Fighting the Demons Again

"I sit up all night and think of evil things to do
And I've got something very special planned for you..."
-Stiv Bators, "Evil Boy" 

I'm about to take you to a very dark place.  I'm going to attempt to describe to you a facet of my personality that I don't care for very much; a version of me that I don't like showing to the world, but which, in certain given circumstances, flashes to the surface like a buoy being forcibly held under water and suddenly released. It's the part of me that drives people away, that sometimes scares people.  That sometimes scares me.

Nothing Is True

Monday night, I was thisclose to bringing this blog to an end, cutting my Twitter and Facebook ties, and retreating back into the hermit-like state I have fought for these past several years to escape from.  My obsessive, anxious demons sat on my shoulder all night like egging me on, double-dog-daring me to do it. "You don't owe anyone anything," the wheedling voice in my head told me, "and besides, none of them give a damn about you anyway..."

In a matter of moments that night, I went from the elation of watching my beloved Phillies clinch their fourth consecutive National League Eastern Division Championship to the depths of an OCD-fueled depression, over a broken link.  There are a number of outlets through which I advertise each new blog post, and whether it be Twitter or Facebook or wherever, I dutifully link to the newest post.  Mondays, of course, are NW4NW days, and I am grateful that so many folks have told me how they enjoy those posts and look forward to them. So yesterday, after publishing this week's installment, I posted links in all the usual places.

My workdays have been extra busy recently, so I did not have the opportunity throughout the day to check my stats to see how much traffic was coming in.  I usually repost the links in the afternoon to catch the crowd who isn't around to see them in the early morning, and this I did yesterday as well.  Then I settled in to watch the game, having not checked blog stats at all.  After the game, I checked the posted link, and saw that it reported 0 clicks.  "Hmm, that can't be right..." I thought, so I clicked the link myself - and was promptly met with a "Page Cannot Be Found" error. The link that I had been advertising all day was a bad link!

Embarrassed, I corrected the link and prepared an apology post, and that's when it struck me: No one had informed me the link was bad.  Even on the Fanpage and the blog's Twitter site, there was nothing.  Had no one even bothered to try to read my post? I pulled up my stats for the day, and there, mockingly, sat a great big zero. I did the math: 100 people follow the TWIWGTS Twitter site. 1400 follow my personal Twitter account. There are 200 on the Fanpage, and 500 on my personal Facebook page. Over 100 follow through Networked Blogs.  I've never claimed a humongous readership, but out of all those people, not one bothered to try to read my newly advertised blog post? What the fuck?

Here It Goes Again

Now, most normal, well-adjusted people would consider this what it was: an anomaly.  I can look back now, with some hindsight, and say to myself, "Well duh! If the link was broken and someone tried to click it, it wouldn't show up in your stats because they never even got to the site!"  And, I know from previous feedback that many of you who read regularly do access the site mainly through those links I put out there. 

(Psst - this would be a great time for me to recommend subscribing using the email form at the upper left of this page so that you never miss a post and never have to worry about bad links. Go, do it now, I'll wait...OK, great, let's continue.)

Sure, that all makes perfect sense now, but I've talked here before about my OCD and my constant anxious paranoia that everyone is secretly trying to set me up for embarrassment, and how cunning those beasts are as foes.  They grab onto any tiny shred of anything that could be twisted to validate their existence in my brain and go immediately to work.  This wasn't a simple, explainable anomaly that was really my fault to begin with for posting an incorrect link. No sir, this was an affront on me personally! An obvious attack, and clear evidence that those lying liars never read my blog! They don't think I'm a good writer! They don't care about the things I write about!

Then, the obsessive part builds upon that:  "Not even your friends who say they read your blog actually read it. They're lying to you! And if they lie about that, then they must be lying about everything! They're not really your friends! This is important to you and to them it's all a big joke!"  I found myself considering shutting the blog down completely. After all, why should I write if no one wants to read it?  And if these people aren't really my friends, why do I interact with them? I ought to just cut all ties - then they can't lie to me anymore.  Do you see how the insane spiral builds?  My mind starts making larger and larger leaps in logic until the thoughts become irrational, and inside I journey from offended to saddened to - if the spiral is left to continue unabated - anger.

And, if anyone happens to be around me or interact with me while this process is happening, they are met with that part of my personality I mentioned earlier - the part of me that I hate. As fate would have it, one person did interact with me right then, through Twitter.  Luckily, my obsessive thought-spiral hadn't spun out of control yet, and after a few somewhat coarse, chopped exchanges, I apologized for being "in a mood" and logged off.  Had she shown up a few minutes later, however, she would likely have encountered Evil Bryan.

My Evil Twin

Evil Bryan is a very dark version of myself, a personification of those OCD/anxiety demons. When I'm in that state, I revert to the behavior of cornered animal being attacked because inside that is how I feel.  In that state I have no concern whatsoever for other people's feelings, whoever they may be - I will simply lash out at them, trying - wanting - to make them feel as bad and hurt as I feel inside at that moment.  Most of the time, that attack or lashing out takes the form of words - loud, vile, cutting words.  On rare occasions, the lashing out has been physical, documented as early as the second grade version of me who threw chairs around a classroom in a rage against a teacher.  To say it is not a pretty sight is putting it mildly.

It is not pleasant to feel that out of control, and there has never been a time when, after the storm has passed, I haven't felt immensely remorseful and apologetic. Over the years, I have learned to recognize when that side of me is surfacing, and have learned to remove myself from other people. It has the same effect as starving a fire of oxygen: the flame tries to continue, but quickly sputters out.  If Evil Bryan is starved of people to lash out at, he sputters away to nothing relatively quickly.

And so it was Monday night. I logged off of Twitter and Facebook and went to bed, and Evil Bryan never showed up. I got up the next morning thinking the storm had passed and all was well, and went about my work day.  Pretty soon I noticed a shadow looming over me.  It was a shadow I hadn't seen in a long time.

I Just Can't Be Happy Today

As it turns out, what I thought was the end of the storm was really just the eye of the hurricane. Something more was coming, I could feel it - I know the feeling all to well, as anyone who has dealt with depression on any level does: it's not sadness, it's not anger, it's not anything that can be easily described.  It's sort of a feeling that something is very wrong, coupled with a complete lack of ability to put a finger on what that wrong thing is, multiplied by the frustration of knowing that you are powerless to fix it because you can't even define it.  It's an awful, awful feeling, and I usually respond to it by pushing everyone away and closing myself up in my own private cave - and so it has been this week.

I was excited because a group of us had planned to get together to create a local writers' group on Wednesday.  I've been trying to get past some rough writers' block recently, and I'm lucky to be in a city populated with excellent writers. Some interaction with them my have been just the thing to get the words flowing again. 

I didn't go.  I hid behind my standard "I don't drive so I can't get there" excuse - even though rides were available had I asked.  Truth was, I didn't want to be around anyone. I'm catching myself hermiting; I'm watching myself push people away; I'm feeling myself fight to fend off the demons. 

Every Day I Write The Book

I actually started writing this on Tuesday - and have been rewriting, editing, and adding to it all week.  If these demons have any redeeming value, it is that they have helped to break the dam holding back the words. Now the question begs - are the words making any sense? I don't know. I know it helps.  I have gone back and forth in my mind all week whether to even post this piece. Finally, I have decided that I should; I must.  I'm not crying out for help here; I'm not looking for anyone to give me the answers (not that anyone could - this is a thoroughly inner battle).  But when I posted the last introspective piece, there were some folks who emailed me or spoke to me and thanked me for writing it and sharing it, because they fully understood it and were somewhat relieved to know that at least one other person out there experienced what they did - they weren't alone and they weren't "crazy."  I, too, find solace in that idea that somewhere out there, at least one or two of you are reading this rambling jumble of words and thoughts and feelings and saying to yourself, "I know that. I've been there."  Even if I never hear from you, I know you're there, and I'm not alone.

So I suppose this post is, in addition to being a bit of "physician heal thyself," my way of saying to those of you who I have been pushing away, I'm sorry. And also saying to those of you who understand, thank you for being there.  As for the rest of you, I beg your indulgence when I need to post such things as this - don't worry, we'll be back to our regular programming in no time.

New Wave for the New Week #85

This week's NW4NW entry is unusual in that it is as much about the story behind and history of a specific song as it is about a particular artist.

We begin with a Belgian musician by the name of Roger Jouret.  In the mid-1970s, Jouret was the drummer, singer and main songwriter for the post-glam, proto-new wave band Hubble Bubble (perhaps best known for their cover of The Kinks' "I'm Not Like Everybody Else").  When that band's bass player was killed in automobile accident in 1977, the remaining members of the group went their separate ways.  Jouret launched a solo career, assuming a purposefully ironic Punk Rock pose and rechristening himself as Plastic Bertrand. Bertrand hooked up with producer Lou Deprijck, who had just recorded a demo of a song called "Ça Plane Pour Moi" (translated alternately as "All's Well With Me," "All's Cool With Me," and "That Flies With Me").  Sung in idiomatic French in a near monotone over a chugging melody, the single appeared in December of 1977 credited to Plastic Bertrand.

With his prepackaged image and easily hummable song, Bertrand began showing up all over European television, propelling the song to hit record status in France, Belgium and the UK.  But a nasty rumor had begun: Plastic Bertrand  was, in fact, so plastic as to not be the real voice on the record!  Jouret insisted that was him on the single for many years, until 2006 when a linguistic expert concluded that Bertrand could not possibly have been the singer. In fact, it is Lou Deprijck's original demo vocal that is heard; the backing track was recorded with a variety of anonymous studio musicians, so Jouret did not actually appear on the single at all! (And you thought such scandals began with Millli Vanilli!)

This was not the only controversy associated with "Ça Plane Pour Moi." In November of 1977, just a few weeks before the Plastic Bertrand single hit the shelves, another artist, Elton Motello, released a very similar single, "Jet Boy/Jet Girl."  In fact, Motello's record used the same studio-session backing track as "Ça Plane Pour Moi," but replaced Deprijck's French vocal with Motello's English.  Motello had written completely new lyrics, unrelated to "Ça Plane Pour Moi," for his song. He also looked to capitalize on the Punk/New Wave movement with his exceedingly graphic, designed-to-shock tale of a gay young man losing his older, bi-sexual lover to a woman.  While the lyrics may still seem a bit extreme in today's climate, in 1977 they were positively scandalous, and the record was banned from airplay in many places.

Because Motello's record had hit the shelves first, and since Motello had listed the title on the single's sleeve as "Jet Boy/Jet Girl (Ça Plane Pour Moi)," many people in non-French speaking countries assumed that one was a direct translation of the other.  This created a minor backlash against Plastic Bertrand's record as being obscene at worst, and an odd foreign-language cover at best.

Through all it's crazily twisted backstory, "Ça Plane Pour Moi" has remained a very popular song and a staple of classic New Wave compilation albums and club playlists where early Wave is featured. It has been covered by artists ranging from Sonic Youth to The Presidents Of The United States Of America to Kim Wilde; it's evil twin song, "Jet Boy/Jet Girl," has been covered by bands including The Damned and Chron Gen.

So here's the single that started all the trouble, Plastic Bertrand's "Ça Plane Pour Moi." Enjoy!


Plastic Bertrand - Ca Plane Pour Moi

5 Great Punk Rock Videos That Actually Got Played on MTV

Although there is now an entire generation of kids who could never comprehend it, once upon a time MTV actually played music videos.  All day long, every day of the week, nothing but music videos.  For a solid three-year period from 1981 to early 1984, MTV was a visual jukebox - a radio station on TV.

During that period, the only Punk Rock you might see would be The Ramones or The Clash, both of whom were considered "safe" by mainstream standards.  Punk bands didn't make music videos - heck they barely had enough funds to self-release their records, and "selling out" by making product for Corporate Television went against the DIY ethos anyway, right?  Well, at least until Green Day realized there was a buck to be made...

But in those early years, Punk was not represented in the MTV world. At least, not very well. However, those of us who stayed up late at night as endless Triumph and Def Leppard clips flickered on our screens were, on rare occasion, rewarded with a once-in-a-lifetime viewing of a real, honest-to-gawd Punk Rock video.  Here are 5 of my favorites from that era that I still can't believe actually got airplay on MTV:

The Minutemen: "This Ain't No Picnic" (1984)
Brilliantly intercut with footage from one of then-sitting President Ronald Reagan's war movies, San Pedro's The Minutemen find themselves under attack as they blurt out one of the best of their sub-two-minute blasts.  Find this one on the stunning Double Nickels On The Dime, which, if you do not already own, you need to.


Black Flag: "TV Party" (1981)
Don't know which is funnier: seeing a very young Henry Rollins, listening to the band rattle off TV show titles of the era (remember Fridays? Quincy? That's Incredible?), or the whole generic-beer-and-beanbag chair aesthetic of the clip.  A classic nonetheless, and a song which Black Flag recorded several times, most notably on the Damaged album.


The Anti-Nowhere League: "Streets of London" (1982)
That's Nick Culmer, better known as Animal, spewing out slightly re-written lyrics to a UK '60s folk chestnut and wielding an axe as frontman for The Anti-Nowhere League.  The track can be found on the album We Are...The League alongside other sick-joke punk extremities as "I Hate...People," "Let's Break The Law," and the stunningly offensive "Woman."  At least, I think they were joking...


Kraut: "All Twisted" (1983)
New York hardcore band Kraut were the only Punk band that I discovered via MTV!  Came home from school one day, turned on the TV, and this gem came blaring out at me. Ran out and bought the album, the long out-of-print An Adjustment To Society, that weekend. Quickly learned that the boys had cleaned up the song for broadcast (the line "Can't you fucking see?" was changed to the obviously dubbed "Can't you people see?" in the clip).  Thankfully, the entirety of their recorded output can - and should! -  be had these days on one disc, Complete Studio Recordings


Angry Samoans: "Time Has Come Today" (1982)
To me, the most surprising clip on this list. Who'd ever expect LA's snarkiest cartoon-punk assholes to see airtime on MTV? That's former music critic "Metal" Mike Saunders on vocals as Angry Samoans snarl through their take on the old Chambers Brothers classic, found on their outstanding (and guaranteed to offend almost everyone) Back From Samoa LP.

New Wave for the New Week #84

Image by Diego's sideburns via FlickrIn Birmingham, England, in 1985, a group of fresh-out-of-high-school girls decided to form a band.  They could play their instruments well enough to get by, but they had a giddy, loopy enthusiasm and a crackling energy that propelled them much further than their amateurish musical talents could have taken them alone. And they had both the neatest gimmick and the most unwieldy band name in history.

When sisters Jo and Maggie Dunne began practicing with Tina O'Neill and Vickie "Vix" Perks, they quickly decided they needed something to set them apart from the crowd.  Sporting multi-colored mohawks, gaudy thrift-store outfits and neon make-up, they had a signature look; now they needed a sound.  They found it in the form of distortion pedals for their guitars, which prompted Maggie to announce to her cohorts, "We've got a fuzzbox, and we're gonna use it!"  Not only did that become the band's statement of purpose, they adopted it as their name as well.

Within a year, We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It had their first record out on the independent Vindaloo label, the double A-side "XX Sex"/"Rules And Regulations." Both songs were heavy on the distortion, burbling along with chanty cheerleader vocals and very simple arrangements; both were irresistibly catchy.  The single was soon expanded into a 5-song EP, with all five tracks on one side of a 12-inch record; the other side was unplayable, as the band etched self-drawn caricatures of themselves and messages to their fans into the vinyl.

The record sold well enough to get We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It  noticed by the Geffen label, who rushed them into the studio for their debut album.  Bostin' Steve Austin appeared in mid-1986 in the UK, with the lead single, "Love Is The Slug," receiving a ton of airplay.  Geffen decided to release the record in the US, but they had two changes in mind: first, the title of the album was changed to the band's name. And second, about that name...they'd never get played on the radio with a name like We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It, so the label had them truncate it to simply Fuzzbox.

That album is wonderful from start to finish.  The band's originals are uniformly enjoyable, hook-filled bits of punky-pop bubblegum. Their cover of Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit In The Sky" is jaw-dropping and not to be missed, and "Love Is The Slug" became a cult favorite and their most well-known song.  They seemed set for big things, but unfortunately the label wasn't done tinkering with the band.

A second album, Big Bang!, was unveiled in 1989, and left everyone scratching their heads. The girls had ditched their signature look in favor of a much more polished, "video-friendly" image. Worse, their was nary a fuzzbox to be heard anywhere on the record.  In fact, the girls did not play a single instrument on Big Bang! Geffen had essentially recast them as Bananarama version 2.0, sapping every last bit of personality from them.  A few of the songs weren't entirely bad: "Pink Sunshine" and "International Rescue" were pretty solid pop songs, but this wasn't what anyone who loved the first record wanted to hear. The only thing remotely reminiscent of the old Fuzzbox was their decision to cover Yoko Ono's "Walking On Thin Ice," and even that turned out to be a better idea in theory than in execution.  A single from what was a planned third album appeared later ("Your Loss My Gain"), but the backlash was too great to overcome, and Fuzzbox called it a day.

Vix went on to record a solo album while the other girls all dropped out of the music world completely.  The two albums fell out of print, but a few "best of" compilations of Fuzzbox songs have appeared over the years, the best being 2004's Look At The Hits On That!!, which collected the early singles and the best songs from the two albums along with a DVD containing all of the girls' promotional videos.

In early 2010, Fuzzbox got back together for a reunion. Only Tina did not join in; in her place they added a new drummer, Karen Milne, and bass player Sara Firebrand and launched a summer UK tour. They also recorded a new single, covering M's New Wave classic "Pop Muzik." Whether a new album is in the works remains to be seen.

This week's NW4NW entry is the clip for "Love Is The Slug," which still remains among my favorite songs and videos from the era. Enjoy!

New Wave for the New Week #82

It's Labor Day, kids.  Last night, temps around here dropped into the 50s (beautiful sleeping weather if you ask me).  The local rugrats are all either back in school or headed back this week.  It all means summer is just about over. Not complaining much about that this year - far too many days over 90º  and 90% humidity for my liking - but it's always sorta sad to see the summer end. So, before the cool breezes turn to jacket weather, how about one more bit of summery fun, in the form of this week's NW4NW?

And what better band to fit the bill than Malibu's own The Surf Punks? The band originally came together in 1976, with a pair of celebrity-related surf-n-sand enthusiasts at the core: Dennis Dragon (brother of Daryl Dragon, better known as "The Captain" of The Captain and Tennille) and Drew Steele (son of Gavin McLeod, better known as Captain Stubing of The Love Boat) began writing and recording in a little garage-based studio across the street from Zuma Beach.  John Heussenstamm and John Hunt rounded out the band, with the late Scott Goddard lending occasional vocals.

They were goofy, wickedly funny, and made great music. Their songs covered the topics they knew and loved best: surfing, tanning, drinking beer and chasing girls. Their incredibly awesome debut album, My Beach (1980), contains classics like "My Beach," "My Wave," "Beer Can Beach," "Teenage Girls," "Big Top," and "Punch Out at Malibu." Deep, intellectual stuff it's not.  But it is the perfect soundtrack to summertime on the beach.  With a sound falling somewhere between The Beach Boys and The B-52s with a strong seasoning of LA Punk Rock and Jeff Spicolli attitude, The Surf Punks were the musical equivalent of the rock-n-roll/T&A movies that used to be shown late nights on the USA Network in the early '80s. The whole thing seemed like it was going to be a one-and-done novelty act record.  Only problem was, someone forgot to to tell that to the band or their fans.

The Surf Punks actually found enough depth in the shallow waters they were surfing to release another collection of songs about surfing, beer and girls in bikinis.  Locals Only was released in 1982 and found a fan base eager for more of this stuff.  Not quite as consistently sharp or funny as the debut, it does have its moments - notably the title track.

After disappearing for a few years, The Surf Punks reappeared on record store shelves in 1988 with Oh No, Not Them Again! and, later in the year, Party Bomb.  They were still mining the same lyrical and musical veins, but the joke was finally wearing thin.  They were now basically a parody of themselves, which is a doubly bad thing when your band was built on the edges of self-parody in the first place.

Nonetheless, those first two albums  remain essential summer listening material.  So, as the summer of 2010 comes to close, we celebrate The Surf Punks in all their glory with two picks: first up, a clip of them performing "My Beach" taken from the movie Urgh! A Music War; after that, an audio-only clip for the second LP's title cut, "Locals Only." Enjoy!

Of Ugly Logos and Local Talk

Want to direct your attention to a couple of blog posts recently posted by my friends Daniel Klotz and Kelly Watson regarding Lancaster, PA's recently announced "rebranding," and specifically the lunacy surrounding our fair city's new logo.  Klotz provides a comprehensive timeline that should bring everyone up to date; Watson delved a bit deeper into the logo's *ahem* pedigree, and later gave the design firm that was contracted to create the logo a chance to be heard.

I don't have much to add to their words; among those three posts the story to date is covered efficiently.  I will say that, regardless of where it came from, the new logo is just plain ugly, more befitting the Lancaster that built the concrete monstrosity known as the Brunswick Mall than of a Lancaster that has been casting its hopes for present-day cultural significance among the arts crowd centered around Pennsylvania College of Art and Design and Gallery Row downtown.

As my hometown continues its futile straw grasping in search of some sort of salable identity with which to draw people back into downtown life, I continue to be astounded at, frankly, the stupidity of it all.  For instance, I have yet to have anyone satisfactorily explain to me what "A city authentic" actually means; I do know a city that would splat a cookie-cutter Marriot Hotel within the gutted facade of the beautiful, unique, 100+ year old Watt & Shand building may be a lot of things, but "authentic" isn't one of them.

Get Well, Jim!

We never really think about it much, but it truly is frightening how fragile we are, and how suddenly everything - our own world and the world of everyone around us - can change.

I have not talked much on this blog about what I do for a living. I've been in direct marketing, working with the same company, Visions Marketing Services, for nearly 14 years.  For the better part of that time, our focus had been in the home equity and debt consolidation fields, bringing solutions to people in need in the form of our clients' products: refinances, home equity loans, etc.  When the economy went south a couple years ago, we went from being as profitable as we'd been in 30 years to having to lay off 90% of our staff across two divisions, and in fact shutting down one of those divisions - the one I had been running for nearly five years.  I was kept on board and have spent the past two years helping to rebuild the company and  carve out a new path for us.  We are now in the Long Term Care industry, and the vehicle with which we are again reaching out to help people is The Long Term Care Association.

Through the Association, we seek to educate people about the things Long Term Care can do to you, and what Long Term Care Insurance can do for you.  We are a hub for Agents who sell Long Term Care Insurance to find the best resources for transactionally modeled leads, prospect qualification, scheduling appointments with potential customers, and creating proposal. On the consumer side, we offer a way to connect those who wish to learn more about Long Term Care Insurance and find out if it is the right choice with local Agents who are knowledgeable and capable.

Over the past two years, I went from knowing nothing about Long Term Care to learning quite a bit.  There are some startling statistics, but none give as much pause to consider "what if" than this: over 40% of people currently receiving Long Term Care in this country are under the age of 65.

Think about that for a moment.  Most people think of Long Term Care as something they won't need to worry about until they are older, probably well into retirement.  But for 4 out 10, it is something they are dealing with while still in what wold be termed their "working years."
 
This statistic was made all too real for me this morning. Got up and had my usual coffee and cereal, and fired up the computer, preparing for another workday (I work from home most of the time).  My first stops are usually Facebook and Twitter, just to see what has been posted overnight.  It was on Facebook that I learned of an accident that had befallen one of my high school classmates.

Jim Sebest and I did not run in the same circles back then; in fact, Jim was at times among those who delighted in tormenting me.  But at his core Jim always was a good guy, funny and likeable. Apparently, according to the CaringBridge.org website that has been set up for him, Jim and his family were on vacation at Bethany Beach last week, and Jim was enjoying the surf.  He dove into a wave, and the best they can tell is that he hit his head on the sand. He suffered a fractured vertebrae in his neck, and is presently paralyzed from the neck down.  The good news is that, after undergoing 8 hours of surgery on Friday, his doctors saw no signs of severing or lacerations of the spinal cord, but there is severe swelling and no telling how long that will last.

I had just seen Jim for the first time in 25 years at our Class Reunion in July.  I didn't get to talk with him much - as I said, we didn't run with the same crowds - but despite showing the same signs of being 40+ that we all shared, he seemed to have barely changed.  He was laughing and joking with friends, and had taken part in the Reunion Golf Outing that morning.  Less than a month later, he's in a hospital bed, unable to move or speak and needing a ventilator tube to breathe.

With a little luck, and the thoughts, prayers, love and support of his family and friends, Jim will recover.   Having no indication of severe spinal cord damage means his chances are excellent to regain full mobility.  Think for a moment of those who have had similar accidents, but whose luck was worse.  Think of those who will never recover, those who will spend the rest of their lives unable to move, speak, or breathe on their own. Think of how their lives are changed - how your life would be changed if it happened to you.  Jim was a classmate of mine, so we're roughly the same age, yet I never think of myself as someone who may need Long Term Care in the near future.  At least, I never really thought about until today.

Jim, all my best thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family, and I wish for you a speedy recovery.  I want to read about you leaping up out of that bed very soon.

New Wave for the New Week #81

Bursting out of LA (via Dallas) in 1981 in an explosion of reedy synthesizers, go-go boots, Aqua Net and all the best parts of every Shangri-La's record ever, cracking her pink bubblegum and winking at all the boys, Josie Cotton was - and still is - the ultimate New Wave chick. Her debut album is a nearly perfect artifact of its time; her comeback twenty years later proved she still had the "It-Grrl" factor that her New Wave Girl contemporaries like Dale Bozzio, Terri Nunn and Belinda Carlisle either lost along the way or cast aside in hopes of winning Music Industry approval. Working in tandem with her husband, Geza X, she continues making excellent music today. 

The former Kathleen Josey left Dallas for LA in 1980, and within a year had already made a very loud splash on the scene with her debut single.  Choosing to record a song that was originally meant for but turned down by The Go-Go's, Josie released "Johnny Are You Queer?" as a one-off single for Bomp! Records.  The shock value of the song's lyrics (which seem so incredibly tame today) and built-in controversy got the record a great deal of notice, and Elektra Records snapped up her contract in a flash and rushed her into the studio for a full LP.

1982's Convertible Music is, as noted earlier, nearly perfect, and is utterly necessary to any New Wave record collection.  "Johnny" is included, along with bubbly boppers like "So Close," "Systematic Way," and a nifty cover of The Exciter's "Tell Him." The centerpiece of the album, though, is the wonderful "He Could Be The One," which, although stalling at #74 on the Billboard Hot 100, climbed to #34 on the Billboard Rock chart and was Josie's biggest-selling single (it was also a rare instance of a US single being released mainly on colored vinyl - bubblegum pink, of course.)

Josie became known to a wider audience through her exposure in the 1983 movie Valley Girl, in which she performed both of her hits in addition to an otherwise unreleased cover of Gary U.S. Bonds' "School Is In."

A second album, From The Hip, hit the shelves in 1984 boasting another excellent single, this time a cover of The Looking Glass's "Jimmy Loves Maryann," after which Elektra chose not to renew her contract, and Josie seemed to fade away.

Almost a decade later, in 1993, a French import album called Frightened By Nightingales appeared, credited to "Josey Cotton."  Sounding quite unlike her previous material, this first attempt at a comeback didn't quite catch on, even with diehard fans.  Reverting to the more familiar spelling, Josie and Geza co-founded B-Girl Records and focused on production work, until a wonderful new Josie Cotton album appeared in 2005. Movie Disaster Music revealed a grown-up version of the Josie Cotton we all knew and loved.  Now this was more like it!  The comeback was sealed, though, with 2007's Invasion Of The B-Girls, a wonderful collection of covers of themes and songs from assorted cult movies from the 1960s, led by the utterly fantastic version she recorded of "Maneaters (Get Off The Road)," originally credited to The Faded Blue in Herschel Gordon Lewis' 1968 schlock-fest She Devils On Wheels.  Invasion is another must-have album, every bit as wonderful as Convertible Music had been 25 years before it.  A new album, Pussycat Babylon, is scheduled for release in October, and can be pre-ordered through Amazon.com now.

For a little compare and contrast fun, here are a trio of Josie Cotton clips - first, an audio-only clip if her shocking debut, 1981's "Johnny Are You Queer?"  Then, from the same era, a clip of Josie performing with surf legends The Ventures on the classic "Secret Agent Man."  Finally, representing present-day Josie, the promo clip for "Maneaters (Get Off The Road)."  

New Wave for the New Week #80

The music world is full of talented people capable of creating mesmerizing music and songs that leave you wanting more. Of those, a certain subset become so enamored with themselves and their own talent that they begin to believe every idea they ever have is brilliant and should immediately be captured in the recording studio lest the world be deprived of that brilliance, and where once was an inspired and inspiring musician now sits a pretentious twit no longer capable of separating the good ideas from the crap (Hello Bono! Hello Sting!).

Standing at the front of that line is Welsh-born singer/songwriter Julian Cope. Cope began as one third of a band now far more revered for what its members did afterward than for anything they actually did at the time.  The Crucial Three (ah, see the early seeds of pretension already?) was Pete Wylie, who would go on to form the band Wah!, Ian McCulloch, who would become a star as frontman for Echo & The Bunnymen, and our good Mr. Cope, who upon leaving The Crucial Three made his greatest and least self-congratulatory contributions to the New Wave via his band, The Teardrop Explodes.

Nicking their name from a Marvel Comics panel (Daredevil #77, for those of you who crave such minutiae), The Teardrop Explodes joined bands like Echo & The Bunnymen, The Associates, The Sound and The Chameleons in a swiftly growing scene of retro-psychedelic UK bands beginning to make noise in the early '80s.  Cope's moody, eccentric lyrical imagery and stabs at literary reference, which might have been clunky at best in virtually any other setting, meshed beautifully with the shimmering, soaring melodies of early singles like "Sleeping Gas" and "Bouncing Babies" (both 1979).  In fact, the latter single may have truly triggered Cope's belief in his own hype, it being a rare instance of one band's single being the subject of a song written by another band (in this case, "I Can't Get 'Bouncing Babies' By The Teardrop Explodes" by The Freshies).

Cope was a demanding and exacting frontman - and, as often goes hand-in-hand with such, an exasperating one as well.  Before the band's first album, Kilimanjaro, was even recorded, keyboardist Paul Simpson had had enough, and was replaced by David Balfe. Released in mid-1980, the album proved hugely popular in the UK, with singles "Reward" and "Treason (It's Just A Story)" both charting well.  Despite apparently hitting on a winning formula, the band went through no less than half a dozen personnel changes between the release of Kilimanjaro and the recording of the second album a year later!

Wilder appeared in 1981, and while also quite a good album, it was an album created by nearly an entirely different band.  Cope's ego was beginning to run amuck: while the first album's material was the combined effort of united band, this album's songs were all Cope's solo compositions.  No longer allowing others to temper his product, Cope's creations ranged from excellent ("Passionate Friend") to terrible ("The Great Dominion") to downright silly ("Window Shopping For A New Crown Of Thorns").  The band's popularity slipped noticeably.  By the time a third LP was in the planning stages, more changes in personnel occurred, reducing the band to the core trio of Cope, Balfe and drummer Gary Dwyer.   Mid-way through the recording sessions, Cope fired Balfe and Dwyer and officially dissolved the band, shelved the tapes, and decided to do it all himself.

Cope as a solo artist proved to be utterly unbearable.  Think of B-level Sting after the dissolution of The Police, only with even fewer good ideas and even more belief that everyone needs to hear what he has to say.  Cope floundered towards a goth audience, but they already had ex-Bauhaus leader Peter Murphy doing the morose intellectual act; the rise of Robert Smith with The Cure and Morrissey with The Smiths rendered Cope utterly redundant.

Nonetheless, for a brief shining moment, Cope got it all right.  This week's NW4NW clip captures Cope at his best.  Enjoy The Teardrop Explodes' finest single, "Treason (It's Just A Story)":

R.I.P. Michael Been (1950-2010)

Michael Been, lead singer of The Call, passed away yesterday after suffering a massive heart attack backstage at the Pukkelop Music Festival in Hasselt, Belgium.  He was only 60 years old.

At the time, Been was working as a sound engineer for his son's band, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, but his greatest fame came as the frontman for a band that more than one critic described as an "American U2."   While always respected from within the music industry (Peter Gabriel, Robbie Robertson and even Bono himself were counted among their fans), The Call never quite reached the level of commercial success that their potential seemed to warrant.  They touched the brass ring a few times, however: bolstered by heavy airplay on MTV, 1983's classic "The Walls Came Down" reached the lower rungs of the Top 40; during the 2000 Presidential Campaign, candidate Al Gore used The Call's 1989 single "Let The Day Begin" as his theme song.

Been also dabbled in acting, most notably playing the role of the Apostle John in Martin Scorsese's 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ.

Among my circle of friends, The Call did achieve their rightful status as superstars.  I was only a sophomore in high school when "The Walls Came Down" hit the airwaves, but from the start it found a home on my short list of all-time great songs.  With its hummably insistent riff (da-da-da-DA, da-DA-da), great lyrics, and four-note guitar solo, the song became a favorite among not only my clique, but most everyone I know who has ever heard it.

The album from which it came, Modern Romans, is as good an introduction to the band as you'll find.  Side One is nearly perfect, with "Walls," "Turn A Blind Eye", "Time Of Your Life" (Been does a scarily accurate Jim Morrison on that one), the title track, and the stark "Back From The Front," its a flawless setlist.  Side Two starts to show evidence of The Call's fatal flaw: they tended to load their LPs front-heavy with the best material, with the weaker tunes closing out.  Rather than mixing the filler in to allow context to bring the best out of it, this approach tended to underscore the lesser songs.  The lone exception was 1986's Reconciled, which found that proper mix (although it still led with its strongest track, "Everywhere I Go.")

When they hit their mark, however, no other band could hold a candle to them.  They released eight albums in total, calling it quits after 1990's Red Moon.

In honor of Michael Been, I've chosen the clip for "The Walls Came Down."  (The clip cannot be embedded here, so please follow the link to YouTube when you click on the image below.) You'll spot The Band's Garth Hudson guesting on keyboards here, and you'll be singing the riff in your head for weeks. Goodbye Michael. You will be missed.