Annette's Got The Hits

Annette Funicello passed away today at the age of 70, reportedly from complications brought on by the Multiple Sclerosis she has battled since the late 1980's.  It's easy to pigeonhole Annette Funicello as the wholesome teen starlet from a simpler time, and certainly she was that, but even more she was a pop culture phenomenon.  She was the first bona-fide child star of the TV era, as the 12-year-old who outshone even Cubby on the original Mickey Mouse Club in the 1950's; hers is he image that comes first to mind when swinging '60s beach parties are imagined, celebrated, or lampooned; I first knew of her as the kind-of-cool TV mom who made Skippy peanut butter sandwiches for all the neighborhood kids in those 1970s commercials. She was the model that corporate entertainment still tries to emulate when concocting each next teen idol: she sang, she danced, she acted, she did TV and she did movies, only she did it all without being a prefab creation.  She had a natural ease in front of the camera and real talent.

It may surprise you to learn that my record collection includes two Annette Funicello albums (!), both from 1964. Annette On Campus is a definite oddity, in which she leads two separate singing groups, The Wellingtons and The All American Chorus, cheerleader-style through a collection of the era's college fight songs; Annette at Bikini Beach is a fun romp through a number of (appropriately enough) beach-y tunes, including the excellent semi-title track "Bikini Beach" and a personal all-time favorite "The Monkey's Uncle," on which she joins forces with The Beach Boys in an absolutely irresistible hook-laden pop confection (bubblegum music for the pre-bubblegum era?).  Sure it's true that I do not own these unironically, but part of Annette's charm was that she always seemed to understand just how corny the material she was regularly handed to perform was, even in her most earnest moments.   

In the early 1980s, before they doubled the d and replaced the c with a k, California punks Red Cross penned a tribute of sorts to the ultimate girl-next-door.  In honor of Ms. Funicello's passing, I offer their surf-punk homage, as well as "The Monkey's Uncle."  I think you'll find by listening to them back-to-back, though they were created in different generations, in the pantheon of teenage goofy fun they are surprisingly not too far apart!

R.I.P. Annette.

Gidget Goes To Hell

Finally, we've got some sunshine around these parts and - dare I say it - warm(ish) weather! With the last snowfall as recent as two weeks ago, it was very nice to actually go jacketless this afternoon. Baseball season is underway, and summer is right around the corner.  WOO HOO!

Summer brings with it it's own soundtrack, and we all have our favorite summer songs.  I was overjoyed a couple days ago to find - finally - uploaded to YouTube the impossibly rare video clip for Suburban Lawns' 1980 debut single and New Wave summer classic, "Gidget Goes To Hell."  Directed by Jonathan Demme (!), the clip was aired during the infamous 1980 season of Saturday Night Live.

Suburban Lawns have always been a favorite of mine (click here to read their entry in this blog's old New Wave For The New Week series), and while the actual single has been in my collection for many years, I literally had not seen this video in, well, three decades before stumbling across it last week.  Here it is for your listening and viewing pleasure, every bit as wonderful as I remembered it. Turn it up and welcome the summer!

Now Hear This!

I just looked at my calendar this morning and realized that we're almost halfway through March already! Jeez, where does the time go? It's been awhile since the last round-up of good music you ought to be listening to. Figured it's time to catch you up with what's been blaring from the speakers around Ruttville lately.

It's a big wide Internet out there, and it's full of tunes.  Some are good, some are bad; some you can acquire legitimately, some...well, not so much.  It's enough to make your head spin! Friend, I'm here to help.  I've done the hard part - I've separated the wheat from the chaff and come up with a list of 10 excellent musical curios for your musical curio shelf...er, iPod.  These aural treats are not presented in any particular order, and I am receiving no compensation of any kind from the artists, other than the sheer enjoyment of listening to their creations. Almost all of these are very recent, but some are not. That's just the way it is. Let's dig in!

Grumpy Old Punks
Punk's not dead; it's just old and grumpy.  Also, wickedly funny when served up by LouB, KRoy, Brian, and Guzda, collectively the Grumpy Old Punks. A grand old party perhaps (with the emphasis on old!), but this GOP seriously rocks.  They don't take the easy Weird Al-style parody route; their songs are original and quite solid on their own merits.  These would be killer tracks even if they weren't snarling about their adjustable rate mortgages or wondering where their glasses are.  Two EP's are available, 2011's self-titled debut and last year's Anarchy in the Prostate.  And you must head to their website to catch their as yet unreleased cover of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance." Yes, you read that right. Now get the hell off my lawn!



GABBA
I am utterly embarrassed to admit that I completely missed these guys in 1999 when their simply astounding Leave Stockholm album was issued, but I am definitely playing catch-up now! The so-obvious-it's-oblivious crossbreeding of ABBA and The Ramones works more often than it flops, although the points at which it doesn't quite gel can be enormously disappointing (hopes were so much higher for their take on "S.O.S." than the results produced.) Still when Bjöey and Anneky harmonize on "Waterloo," you wonder why no one else ever thought of this. Genius!



Compressorhead
The machines have taken over, and as it turns out, they just wanna rock.  Stickboy, Fingers, and Bones form "the world's heaviest metal band," the all-robotic Compressorhead. Whipping through head-thunking covers of AC/DC, Motorhead, and The Ramones, these precision machines are programmed to rock and roll all night and party every day.  Listen up, meatbags!



Shear/Shazar
Regular readers of this li'l ol' blog are likely quite familiar with both halves of this husband-and-wife duo who have released their first official collaboration this year (what took them so long?!?).  If you don't know Jules Shear or Pal Shazar, get thee to Google!  Get yerself some Polar Bears and Slow Children records and get yerself schooled, kiddo! Or, better yet, join me in bopping along to some incredibly literate, deeply touching music that manages to be yearning without being unhappy, and manages to be crunchily hippie-ish without reeking of patchouli and weed.  It's folksy, folk-y, and funky, just like the artists who created it.  Outstanding!



Scott Walker
I discovered the music of the enigmatic and fascinating Scott Walker by happening across the excellent documentary 30 Century Man (find it and watch it!). Walker's story is compelling: he achieved and utterly rejected pop stardom in the early '60s UK, became a troubadour in the tradition of Jacques Brel, cultivated a rather purposeful obscurity, and began creating recordings of highly experimental and personal musical expression. His stunning and unmistakeable baritone may be the only continuity in his career's twisting, turning journey, but his works have inspired and influenced many: Brian Eno, David Bowie, Gavin Friday, and Marc Almond, among others, all show up to praise him in the film. Walker has a new album out, his first in six years, Bish Bosch.  The first single from it, "Epizootics!," is jaw-droppingly good:



Palmyra Delran
In the 1990s, Palmyra Delran headed up all-girl punk band The Friggs. These days, she's a solo act; a girl with a guitar and an attitude and, as of last week, a brand new album, You Are What You Absorb.  The first single from it, "Shut Out," has been being played often and loudly around here lately.  Delran bears more than just a passing sonic and vocal resemblance to the late Paula Pierce of The Pandoras, so you know exactly what you're in for. Delran delivers on this cut; can't wait to hear the rest of the LP!


 
The Electric Mess
With a psychedelic paisley-punk farfisa snarl that brings to mind a chance meeting of The Fuzztones and The Three O'Clock on board a yellow submarine, The Electric Mess burst out of NYC a few years back with the in all ways wonderful "You've Become A Witch." This year, they've damn near topped it with the single "The Girl With The Exploding Dress," from their sophomore album Falling Off The Face Of The Earth.  Awesomely good stuff, sez me!



Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
Also on the list of bands with new albums out - or, in this case, soon to be out - is this pleasant surprise: OMD! Always one of my favorites back in the day, OMD's brand of synthpop was a bit more erudite and sophisticated to my ear than the run-of-the-mill stuff of the early '80s.  Songs like "Electricity," "Joan Of Arc," "Souvenir," and "Telegraph" were constantly on my high-school-era playlist, and even when they moved into the more commercial sound of "Tesla Girls," "If You Leave," and "So In Love," they were always a class act.  And now they're back! Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphries, just like the old days! (Yes, yes, I know, the comeback album was actually three years ago when History Of Modern was released. Jeez, do you hafta spoil all my fun?!?) The first sounds from the forthcoming album, English Electric, could have been happily ensconced in the grooves of 1983's majestic Dazzle Ships, which is a good thing - a damn good thing! Behold:



Lifestyle
Freezepop's The Other Sean T. Drinkwater's other band, Lifestyle, has a couple of new releases out via Bandpage.com. At the end of last year the synthpoppers issued a crisp new seven-song set, Artificial, and in January they gave a properly restored and remastered reissue release to 2005's Adventure. Both are excellent, and will carry you back to 1985 on the backs of glistening synth washes and memories of Simple Minds, Spandau Ballet, and later-era Roxy Music.  But, as with Drinkwater's other other band, Lifestyle isn't a nostalgia act.  Their work is solid and enjoyable pop music - and that's not a crime, right?


The Popdogs
If you don't find yourself smiling and tapping your feet along with The Popdogs' debut Cool Cats For Pop Dogs, you probably want to have your fun meter readjusted.  If there isn't already a genre called Sunshine Power Pop, there needs to be, and The Popdogs need to be filed under it.  They jangle like R.E.M. but wear much brighter colors; their songs are catchy and hummable bits of ephemeral ear candy that seem to evaporate upon arrival yet leave joyful echoes bouncing around your head.  Check out the lead track, "Honest Guy," for proof: 

Happy 80th Birthday, Kong!

Today, my favorite movie of all time turns 80 years old.  Seems hard to believe that it has been eight decades since King Kong made his fateful climb up the side of the Empire State Building with the beautiful Ann Darrow in his hand, only to meet his demise at the hands of a squadron of biplanes.  What is not hard to believe is that the movie has endured, finding new audiences with each successive generation.  It is an incredible film, both in story and in production, and despite the limitations of the era in which it was made, it remains far superior in every way to the attempts to remake it in 1976 and 2005.

King Kong was released on March 2, 1933, in the thick of the Great Depression, and still made over $1.8 million in its initial release (adjusted for inflation, that would be the equivalent of over $300 million today).  In 1938, King Kong became the first movie in history to be re-released; it earned another half million the second time around.

Although often lumped in with the monster movies of its day (Frankenstein and Dracula were only two years old at the time of Kong's release), this is no horror movie.  More than anything, Kong is a story of unrequited love; it just happens that the rejected suitor here is a 24-foot tall gorilla.  If Kong is a monster, it is only because he was forced to be one when kidnapped from his home to be put on display in a world he neither knew nor was capable of understanding.  Had Carl Denham and his crew not been constantly in search of the almighty dollar, Kong would have lived out his days in that prehistoric world hidden behind a giant fence on Skull Island without bothering a soul save the occasional triceratops or an unfortunately wandering native.

The acting is most definitely of the style of the era: stage-heavy, but not stilted. Keep in mind, movies had been silent just six years before; subtlety in delivering lines was not yet well developed among the acting community.  Yet Robert Armstrong nearly steals the movie in the role of Carl Denham.  Yes, he is the heavy who steals Kong away from his paradise, but he is also father figure to Fay Wray's Ann Darrow and narrator for the viewing audience.  Armstrong gives the Denham character a depth that makes him hard to truly dislike.  While he is certainly a money-hungry promoter, he truly cares about his crew, about the young actress he pulled into this adventure, and even about the beast he has inadvertently unleashed in New York City.

It would be easy to dismiss Fay Wray's performance as Ann Darrow as a one-dimensional damsel in distress, but she is a surprisingly strong character when she isn't enfolded in a giant ape's paw.  Yes, she is well-known for her screams throughout the picture (many of which were recorded and added in post-production), but watch the subtleties in her reaction shots, and pay attention to her interaction with the crew of Denham's ship, and especially with her less tall suitor, Jack Driscoll, played by Bruce Cabot.

Driscoll, it turns out, is the one-dimensional character here: he is the stereotypical 1930's guy-who-gets-the-girl. He's got the football team captain looks and spouts the right lines at the right times, but possesses not an ounce of either personality or insight.  Whether it was Cabot's intent to play Driscoll that way or inability to do better, the flatness of our wanna-be hero's presence actually works far better in the film than a charismatic, engaging presence would have.  Nothing should (nor, in truth, could) distract from the true star here.

So much has been written about Willis O'Brien's absolutely astounding special effects given the era in which the film was made that space need not be wasted parroting all of that well-deserved praise here.  All one needs to do is compare the 1933 Kong with the robotic 1976 version and the CGI'd 2005 version to see that a tiny miniature and a stop-motion camera many moons before brought more life and emotion out of Kong than more modern and supposedly more sophisticated technologies did decades later.  Through his facial expressions and body language, you know what Kong is thinking and feeling at every moment.  And if you do not find yourself shedding a tear for Kong at the end, when Denham delivers the film's classic closing line, "It wasn't the planes. It was Beauty killed the beast," you may want to check to see if you actually have a soul.  Of all the characters, it is the wild giant ape who is the most human.

If you have never seen the original King Kong, it is simply a glaring omission from your life experience list that you must correct.  If you can, find the 2005 DVD issue which presents the most complete version of the film available, at a running time of 104 minutes.

Happy 80th birthday, Kong!

Let's Go Surfing!

So you're sitting around on a Sunday night with not a lot to do, no desire to watch a Hillbilly Handfishing marathon or whatever other mindless programming the idiot box might spew at you, and no wish to prattle on endlessly about what you had for lunch on Facebook or Twitter?  Bored to pieces and looking for something new and different to fill up that empty space in the back of your mind? Friends, I'm here to help with yet another collection of some of the coolest, awesomest, and all-around bestest things I've found on the big, wide Internets lately.  Check 'em out and enjoy:

Network Awesome

Those of you who remember the heady days of the early-'80s cable boom will probably recall spending many a Friday and Saturday night sitting blurry-eyed in front of the TV trying desperately to stay awake to see all four hours of the then-fledgling USA Network's greatest contribution to pop culture history, Night Flight.  If you are among those smiling in fond remembrance of that program, you need to bookmark Network Awesome immediately.  Just as Night Flight did in the era when folks were abandoning network television product for the uncharted frontier of cable content, so Network Awesome does in the now when folks are trading in their cable boxes and bloated cable bills to find better, more imaginative content online.

Network Awesome repurposes content in much the same way Night Flight did thirty-odd years ago: the site's ever-expanding crew of curators sift through the immense amount of detritus filling online video sites to find rare gems in the form of long-forgotten  documentaries, episodes of foreign TV shows, short-subject animations and independent films, music videos both popular and obscure, and just enough original production to tie everything together into loose "themes" for each day's six-hour block of programming.  Rare concert footage, bizarre broadcast experiments, and programming not seen in decades is not only presented, but examined in short essays. Watch what you want, when you want - everything is archived. You are likely to find something fascinating that you never knew was out there.  Don't waste time with sites that simply stream internet versions of cable product (I'm looking at you, Hulu). Not when there is Network Awesome to be had!

Greta's Records

I'm not one who normally goes for Tumblr blogs.  Never really got the whole point.  There some good ones out there, a handful of which even appear on this site's Blogroll.  But it always seems to me that there is some special secret way I'm supposed to interact with Tumblr blogs that I don't understand, so I feel like I'm not in the club when I'm visiting one. (Do not even get me started on Pinterest! That's thoroughly alien territory from where I sit!)

That said, filmmaker Allison Andrews has created a Tumblr blog that just may prove to be my gateway into that secret club, because of its utterly fascinating subject.  Ms. Andrews went out and bid on a lot 50 record albums from the estate of movie legend Greta Garbo, and dangit if she didn't win!  Armed with this stack of celebrity-owned vinyl, she pulls one album from the lot for each post, and not only plays and shares the music within, but attempts to glean something about the famously enigmatic star's deeply private world from the choices she made at whichever record shops she frequented.  She was a Beatles fan? She was hep to Professor Longhair? She did the Twist?!? The things Garbo chose to listen to when she "vanted to be alone" are truly fascinating, and Andrews does an excellent job of exploring the unanswerable question that seems to pop up with each selection: what is this record doing in Greta Garbo's collection? 

Hope From Nope

One of everyone's great fears is the fear of rejection, no matter what form that rejection takes. Whether it is a fear of social rejection that is keeping you from asking that special someone out, fear of professional rejection that stops you from presenting your ideas to your boss, or whatever rejection you fear in a given moment, it can be paralyzing, humbling, and at times, humiliating.  But can the fear of rejection, seemingly hardwired in us, be overcome, as many other phobias can, through aversion therapy?

That question is the basis of entrepeneur and blogger Jia Jiang's Hope From Nope project.  Subtitled "100 Days of Rejection Therapy," Jiang's project is to go out each day for 100 days and ask a random person for something that he will most certainly be refused, record the interaction on video, and blog about the results.  In doing so, Jiang reverses the standard expectation of personal interaction: in this project, being accepted is actually failure while being rejected is the success sought.  The results are both hysterical and deeply insightful. Starting out nervously asking a security guard if he can borrow $100 on Day 1, Jiang has shown a marked increase in confidence and poise as he has steadily worked through his self-prescribed therapy. He has asked for a "burger refill" at Five Guys, he has challenged a local CEO to a staring contest, danced with a mall Santa and attempted to name his own price at Dollar Tree.  Entertaining and inspiring - check it out!

MajorScaled TV
Feeling a bit low lately? Overtaken by moodiness? Are the grey skies of winter causing your seasonal affective disorder to kick into overdrive? Well, spend some time over at Vimeo with MajorScaled TV, and you will have the musical frown turned upside-down!  Not sure how this digital magic is worked, but MajorScaled TV somehow takes recordings of great downbeat minor-scale tunes reworks them with their major-scale equivalent chords, recasting the dirge into a bright sunshiny piece of poppy ear candy guaranteed to set your toes a-tappin'.   It's like listening to a radio transmission from a parallel universe where there are no hassles, man, just good vibes.  Behold as The Doors' "Riders On The Storm" morphs into an easy-listening smilefest. Marvel as Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" comes back sounding happily lobotomized.  And, well, just listen to R.E.M. sounding shinier and happier than ever:



Jimmy Slonina
OK, if MajorScaled TV didn't put a smile on your face, then a few minutes with Jimmy Slonina certainly will.  You remember as a kid standing in front of a mirror lip-synching to to your records your the radio?  Come on, fess up - we all did it.  Well Jimmy still does it, only these days in front of a video camera. The fact that he is blessed with a very expressive face and clearly has a brilliant sense of humor helps immensely, and if you can get through his takes on "Under Pressure," the theme from Hong Kong Phooey, or "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" without cracking a grin, there may be no hope for you. And if this run-through of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You" doesn't do the trick, well, just go in a corner and mope until you're ready to join the rest of us in hysterics over here!




The Pitch Drop Experiment

The science geek in me has always been intrigued by the concept of time and how surprisingly elastic it can be.  You may recall in one of my Now Hear This! posts back in August, I directed your attention to the work of an artist named Buttress O'Kneel who was working with songs slowed down and stretched out to almost incomprehensible length (check that post to listen to "Heaven," in which she stretched a recording of "Stairway to Heaven" out to 77 minutes and 7 seconds.) Experiencing things on such extreme time scales forces a re-evaluation of time itself, as you quickly learn that even in immense slowness, things can occur that are so quick you might miss them.

Underscoring that concept is an ongoing experiment at The University of Queensland in Australia. In 1927, Professor Thomas Parnel put a bit of pitch, a highly viscous tar-like substance that, at room temperature, appears to be solid yet is actually a liquid, into a funnel over a jar, and let it begin to drip. Over 85 years later, the pitch has dripped only eight times - yet when it does eventually drip, the drop falls so quickly that, to date, no one has actually seen it happen!  The ninth drop has been on the verge of dripping for about five years now, and these days there is a webcam trained on the funnel in the hopes to finally catch the event.  There are pitch geeks around the globe who keep the webcam page open day and night hoping to see it live. Me, I just check in every now and then. You might want to also. You just might see something no one has ever seen before!

Vegan Black Metal Chef
So you say you're a vegan who is into death metal, but you just don't have time to cook a decent meal? Pish posh! Since 2011, Brian Manowitz has been posting video tutorials on making quick, easy, and delicious vegan dishes that even the least versed in culinary arts can follow - just be sure to crank the volume! This is right out of the Things I Wish I'd Thought Of file, and is just sheer brilliance!  Must be seen to be believed and yet there he is, exactly as promised in the name. Mr. Manowitz, you see, is the Vegan Black Metal Chef. This is not your parents' cooking show, my friends.  The guy makes a mean pad thai, lemme tell you:




Zombo.com

Far and away my favorite site on the entire Internets.  If you have never been to Zombo.com, you must stop everything you are doing right now and go to Zombo.com!  There simply is no other site like Zombo.com. You can do anything at Zombo.com! Zombo.com is the site we never knew we needed until it was here. Zombo.com is the epitome of websites; the ultimate purpose for having an Internet in the first place. You will never feel so welcome, at ease, and at home as you will at Zombo.com. Don't waste time just reading about Zombo.com - go now to Zombo.com! You will be so happy you visited Zombo.com. I'm going there now - meet you at Zombo.com!

Unclogging the Blogging

Try as I may, I cannot seem to get a blog post written lately.

Oh, it's not for lack of ideas. There are plenty of things I want to write about. There is music to share, sites to recommend, internal anxieties to comment upon - the usual stuff of this blog.

But there's other stuff, too. I would like to write about my time in college radio, share a few stories from back in the day. I'm eager for baseball season to begin. Last year I hardly wrote about The Grand Old Game or my beloved Phillies at all, yet I still get several hits each week on a few of my older baseball posts: The 8 Ways a Batter Can Reach First Base, 10 Damn Good Reasons to Be a Phillies Fan, and 12 of the Greatest Baseball Player Names in History all rank among my most often read posts.  Plus, without my cheering them on last year, the Phils had an extremely tough year. My team needs me!

I want to comment more on current events. I want to get back into posting more of my creative writing more often. I want to share the hilarious antics of Edison and Amadeus.

So it's not lack of ideas.

Lack of time? Well, admittedly my world has been hectic lately, but when isn't it? Nah, that's too easy an excuse. There is always time. There's time while I'm waiting for the bus, time while I'm on lunch break, time when I'm letting my eyes glaze over watching something dumb on TV (although no one needs to be bad-mouthing Amish Mafia now, ya hear?)

It seems, then, that to get the blog posts going again, I need to just, well, get the blog posts going again. Just sit down and write. Just write.

Can it be that simple?

Well damn, that's what I did tonight, and lookit - a blog post! 

Vinyl Geekdom and A Song I Never Knew Was Actually A Cover

My fellow record collector geeks out there will attest to the fact that each of us who while away hours thumbing through threadbare copies of Glen Campbell LPs, faded Firestone Christmas compilations, and the assorted other wretchedness that inhabit milk crates in dusty corners of thrift shops or fill the dollar bin tables at record shows, or who relentlessly scan auction site postings and mail-order lists, all in the hope of finding that unexpected gem or long-sought piece of vinyl - especially at can-you-believe-it prices - feels the same abundant joy on those rare occasions when such a search pays off.  Sure, nowadays you can easily shell out the big bucks online for a copy of just about anything, or find it ripped to mp3 on some obscure shareblog, but it isn't the same, man, it's just not the same.

There's an unparalleled exuberance in bringing that amazing find home and giving it that first spin on your own turntable that defies description for those born without the vinyl geek gene.  Sure, even in the most extreme cases of finding "holy grail" records after sometimes literally years of searching, we pretty much already know what the records sound like. It's the having of it, the owning the physical product, the wondering about the life story of the copy now in our hands (...how many people have owned and loved it before us? what records did it share shelf space with? why would anyone have ever parted with it to begin with but boy am I glad they did...).  We instantly become Daffy Duck awash in treasure: "Mine, mine, mine!"

On truly wonderful occasions, though, the vinyl grooves of our new-found treasure reveal stunning new things to us, as happened to me with my first vinyl find of the new year.  Finally found a surprisingly cheap copy of a 1977 UK punk compilation called Streets, which I've been looking for for some time for two reasons: first, it's one of only a few vinyl appearances of The Doll, a great unheralded band I have written about here before; second, its catalog number is BEGA 1 - the first album released on the Beggars Banquet label, which was very important in the independent record scene of the first punk era.  It's a decent encapsulation of the second-tier scene in early UK punk, and many of it's tracks already exist elsewhere in my collection: "Cranked Up Really High" by Slaughter and the Dogs, "Ain't Bin To No Music School" by The Nosebleeds, John Cooper Clarke's "Innocents," heck, even The Doll's cut, "Trash," has been in my singles box for quite awhile.   But among the tracks I was not familiar with was what I have since learned is the only vinyl release of a song here titled "Talk Talk Talk Talk" by virtual unknowns The Reaction.

When The Reaction's track started, my ears perked up immediately. Opening with a fantastically skittish riff that settles into a choppy mod jam (pun intended), this is the kind of song I love. But then the vocals hit and...hey wait a minute...I know these lyrics!

"Well yeah I told you before when I was up, society was bringing me down..."

One of my favorite songs of the MTV synth-pop era was "Talk Talk" by a group called Talk Talk. Talk Talk would later have a big worldwide pop hit with "It's My Life," later made a hit again by No Doubt, but in 1982 they were skinny-tie New Wavers with this incredible song.  But I had no idea - no freaking idea! - that it was actually a cover of an old punk tune!  A bit of Googling taught me that Talk Talk's lead singer Mark Hollis had been, in earlier years, the singer for a little-known punk group.  Yeah, that's Mark on The Reaction cut alright!

The Reaction's total vinyl output seems to have been this track on the Streets compilation and two other tracks on a one-off single (now added to my "holy grail" list, natch), which is a damn shame because oh man does this original version of this killer track sizzle!  I am happily stunned!

For your listening pleasure, here is the MTV classic as most people know the song, "Talk Talk" by Talk Talk, followed by the original, "Talk Talk Talk Talk" by The Reaction. Compare and decide. Me, I've got some crate digging to do!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Safe and Happy New Year with a handful of musical Christmas-y goodness! See you in 2013!

Side Four

Today this humble little blog celebrates four years online!  Quite amazing to think that when I was posting my first screed bemoaning the inconsiderate behavior of so many folks at Lancaster's historic Central Market on this date in 2008 that it would grow to 467 posts read by 14,060 unique visitors representing 117 different countries across the globe! I thank each and every one of you - whether you're a regular reader or just happened to stumble upon the site by chance - for being willing to take in my rantings, ravings and recommendations, for cheering me on in my battles against my demons, for being my road companion to many live shows, and for bearing with me through my occasional hiatuses (or, perhaps, hiati?).  You make this worth it; you give this blog purpose.  You have my gratitude.

I've been trying to determine the best way to celebrate four years in today's post, when it struck me that perhaps it might be time to provide at least a partial answer to the question I am often asked, How did I start listening to all that weird music I write about so often in the first place?  There are many factors which came together to shape my musical tastes, many of which are near impossible to truly pin down.  But there is one major influence that is easy to point to.  And what better time than Year Four of the blog to write about Side Four?

Side Four are words spoken in my family in the hushed tones reserved for Very Special Things Indeed.  While our reactions to Side Four varied then and vary now, all of the members of my family know Side Four very well. We were all, in some way, affected by it.

In the late 1960s/early 1970s, Warner Bros. Records issued a series of mail-order only compilation albums the called Loss Leaders.  The concept was a good one: folks will gamble a dollar a record to hear a selection of new music, will probably find a couple tunes they really like, and then are likely to pony up the dough for a full album or two by those artists who caught their ear. Most of these were two-record sets for $2, and my parents had several of the good ones including one that is often heralded as among the best of the bunch, 1970's The Big Ball.  Boasting excellent tracks from stalwarts like Arlo Guthrie, Neil Young and The Beach Boys; psychedlic folksters like The Pentangle and a pre-Stevie Nicks/Christine McVie Fleetwood Mac; and now-forgotten gems from The Fifth Avenue Band and Savage Grace, The Big Ball captures the turn of the decade from the groovy 60s to the far out 70s as well as any album you might name.  For three sides of its two records, that is.  Then there was Side Four.

Side Four held within its grooves a host of forbidden delights, a cornucopia of crazed cacophonies, the most geeked out stuff you ever heard.  It was wild, it was vulgar, it was rude, it was in your face.  And it changed the way I listened to music.  Warner Bros. had given Frank Zappa a sub-label of his own, Straight/Bizarre Records, to which he could sign any act he chose and let them record with relatively unrestricted artistic freedom.  Side Four collected several of these, along with some like-minded artists, in an offering of pre-punk underground anti-mainstream performances that, in hindsight, boggle the mind that they existed in the same world - on the same compilation! - with James Taylor and Joni Mitchell and Small Faces.

Side Four begins with Ed Sanders founder and leader of one of the more notorious subversive hippie bands of the era, The Fugs. Sanders warbles/shouts "The Iliad," a ironic character study of the typical insensitive intolerant good ol' boy of the day who hated those longhaired, drug-tokin', obviously queer hippies with their free love and peace and all that. Ed spits that hatred in your face and dares you to wipe it off, and in the process predates the far more "commercially acceptable" Charlie Daniels tale of "Uneasy Rider" by at least three years:



Up next, The GTOs warble giddily about "The Captain's Fat Theresa Shoes". The GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously...or Organically...or Orgasmicly...or, as they declare on their lone album, 1969's Permanent Damage, "all those other O's") were a group formed by a bunch of honest-to-goodness groupies led by the infamous Pamela des Barres.  Their childlike chanting and simplistic music would have fit in perfectly with the New Wave era:



Following that, the Captain himself!  The late Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart, had recently released his yet-unequalled masterpiece Trout Mask Replica, and from it the stunning "Ella Guru" was plucked for this collection. With shifting rhythms and odd time signatures, the surprisingly catchy shoulda-been-hit inspired many, from Pere Ubu to Tom Waits.  It remains a classic:



Zappa himself shows up for a bit of a doo-wop goof with The Mothers of Invention celebrating a well known poor-man's drink of the day. "WPLJ" (white port and lemon juice) goes down just a smoothly as its namesake...and slowly eats away at your guts, again just like its namesake:



At this point, Side Four hits its crescendo, with a visit from the legendary Wild Man Fischer.  Fischer was a street singer who suffered from severe schizophrenia, who was known to hang out on Sunset Strip shouting his "songs" at the top of his lungs for anyone who would pay him a dime to hear one.  Zappa corralled Larry (Wild Man's given name) into a recording studio, put a microphone in front of him and rolled tape. Zappa found studio musicians to put a musical bed under some of the more "melodic" compositions, allowing others to stand in stark a capella harshness.  The resultant album, An Evening With Wild Man Fischer, is a stunning creation which will leave you wondering just how blurred the line between celebration and exploitation truly is. (For a truly emotion-wrenching experience, dig up the documentary on Fischer's life, Derailroaded, and then ask yourself where that line is.)  For The Big Ball, Warner Bros. created an elsewhere unavailable hybrid of two tracks from Evening, the absolutely wonderful (if lyrically inscrutable) "The Taster" and its explanatory companion track "The Story Of The Taster." Here are both as they appear in their original forms:



Finally, the tour of the bizarre ends with a remarkably straightforward little piece of folky sunshine, Pearls Before Swine's "Footnote."  Kind of like a palette cleanser after an exotic meal, "Footnote" brings you safely back to the real world after surviving Side Four:



In those six tracks, you can hear so many sounds that clearly influenced my musical choices later in life. And the most telling thing about Side Four?  There is a seventh and final song on that side, one that I seldom ever listened to then or now.  I have never been able to stomach much at all from The Grateful Dead. A few songs here and there are OK, but the endless, formless jam-band concept is one I've never been too keen on. So, for all my love of Side Four, the seven-plus minutes of "Turn On Your Love Light" that seems oddly tacked on at the end is as out of place as I would be at a Grateful Dead show.  (Apologies to my Deadhead friends - I respect your love of the band. Just never was and never will be my thing. Peace?)

So, after four years, a peek into what made me, well, me.  Stick around for the next four years, friends!

Six Word Sunday

Patience, my friends, shall be rewarded.