Tuesday Tuneage
UFO - "Shoot Shoot"
1975

My love for crime novels started in the nineties when a friend loaned me Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch and Carl Hiaasen’s Striptease. A few years later while at the Washburn Library I came across John Williams’ Into the Badlands, checked it out on a whim, and that got me into George V. Higgins (amazing dialogue, has to be read to see its genius) and James Ellroy (probably a big Lee Marvin fan.) Then it was a review of King Suckerman in Spin that turned me onto George Pelecanos. When I got into The Wire (and like almost everyone who watches it, I really got into The Wire), along with Pelecanos in the credits I saw the names Dennis Lehane and Richard Price and had to check them out. Price’s Clockers might be the perfect novel, not a single word is wasted or out of place.

So it went, other things would come along. Saw the James Crumley obituary in Time where it mentioned the opening line of The Last Good Kiss and added him to the list. Then came my Elmore Leonard renaissance. I had given up on his Out of Sight shortly after release (“too contrived” I sniffed, only to see it be made into one of my all-time favorite movies), but grabbing his Swag at a library in Edina (!) and burning through it in a weekend got me back into his novels. The Last Good Kiss and Swag both have final lines that are up there with the ones from Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays and Mark Harris’s Bang the Drum Slowly as greats in American fiction.

This year I’ve been reading Laura Lippman (who recommended Pelecanos to David Simon for The Wire) and Dennis Woodrell, who I got into via William’s second travelogue/author interviews book Back to the Badlands. Woodrell’s fiction got me into enjoying cheap scotch on the rocks on a hot summer day while trying to beat the heat. Woodrell didn’t write for The Wire but I call a Cutty Sark on the rocks a “Dennis Wise.” And the straight literary novel had kinda lost its luster with me: Read about the annoying bland-ohs who populate Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom or the streetwise tough talkers in George V. Higgins’  Cogan’s Trade?

Whether it’s sitting in Painter Park with my morning tea and Smokey’s Soul Town on headphones, sitting at a bar with a draft and hearing snippets of conversations near me over the jukebox, or at home with a bottle of water and music on the hi-fi — there’s few things more enjoyable for me than reading while listening to music.

"Shoot Shoot" spins a story worthy of forties film noir, the film genre that so influenced American crime fiction with its sharp dialogue and endings where nobody really wins. Featuring the classic crisp crunching sound of mid-seventies UFO, the tale of a femme fatale could also fit into a song by a friend of Carl Hiaasen’s, the late Warren Zevon. 

Tuesday Tuneage
The Reds - “Victims”
1979

The first summer I played bantam league baseball, all teams got major league team names — my team was the Reds. But for some reason the park board gave us blue tee shirts to play in. Can’t believe this never made it into my writing.

Tuesday Tuneage
INXS and Jimmy Barnes - "Good Times"
1987

The Lost Boys looked promising upon release: teen horror-comedy flick featuring the actors responsible for the two best performanes in Stand By Me: That era’s teen movie creepo Kiefer Sutherland and the irrepressible Corey Feldman. Throw in the other Corey (Haim) to advance the comedy (“that’s a serious book”) and include Jason Patric and Jami Gertz, who brought the darkly smoldering aspect. But upon three or four viewings over the decades, it’s never topped that first fun “watch it some Saturday night with roommates” vibe, though my most recent alone with Cutty Sark rocks and in the mood to laugh brought some valued summer entertainment.

“Good Time” by INXS and (who the heck is) Jimmy Barnes is heard twice in The Lost Boys, early in a boardwalk scene and then in the climatic waste-the-vampires scene:

Vampire: You missed, sucker.
Corey Haim: Only once, pal.

First heard this one in the summer of ‘87 on Q-98 out of Fargo, was quick to learn it was first recorded by Aussie legends The Easybeats, who featured Harry Vanda and George Young, later to go on to produce AC/DC albums. As let’s-have-some-fun songs goes it’s up there with and reminiscent of Eddie Cochran’s “C’mon Everybody” and in another throwback the party promises to include Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally and Larry Williams’ Bony Moronie. I have the single of the INXS/Barnes version, my 45 practically jumps off the turntable, what a grade-A fucking sound! Figures, it was remixed by Bob Clearmountain. (The B-side was remixed by Chris Thomas, which somehow made complete and utter sense when I first scanned the credits.) I bought my single at Cheapo way back when and it has a Fallon McElligott sticker on it. Makes you wonder who was running that joint back in the day — we know Sterling Cooper controller Lane Pryce wouldn’t go for buying random singles to play on the firm’s hi-fi.

Tuesday Tuneage
Nazareth - “Razamanaz”
1973

In the same year that Nazareth released one of the greatest folk rock songs ever, they put out this garage rock classic. They claim if we bring the wine, they somehow will bring the weather. (Hey Nazareth: Could you do something about this summer of 2025? It bites the big one.) And not only are they going to “razamataz” us tonight, they’re going to “razamanaz” us all night. What does any of this mean? Who cares! Wooly Bully, Louie Louie, Liar Liar, Talk Talk … Abracadabra.

Annoyance Index No. 4

People saying it’s their “birthday week”
Northbound 4B bus always running late
Someone listing all their favorite podcasts as a pretense for conversation
MFA-Writing Grants-Writing Magazines-Industrial Complex
Me not coming up with a catchy name for above like Ike did with Military-Industrial Complex

Tuesday Tuneage
America - “Sandman”
1972

Call me a sap (and many likely have) but throughout my existence as a mostly hard-rock-or-GTFO guy, I’ve always dug America’s singles. A big part of my mid-seventies soundtrack what with “A Horse With No Name” being played on the radio among rockers Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Joe Walsh while my friends and I played Risk over and over and “Sister Golden Hair” coming onto an AM station on a ride home from church in that same era and feeling wistful while hearing it (if a fourth grader can feel wistful.) Something called “the Tropic of Sir Galahad” from “Tin Man” is deep when you’re that age and in later years “you can always change your name” from “Ventura Highway” always had me convinced the  narrator was talking to a draft dodger friend.

A few years back my hankering for that America sound got to the point where I went out of my way (simple rack surfing at local record stores wouldn’t suffice, suddenly needed this album pronto) to get History: America’s Greatest Hits on eBay. Yessir: All the seventies hits and other gems, plus “Muskrat Love” leads off side two so it’s easy to skip and get to a true leadoff hitter in “Tin Man.” Finding out that Phil Hartman (spelled Hartmann in the liner notes) designed its album cover is the second coolest “whoa HE designed album covers” discovery I’ve had in recent years since looking over my Steve Martin Let’s Get Small album and discovering Dean Torrance of Jan and Dean designed that cover. These types of finds are arguably more mind-blowing than the concept of a Tropic of Sir Galahad.

While in the depths of my America rabbit hole on the Internet. I came across some blurb where David Crosby showed disdain for America allegedly ripping off Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s sound. But I find America more sonically and lyrically interesting than the likes of CSNY’s “Our House” and “Teach Your Children.”* Meanwhile “A Horse with No Name” did as good at Neil Young as Neil himself. So yeah, I can get my first-half-of-the-seventies fill of rock jollies with Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Blue Oyster Cult, BTO, et. al. but “Sandman” is the America deep cut played on the AOR FM station in that alternate universe I’ll gladly set up shop in some Saturday afternoon with Ardbeg and Snyder’s of Hanover.

*“Adult bubblegum” was the spot-on phrase used by Billy Altman to describe CSN(and sometimes Y) in The Rolling Stone Record Guide. The Guide’s entry on America by John Swenson snidely notes that all of their album titles begin with the letter “H” and calls this “a Sesame Street-level conceit”. Having been a huge fan of Sesame Street seasons one and two as they aired, I should take offense.

Tuesday Tuneage
Deep Purple - "Highway Star"
1972

 

The Imaginary Further Adventures of Guys Who Had Written Their Names on Albums I Bought in Used Bins

Jim Clark, Deep Purple, Machine Head — Later as an adult when his nephew played The Replacements’ “Takin’ a Ride”, Jim realized they nicked its opening from Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” (And damn: both were opening tracks.) Then he went to a local store, bought Machine Head on compact disc for $15.99, and realized that the jokers at the record label had released it in quadraphonic sound and everything sounded bizarre. Around this same time, his nephew asked if he still had his vinyl albums and could he look through them for anything by Budgie, Bloodrock, or Funkadelic. I’m getting too old for this, Jim said to nobody in particular.

Steve Forman, The James Gang 16 Greatest Hits — On the album cover after “The James Gang” he wrote “with Steve Forman” because he was moved by the plea of the Gang’s “White Man, Black Man”, a pop culture racial unity moment on par with Jerry Seinfeld’s “look to the cookie” speech in 1994. He was also delighted to see that they had a “Funk #48”, which makes sense: Because if there were a “Funk #49”, it must be assumed that there were funks one through forty-eight beforehand.

Eber (only surname was inscribed), Blue Oyster Cult, On Your Feet or on Your Knees — His roommate ate all his Cheetos and also made a serious dent in his Frosted Flakes stash so hell no is that joker going to abscond with his Foghat, Montrose, or BOC albums. Eber sat down with a black Bic pen — the same model he used to take the ink reservoir out of to configure a spitball shooter in eighth grade study hall — and plainly wrote his name on all of his LPs. Even the Flip Wilson album that ended up in his collection after his big brother left for college. Your move, roomie.

Sam Birkholm, Alice Cooper, Love It to Death — Once his mom found out they had a song titled “Dead Babies,” all of Sam’s Alice Cooper albums went in the Sell Immediately pile when the family emigrated from their 42-parishioners Laestadian Lutheran church to a breakaway 17-parishioners one. This new sect adopted a further hardline (no card playing, no playing music on the radio) and held its services on Sunday mornings in a vacant storefront in a half-empty strip mall on the south edge of town. Sam would later go on to form a metal band called Lutheran Schism before sidelining music and getting a manager’s job at the local Jiffy Lube.

Duhe (only surname inscribed), Bad Company — On this debut long player, the band’s pared-down logo, designed by album cover masters Hipgnosis, is simply stamped in bold white letters across a black field. Duhe couldn’t stand to mar this visual masterpiece, so on the sly he wrote his name on the inside jacket of the LP. In cursive as well, to offset the bold sans-serif font used by Bad Co. on the cover. He currently has a job where he uses the word “creative” as a noun and hosts weekly Mad Men parties, though the show has been off the air for years.

Donn B., John Entwistle, Whistle Rhymes — In 1976 a cash crunch necessitated the selling of all solo works by members of The Who. Donn felt none of them had been that outstanding and the one where a shirtless Roger Daltrey was portrayed as a centaur always gave him the creeps. This one had to go as well because Entwistle did not spell his name using “whistle”, while Pete Townshend had a silent “h” in his surname. A maddening bunch.

Tom Lenzen, Focus, Moving Waves — This album contains “Hocus Pocus, ” which is not only the greatest rock ‘n’ roll song with yodeling AND a top-five one featuring a flute (Lenzen briefly had a flute-rock section in his vinyl collection: Focus, Jethro Tull, Marshall Tucker Band), so damn straight he was going to ink his brand on the cover.

Ray Nickels, Yes, The Yes Album — Ray, bitter that this album had a song called “Starship Troopers” but it had nothing to do with Robert Heinlein or libertarianism, sold it with all his other Yes albums. Yes was always too happy and hippie-dippie for his taste anyway. He took the cash, walked to a nearby used bookstore, and bought a second copy of Heinlein’s (yes) Starship Troopers to keep at his cabin in the woods.

Annoyance Index No. 3

Cars stopping in middle of crosswalks
Mindfulness
Using “Nordic” and “Scandinavian” interchangeably
Lack of Thin Lizzy LPs in my collection
Skip preview > Skip listen to podcast about this episode > Skip recap > Skip intro

Tuesday Tuneage
Little Richard - "Rubber Duckie"
1994

Your friends at the table each order a beer. The server looks your way, you order a single malt scotch. To the table you say, “Toddler time has ended.”

Tuesday Tuneage
AC/DC - "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)"
1981

As noted here before, the Young brothers’ attempts to mimic Pete Townshend’s *Who’s Next* synthesizer using guitars were downright admirable. That sound was first heard on this track and the use of cannons towards the end of the song was downright Spinal Tap-esque*. Wikipedia says AC/DC was inspired to employ artillery when hearing cannons being used at the wedding of Charles and Diana. Turns out those inbred German royals were good for something after all.

*AC/DC’s use of phallic metaphors is a whole other Tap-worthy thing. As Chuck Eddy has noted, the *For Those About To Rock** album alone has “Let’s Get It Up”, “Inject the Venom”, and “Night of the Long Knives.” You could make your own playlist of such songs by throwing in “Big Gun”, “Sink the Pink”, “Hard As a Rock”, “Fire Your Guns”, “Let Me Put My Love Into You,” and many, many more.

Annoyance Index No. 2

The Academy Awards
Stating that the Miracle on Ice game was a semifinal
Unshoveled sidewalks (hello Minneapolis 311)
Person next to you on the treadmill who obviously smoked a half pack before coming to gym
Person next to you on the stationary bike who reeks of patchouli (or is that perfume okay boomer)

Tuesday Tuneage
Alice Cooper - "School's Out"
1972

On a recent Saturday morning I was supposed to take an accounting course to further my knowledge and appreciation of the profession learn something new to help make some extra money so I can maybe bump up my retirement savings and hopefully get out of the game before chronic pain takes over my life. So I had a doughnut and coffee ready in my UND mug and was set to start. I logged in and found out a specific software was needed to take this course and I would have to take it elsewhere. What to do with an unexpected hour off?

Reminds me of junior year in college when I was taking a course called The Economics of Labor and the professor was a real stiff. Grumpy and anti-union. Great, a professor hostile to labor teaching a course centered around labor … it was fun to wear my P-9 Proud button to class one day. And now I’m hesitant to get out my transcript to see if I: 1) gutted out an A or B in this course, or 2) took a C in some sort of mail-it-in misguided protest. Anyway, one day he simply didn’t show up. We all sat in the classroom for about ten minutes and then reached some sort of consensus: F*ck this, let’s leave. Huh, an unexpected hour off during college? What to do? Unfortunately I didn’t have a non-school book with me to pass the time with (the best thing about going to the laundromat back then, shun the video games and sit on one of those crummy uncomfortable plastic seats and read a book that wasn’t required for as long as the machines were running) so I headed to the library, found a quiet cubicle, and took a nap. Professor Grumpus was back the next day. (And that Saturday morning I took my coffee and doughnut to the recliner and watched Succession.)

The list essay is a great way to get into the personal essay. Of course, sometimes the essay just doesn’t materialize. So you take what the muse will give you and just stick with the list. 

Annoyance Index No. 1

Emotional intelligence
Quickbooks Online
Kevin Hart
“Is this the Vikings Super Bowl blueprint?”
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Tuesday Tuneage
Nirvana - "Stay Away"
1991

Curbside 2021

Yes I’m that guy standing on the curb hoping somebody inside will see me. No, I don’t have a make or color of car, just wearing jeans, tee shirt, ballcap. I’d like my hoagie and chips, I already paid and tipped online. And I’m dropping off my cat who needs emergency care.

No, I don’t have a number for a parking stall that I’m in. Yes, I assure you I won’t walk through the door and be a bad guy, a villain, even though I am wearing a mask. I’d just like to pick up my chicken dinner and side salad. And pay the veterinary bill with a couple of credit cards so I can take my cat home.

I haven’t had a car in ten years, that’s why I’m standing here. Yeah, it’s been walking and buses and cabs. I don’t mind it here on the curb except when it’s cold out, then I’ll have the food delivered. Do you deliver veterinary care?

Standing curbside digging the phone out of my pocket, the folks in their cars look happy, smiles all around when the door to the building opens and staff emerges with bags of food and carriers and furry friends on leashes.

Hoping somebody will answer the phone and not put me on hold so I can get my stir fry and egg rolls. And prescription for my cat who had the urinary blockage. Help me out and then send me on my way, I’d like to get home to eat this delicious meal. And monitor litter box usage to ensure my cat doesn’t have to come back.

Please please please someone release me from this curb.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Chi-Lites - "(For God's Sake) Give More Power to the People"
1971

After Quickbooks Online Accountant, Quickbooks Ledger, Quickbooks Solopreneur (formerly Quickbooks Self-Employed), and Quickbooks Money … it’s not surprising to see Quickbooks Capital has been added to the QB roster of products. One can imagine the weekly emailed newsletters — you’ll get them whether you subscribe to them or not — and their features:

City and State Code Loopholes: The Key to Starting a Profitable Sweatshop
Hell Yeah the NLRB Is Unconstitutional: Go Trader Joe!
Pinkertons: A Timeless Classic
The United States Chamber of Commerce: Your Uncle, Your Friend

Of course with Quickbooks Capital being an Intuit product, bugs will be features. These include such things as the concentration of wealth, wage inequalities, and recessions. If you like Quickbooks Capital, you can upgrade to Quickbooks Imperial for a monthly fee. There is no Quickbooks Labor available and in a release Intuit says it has no plans to develop it, though Reddit boards indicate a shareware version is available with a Seize the Means of Production mode.