New Wave for the New Week #2

Top o' the mornin' to ya!

St. Patrick's Day is Tuesday, so I thought it only fitting that this week's clip should come to us from the Emerald Isle. In fact, the luck of the Irish shines upon you: this week I thought I double shot was in order!

First off, the band that Trouser Press once dubbed "the best band ever to come from Northern Ireland," The Undertones. Starting with 1978's "Teenage Kicks", The Undertones put together a string of fantastic punky/power-poppy records that swiftly earned them the nickname "the Irish Ramones." While you can definitely hear that influence in their earliest material, by 1980 they had settled into a moodier, almost neo-psychedelic sound (check out 1980's "Wednesday Week" or 1981's "Beautiful Friend" to hear for yourself.) Sadly, the ride was over in 1983 when lead singer Feargal Sharkey left to pursue a solo career. The Undertones have reunited a few times in recent years for the occasional shows, but the magic of their moment is captured best where and when it started - in 1978, with "Teenage Kicks":

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

Now then, no St. Patrick's Day is complete around my house without a good bit o' The Pogues! Also rising out of the Irish punk scene, The Pogues (shortened from Pogue Mahone, or "kiss my ass" in Irish slang) combined the energy and attitude of the era with traditional Irish folk music. 1986's Rum, Sodomy and the Lash brought The Pogues to most people's attention, and it is simply a stunning album. In honor of St. Patrick's Day, lift a mug of green beer along with Shane MacGowan and his band (who, in this clip, looks as though he's had more than a few - it's one of the most classic examples of drunken lip-syncing you'll ever see!) and sing along with "Sally MacLennane"



Again, if you have suggestions for clips for future installments of NW4NW, please let me know in the comments. For now, a Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all, and may you be half an hour in heaven before the Devil knows you're dead!

And Here I Thought We Had an April 15 Deadline...

This one'll leave you with jaw agape, I'm sure -- it certainly left me staring blankly at my screen.

No wonder the Democrats don't understand why hard working people get upset to learn that their tax money is being spent frivolously or "redistributed" to those who refuse to contribute to society in any meaningful way. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D - NV) explains here that, in the United States, taxes are VOLUNTARY!



"Now who can argue with that? I think we are all indebted to Gabby Johnson here for clearly stating what had to be said. And I'm glad the children were here today to hear that speech. Not only was it authentic frontier gibberish...but it expressed a courage that is little seen in this day and age."

- David Huddleston as Olson Johnson in Blazing Saddles

Update: The Steve LeVeille Broadcast

Ben Goodman, the force behind the immensely successful Bring Back Steve LeVeille campaign launched in January in response to WBZ's decision to lay off LeVeille and replace his overnight program with a syndicated one, will be live in the studio during tonight's Broadcast.

Goodman isn't certain whether he'll be on air or not (knowing LeVeille, my bet is "yes"), but he received the invite when he called in during LeVeille's first night back on the air.

For all of you who supported the effort to bring Steve back to WBZ's airwaves, and for those who just may have been interested in passing by the pieces I wrote on this blog here and here, tune in tonight to WBZ 1030 AM, or listen to live streaming of the broadcast on WBZ's website, tonight from midnight to 5:00. You just may hear the voice of the fellow who started the wave!

The Cost of Being "Nice"

Image via Wikipedia

No sooner do I put up a post declaring that nothing has caught my eye or ear to rant about lately than, sure enough, Stupidity pops its ugly head out of its hole and yells "Hey Bryan...over here!"

Pennsylvania's Liquor Control Board announced that this month it will begin a campaign to train the state's 4000+ State Store employees in the art of common courtesy. Basically, how to be nice to customers.

For those of you who live in states that do not have the bizarre and outdated alcohol laws that we have here in good ol' PA, the State Store is the only place where you can purchase wine and liquor. Let me stress: the ONLY place. It is, in essence, a government-imposed monopoly. Apparently, state-wide, the feeling of those people who work behind the registers at these State Stores is "Why should I have to act humanly towards these people? It's not like they can take their business elsewhere!"

As a part of what the LCB's chief executive Joe Conti calls "...the renaissance of the Liquor Control Board," an effort needs to be made to correct this perceived behavior. Hence, a training program focusing on how to pleasantly greet a customer, perhaps help with the customer's purchase, and how to thank the customer and invite him back after the transaction is complete.

You know: manners. The stuff your parents should have taught you when you were a child.

Now, I have no problem whatsoever with the idea of teaching those in any service-oriented job the importance of being polite and helpful to the customer. It seems, sadly, that basic customer service is swiftly going the way of the dinosaur; customer service that goes above and beyond to help with a purchase or answer questions is rarer still. More than one pundit has declared recently that those businesses which begin practicing stronger customer service are the ones most likely to survive and perhaps thrive in this tough economic world.

I should also point out that, in my dealings with State Store employees over the years, I have never run into a clerk who was less than pleasant. Where these rudely grunting oafs of employees who need to be retrained are I don't know. If we're going to teach anyone how to better treat the customer, it should be the nation's grocery store checkout folks. "Lesson one: Don't chomp your gum while scanning my produce. Lesson two: I'm right in front of you. Don't yell over my head to the next checkout person about how hard you partied last night..."

But, for whatever reason, the State feels this is necessary. OK. So how hard can this be? Maybe a day-long seminar with a morning lesson and afternoon role-playing, run on location by each store's manager?

No. To do this, the state of Pennsylvania feels it necessary to hire an outside consulting firm, the Pittsburgh-based Solutions 21, to spend the next year (!) facilitating this training at a cost of over $170,000 dollars.

Let me repeat that: A full year at more than $170,000 to teach people to say "Hello," "May I help you?" and "Thank you, please stop by again!" with a smile on their face.

And it gets better: The president of Solutions 21, the consulting company hired at this unreal rate to perform this virtually unnecessary training? Married to the LCB's Pittsburgh area regional manager. Of course, they see "no conflict of interest" in this arrangement.

Let me make this offer to Governor Rendell: I'll save the state thousands of dollars right now. I don't even ask for reimbursement at all - it's this simple: print out the announcement I've written below and pass it out to all state store employees.

Attention all PA State Store Employees - new procedures in effect immediately!

1. When a customer enters the store, smile and say "Hello!"

2. If the customer appears to be struggling with his choice of beverage, offer to help by smiling and saying "May I help you find something?"

3. If a customer asks a question, smile and answer it to the best of your ability.

4. After concluding the transaction with the customer, smile and say "Thank you for your business. Please stop by again!"

Favorite Five Comedy Routines

There are some comedy routines that you hear once and they're funny, but they just don't hold up well upon repeated hearings. And then there are those that leave you in tears laughing again and again no matter how many times you hear them. You might even know the routine by heart, be able to recite it word for word, and you still double over in hysterics when you hear it. That's what this list is about. These are my favorite five. Let's do this countdown style, shall we?

#5 - Rowan Atkinson's Amazing Jesus
British humor seems to either strike me as utterly unfunny or utterly hysterical. Seldom do I find any middle ground - must be a cultural thing. Nonetheless, Atkinson is one Brit who never fails to leave me laughing, whether he's doing his slapstick Mr. Bean shtick or doing something a bit more cerebral, like this.



#4 - Andy Kaufman's Old MacDonald
Ah, the Genius himself. Kaufman is one of my favorite comedians of all time, and the very fact that most people didn't "get" what he was doing is sad. He was (and probably still is) way ahead of most other comedians, essentially doing meta-comedy (the comedy itself is often the butt of the joke). I almost went with the classic Mighty Mouse routine, but this one actually builds on that premise by involving audience participation...even if they had no idea what they were participating in until it happened!

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

#3 - Larry Miller's Five Stages of Drinking
The best comedy is always rooted firmly in truth, and (to be cliched) in holding a mirror up to ourselves when we are at our worst. Hence Miller's classic routine - we've all either been there or seen many a person who has.

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

#2 - Groucho and Chico Marx's Contract Scene from A Night at the Opera
Hard to top the Marx Brothers when it comes to funny. This particular bit is a classic piece of silliness and punnery. Pay attention to the apparent throw-away lines: Groucho saying "You must've been out on a tear last night" when he does is so perfectly timed.



#1 - Bob and Ray's Slow Talker
Absolutely the funnniest bit I have ever heard. The characters here are so perfectly portrayed, and even though you'll know what's coming from the halfway mark on, it's brilliantly funny. You know the frustration of dealing with someone so oblivious to the obvious, and therein lies the hilarity.



All right, gang, those my faves. What are yours?

New Wave for the New Week

Plastics (via last.fm)

Happy Monday, everyone. Sorry to go through another posting dryspell - nothing is catching my eye or ear to rant about lately. But, I don't want to leave you unentertained, so I have come up with a few regular features to begin debuting on the blog. This is the first of them: New Wave for the New Week will be a regular Monday feature, where I will dig up some long-forgotten new wave video clip to help get your week started out on a good note. Suggestions/requests are welcomed - leave them in the comments, and I'll see what I can do.

The clip I've chosen for the first post of this series is a bit of a rarity. The only place I have ever seen the Plastics' video clip for Top Secret Man was on the old and fondly remembered SCTV; indeed, the clip you see here is cut from that show (hence the very un-PC opening bit). The video and song are from 1979, the very height of the New-Wave era.

The Plastics' two Japanese albums, 1979's Welcome Plastics and 1980's Origato Plastico are leaps and bounds better than the watered down American release Plastics (also known as Welcome Back), where the key songs from the original LPs were actually rerecorded to better suit "American musical palettes." While this may have resulted in slicker production, the quirkiness and angular DIY feel of the original recordings was lost, along with much of their personality. All three are worth picking up if you can find them, though. They have all been issued on CD, but have gone out of print and now fetch a pretty penny on Amazon.com.

The clip used the original Japanese version of the song. It is obviously dated, using early video techniques, but that is a large part of its charm. You'll hear echoes of The B-52s, Devo and Suburban Lawns here, so if you like that sound, this will be right up your alley. The darn thing just makes me smile, which is why I picked it.

So, without further delay, here is your New Wave for the New Week: Top Secret Man by The Plastics:

Top Secret Man - The Plastics

Broadcasting Legend Paul Harvey Passes Away at 90

Image via Wikipedia

There have been many great and memorable voices broadcast through the atmosphere since Marconi's wireless radio became a fixture in almost every household, but anyone who ever heard Paul Harvey and his twice-daily editorials would put his name on the short list of the most memorable and the very best.

For over 50+ years, Harvey presented news and commentary (often more commentary then news, but that was part of his charm) with a style that echoed and combined Walter Winchell's stacatto bulletin-reading, Edward R. Murrow's incisive journalistic instincts, and Walter Cronkite's warmth and trustworthiness to create a wholly unique persona that was all of those and none of them at once.

Harvey was as easily identified by his catch-phrases as his voice:

- His famous opening, "Hello Americans, standby for news!"

- After finishing his first story of the day, a pause and then, "....Page two."

- At the end of almost every report: "And now you know the rest of the story."

- And his signature sign-off: "This is Paul Harvey.........good day!"

I once saw an interview with Harvey where he let everyone in on the secret of his sign-off: he would actually use his wristwatch to tick off the 5 seconds between "This is Paul Harvey" and "Good day." In a medium where dead air is the bane of every programmer and formatter who ever lived, Harvey understood how effective silence could be - that people tend to listen more intently when he said nothing for a moment or two than if he ranted and screamed into the microphone.

Paul Harvey passed away today in Arizona. He was 90 years old. Harvey was one of the last of a swiftly disappearing breed of broadcasters, and he will be deeply missed.

Mr. Obama's Fuzzy Facts

Image by jmtimages via Flickr

So, we're a little over a month into the Presidency of Barack Obama. I wonder how different these past 30+ days have been from what he envisioned. He was all revved up to "hit the ground running," and he started stumbling right out of the gate! Blagojevich-gate cast a pall over the transition period, no less than three of his appointees for major positions within his Team were shown to be tax cheats (causing two of them to "withdraw from consideration"), his half-brother was arrested for drug possession, his efforts to reach across the aisle have been rebuffed at every turn. Surely this wasn't what he thought he was getting himself into!

For as much as he had campaigned on a promise to change Washington, he had better learn to play the Washington game considerably better than he has been playing it if he hopes to survive it. He's going to have to adapt, adopt and adjust quickly, lest he endure four full years of this Washington culture of digging up skeletons and political progress-blocking stalling every effort he makes toward his goals.

Indeed, he's already taken the first tentative steps into par-for-the-course politics-as-usual: in Mr. Obama's first speech as President before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, it seems the old tried-and-true strategy of refusing to let facts get in the way of a good story was his choice of gameplan.

The non-partisan public advocate site FactCheck.org (which everyone should bookmark or subscribe to) reviewed the speech, and reports that President Obama sure seemed to get a lot of things wrong:

* He said "we import more oil today than ever before."

* He claimed his mortgage plan would never help those who borrowed beyond their means.

* He claimed health care costs cause bankruptcies in America "every 30 seconds."

* He stated that the automobile was invented in America.

* He said the transcontinental railroad was completed during the Civil War.

* He claimed that his stimulus plan "prevented the layoffs" of 57 Minneapolis police officers.

* He said that the CHIP program only provides health insurance for those children whose parent's work Full-Time.

Every single one of these assertions turns out to be either completely false or, at best, exaggerated and distorted. Yet, these "facts" are among those on which he is basing the defense of his stimulus plan and proposed budget. (Read the article at FactCheck.org to get in-depth discussion of each point - what he actually said in the speech and what the real truth is. You can read that article here.)

So, before even half of the high-scrutiny First 100 Days of his Presidency have passed, is President Obama becoming the very type of typical Washington politician he railed so hard against in his campaign? The line between maintaining the support of the idealistic youth vote that helped to sweep him into office (and, indeed, his own optimism) and doing what he will have do to accomplish his goals (get down in the muck with the Washington crowd) is razor thin. How long can he walk that line? How long before the notoriously fickle American public begins to turn?

15 Albums That Changed My Life

One of the current memes making the rounds on Facebook is the 15 Songs/Albums/Records meme. Here's how it goes:

Think of 15 songs, CDs, or LPs that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life, dug into your soul; Music that brought you to life when you heard it. Royally affected you, kicked you in the whatchamacallit, socked you in the gut, is what I mean. Then when you finish, tag 15 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you're it!

Well, given my love and knowledge of music, I was tagged quite often on this one, and it took awhile to put together my response. Today I did, so I thought I might share it here, as well as add some video for each entry:

This was a surprisingly difficult assignment for me, mainly because it was so very, very tough to pare down the list just 15. So, with the caveat that there are indeed many other records that could justifiably be placed right alongside these, and with the knowledge that the particular list of 15 might be very different if you asked me in a month, in a week, or even tomorrow, here's a pretty solid list of 15 records that changed my world (in no particular order):

1. Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes (1982)
This is the album that anyone who knows me must expect to be here. The album is nearly perfect: ten songs without a clinker in the bunch; a sparse acoustic minimalistic sound that manages also to be darkly claustrophobic and sinister; Gordon Gano's Jonathan-Richman-trying-to-be-Lou-Reed vocals; and lyrics that are at once anguished and hysterical (culminating in the plaintive cry of "Why can't I get just one fuck?" in Add It Up). Brilliant.



2. Sparks - A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing (1972)
Never has any band ever had such a spot-on inherent sense of how a pop song should sound and yet so firmly refuse to write pop songs. Straddling the ground between 60s psychedelia and 70s prog rock (but in truth belonging to neither genre), Woofer was sprung upon an unsuspecting and criminally apathetic public almost 4 decades ago, and the rest of the music world has yet to catch up. Musically, the album dabbles in bubblegum, acid rock, chamber music, and pseudo-opera, often combining styles within the same song; lyrically the album covers subject matter no one else writes songs about, often being wickedly funny in the process: Girl from Germany discusses the concerns of Jewish parents about their son's new love; Here Comes Bob describes a young Lothario who meets women via automobile accidents he causes; Moon Over Kentucky is more unsettlingly beautiful than any song you will ever hear. Perhaps the most creative and unusual album I have ever heard, and I love it!



3. Lloyd Cole & the Commotions - Rattlesnakes (1984)
Nothing beats great lyrics. Even the most mundane melody can be made listenable with lyrics that pull you in and paint pictures that you see with your soul. Of course the line between great lyrics and pretentious twaddle is razor-thin, and most go steamrolling right over it. On this record, Lloyd walked right up to that line on every song, but never crossed: "When she smiles my way/my eyes go out in vain/she's got perfect skin" - hell, who hasn't been there? "She took her keys and left me out in the cold/wearing a plastic coat and the pressures of life/through lack of patience" - has a breakup ever been captured as well?



4. Flying Lizards - Fourth Wall (1981)
The Lizard's hard-to-find second album is treasure to be snapped up if you ever see it. This is not the album with Money on it, nor is it the album with their novelty covers of Sex Machine and Dizzy Miss Lizzie; in fact, it sound nothing like those. It is a gorgeous amalgam of melodies, electronics, audio verite and studio noodling. New York scenestress Patti Palladin took lead vocal chores for this record, King Crimson's Robert Fripp is wandering around the grooves here, and lead Lizard David Cunnigham steers the listener through the aural equivalent of a funhouse hall of mirrors.



5. Bow Wow Wow - See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah! City All Over Go Ape Crazy! (1981)
The second-longest album title in my 3000+-title collection (Fiona Apple's When the Pawn... takes the prize - look up the full title for yourself), this was one of the earliest "new wave" records I owned. Tribal chanting, Burundi drums, spaghetti-western guitars, Malcolm McLaren's PR manipulations and the stunningly beautiful Annabella out in front, Bow Wow Wow remains my favorite band of all time - actually got to see them live in NYC in2004 and meet them after the show, and what a show they put on! This, their debut vinyl (the cassette-only Your Cassette Pet was their first release), is my favorite of their three albums.



6. The MC5 - Kick Out the Jams (1969)
This is what a live album should sound like, period. Nothing but energy, noise, jubilation, and unsafely loud muthafukkin rock-n-roll. This is the album to have blaring while you're thrashing about your living room in an immature air-guitaring frenzy; this is the album to have blaring when you and your friends have a full car with the top down speeding down the highway in the summer; this is the album to have blaring when you're grilling burgers and dogs and downing the suds in the backyard. Do we want a revolution? Sure, but more than that, we wanna rawk!

MC5 - Kick Out The Jams
Uploaded by moriganne

7. The Jim Carroll Band - Catholic Boy (1980)
Go read the book "The Basketball Diaries" (no, just seeing the movie doesn't count - read the damn book!) Then go find a copy of Catholic Boy and play it start-to-finish. If you aren't affected by it, you have no soul. From Wicked Gravity to Nothing is True to People Who Died, this is a soul lain bare. It's at once a cry for help and a fuck you for trying. And it is awesome.



8. Dead Kennedys - Plastic Surgery Disasters (1982)
This statement may cause arguments, but I am going to make it anyway and I will stand by it: Plastic Surgery Disasters is the most perfect punk rock record ever made. Jello Biafra is at his sarcastic best skewering everyone and everything from preppies to doctors to California phonies, the band is far tighter here than on the admittedly classic Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the music is hyper speed but not at the cost of melody. Winnebago Warrior, Buzzbomb, Moon Over Marin, I Am the Owl - all classics. They would later become message-heavy before collapsing altogether, but this album captured the band and the sound at the perfect moment.



9. The Fleshtones - Hexbreaker! (1983)
No better party album exists than this'n. The Fleshtones have always been about fun. They are a band that you really have to see live to fully "get", but Hexbreaker! comes damn close to capturing that excitement on vinyl. Every song is an upbeat hook that will wriggle into your brain and force you to sing or hum along by the second or third listen!


[note - the video title is misspelled - should be "Right Side of a Good Thing"]


10. Ramones - Ramones (1976)
The Ramones have to be here, but deciding which record to include was tough. I'm going with the debut, not only because it blew me away the first time I heard it, but because of its well-documented effect on the music world. The number of bands who started up because of this album is staggering - do some Googling and be amazed. How much different would music be today without this album?



11. The Saints - (I'm) Stranded (1977)
12. Iggy & the Stooges - Raw Power (1973)
I put these two records together because they are both here for essentially the same reason - they freakin' rock from start to finish. A friend I used to work with once said, "you know, I can be having the worst day, everything going wrong, and I put on Raw Power, and everything is cool again..." Yep, and the same can be said of (I'm) Stranded





13. Syd Barrett - The Madcap Laughs (1970)
A stunning document of one man's descent into acid-drenched insanity. Barrett's first record since leaving Pink Floyd is difficult to listen to at first due to its very spur-of-the-moment nature and Syd's tendency to add or omit beats, or bars, or occasionally choruses. The record sounds incomplete, at times being more reminiscent of a tape recorder candidly catching a child entertaining himself by singing off-key and off-kilter than of a major-label album recorded by a major artist. It's worth the effort to get to know this record, though - there is much joy and beauty to be found in the warped innocence and naiveté of songs like Love You, Octopus and Terrapin.



14. The Residents - The Residents Present the Third Reich 'n' Roll (1976)
This was one of those records that opened me up to the idea that music doesn't have to sound like what the radio tells us music should sound like. Two side-long suites that rip apart the songs that everyone used to hear coming out of tinny AM transistor radios, pulse the pieces through a meat grinder, drag the result through the mud and slap it all back together with spit and spackle, making it at once horrifically alien and oddly familiar. Up through the blurry mush bubble things like the hook from Yummy Yummy Yummy, a strained chorus from The Letter, an angry spitting of Hanky Panky, but these are only fleeting moments of safety before your head is pushed below the surface of the muck again until the nightmare culminates in a bizarre blending of Sunshine of Your Love, Hey Jude and Sympathy for the Devil. It's the only record that I have ever played for people who have asked me to turn it off. How could I not love it?



15. The Suicide Commandos - The Suicide Commandos Make a Record (1978)
One of the most criminally forgotten artifacts of early American DIY punk rock. This isn't punk in the British mohawk sense, the LA hardcore sense, or even the New York art school sense. This is a wholly mid-America product; three guys writing great songs with killer hooks. Hindsight allows a line to be drawn from the Commandos that converges with the line drawn from the Raspberries and Big Star to create early80 s power pop, but this record isn't quite that sound yet (proto-power-pop maybe?) Every song here is a winner, but the star of the show is Match/Mismatch, the story of a dinner date gone horribly wrong (complete with our hero shouting "Waiter! My check!")



So, how telling is it that the most recent record on this list is 25 years old?

And People Wonder Why I Don't Drive

You have to see this one to believe it, courtesy of OCRegister: the video is from the surveillance camera at a convenience store where a gentleman "parked" his truck while he briefly went inside to get a soda. When he returned to the parking lot, his truck was gone.

Since he left the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked while he went into the store, he assumed the truck had been stolen. After all, it was here a moment ago, right?

He called 911 to report the stolen truck, and the responding officer had the store pull the surveillance tape, which revealed what really happened.

These are the people they give licenses to, folks - and yet people ask me why I don't want to be out on the roads with them...