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

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, competent 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 desperation 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 dry-dock 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 dry-docked 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:

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Betty Boo - Boomania

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 during one of their impromptu performances at a McDonald's in the city, were noticed by, of all people, Public Enemy's Professor Griff.  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 listen to the cuts I mentioned above, and as always, let me know what you think:

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The Fleshtones - American Beat '84 EP

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 resilience 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 introduces 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 instruments 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.

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Poll Results - "Best 'Worst Album'"

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 as 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!

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Trona - Trona

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 one 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:

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One Year

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?"

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):

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Enjoy, and let me know what you think.]

The Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Plasma Shaft

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:

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Love Tractor - This Ain't No Outerspace Ship

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.

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Thomas Mapfumo & The Blacks Unlimited - Corruption

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.

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