time previously but instantly fell in love with.

The only issue was that I had to schlepp my way up to Vermont to get him, as he had no transportation. I didn't see that as a major issue. On the week of the show, I was to be away in Atlanta until early Friday afternoon. The plan was that I would fly back to Providence, drive home to pack my stuff, then shoot up to Vermont to pick Rob up en route to NYC. The camp managers had only given him two days off, so it was going to be a quick trip. Up to that point in my life, I had never been to Vermont - really didn't have any reason to. But it looked small on the map, so how long could it take to get there?

[Well, I found out EXACTLY how long it took to drive through that stultifyingly boring state. I'll spare you the details of that journey - a tragicomedy of plane delays, traffic jams and assorted errors that began in Atlanta and didn't end for another 18 hours or so. Let me just say that, no offense to the good citizens of Vermont, but I'll live just as long and die just as happy never having to visit that boring-ass state ever again . . .]

By the time we finally got to New York in the very wee hours of that Saturday morning, we were dead beat. But we were also starving, so we threw our stuff down at the Helmsley and went to the Carnegie Deli (which is open until 4 am) for a feed (even at that late hour, there were famous faces there - Tommy Lasorda sat gorging himself at the table next to us) before stumbling back to the hotel and collapsing exhaustedly into our beds.

We were up fairly early the next morning - I was worn out from all of the traveling and delays, but Rob only had 48 hours of leave from the camp, and didn't want to waste it sleeping. The show didn't start until 8-ish, so we killed the day running around town, from Central Park to Canal Street and points in between. Rob hit the city wearing his "party/concert" attire, which consisted of bright orange jeans with cargo pockets and a black mesh shirt . . . I nearly collapsed with laughter. His outfit looked like something the Festrunk Brothers from SNL would wear in New York to look 'hip'.

[Of course, I ended up eating my words and guffaws - as we walked around Soho that afternoon, a guy with a camera came up to us, told Rob he was a professional photographer for a nationally-known men's fashion magazine, and asked to take his picture for an upcoming issue (the bastard completely ignored me - guess I wasn't dressed 'hip' enough). And sure enough, a couple of months later, a small shot of Rob sporting his 'look' appeared in the magazine. So that shows how much I know . . .]

After a few drinks (at the Cub Room on Sullivan St. - great place) and some chow (at Blue Ribbon Sushi just down the street - highly recommended), we hopped a taxi for the show, soon arriving in front of the venue. I was really looking forward to seeing the reformed Breeders, with both Kim and Kelley Deal back in the band (they were touring on Title TK, their first new album in nine years). In the years since the last show I saw with them together (in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1995 (detailed in my previous Kelley Deal 6000 post)), I'd seen Kelley's band play several times all over the country. And in 1997, I was part of a very disappointed packed house at DC's 9:30 Club listening to a set performed by what was touted as a "Breeders" band fronted by Kim, but stocked with lame, no-name musicians playing lame, no-name songs (I discovered later that most of those ersatz Breeders were actually members of Kim's more recent band The Amps). In both cases, some of the spark and chemistry was missing; it just wasn't the same as seeing the sisters perform together. So I was pretty jazzed (I was also secretly hoping that Kelley would remember me, her old friend from years past, and take the time to say hello - but I wasn't going to press the issue). Rob and I went up the stairs to the main stage area of the Bowery Ballroom, got a couple of drinks, and milled around waiting for the show to start.

I didn't know anything at all about the supporting band, Imperial Teen, so I was sort of surprised when, in speaking with some of the other concert attendees before the show, a fairly good number of them were there to support this band. Although they were the opener, they were touring on their own new album, 2002's On. Others there were enthusiastic, but I honestly didn't know what to expect as Imperial Teen took the stage.

Imperial Teen was formed in late 1994/early 1995 by Roddy Bottum, keyboardist for Faith No More. Soon after the 1992 release of Faith No More's Angel Dust, the band's most commercially successful album, Bottum began going through a series of personal crises (including the death of his father and coming out of the closet) that significantly limited his input and activity with that band. After getting through his rough period, he started a band, Star 69, as a side project with another San Francisco-area musician, former Sister Double Happiness member Lynn Perko (they later changed their name to Imperial Teen). They were joined by Perko's friend and former bandmate Jone Stebbins and local rocker Will Schwartz.

Imperial Teen released their debut album, Seasick, in 1996, followed by What Is Not To Love in 1998. From what I understand, these albums, featuring alternative/college radio hits like "You're One", "Yoo Hoo" and "Lipstick", were very well received in certain quarters. And due to relentless touring (including opening for Courtney Love's band Hole in 1998), they had established a pretty strong following. I don't know why I was so clueless, and hadn't heard of them . . . (oh yeah, now I remember - I lived in Texas).

Well, that night in the Bowery, I discovered what I had been missing all of those years. Imperial Teen was absolutely FANTASTIC. The songs were all outstanding, but what really struck me was the dispositions of the four band members; it's nice to go to a show and see a band actually having fun up on stage, and enjoying one another. And they were all completely unpretentious and 'precious' regarding their musical input - I was stunned when, after a couple of songs, the band members switched off on instruments - Perko left the drum kit and grabbed Bottum's guitar, Schwartz moved from guitar to bass, Stubbins took over guitar and lead vocals, and Bottum settled behind the drums. During the course of the show, every band member played every instrument. But it didn't come off as a sort of musical circuit training - it seemed totally natural, and of course for every variation the band sounded great.

Combined with a great set by The Breeders (who were in perfect form that night - it was as if that nine-year hiatus never happened), the entire show was superb. I arrived there a big fan of one band, but left there that evening a big fan of two.

We had to leave NYC on Sunday mid-afternoon, in order to get Rob back up to his camp on time. But I used some of our remaining time in the city to track down all of the Imperial Teen music I could, and we left the city with all three albums in our possession. Listening to those tunes in the car eased the hateful trip back up to Vermont (somewhat). Rob was bumming about having to go back to that mosquito-infested hellhole and resume his camp duties with those sullen city kids. But I was glad that I had the opportunity to show him a bit of fun that summer. And of course, getting new tunes out of it made it all worthwhile for me as well.

So, here's Imperial Teen's second album, What Is Not To Love, released by Slash Records in 1998. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think:

Imperial Teen - What Is Not To Love

The Clash - Return To Brixton EP [Extended Mixes]

2011-03-12T14:31:00.008-05:00

It took me a long time to get into compact discs. I can remember when the Midshipmen's Store at Annapolis started stocking the things in 1985, a small area (basically, a little kiosk) within the store's already small music section. This was in the 'longbox' era, when CDs were packaged in 12" boxes so they would fit a music store's already in-place vinyl record racks. These long, thin things seemed strange and exotic back then, and there was a mystique about the technology behind those shiny little circles that mesmerized many people. However, the discs were also prohibitively expensive, as were CD players. And it's not like there was a huge selection of music, either new stuff or back catalogue items, available for sale in the early days (especially at the Mid Store, of all places . . . I'll be charitable, and just say that the CD albums they did have to offer at that time weren't exactly on the cutting edge). During my time at Annapolis I had managed to assemble an awesome collection of great tunes, the bulk of it (about 400-500 albums) on cassette tapes that I meticulously stored (alphabetically by artist and chronologically by release date - yes, I was (and am) that anal retentive . . .) in padded faux-leather cases. As much of a pain in the ass as it was to cart these bulky tape suitcases around with me hither and yon, I wasn't about to casually give up on my music treasures, compiled with much thought and at great expense over those years, and start over again.

So during the late '80s, while everyone else I knew forged ahead with their CD collections, I remained committed to cassettes, a musical Luddite clinging to a rapidly outdated format, the music industry equivalent of the buggy whip. In hindsight, I should have switched over sooner. But I guess in many ways, I was still intimidated by CD technology.

For example, I remember my first visit to England, in 1988. My ship docked in Portsmouth, and that first weekend there I caught British Rail and headed for London, Ground Zero for me as far as what was happening in the world musically. I arrived there coincidently on the same day as the historic Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday concert at Wembley Stadium. But I wasn't interested in any of that activity, I wanted to see things that resonated with me (like Kings Road, as seedy and awesome as I thought it would be, and Brixton, which was sort of scary and grim until I fell in with some locals). At one point during that trip, I HAD to go to the world-famous Virgin Records store near Piccadilly Circus. I bought tons of tapes while there, but the main thing I remember about the place was the "CD factory". There was a sublevel in the Virgin building that could be viewed through glass from the upper levels. On the sublevel floor was a compact disc production line, manned by workers wearing white hooded anti-static suits, smoked glasses and face masks. It was all very sterile, protected and futuristic, and it made quite an impression on me - the WRONG impression. I thought, "Shoot, CDs are so hard to make, no wonder they're so expensive!" If a tape broke on you, you could either go out and buy a replacement fairly cheaply, or else borrow a friend's cassette and make a new copy - with CDs so pricey and apparently fragile, what would happen if one of those discs broke? So I remained on the CD sidelines.

Finally, by the early 90's, the pressure to switch over to CDs was becoming unbearable. The final push over the line happened due to good old WHFS, the old alternative music station for Annapolis, Baltimore and Washington. I had just left the Norfolk area after three years and returned to the DC area to take a job in Arlington, and I was happy to be back in my old haunts and once again surrounded by 'good' music (the Tidewater area being a virtual backwater for that type of stuff, as I've mentioned in earlier posts). One of the first things that met my ears upon my return that spring was a very cool remix of The Clash's "The Guns Of Brixton", a song in semi-heavy rotation on 'HFS. Now, not only is The Clash one of my all-time favorite bands, but "The Guns Of Brixton" (off of London Calling) is quite possibly my all-time favorite Clash song. So I went running to the old Tower Records at George Washington University to grab this remix . . . only to find that the EP wasn't available on tape, ONLY on CD.

I stood there in the record store with head bowed, pondering, holding that CD longbox in my hand for what seemed like several minutes. Finally I sighed, shrugged my shoulders, and walked to the counter to purchase it. They finally got me.

The next day, I bought a Sony portable CD player that came with a little doohickey that attached to the player and ran into the car's cassette tape slot, so I could listen to the CD while I drove (with skips and all - the anti-skip technology back then wasn't as advanced as it was now, necessitating careful driving and/or ingenious padding to enable you to hear an entire song without interruption). And the rest, as they say, is history . . .

So here's the one that started it all for me - the very first CD I ever bought, the Clash's Return To Brixton [Extended Mixes] EP, released by Epic Records back in 1990. Even after all of these years, I still enjoy these remixes, and I hope you all enjoy them to. Here you are - let me know what you think:

The Clash - Return To Brixton EP [Extended Mixes]

(And sorry I've been away for so long - circumstances, you know . . .)

Poll Results - "On the Elevator To Hell, what sort of music is playing?"

2011-03-02T12:02:00.000-05:00

Reggaeton, guys? Really?

I thought sure that either Gangsta Rap or Country (my personal choice) would win in a landslide . . . man, I didn't realize how deep the enmity is out there for reggaeton - wow!

Here are the results:

Rap - 1 vote
Bluegreas - 1 vote
Disco - 1 vote
Klezmer - 1 vote
Other (and don't ask me what that 'other' is) - 1 vote
Celtic - 2 votes
Jazz Flute (a la Ron Burgundy) - 2 votes
Country - 3 votes
Gangsta Rap - 3 votes
Reggaeton - 5 votes

Thanks to all who participated! I'll put up a new poll soon, just as soon as I can think of a new topic.

Sorry, gang . . .

2011-01-21T01:18:00.001-05:00

Just got busy here with a lot of after-New Year's sort of stuff, and thus haven't had the time/wherewithal to post anything in a while. But I will be back soon - thanks for hanging in there with me!

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-23T23:15:00.002-05:00

Just want to take the time here to say thanks a lot to all of you who've stopped by here to visit over the past few months. I hope you've enjoyed my posts and the screeds that come along with them. Music is a personal thing, I think, and it's my feeling that the impression or memory a song imparts to you is just as important as the song itself, if not moreso.

So I hope that the holiday music you've been listening to this week has put you all in a happy, festive mood. Merry Christmas, and I hope to be seeing more of you here in 2011!

Well . . .

2010-12-14T14:37:00.002-05:00

You people never cease to surprise me! Lolita Storm's Girls Fucking Shit Up, the worst-reviewed album ever on this site, has had the highest download rate of anything I've ever put up here, with acquisitions quickly eclipsing those of albums that have been posted here for months! I'm completely amazed, and somewhat amused - I'm thinking maybe I should write crappy reviews for everything here!

Just out of curiosity, can someone explain to me what exactly IS the attraction of this album, and why so many people want it? It can't be my writeup - I savaged it (unless, of course, the concept of reverse psychology is actually valid here . . . )! Please let me know in the "Comments" section below - thanks!

Various Artists - By Golly Get Jolly!

2010-12-13T22:46:00.007-05:00

Here's another Starbucks Christmas compilation for you, By Golly Get Jolly, available during the 2002 holiday season at stores nationwide and picked up by yours truly at their Providence, Rhode Island Wayland Square location that year.

This one is full of a lot of great pop and easy-listening renditions of popular Christmas songs. Standouts include Dean Martin's "Let It Snow", Nat King Cole's smooth and flawless rendition of "Silent Night", and the classic version of "Do You Hear What I Hear?" by the immortal Bing Crosby.

Here's the complete lineup:

1. Diana Krall - Jingle Bells (3:25)
2. Lou Rawls - The Little Drummer Boy (2:50)
3. Ella Fitzgerald - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (feat. The Frank de Vol Orchestra) (2:56)
4. Johnny Mathis - Sleigh Ride (2:59)
5. Nancy Wilson - That's What I Want For Christmas (1992 Digital Remaster) (2:19)
6. Dean Martin - Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! (1:54)
7. Peggy Lee - The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You) (2:30)
8. Frank Sinatra - The Christmas Waltz (feat. The Ralph Brewster Singers) (3:03)
9. Chet Baker - Winter Wonderland (4:24)
10. Nina Simone - Little Girl Blue (Live Stereo (1964/New York)) (2:32)
11. Lena Horne - Jingle All The Way (2:36)
12. Bing Crosby - Do You Hear What I Hear? (2:45)
13. Nat King Cole - Silent Night (1:28)

I've always thought that this was the sort of Christmas compilation you'd play as background music at holiday parties at your home, or at similar gatherings. It's light, jazzy and sets just the right tone for the festivities. So I hope I'm providing this to you before your big party this year! If not, take it and save it for next year, or just listen to it yourself - I know you'll like it!

Enjoy:

Various Artists - By Golly Get Jolly!

Lolita Storm - Girls Fucking Shit Up

2010-12-12T22:55:00.007-05:00

. . . or as I like to refer to it: "The Worst Fucking Album I Ever Bought".

And that's saying something. Over the years, I've laid my hard-earned cash out on some truly reprehensible garbage - Julian Lennon's Valotte, Sheryl Crow's Tuesday Night Music Club, Andy Summers' XYZ and It's A Sunshine Day: The Best Of The Brady Bunch, just to name a few. But at the very least, these albums I just named have a dollop of something within to redeem themselves - one decent song, the nostalgia factor, whatever. Girls Fucking Shit Up has ABSOLUTELY no redeeming qualities whatsoever that I can find.

As per usual, I blame the British music press. Those lyrical limey lunkheads fooled me once again.

Back in the late 90's/early 00's, English magazines like NME and Melody Maker (which merged with NME in 2000) were on a roll. Practically everything cool or cutting edge that I listened to back then, the Brits had discovered first, and championed long before anyone in the U.S. got wind of them. The Smiths, The Madchester sound, The Pixies and the stuff 4AD was doing - they were the ones who let the world know about these new and important sounds. And with that, I became a devoted reader, my thought being that if Q or the NME said it was good, then who was I to argue?

Lolita Storm was formed in 1999 by four working-class girls, who performed under the nom de plumes of Nhung Napalm, Romy Bonilla Medina, Jimmy Too Bad and Spex. They put together a demo tape of their material, which made its way to influential UK DJ Steve Lamacq. From that initial contact, they were quickly signed to a small independent label, Rabid Badger, and released a single ("Goodbye America"/"Get Back I'm Evil") later that year. NME immediately latched on to this band, making their first 45 release their "Single Of The Week", and championing the band as "Modern Age Riot Grrls" and "the logical descendents of Bikini Kill".

Sounds good, right? Well, not so fast, pardner. Lolita Storm's sound was nothing close to what Kathleen Hanna and company were doing out in the Pacific Northwest. The band's sound has been described as something called "digital hardcore", but that's bullshit - to paraphrase Wikipedia, their music is basically "chanted [shouted] punk lyrics about sex, bondage, drugs and feminism . . . put to a backdrop of generally highly aggressive [digital breakbeats]" at a maximum BPM. It's essentially noisy, toneless, mindless shit.

However, I didn't know that's what this band was all about. So, in 2000, when Lolita Storm released their first LP, Girls Fucking Shit Up on Alec Empire's Digital Hardcore Recordings (DHR), the April 21st, 2000 issue of NME gave it a decent review, giving them points for effort rather than execution. My dumb ass read this review, and like the Pavlovian music dog I was at the time, I immediately responded to this outside stimulus by running out and buying this album at my first opportunity.

Big mistake on my part.

From that point on, I began to question the objectivity and wisdom inherent in NME/Q/Uncut's music reviews, and to take their recommendations with many grains of salt. In the meantime, I listened to this album once or twice, just to make sure I didn't miss out on any redeeming qualities that might have been buried within. Then I stuck this CD up on the shelf, in a section I call the Island of Misfit Tunes, where it has remained unplayed for the past decade.

So again, in case you missed it - here's the Pee-Pee Soaked Heckhole review of Lolita Storm's first album:

Xxxxx Fucking Shit Xx

I'd like to thank the band for seeing fit to include the gist of their music in the album's name.

But hey - that's just my review. Like I said above - don't take my word for it. If you feel up to it, here it is - have a listen. Just don't say I didn't warn you:

Lolita Storm - Girls Fucking Shit Up

The Wiggles - "Unto Us, This Holy Night"

2010-12-11T21:00:00.011-05:00

OK, OK . . . I can almost see the looks of incredulity on your faces with this entry. But bear with me, while I explain its inclusion here (and no, I am not insane).

Frankly, it's hard to write a good modern-day Christmas song. I think that most people have a pretty set list of images and ideas in their heads as to what Christmas is all about and should be. These things include stuff like sleigh rides and snowflakes: Santa Claus and reindeer: Jesus, Mary and Joseph; presents and bells and Christmas tree lights; heading home to see the folks in their nice, warm house and having holiday dinner with the family; etc. You know what I mean. The problem that holiday songwriters have nowadays is that, musically, all of these themes have been covered and recovered, ad nauseum. There are literally dozens of songs about sleigh rides, scores of songs referring to Santa, hundreds of songs addressing the subject of Christmas snow or holiday weather, and thousands of song celebrating Bethlehem and the birth of Jesus. It's all been done.

In addition to theme, a holiday song has to set the right tone - sincere without being sappy, real enough without seeming contrived. Think of the best lines in the greatest Christmas songs - "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire; Jack Frost nipping at your nose"; "For the holidays you can't beat home sweet home!": "Oh the weather outside is frightful; but the fire is so delightful"; "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas; just like the ones I used to know". All of those songs conjure up and reinforce cherished Christmas images and ideals, even for people who have never roasted chestnuts in their lives or have never experienced a white Christmas. [For example, it was always sort of weird hearing these traditional holiday tunes played and sung when I lived in New Zealand, where Christmas falls in the middle of the austral summer there. And yet, the people there cherished this music as much as folks in the Northern Hemisphere did, so while it seemed odd, it still felt right and natural.}

Unfortunately, all of this hasn't stopped contemporary songwriters from trying over and over again to create up a new bit of holiday musical magic. Most of the latest results have been embarrassingly trite or maudlin - prime examples include Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" from 1979, Leann Rimes' "Put A Little Holiday In Your Heart" from 1996, 2000's "My Only Wish (This Year)" by Britney Spears, and Faith Hill's 2008 song "A Baby Changes Everything". Even worse have been the spate of Christmas novelty songs released in the past generation - the worst of which being the reprehensible "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer"; I could live just as long and die just as happy never hearing a note of that stupid song ever again.

With all of this in mind, you could quite easily make the argument that there hasn't been a great, sincere, classic (not novelty) Christmas song written since the mid-1960s. I'm referring to beloved tunes like Vince Guaraldi's "Christmas Time Is Here" from the 1965 Charlie Brown Christmas special, Andy Williams' 1963 classic "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year", and "Do You Hear What I Hear?" by the Harry Simeone Chorale in 1962 (I'd include Burl Ives' "Holly Jolly Christmas" and Thurl Ravenscroft's "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" in this group, but I consider these more as novelty holiday songs).

Now, I'm not a big Wiggles fan. They were huge around my household back in the early part of this decade, when my children were still toddlers. Their TV show was rarely missed in my house, and more than once I stood in line overnight to buy tickets to the Australian group's local live shows. But the popularity of The Wiggles waned as my youngsters approached school age, relegating the piles of Wiggles DVDs, toys and other paraphenalia to boxes in the storage area.

I bought the album Wiggly Wiggly Christmas for my one- and two-year-old daughters in 2002, although it was released in 2000. The majority of the material on the disc is kiddie fodder - reworkings of traditional Christmas tunes alongside bouncy, silly original music usually referring to a character on the band's TV show: "Henry's Christmas Dance" or "Wags Is Bouncing Around The Christmas Tree", for example.

But there was one song on this album which stood out from the rest: "Unto Us, This Holy Night". On this one, the band played it straight, and offered up a superb Latin-tinged melody about the birth of Jesus, subtlely highlighted with tasteful horn arrangements. The song is so glaringly good, that it's hard to believe that it's stuck unheralded in the middle of an album like this.

Here's a clip of the Wiggles from their Wiggly Wiggly Christmas video, playing this song; it starts at about 1:32 after the chatting with the children:

It's almost shocking to admit this, but I have to say, in my opinion, that The Wiggles' "Unto Us, This Holy Night" is simply one of the best Christmas songs written in the past twenty years. But I'll let you all decide for yourself. I have mercifully taken this one song off the album (and believe me, if you knew how bad stuff like "Let's Clap Hands For Santa Claus" or "Go Santa Go" really was, you'd be thanking me for not posting the rest of the disc) and attached it below. Check it out, and let me know what you think of it, or of any of what I've written above.

The Wiggles - "Unto Us, This Holy Night"

The Fantastic Dee-Jays - The Fantastic Dee-Jays

2010-12-10T22:58:00.013-05:00

I don't think I ever mentioned this before, but from 2001 to 2007, I was in a band, a decent band at that. The group was made up of high-level executives, my colleagues, at the financial institution where I worked in Rhode Island - the drummer was the Chief Financial Officer, the bass player was Lead Syndicator, etc. The group was already going semi-strong before I joined the company, just doing instrumental jam sessions in someone's basement. One day they told me that they were looking for a singer, and asked if I was interested in the job. Now frankly, at the time, I couldn't carry a tune if it had a handle on it. But I went and auditioned for them one night, and I guess I was passable enough; they let me join up.

Our band did nothing but rock, garage rock and blues covers, stuff like "Devil With The Blue Dress", "Stormy Monday", "Burning Love" - nothing original. But we practiced a lot, and got competent enough to begin playing small local gigs, company parties and Open Mike Nights around Providence, stuff like that. We didn't take our group too seriously - it was just something to do, a way to blow off steam after work. However, as it turned out, we went a lot further with that band than we ever dreamed, and achieved some small measure of national success (on the amateur level, of course). But that's another story that I may tell later on down the line. All in all, it was really fun, and a dream come true for me. One day, maybe I'll post a recording of one of our songs too, for you all to have a laugh over.

We were a pretty close bunch, the group of us, often eating lunch together or going our for after-work drinks on the days we didn't practice. In addition to our regular jobs around the office, we were collectively known there as "the band", which got us a lot of attention in the building, both positive (in that people from work would flock to our gigs, a major selling point we used when negotiating fees with club owners) and not-so-positive (a few folks resented our insular, tight-knit combo, thinking that somehow our membership in an unofficial company band somehow gave us a Teflon coating). Fortunately, there wasn't much of that latter attitude around.

One day, an acquaintance of mine there in the office who often came to our shows handed me a CD of tunes he thought the band might like enough to take a swing at (in addition to being the lead singer, it was the bass player and I who came up with the majority of the group's material). The CD contained songs by an old '60s group called The Fantastic Dee-Jays. I'd never heard of them before, but the guy who gave me the recordings had an affiliation with the band - way back when, his dad was their rhythm guitarist.

The Fantastic Dee-Jays were a Pittsburgh-area (actually, out of McKeesport) group founded in 1964 by three 16-year-old high school students: Denny Nicholson on lead guitar, Dick Newton on rhythm guitar and Tom Juneko on drums (note that the band used an unusual bass-less setup). They were a straight-up, literal garage band, practicing at Newton's house after school; just a bunch of kids goofing and having fun.

However, in early 1965, a local radio DJ caught wind of the band's sound and began recording them after-hours on the station's equipment, then playing the songs on the station the following day. These singles began building the band a rabid local following, with kids flocking to their shows. And it generated enough of a buzz to lead to the recording of their one and only album, The Fantastic Dee-Jays, in early 1966, released on Stone Records. Later that year, on June 25th, the band played its biggest gig, opening for the Rolling Stones at the Pittsburgh Civic Center Arena during the Stones' second American tour (in support of the album Aftermath).

But, as things usually happen, the band began to unravel as the members got older and graduated from high school. By the end of 1966, The Fantastic Dee-Jays were history. Members of the original band stayed active, eventually evolving into another local garage band, The Swamp Rats.

It's an old story, told many times before - group gets together, has some level of success, breaks up and moves on - end of story. Sounds like That Thing You Do!, eh? Well, The Fantastic Dee-Jays should have fallen to that level of extreme 60s obscurity. However, the five singles and lone album they cut have long been celebrated by serious collectors of mid-Sixties garage rock, so much so that in 1996, Millennia Records obtained the license for their sole album and rereleased it on their label. In addition to their excellent original songs, the album includes a couple of notable/noteworthy tunes:

- A cover of "Fight Fire" by The Golliwogs, a band that would eventually evolve into Creedence Clearwater Revival;
- "What You're Doing", a Lennon/McCartney obscurity, and
- "T & C Lancers", a song the band recorded for a advertisement for a local shoe store!

We (that is, my band) never used any of the songs on this album, but I came to appreciate and enjoy the energy and simplicity inherent in these tunes. Shoot - I was in a garage band myself, so I could relate.

And I hope you all can relate too - here it is:

The Fantastic Dee-Jays - The Fantastic Dee-Jays

Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

The Fall - (We Wish You A) Protein Christmas EP (plus a bonus Fall Christmas song)

2010-12-09T19:56:00.011-05:00

I'm jazzed about this posting - it lets me combine my whole Christmas schtick with the rabid fandom I have for my favorite band, The Fall.

Here's The Fall's EP (We Wish You A) Protein Christmas, released by Action Records in 2003. Only one song on this CD, the title cut, has anything to do with Christmas. The other three songs are taken from the Country On The Click sessions from earlier that year ("Mad Mock Goth" would later appear on 2004's stopgap LP Interim). Here's the lineup:

1 (We Wish You A) Protein Christmas 3:32
2 (We Are) Mod Mock Goth 4:44
3 (Birtwistle's) Girl In Shop 3:54
4 Recovery Kit 2 # 4:04

Here you are:

The Fall - (We Wish You A) Protein Christmas EP

And as a special addition to this posting, I'm including The Fall's song "Christmastide", included on the bonus disc added to select editions of 1997's Levitate. I personally consider this one to be the best Fall holiday song - not that they have that many to begin with (although "Protein Christmas" isn't bad either). Enjoy.

The Fall - "Christmastide"

John Lennon - Lennon (Boxed Set)

2010-12-08T21:12:00.004-05:00

At just after 9 pm on the evening of December 8th, 1980, I arrived home from my after-high school job working in the kitchen of Santa Catalina (a very ritzy private girls school located near my house in Monterey, California) to find my family crowded around the TV, watching a special news report on NBC. When I asked what was going on, my dad told me that John Lennon had been killed in New York City earlier that night. That was how I first learned about it.

Lennon's death took place in the days before most families had cable TV, so the concept of 24-hour news was all but unheard of in 1980 (CNN had just started broadcasting in June of that year, but the fledgling network wasn't seen by most people). I sat in the family room and flipped channels for the next few hours, from ABC to CBS and back to NBC, following the reports and trying to gather what little information was available. The networks ran footage of crowds beginning to gather in the dark near the Dakota, Lennon's home and the place where he was murdered, and showed people crying, praying, singing and mourning. And for the first time in my life, I wished that I was in New York City, there with them all, being part of the crowd, instead of sitting in a little house 3,000 miles away. It truly felt like something was passing with his death - not just a man, or his talent and genius, but it was as though an entire era was ending. In many ways, Lennon's death was the true end of the Seventies.

The Beatles had broken up even before I'd entered first grade, but I was very much aware of them as a child, and loved their music. When I was in elementary school in Norfolk, VA, during the summer the school district would sponsor weekly discount matinees at a local theater, where they showed classic kid's movies like The Phantom Tollbooth and Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. But my favorite of all those summer movies was Yellow Submarine. At the time, I didn't realize how arch and subversive the film was - I (and many of the other kids attending) just liked the animation, the characters, and especially the music. Later, in my early teens, I actually paid to see the Bee Gees/Peter Frampton schlockfest Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (I must be honest, and provide full disclosure here - I paid to see it TWICE), simply because I loved the Beatles' music.

In terms of the band's solo output, Ringo was an early favorite. I remember when I was eight or nine, his self-titled album was HUGE, and "Oh My My" and "Photograph" were always on the radio. Later during the 70s, my allegiance moved towards what Paul was doing, by himself and with his band Wings. I can recall a family trip we took from Maryland to Niagara Falls and Toronto one summer - "Let 'Em In" and "Silly Love Songs" were played constantly on radio stations all the way up to Canada and all the way back. I didn't have much of a feel for what George Harrison or John Lennon were doing then. When you're a kid, you tend to gravitate to the more accessible, "poppier" sounds, like the ones Paul and Ringo were making. The introspection, mysticism and acid commentary of most of John and George's music during that period just sort of went by me. So when Lennon died, I mourned it more as the passing of a Beatle, rather than the passing of a singular artist.

I really didn't fully get into Lennon's solo career until well into my twenties. In 1990, my ship left for a six-month deployment to South America, an exercise called UNITAS (which, needless to say, was a whole lot of fun, with visits to amazing places like Chile, Argentina and Rio). I had a new enlisted guy working for me down in the office. He was a music buff like myself, and brought plenty of CDs along for the trip. One day early on, he began playing some Lennon music on the office boom box, stuff I had never heard before. When I asked him about it, he handed me this boxed set, Lennon, released by Capitol Records earlier that year.

In my opinion, this is the best John Lennon compilation EVER assembled. It includes not only all of his hits, but also large chunks off of all of his solo albums and later work with Yoko Ono, the best tracks, filtering out the filler and dross. The songs for this collection were personally compiled by Mark Lewisohn, a British historian who is considered the world's foremost authority on The Beatles. So it's not like some record company drones picked the tracks for maximum commercial potential - there was some serious thought put in behind every selection.

This collection was perfect for someone like me, who wanted to know more about Lennon but didn't own any of his albums. If you're looking for rarities or alternate tracks to familiar songs, this is not the compilation for you. But if you're looking for something that has essentially everything you want/need to hear/know about Lennon's solo career, this is truly the only box set you need.

As such, it's a crime that Capitol deleted this set from Lennon's catalog sometime in 1998, replacing it with the decidedly inferior John Lennon Anthology. Forget that crappy set - Lennon is the one you want. Trust me on this.

In case you're curious, here's the track lineup:

Disc One
1. "Give Peace a Chance" – 4:53
2. "Blue Suede Shoes" (Carl Perkins) – 2:38
3. "Money" (Bradford-Berry Gordy) – 3:25
4. "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" (Larry Williams) – 3:23
5. "Yer Blues" (John Lennon/Paul McCartney) – 3:42
6. "Cold Turkey" – 5:02
7. "Instant Karma!" – 3:23
8. "Mother"– 5:35
9. "Hold On"– 1:53
10. "I Found Out" – 3:37
11. "Working Class Hero" – 3:50
12. "Isolation" – 2:53
13. "Remember"– 4:36
14. "Love" – 3:24
15. "Well Well Well" – 5:59
16. "Look at Me" – 2:54
17. "God" – 4:10
18. "My Mummy's Dead" – 0:53
19. "Power to the People" – 3:18
20. "Well (Baby Please Don't Go)" (Ward) – 3:56

Disc Two
1. "Imagine" – 3:04
2. "Crippled Inside" – 3:49
3. "Jealous Guy" – 4:15
4. "It's So Hard" – 2:26
5. "Give Me Some Truth" – 3:16
6. "Oh My Love" (John Lennon/Yoko Ono) – 2:45
7. "How Do You Sleep?" – 5:36
8. "How?" – 3:42
9. "Oh Yoko!" – 4:19
10. "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" (John Lennon/Yoko Ono) – 3:34
11. "Woman Is the Nigger of the World" (John Lennon/Yoko Ono) – 5:15
12. "New York City" – 4:29
13. "John Sinclair" – 3:28
14. "Come Together" (John Lennon/Paul McCartney) – 4:25
15. "Hound Dog" (Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller) – 3:02
16. "Mind Games" – 4:12
17. "Aisumasen (I'm Sorry)" – 4:44
18. "One Day (At a Time)" – 3:07
19. "Intuition" – 3:09
20. "Out the Blue" – 3:21

Disc Three
1. "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night" – 3:25
2. "Going Down on Love" – 3:54
3. "Old Dirt Road" (John Lennon/Harry Nilsson) – 4:09
4. "Bless You" – 4:37
5. "Scared" – 4:39
6. "#9 Dream" – 4:48
7. "Surprise, Surprise (Sweet Bird Of Paradox)" – 2:55
8. "Steel and Glass" – 4:37
9. "Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out)" – 5:10
10. "Stand by Me" (Ben E. King/Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller) – 3:28
11. "Ain't That a Shame" (Fats Domino/Bartholemew) – 2:30
12. "Do You Wanna Dance" (Bobby Freeman) – 2:52
13. "Sweet Little Sixteen" (Chuck Berry) – 3:00
14. "Slippin' and Slidin'" (Penniman/Bocage/Collins/Smith) – 2:16
15. "Angel Baby" (Hamlin) – 3:39
16. "Just Because" (Lloyd Price) – 4:25
17. "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night (Live)" – 4:19
18. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (John Lennon/Paul McCartney) – 5:58
19. "I Saw Her Standing There" (John Lennon/Paul McCartney) – 3:28

[Tracks 17-19 recorded live at Elton John's Madison Square Garden show on 28 November 1974]

Disc Four
1. "(Just Like) Starting Over" – 3:56
2. "Cleanup Time" – 2:57
3. "I'm Losing You" – 3:56
4. "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)" – 4:01
5. "Watching the Wheels" – 3:31
6. "Woman" – 3:32
7. "Dear Yoko" – 2:33
8. "I'm Stepping Out" – 4:06
9. "I Don't Wanna Face It" – 3:21
10. "Nobody Told Me" – 3:33
11. "Borrowed Time" – 4:28
12. "(Forgive Me) My Little Flower Princess" – 2:27
13. "Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him" (Yoko Ono) – 3:31
14. "Grow Old With Me" – 3:07

So, on the 30th anniversary of the death of John Lennon, a poet, genius and all-around great man, I offer you, in its entirety, his best collection. Enjoy, remember . . . and imagine.

John Lennon - Lennon (Disc 1)
John Lennon - Lennon (Disc 2)
John Lennon - Lennon (Disc 3)
John Lennon - Lennon (Disc 4)

Various Artists - A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector (RS500 - #142)

2010-12-07T23:19:00.005-05:00

Many months ago, I posted three discs from the Phil Spector: Back To Mono (1958-1969) box set on this blog. What I didn't mention was that this compilation was a FOUR-disc set. Here's the fourth disc, A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector, originally released on Philies Records in 1963 (unfortunately, on the same day as the Kennedy assassination) and reissued with the box set in 1991 on ABKCO Records.

This is arguably the greatest Christmas album of all time, and one of the first compilations of classic holiday tunes interpreted by modern artists. Every one of the Christmas albums you can find nowadays, from the likes of The Rat Pack, Herb Alpert, The Stylistics; various soul singers and Motown artists; country Christmases, jazz Christmases, polka Christmases, etc. - all of these albums can trace their origins back to A Christmas Gift . . . This is pretty much what started all of that.

Each and every song version included here is a bonafide, stone-cold CLASSIC holiday song. Frankly, there's really nothing else for me to say about this offering. This is the one by which all other Christmas compilations are measured, and well-deserving of its inclusion on the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time.

And thus, here you are. Merry Christmas!

Various Artists - A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector

Inch Feat. Mark E. Smith - Inch EP

2010-12-06T22:45:00.006-05:00

Found this one at the late, lamented Virgin Megastore at Grapevine Mills Mall in Grapevine, TX in 1999, during my weekly search through the Fall stacks for any new releases. I miss that store - they were always 'Johnny-on-the-spot' regarding new music, and always had the latest/rarest stuff available. Back when I lived there, there were only two decent music stores in the Dallas area - Virgin and Bill's Records in Dallas. The only problem with Bill's was that I found it to be overpriced, compared to Virgin (plus the mall was only a couple of miles from where I lived). So must of my music purchases were made at Virgin.

Sort of a convoluted history behind thie release, the facts of which I didn't know completely until last year, when I read The Fallen, Dave Simpson's excellent book regarding his search for all of the forty-odd former members of The Fall (BTW, I highly recommend this book for all Fall fans). Here's the scoop:

Kier Stewart was a guitarist and studio engineer in Manchester who, with his studio partner Simon Spencer, worked with Fall leader Mark E. Smith on a one-off track called "Plug Myself In" in 1996 (the two billed themselves as DOSE - and BTW, the track can be found on my earlier Fall posting, A World Bewitched). The track was pretty well received, and Stewart and Spencer were eager to produce The Fall's next album (which eventually became 1997's Levitate). When guitarist Adrian Flanagan (a short-term fill-in for the recently departed Brix Smith, on her second and last go-round with the band) left the group in early 1997, Stewart was offered the slot and a chance to join the band. He initially refused, but Spencer talked him into it, thinking that it might lead to their being tapped as producers - which they were (sort of).

The band began recording in West Hempstead, but the sessions did not go well, mainly due to Smith undergoing personal problems that made him extremely paranoid, to the point where he'd sometimes refuse to do any vocals. Coupled with this was Smith's refusal/delay in signing a producer's agreement with Stewart and Spencer, and ongoing lack of payment.

The two finally got fed up and quit the sessions as both producers and musicians; they even went so far as to wipe the tapes of the little that had been recorded up to that point. And they decided to play one last practical joke on Smith: during the sessions, Stewart and Spencer had recorded a track with Smith, "Inch", as a side project apart from what The Fall was doing. After their departure from the Fall sessions, they carefully packaged up the single and shipped it out to John Peel and various major record companies, along with a letter claiming to be from Mark E. Smith, but full of un-Smith like language along the lines of "Golly gee - we really made a super cool record! Have a listen!"

Smith arrived home to find his answering machine full of messages from recording companies, asking about the "new record" that he didn't know existed. While Smith remained confused, Spencer and Stewart got a deal for the track with EMI themselves, only later bringing Smith in to work out the final details.

So, here it is, the Inch EP, released on Regal Recordings (a subsidiary of Parlophone, itself a subsidiary of EMI) in 1999. A version of this song, titled "4 1/2 Inch", made it onto Levitate. But I think the EP version is superior. This EP includes the original song and four longer remixes, all of which are superb. All hail Mark E. Smith!

Enjoy:

Inch Feat. Mark E. Smith - Inch EP

Poll Results - "Who is the greatest Canadian rock group/singer?"

2010-12-05T19:37:00.003-05:00

OK, so I forgot about Joni Mitchell - I've heard it enough from you guys already. Mea culpa. Either way, I don't think anyone was going to beat Neil Young for Greatest Canadian Rock Group/Singer, with the remote exception of Rush. Young led all other names three-to-one (a group that included Broken Social Scene, k. d. lang, the aforementioned Rush and The Guess Who. He led "Other" (which I assume was a vote for Mitchell) by two-to-one. Others receiving at least one vote included The Tragically Hip, The Arcade Fire, Feist, Martha & The Muffins and Alanis Morissette.

Thanks for voting! A new poll will be posted soon.

Various Artists - Hi-Fidelity Holiday

2010-12-04T23:33:00.010-05:00

Here's another one to add to my holiday selections:

I've long been a sucker for those Christmas compilations that Starbucks has for sale every year about this time. I've got several of the doggone things. Why? Well, say what you will about them, but most of them are actually pretty good collections of classic and modern holiday music.

Here's one I picked up during the Christmas season back in 1998 when I lived in Texas, Hi-Fidelity Holiday:

1. Jingle Bells - Esquivel
2. Jingle Bell Jamboree - Keb' Mo'
3. Winter Wonderland - Cocteau Twins
4. Baby, It's Cold outside - Dean Martin
5. Sleigh Ride - Combustible Edison
6. Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen
7. Thanks for Christmas - Three Wise Men (XTC)
8. Christmas Wish - El Vez
9. Merry Christmas Baby - James Brown
10. Happy Christmas (War Is Over) - The Alarm
11. Little Drummer Boy - Temptations
12. I Like a Sleighride (Jingle Bells) - Peggy Lee
13. Christmas Must Be Tonight - Robbie Robertson
14. We Four Kings - Blue Hawaiians
16. Christmas Auld Lang Sang - Bobby Darin

Favorites include the songs by XTC and The Blue Hawaiians, but pretty much every song here is a winner.

So here you go - bon appetit:

Various Artists - Hi-Fidelity Holiday

Blur - Girls & Boys EP

2010-12-02T16:26:00.013-05:00

By May of 1994, I had been living and working in New Zealand for a year. I had a ton of leave saved up, so I requested and received permission to head back to the States for a monthlong vacation.

Flying back and forth between New Zealand and the U.S. was prohibitively expensive, but I had an ace in the hole - each week, the U.S. Armed Forces ran a C-130 cargo plane shuttle across the Pacific between Honolulu and Sydney, Australia, with stops in between, as part of the Air Mobility Command. If space was available among the supplies and other personnel aboard the plane, I would be able to grab a seat (known as flying "Space-A") and get to where I was going - eventually. I say 'eventually', because while the weekly shuttle had to leave from Hawaii on the same day for the westward trek of its weekly schedule, the points and destinations in between were flexible and subject to change, as were the layover times in those places. On an AMC flight, I might get to the States lickety-split, or it could take me a while. But it was of no matter to me - I had a month to burn, so I wasn't in any great hurry. Plus, it was free, so why complain?

The Air Force officer stationed in Christchurch in charge of the local air detachment and all U.S. military flight operations there was a good friend of mine, and he completely hooked me up. The C-130 made a brief stopover in New Zealand on a Wednesday in mid-May, headed west (there was to be no Christchurch stop on its return trip east, so I had to go with them to Australia first). After I boarded, I discovered, to my surprise and delight, that my Air Force buddy had amended my travel orders to essentially make me part of the plane's crew, as long as I was with them. I wasn't fully appraised of the benefits of this designation until we landed near Sydney. It was to be a two-day layover there, and for situations like that, the military provides for accommodation for the crews somewhere. So I ended up staying with the C-130 gang in my own room at the Panthers World Of Entertainment, a resort complex owned by the local top-level pro rugby team, the Penrith Panthers, and located in Penrith, a western suburb of Sydney.

We had a lot of fun over those two days. During the flight there over the Tasman, I learned that the pilot was a woman who graduated from the Air Force Academy the same year I graduated from Navy. We found that we had a number of mutual acquaintances. And I also spent a lot of time yapping with a couple of the enlisted crew members during the ride (overall, I found that the Air Force didn't appear to strenuously enforce constraints of hierarchy and separation between officer and enlisted - it was more like, they were all on the plane together to do a job, and so be it, which was cool by me). After we landed, one of those crewmembers, the pilot and I sort of joined forces, and we spent a lot of time together during our stay in Sydney.

It was my first visit to the city (outside of passing through the airport en route to New Zealand the year before), and it turned out to be a lot of fun. Sydney completely lived up to its advance billing; to put it in an American perspective, it's like a cleaner, friendlier New York City, in a more attractive setting with sizzling, tanned blonde Australian chicks everywhere you look (and you can drink beer on some of the streets without the cops hassling you). Our activities ran the gamut from lowbrow (we of course HAD to see the Kings Cross area, and I wanted to visit some of the great Aussie music stores I'd heard so much about) to highbrow (we made a long visit to the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA)). We visited many bars (including one on George Street called Jacksons on George, a place that would figure prominently in another Australian adventure I'd have a year later, when I discovered EXACTLY how much they love Americans over there. . . but that's another story (heh heh)) and had great stuff to eat. And the highlight of our time there: on a suggestion from the female member of our group, we hurriedly bought tickets and were treated to an evening performance by the city's symphony orchestra within the absolutely stunning confines of the world-famous Sydney Opera House [to attend the Opera House show, I passed up seeing a band that was performing at the Panthers World of Entertainment that same evening - The Hoodoo Gurus. As good as seeing the Hoodoos would have been, I still think I made the right choice].

Late the next afternoon we left Sydney, headed northeast towards Honolulu. We were in the air for what seemed like most of the day, the only excitement occuring when the door latch to the plane's toilet broke, trapping me inside for almost an hour until the crew figured out a way to open it. We were flying over tropical regions, but at 30,000 feet in the air in an unheated C-130, it was getting pretty cold. I spent the remainder of that leg of the journey in my seat, hunkered down in army blankets, reading a book of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories I'd brought along with me.

It was somewhere well after 2 am when we finally landed in Pago Pago, American Samoa. That was a very weird stopover. We landed at a location which appeared to have been hacked out of the surrounding jungle; I couldn't see any city lights blazing anywhere. As we taxied towards the terminal, I looked out past the field lights to see mobs of people gathered on the edge of the airstrip - children, men and women, many wearing the traditional lava-lavas, all staring intently at the cargo plane. It struck me that life in Pago Pago must be stultifyingly boring, if watching a plane land in the wee hours of the morning can draw that kind of crowd.

I had to get off while the plane refueled, so I sauntered into the waiting area of the terminal. It looked more like the waiting area of a Greyhound bus terminal, with dull brown Formica-tiled floors, a couple of rows of hard-backed wooden chairs, and a black-and-white TV playing from a ceiling corner. There was also a sorry-looking snack bar there, stocked with a paltry selection of stuff that I didn't want to buy [I did notice one thing there, though: the only cola drink they had for sale was New Coke, the reviled and ridiculed soft drink that had been introduced and quickly withdrawn in the States three years earlier. So if you ever wondered what the Coca-Cola Company ever did with their leftover stock of that crap - now you know]. I sat in that terminal for an hour, watching some docudrama about John Gotti on the no-color TV, until it was time to reboard just as light was reappearing in the eastern sky.

I discovered as I took my seat that I was to have additional company - other folks were flying Space-A as well, headed back to Hawaii from what appeared to be short vacations in tropical Samoa. These people sat across from me wearing Hawaiian shirts, shorts and sandals, jabbering about how great Pago Pago was. Hours later, as we crossed the Equator during our 3,000 mile flight to Honolulu, those same people were suffering, quivering in their beach clothes under blankets and piles of newspapers as the temperature dropped inside that plane. I was dressed a little better/smarter then they were, and by then knew what to expect, so I was good to go.

We arrived in Hawaii about noon, where I said goodbye to my friends among the crew (never to see them again), and made my way over to the AMC office to see about a connecting flight to the mainland. There was going to be nothing available for a day or so, so I was left to fend for myself. Mind you, this was my very first visit to Hawaii, I didn't know my way around and had no place arranged to stay while I was there. But I was young and fearless; that didn't worry me a bit. I merely made my way over to the main airport and rented a Jeep. I figured that, worst case, I could store my luggage in the car and sleep in it that night.

Upon leaving the airport's rental car area, I remembered that a girl I used to see when I was stationed in the DC area a year earlier was now stationed somewhere in Honolulu, so I figured I'd try to look her up and see what was what. But that plan was almost immediately put on hold as I eased up at the first stoplight - for there, on my right, was a Tower Records, the first I'd seen in more than a year.

[Quick aside: There were some pretty good record stores in Christchurch, well stocked with local product and some semi-cutting edge rock and alternative acts (they had plenty of Nirvana and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, but it took them almost four months to get the Fugazi CD I ordered through them). But the thing with NZ music stores is that they GOUGE the locals. At the time, standard prices for CDs were between NZ$28 and NZ$34. With the New Zealand dollar equal to about 60 cents U.S. at the time, that equates to somewhere between $17 and $21 per CD, at a time when CD prices back home were moving steadily towards the $11-$12 range. The prices there didn't faze me that much, because I was paid in U.S. dollars, I already had a huge music collection, and I could find a lot of stuff at the base exchange. But I felt bad for Kiwis - no one there really owned a whole lot of stuff (upon coming over to my house for the first time, one of my buddies there was astounded at all the music I owned). I was happy to be back in an area that had (relatively) cheap music.]

I skidded that Jeep to a halt in front of Tower and ran inside. I bought a ton of stuff that day, things I'd wanted to hear for a while (like Bjork's debut album, appropriately titled Debut) and things I bought . . . well, not sight unseen, but the aural equivalent ("ears unheard"?). The store was playing a song with a thumping discofied beat over the intercom; it tickled my fancy enough to inquire of the counterperson what I'd been listening to. When she told me it was "Girls & Boys" by Blur, I went back and picked up that single as well, to add to my pile.

Well, this EP, with the cover picture of a frolicking couple on the beach, and lyrics celebrating tropical holidays in Ibiza, sort of set the stage for the rest of my stay in Hawaii. I met up with that girl I knew, and she was very happy to see me. I took her out to dinner in town that night, wearing my hybrid Miami Vice/Magnum P.I. 'cool' summer gear, and we went to some of the beachside bars there in town. At one point, we sat out in the sand under a palm tree with our drinks, with a warm, gentle tropical breeze blowing and the surf roaring at intervals, but not loud enough to drown out the Hawaiian band playing at the nearby bar. I can recall thinking that NOW I could relate to what Blur was singing about, and how my time in Honolulu couldn't get any better than that moment . . .

(Well, actually, it DID get better ;) . . . but that's a story that won't be elaborated on here. Leave it be said that we had fun.)

I left Honolulu on an AMC flight a day or so later, and after additional layovers (and more good times) in San Francisco and Charleston, SC, I finally made it home to Virginia a week after I started. But the journey was just as fun as the actual vacation, if not moreso. I often think back on that time and those adventures, and smile.

So in honor and in memory of my wonderful first visit to Hawaii, I offer you Blur's Girls & Boys EP, featuring two superb remixes of the original song (off of Parklife) produced by the Pet Shop Boys. Enjoy, and mahalo!

Blur - Girls & Boys EP

Various Artists - Holiday Freak Out (Disc 1 & 2)

2010-12-01T23:47:00.005-05:00

Well, it's that time of year again . . . time to:

- sweat over what to get the special persons in your life, trying to balance to desire for giving an amazing gift against the reality of a not-so-amazing bank account; time to

- brave mall traffic in the freezing cold and having to park six miles away from the shopping center because some bitchy old lady in a Cutlass cut in front of you and stole the parking spot you'd been patiently waiting for, then proceeded to give you shit about it when you complained; time to

- get jostled by dead-eyed shoppers laden with bags and packages of their own, as you race from store to store to find that the item they swore up and down they "had plenty of" when you talked to them on the phone two hours ago was now sold out, with no plans to replace their stock before January 10th; time to

- race around, looking for the perfect Christmas tree, only to find that every one you look at seems to have a flaw - and when you finally find a good one, you end up paying an arm and a leg for it, only to have the fucking thing fall off of the car and destroy itself as you travel down the highway, because the dumbass who sold it to you didn't properly tie it onto the roof rack; and time to

- spend Christmas Day in a flurry of present opening and stuffing ripped Christmas wrapping into big green trash bags, visiting nearby relatives you really don't like very much but have to go see because "it's the holidays", watching heavily hyped and stultifyingly boring college football games hunkered down on the sofa, eating and drinking WAY too much, then putting your head on the pillow that night and wondering where the day, and the holiday, went to so quickly.

I know, I know - I sound like friggin' Ebenezer Scrooge here, with all of that. Believe it or not, though, I really love Christmas. It's just that the fantasy we have of Christmas - snowflakes and mistletoe, sledding and Santa, caroling, cookies and gingerbread houses - seems to always get trumped by the actual REALITY of the holiday season, all of the stuff (and more) that I mentioned above. In this age of braying hucksters urging us to "Buy! Buy! Buy!" and the nonstop commercialism that now has the holiday "shopping season" beginning in late September, Christmas is becoming just another major reason to worry and stress and fret over the state of our lives.

And it really shouldn't be that way. Christmas should be about fun, and laughter, and happy children quivering with nervous excitement under the bedcovers on Christmas Eve, trying (and failing) to stay awake long enough to hear Santa's sleigh on the roof of the house. It should be about Charlie Brown, and Mr. Magoo, and Rudolph on TV as close to the holiday as possible (this crap about airing these classic holiday specials in November and early December irks me to no end). And it should be about silly, sappy, dopey, funny Christmas music, the songs we heard and loved as kids - and I'm not referring to the classics, like "White Christmas" or "The Little Drummer Boy".

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to try to bring a little bit of that type of zany holiday spirit back into your lives, by posting some of the many Christmas compilations I have in my possession.

And here's the first in this series: Holiday Freak Out, posted on a site called Otis Fodder back in 2002. I can't remember how I happened to stumble over this site or this music, but I'm glad I did - Holiday Freak Out is two discs of wacked-out Xmas gold! If you're the sort of person who thinks that "Hooray For Santa Claus" from the so-awful-it's-now-a-cult-classic movie Santa Claus Conquers The Martians is a misunderstood classic; or who sheds a tear as Jim Backus, in Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, laments his sad childhood in "All Alone In The World"; or who knows and loves Bobby "Boris" Pickett's "Monster's Holiday", his less-well received follow-up to his smash hit "Monster Mash" - then this is the album for you! These two discs are full of sad, funny, weird, off-kilter - yea, 'freaky' (hence the name) Christmas songs that will put a smile on your face and on that of anyone else who hears it!

The Otis Fodder site has been defunct for quite a while now, making this compilation pretty hard to find online. It's too bad - the guys who compiled this collection were straight-out geniuses. So, here you are, for your listening pleasure - Holiday Freak Out, Discs 1 and 2! Enjoy the start to your holiday season, and as always, let me know what you think.

Various Artists - Holiday Freak Out (Disc 1)
Various Artists - Holiday Freak Out (Disc 2)

Hunters & Collectors - Hunters & Collectors

2010-11-30T22:31:00.004-05:00

I'd never even heard of Hunters & Collectors until about ten years ago. I was browsing through one of my old reliable music books, the Trouser Press Record Guide, and happened to come across their name. I can't remember what most of the article about this band said; the main thing I recall was that the TPRG mentioned that the band's sound was similar to that of England's The Fall.

Being a HUGE Fall fan, that was all I needed to hear. I instantly became more interested in what this band was about.

Hunters & Collectors was formed in Melbourne, Australia in 1981 by a bunch of local college students. They named themselve from a track on an album by Can. The band lived up to its naming source by creating a post-punk sound heavily influenced by 1970s German experimental groups like Faust, Tangerine Dream and, of course, Can, filtered through an Australian rock sensibility (Mark E. Smith's love of Krautrock was a primary early influence to The Fall's music as well; hence the comparison between The Fall and Hunters & Collectors in TPRG). The band's lead singer and principal lyricist was a guy named Mark Seymour, whose younger brother Nick later became bassist for Crowded House.

Hunters & Collectors were quickly signed to a subsidiary of Mushroom Records, and their first release, a 3-song EP called World Of Stone, was released in January 1982. Their debut album, Hunters & Collectors, was released by the label the following July, and reached #21 on the Australian charts. Another EP, Payload, was released on Mushroom in November of that year. In early 1983, the band began a six-month tour of the UK and signed to Virgin Records, who combined the band's LP and the Payload EP into a UK LP rerelease of Hunters & Collectors. Another album, The Fireman's Curse (recorded in Germany and helmed by renowned Krautrock producer Conny Plank), was released on Virgin in September 1983. But a multialbum deal with Virgin fell apart after the band publicly insulted the manhood of the managing executive of the label. By November, Hunters & Collectors had disbanded.

But by early 1984 the members had returned to Australia and reformed, at the same time revising their sound, moving away from post-punk and arty German rock pretensions towards a fuller, 'pub rock'-ier, bass-&-horn-driven attack that brought them nationwide fame. Hunters & Collectors' breakthrough album was 1986's Human Frailty, featuring their most popular song, "Throw Your Arms Around Me". The album was their first Australian Top Ten LP, and from then on, the band was one of Australia's top live draws, a 'bloke's' band that recorded several other popular songs, such as "Back On The Breadline", "When The River Runs Dry", and "Where Do You Go", before finally calling it quits in 1998.

Hunters & Collectors didn't do diddley-squat in America, but it's not for lack of trying. In 1986, they signed a parallel record deal with I.R.S. Records to release their albums in the States, but found little mainstream success ("Back On The Breadline" did make the Top Ten Modern Rock charts here, however). They were the support band for Midnight Oil's 1990 U.S. tour (The Oil's were touring on their American breakthrough record, Diesel & Dust), but failed to make any headway. I think that I.R.S. considered the band to be "too Australian" (whatever the heck that means), and as such, didn't know how to properly market the band in the U.S.

[Of course, that rationale makes absolutely no sense - Midnight Oil was a hell of a lot more "Australian" than H&C, and so it stands to reason that Diesel & Dust, a song cycle dealing almost exclusively with the plight of the country's aboriginal population, should have tanked here - instead, it was the album that made them in the States. So go figure.]

It's too bad that H&C couldn't find a U.S. audience. It's also sort of a shame that they changed their sound after 1983. Their debut self-titled album is absolutely superb. The 'hit' off of this album was supposed to be "Talking To A Stranger". But my favorite song off of Hunters & Collectors is "Run Run Run", an absolutely mesmerizing song that starts off as a bass-and-nagging guitar motorik hybrid, before suddenly, in the middle of the song, changing into a hypnotic chug that modifies yet AGAIN near the end into a grinding guitar workout. A completely amazing work.

But don't take my word for it. Here's the album for you to judge for yourself. As always, let me know what you think:

Hunters & Collectors - Hunters & Collectors

Pavement - Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe (RS500 - #134)

2010-11-20T14:45:00.007-05:00

I got into Pavement sort of ass-backwards, but as it turned out, it was exactly the right way to understand the band.

I learned about the band during that six-month period back in 1993 that I mentioned in my earlier post on The Starlings, just before I left for New Zealand [in hindsight - damn, but there was a lot of good music floating around back then!]. I don't recall hearing them on the radio; I must have read something about them in one of the music magazines I regularly perused back then, like Spin or the NME. Or maybe there was something about them in the DC City Paper that I saw - I just don't recall. Back then, more than now, there were music critics and commentators whose judgement I trusted implicity; if they said something was good, that was usually good enough for me. So I must've come to the band through something like that, because I purchased the first Pavement album I came across, Westing (By Musket & Sextant), before I'd ever heard a note of their music.

[or, at least I THINK I'd never heard one of their songs up to that point . . . I say this because back in October 1991, my friend Camob came out from California to visit the DC area, and we ended up doing the town a couple of nights, hitting the old college bars along M Street that used to cater to Georgetown students (all of them now long gone) and checking out our old music haunts. We spent a couple of hours in the old 9:30 Club on F Street one evening, listening to some no-name band play . . . and it was years later, after thinking about it, that I became pretty sure that, during their set, those guys played a version of Pavement's "Texas Never Whispers", a year before it came out on the Watery, Domestic EP. I could be wrong . . . but I don't think I am.]

As far as I knew, Westing was Pavement's first album. I listened to it constantly that spring and summer, at home in the DC area and at my new home in New Zealand. Several songs entered heavy rotation on my personal playlist, including "Box Elder" and "Forklift".

Christchurch, New Zealand is pretty well off the beaten path, as far as American acts are concerned; when a Stateside act arrives down that way, it's pretty big news (which explains why I inexplicably paid my hard-earned money to see Tina Turner, of all people, play at Lancaster Park during my first month there . . .). So I felt incredibly lucky when, browsing the local paper one day about two months into my Kiwi residency, I noticed a small ad announcing that Pavement was actually coming to play a show in town. I was so shocked, I stopped, went back and slowly scanned the ad again, just in case I had misread the name. But no, it turned out to be true - a decent indie band that I was just getting fully into was heading my way!

At about the same time I heard about the upcoming show, I discovered that Westing wasn't the band's first album - it was just a compilation of early singles and EPs. Their first official disc was Slanted & Enchanted, released by Matador Records in April 1992 (although copies had been distributed to selected DJs and music critics as early as the spring/summer of 1991 - which makes my conviction that I heard "Texas Never Whispers" a year before its official release not as far-fetched as it appears . . .). I found a copy of the album at Echo Records downtown and took it home to begin absorbing it.

As much as I loved Westing, Slanted & Enchanted COMPLETELY blew me away. EVERY song on the album was strong, and I quickly discovered several new Pavement favorites that began being played constantly around the house and in my car - "Perfume V", "Two States", "Summer Babe" (which sounds almsot indentical to the one on Westing), and especially "Here", in my opinion one of the three best songs Pavement ever did (along with "Shoot The Singer" and "Box Elder"). By the date of their show in town, I was fully conversant in their music.

However, I still didn't know much about the band, or the players themselves, outside of their names. So I went to the packed show, fought my way to a space near the front, and suffered through the opening band, some no-name Christchurch locals. The following band, who I assumed to be Pavement, came on and started playing. And all through the first part of their set I'm shouting out song names for them to play - "'Box Elder'!" "'Two States'!" The band is giving me dirty looks all the while, and it finally dawned on me that they weren't Pavement; they were Bailter Space, a rightly renowned Kiwi band that, at the time, I knew nothing about. I'd never been to a show that had two opening acts before the headliner, so I made an assumption - a poor one, as it turned out (hell, I didn't know - it's not like there were band pictures in the CD inserts!).

Pavement finally came on, and of course they were absolutely great. The crowd there was going wild - say what you will about the assumed provincialism of New Zealanders, but I gotta tell you: Kiwis KNOW their music. They played everything I hoped they'd play, and more. I left that show a rabid Pavement fan, and from then on was on a mission to track down all of their EPs and obscure 7"s. And to add to this embarrassment of Pavement riches, the band RETURNED to Christchurch less than a year later, for a show at the Caladonian Hall down the street from the Park Royal Hotel - another great show.

For me, this album was Pavement's peak. Their following releases - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Wowee Zowee, Brighten The Corners - have all been critically acclaimed, but to me they all seem to lack the grit, spark and urgency of their earlier material. Others seem to think so as well - in 2002, Slanted & Enchanted was the first of Pavement's albums to get the Deluxe Edition treatment, adding a second disc of B-sides and live versions from that era to the original release. I'm frankly stunned that Rolling Stone would rank this album as high as it did - in my mind, it's more than deserving of this recognition, but I never thought the band's music was 'commercial' enough or accessible enough to warrant widespread recognition like this. Guess I was wrong again . . . and thankfully so this time.

Here it is - the Deluxe Edition, for your listening pleasure. As always, I appreciate your comments:

Pavement - Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe (Disc 1)
Pavement - Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe (Disc 2)

Triple Gang - This Nation's Saving Grace (Cover Version)

2010-11-11T00:25:00.005-05:00

In the summer of 2000, a short-lived pickup band composed of national and local recording artists residing in the Bay Area played two shows three weeks apart at small venues in San Francisco. Normally, events like this happen all the time in cities around the globe, and are little noticed nor long remembered, even by the participants and attendees. What made this particular pair of concerts so memorable was that the band, Triple Gang, decided that instead of playing a set full of hoary rock chestnuts, they would challenge themselves and their audience by mastering and covering, in its entirety, The Fall's 1988 magnum opus, This Nation's Saving Grace.

This Nation's Saving Grace is one of my favorite Fall albums, a release from the band's heady mid-80s period, when they could do no wrong (at least as far as their fans were concerned) and pumped out classic album after classic album: Hex Enduction Hour, The Wonderful & Frightening World Of The Fall, Bend Sinister. TNSG is the apex of the band's output during that time, but it's also one of their densest and most challenging recordings, sonically and lyrically. It's very much a product of Mark E. Smith, The Fall's founding member, lead singer and quasi-dictator, and as such, one would think that it would be pure hubris and/or insanity for any band other than The Fall to cover it.

And yet, that's just what Triple Gang set out to do.

Triple Gang was composed of: Matt Jervis, the ex-lead singer for local S.F. band Kingdom First; Billy Gould, the former bassist for Faith No More; Alex Newport, who used to play guitar for Fudge Tunnel; drummer Jon Weiss, formerly of Horsey; and keyboardist Miya Osaki. The two shows they played that summer were at Kimo's that July 14th and at the Covered Wagon on August 3rd (both venues still exist, and still showcase local music almost nightly).

I can't remember how I heard about these shows. I was living in Texas at the time, and as such had no chance of getting out to San Francisco to see these events - would have loved to have attended, though. I probably got wind of them through the Fallnet message boards active back then.

The SF Weekly ran a long article about Triple Gang and this project in an issue released prior to the first show - here's the link, in case you're interested.

These two shows were the only performances ever conducted by this band lineup. Immediately afterwards, Triple Gang broke up, and the band members moved on to over things. Jervis currently lives in Berkeley, doing illustrations and producing the occasional concert poster. Weiss and Gould are currently collaborating with Jello Biafra on one of the latter's latest projects, Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine. Newport owns a recording studio in New York and is an in-demand producer, working with such names as Death Cab For Cutie and Japan's Polysics. And Osaki has worked with a number of small Bay Area and L.A. indie bands.

The Triple Gang shows were never offically recorded for release. But fortunately, someone had the foresight to tape one of these events for posterity (specifically, the first show, at Kimo's), and as fortune would have it, I obtained a copy of the bootleg. But for a bootleg, the sound quality is actually pretty good.

I suspect that the audience for this posting will be extremely limited to folks with knowledge of/nostalgia for the old Bay Area music scene, as well as hardcore Fall fans interested in a different take on a classic Fall album. If you count yourself a member of one of these groups, well, here you go - enjoy. As always, let me know what you think:

Triple Gang - This Nation's Saving Grace (Cover Version)

Poll Results - "What is the worst rock song of all time?"

2010-10-30T23:25:00.001-04:00

Well, hell . . . you guys scared me for a minute. Up until the day before the poll closed, "All That She Wants" and "We Built This City" were actually TRAILING in the "worst song" competition. Fortunately at the last minute, enough of you had the good bad taste to make the right choice. Here are the results:

- "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" - 1 vote
- "My Humps" - 1 vote
- "Kokomo" - 1 vote
- "I'm Too Sexy" - 1 vote
- "Live Is Life" - 2 votes
- "The Final Countdown" - 2 votes
- "Achy Breaky Heart" - 3 votes
- "All That She Wants" - 4 votes

And the champion, the concensus Worst Rock Song of All Time:

- "We Built This City" - 5 votes

I congratulate you all for participating. I'll put together another poll soon, when I think of a good topic.

The Who - Live At Leeds: Complete

2010-10-25T11:51:00.007-04:00

I hesitate to mention this, for fear of committing rock blasphemy and losing my credibility with you musicophiles out there . . . but frankly, The Who have never done that much for me. True, I like some of their songs, and I enjoyed seeing them play their abbreviated "greatest hits" set at the Super Bowl last year. But I've never had any interest in delving that deeply into their individual albums, searching for that obscure gem buried on, say, Side Two of The Who Sell Out or The Who By Numbers. I'm happy just listening to my copy of the hits collection Who's Better, Who's Best, and leaving the rest unplayed. To me, their concept albums, like Tommy and Quadrophenia, just seem a bit over the top. IMHO, in the late 60s, there were better bands than The Who putting out more superior concept albums addressing the state of the world and life in Britain (um, Kinks, anyone?).

And over the years, the whole hagiography of the band, and Keith Moon in particular, has seemed a bit overblown to me. Yes, I was sad when John Entwhistle died (I give him props, though, for going out like a true rock star - in bed in a Vegas hotel, a naked hooker to his left and a pile of blow to his right), but it wasn't as affecting to me as it was to a lot of other, bigger Who fans. I have a lot of bands that I'm really into and have made the time and effort to know more about - The Who are not one of those bands. They're a classic rock band, and rank right up there near the top . . . but so do Led Zeppelin and Cream, and those bands don't get half the quasireligious worship that The Who seems to engender.

My buddy Ed is a HUGE Who fan, though, and knows the band's music and history back and forth. He can tell you which one of the numbered guitars Pete Townshend played at which point during the Woodstock and Isle of Wight festivals, and exactly how much gunpowder was loaded into Keith Moon's drumset during the infamous Smothers Brothers show explosion in 1967 (BTW, if you've never seen it, it's an instant classic:)

Ed's all-time favorite album is Live At Leeds. Many years ago, he began hearing rumors that what was released on Live At Leeds was not the band's complete set recorded at Leeds University on Feburary 14th, 1970. He assumed that with the release of the expanded Live At Leeds: Deluxe Edition in 2001, he would finally be hearing the full show. But even that release had issues, specifically in that it wasn't fully 'live', but "augmented" in some places in the studio to either expand the sound or hide some of the flubbed notes and sloppy riffs. Ed was still itching to get his hands on the complete, unadulterated set, complete with errors and extended stage banter. I told him I'd help him track it down. A friend of mine in the Rockies had a copy, a bootleg released on Midas Touch Records a few years ago, and at my request he immediately sent one to me.

The two-disc Live At Leeds: Complete was all that Ed had asked for, and more - the complete set from that fateful day in 1970, from start to finish. The song sequencing is different from the earlier releases of this album, and the length of the individual tracks varies according to how much studio wizardry and elimination of stage chatter was done to the originals. There's also an infamous static hum through some of the songs, a noise that was eliminated on the earlier releases, but a sound that told Ed that he was getting the original, unadulterated goods. He was completely flabbergasted and fascinated with some of the obvious (to him) changes evident on Complete, compared to the originals. He tried to point out some of them to me, but I was oblivious - shit all sounded the same to me. Still, I know he spent hours listening and relistening to each track . . . as many others have done. There are literally entire websites set up that meticulously analyze every song on this one album and track the modifications. That's getting a little too nitpicky for me, but more power to guys who are into stuff like that.

If you're one of those types of Who fans, then I guess this posting will be right up your alley. Have a listen, enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think:

The Who - Live At Leeds: Complete (Disc 1)
The Who - Live At Leeds: Complete (Disc 2)

The B-52's - Bouncing Off The Satellites

2010-10-12T22:32:00.011-04:00

[Well, I'm back . . . sort of. I'm cheating a little, by backdating this one. I originally started it early in October, but never finished it in time for the anniversary I was trying to commemorate. Sorry for being away from this thing for so long. I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to post, but a combination of more pressing matters, time spent away, and simply my own general sloth kept me from creating actual words from my thoughts. No promises on how active I'll be in the next few days/weeks - I made that mistake last month! But, for now, here you go - enjoy:]

If you read my earlier posts, you know that I absolutely love The B-52's. I've been a fan of theirs for over thirty years (God, have they been around that long (and a more pertinent question - am I THAT old?)?), and have attended a countless number of their live shows (has to be somewhere around 12-15 now). I know this band back and forth, and can speak knowledgably about band minutiae such as the name of Kate Pierson's pre-B-52's hippie band (The Sun Donuts), and as the relative quality of their opening acts over the years (The Bongos were pretty good, Royal Crescent Mob sucked). I briefly lived in Athens, GA, the band's hometown, and while I was there I used to go to Allen's for a beer (no longer 25 cents though (and this was before "Deadbeat Club" was even recorded, so gimme a break)), and on the way into school every day, I drove by the house at the far end of Milledge Avenue where the band played their legendary first concert, out on the back porch.

Probably my favorite of all the B-52's shows I've seen was the one they played Providence in March 1982, in support of their latest album Mesopotamia (I think it was called the "Meso-Americans Tour"). At the time, I was living and going to school in Newport, RI, and I had recently turned one of my new buddies there (we'll call him "Camob") onto the band. Camob came to Rhode Island straight out of the San Fernando Valley of suburban Los Angeles, and though he did his best to hide it, his unconcious mannerisms and vocal inflections pegged him as a straight-up early '80s "Valley Boy". He was like a bigger, beefier, less aggro Billy Zabka - only if Zabka had brown hair, no karate skills and a more normal, formative childhood. Camob was also smart as hell, although he was doing his level best to murder his cerebral cortex every weekend by liberally dousing it with as much ethanol as he could procure (the man had a stinging, insatiable yen for stinkwater that was truly remarkable for someone of his tender years, and positively hair-raising for a teetotaling geek like myself back then). Couple all of that with his Devo fandom, and it's no wonder we quickly became fast friends.

Anyway, after his first taste of their music, Camob dug the Bee-Fives pretty much from the get-go, and as such, he and I decided to go to the Providence concert. He talked one of our classmates into going with us as well - not that we were particular buddies with the guy, but mainly because he had a car we could use for the trip (well, that HE could use - I still couldn't drive just yet). The evening of the show, Camob and the other guy loaded up the car with brown-bagged "supplies" (I didn't bother to ask what they were), and we all headed across the Newport Bridge, en route to the state capital.

The sold-out show was at the Providence Performing Arts Center, a beautiful old opera house-type venue with red velvet seating and a huge balcony hanging over a third of the floor seating. We got to Providence early enough to find good parking close to the theater. But instead of running right in the claim our seats and settle in for the opening act, the other two guys with me insisted on breaking into their bags of "supplies", which basically consisted of several cans of semi-cold Busch beer and a contraption consisting of a long flexible plastic tube about an inch in diameter, with a funnel at one end. Being a nondrinker, I had no idea what the thing was for - looked like some sort of mouth douche to me. But I soon found out what the deal was, as the guys plugged up one end and began pouring can after can of brewski into this contraption, which they called a "beer bong". I watched in amazement as Camob held the bong high, raised the nonfunnel end to his lips, and in a flash emptied the equivalent of four cans of beer straight into his belly, without losing a drop (my boy was very proud of his ability to "open his throat" to make that happen . . . and we'll just leave that line alone . . .).

Needless to say, by the time the show started, Camob was roaring drunk. Our driving buddy, who didn't partake as liberally as Camob did, seemed to be holding his own; of course, I hadn't had a drop. I had more than a bit of concern regarding how we were going to be able to drive back to Newport later that night, but my worries were momentarily forgotten as the curtain came up. Like I mentioned earlier, the opening band, The Bongos, were pretty good. I'd never heard of them before that show, but a lot of their songs stuck with me, including "Number With Wings".

But of course, the main reason I was there was for the headliner, and they did not disappoint. The place was going apeshit as the B-52's played classic song after classic song. Outside of "Mesopotamia", I don't recall them playing anything else off of their latest album. The set was concentrated on the big hits from their first two discs: "Private Idaho", "52 Girls", "Rock Lobster", "Dance This Mess Around". People were out of their seats the entire time, dancing in the aisles and causing such a ruckus in the PPAC balcony that Fred Schneider paused the show momentarily to implore the people up there not to bounce around so much, lest they cause the balcony to collapse on the rest of the audience! Just a great, great show.

(And as for our return trip, Camob's friend had danced and sweated off enough booze to become sober enough to get us back to Newport. I rode shotgun, still petrified, ready to grab the wheel at the first sign of the guy slipping into a sudden alcohol coma, while Camob lay prone in the backseat, mumbling to himself in a profound liquor stupor - another TKO victory recorded by the infamous beer bong. Thank God he made it back there without booting - that would have made a bad ride THAT much worse.)

I've been there and back again with this band, long before their mainstream popularity, so the death of Ricky Wilson back in 1985 was particularly affecting. The guy was a guitar genius, and while Keith Strickland has definitely picked up where Ricky left off (and saved the band in the process), to this day the band is still missing the spirit that Ricky brought to their music. I'll always be a fan, though - as will Camob, who after all of the these years is still one of their #1 acolytes.

So on the 25th anniversary of his death, I offer you the last album recorded by all five original members, Bouncing Off The Satellites, released in September 1986 on Warner Brothers Records. This album doesn't quite have the loose, party-hearty feel of their earlier albums, but there is still enough in the way of goofy ideas and good music to make up for the overall stiffness and broader lack of imagination.

Enjoy:

The B-52's - Bouncing Off The Satellites

So much for my big plan . . .

2010-10-04T23:37:00.002-04:00

to post a bunch of stuff at the end of September. Sorry, folks - circumstances conspired against me. More stuff to come this week and month, so don't give up on this blog yet!

Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians - 'So You Think You're In Love' EP

2010-09-20T02:16:00.011-04:00

[Sorry that I've been kind of slow in posting stuff this month - it's been pretty busy here, which has sort of limited my time to put together the erudite, pithy writeups on this music that I know you all love so well (ha ha!) . . . I'm trying to make an end-of-month push here, and get a few more posted to at least meet my monthly average of 10-12 albums/EPs (you might have noticed that the number of posts has increased in the last week - or then again, maybe you haven't . . .). So on that note, here's another one:]

I should probably be a bigger fan of the music of Robyn Hitchcock than I am, but I simply have trouble fully getting into his music. He's just too quirky and inconsistant for me. I was never a fan of The Soft Boys, his first post-punk/psychedelic-punk group, so I have no nostalgia for his early work. And it seems that every time he puts out something that catches my interest, he follows up with something that I can't stand, putting me back to Square One with him once again.

For example, I loved the song "Balloon Man" (off of the great Globe Of Frogs album) when it came out in 1988, and figured the guy had finally found a sound that appealed to me. But his followup, 1989's Queen Elvis, was terrible, and I found the lead single off of that album, "Madonna Of The Wasps", to be weak and somewhat whiny. Once again, he lost what little goodwill he had with me.

With that being said, I paid little attention to his next release, 1990's acoustic solo outing Eye, and by the time he reunited with The Egyptians for his 1991 album on A&M Records, Perspex Island, I was all but completely ignoring his output. However, that perspective changed once I began hearing cuts from the new disc on the radio. I was living in the Washington, DC area at the time, and WHFS there put the lead single, "So You Think You're In Love", in heavy rotation. I thought to myself, "Pretty good song."

But it was another Robyn Hitchcock single from that time period played on 'HFS that really caught my attention and interest. They played it less frequently on the station, which was too bad, as it was a MUCH stronger song than "So You Think You're In Love". It was a gentle acoustic duet between Hitchcock and Michael Stipe of R.E.M., called "Dark Green Energy" (Stipe and other members of R.E.M. collaborated on other songs on Perspex Island). The song was just outstanding, so much so that I decided to become a Robyn Hitchcock fan once again, and went running full-bore to Tower Records to pick up the disc. But when I got to the record store, I found that the song I loved so much wasn't on the album track list.

I had to hunt around for a while to actually find the recorded tune; I finally tracked it down on an EP, So You Think You're In Love, offered at a small record store I used to go to in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Although the EP featured the title cut, the song that A&M was pushing to be the 'hit' off of this album, the EP was woefully obscure and hard to find, which made absolutely no sense to me at all - it stands to reason that if you want to sell something, it helps to have it readily available in large quantities.

And, of course, after drawing me back into the fold, Hitchcock drove me away again with his next release, Respect, which was his last with The Egyptians. Respect sucked so bad that even Hitchcock himself has been quoted as saying he himself didn't like the record. And there you go.

For me, Robyn Hitchcock hasn't put out anything as good as this EP in the last 20 years. He's still plugging away at it, though - God bless him, and I wish him all the luck and success in the world.

Here you are - enjoy, and let me know what you think:

Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians - 'So You Think You're In Love' EP

The Fall - A World Bewitched: Best of 1990-2000

2010-09-19T13:52:00.006-04:00

I found this one in Chicago.

In the summer of 2001, I flew to the Chicago area for work, as part of a team looking at a portfolio the company was thinking of buying. We stayed about 15-20 miles outside of the city, in a village called Bolingbroke (don't let the term 'village' fool you into thinking there are milkmaids and farm wagons rolling around dusty streets - the 'villages' in Chicagoland are huger and more populous than some cities back East. 'Village' is just a affectation they never got rid out out there). We were put up in some sprawling old hotel/"resort" - the kind of place with its own golf course, conference rooms, swimming pools, etc., spread out over several acres. I guess at one time, back in the '60s and '70s, the joint was considered to be pretty swank. But the owners had done nothing to keep the place current with the times; the wallpaper and decor were still echoing some time around 1973. The main bar resembled something out of a bad "Kojak" episode, and the only thing that kept my room from looking like Greg, Peter and Bobby's bedroom was the absence of a bunk bed in the corner.

However, the place wasn't all bad. Out of boredom one evening, I began wandering the hotel, and found myself in the game room, which was full of old video arcade games I hadn't seen or played in decades: Hard Drivin', Pole Position, Spy Hunter, Xevious - you name it, it was in there. So I had a good time killing an hour of two there.

But after a couple of days, I was getting pretty stir-crazy, working all day on site, then coming back to the House of Mannix. So one night I rented a car and drove into Chicago.

Prior to that visit, I'd never spent much time in that city, so I knew nothing about what was going on there. But I must say that I found Chicago to be a fun, hip little town. Lots of stuff to do, great restaurants (the steakhouses can't be beat), good bars and clubs, nice chicks - they've got a good atmosphere there. I grabbed something to eat at one of those steak places (don't ask me which one - I can't recall), then started walking around and looking around. I found myself in front of the local Tower Records, and decided to pop in for a bit.

I don't know about you, but when I go to a music store, the first stacks I go to are the ones for my favorite bands, just to check and see if anything new had been released, or if one of their earlier releases had evaded my attention. Since I'm a completist when it comes to most of my faves, these searches are usually futile - I'd already have everything they had out. But that night in Chicago, I ran across this Fall compilation, A World Bewitched: Best of 1999-2000, released on Artful Records earlier that year.

The 1990s were an iffy period for The Fall, in my opinion. Brix had left Mark E. Smith and the band, and her presence and ear for pop-friendly hooks was sorely missed. Her absence did serve as the inspiration for one of the best Fall albums, 1990's Extricate, where (despite denials to the contrary) Mark savagely vents his spleen regarding her (What? "Sing Harpy" and "Black Monk Theme Part I" aren't directed towards Brix? Really, Mark?). From there, the albums began a gradual decade-long slide into mediocrity. There were some high spots here and there: Code: Selfish and The Infotainment Scan had many high moments. But other releases like Middle Class Revolt and Cerebral Caustic seemed to lack the imagination and fire of some of the band's best material from the 1980s. And, of course, the infamous onstage punchup in New York in 1998 that led to the departure of longstanding Fall stalwarts like Steve Hanley didn't help either. The Fall really didn't start to get its shit back together until 1999's The Marshall Suite.

With all that being said, you would think that Fall highlights during tha decade would be few and far between. That didn't stop the release of a series of "Best of '90s" Fall compilations of varying scope and quality - A Past Gone Mad: The Best of 1990-2000 and Listening In: Lost Singles Tracks 1990-1992 among them (A Past Gone Mad is actually pretty good, collecting some of the best Fall songs from that decade).

But of all of these releases, I found the two-disc A World Bewitched to be the best of them all. This compilation picks through the dross of the decade, pulling out the superior cuts from that time that were left off of A Past Gone Mad - tunes like "4 1/2 Inch" and "Glam Racket" - so it's a good retrospective of that time and a good starting point for new Fall fans who want to hear the highlights from that period without purchasing all the albums.

But what makes A World Bewitched REALLY worthwhile for true Fall fans is Disc 2, which collects all of the decade's hard-to-find rarities and one-off collaborations by the band (or just Mark E. Smith) with artists such as Elastica and Badly Drawn Boy. Featured on this disc are songs such as:

- the band's superb cover of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich's 1960's hit "The Legend Of Xanadu", which before this album had only been available on a rare NME magazine compilation;
- the brilliant "Calendar", driven by Badly Drawn Boy's guitar, formerly available on a limited-edition "Masquerade" single; and
- "Seventies Night", a hilarious discofied workout between Mark and Edwyn Collins.

As mediocre as the Nineties seemed to be for The Fall, this compilation all but redeems the decade, and shows that, even when not at the top of their game, The Fall still crushes anyone else recording out there.

All in all, it turned out to be a valuable and productive trip to the city for me that night (I also picked up that night, on a whim, The Sea & Cake's Oui, which turned me into a fan of that band as well). We ended up not bidding on that portfolio we were there for. But I got cool new tunes out of the trip . . . so it was all good.

And here you are, for your listening pleasure. Enjoy:

The Fall - A World Bewitched: Best of 1990-2000 (Disc 1)
The Fall - A World Bewitched: Best of 1990-2000 (Disc 2)

Trio - Trio & Error

2010-09-15T14:20:00.005-04:00

[I guess with my recent couple of posts regarding disasters, I've been getting some folks down. A friend here on this blog recommended that I lighten up a bit . . . so I'll put the bad tales aside for a bit, starting now:]

I spent a good part of my second summer at the Academy at sea, sailing up and down the East Coast on a small yard patrol (YP) craft with about 15-16 other classmates and a couple of upperclassmen. We were part of a flotilla of three or four of these boats, doing training on maneuvers, navigation, etc. Initially, I was disappointed to be on a YP, rather than over in Europe or the Far East as others were, but it turned out to be great. We took those puny vessels everywhere, and made a lot of extended stops in great places like Boston and New York City (my first long visit there). It was during one of those early stops that I first noticed HER.

She was a fellow classmate, beautiful and cool and athletic, part of the crew of one of the other YP boats in our group (somehow, I had never noticed nor run across her during the entire first year of school, which was strange because the campus and student body was not very large). Anyway, I was instantly smitten. Since she was on a different boat and off doing other things with her friends on shore, my encounters with her that summer were brief and fleeting, and in all of them she was cool and aloof and mysterious, which only piqued my interest further. By the end of the summer, I had a major crush on her . . . and she, no doubt, had little, if any, idea or interest in who I was or what I was all about.

But the Gods of Random Probability like to have their little jokes every once in a whiie - our class was the first in several years to be "scrambled"; that is, moved to different companies at the end of plebe year. And as fate would have it, she and I ended up in the same one, living just a few doors away from one another. Not that that helped my cause; I was a goof, and initially she wanted nothing to do with me at all.

But as time passed, slowly and steadily, our 'relationship' (as it were) progressed. In her eyes, I think I moved from being an annoying pest to a tolerable distraction to an acceptable acquaintance, and in time we became friends. We found we had the same sence of humor, and would find hilarious ways to make fun of the people we knew. I used to challenge her at racquetball, and she responded by kicking my ass every time we played. But mostly, we bonded over music. I had a large and growing collection of cassette tapes back then, probably the best selection on the floor, and she would sometimes come over to borrow music or talk about bands. We were supposed go with a group of people to see Book Of Love in DC one weeknight during our junior year, a show that necessitated that we go "over the wall", that is, leave the Academy grounds without permission . . . in the end, I couldn't go, but she did; the entire group got busted coming back, and received days of restriction and heavy demerits. She got me a Fishbone T-shirt from another show she went to that I didn't attend; I treasured that shirt, and wore it for years, until it literally disintegrated.

But with all of that, we were still 'just' friends. And that was cool by me; by that time, the old crush had cooled considerabily. I still liked her, but I figured if we were to be just friends, then so be it. She had a boyfriend or two at school, and we each went to the Ring Dance at the end of our junior year with someone else. She was as aloof and mysterious as ever, but in a different way, now that we were closer. But I could still never 'read' her, or figure out what was on her mind.

So I was surprised when, on a Friday evening during the winter of our senior year, I found myself driving with her to my parent's house for the weekend, just the two of us. To this day, I still can't figure out how this came about; I don't really recall asking her. I might have mentioned that I go home on weekends from time to time, and she asked if she could join me - I simply don't recall. All I knew was, there I was, driving down a snowy Route 50 towards the Beltway and Virginia with the girl I'd liked for years sitting next to me.

The roads were bad and the going was slow, but I brought plenty of music along, which we played in my Subaru's tape deck. In addition to being the driver, I also served as the sort-of DJ, swapping cassettes out frequently, putting on stuff that she might not have heard before. One 'new' song really captured her interest, a simplistic melody called "Da Da Da" by a German band called Trio.

Trio (made up of Stephan Remmler on vocals, Gert Krawinkel on guitar, and Peter Behrens on drums) was formed in Grossenkheten, Germany in 1980. They were part of a strange but unorganized and unofficial hybrid of European new wave that appeared during that time, featuring simplistic melodies, songs with no more that three-chord progressions, and monotone vocals. Other practicioners of this sound back then included Young Marble Giants (previously covered in the blog) and The Flying Lizards from England. In many ways, Trio took that minimal sound even further than the other bands mentioned, utilizing only guitar and drums on their songs until late in their career. In a lot of ways, Trio was like the "new wave Kraftwerk" of their time.

But even with these limitations, the band still managed to put out some catchy, popular numbers, including the aftermentioned "Da Da Da". This song was on their debut German-language album released in 1981, and eventually made it to #2 on the national charts there in April 1982. An English-language version of this song was released in England in the late spring of that year, and saw similar success, also reaching #2 there and selling over a million copies. The English version was also a hit in Canada later that year, making the Top 5 in that country.

With this international success, Polydor Records rerecorded Trio's debut, adding some English songs, and rereleased the album in the U.S. as Trio & Error in 1983 (the label retained the services of the band's long-time producer, the legendary musician, artist and Beatle friend Klaus Voorman). But the album and their international hit song did nothing here in this country; outside of a few college/alternative stations airing it, Trio's music went unheard by the majority of Americans. WHFS in Washington, DC used to play it once in a while, though; that's where I first heard it, and liked it enough to look for a cassette copy.

It was that cassette that was played over and over that weekend, as she and I rolled through DC. Even with the weather, we had a fun time. We went out to eat in the city, and hit a lot of the clubs, bars and dance places there (including the late, lamented new wave club Poseurs in Georgetown, at the foot of the Key Bridge - sadly, it's a bike shop now). My parents loved her, and made her feel completely welcome in their home. And she and I just laughed, and talked, and bonded. All in all, it was the best time I had all year; it was one of the best times I had during my entire time at school.

Trio released a final album, Bye Bye, in 1983, before breaking up the following year. As for that girl and I, that trip was sort of the high-water mark for anything serious. We remained friends for the rest of school and after graduation, but she moved to one side on the country and I moved to the other, and we just sort of went on with our lives, contacting one another occasionally. In time, even the memory of that time I spent with her that snowy February began to fade.

In 1997, I was watching something on TV; I can't remember what. When it went to commercial, the first ad up was an ad for the Volkswagen Golf. The commercial was simplicity iteslf - just two guys riding around in the car, with music playing. I instantly recognized the song - it was Trio's "Da Da Da"! Somehow, the music completely fit the visuals of the ad. And in a flash, it brought back to me every detail my own road trip ten years earlier with that fetching passenger at my side, where that same song featured prominently. I never asked her, but I hope that she saw that ad too, and it brought back some fond memories for her as well.

Due to the popularity of the commercial, Trio's album was rereleased in the U.S. that year as Da Da Da, and finally gave the band some long-overdue chart success here. I've always hated the retitling - seemed like pandering to me. I'll always refer to it as Trio & Error.

So, here you go - enjoy:

Trio - Trio & Error

The Rogers Sisters - Purely Evil

2010-09-14T17:55:00.007-04:00

On the morning of Monday, September 10th, 2001, I drove from Rhode Island to New York City to attend a meeting with some investment bankers at their offices in lower Manhattan, about four blocks from the World Trade Center. I was supposed to meet my boss there at noon, but it appeared I was running slightly late, so I gave him a call as I travelled down I-278 in Queens. He asked me if I was close, and I remember saying to him, "Well, I can see the Trade Center, so I'm pretty close." The meeting took up the rest of the afternoon, and we left Manhattan just before rush hour. I drove him home to his place in Connecticut, then I stopped at Foxwoods to play poker for a couple of hours before getting home later that evening.

The next morning, I was back at work in Providence. It was going to be a pretty busy and important day for me. Some financiers from a Pennsylvania company called De Lage Landen were coming up for an all-day meeting, and I was looking forward to a call from California - I had recently been accepted to appear on a game show, and the producers were supposed to call me later that morning with the final flight details. Other than prepping for and anticipating those two events, it was just another Tuesday at work . . .

Then, of course, all hell broke loose that day. In a couple of hours, the buildings that I used as landmarks less than 24 hours earlier were reduced to rubble, and the place where I had my meeting, four blocks from the WTC, was inaccessible and coated with dust and debris. Back in Providence, the meeting with the Pennsylvania people broke up as events unfolded, and soon the entire town was engulfed in confusion and turmoil, as rumors began spreading about possible terrorists who missed the plane out of Logan being seen getting off of the Amtrak train at the Providence station and disappearing into the nearby mall. They closed all downtown businesses early that afternoon, and I drove home listening to the nonstop news coverage of that day. And, needless to say, I never received that phone call from California that day . . .

Fast-forward to November 2001. I was headed back to NYC for the first time since 9/11, going to see The Fall play at the Knitting Factory on Leonard Street in Lower Manhattan. It was weird being back in the city; there was a palpable sense in the air of something having changed. At that time, people were still being nice to one another in New York, a very welcome change. But that kindness was tinged with wariness and a bit of suspicion, especially if you didn't look quite 'right', if you know what I mean. The security at the show was extra-vigilant, I felt, compared to earlier shows I'd attended there. The patdowns and metal detections were done with determination and purpose, by unsmiling security officials there.

I hadn't seen The Fall in a while; they were touring on Are You Are Missing Winner, one of the weakest Fall albums in recent years. I was still looking forward to seeing them, though. The opening band was a local group I had never heard of, The Rogers Sisters out of Brooklyn. I paid little attention to them while they set up, but that changed once they began playing.

The Rogers Sisters were made up of, of course, two sisters, Laura and Jennifer Rogers, accompanied by Asian-American guitarist Miyuki Furtado. The sisters were formerly in Ruby Falls, an all-female indie rock group formed in 1992 that released a couple of obscure EPs and singles before falling apart in 2000. After the breakup of Ruby Falls, the girls quickly recruited Furtado and began playing a modified sound from their earlier band, incorporating a more garagy/guitar-based punk attack that provided them with some success.

Their gig with the Fall was one of their biggest since forming, and their sound immediately tickled my eardrums. In my experience, it's rare that The Fall have decent lead-in bands; The Rogers Sisters were the exception, so much so that I made a mental note to look for any of their releases in the near future (at that time, they had yet to be signed to a label). The Fall also played an excellent set that evening; Mark E. Smith was in fine form, not too curmudgeonly, and they didn't play too many songs from their recent album, which was a blessing. From start to finish, it was a great show.

After the concert ended, at around 12:30-1:00 am, I decided to try to make my way down to the WTC site, just to see things for myself. I walked for blocks in the dark, along deserted New York streets, some still thinly coated with the dust of that horrible day two months earlier. I made my way around cordoned-off streets and roadblocks, and finally got as close as I could to the highly illuminated site. The work was going on there nonstop, around the clock, and I was close enough to hear the growl of jackhammers and clank of cranes moving pieces of the destroyed buildings. I sat on a barricade along the main street where they were taking stuff away from the area, and I watched for hours as trucks and flatbeds moved past me in what seemed to be an unending wave, all loaded with metal and debris. I remember one flatbed carried an entire fire engine, smashed to half its height and coated with dirt and dust. But there were plenty of other sights and pieces of the tragedy that I saw that night that made the entire event really hit home to me. Seeing the operation on TV was one thing; actually BEING there, and watching the operation, and seeing the dust and smoke rise through the klieg lights . . . well, that was something else, and something I'll always remember.

The Rogers Sisters' debut album, Purely Evil, was released on Troubleman Unlimited Records early in 2002. The disc contained almost all of the songs I heard and enjoyed the year before. The band released two more albums, Three Fingers in 2004 and The Invisible Deck in 2006, before breaking up in late November 2006, almost five years to the day of their Knitting Factory show.

I still enjoy their debut album, but every time I listen to it, I'm transported back in time, and think about that long, cold night I spent sitting on a block of concrete in lower Manhattan, watching the cleanup and trucks going by and trying, like many other Americans, to make sense of it all. This music has nothing to do with or say regarding 9/11, but to me, it will always be part of that time and place.

Anyway, here's the album:

The Rogers Sisters - Purely Evil